Anthony Stephen Fauci OMRI is an American physician-scientist and immunologist serving as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Chief Medical Advisor to the President.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who played a critical role in steering humanity through the two pandemics of our time, AIDS and COVID-19, announced Monday he is stepping down from his role in the federal government.

As of December, he will leave the position he’s held for 38 years as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as well as his job as chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation, and his role as Chief Medical Advisor to President Joe Biden. The straight-talking scientist and physician was the government’s top infectious disease doctor for decades and one of the few scientists that many Americans knew by name.

Department of Health and Human Services secretary Xavier Becerra, who took leadership of the agency a year into the COVID pandemic, said he relied on Fauci’s counsel and praised him for “his ability to break down complex science in simple terms to the American people to save lives.

With Joe Biden’s election, Fauci became the president’s chief medical adviser. Fauci admitted in the administration’s very first press briefing that it was a relief to work for a president who took science seriously.

“I can tell you I take no pleasure at all in being in a situation of contradicting the president,” he said. “So, it was really something that you really feel you couldn’t say something and there wouldn’t be any repercussions. The idea is that you can get up here and talk about what you know, and what the science is and that’s it. Let the science speak. It is somewhat of a liberating feeling.”

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