The White House COVID-19 pointman Dr. Anthony Fauci stated on Wednesday that he and his family has been inundated by death threats.
NY Daily News reported the 79-year-old doctor saying, "The unseemly 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."
The family have been forced to hire a security team since at least early April.
The government's top infectious-disease expert stated on Wednesday at a public forum hosted by the Harvard School of Public Health, "I wouldn't have imagined in my wildest dreams that people who object to things that are pure public health principles... that to me is just strange," reported ABC 30.
The doctor claimed that his three daughters to wife, bioethicist Dr. Christine Grady, have been subjects of harassment.
Fauci who is facing intimidation has been the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984 and is on the White House coronavirus task force, indicated Trib Live.
Regarding matters of public health, he has advised six presidents but recently occasionally made statements contravening US President Donald Trump.
Amid the 1980s HIV/Aids epidemic, Fauci has been embroiled before during a public health crisis, reported BBC.
Notwithstanding the death threats, in the course of Anthony Fauci's five decades as a medical researcher, he had been called a "murderer" by demonstrators, has witnessed his effigy burnt, and had smoke bombs launched outside his office window.
Fauci wishes his family did not have to go the ordeal. He did not go into detail regarding the mounting threats.
He is not the only one in receiving intimidating threats for his work in the public health response to the novel coronavirus pandemic. Local health officials across the nation have also reported receiving bullying comments online.
The Trump government has consistently underestimated the public health threat of the coronavirus, but Fauci has staunchly rejected such actions. Fauci has provided straightforward assessments of the global health crisis since the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic in media appearances and in remarks at the White House. However, this has been less regular in the latest months.
According to Johns Hopkins University, the United States has registered over 158,000 COVID-19-related fatalities and beyond 4.8 million confirmed cases. The US has outnumbered any other country across the globe.
Fauci clarified regarding the threats against his family and stated that he had worked to ignore online conspiracy theories about him in an interview with Politico's Pulse Check podcast released on Thursday.
Anthony Fauci's three adult daughters who received intimidation are Jennifer, 34, Megan, 31, and Alison, 28. He said that his family was fine but stressed by the death threats.
Preventive measures including physical distancing, donning face masks, and restraining mass gatherings to mitigate the prevalence of the infection has drawn flak from a number of Americans who think the administration has no right to impose them.
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