Dr. Fauci: The Man Behind America’s Pandemic Response

0:00:13 Hello, everyone. I’m Guy Kawasaki. This is the Remarkable People podcast. And today,
0:00:20 we truly, truly have a remarkable person. It’s Dr. Tony Fauci. And he was the director
0:00:27 of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. He was an advisor in this kind of role
0:00:34 for seven presidents, seven presidents. So he was involved during these times of HIV/AIDS,
0:00:44 respiratory infections, tuberculosis, malaria, Ebola, Zika, COVID-19. He really has this amazing
0:00:50 background. He has the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It’s the highest civilian award. It
0:01:00 was given to him by 2008 by George W. Bush. And Dr. Fauci, Tony, he said I can call him Tony. I got
0:01:09 to tell you, we have 52 remarkable people a year, but you are near the top. You have had, I think,
0:01:17 more impact than just about anybody else on our podcast. So I just want to express my deep, deep,
0:01:23 sincere appreciation for the work that you’ve done. I personally think you probably saved my
0:01:29 families, I don’t know, their lives, but certainly their health. So I just want to thank you in terms
0:01:35 of many, many millions of people who want to express this gratitude for your work through your
0:01:41 career. Thank you. I appreciate that guy. Thank you very much. And I hope you get a second Medal
0:01:46 of Freedom or you get a Nobel Prize or a MacArthur Fellowship or whatever the hell you want. You
0:01:56 deserve it all. Thank you. Let’s start with something easy. So it seems to me that disease
0:02:05 control isn’t exactly rocket-sized at this point. We kind of know what to do. But why are people so
0:02:11 stupid that we just don’t do what it takes and take care of these problems? What stands in the
0:02:16 way of this? Guy, I don’t think it’s that people are stupid. I think that they don’t have a full
0:02:24 appreciation for the relationship between good public health practices and the ability to contain,
0:02:31 for example, an outbreak. There are certain fundamental core principles of public health
0:02:37 that when you have the situation that we face during the COVID pandemic where there was a great
0:02:45 degree of divisiveness in the country. And I want to distinguish divisiveness from diversity of
0:02:51 opinion. Diversity of opinion is fine. But the profound divisiveness that we had as we were
0:02:58 trying to contain a historic pandemic, the likes of which we have not seen in over a hundred years,
0:03:05 it became very difficult. And what evolved out of that was a distrust in science. And even
0:03:12 somewhat of an anti-science attitude, we saw that in the fact that we had a totally life-saving
0:03:20 vaccine. By every single parameter that has been measured in the United States and throughout the
0:03:27 world, the COVID vaccine has literally saved millions and millions of lives. And yet there were
0:03:35 people who, for ideologic or other reasons, refused to take the vaccine, essentially putting
0:03:41 themselves and their family in danger. So again, I don’t think that can be classified as being
0:03:50 stupid. I think it’s somewhat misguided by an anti-science attitude, which is really unfortunate.
0:03:59 So here’s the hypothetical. Let’s say we could get the world to shut down for six weeks. Six
0:04:06 weeks. Everybody just stays put for six weeks. Theoretically, could we just wipe out many
0:04:13 infectious diseases? No, I don’t think so. When you say wipe out, guys, you’ve got to distinguish.
0:04:18 And this is a really good issue that you bring up. There’s a difference between controlling
0:04:25 infections, eliminating infections, and eradicating infections. We have only been successfully
0:04:33 eradicated one human infection in the history of mankind, and that’s smallpox. We’ve eliminated
0:04:40 infections in certain geographic areas by good public health practices. And predominantly,
0:04:49 the major force in that was vaccination. For example, we have officially eliminated polio and
0:04:57 eliminated measles in the United States. Measles still exists in different parts of the world.
0:05:06 Polio still exists. But you eliminate it by creating a situation by vaccination and diminishing the
0:05:13 opportunity of a pathogen, in this case, a virus, to infect people that you can actually eliminate
0:05:21 its occurrence. We don’t do that with a lot of different infections. For example, HIV right now
0:05:30 in the United States is under better control than it was back in the 1980s. But, big but,
0:05:38 it hasn’t been eliminated, and it certainly hasn’t been eradicated. Whereas infections like polio,
0:05:45 smallpox, measles, yellow fever, malaria, we’ve eliminated them in the United States and other
0:05:52 developed nations. So, I don’t think that if you just lock people up for six weeks, you’re going
0:05:57 to get rid of all infections. That’s just not going to happen. But what happens when people are
0:06:05 saying that if you get MMR, your kids will have autism, and then there’s all these anti-vaccines.
