Dr. Anthony Fauci reclaimed his position on the national stage Thursday as President Biden’s chief medical adviser, a reversal in his status after being relegated by former President Donald Trump to podcasts and other alternative media outlets.
His first act as the Biden administration’s point person for pandemic control was to reenter the World Health Organization Thursday morning when he reaffirmed Biden’s pledge to work with the international public health body to help end the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Given that a considerable amount of effort will be required by all of us, the United States stands ready to work in partnership and solidarity to support the international COVID-19 response, mitigate its impact on the world, strengthen our institutions, advance epidemic preparedness for the future, and improve the health and well-being of all people throughout the world,” Fauci told the WHO board via video meeting on Thursday.
Fauci’s installation as the president’s top adviser was just one example of Biden’s efforts to reverse course from Trump’s messaging, which toward the end of his administration was to downplay the threat posed by the pandemic.
Almost immediately after taking his oath of office on Wednesday, Biden signed a 100-day mask mandate requiring people to wear masks on all federal properties. In addition to announcing that the U.S. would rejoin the WHO, Biden said he would reestablish the pandemic preparedness office in the National Security Council, which had been dissolved under Trump.
“When you’re dealing with a global pandemic, you have to have international connectivity, and for us to not be in the WHO was very disconcerting to everybody,” Fauci said on Good Morning America Thursday. “It was really a very good day. … The response I’m getting from my colleagues all over the world is really very, very refreshing.”
Fauci had been sidelined by Trump during the pandemic for not conforming to the White House’s narrative. Previously a fixture in the White House coronavirus task force briefings, Fauci all but vanished from press events hosted by Trump last summer. In August, Trump welcomed Dr. Scott Atlas, a conservative neuroradiologist without a background in epidemiology, to join the coronavirus task force. From then on, Fauci was hardly ever seen in the White House.
Fauci has since used alternative channels to address the public, such as podcasts and virtual interviews on Instagram with celebrities such as actress Jennifer Garner and NBA player Stephen Curry. Fauci told the Financial Times in July that his reputation for “not sugar-coating things” might be why he had not met with Trump since early June to discuss the pandemic.
Trump then began campaigning against Fauci in November. He told his supporters at a rally just before Election Day that he would fire Fauci if reelected. Trump had also undercut Fauci’s credibility as a public health expert, accusing him of making “a lot of mistakes” in his response to the coronavirus pandemic, especially in his early pronouncements that face masks would not cut transmission rates. Fauci was one of several in the administration to have discouraged people from buying face masks.
In the lead up to Election Day, Trump insisted that reports of surging cases were a “media conspiracy” and claimed that the jump in new cases was merely the product of expanded testing, rather than worsening outbreaks.
The rate of new cases has slowed in recent days, but daily totals are still high. Roughly 193,000 new cases were reported each day over the past week, according to the COVID Tracking Project. Cases in the U.S. have surpassed 24 million, although the true number of infections is much higher because many go undetected. More than 406,500 deaths due to COVID-19 have been confirmed.
