How Dr. Fauci found himself talking to Julia Roberts, Lil Wayne and just about any podcaster who asked

moneycontrol.com| New York Times |Aug 29, 2020

On March 15, as the novel coronavirus was beginning to surge in the United States, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci accomplished a rare Washington feat: He appeared on all five major Sunday talk shows.

But the White House worried that Fauci might upstage (and sometimes contradict) President Donald Trump, and soon his media handlers were no longer approving his high-profile interview requests.o Fauci found another way to get his message out: He said yes to pretty much every small offer that came his way: academic webinars, Instagram feeds and niche science podcasts as well as a few celebrity interviews.

That’s how Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease scientist, found himself talking to the American Urological Association in June; the Economic Club of Chicago in July; and the “Brazda Breakfast” briefing this month.

And it may be how he ended up with a polyp on his vocal cord. “Essentially I was talking all day without interruption for six months,” he wrote in an email message Friday, the day after he had surgery to remove it.

The coronavirus pandemic has turned Fauci, a career government scientist first propelled into public view in the early years of the AIDS epidemic, into a genuine celebrity. There is now all manner of Fauci swag — Fauci socks, T-shirts, coffee mugs, buttons, stickers and masks. When the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame made a doll in his likeness, it “quickly became our best-selling bobblehead of all time,” said Phil Sklar, the group’s chief executive officer.

…

“He would prefer to go on Andrea Mitchell and Sanjay Gupta, but he has marveled that this lower-level stuff kind of ends up the same way,” Staley said. “He does the little Zoom with Harvard, and it’s on CNN that night.”

In July, Fauci appeared on a weekly video news conference that Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., hosts for local media on his Facebook page. Fauci made news when he directly contradicted Trump by saying it was a “false narrative to take comfort in a lower rate of death,” comments that rippled across the national media that day.

Fauci has rarely appeared on CNN’s prime-time broadcasts, but he did grant an hourlong interview to “The Axe Files,” a CNN-backed podcast hosted by David Axelrod, who was a top adviser to President Barack Obama. “Tony is the personification of the nagging reality that science presents,” Axelrod said. “What he understands is that it really doesn’t matter where you say what you say. We’re in a digital age, and you will be heard. And he’s right. I mean, you know, when Tony Fauci speaks, people find him.”

Journalists with major news broadcasts are frustrated they can’t book Fauci during a public health emergency. Margaret Brennan, host of CBS’ “Face the Nation,” told her audience in July that the White House had not approved any interviews with Fauci since March, inhibiting public understanding of the pandemic. “We will continue our efforts,” she said. Mary Hager, executive producer of the show, said they asked for Fauci and other government scientists every week.

“We have this genius and this gold mine of a guest,” she said. “And we can’t use him to his absolute maximum capacity at a time when people are dying.”

…

But his inclination to say yes — and his friendships with prominent journalists — has sometimes gotten him in trouble, as it did when his friend Norah O’Donnell interviewed him for InStyle magazine. Fauci was photographed by his backyard pool wearing sunglasses — an image that did not sit well with Republicans and one he now says he regrets.

“Not really me, and anyone who knows me understands that this is not my style,” he wrote. “I can understand the criticism, and like I said, I wish I could take it back. My bad.”