White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday that he and his family have required continued security in the face of harassment and death threats from people angry over his guidance on the coronavirus pandemic.
“The unseemingly things that crises bring out in the world, it brings out the best of people and the worst of people, and getting death threats to my family and harassing my daughters to the point where I have to get security — it’s amazing,” Fauci said in an interview with CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta on Harvard’s School of Public Health website that was streamed on Facebook live.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been assigned a beefed-up security team since at least early April after he and his family received serious threats over his work to mitigate the spread of the virus.
“I wouldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams that people who object to things that are pure public health principles are so set against it and don’t like what you and I say, namely in the world of science, that they actually threaten you,” Fauci said.
“I mean, that to me is just strange,” he added.