Background reading:

• “Dr. Fauci Publishes Memoir Chronicling Career To Inspire Next Generation of Public Servants” — Georgetown

Transcript:

00:00:05 Michele Goodwin:

Welcome to On the Issues, with Michele Goodwin, at Ms. Magazine. As you know, we’re a show that reports, rebels, and we tell it just like it is. On this show, we center your concerns about rebuilding our nation and advancing the promise of equality. So, join me as we tackle the most compelling issues of our times. On our show, history matters. We examine the past as we think about the future, and in thinking about 2025, our first show starts with Dr. Anthony Fauci. 

He served as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases from 1984 to 2022. He also served as the Chief Medical Advisor to President of the United States, Joe Biden, from 2020 to 2022. And as we think about this new year ahead, there’s so much hope and possibility, but already, there are groups lobbying to do away with vaccines. 

There are members of Congress who believe that COVID didn’t occur, or believe that COVID happened but only for a couple of weeks. There are those that say the government should not be interfering with their lives and requiring vaccination of children. In fact, there are states that are considering doing away with childhood vaccination programs altogether. What does this mean for you? 

What does this mean for your family? What does this mean for millions of Americans who’ve relied on vaccinations and have realized its promise and its potential, the fact that it has saved millions upon millions of lives in the United States and around the world? I couldn’t have a more influential, a better guest, than the nation’s chief doctor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who guided us and the world, truly, during the pandemic of COVID. Sit back and take a listen.

00:02:03 Michele Goodwin:

It’s always a pleasure to be in your company, Dr. Fauci. You really are not just our nation’s doctor. When I think about coming through this period of COVID, you truly were…and we’re still in it. You really served as really the global health thought leader for the world, and so, I want to start off this interview with asking you about your concerns, or concerns that you might have, given that it seems that we’re in an anti-vaccination space that people are embracing a bit more than what they have in the past.

00:02:44 Dr. Fauci:

Yes, Michele, a very important issue. We are in an unfortunate anti-science, anti-vax era, right now. It’s, in some respects, global, but we’re seeing it very intensively in the United States, and the concern of that is at multiple levels, but the one that is most obvious is that if you look at any intervention in the field of health that has proven, beyond any doubt, at all, as to be the most cost-effective and beneficial intervention, it has been vaccinations, which has saved, literally, without hyperbole, tens and tens of millions of lives, worldwide.

With COVID, itself, it is very clear that vaccinations, done by a number of studies, in the United States, has saved several million lives, at least 3 to 5 million lives, and when you look at the modeling studies that have been done throughout the world, the vaccine for COVID has saved, you know, double figures millions of lives.

So, when you have an anti-vax feeling or an anti-vax trend, it’s troublesome not only for what we’ve been through with COVID, where we could’ve saved many more lives if people accepted the vaccine more readily, but we’re always thinking about our preparation for the next pandemic, how well prepared are we, and if we’re going to go into that situation with a background of anti-vax, we really have a serious problem because, already, that’s telling us we likely will lose, unnecessarily and tragically, more lives than we otherwise would’ve lost if we have a pandemic and we don’t fully utilize vaccinations.

00:04:43 Michele Goodwin:

I want to pick up on threads that you’ve laid bare, right there, and one of the first that I’d like to pick up on is you’re mentioning that we’re in a space of anti-science, anti-healthcare, and I’m wondering how you believe that we got there. We’ve not always been a nation where science has been rejected, where we turn our backs on what we know from sound medical literature. How did we get here? And I’m curious, too, about how we get out of this.

00:05:17 Dr. Fauci:

Yeah. How we got here is very complicated, and I think how we get out of it might be equally as complicated. And you know, I don’t pretend, Michele, to know all of the reasons why we wound up in this disturbing state of anti-science, but there are a couple of things that really do stand out.

And that is that, you know, we have now, in this country, and to some extent worldwide, have gotten into an anti-authority approach, be it government or science as an institution, which has an authoritarian element to it if you look at it in a certain light. It shouldn’t, but it does, and people feel they don’t want to be told what it is they should be doing, that libertarian spirit that in some respects is very positive in this country.

00:06:15 Michele Goodwin:

Right, that we can respect a libertarian spirit, but you’re talking about something else.

