Top epidemiologist Anthony Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is feeling a little freer to speak his mind these days. Dr. Fauci told reporters at a White House press briefing on Thursday that doing his job under the new administration is “liberating”—and talked about some of the challenges of working under the Trump administration.
When a reporter asked Dr. Fauci whether he felt “less constrained” speaking about the pandemic under the Biden-Harris administration, he appeared relieved to report that science is leading the way under the new leadership. “The idea that you can get up here and talk about what you know, what the evidence [is], what the science is, and know that’s it. Let the science speak,” the 80-year-old said. “It is somewhat of a liberating feeling.”
Dr. Fauci, who is also the new chief medical adviser to the president, added that several conversations with President Biden have made clear that transparency is now paramount in communicating with the public about COVID-19. “One of the things that we’re going to do is to be completely transparent, open, and honest,” Dr. Fauci said. “If things go wrong, [to] not point fingers but to correct them. And to make everything we do be based on science and evidence.”
He was up-front about the fact that working with the new leadership was quite a departure from his tenure under Trump, who indeed had a habit of pointing fingers—he publicly contradicted and criticized Dr. Fauci throughout the pandemic, as USA Today reports, threatening to fire him at one point. When a reporter said that Dr. Fauci had “joked” about the difference he felt working under the new administration, Dr. Fauci replied, laughing, “Yeah, but you said I was joking about it—I was very serious.”
Taking a more serious tone, Dr. Fauci touched on the challenges of working under the Trump administration, whose policy and talking points often went against the science. Dr. Fauci said it was “uncomfortable” when members of the previous administration said things “not based on scientific fact,” pointing to Trump’s championing of hydroxychloroquine as an example. “I can tell you, I take no pleasure at all in being in a situation of contradicting the president,” he said. “You didn’t feel that you could actually say something and there wouldn’t be any repercussions about it.”
And without naming President Trump, Dr. Fauci made a reference to the tendency of the former president and some of his advisers to “guess” answers to questions in the absence of evidence. “One of the things new with this administration is that if you don’t know the answer, don’t guess,” he explained. “Just say you don’t know the answer.”
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