The United States will grapple with covid-19 long after Dr. Anthony Fauci leaves his post as the president’s chief medical adviser, the Brooklyn native said in a Politico interview announcing his plans to retire by the end of Joe Biden’s first term.
Fauci, 81, became the face of the covid-19 pandemic, often clashing with former president Donald Trump during the first year of the pandemic. He told the outlet he feels no obligation to stay in his role until covid is eradicated because there is no such endpoint on the horizon.
“We’re in a pattern now,” he told Politico. “If somebody says, ‘You’ll leave when we don’t have Covid anymore,’ then I will be 105. I think we’re going to be living with this.”
His words for Trump were not all harsh.
“We developed an interesting relationship,” Fauci said of the former president. “Two guys from New York, different in their opinions and their ideology, but still, two guys who grew up in the same environments of this city. I think that we are related to each other in that regard.”
Though he has no specific timeframe in mind, nor has he begun the process of retirement, Fauci said he will “very likely (retire)” by the end of Biden’s first term in January 2025, according to CNN.
For now, he told Politico, he is focused on working to reinvigorate trust in science.
“I don’t think they can say anything about the science,” he said of congressional Republicans who have called for investigations into his leadership and pandemic response. “If that’s what you want to investigate, be my guest. My telling somebody that it’s important to follow fundamental good public health practices … what are you going to investigate about that?”
Fauci has led the National Institute for Allergy and Infection Diseases for more than 50 years under seven presidents, beginning with Ronald Reagan.
It’s his work that began under Reagan with the HIV/AIDS epidemic, he told Politico, that he hopes defines his legacy. To that end, Fauci called George W. Bush’s founding of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief an accomplishment that “may be the most impactful thing I have done in my career.”
