In contrast to Phillips and Williams, Fauci asserts post-infectious diseases like ME/CFS and long COVID should get much more research funding.
Anthony Fauci’s take on ME/CFS, long COVID, and other post-infectious diseases provides an informative counterpoint to Phillips and Williams’s stunning proposition that federal funders “prioritize care delivery over research” – thus essentially freezing those research fields – and the development of new treatment options – leaving millions of people hobbled to the present status quo – not a pretty sight.
Indeed, the author’s characterization of the ME/CFS field as being “singularly unproductive” with regard to treatment options is decidedly at odds with their aspirational goal of providing “comprehensive care, multi-disciplinary expertise, and professional empathy through well-described (but frequently inaccessible) symptom management and functional rehabilitation pathways” to people with long COVID, ME, post-treatment Lyme disease, etc.
Phillips and Williams’s clarification, later in the piece, of what their notion of ‘comprehensive care, etc.,’ indicates that it’s simply a focus on “prevention, improved prognosis, access to empathetic care and quality of life issues”.
The inescapable result given the poor treatment options available is a kind of long-term hospice care-like situation for millions of formerly productive Americans. With inconvenient diseases like long COVID, ME/CFS, fibromyalgia, PTLDS, and others out of the way, researchers can focus on other diseases.
Phillips and Williams’s proposal, then, essentially duplicates the paradigm under which the research efforts for diseases like ME/CFS, fibromyalgia, and PTLDS have functioned for decades; i.e., it will provide them with minimal funding guaranteed not to produce definitive results – or the interest of drug companies. Instead of shedding new light on these long-neglected diseases, their proposal will thrust them back further into the darkness; i.e. the so-called “invisible diseases” would become ever more invisible.
Into the Darkness
It’s in the darkness that we encounter Anthony Fauci, the former long-time head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Interestingly, earlier in his career, Fauci appears to have duplicated Phillips and Williams’s path and gave up on ME/CFS. Over time, though, he’s come out the other end – and now strongly supports more ME/CFS, long-COVID, and post-infectious disease funding.
Fauci was interested enough in chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) in the mid-1990s to fund three ME/CFS research centers, but by the early 2000s, the same problems that have aggravated Phillips and Williams so much – the multisymptomatic, multisystemic nature and complex nature of the illness gave Fauci an “out”. Declaring that ME/CFS wasn’t a good fit for the NIAID – he booted it out – and shut down the three small ME/CFS research centers.
As funding for the NIH (and NIAID) climbed, ME/CFS funding at the NIH dropped declining in real terms (accounting for inflation) below the early 1990s levels.
What Fauci failed to mention was that the multisystemic nature of ME/CFS made it a poor fit for any Institute.
As Fauci must have known would happen, the results were devastating. Thanks to the timely intervention of the Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH), the program found a home of sorts, but with no Institutes assuming responsibility for the disease, the funding mechanism employed – a Trans-NIH Working Group – was doomed to failure. As the NIH’s budget swelled and swelled over the next 20 years, funding for ME/CFS fell and fell until it reached its nadir about 6 years ago – only $6 million/year.
The Cipher
Fauci’s hobbling of the ME/CFS program made him a Darth Vader-like figure for ME/CFS community. He evinced no interest in the subject and made no public statements about it. He was simply a cipher – all we knew for 20-plus years was that he’d kneecapped the fledgling ME/CFS research effort – and we were all the worse for it. Our big hope was that he would retire and someone more amenable to ME/CFS would show up. Over time – thanks to Fauci and many others like him – ME/CFS became the most neglected major disease at the NIH – and it wasn’t even close.
Fauci, though, showed a different side in private. After several meetings with him, then Solve M.E. President’s head, Carol Head, reported that Fauci was polite, interested, and surprisingly well-versed in the research. Ian Lipkin reported that Fauci has long understood that ME/CFS is not a psychiatric disorder.
Fauci also supported the small 2015 effort to reinvigorate the NIH’s ME/CFS research effort and NIAID, with NINDS, became its two biggest supporters. When other Institutes dropped out of that effort last year, NIAID and NINDS picked up the slack.
Fauci never, though, assumed the kind of leadership role that NINDS director Walter Koroshetz has over the past five years. While Koroshetz frequently interacts with the ME/CFS, has produced blogs promoting ME/CFS research, and initiated the strategic plan effort underway, Fauci has remained a man apart.
