ANTHONY FAUCI thought he was doomed last year after opening a piece of mail sent to him that was loaded with white powder and exploded in his face – forcing him to shed his clothes and hop into a kiddie pool to get decontaminated.
The mailing turned out to be innocuous, but Fauci feared at the time that he had been the target of a chemical agent attack like ricin, and thought for a few moments that he was a “dead duck.”
Dr. Fauci, who heads infectious disease research wing of the National Institutes of Health opened up about the postal prank in a new book “Nightmare Scenario” by Washington Post co-authors Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta, according to a snippet covered in Politico’s Playbook.
In the moment where his face was smothered with the potentially poisonous substance – Fauci conjured three possibilities: he was being pranked, the substance was anthrax and while he’d surely get sick he’d likely live, or he was a “dead duck” if it was indeed ricin.
So for the next few hours Fauci and his team of scientists stiripped the doc naked and had him hover in a kiddy pool as they hosed him down and simultaneously tested the powder.
He even dialed his wife to alert her that he was in this awkward position.
But Fauci learned he was in the clear after lab tests came back negative for any serious chemicals.
The book is includes a bit about how then President Trump had spoken aloud that he wished John Bolton would croak from Covid-19.
The alleged incident came just as the president’s short-tenured national security advisor published his tell-all about working in the administration.
In the past year, Fauci has become the face of the Covid-19 response, from wincing in the background at press conferences while serving at the pleasure of former President Donald Trump to his current duties advising President Joe Biden in rolling out vaccines.
He and Trump were often at odds over how to combat Covid-19.
Trump didn’t hide his misgivings about Fauci, who has served seven presidents – starting with Ronald Reagan.
“I disagree with a lot of what he said,” Trump told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham last year when asked if he would place Fauci “front and center” during the White House’s coronavirus response.
Trump continued: “I get along with him, but every once in a while, he’ll come up with one that I say, ‘Where did that come from?'”
“I inherited him. He was here. He was part of this huge piece of machine.”
Trump’s White House also distributed a list of errors they claim Fauci made at the start of the pandemic
Fauci had responded to the the White House’s attacks against him as “bizarre” and that, “Ultimately, it hurts the president.”
Fauci’s also come under fire for failing to act on evidence that the worst pandemic in modern history may have come from now that more evidence is coming forward lending credibility that the Wuhan Institute of Virology may bear some responsibility.
He also couldn’t answer questions directed at him by US senators to explain how $600,000 of grant money was used in the lab and if it was used to help so-called Gain-of-Function research.
The threats weren’t directed against him only.
It appears his wife and his three adult daughters, Jennifer, Megan and Alison, have all received threats.
It’s unclear if the booby-trapped mail incident forced the 80-year-old doctor’s hand to ramp up protection efforts, but he has since added his own security detail.
“Getting death threats for me and my family and harassing my daughters to the point where I have to get security is just, I mean, it’s amazing,” he said in an interview with CNN last year.
“I wish that they did not have to go through that.”
He suspected then that much of the acrimony pointed his way has been due to aggressive efforts to mitigate the Covid-19 spread with mandatory masks and the driving schools and the country’s commerce to a crawl.
“I wouldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams that people who object to things that are pure public health principles are so set against it, and don’t like what you and I say, namely in the word of science, that they actually threaten you.
“I mean, that to me is just strange.”