0:06:11 So, these things that have been “eliminated” can return. Absolutely. In fact, that’s one of the
0:06:19 big caveats when you use the word “eliminate.” Because if you eliminate, but don’t eradicate,
0:06:25 there is always the possibility of the return of that particular pathogen. And we have excellent
0:06:34 examples of that in countries that have suspended the broad general measles vaccination. There’s
0:06:39 been outbreaks of measles in those countries. We’ve seen that in the UK. We’ve seen that in
0:06:46 certain European countries, which is the reason why we’re very concerned about the skepticism on
0:06:54 the part of some about continuing vaccinations, which have essentially eliminated infections in
0:07:00 this country. Now, let’s suppose, Tony, that I give you this magic wand. And with this magic
0:07:09 wand, you can redesign the clinical trial system. How would the Tony Fauci clinical
0:07:15 trial system work? There are clinical trials guys that are being conducted that have been
0:07:21 conducted, particularly in areas that we most recently have been involved with. For example,
0:07:28 the clinical trial to prove the safety and the efficacy of the COVID vaccines, the clinical
0:07:36 trials that proved the safety and the extraordinary efficacy of some of the HIV drugs that have saved
0:07:43 now millions of lives. The clinical trial, I don’t need a magic wand guy because it’s pretty
0:07:50 well established that if you do a well controlled clinical trial in which all of the parameters
0:07:57 of getting a definitive answer and the gold standard of that, when you can ethically do it,
0:08:05 would be a randomized placebo control trial, which is exactly what we did with the COVID
0:08:13 vaccines in which we tested it in tens of thousands of people. And at the end of less than a year,
0:08:21 it was demonstrated that the people who were in the treatment group, namely the vaccine group,
0:08:29 compared to the placebo group, had a very, very highly significant diminution in infection to the
0:08:37 tune of more than 90% efficacy. So there are good models for clinical trials. I don’t need a magic
0:08:46 wand. It happens. But it seems to me, I read in your book that you were somewhat in conflict with
0:08:54 the CDC about the pace and the number of trials and the number of patients in the trial. And there
0:09:00 was a moral issue that you see such efficacy in the early days that rather than taking it to the
0:09:06 full term, let’s push it out now. So isn’t that a fundamental change in how clinical trials were
0:09:12 done? No, not necessarily. And I wasn’t really a guy. I have to correct you on that. I wasn’t in
0:09:19 conflict with the CDC on that. What happens in a clinical trial is that you have what’s called a
0:09:26 data and safety monitoring board that is an independent board, not the people who are doing
0:09:36 the trials, but an independent, non-conflicted board of experts that intermittently look at the data
0:09:44 for two reasons. One, are there any safety issues in which the vaccine or the intervention
0:09:51 in question is doing more harm than good, which would trigger you to stop the trial?
0:09:59 On the other side of the coin, are the results so good that you would be unethical to continue
0:10:05 the trial because the people who are in the placebo absolutely should be receiving the
0:10:12 intervention? There’s no conflict there, but the reason there’s discussion is that often,
0:10:21 sometimes, rather than to let the trial go to its full, pre-intended completion, you stop it earlier
0:10:27 because the results are so good. You want to get the benefit of that intervention as quickly as
0:10:46 possible to as many people as possible. Do you believe that we are truly post-pandemic and
0:10:51 now it’s the 10th leading cause of death? It used to be the fourth, but are we considering the impact
0:10:59 of long COVID or is everything as rosy and good as some politicians might have us believe?
0:11:05 Well, whenever there is an infection in the community that’s causing suffering and death,
0:11:16 you can’t say everything is good and rosy. It certainly is better now in January of 2025
0:11:23 than it was in January, February, March, and April of 2020 when it was an explosive global
0:11:30 pandemic that lasted in its explosive form for at least two or three years, for the last year or so,
0:11:36 even though there have been new variants and there are still a number of infections. If you
0:11:44 look at the data guy, the number of infections per day are dramatically lower than they were
0:11:50 a couple of years ago. The number of deaths, even though we’re seeing deaths throughout the world
0:11:57 from COVID, it is remarkably lower due to the efficacy of the vaccine and the fact that most
0:12:03 people have already been infected and they have a degree of background immunity, but we still
0:12:09 need to take COVID seriously. We don’t need to shut anything down. We don’t need to have the kind
0:12:15 of restrictions that we had early on, but we shouldn’t forget about it because people are
0:12:23 still getting infected. And as you said, long COVID is a serious issue that we need to contend with
0:12:30 because even if a small fraction of the hundreds of millions of people who’ve been in fact, the
0:12:37 billions of people who’ve been infected with COVID, even if a small fraction of them have long COVID,
0:12:44 that’s a serious public health problem. And there’s a term that politicians love to use called
0:12:53 herd immunization. And is herd immunization really relevant for herd immunization herd immunity,
0:13:01 herd immunity, excuse me, pardon me, that that’s why you’re Tony Fauci and I’m Guy Kawasaki.