Flailing
Fauci, the NIH, and our medical system were caught flatfooted by the emergence of long COVID. Meanwhile, funding for ME/CFS is declining.
Then came what Fauci said has been keeping him up at night for years – an airborne pandemic. It was always going to happen – an unavoidable consequence of rising population levels, the ability of modern transportation networks to rapidly spread deadly pathogens, and the ecological destruction that exposed humans more and more to animal-borne vectors.
The small post-infectious field had certainly provided warnings. The first SARS coronavirus, MERS, West Nile Fever, and the Ebola virus all left debilitated people in their wake. Studies indicated that Epstein-Barr virus, Giardia, Coxsackie, HIV, etc. could trigger mysterious long-term illnesses in a significant number of people. ME/CFS, of course, had been widely recognized to be a mostly post-infectious disease for decades. The emergence of long COVID was no surprise to those who’d taken the trouble to get acquainted with post-infectious illness.
Despite the fact that Fauci had been thinking about the consequences of a pandemic for years he, the NIH, and the medical system were caught completely flatfooted when its inevitable post-infectious consequences showed up, and millions of people are paying the price.
Recognition
Fauci missed that boat entirely, but to his credit, he quickly recognized that a long-COVID/ME/CFS-like condition was showing up. In response to a question in July 2020, Fauci said that “some patients may have “post-infection syndromes” that resemble ME/CFS:
“You can see people who’ve recovered who really do not get back to normal, that they have things that are highly suggestive of myalgic encephalomyelitis and chronic fatigue syndrome—brain fog, fatigue, and difficulty in concentrating. So this is something we really need to seriously look at because it very well might be a post-viral syndrome associated with COVID-19.”
In 2021, Fauci knocked down the idea that the long haulers have a psychological disorder, stating, “A lot of times people think it’s a psychological disorder. It’s not.” In a special session about COVID-19 at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) in 2021, Fauci again brought up ME/CFS:
“We’ve been chasing myalgic encephalomyelitis and chronic fatigue syndrome without ever knowing what the etiologic agent was. Now we have an absolutely well-identified etiologic agent that should be very helpful now in getting us to be able to understand it. I hope we do; it’s been mysterious to us for years. Maybe this will give us a chance at a breakthrough.”
In October 2022, Fauci could have been reflecting on his own experience when he called long COVID a “public health emergency” whose insidious nature left it (like ME/CFS) open to neglect:
“(Long COVID) is very insidious beneath-the-radar-screen public health emergency because it isn’t that you have people who are hospitalized or dying but their function is being considerably impaired and, for reasons that are obvious, that doesn’t attract as much attention as a death rate.”
Demonstrating a clear understanding of the problems long COVID causes, Fauci asked:
“How come someone who is very sharp intellectually and very energetic all of a sudden can’t concentrate for more than half an hour on anything? And how come people who are polished athletes no longer have any exercise tolerance?”
Question Marks
The emergence of long COVID didn’t earn a mention in Fauci’s wrapups of the pandemic. Has he really gotten it about long COVID?
Yet one wonders if Fauci really has gotten it about long COVID, ME/CFS, and post-infectious illnesses. The pandemic is over. Over a million people in the U.S. died, but we learned much about how to deal effectively with the coronavirus. Life had returned to something approaching normality for many of us – but it’s left behind many more sick people than it killed.
Yet, Fauci failed to mention the emergence of long COVID in the May “Five Lessons He Learned From the COVID Pandemic” article or in his Oct 18th Science article addressing the question, “What Keeps Me Up at Night“.
Despite its close connection to long COVID, NIH funding for ME/CFS is slated to decline about 20% this year. In January 2023, after 50 years at the NIH, the 81-year-old Fauci retired. Fauci subsequently became a Distinguished University Professor in Georgetown’s Division of Infectious Diseases.
Enthusiastic Private Citizen…
On Nov. 10th, in “What Tony Fauci Says about Long COVID and Other Postviral Illnesses“, Emily Mendenhall reported that as part of her research for a book on postviral syndromes, she’d interviewed Fauci, and Fauci was interested – very interested in the emergence of long COVID as well as ME/CFS. Despite the fact that as NIAID Director, Fauci did little to support ME/CFS research, he stated that he emphasized to her “how important it is to do more research on postviral syndromes.”
Fauci said that even before chronic fatigue syndrome had a name – back in 1968 – that he’d noticed people who’d failed to recover from a viral illness. In particular, “their ability to function” was compromised.
