‘Our society is totally nuts’: Fauci’s emails show how he felt about all the buzz over his persona

• Thousands of pages of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s emails were released by BuzzFeed and The Washington Post.
• The emails reveal that Fauci was shocked by the public fascination with his persona.
• “It will blow your mind. Our society is totally nuts,” he said in response to articles about him.
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More than 860 pages of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s emails during March and April 2020, published by The Washington Post, show the nation’s top infectious disease expert’s reaction to the buzz around his persona at the start of the pandemic.

In one email, Fauci, who played a central role in the US COVID-19 response, received a Google News alert for his name.

He then forwarded that email which featured an article called “‘Cuomo Crush’ and ‘Fauci Fever’ – Sexualization of These Men Is a Real Thing on the Internet,” to someone with the message: “It will blow your mind. Our society is totally nuts.”

BuzzFeed also published more than 3,200 pages of Fauci’s emails from January to June 2020.

Other emails revealed a Fauci that was “hanging in there,” under thousands of requests and attacks.

On February 5, Howard Bauchner, editor-in-chief of JAMA, sent Fauci an email that included: “You surviving — worried a bit about your workload.”

“Am hanging in there,” Fauci replied. “Feels like my internship and first year residency when I was on every other night and every other weekend, but actually never left the hospital because the patients were so sick.”