Tony's Diary Package — page 42

it by headquarters in Atlanta that some diagnoses were delayed or missed, possibly leaving infected people to spread the virus to others. Dr. Fauci, 79, does not seem to be in the cross hairs. Although he was recently told he must clear his many TV, radio and print interviews through the White House, he has said that he has not been muzzled. "You don't want to go to war with a president," Dr. Fauci told Politico. But he thinks the public needs solid, understandable medical information, especially during crises. He makes a point of not trying to "razzle-dazzle" audiences with his knowledge, he told an interviewer in 2015, adding that his education at a Jesuit high school and college taught him intellectual rigor and the value of public service. As director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, Dr. Fauci has lasted through six presidents, and has declined multiple requests to lead his agency's parent organization, the National Institutes of Health. He has led federal efforts to combat diseases caused by emerging viruses, including H.I.V., SARS, the 2009 swine pandemic, MERS, Ebola and now the new coronavirus. He was an architect of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, started in 2003 by President George W. Bush, to fight H.I.V. globally. In 2001, after anthrax was mailed to Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Bush administration tried initially to minimize the threat, but Dr. Fauci was characteristically blunt. "This is material that is quite formidable, that is infecting people with inhalation anthrax, infecting them in the absence of direct contact," he said. "You can call it whatever you want to call it with regard to grade and size or weaponized or not weaponized. The fact is, it is acting like a highly efficient bioterrorist agent." Previous disease outbreaks have kept him on the lookout for new pathogens, and in January, reports of unexplained pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China, set off alarms in his head. "Even before we knew it was a coronavirus, I said it certainly sounds like a coronavirusSARS type thing," he said. "As soon as it was identified, I called a meeting of top-level people and said, 'Let's start working on a vaccine right now.'" He is among the most highly paid federal employees, earning about $400,000 a year, more than the vice president or the chief justice of the Supreme Court. He oversees a 2020 budget of $4.75 billion, which is $769 million less than last year's after being cut by the Trump administration. Unflappable though Dr. Fauci may seem, the new coronavirus worries him, especially its spread in the Seattle area and the toll it is taking in a nursing home there. He said he