00:06:18 Dr. Fauci:

Yeah. I’m talking about taking it to the extreme, where people don’t want to be told what they should be doing, certainly not forced to do what they may not want to do, and there has been this pushback against science, against scientists, and maybe, in some respects, a bit of that lies on the scientists, themselves, that perhaps they were a bit too dogmatic or were not considering people’s reluctance to follow a certain course.

So, I don’t think it’s all one-sided, but clearly, this idea of anti-authority has spilled over into anti-science, and you superimpose upon that the unfortunate but profound divisiveness that we have in our country that we see people taking sides that have no rational reason in science, like people don’t want to get vaccinated much more if they are in conservative Republican ideology as opposed to a more liberal or moderate ideology. It is the truth. It’s unfortunate, almost inexplicable, to say how someone who lives in a red state doesn’t want to get vaccinated, whereas someone who lives in a blue state is much more likely to get vaccinated. That doesn’t make any sense.

00:07:48 Michele Goodwin:

I want to pick up…

00:07:49 Dr. Fauci:

Yeah?

00:07:49 Michele Goodwin:

On that a bit more, too, before we get to the how do we get out of it, because there are a couple of things that come to mind with this, one, what you experienced while serving during the period of the last administration, in just trying to promote health and science, two, something else that you’ve mentioned, which is that we know there’ve been more Republicans that have died from COVID than others, which shouldn’t be, right?

I mean, these things shouldn’t be Republican/Democrat, but that’s the data that’s coming out, and the third thing that comes to mind is that you’ve testified…you’ve testified, perhaps, more than any person living on Earth before the House and the Senate, but it brings to mind, what was it, about 2 or 3 months ago that you were…or a few months ago that you testified before Congress about COVID.

And you were attacked, I don’t think that there’s any other way to put it, while actually trying to speak to health and science with regard to COVID. It was absolutely stunning and appalling.

00:09:04 Michele Goodwin:

Here’s Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.

00:09:20 Representative Brad Wenstrup:

I now recognize Ms. Greene, from Georgia, for five minutes of questions.

00:09:23 Marjorie Taylor Greene:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Fauci, you were quoted on CBS Face the Nation saying it’s easy to criticize, but they’re really criticizing science, because I represent science. Do you represent science, Mr. Fauci?

00:09:41 Dr. Fauci:

I am a scientist who uses the scientific method to gain information.

00:09:45 Marjorie Taylor Greene:

Yes. You said you represent science. Do you represent science, Mr. Fauci? Yes or no? Yes or no?

00:09:50 Dr. Fauci:

Again…no, that’s not a yes or no answer.

00:09:53 Marjorie Taylor Greene:

Yes, it’s a yes or no answer.

00:09:54 Dr. Fauci:

I don’t think it is.

00:09:56 Marjorie Taylor Greene:

Okay. Well, we’ll take that as a you don’t know what you represent.

00:09:59 Dr. Fauci:

Oh, I…

00:09:59 Marjorie Taylor Greene:

But this, as director of the NIH, you did sign off on these so-called scientific experiments, and as a dog lover, I want to tell you this is disgusting and evil, what you signed off on, and these experiments that happened to beagles paid for by the American taxpayer, and I want you to know Americans don’t pay their taxes for animals to be tortured like this. So, the type of science that you are representing, Mr. Fauci, is abhorrent, and it needs to stop. Mr. Fauci, you also represent the type of science that…where you confess that you made up the COVID rules, including…

00:10:41 Dr. Fauci:

I didn’t hear what you said…

00:10:43 Marjorie Taylor Greene:

Six feet social distancing and masking of children.

00:10:47 Dr. Fauci:

I never said I made anything up.

00:10:49 Marjorie Taylor Greene:

You admitted that you made it up. You made it up as you went.

00:10:50 Dr. Fauci:

I didn’t say I made it up.

00:10:50 Marjorie Taylor Greene:

So, are you saying this is fake news, Mr. Fauci?

00:10:53 Dr. Fauci:

I didn’t say I made anything up.

00:10:56 Marjorie Taylor Greene:

What did you say?

00:10:58 Dr. Fauci:

I said that it is not based in science, and it just appeared.

00:11:03 Marjorie Taylor Greene:

But this is science.

00:11:04 Dr. Fauci:

What do dogs have to with anything that we’re talking about today?

00:11:24 Michele Goodwin:

And I believe I emailed you that day. I was out of the country, out of town, but I saw the clip of it, and it was just so stunning to me. So, I guess I’ll start with why is it that there is a political divide, do you think, around something that is a health issue, like COVID?