0:13:08 So herd immunity for something like COVID, is that realistic or does COVID because it’s
0:13:17 right down at the DNA level and it’s, it mutates so fast. It’s herd immunity. Just a irrelevant
0:13:23 concept. It’s not irrelevant, but it’s very, it’s a unique situation with COVID. The two
0:13:31 fundamental factors that are necessary to get herd immunity is that you have to have an infection
0:13:39 by a pathogen that doesn’t change from month to month and year to year. Number one. Number two,
0:13:48 when you get infected or you get vaccinated, you have to have durable immunity measured not
0:13:56 in weeks and months, but measured in many years. If you get durable immunity and a virus that doesn’t
0:14:04 change, then you conceptually can get herd immunity when you have a certain percentage of the population
0:14:12 is protected. That would protect the small percentage of people that don’t have protection.
0:14:20 But if you have a virus like COVID that changes, we have multiple variants over the last five
0:14:28 years. Number one. And number two, even when you get infected and recovered or when you get
0:14:35 vaccinated, the durability of protection is very low. It’s measured in months to a year,
0:14:45 not years to a decade. So the concept of herd immunity in many respects does not hold for COVID.
0:14:54 Okay. So right now, about 20% of Americans are getting vaccinated for these booster shots and
0:15:03 stuff. Is that critical mass? No, it’s not. We’re not utilizing a vaccine that is highly effective
0:15:09 and safe. Obviously, if you’ve been vaccinated or infected, you have a degree of protection.
0:15:16 If you want to increase that degree of protection, then a booster will help you to get a greater
0:15:24 degree of protection. So it doesn’t mean if you don’t get boosted, you have no protection.
0:15:30 But if you do get boosted, you have a greater degree of protection than you do if you don’t get
0:15:37 boosted. My logic would be like for the 30 minutes of effort and basically free booster,
0:15:44 why wouldn’t you get it? That’s a good question. But unfortunately, there’s a bit of inertia in
0:15:50 the population about getting boosters because for many respects, guys, understandable, but
0:15:56 unfortunate that people don’t want to be bothered with COVID anymore. They don’t want to think about
0:16:00 it. They don’t want to do anything about it. They just want to go on with their lives,
0:16:06 which is very understandable. But from the standpoint of protection in an optimal way,
0:16:14 it’s unfortunate. Now, I get this impression, and I’m obviously not a scientist, but that the
0:16:21 treatment of AIDS took a long, long time to figure out. But the treatment of COVID seemed like
0:16:28 magically was but a bing, but a bang. It was there. So is the latest technology and mRNA,
0:16:34 is that the silver bullets from this day forward? We’re going to just be knocking out these viruses
0:16:40 quickly. Now, it’s complicated, Guy, because you don’t want to mix up the development of a vaccine
0:16:47 for COVID with the development of treatments for HIV. Even though it took a while to get
0:16:54 treatments, we have spectacularly effective treatments for HIV right now. When I was taking care
0:17:03 of persons with HIV every day, back in the 80s and the 90s in the early 2000, and even to this day,
0:17:10 I still see occasionally patients with HIV. But back in the 80s, before we had any drugs,
0:17:17 it was a virtual death sentence for persons living with HIV. Now, you could take one pill
0:17:25 that contains two or three antiviral drugs that can suppress the virus to below detectable levels
0:17:33 that persons can lead essentially a normal lifespan. That’s very different than drugs for COVID,
0:17:41 because drugs for COVID, it’s a transient infection, whereas HIV is a chronic lifelong
0:17:48 infection. So there are some drugs for COVID, you know, you get paxilavid and remdesivir and others,
0:17:55 but nothing like the incredible power of the drugs against HIV. On the other hand,
0:18:04 we don’t have a vaccine yet for HIV, whereas we did something, we being the scientific and
0:18:11 pharmacological community, we did something that was completely unprecedented, that from the time
0:18:21 the virus sequence was made public in January of 2020, to the time we had conducted clinical trials
0:18:28 in tens of thousands of people, and developed a vaccine that was safe and highly effective,
0:18:36 was less than 11 months, which is completely unprecedented in the history of vaccinology.
