Anthony Fauci Talks COVID-19, Mentorship, and the Power of Listening

President Biden’s chief medical advisor tells a large Tufts audience about vaccines and why smart public policy is so important for health
COVID-19 is "the only disease in which 30 to 40 percent of the people who get infected have no symptoms at all, yet it can kill so many other people," said Anthony Fauci to a Tufts audience.

Faced with his worst nightmare—the outbreak of a global pandemic—Anthony Fauci said that clear and articulate public health guidance is the best way to overcome the challenges of combatting a deadly disease like COVID-19.

Fauci spoke on March 8 about mentorship, activism, and the stress of managing global pandemics to some 4,000 members of the Tufts University community as part of the Tisch College Distinguished Speaker Series.

As director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for the past 37 years, Fauci has advised seven U.S. presidents on pandemics such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, Ebola, Zika, SARS, H1N1 (or swine flu), and COVID-19.

Like many of the medical students listening to his remarks, Fauci got into medicine because of a “dual desire to do something intimately connected with people and the suffering and the joys of the human species,” he said. “There was no other profession I could think of that would combine both of those besides being a physician.”

Read more about takeaways from the discussion with Fauci.