Tony's Diary Package — page 761

yst with the dllowing." Here are five takeaways from Fauci's emails. 1. Fauci stayed far away from any Trump-bashing. Trump blasted the public health expert throughout the pandemic, at one point threatening to fire him after the November election. And from time to time, Fauci would criticize the administration's response in interviews, although almost always indirectly (in October, he told The Post the country needed an "abrupt change" in public health behaviors). In Fauci's correspondence, he was even more circumspect. In April 2020, Marc Short, Vice President Mike Pence's chief of staff, emailed Fauci about some apparent crossed wires before Easter Sunday. At the time, Trump was starting to butt heads with public health officials as he tried to move on from the pandemic. "You correctly noticed the symptoms but misdiagnosed the root cause," Short wrote in a heavily redacted email that closes: "Apologies for a poor poker face." Fauci responded: "Thanks for the note. Understood. I wish you a peaceful and enjoyable day with your family." In another exchange, a former acquaintance wrote to Fauci that "The leadership from the top is utterly lacking and incompetent and dangerous to the American people." "Thank you for your note," Fauci wrote back. "I hear you!" 2. Fauci didn't like the public adoration. "Our society is really totally nuts," Fauci wrote in an email he forwarded, which included the link to an article titled "'Cuomo Crush and Fauci Fever' -- Sexualization of These Men Is a Real Thing on the Internet." On March 31, a colleague at the National Institutes of Health sent Fauci an article from The Post with the headline, "Fauci socks, Fauci doughnuts, Fauci fan art: The coronavirus expert attracts a cult following." "Truly surrealistic. Hopefully, this all stops soon," Fauci replied. In another note, he added: "It is not at all pleasant, that is for sure." 3. Fauci accepted a sort-of apology from the director of China's public health agency. George Gao, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, had been quoted in Science magazine as saying the United States was making a "big mistake" by not telling people to wear masks in spring 2020. Gao, who has long been friends with Fauci, reached out personally to clarify his remarks.