0:18:44 Usually, it takes seven to 10 years to get a vaccine, but that’s where the technology came in,
0:18:48 to allow us to do things that we could not do before.
0:18:57 And this technology specifically is mRNA. It’s mRNA, but it’s also what’s called immunogen design,
0:19:04 where the mRNA is the platform to deliver the vaccine, whereas the immunogen
0:19:12 is what we call the business end of the vaccine. And scientists at NIH, in the institute that I
0:19:21 used to develop, my team, were able to design the immunogen in a stable form that was highly
0:19:31 immunogenic. So when you combined the mRNA platform technology with the very, very successful
0:19:37 immunogen design, that’s why we had the very, very successful COVID vaccines.
0:19:45 So are we now much better prepared if bird flu mutates and becomes more contagious, human to
0:19:53 human? The answer is in many respects, yes. When I think of pandemic preparedness and response,
0:20:00 I generally put it in two separate buckets, the scientific preparedness and response,
0:20:06 and the public health preparedness and response. If you look at our track record,
0:20:13 we’ve done spectacularly well with the scientific preparedness and response for COVID
0:20:20 because we have a vaccine that never would we have thought we’d have a vaccine in less than a year.
0:20:26 However, from a public health standpoint, we had somewhat of a fractionated response. We didn’t
0:20:33 have a uniformness in our public health response. In some respects, I’m not so sure
0:20:39 we’re that much better prepared from a public health standpoint than we were
0:20:45 from a scientific standpoint. So we’ve got to do better in our public health response.
0:20:51 This is a question I almost hesitate to ask you, but when I was preparing for this interview,
0:20:55 I asked some friends, “What would you ask Tony Fauci?” And one of them said,
0:21:01 “I saw a clip where he says on MSNBC, when you get vaccinated, you can feel safe,
0:21:07 you’re not going to get infected.” And I realized that’s like six seconds and who knows what came
0:21:15 before after that. But can you explain the context of that? Yeah, vaccinations for the most part,
0:21:24 not all, but most of them protect you against clinically apparent disease, whereas it doesn’t
0:21:32 necessarily have as much capability of protecting you against infection. So you can get an asymptomatic
0:21:40 infection if you’re vaccinated, but you won’t go on to get seriously ill, require hospitalization,
0:21:49 or die. So vaccines, including COVID, are much better and very effective in protecting you
0:21:57 against clinically apparent and severe disease, not as good protecting you against infection
0:22:03 as an event, even though you might be asymptomatic with that infection.
0:22:08 But when people quote those six seconds, it’s as if you’re saying get a vaccine,
0:22:14 everything is great. No, I never said that. And whoever’s doing that is misquoting a guy.
0:22:19 I never said that. I said that you will be protected against severe disease. I’ve said that
0:22:28 maybe a thousand times on television. Okay, so let me say that if I’m a young person and I’m
0:22:36 interested in public health or medicine, and then I see what happened to you and Dr. Berks and how
0:22:42 you were treated by politicians and the public, I must admit, I’d look at that and say, do I really
0:22:48 want to get into medicine? Do I really want to get into public health? So what’s your advice to people
0:22:54 who might be interested in this field, but they’re a little taken aback by what happened to you?
0:23:01 Yeah, it’s unfortunate that I and many of my colleagues in medicine, science and public health
0:23:07 have been attacked for reasons that are still difficult to understand, but instead of being
0:23:13 supported have been attacked. But what I tell younger people when they ask the question that
0:23:19 you’re asking is that why would you want to get involved in public health and in medicine
0:23:26 if you get treated the way many of us have been treated? And I say that the gratification that
0:23:34 you will get from doing something that ultimately could save people’s lives and alleviate suffering
0:23:41 is so much more overwhelming than the negative things. So the positive aspect guy
0:23:49 completely outshines the negative things. So even though it would be nice if people appreciated
0:23:56 what public health people were trying to do, even for those whatever fraction of the population
0:24:04 doesn’t feel that way and is very much attacking public health officials, that’s still the gratification
0:24:11 that a young person or even an older person would get by contributing to the public health
0:24:24 of the country and the world just completely over overrides and outshines the negative aspect.