00:11:42 Dr. Fauci:

Yeah. Right. It doesn’t make any sense, Michele, but it is what we have to deal with because it is true. The divisiveness has spilled over into the arena of health, and there should never be that situation because health is not a political issue. I mean, health is something that is important to each and every individual.

And people who are in the field of health and medicine and science have the main purpose to protect and preserve the health of people, people in the United States and people worldwide, and how that got into an arena or an atmosphere of confrontation and vitriol is really very, very unfortunate. You know, it’s unfortunate inherently, in and of itself, but it’s tragic when it results in the unnecessary loss of life, which, in fact, is a result of that.

We know that. I mean, we know that there have been hundreds of thousands of people who have died unnecessarily of COVID because of a refusal to take a vaccine that has been overwhelmingly shown to be highly effective and safe. I mean, and then, when you say safe, people say, well, there are adverse events. Of course. There are adverse events in virtually every intervention, but if you balance the risk and benefit of vaccination, overwhelmingly, the benefits outweigh the risks. But somehow or other, there are many people who don’t see it that way.

00:13:28 Michele Goodwin:

We will get to how do we get out of this, but it brings to mind the personal cost, or maybe it’s a professional cost, that you have endured as the nation’s doctor, as a doctor standing out for the world, and I’d be remiss if we didn’t actually touch on that, too. 

Would you say that it was during the period in which COVID emerged as a pandemic that it…I mean, I’m wondering how long it’s been that there has been this threat against your life. I mean, it seems to me that for the most part, most people came to be familiar with you in recent times, during this period of COVID, although you’ve been working in this field for decades, for decades and decades, with the government, but you walk around with security now. Is that a manifestation of just these last few years, or was that something that you had to experience 30 years ago?

00:14:58 Dr. Fauci:

No. No. It’s absolutely, Michele, a manifestation of the last few years. You know, there have been disagreements about how the federal government handled different health issues. I mean, if you go back to the ’80s and early ’90s, with HIV, the activist community was very concerned, I might say appropriately so, about what they perceived and turned out to be the reality, at least early on, of the federal government’s lack of forcefulness in putting resources into this emerging plague of HIV/AIDS.

And even the way the scientific and regulatory community approached persons with HIV, not fully realizing that they needed a say in what was going on, in the design of clinical trials, in looking at is the regulatory apparatus a bit too rigid when you’re dealing with a disease that’s virtually 100 percent fatal if you don’t treat it? So, they rebelled, and they demonstrated, and they became provocative and iconoclastic. But it was never to the extent of we and the government feeling unsafe. I mean, there were demonstrations that why aren’t you doing this or doing that? 

00:16:26 Michele Goodwin:

So, let’s take a listen to a clip from 1988. You hear the voice of Roz Abrams. She’s an anchor, at that time, on Eyewitness News Channel 7 ABC New York, and what you hear are the chants and protestors, including individuals saying that they’ve not been heard by government and one young man speaking about the fact that he is HIV positive and there is no vaccine, there’s no drug regimen that he could take, at that time, to save his life.

And the point being made there was not this sense that individuals who are health officials, that their lives were in danger because protestors were trying to bring greater attention to HIV and AIDS. Let’s take a listen.

00:17:33 Roz Abrams:

This beautiful day started with trouble in Lower Manhattan. More than 100 people were arrested during a protest. Demonstrators were demanding more money in the war against AIDS. They brought rush hour traffic to a standstill. Tim Menton has details.

00:17:45 Tim Menton:

The early show on Broadway today was packed. Thousands of financial center workers leaving subways and hundreds more in cars with nowhere to go caught the performance. Its message was blunt, spend more for research, treatment, and education on AIDS.

00:18:10 Female Speaker:

They have been ignoring us all these years, and the only way you get attention from them is to hit them where it hurts, and in New York City, of course, traffic hurts.

00:18:22 Male Speaker:

I’ve been diagnosed with AIDS-related complex for 2 and 1/2 years now, and there’s absolutely no drug I can take, and I’m slowly getting worse and worse. That’s why we’re here, to make a point.

00:18:32 Dr. Fauci:

I think one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life was to go past the demonstrations and the provocative behavior and listen to what the activists were saying, and when you did listen to what they were saying, what they were saying was making perfect sense. And I came to the conclusion that if I were in their shoes, I would be doing exactly what they were doing.