He provided something of a mea culpa about his unwillingness to support ME/CFS earlier in his career, stating that he had gotten “swooped up” in the HIV/AIDS crisis. He agreed that illnesses like ME/CFS don’t get the attention they deserve, leaving many people suffering without the possibility of a diagnosis, let alone a cure.
Over 25 years Fauci has come full circle.
Mendenhall reported that Fauci emphasized how important it is to get “long-range, multiple-year funding that isn’t necessarily dependent on a result for renewal” (the kind he never provided, actually (lol)).
With that, Fauci came full circle. The man who’d booted the ME/CFS program out of NIAID because it hadn’t produced the results he’d wanted now called for a long-term committed effort that was not dependent on immediate results.
Contrast Fauci’s approach with that of Phillips-Williams who appear to be retreading Fauci’s path of two decades ago when he quickly, apparently to his regret now, tossed the ME/CFS program into the wilderness. Three years after the emergence of long COVID, and two years after calling for more research – they’ve already declared long-COVID research a lost cause.
Fauci led NIAID for over five decades and advised seven presidents, but in the end, he said, “I am just giving you my scientific opinion in my experience as an immunology, virology, infectious disease guy”, and that’s the point. Fauci battled HIV/AIDS and the coronavirus. He knows what a tough fight is like. He knows what the medical research field is capable of.
When Fauci was a friend of ME/CFS, he was never much of a friend and when he was an enemy, he caused a lot of damage, but he’s clearly changed his mind, and good for him for saying so. For me, I’ll take his expertise – not to mention his compassion – over Phillips and Williams, any day.
Here’s the thing, though. Fauci is always on the sidelines with ME/CFS. He’s never led with it, or long COVID, or post-infectious illnesses. If someone can get to Fauci, he’ll say all the right things, but has to be prodded. Phillips and Williams, on the other hand, are out there writing up their ideas and making waves.
Time will tell if Fauci will ever take a leadership role with these diseases, but one wonders if he’d like to exorcise some ghosts. To put it bluntly, a nation unprepared for long COVID happened on his watch. Asking the head of the NIAID to be prepared for every possible outcome is a bit much, but nevertheless, it did happen on his watch.
Time will tell what effect Phillips and Williams’s calls to turn off the ME/CFS, long-COVID, etc., research spigot will have. They appear to be a 2023 version of the naysayers who – as Fauci did 20 years ago – have been attempting to undercut the ME/CFS field for decades.
Fauci did it by kneecapping the ME/CFS program at NIAID, but it more often happens in more subtle ways. Mentors advise their students not to go into the field. Educators don’t teach about these diseases in their classes (or teach them poorly). Researchers who excel in getting grants for other fields suddenly find themselves shut out with ME/CFS, and now we have this call for an end to long-COVID and ME/CFS research efforts.
For now, long COVID is getting the funding. More long-COVID studies are being published all the time and the NIH’s RECOVER Initiative is finally starting to dig into long-COVID biology. We’re learning more all the time and the future actually looks bright.
The Phillips/Williams article – appearing in two major media outlets – though, indicates that long COVID has not extinguished the rot in the medical system that has allowed it to basically take a pass on millions of Americans who were simply unlucky enough to get the wrong disease. Surely we can do better.
It’s a great divide alright. I very much hope Dr. Fauci will publish his thoughts on post-infectious diseases – all the more important for someone like him who has seen close up and over decades where the post-infectious field is – nowhere. He could add so much credibility to the discussion.
Maybe Solve ME could include him in their next Congress advocacy day.
I think it would make a huge difference if he would do something like write an op-ed on his thoughts on post-infectious diseases. He’s a private citizen now – he can write what he wants. It was encouraging that he was willing to speak with the author about post-infectious diseases for her book. Who knows? Maybe he will…
While I appreciate his apparent change of heart, frankly I dont believe it will help now, especially with so much ‘damage done’ to overcome, and with him not out trumpeting his new views on this (has to be asked). I hope Im wrong. I am so cynical and pissed that he waits to say these things until he is 81, retired, and no longer in a position to DO something.
Plus he has become a very controversial figure through the whole C19 debacle and is now absolutely hated and completely distrusted by many people – I would venture a guess that certain portions of our society and political/medical fields (like P&W and their expert-free political consort) would actually use his now-support against us somehow. Again, I hope Im wrong and his change of heart actually helps us.
