Fauci’s many enemies

Over the past year, Anthony Fauci’s fact-based interventions in the fight against Covid-19 have won him many admirers – and plenty of enemies too. As America’s leading infectious diseases expert, he had frequent high-profile bust-ups with President Trump, and has received death threats from Covid deniers. It has not been easy; but it is not the first time the 80-year-old has been a hate figure. In the 1980s, when the US was in the grip of the Aids crisis, many in the gay community were appalled by the Reagan administration’s handling of it – and as the head of the nation’s infectious diseases agency, Fauci became the lightning rod for their anger. Activists burnt him in effigy, and picketed his offices. His response was to meet them, and to listen to their concerns. They were, he says, right to demand faster action. “They needed to get things done right away because they were in a desperate situation,” he told Martin Fletcher in The Daily Telegraph. “Everything they said made sense.” Now, his hope is that before he retires, research into Covid vaccines will finally lead to one for HIV.“I think we might get an imperfect one,” he says. “That, I think, would be possible during my continued tenure.”

Over the course of two films, Sacha Baron Cohen has disguised himself as an uncouth TV reporter from Kazakhstan in order to expose the worst prejudices in US society. And it has put him into some dangerous situations. Once, while posing as his alter ego Borat, he went to stay in a remote cabin with two Trump-supporting conspiracy theorists. Soon after arriving for the five-day visit, he realised that though his hosts had not heard of Borat, they did know a lot about Kazakhstan. “It was 6am and I started pacing around my room, thinking, ‘How am I going to keep in character? They’re going to see through me.’ It was bloody terrifying,” he told Catherine Shoard in The Guardian. Another time, he appeared on stage at a right-wing rally, to sing a song called The Wuhan Flu. At first, the audience joined in with its extremist lyrics; but then, smelling a rat, they all stormed the stage. One man was carrying a gun. With the crowd in pursuit, Baron Cohen just made it to a waiting van. “It was the hardest movie to make that I’ve ever heard about,” he says. “Maybe apart from Fitzcarraldo. The director was taking risks very few directors have taken: being chased by an angry mob, armed to the teeth.” Still, he remains philosophical about the risks he is taking. “We are in a very violent time. If you’re protesting against racism, you’re going to upset some racists.”