During the early days of the Covid pandemic, one man quickly became a household name.

Is the worst yet to come, Doctor Fauci?

Yes it is. How much worse will get will depend on our ability to do two things. To contain the influx of people who are infected coming from the outside, and the ability to contain and mitigate within our own country. Bottom line, it's going to get worse.

Back then, Doctor Anthony Fauci was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the NIH. With his signature gravelly voice and calm demeanor. Fauci's frequent press conferences offering guidance on masks and social distancing and vaccines captured the nation's attention.

The country as a whole still remains at low risk. This is an evolving situation. Staying out of the bar, staying out of the restaurants, really trying to distance yourself. Help is on the way. We'll be getting vaccine doses into people at the end of December.

And he often found himself navigating not just the pandemic, but the pandemic politics. And it's something he's still facing to this day.

That man does not deserve to have a license. As a matter of fact, it should be revoked. And he belongs in private.

That's U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. She was berating Doctor Fauci during a recent House subcommittee hearing about the US Covid pandemic response and the origins of the virus. But as you're about to learn, Covid wasn't Fauci's first public health crisis. It wasn't even the first time he found himself in the hot seat.

You know, the whole thing with the National Institutes of Health is they won't test any of these drugs that will keep people alive. And I got this saying, no peptide T, no compound Q. Anthony Fauci, I guess on you.

On today's podcast, I sit down with Doctor Fauci to talk about his role helping America navigate both the Aids crisis as well as Covid 19 and his nearly six decades in public health. It's something he chronicles in his new memoir, On Call A Doctor's Journey in Public Service. Plus, at 83 years old, I'm going to ask him about his reflections on legacy and on finding happiness. I got to say, I've interviewed Doctor Fauci what seems like countless times over the past couple of decades. But this conversation, it went places we've never been able to go before. I'm Doctor Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent, and this is Chasing Life. You know, long before he became the nation's top infectious disease expert. Doctor Fauci grew up in Brooklyn in the 1940s. He was delivering prescriptions from his father's pharmacy on his bicycle, and he attended Regis High School in Manhattan's Upper East Side.

The Jesuit priest. When you thought that all of a sudden the whole world was pounding on you and they would say illegitimi non carborundum, which means don't let the bastards wear you down. Which is actually goes lately, that is a very relevant and appropriate saying.

Does it work? I mean, when you say this phrase to yourself, are you are you able to not let these guys get you down?

They don't get me down to the point of interfering with what my work is. But it does wear and tear on you. I mean, knowing that there are people who are just hell bent on trying to discredit you and they have no evidence about anything and all you've done all your life, your professional life, for me, 54 years and almost 40 years as director have done nothing but try to save lives and have in fact done that successfully. And yet, for reasons that are very difficult to understand, maybe, I don't know. All of a sudden people are going totally out of their way, making up things that are just not true.

Later, he went on to medical school at Cornell and then joined the National Institutes of Health shortly after his residency, where he quickly rose through the ranks, focusing on infectious diseases. But there was one pivotal moment in his career that Doctor Fauci says changed everything. It was July 1981, and one day he was reviewing the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the memoir, and he noticed a concerning spike in deaths. 26 young, otherwise healthy gay men.

Reading that MMW are totally transformed my professional career because I made the decision right there, even though I had a very successful career up to that point. I said, this is a brand new disease, and even though I don't know what it is, there's no doubt it's an infection. The epidemiology was just, you know, running you over with the fact that it's an infectious disease and it seems to be destroying the immune system. And here I am. Boards and internal medicine boards and infectious diseases boards in clinical immunology. I said if there's one disease that I have to study is this disease. And that's when I put the group together and started bringing in these desperately ill young gay men. And it was interesting because I wanted to study them, but they were so sick that 85 to 90% of our time was just taking care of them. They were so sick. So that summer is a major turning point in my professional life and my personal life. I mean, it just spilled over into everything I do.

The public sort of starts paying attention to something, you know, you start to see some unusual cases, as we did in Wuhan, for example, going back to 1981, you started to see something that was unusual. What are the red flags for you? At what point do you start saying, this is a problem and I imagine it's got to be earlier than everyone else, right? What are those things?

