Dr. Anthony Fauci lauds Dianne Feinstein's impact in early days of AIDS/HIV crisis; "A great champion"
Among the dignitaries and invited guests at the memorial for the late Senator Dianne Feinstein in San Francisco on Thursday is Dr. Anthony Fauci, who worked shoulder-to-shoulder with the then-San Francisco mayor during the 1980s AIDS/HIV epidemic.
Feinstein and the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases led a national response to the AIDS crisis in its earliest days when people were dying by the thousands.
In an interview on CBS News Bay Area Morning Edition, Fauci said that Feinstein was instrumental both as mayor and senator in marshaling the response to the crisis.
"What it really required was the kind of response that was led by then-Mayor Feinstein, as well as the health care providers in the city of San Francisco, which actually was a prototype of the really excellent response showing empathy and care and concern at a time when we did not even know what the virus was that was causing this disease much less had any specific therapy for it," said Fauci. "And then later on as Senator Feinstein was a great champion when I was at the [National Institutes of Health] to getting us funds and to make sure that we acted appropriately with understanding and compassion for persons with HIV."
He added, "She was a champion both as mayor as well as senator, and I've had the privilege and honor of knowing her in both those capacities and I can tell you, she really was an icon to us all."
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Fauci noted how Feinstein early on in the crisis pushed for more funding in fighting AIDS/HIV, with San Francisco initially dwarfing the federal response.
"The numbers themselves speak, I think, speak volumes about the leadership of Mayor Feinstein as well as the spirit of the city of San Francisco," said Fauci. "San Francisco was investing under the mayor's leadership more resources into treatment and care of persons with HIV than the entire federal government - a city of less than one million people. And that is extraordinary and quite remarkable that that happened."
On Wednesday, Fauci was among the steady stream of mourners who came to San Francisco to pay respects to Feinstein as her body lay in state in the rotunda of City Hall, escorted by Mayor London Breed.
Fauci said that the way Feinstein and the city's health officials worked with others in searching for solutions to the AIDS crisis serves as a model for how people today can work across the political spectrum for the betterment of the citizenry as a whole.
"If people look back, you know, now more than 40 years back ... how people like the mayor and your own citizens, your own health care providers in the city of San Francisco actually served as a phenomenal example of when you had a lot of pushback at what you were doing, " said Fauci. "Some of the heroes, the nurses, the health care providers and the doctors here in San Francisco were able to show that, despite the pushback on some who were puzzled by this mysterious disease ... we had a meeting of the minds and ultimately we all came together because we realized that all of us had the same goal, to take the proper care of people who needed care. And it's under those circumstances that the model of what happened here in San Francisco ... can serve as an example for the kind of working together on all sides of the political spectrum to come to the common goal of what is the common good, in this case, of the city of San Francisco, but in general for the whole country, if not the world."
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Last year when Fauci retired from his post after nearly four decades, Feinstein issued a statement lauding his work in steering the country through the COVID-19 pandemic as well as multiple other public health crises.
"I'm particularly grateful for his leadership during the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s. His early support for funding research on treatments and push to include patient advocates in the process continue to influence clinical trials today," said Feinstein in her statement at the time. "I hope Dr. Fauci takes great pride in his legacy of protecting our public health."
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