Fauci is currently isolating and working from home

USA TODAYUSA TODAY

Dr. Anthony Fauci tests positive for COVID-19, is experiencing mild symptoms

Cady Stanton, USA TODAY Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of the nation's pandemic health response and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, tested positive for COVID-19 Wednesday and is currently experiencing mild symptoms.

Fauci, 81, is fully vaccinated and has received two booster shots, according to a statement from the National Institutes of Health . He has not been in close contact with Biden or any other senior government officials recently, the agency said.

Fauci is currently isolating and working from home. He will return to the NIH when he tests negative, the statement said. In addition to his role as chief medical advisor, Fauci also serves as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the NIH.

Wednesday marked the first time it was publicly announced Fauci tested positive for the virus after more than two years of regular testing. NIH said he tested positive Wednesday after a rapid antigen test.

Older adults, like Fauci, are more likely to get very sick from COVID-19. The risk increases for people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, according to the CDC. But adults 65 years and older who were fully vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine had a 94% reduction in risk of COVID-19 hospitalizations , according to the organization.

Fauci has been the face of the United States' response to the COVID-19 pandemic since it started its spread across the country in 2020, advising former President Donald Trump before his current role in helping shape the U.S. response under Biden.

He was scheduled to testify before a Senate committee Thursday morning alongside other health officials, including the director of the CDC, to give an update on the federal COVID-19 response and future planning.

At the end of April, Fauci said in a statement on PBS NewsHour that the United States was "out of the pandemic phase," of COVID-19.

As chief medical adviser to Biden and as an adviser during President Trump's administration, Fauci graced cable news and Sunday morning shows close to nonstop throughout the pandemic, attempting to ease a country at a once-in-a century moment of complete uncertainty.

Story continues

His role as a trusted figure grew contentious under Trump. The pair publicly sparred on many occasions early in the pandemic , often disagreeing on issues ranging from COVID treatment options and the timeline for rolling out the vaccine to remarks by Trump in September 2020 that the pandemic was "going to disappear." Fauci recently stated that he would leave his role if Trump was reelected.

*Trump v. Fauci: *Here's a timeline of President Donald Trump's and Dr. Anthony Fauci's relationship

Fauci has served under seven presidents since 1984, acting as a leading public figure on infectious disease in the United States for almost four decades. Among the viral epidemics he's helped the country confront: HIV, SARS, swine flu, Zika, Ebola and avian influenza.

He was named one of Time's 100 most influential people of 2020 . As his public image became more recognizable in 2020 , he gained a bobblehead in his likeness, a Topps baseball card with his picture and had a drink - the "Fauci Pouchy" -named after him at a Washington, D.C., bar.

/This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Anthony Fauci tests positive for COVID-19, experiencing mild symptoms /

Our goal is to create a safe and engaging place for users to connect over interests and passions. In order to improve our community experience, we are temporarily suspending article commenting

* Reuters

Fauci, face of U.S. battle against COVID-19, tests positive

Dr. Anthony Fauci, a public health official who became the face of U.S. government efforts to contain the coronavirus pandemic, tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) said in a statement. Fauci, the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, was experiencing mild symptoms, the NIH said in a statement. The NIH said Fauci, 81, was fully vaccinated and twice boosted, and will self-isolate and continue to work from home.

Watters reported that Dr. Anthony Fauci's NIH has used taxpayer money to fund "dozens of twisted experiments ... for decades."

Thursday, February 3, 2022

These experiments reportedly include spending over $2.3 million to inject beagles with cocaine and paying Scripps Research over $200,000 to make transgender monkeys. The latter experiment was purportedly conducted "to study HIV rates in transgender women," Watters said.

"Really?," he asked.

Other experiments include paying a college nearly $500,000 to teach pigeons how to play the slots and $3 million on a hamster fight club, Watters said.

"These frivolous studies sound like they were conceived by mad scientists, on an acid trip," Watters continued. "What a sadistic abuse of taxpayer money ... "

"The NIH is addicted to spending, and unfortunately, animals and taxpayers have been paying the price for decades," White Coat Waste Project senior vice president Jesse Goodman told Watters.

"As you said, the NIH wastes about ... $20 billion a year on these types of wasteful animal experiments that range from the stupid, like putting fish on treadmills to the sadistic, like scaring monkeys with fake snakes and spiders. Something happening right now at a cost of $50 million to taxpayers."

