If we have all become rather ageist these days, and in some respects for good reason, Dr. Fauci is a reminder that some people are ageless. He shows it’s possible to stay sharp and energetic well into our dotage:
Anthony S. Fauci celebrates a big birthday on Christmas Eve. He’ll be 80. He says he has worked every day since January, often late into the night, laser-focused on fighting the coronavirus pandemic. He enters his ninth decade with remarkable vigor, and attributes his youthful appearance to genetics. His father lived to 97 and never looked his age.
To deal with the demands of his job, Fauci says he relies on the muscle memory from his days as a young doctor working crazy shifts in a big New York City hospital, often all through the night, triaging patients with life-threatening injuries.
“There is no option to get tired. There is no option to sit down and say ‘I’m sorry, I’ve had enough,’ ” he said. When fatigued, he recalled, he would tell himself: “I’m gonna dig deep and just suck it up.”
Which is kind of what he’s been advising the whole country.
This hideous pandemic will not last forever, but it won’t end soon enough, sadly, for thousands of families who will suffer through the dark days of winter as this cold-weather surge of infections, hospitalizations and deaths hits its peak. Coronavirus vaccines, a marvel of human ingenuity, will not begin to quash the pandemic for many weeks or months.
So: Wear a mask. Keep your distance. Wash your hands. Avoid crowds. Outside is better than inside.Fauci delivers that mantra every time he gives an interview, which is many times a day. He repeatedly cites scientific evidence or the lack of it. He is not hesitant to say that there are things we still don’t understand about this virus. And he has issued warning after warning: Take this thing seriously. It’s dangerous. We have to stay vigilant. And he says it again and again.
Some of us are listening. Some of us aren’t, unfortunately.
This part makes me sick:
Not everyone loves him or even likes him. He’s been derided by critics as apocalyptic. The criticism at times has been venomous, and scary. The fact that Fauci and his wife, Christine Grady — the chief of the bioethics department at NIH Clinical Center — require constant security is one of the countless dismal elements of this wretched, wrenching year. Even their three adult daughters have received harassing messages.
“On the one hand, I’m being adulated as this, you know, iconic figure, this person that everyone recognizes now, and knows. Which is fine. I can’t be distracted by that,” he said in an interview. “On the other hand, people have threatened my life and have harassed my wife and children and are still doing that. Public health measures have been swept up into the divisiveness of our society,” he said.
The only way Fauci gets through is by focusing on his job, he said — which includes speaking clearly to the public about the virus, the vaccines and what science does and doesn’t know.
Fauci is one of the few people who traveled in Trump’s orbit (by necessity) who managed to keep his integrity and credibility to the end. That takes some skill. And people wanted to kill him. It’s disgusting.
But this too will pass. And I want to go to his house for Christmas next year:
The pandemic will compromise Fauci’s Christmas Eve celebration. For nearly half a century he has marked the event with a traditional Italian meal at the home of his sister in Alexandria, Va. Not this year. Fauci will stay home in Washington with his wife.
Another family Christmas tradition has already happened, just a few days ago. Every holiday season Fauci makes timpano at some point when his kids are home. Timpano is an Italian pasta cake, filled with cheese, eggs, meatballs and salami — a caloric atomic bomb — made famous in the 1996 movie “The Big Night.” Fauci got the idea from the movie. It’s a major production. Ali Fauci, his youngest daughter, now a software engineer in San Francisco, says the greatest part of the timpano is not the food itself, although it’s delicious. It’s the delight her father takes in preparing it and presenting it triumphantly.
This year he made it while a documentary camera crew captured the moment and his daughters, who are scattered across the country, watched remotely.
“It turned out perfectly,” Fauci said. “The pressure was really on. If I had messed it up and it had fallen apart out of the pot it would have been very embarrassing.”
Fauci has been warning people that this is no time to mix households. In a recent call among Fauci, Grady and their daughters, Fauci expressed concern that it might look hypocritical if anyone in the family traveled home for the holidays. Before he could even complete a full sentence, the kids said, “We get it, Dad.” So the Fauci family will have a Zoom Christmas.
The kids didn’t come home for Thanksgiving, either. Fauci and his wife ordered takeout from Cafe Milano, a Washington restaurant popular among the city’s power brokers, and shared it with their security detail.
“I felt sad,” he said of Thanksgiving. “It was very 2020.”
Yeah, a lot of us are right there with him. It’s sad. But better sad than dead.
Happy Hollandaise everyone.
cheers,
digby