Well, you know, I wrote an article. I call it my I use my Latin training, my Apple Logic Pro Vita sue, which is an a an explanation or apology for one's decisions in life. I remember I sent that in, I believe, to the New England Journal. They rejected it. They thought it was too alarmist. The real nailing down of the big, big deal, which was after the virus was isolated and a test was made for HIV positivity. We became aware that the patients that we were seeing who were desperately ill, were the tip of the iceberg of the degree of the prevalence of the infection. And I remember when I got the epidemiological data back, I mean, I was I can't describe it was a physical response of a combination of, of almost tears, like, I can't believe this, because we were doing sero surveillance in Greenwich Village and sero surveillance in the Castro district of San Francisco, and 40 to 50% of the gay men were infected. And it was like, oh my God. And because you know what the ultimate outcome is? Because here I am at the NIH, taking care of desperately ill patients every day. And then you see this epidemiological profile of that. There's there's magnitude more people who are infected, and we still don't have a therapy. And that was the thing that was the real impetus. We got to get therapy. We really got to do it really fast, because there's a lot of people out there who are infected.

I don't think many people who sort of know you from Covid realize, and in many ways you went through some of these same challenges before with HIV Aids, not just new disease, trying to find new therapeutics, but the activists. What was that part of your life like?

Well, you know, naturally, people ask about the difference or similarity between the pushing back against me and the government in HIV and pushing back against the government and me as the face of Covid. In the Covid, it is as different as peanuts and watermelons. I mean, it just is very different because the activists were trying to get the attention of the authorities, the scientific authorities and the regulatory authorities that the time proven way of approaching the development of interventions for a new disease doesn't work well for a disease that's rapidly killing themselves and their friends and their loved ones. So they won that. A seat at the table. To at least discuss is the design of the clinical trial user friendly enough to be meaningful? Number one, is the regulatory process too strict? Hence, should there be a parallel track? And also, are we putting enough resources into a disease that many people early on in the 80s were feeling? Well, this is somebody else's problem. It's not our problem. The scientific community and the regulatory community didn't listen to them because it was something that was back then acceptable. But today is almost laughable. We're scientists. We're regulators. We know better what's best for you. Trust us, we have experience. And the activists were saying, no, we really want to be part of the dialog. So their confrontation to us was based on a good thing. You know, I think back to John Lewis's good trouble versus bad trouble. They made good trouble for us because they wanted us to just put ourselves in their shoes. So they were confrontato. They were kind of clastic. They were disruptive to get our attention. By the. Fridays. One of the best things I did in my career was to, instead of running away from them the way most of the scientific community did, as more confrontato was, they became the scientific community withdrew, the regulatory community withdrew. I said to myself, this can't work. So let me put aside the theatrics and the disruption and listen to what they have to say and what they had to say made absolutely perfect sense to me. And I said to myself, if I were in their shoes, I would be doing exactly what they're doing. That's when I invited them in to sit down with us and say, let's start talking. And we didn't win them over. The first time I sat down with them, but over a period of months, two years, it became such that they became an important part of the community scientific effort to address HIV, with therapeutics, with prevention, with regulation. To the point now where they're on all of our advisory committees, they're part of the discussion. So my, my, my interaction and my response to them, as they often get asked, is dramatically different than someone on the basis of no evidence accuses you of killing people or that scene of Marjorie Taylor Greene at the hearing. I mean, come on, that is nothing like what the activists were doing.

When people do say, hey, look. I wondered if these other medications could work. Ivermectin. Hydroxychloroquine. I'm worried about vaccine injuries. How do you how do you approach that?

I think that you have to approach it with an open mind, and that's the reason why you do clinical trials. So when hydroxychloroquine was actually given an emergency use authorization for a while, but when the clinical trials show a they definitely don't work and B it might hurt people. That's the line that okay, science, we can understand how you might want to try empirically a drug. But if you're going to start trying it, let's do a trial to see if it works.

You talked about this interesting press briefing that you did. This is in March of 2020. And you had to. To correct the record. Even if the president was talking. And first of all, how challenging is it? I'm just wondering in your own, like your heart racing?

It was I, I had heard, things that were disturbing to me. It was when he started saying things that were factually incorrect from a medical and scientific standpoint. And this is exactly how I felt. So when I walked up to the the podium, I said, here it goes, Doctor Fauci, the president just said, hydroxychloroquine is, you know, the end goal.

Is there any evidence to suggest that, as with malaria, it might be used as a prophylaxis against Covid 19? No, the answer is, is no. And the the evidence that you're talking about, John, is anecdotal evidence. The information that you're referring to specifically is anecdotal. It was not done in a controlled clinical trial. So you really can't make any definitive statement about it. That was painful to me to have to do that, but there was no doubt that I had to do it. I mean, it wasn't like, well, maybe you shouldn't, maybe you. There was no doubt that I had to do it because I would actually be just relinquishing my responsibility. And that's when, you know, what happened is that the president was less upset about that than the people around him who really got upset. That's when all of a sudden, you know, opposition research was done on me. And Peter Navarro writes in an editorial about me. And then Mark Meadows starts jumping all over me. That's when it happens.