0:24:38 You were on the receiving end of much AIDS activism. So from the receiving side of activism,
0:24:46 what’s your advice to people who want to be good activists? If you want to be a good activist,
0:24:55 you should try to get as much correct information that you can work with the people in authority
0:25:03 to try and get them to understand what particular issue that you have with the way things are being
0:25:15 done. I must say the AIDS activists in the 80s and early 90s were a epitome of a good example
0:25:21 of what activists should do. They did their homework for the most part, not completely,
0:25:28 but for the most part they got their facts straight and they confronted the establishment,
0:25:36 the scientific and regulatory establishment and said, “You know, you’ve got to keep us at the
0:25:42 table and you’ve got to consider our viewpoint about things because we’re the ones that are at risk
0:25:51 and/or suffering from this infection, HIV, so perhaps we can contribute to the ultimate effort
0:25:58 to address it.” And they were completely correct when you have activists that don’t do their homework,
0:26:04 that don’t understand all the facts of what’s going on, then that is counterproductive. But the
0:26:14 AIDS activists were very much value added to the effort. And this is even when Larry Kramer called
0:26:22 you a murderer. Absolutely. He was trying to gain my attention and deep down Larry Kramer got it
0:26:30 right. He felt we needed to do more. And once he got my attention, we became not only collaborators
0:26:38 and colleagues, but we became very good friends. And when, until the day he died, he was a very good
0:26:45 friend of mine. I just, I have to ask this question because you are one of the most stunning examples
0:26:53 I’ve ever seen in my career. What’s your advice when you need to contradict your boss? When your
0:27:00 bosses take this, you know, drink Clorox or whatever and you know it’s just absolutely wrong. What’s
0:27:05 your advice now when you have to contradict your boss? You don’t want to contradict for the sake
0:27:12 of contradicting, but you have to stick by your principles and your values. And when you’re working
0:27:21 in a situation where someone is saying or doing something that is dangerous to the health and
0:27:28 welfare of others, you have a moral obligation to speak up. And that’s how I felt when I had to do
0:27:33 something that I wasn’t happy with. I was not comfortable with it, but I had to publicly
0:27:40 contradict the president of the United States. And I have a great deal of respect for the office
0:27:48 of presidency of the United States, but I had to do it because I had to fulfill my responsibility
0:27:53 to the American public. So my advice to people are when it comes to important matters,
0:28:00 like the health of a population that you’re responsible for, you just have to take the
0:28:07 consequences of speaking up. And most of the time the consequences are that people will agree with
0:28:12 you. And if they don’t, that’s part of the risk you take of being in this kind of a profession.
0:28:21 I loved in your book the story of how your parents were both very concerned with human
0:28:27 welfare and how that influenced your career path. I think a lot of parents are listening to this
0:28:33 podcast. Can you just explain how your parents influenced you for the rest of your career?
0:28:39 Yeah, from the time I was a child, old enough to remember a guy, my father, and this is back in
0:28:46 the 1940s and 1950s, he was the neighborhood pharmacist. He owned a pharmacy. And back then,
0:28:54 the pharmacists are unlike now with the chain drugstores of CVS and Walgreens,
0:28:59 which is somewhat very businesslike and impersonal. Whereas he was kind of like
0:29:04 the neighborhood psychiatrist, the neighborhood doctor, the neighborhood counselor,
0:29:12 and he cared very much about the community. So I, from the time I was able to understand things
0:29:20 and reach the age of reason, I saw my family devoted to service to the community. And that
0:29:26 really laid the foundation for me going into medicine and ultimately going into the public
0:29:34 service concept of medicine. So they had a very, very strong influence on me, as did my schooling.
0:29:41 I went to a Jesuit high school, a Jesuit college, and in those environments, the theme of my
0:29:49 educational institutions was service to others. And that’s been the prevailing theme of my professional
0:29:56 life. In the tradition of a president, outgoing president writing a letter to the incoming president,
0:30:03 let’s say you wrote a letter to the next National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease
0:30:06 Director. What would your letter say to him or her?