I wish he would come out and ‘whistleblow’ about all the corruption behind the ‘medical industrial complex’ but he’s likely been at the center of much of it for decades so Im not holding my breath.
My pissing and moaning aside – Cort I appreciate your optimism (and thank you for all your hard work!)
Thanks – there is a danger of a backlash but I’m thinking more of researchers, health officials and those in charge of funding.
I agree with you, Fedup. My personal opinion is that Fauci will say/do whatever brings attention to Fauci. We saw how he handled the AIDS epidemic, how he handled the COVID epidemic, and both ended up doing a lot of unnecessary damage. I’m not holding my breath for anything productive for the ME/CFS community to come from Fauci. I hope I’m wrong.
This is a common meme these days – somebody says something that someone doesn’t like and the response is he/she just wants publicity or attention.
I think that argument collapses pretty quickly when you consider what that attention is bringing Fauci. He’s had death threats against him, his wife and his daughters and that’s been going on for three years. He’s had to install security cameras and has federal marshals protect himing and his family. A man was recently sentenced to prison for threatening him.
Ditto with anyone else who sticks their heads out – they know what’s going to happen. They are going to get targeted and threatened. Far more likely I would think that most people would retire or say nothing – that’s the safest and least stressful course.
I appreciate your articles and insights Cort. I’m not suggesting he doesn’t mean well, just that he seems to revel in the celebrity status he’s received thanks in part to the heavy media coverage. Unfortunately, that has sometimes come at the cost of effective policy decisions. No doubt there are many scientists/researchers who have benefited over the years from his instruction, and hopefully they’ll take the ME/CFS research more seriously than Fauci did.
Kneecapped by Fauci, along with funding, compassion, and actual HELP to SICK PEOPLE, was my career in research physics at Princeton – and my entire life. Glad he’s seen the light, but I’m not in a forgiving mood of ANY of these people, though the ones who have ‘come around’ may be listened to again some day, far sooner than the people who look at us and throw us BACK on the dung heap, like the other two clowns.
NO HELP in 34 years is what I’ve gotten from MY RESEARCH TAX money.
It is very hard to forgive.
Another Thanksgiving is coming, and I have nothing to be thankful for – while they blather on, healthy, MAKING DECISIONS for US without knowing how devastating it is to BE us. And not caring. And seemingly having forgotten, also, about the over a MILLION Americans, and countless others worldwide who lost their lives to something we could have been prepared for.
I hope someone in a position to do something about this is reading this and realizing the great cost that has been foisted on so many people by the decisions to not adequately support this disease.
I hope they are also checking out the Lives Interrupted program which allows people with these diseases to make the costs crystal clear. And I hope everyone reading this will participate in the program. This is how we get the word out.
https://www.healthrising.org/bm-li-view-stories/
Why does our medical system shut us out? There’s plenty of money to be made from us. Millions of patients would quickly fill new clinics, and the pharmaceutical companies would rake in money from treatments.
I wonder about two possibilities.
One, our medical system doesn’t want to admit that it was wrong to dismiss us, all these decades. Much easier to kick the can down the road.
Two, there are big money issues. Our disability system has denied benefits (direct disability payment, plus early admission to Medicare) for millions of people, for decades.
If they admit that we are disabled, can the current system handle adding millions of us? (Especially with all the new and increasing numbers of Long-covid people?) Without definitive testing, how can they rule out the actual fakes?
And, what retribution could be made, for the millions who have suffered without any disability benefits, for so long?
So much easier to kick the can down the road.
This is all conjecture. We’ll probably never know what goes on, behind those closed doors. But after all the official denial all these years, and all the cold calculations from doctors, nothing would surprise me.
Forget Fauci. He had the biggest platform in the world to elevate post-viral illnesses and he failed to have an influence. Now that he no longer has that platform, he’s having a come to Jesus moment? C’mon. Also, who cares. He’s lost relevance for most Americans in general and definitely for those of us suffering with these illnesses.
If you had memes and GIFs enabled here, I’d post the perfect one of a guy rolling his eyes and saying, “Boy, bye!”
Fauci, for all the controversy around him, is probably the most well-known researcher on the planet. Plus he was the head of NIAID for decades and that’s where his influence really lies – in the research arena. One can only imagine how many people he’s mentored, how many connections he has, how many people in the medical arena respect what he says, etc.