One thing that's interesting about Covid, as the country gets sort of used to this idea that you could develop a vaccine in under a year. Really fast, as fast as it's ever been done. And at the same time, the book reminds us that we still don't have a vaccine for HIV Aids. Why is that? Why is it been so hard?

HIV is one of the few, if maybe the only, disease where, despite the fact that some people control the virus, well, there isn't a single example of somebody who was actually rid of the virus from the body by their own immune system. And we know even when people are infected and suppressed, they can get super infected. So the fact that you can super infect someone who's got infection, which is the best inducer of immunity, strongly tells you you're going to have a real problem with developing a vaccine that's going to protect you. So let's fast forward to Covid. We know that the body, for most of the people, including you and I, you have been infected with Covid too. We know that the body can get rid you of Covid and then mount an immune response to Covid. So I could have guaranteed you from the beginning that we were going to get a vaccine against Covid. You could not predict that with HIV, because there's no example of the natural immunity that can protect. So what do we have to do? I'm not giving up on a on an HIV vaccine. What we have to do is we have to figure out a way to do better than natural infection. So it's tough.

Coming up after the break. More of my conversation with Doctor Fauci. We're going to focus on the future from preparing for the next pandemic to his own personal life. That's up next.

If another pandemic happens and, you know, people are keeping an eye on H5n1, for example, you're not in the same position. Other people are going to be making these decisions or making these recommendations. What would you advise? How would you advise people to approach a future pandemic from a public health perspective, including communicating?

I don't want to be critical of what's going on, because I've been in the hot seat when people on the outside were criticizing, but it just seems to me we've got to get a better handle on the surveillance of the dairy workers, of how many of them are infected. I mean, you can't say, well, if they get sick, we'll hear about how many of them are asymptomatically infected. How many cows are Asymptomatically infected? What is the spread of this on the various dairy farms? It's like, why don't we have that?

Why don't we?

I don't know. You're going to. I mean, I don't know, but we should have that.

But to the extent that I try to be very forgiving and understand people have different frames of looking at things. Is there any logic to why they wouldn't be doing that? Testing. Doing, as you call it. Sarah. Sarah. Logical testing just to figure out how how widespread is this?

I don't have an answer to that.

Is it money? Sanjay? You think?

I don't? I think it doesn't want. I think I don't know if I started guessing. Then I'm going to have a sound bite. I just don't know why they're not doing that.

For you personally. You've been the face of so many different things over the last 40 years. You know, going back to obviously HIV Aids, but all these other things Zika, SARS, Ebola, anthrax and then 2001. How important was it for you to be out there talking about this to the public versus letting you know spokespeople or whoever else do that?

Well, I felt that I was best positioned to do that because I understood the science, because I was part of the science of a lot of it, certainly with HIV. So I was the scientific expert, but I also, I believe, have a, have a, I would say a talent. That sounds so presumptuous, but I'm pretty good at communicating. And I know that.

Sometimes people conflate the idea that you're talking about science with the idea that you're now making policy recommendations. How do you navigate that?

Well, I don't think there's any, conflict there.

People say, oh, was Doctor Fauci who said, shut down the schools and.

Yeah, well, well, okay. So now you're, you know, you're getting into something that is interesting and misleading. Is that because I was someone who was a communicator in addition to being a scientist, I was out there communicating to the public. The public. Understandably, maybe, but incorrectly assumed that I was the one that made the policies. Fauci shut down the school. Fauci closed the factory. Fauci did this, which was absolutely untrue. I was part of a team in which sometimes decisions were made multiple levels beyond us. So I didn't close any schools. You know, I didn't close any factories, but there were people who actually do believe that I was. I mean, you could say that at some of the congressional hearings, when they point to you, you shut down the government and you caused the economy to fall apart. No, no, no, not so. This was done at the local level. And recommendations came from a group of people on the coronavirus task force. But I was in front of the television all the time. So that's why I say understandably, maybe, but incorrectly. I was essentially the person who sat in the room and made all the decisions about everything that had to be done, which was completely untrue.

20 years from now, 30 years now. Pick the time frame. What do you what do you want your legacy to be? How do you want people to reflect on Doctor Anthony Fauci?