00:19:00 Michele Goodwin:

In fact, let’s take another listen in Washington DC, in 1990, at the NIH, as there are ACT UP protestors that have come to DC to demand that government officials and medical scientists pay attention to medical studies being conducted abroad, and as well, the suffering that was continuing amongst individuals who were diagnosed with HIV/AIDS.

00:19:32 Female Speaker:

We’re the invisible women, and we’re here building what is now the invisible building for women’s issues here at the NIH. Not only are women excluded from ACTGs, consistently, the NIH is also not even studying the different opportunistic infections that women get. Women do not get the same opportunistic infections as men.

00:19:59 Dr. Fauci:

Michele, never, for a moment, did I feel that I needed security, because although they were being provocative and iconoclastic, they merely wanted to gain our attention so that we can listen to what their side of the story was, and at the end of the day, it turned out to be one of the most successful collaborations and ultimately friendships with the people that were doing that. That’s entirely different than what we’re seeing now, where the vitriol and the hate and the anger isn’t just trying to get our attention. I mean, it’s trying to really hurt you.

00:20:45 Michele Goodwin:

Well, every time that I see you, usually, there is always some form of security detail, which is necessary, and you’ve experienced that, and at the local level, over the last few years, there have been more public health officials who’ve also experienced threats, who’ve had to get security, whose homes have been picketed and disturbed and so much more.

I’m wondering about what kind of personal toll, if you don’t mind, that takes? And you were always so stoic, whether you’re testifying before Congress, whether you are at an event, but it seems to me that there has to be given some voice to the fact that there’s a personal toll, perhaps, that has come with the anti-science connected with a kind of violence that has emerged in recent years.

00:21:44 Dr. Fauci:

Well, there is. I mean, I would not be totally honest with you if I said it wasn’t a personal toll. You know, my life has changed, not for the better, because of this. I mean, you feel almost a prisoner of not being able to be out there, free. I’m very upset, and in fact, angry at the impact it’s had on my family, my wife and my children, you know, who are not in the same field that I am in.

My wife is, to some extent, but not, you know, necessarily in the line of fire, but she does get collateral fire at her, very frequently, you know, and anybody who knows her, one of the most incredible persons you’ll ever want to know, and she winds up getting the same thing. So, it is quite disruptive of what I would have hoped would be a normal existence, now.

The thing that is even more grating about it, Michele, is that the things that they’re accusing you of are completely made up, with no foundation whatsoever in reality, and when you have social media that continues to repeat these untruths, over and over again, after a while, the man and woman in the street kind of believe it. It’s just, you know, the perfect storm of divisiveness amplified by a normalization of untruths that get completely amplified by social media. It’s a very disturbing situation that we’re in.

00:23:30 Michele Goodwin:

I think disturbing is a perfect term for it because you’ve been a public servant and given your life. I mean, it’s been a full career and life, decades of it, more than four decades of it, to serving the public, when very well you could’ve been doing other things.

00:23:47 Dr. Fauci:

Right.

00:23:47 Michele Goodwin:

When very well you could’ve taken the route that others would have to commercialize your knowledge and to take that route, and you didn’t… you’ve had multiple peaks along your career, but for that to take shape, I can imagine, is really painful and in fact the effects on family, and you’re absolutely right. Your wife, is, in fact, exceptional.

So, I want to turn to this question that we talked about, in terms of digging out of this. It seems to me that the risks are really high. The anti-vaccine movement that we see now, it’s no longer just a minority of people in very rich zip codes, which is what it used to be, right? It was some wealthy people who probably would consider themselves on the left, who would say that they were concerned about vaccines and unfounded realities but would say that they were concerned about vaccines and the connection to autism, which has been disproved.

But that wasn’t the right or the hard right or strictly conservative. That was a different narrative, but now, you have individuals that want vaccines to be removed from child health programs, are making inroads and lobbying so that what had become mandatory vaccines that all kids would get after birth is something that is being talked about at the states’ level of removing. There’s a lot of risk there, and for that, I’m wondering how do we dig ourselves out of it?

00:25:30 Dr. Fauci:

Yeah. There’s no easy solution, Michele. I am, in many respects, maybe a bit too much of an optimist, but I’m at least cautiously optimistic that the…you know, the better angels in all of us, even people who you might perceive as those who are attacking you, we’re so much more alike than we are different, and I think when we realize that and start talking to each other instead of fighting with each other…and I don’t know how we get to that point where both sides realize that rather than, you know, shooting back and forth tweets with each other, attacking each other, that you actually start…which is the reason why I don’t do anything in social media. 