0:30:14 It’s a her, and I respect her very much. It’s Dr. Jeannie Morosco who took my place. And I think she
0:30:20 already has the principles that I think are important for someone to direct an institute like
0:30:28 that is stick with the science, be transparent, keep an open mind, and have a very passionate
0:30:33 support of biomedical research. And I would put that in the letter, but I don’t need to because
0:30:39 I think she already understands that. Okay. And here’s my last question, which might take some
0:30:48 explaining, but my favorite story in your whole book is about how you are dealing with a patient
0:30:56 who was wanting to go back to Brazil and you don’t speak Portuguese. So he was answering a question
0:31:02 in Portuguese and Christine who became your wife told you that yeah, he said he’ll go back and be
0:31:09 careful, but really he was saying quite the opposite. And I want to know how it ever came out that
0:31:15 finally Christine said, Tony, let me tell you what he really said. How did that happen?
0:31:23 I can tell you exactly how it happened guys. I had been dating her for, oh, a couple of months.
0:31:30 And I had fallen in love with her. So it was very clear that I was in love with her with
0:31:35 Christine and Christine was in love with me. And we were sitting at a restaurant one day.
0:31:40 And after the appetizers came, she says, you know, I have something to tell you.
0:31:47 And I said, what? And she said, remember, when I translated from Portuguese to English,
0:31:54 what that patient told me, he didn’t tell me that he was going to do what you said, namely,
0:32:03 stay in bed, elevate his leg and take care of his wound because he had a vascular ulcer on his leg.
0:32:09 He actually told me he was going to go to the beach, drink a lot of cachaça and dance all night.
0:32:13 So at that point, it was a really funny and I bark out laughing.
0:32:22 That is one of the best stories I’ve heard in five years of interviewing people for
0:32:27 remarkable people. I have to tell you, I just want to thank you. I want to thank you not just
0:32:33 for this time to interview you, but really for your entire decades of service to public health.
0:32:39 And I don’t think life in America would be what it is without you and people like you.
0:32:41 So thank you very much, Tony.
0:32:45 You’re very welcome, Guy. Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be with you. Take care.
0:32:52 All righty. And oh, you know what? Are you on the board of directors of the Doris Duke Museum?
0:32:53 Yes, I am.
0:32:58 Because I was there talking to the executive director. He says, yeah, Tony Fauci is on our board.
0:33:04 I said, how in the world is Tony Fauci on a board on this thing in diamond head that has to do with
0:33:12 Muslim art? What? The Doris Duke Foundation is a foundation that has multiple interests.
0:33:23 One of them is in Hawaii. The other one is for Duke farms in New Jersey. It’s for medical education.
0:33:31 It’s for child welfare. It’s for the performing arts. So it’s a broad umbrella foundation that
0:33:36 supports these noble causes. And one of them is Shangri-La in Hawaii.
0:33:44 Literally Shangri-La. All right, Tony. I’m going to let you go. Have a great weekend.
0:33:51 Happy New Year. And I wish you all the best. And oh, can I ask you? I swear, one last question.
0:33:58 One last question. Okay. I promise you, don’t pull me off. I just want you to tell me like,
0:34:04 I read this story that you got West Nile virus from a mosquito bite in your backyard.
0:34:11 And I heard that I said, so he treated thousands of HIV AIDS patients. And he was standing on
0:34:16 these podiums with people who weren’t masked up. And he did all these dangerous things.
0:34:23 And it comes down to a mosquito in his backyard gives him West Nile virus. Did I repeat that
0:34:29 story right? I mean, is there not some great irony there? You bet. It is the irony of the year
0:34:37 that an infectious disease doctor like myself sitting in his own backyard in Northwest Washington,
0:34:43 D.C. in the middle of the city gets bitten by a mosquito and gets a disease that almost killed
0:34:49 me because West Nile is a very serious disease. So I’m lucky to have recovered completely.
0:34:56 But given my age, guy, the seriousness of my illness, I’m very fortunate to have recovered
0:35:04 completely. That was an interview with a truly remarkable person. And the impact that he has
0:35:12 had on human welfare is basically immeasurable, actually. And I hope you learned about infectious
0:35:19 diseases, but also about public health and public service. He’s just a stunning example of that.
0:35:26 So this has been Remarkable People. My thanks to Tony, of course, for being on the podcast and
0:35:34 Madison producer, co-author Tessa Deismar, who is the researcher, Louise McDonough and Alexis
0:35:40 Nishimura and Jeff C. and Shannon Hernandez. We are the Remarkable People team. And we not
0:35:46 only want to make you remarkable in 2025, we want to keep you healthy. So that’s why we have people
0:35:52 like Tony Fauci. Until next time, thank you and mahalo and aloha.
0:35:57 This is Remarkable People.