Dr. Fauci Says His Family Has Experienced Harassment, Death Threats During Pandemic

Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top member of the White House coronavirus task force, said Wednesday that his family has experienced harassment and received death threats amid the ongoing COVID-19 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 told CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta in a live-stream interview.

Fauci, 79, has had a security detail since at least April. In the early stages of the outbreak, he frequently appeared with President Trump during daily briefings, making him a target of conspiracy theories.

“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.”

Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has advised six presidents on public health issues such as HIV/AIDS, Ebola and the Zika virus.

Fauci has been well-known for his blunt assessments of the pandemic. Trump has previously claimed that Fauci has “made a lot of mistakes” due to certain statements he made early in the outbreak. A recent poll from NBC News/Survey Monkey indicated that Americans trust Fauci’s statements on the outbreak more than Trump’s.