I've thought about that. And when I think about legacies. I really honestly mean this. I would leave that to other people to decide. I know what I've done with Pep, far with the development of drugs for HIV, with the development of the vaccine for Covid. I know that, but that's not what I say. I want my legacy to be this because people are going to have different interpretations of that. History is going to prove that I'll be long gone and people will forget I was flawed. I would want my legacy to be is something that I am certain of, is that I have given it a 100% every single day. And in the sports analogy, I can say I always left it on the field or left it on the court. If you're playing basketball, I never held back. I just gave everything I could for the discipline I'm in, which is science, medicine and public health. That's what I like my legacy to be than anybody else can interpret. You know, what my role was in those other things.

How is your life now if you've left the the the job? Obviously been busy writing a book and things like that, but are you happy?

Oh, I'm very happy.

What you joy nowadays?

You know what I really like, it was. It was the best decision I could possibly have made is to join the faculty at Georgetown University. I have a joint appointment in the School of Medicine in the School of Public Policy. But the thing that I didn't fully realize till I got there that I'm located in the middle of the university campus, in the middle of the administrative building, where there's literally hundreds of students walking by you every single time. I'm surrounded by people who are 20, 21, 19, you know, 27 and the the vibrancy of that is is a new experience for me.

Are you ever going to retire? You thank her.

You know, it's Sanjay. That's a good question. Now, you know, I may be 83, but I feel like I'm 55. Know. So I to me, I, I don't see any end to it, but I do know that I think I have enough realism about myself. I mean, the people who throw darts at me, you know, think badly of me. But I'm fundamentally a pretty humble person, and I know and can evaluate my limitations. And I can tell you when I feel I'm not able to leave it all on the court, then I'll walk off the court. And I happen to have an amazing wife who our nature of our relationship is that she's always very honest with me. She knows that she can be critical in a gentle way, and I have absolute certainty that if she starts to see that I'm not able to leave 100% on the court, she'll say, Tony, let's go off to a beach somewhere, you know, and read some books.

But, you know, it's interesting, this idea of happiness, like what actually makes you happy. And does that overlap with satisfaction in life? Do you need to be satisfied to be happy? Do you need to be dissatisfied, to be happy constantly in search of something more? Could you live on a beach? Could you live on a could Toni Fortune live on a beach for, you know, in retirement?

I just don't up to this point, given that I am still able to move around and pretty healthy and, and, and, energetic, I don't think I could do that. I just have always felt you ask the good question. Happy and satisfied.

And satisfied. I think you can be happy at a time when you're not fully satisfied, as long as you're working towards something that would be satisfying. So I can say I'm happy I haven't gotten to the goal I want, I, you know, where I was happy when I was trying to get drugs to people in Africa because I felt we had a moral responsibility as we were working on Pep, for I was not satisfied because we didn't have it yet. But I was happy. Yeah. And then once we got pep four nailed down, I was happy and satisfied. But there was a period of time when my being not quite satisfied yet with what we dug didn't take away from my happiness.

Despite our countless conversations and interviews, this was a side to Doctor Fauci I really had never seen. I've known him for more than two decades as someone the country often turn to for the biggest health crises of our time. But also, as someone I often turn to when I needed to better understand a complicated issue. And I knew that he could explain it better than anyone else in the world. Now, of course, I couldn't let him go without asking him one of our favorite questions on this podcast. How do you chase life?

Well, first of all, I love your podcast.

Thank you.

It's really it's really great. Well, you know, I don't know if I can answer that, that how I chase life, but I take life as a gift, actually. You know, I tried at a point to say every single day is precious. I have. Friends now in my age group who are ill. I've lost a bunch of friends. So when I take life on a daily basis and try and enjoy aspects of life every single day and take really serious relationships, particularly, you know, my relationship with Christine is, is that I just think is something that I value immensely because she really keeps me on the track. And my children, my children have been just amazing is very important to me. When you talk about life and chasing life, chasing life has a lot to do with family.

That's it for today's show coming up next week. How can we find the joy in exercise?

I always say that exercise is like an intravenous dose of hope.

Tune in next Tuesday to hear how. Chasing life is a production of CNN audio. Our podcast is produced by Eryn Mathewson, Jennifer Lai, Grace Walker, and Jesse Remedios. Our senior producer and showrunner is Felicia Patinkin. Andrea Kane is our medical writer. Dan Dzula is our technical director and the executive producer of CNN Audio is Steve Lickteig with support from Janice Andrus, John Dionora Haley Thomas, Alex Manisseri, Robert Mathers, Leni Steinhart, Nicole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. Special thanks to Ben Tinker, Amanda Sealy, and Nadia Canning of CNN Health and Katie Hinman.