Fauci says COVID-19 has all the characteristics of his 'worst nightmare'

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last updated 10 June 2020

We are living through Dr. Anthony Fauci's worst nightmare.

Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a recorded message on Tuesday that Ebola is "scary" and HIV, "as important as it is, was drawn out and over an extended period of time," but his biggest fear has always been a new respiratory infection that was transmitted from animals to humans and is highly contagious.

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Because the pandemic is still in its early stages, "the thing we don't yet fully appreciate is what happens when you get infected and you get a serious disease and you recover. What are the longterm durable negative effects of that infection?" While this crisis is nowhere near over, Fauci said, he believes there will be "more than one winner" when it comes to COVID-19 vaccines, as pharmaceutical companies have been working at an "unprecedented" speed, outpacing the "public health response in some respect, which you usually see it opposite."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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