I wouldn’t know how to send a tweet if you paid me for it, but I think what we have to do is to really start trying, in a civil way, to talk to each other and try and understand where people are coming from. It’s not going to be easy, but we have to try, because I think that this is going in a bad direction for everyone. I mean, if you talk about there are sides, one side versus the other, this type of disagreement is bad for both sides, not just one side.

00:26:56 Michele Goodwin:

That’s absolutely right. All right. So, as I begin, then, to approach our wrap-down, a few more questions for you. One, what is it that people should be concerned about now in terms of their health, right, because, for…there are the people you’ve talked about who don’t believe that COVID existed, at all. Before you testified before Congress recently, I did, and at that hearing, there were members of Congress that said COVID did not exist. 

There was another one that followed up and said, well, it existed, but it was only in existence for two weeks, after that that COVID was gone. We know that in the first three months of COVID, there were more people that died who were Americans than 19 years of the Vietnam War, Korean War, and war in Afghanistan all together. 

So, it did exist, but it seems to me that this is…and what medical science, you know, holds is that this won’t be the last of it. So, I’m wondering what are the other kind of emergency points that you would raise some concern about, either domestically or abroad, that people should be paying attention to?

00:28:05 Dr. Fauci:
Yeah. Well, there are several things, Michele. I mean there are things that are emerging infections, and there are things that are public health issues that aren’t as dramatic. They’re somewhat insidious, but they still can have a profoundly negative impact on our health. So, the question always asked, will we have another pandemic? And the answer is, absolutely, yes. The one thing we don’t know is when.

Is it going to be a year from now, 5 years from now, or 50 years from now? But given the extraordinary toll that pandemics have, take the 1918 pandemic of influenza, killed 50 million people worldwide, look at what HIV/AIDS has done, already killed 40 million people worldwide. So, given the potential negative impact, we have to be prepared for it. So, another pandemic is something we absolutely cannot push out of our mind and say we’re so happy to be out of the intense part of COVID that we don’t want to think about it.

Well, you know, I don’t want people to obsess about it. That’s not appropriate, but we should continue to be prepared, but if you look at other public health issues that are really of concern, I mean, even in our own country, you know, the kinds of habits of health that people have, the idea of drug abuse, I mean, the fentanyl and opioid crisis in this country, the crisis of obesity. You know, there are 70 percent of the people in the country are overweight, and 33 percent are obese.

I mean, that is extraordinary. Forget this idea of what the social and other aspects of that is. Look at the pure health aspect. Remember, during COVID, Michele, one of the conditions that was the most likely, if you got infected, to lead to hospitalization and death, was guess what? Obesity. If you were a clinically obese person, you had a much, much more likely chance of getting hospitalized and dying from COVID, and it’s the same with other diseases.

So, there are so many other things. Climate change, we’re starting to see, now, is having an impact on health, in so many different ways. So, I’m an infectious disease person. So, the number-one thing I give you is another outbreak of a pandemic, but we should not forget about other important areas of health that we can do something about.

00:30:58 Michele Goodwin:

That’s really helpful for people to think about and to know because, often, that gets missed, whether we are talking about an opioid crisis and fentanyl, which are still major issues, or we’re talking about obesity and what underlies obesity, food deserts, lack of access to adequate outdoor exercise, and so much more, which are also socioeconomic issues that relate back. I mean, this is all enough for us to do a second podcast recording to talk about and unpack those kinds of issues.

00:31:36 Dr. Fauci:

Right.

00:31:36 Michele Goodwin:

Because those are critically important, too. I mean, in terms of a next administration, if you were to give advice about, then, what to do, going forward? I mean, there would be so much there, but are there some things that are top of mind that you think, you know, this is what a responsible, healthy government should be doing in order to protect its citizens?

00:32:02 Dr. Fauci:

Right. Yeah. I think some of the things, we’ve already discussed, Michele. I think, to continue the alertness, the vigilance, and the preparedness for another outbreak of infectious disease because of the devastating impact that we know historically, since we’ve lived through it already. I mean, we are a historic generation. We’ve lived through one of the worst pandemics in the history of civilization. 1.2 million Americans have died from this pandemic. 

We don’t want that to happen again. The other thing is something that we alluded to just a moment ago in our discussion is the promotion, by the government, the next administration, of healthy living, healthier foods. You mentioned something like food deserts, making sure that the socioeconomic situation that people find themselves in doesn’t work against their health. 

