Biden responds to Fauci's retirement, says he has 'touched all Americans' with his work

President Joe Biden released a statement Monday in response to Dr. Anthony Fauci announcing he is retiring from his roles as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Chief Medical Advisor to the president.

"Whether you’ve met him personally or not, he has touched all Americans’ lives with his work," the president wrote. "I extend my deepest thanks for his public service."

Fauci, who has led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984 and joined the National Institute of Health in 1968, was President Joe Biden's chief medical advisor since he became president in 2021. 81-year-old Fauci had first suggested he would retire back in the spring.

Joe Biden said Fauci had done his work with "unparalleled spirit, energy, and scientific integrity."

Earlier in August, Fauci told Dr. Larry Corey at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center that he symbolizes "truth" and "integrity" across society in a phenomenon he calls the "Fauci effect."

"What I symbolize, in an era of the normalization of untruths, and lies, and and all the things you're seeing going on in society, from January 6 to everything else that goes on, people are craving for consistency for integrity, for truth and for people caring about people," Fauci said.

Prior to that Fauci said that attacks on him are "attacks on science" when speaking to MSNBC's Chuck Todd in June 2021. In November 2021 he told Face The Nation's host Margaret Brennan that "if you're attacking me, you're really attacking science."

Biden also said that Fauci had a "steady hand with wisdom and insight honed over decades."

Senator Rand Paul recently called out Fauci's dubious assertions on truth and science at a Congressional hearing in June as the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director was telling children to get vaccinated and boosted despite kids being at low risk to Covid.

During the hearing Paul asked, "are you aware of any studies that show reduction in hospitalization or death for children who take a booster?" To which Fauci answered, "right now there's not enough data that has been accumulated Senator Paul to indicate that that's the case."

In other congressional hearings Paul repeatedly grilled Fauci over his duplicitous description of "gain of function" research at the Wuhan lab. In January of this year Paul accused Fauci of deliberately smearing doctors who credibly pursued the lab leak theory of the Covid virus.

In December of 2020, Fauci admitted he was "guesstimating" the figures he was using for herd immunity, numbers which significantly impacted the country shutting down and has been aggressively inconsistent on masks while being very consistent on Covid never ending as a public crisis.