Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted in a new interview that he and his family are receiving "serious threats" because of his work on the coronavirus pandemic.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN's David Axelrod on "The Axe Files" podcast that he now has a security detail.
"I've seen a side of society that I guess is understandable but it's a little bit disturbing," Fauci said. "Back in the days of HIV when I was being criticized with some hate mail, it was, you know, people calling me a gay-lover and 'what the hell are you wasting a lot of time on that' ... things that you would just push aside as stupid people saying stupid things."
Fauci said this year is "really a magnitude different."
"As much as people inappropriately, I think, make me somewhat of a hero … there are people who get really angry at thinking I'm interfering with their life because I'm pushing a public health agenda," he said.
The pushback against him has resulted in "serious threats against me, against my family … my daughters, my wife — I mean, really? Is this the United States of America?"
Fauci has led his agency since 1984 and helped lead the public heath effort during the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s. He is now a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force and has issued several warnings, some of them dire, about the COVID-19 pandemic and how people could do their part in mitigating the virus.
President Donald Trump has criticized Fauci, a career public health official, several times for advocating for stricter COVID-19 measures.
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