When you say he had the biggest platform to elevate post-infectious illnesses and failed to have an influence – you’re assuming that he tried to elevate them. I don’t know, of course, but I don’t see any indication of that. it always seemed like more of a side issue for him.
Let me re-word my previous statement, Cort, so it’s more in line with my point: he had the biggest platform in the world with which he could have elevated post-infectious diseases. That he didn’t try at all was the point I was trying to drive home. In the end, it sounds like we agree: it was at most a side issue for him.
Your righteous anger came through loud and clear in Part I, but Part II seems half-hearted. I don’t think Fauci is the antidote to Phillips and Williams, he is yesterday’s news. That he has apparently changed his mind about ME/CFS after retiring is just too little too late.
Well, this was supposed to be something of an antidote to first piece 🙂 I still couldn’t help sneaking in, though, more on their paper in the first part of the blog. I’m a bit mystified that they’re not getting more pushback. Maybe I’m just missing it. .l
AnneM, I’m with you…mostly.
I think if the story Fauci started telling now was a confessional act of contrition, he could make a difference. His story shouldn’t be, “Long COVID is one in a long line of viral illnesses and we’re going after it,” it should be, “post-viral illnesses have been on our–no, my–radar for decades and I ignored it.”
In the recent articles I have read, he comes off as sounding like he has been leading the charge all along. (Like he deserves a medal or something.) A reader would think, “well, the ME/CFS people have been treated well these past decades.”
If readers’ takeaway was, “Even the upper echelon of researchers are now admitting gross negligence,” then that could make a difference.
I agree that is the best way Fauci could have an impact. It is crucially important for the entire medical community, and society in general, to admit that WE HAVE BEEN EGREGIOUSLY NEGLECTED!
All of the politics would have to change once that singular fact had been acknowledged. And Fauci should be THE person to start saying it!
However… I have never once observed that kind of humility or heard a single mea culpa from anyone in the medical field, ever. I doubt there ever will be one individual who will risk their own personal position to even shine the light on, never mind begin righting, the wrongs of the entire profession. We ascribe a lot more honor, character, and integrity to doctors, simply for being doctors, than many of them merit. Few are brave or selfless enough to stand up for what’s right if it’s going to cost them personally or professionally. (Kickin’ the can…)
I often say I would not wish this disease on my worst enemies… but I might wish it on a few doctors. Not because I want them to suffer – I just want them to KNOW.
IMNHO Dr. Fauci is a fraud, liar and political clown whom I would never trust with my life.
Don’t forget Sir Simon Wessely 🙂 But I believe there will come a day here or on the other side when people will have to be held accountable for their negative actions. All their negativity will come back in the form of karma. That is a law of nature that scientists should not investigate because they will never be able to find it.
That’s why I’m not mad at them. They have had too little love in their lives and have no empathy. Narcissism and Machiavellianism are mental disabilities. We have to laugh at these people.
It’s real simple.he retired so he now can say what he wanted to say but couldn’t, until he retired
out of curiosity, where is the “well described” link in the second paragraph intended to go?
“Time will tell if Fauci will ever take a leadership role with these diseases” – he is 81 and retired, so even as a professor (emeritus?), I don’t see what he could do. Not to be ageist – my dad is 82 and very sprightly – it just seems unlikely.
Although as you Americans favour older politiicians, maybe he could run for president 🙂
Come on, people! Fauci knew all along about mecfs. Do not let yourself be misled by his so-called changed thoughts.
Yeah..and he’s not exactly doing a volte face and committing himself is he…just flannel as we say here in the uk
Cort, I tried to reply to your email but it wouldn’t send for some reason. Sorry. If Fauci now supports robust research, I hope he continues to use his influence to do so. The Nov. 10 article was a good start but it shouldn’t be the end.
I want everyone suffering from LC and ME/CFS reading this to know that there are still intellectually curious people who want to do good research. Until I can get into a lab myself, I’m walking 100 miles in November to raise money for the Ron Davis lab and trying to be as aggressively self-promoting about my efforts as Phillips & Williams are about their defeatism. Everyone now either has some subtype of LC or knows someone who does. There’s an appetite for real solutions.