Get them the opportunity to have access to healthy food, exercise, giving them the accessibility of physical places to exercise. You know, promote public health issues like the proper diet. I mean, it isn’t just obesity. Remember, obesity is a condition, but it is associated and actually causally associated with diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease. So, there’s a lot of things a new administration can do to promote health for the next generation.

00:33:38 Michele Goodwin:

All right. My last two questions, we always close with a silver lining. So, I’m going to get there, but before I do, you wrote a memoir. It’s a powerful memoir. I’ve had the benefit of sitting in the audience when you’ve done an interview, and you’ve done a number of them, about your memoir, and there’s so much that you explore. It is truly a life’s legacy that is in your memoir, but if you could touch upon your process, as you were writing your memoir and what came out of it, what was most important for you to convey to the public that’s been reading your memoir? What would that be? What’s been the most important message?

00:34:30 Dr. Fauci:

You know, to me, I mean, if you look at the title, which is On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service, the message was that we should try…some of us, in officially what we do, to be of service to mankind, whether you’re, you know a real…public service in the official job description sense, like people who work for the government and people who do things that…who are directed to public service.

But I think everybody in their life should have at least an awareness of what they can do, not only for themselves and their family, but to make the world a better place. You know, I had my training back from my parents and my many years of Jesuit training in high school and in college, where the motto was, you know, service for others. So, I think if there’s one message that one can get out of that book is to consider the possibility of what you can do in service to others.

00:35:43 Michele Goodwin:

Wow. And on that note, it brings us to the end of this interview, but with our closing question, which is always what do you see as the silver lining? I mean, we’ve talked about the anti-science movement, direct violence, the effects on your family, of a kind of vitriol that’s now in the air. There’s global warming. There’s so much from the point of view of what you do, where people might say it all looks very grim, but there is a silver lining, and I wonder what you think of as a spot of hope, going forward?

00:36:25 Dr. Fauci:

Yeah. I think there are two things, not necessarily related. One is a firm confidence in the fundamental goodness of people, and I think that’s going to shine through. We…even people who are vigorously criticizing you, I think, deep down, there’s that bit of goodness in everyone that I hope comes out when people realize the folly of the vitriol, because that doesn’t get us anywhere. The other thing, as a scientist, you know, the silver lining I see in what we went through is the extraordinary benefits of the investment in basic and clinical biomedical research.

Because what sometimes gets lost in all the commotion associated with the pandemic is that the decades of investment in basic and clinical biomedical research allowed us, with the COVID vaccines, to do something that was beyond unprecedented in its accomplishment, to have a vaccine, from the time that the viral sequence was made public to the time we had a vaccine going into the arms of individuals, that was safe and highly effective, was less than 11 months. That is almost unbelievable, but it’s true, 11 months.

00:37:56 Michele Goodwin:

It is, right? It’s unbelievable except that it happened.

00:38:00 Dr. Fauci:

It happened. It happened, and that is truly unbelievable. When you look at all of the great vaccines that we’ve had that have been life-saving, the average was 7 to 10 or more years to get the vaccine, and we did it in 11 months, which that’s a real silver lining about what science can do.

00:38:21 Michele Goodwin:

It says a lot about scientific collaboration, too, what science can do and what science can do when people band together and work towards a common cause. Dr. Anthony Fauci, I want to thank you for joining me and our Ms. community for this interview. I know that our listeners, who are around the world, will benefit greatly from the time that you’ve spent with me. Thank you so very much.

00:38:53 Dr. Fauci:
My pleasure, Michele. Thank you for having me.

00:38:57 Michele Goodwin:

Guests and listeners, that’s it for today’s episode of On the Issues, with Michele Goodwin, at Ms. Magazine. I want to thank each of you for tuning in for the fully story and engaging with us. We hope you’ll join us again for our next episode, where you know we’ll be reporting, rebelling, and telling it just like it is.

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This has been your host, Michele Goodwin, reporting, rebelling, and telling it just like it is. On the Issues with Michele Goodwin is a Ms. Magazine joint production. Michelle Goodwin and Kathy Spillar are our executive producers. Our producers for this episode are Roxy Szal, Oliver Haug, and also, Allison Whelan. Our social media content producer is Sophia Panigrahi. The creative vision behind our work includes art and design by Brandi Phipps, editing by Natalie Hadland and music by Chris J. Lee.