Experts: Dr. Fauci’s record is stellar, sidelining him would be a mistake

Experts in Boston’s medical and public health community say Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease specialist, has a sterling reputation, and expressed faith in his work even as the White House appears to be trying to undercut his standing.

“In the infectious disease community, his reputation has always been stellar,” said Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, an infectious diseases specialist. “He has been a beacon for scientific thinking and evidence-based response to public health emergencies.”

An attempt to sideline Fauci could be “really damaging in our ability to control this pandemic,” said Bhadelia, an associate professor at the Boston University School of Medicine and medical director of the Special Pathogens Unit at Boston Medical Center.

President Trump’s advisers over the weekend anonymously provided details to various news outlets about statements Fauci had made early in the coronavirus outbreak that they said were inaccurate. The extraordinary move was akin to treating Fauci, the long-time director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as if he were Trump’s political rival. The controversial, divisive Republican president had also openly criticized Fauci last week, saying, “Fauci is a nice man, but he’s made a lot of mistakes.”

With the United States leading the world by a large margin in both cases and deaths, Fauci has grown more outspoken recently in interviews with his concerns about the virus, even as Trump has tried to push for states to reopen faster and has threatened to withhold federal money from school districts if they do not reopen in the fall.