Good luck with the walk Doty! I think you’re right – there is a lot of interest in these diseases and an appetite for real solutions. I’ve always thought that when things get going we’re going to see supporters we never knew we had ;0
This is a fantastic antidote to the dispair from hearing what’s beginning to appear in the media – this article in corts article isn’t the first I’ve read suggesting me/CFS and LC research haven’t got us anywhere (blatant lies, we know so much more than we did, progress is progress!). Good luck with your walk for Rons lab. Glad you shared this and that I read the comments today
I still smell regulatory capture in the entire post viral disease field, where a special interest (payers of disability income come to mind) simply do not want them researched and are existentially terrified of a biomarker (whether for ME/”CFS” or Long Covid) which would result in having to pay US$ trillions (ie the GDP of a medium size country) in lifetime disability income.
Retired, Fauci would no longer be constrained by regulatory capture in what he could say.
Just a thought.
Fauci was more a bureaucrat than a scientist. Public health offices are nearby the Pentagon one. PH is more about strategic politics and less about methodical doubt. Health system from the top to the bottom use the silo thinking, a multieverything sickness can’t fit in a bureaucratic mind. The classic infectiously since Pasteur is about microbes and AB : a cause, a hammer, and one week after nothing remain in the body. With viruses, especially Herpes family one, it is another story. Sciences need imagination, bureaucrats don’t have it.
All your articles on ME/CFS are great, and much appreciated. I realize that you are American, and you write with America in mind – but you must realize that those of us non-Americans also read them. So when you write a sentence such as: “The inescapable result given the poor treatment options available is a kind of long-term hospice care-like situation for millions of formerly productive Americans”, PLEASE do add the words “AND OTHERS WORLDWIDE” or something similar to acknowledge that there is a wider world than just the USA, and that concern for ME/CFS sufferers is not confined in your thinking to merely your own population. Of course, I know that your concern IS for all, but avoiding parochial (in the sense of “having a narrow or limited perspective or scope, often confined or restricted to the concerns of a local area or community”) writing would be welcomed. Do keep up the good work!
Thanks Joan – as I writing I was thinking about that. Since the authors were from America I thought the article would be just a bit powerful if I kept it to America but I was thinking about the rest of the world.. I just decided to keep it to America in this case. Thanks for your thoughts!
I will not forgive and I definitely will not forget. Confessions after retirement are too little, too late.
Fauci is still one of the most well-known medical researchers in the world, even even out of office he can still contribute to fields if he wanted to by using his contacts.
Instead of focusing on the extremely justified blame-game of the past, my question is: Can his new-found beliefs someone be used for the good of LC and ME/CFS research? Can we harness his contacts for the better? Can we make him become a global advocate? How can we make use of his new beliefs?
There seems to be no good news in this article either. Fauci is still not our friend
‘The Real Anthony Fauci’ book by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might be an interesting read for those who are still fans of Fauci.
“Pharma-funded mainstream media has convinced millions of Americans that Dr. Anthony Fauci is a hero. Hands down, he is anything but.
As director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Dr. Anthony Fauci dispenses $6.1 billion in annual taxpayer-provided funding for rigged scientific research, allowing him to dictate the subject, content, and outcome of scientific health research across the globe—truly a dark agenda. Fauci uses the financial clout at his disposal in a back handed manner to wield extraordinary influence over hospitals, universities, journals, and thousands of influential doctors and scientists—whose careers and institutions he has the power to ruin, advance, or reward in an authoritarian manner.
During more than a year of painstaking and meticulous research on his laptop and through interviews, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unearthed a shocking story that obliterates media spin on Dr. Fauci . . . and that will alarm every American—Democrat or Republican—who cares about democracy, our Constitution, and the future of our children’s health.”
Also, knowing that Fauci was funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab when it was banned in the US, research which likely lead to the covid outbreak…the least he can do it support efforts to help long-covid research.
I concur with the comments that emphasize the negative about Fauci. He is not a researcher, nor a physician, nor a force for good. He is everything bad about medicine (and I speak from the perspective of being a physician) and he is clearly bought and sold by pharma. He has made his life and his mark by catering to them, yet botching AIDS, ME/CFS and now covid, all to pharma’s and his own gain, while paying off the researchers and others involved in towing the line, just as we have seen with the especially toxic covid vaccine.
I won’t bore you all with more, but I do believe he is a horse that everyone in the ME/CFS field should allow to ride off into the sunset. Along with all of those of you suffering from this ‘disease’ and its decades of neglect (in large part thanks to Fauci), I too have been permanently injured and disabled by the covid vaccine (also thanks to Fauci). I dislike intensely this charlatan, and cannot wait for him to receive his just rewards.