Story at a glance
- Anthony Fauci is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
- The longtime infectious diseases expert has emerged as the nation’s face of public health amid the current pandemic.
- He turns 80 on Dec. 24 — Christmas Eve — of this year.
It’s been quite a year for Anthony Fauci, and he’s ending it on a high note.
The nation’s top infectious diseases expert turns 80 on Christmas Eve, celebrated by friends, family and the country. In Washington, D.C., where he’s lived for more than four decades, Mayor Muriel Bowser proclaimed the date “Dr. Anthony S. Fauci Day” and his soon-to-be boss and First Lady sang him a happy birthday on Twitter.
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Happy Birthday Dr. Fauci pic.twitter.com/fhdVvtHvvy
— Dr. Jill Biden (@DrBiden) December 24, 2020
Despite having served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, the physician and immunologist was a little known figure until this year, when the coronavirus pandemic put him in the national spotlight. In a turbulent year under an administration that has seen record turnover, Fauci has been a consistent and reassuring presence for many Americans.
“I feel like I’m 45. And I act like I’m 35,” Fauci told Politico in March. “When I start to feel like I don’t have the energy to do the job, whatever my age, I’ll walk away and write my book.”
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The pandemic may have aged him a bit, but this certainly isn’t his first rodeo. Fauci has advised six presidents on the response to the HIV and AIDS epidemic, as well as both Ebola and Zika in nearly four decades at the National Institutes of Health. And he’s optimistic for the change in leadership this January.
“I’m watching for what I would hope would be a marked diminution of the divisiveness in our country and in society,” he told Politico recently. “Of course, I have been really saddened as a physician, scientist and public health official that we’ve had to operate in an environment of divisiveness that I hope that the characteristic of President-elect Joe Biden of being someone who’s had really good experience over his multi-decade career of reaching across the aisle and collaborating with member of the opposite party to get things done. I hope that during the next administration we get much more collegiality across the aisles of political divide as opposed to the divisiveness that we see right now.”
But for today, the father of three is celebrating his birthday at home with his wife, he told Politico. Following his own advice to Americans to stay home this holiday season, Fauci is forsaking a birthday party at his sister’s house in Alexandria for a quiet dinner and prosecco toast over Zoom with his daughters, who are calling in from San Francisco, New Orleans and Boston. And who knows, the stoic man Americans watch on screen might even get a chance to let loose and dance like he used to, before all this.
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