How Fauci and the NIH Got Ahead of the FDA

How Fauci and the NIH Got Ahead of the FDA and CDC in Backing Boosters By Sarah Jane Tribble and Arthur Allen September 16, 2021 Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky are sworn in before testifying at a House Select Subcommittee hearing on April 15. (Susan Walsh-Pool / Getty Images) In January -- long before the first jabs of covid-19 vaccine were even available to most Americans -- scientists working under Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases were already thinking about potential booster shots. This story also ran on Los Angeles Times. A month later, they organized an international group of epidemiologists, virologists and biostatisticians to track and sequence covid variants. They called the elite group SAVE, or SARS-Cov-2 Variant Testing Pipeline. And by the end of March, the scientists at NIAID were experimenting with monkeys and reviewing early data from humans showing that booster shots provided a rapid increase in protective antibodies -- even against dangerous variants.