Goodman said he thinks the Drug Enforcement Administration has a stash of cocaine to use on the beagles.

"These are six-month-old puppies, and they fit them with these coats that infuse cocaine directly into their veins because obviously, they're not going to snort it," Goodman explained.

   Seattle teachers union demands forced masking until May to ensure 'sense of normalcy'

   Too Many COVID-19 Booster Shots May Actually Weaken Our Immune System: Experts

   CDC withholding COVID data over fears of misinterpretation

   FDA Exec Says on Hidden Camera That Yearly COVID Shots Will Be Mandatory for all Americans-Including Toddlers

   FAUCI-MONEY

   FAUCI-CHINA-YEAR-2019

Internal Documents Further Contradict Fauci's 'Gain-of-Function' Research Denials

Caroline Downey Tue, September 7, 2021, 7:29 AM·3 min read In this article:

Anthony Fauci American immunologist and head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Explore the topics mentioned in this article

Newly released documents appear to contradict Dr. Anthony Fauci's repeated claims that the NIH did not fund gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

The internal documents detail the work of EcoHealth Alliance, an American research non-profit which used NIH funding to research novel bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab. Among the documents, which were obtained by /The Intercept /through a Freedom of Information Act request, is a previously unpublished EcoHealth Alliance grant proposal filed with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, which is run by Fauci.

The proposal requests $3.1 million for a project titled "Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence," which involved screening thousands of lab workers for novel bat coronaviruses. The grant was awarded for five years, from 2014 to 2019, and was subsequently renewed before being suspended by the Trump administration. The proposal directs $599,000 of the total grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for research designed to make the viruses more dangerous and/or infectious - and its author acknowledged the danger associated with such work.

"Fieldwork involves the highest risk of exposure to SARS or other CoVs, while working in caves with high bat density overhead and the potential for fecal dust to be inhaled," it read.

After reviewing the documents, Gary Ruskin, executive director of a group probing COVID's origins called U.S. Right to Know, told the /Intercept/ that the grant was a "road map to the high-risk research that could have led to the current pandemic."

Fauci has repeatedly insisted during his Senate testimony that the research being funded by the NIH at the WIV did not qualify as "gain-of-function" under the NIH's current definition. But critics, including Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, have accused Fauci of playing semantic games by excluding research which makes bat coronaviruses more transmissible - the commonly accepted definition of "gain-of-function" - from his more convenient definition.

Story continues

Dr. Richard Ebright, biosafety expert and professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University, has also disputed Fauci's claims. Primarily, he has rebutted Fauci's chief declaration that the NIH "has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology [WIV]" as "demonstrably false."

Ebright told /National Review/ that the NIH-financed work at the WIV "epitomizes" the definition of gain-of-function research, which involves working with "enhanced potential pandemic pathogen (PPP)" or those pathogens "resulting from the enhancement of the transmissibility and/or virulence of a pathogen."

The Wuhan lab's program qualified as gain-of-function research because it artificially engineered novel SARS-related coronaviruses to make them more transmissible and dangerous to humans, the breeding ground for accident, Ebright said.

Following the FOIA release secured by the /Intercept/, Ebright doubled down on his repudiation of Fauci, confirming that the NIH did conduct gain-of-function research during the five-year period in question.

"The materials show that the 2014 and 2019 NIH grants to EcoHealth with subcontracts to WIV funded gain-of-function research as defined in federal policies in effect in 2014-2017 and potential pandemic pathogen enhancement as defined in federal policies in effect in 2017-present," Ebright tweeted .

He added that the "documents make it clear that assertions by the NIH Director, Francis Collins, and the NIAID Director, Anthony Fauci, that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement at WIV are untruthful."

As evidence mounts in favor of Ebright's conclusion, further discrediting Fauci, some Republican lawmakers have called for the doctor's removal from his post in the Biden administration. Shortly after the FOIA disclosure, GOP Senator Josh Hawley demanded that Fauci step down and be subject to a congressional investigation for lying to the public about the NIH's activities.

"Anthony Fauci has repeatedly and deliberately mislead Congress and the American people. Resign. And face a congressional inquiry," he tweeted .