Transcripts For BLOOMBERG The David Rubenstein Show Peer To

Healthy, david. Would you fix your tie, please . David people would not recognize me if my tie was fixed, but ok. We will leave it this way. All right. I dont consider myself a journalist. Nobody else would consider myself a journalist. I began to take on the life of being an interviewer, even though i have a day job running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What is it that makes somebody tick . We are here today with dr. Anthony, also tony, fauci, who is the director of the National Infectious Disease Institute of the National Institutes of health, which he has led since 1984, 35 years. That is a pretty long time to be leading the institute at nih. Is that a record . Dr. Fauci it is. Indeed. It is. David you havent gotten tired of doing this for 35 years . Dr. Fauci no, because things keep changing. We get new Infectious Diseases, new outbreaks, new challenges. So it is almost like a different job every year or two. David i always worried about getting a flu, so if i want to avoid catching the flu, should i take a flu shot . Dr. Fauci yes. Influenza vaccination clearly protects you. It is not a perfect vaccine. It does not protect you 100 , and it varies from year to year, but the best way to avoid influenza is to get your flu shot every year. David do you get one every year . Dr. Fauci i do. I do. David i usually dont get them, and i will tell you why. I am often afraid i will get the influenza shot for a different flu than the one that comes out this season. Is that a problem . Dr. Fauci influenza tends to drift or change from season to season, but essentially, every year, you get vaccinated with a vaccine that we hope matches well with the circulating virus. But, it is possible that you make a vaccine against one, and it will change a little by the time the season comes, and then it isnt a best match. But it is still always better to get vaccinated. David 100 years ago, around 1918, 1919, about 100 Million People in the world were killed by influenza. Why was that . Why was it not treated better in those days . Dr. Fauci it was a pandemic. A pandemic means that it is a virus that no one had any previous experience with. It was a brandnew influenza, and it happened to be one that spread very rapidly and was very virulent. It was a catastrophe. David is Something Like that not likely to happen again . Dr. Fauci hopefully not as severe as that. We had a pandemic in 2009. H1n1, the swine flu of 2009. It was a pandemic because it was a brandnew virus. The good news is that it was not particularly virulent. So although it spread rapidly, it did not kill as many people. David you are the leading Infectious Disease person in the United States, maybe the world. How many times per day do you wash your hands . Dr. Fauci i would say at least six, seven, eight, nine times. David does it look bad if you shake someones hand, and then you go and wash them right away . [laughter] dr. Fauci if you make it obvious. Dont make it obvious. David so you avoid making it obvious . Dr. Fauci i avoid embarrassing people. David i have a theory that when someone is ready to cough, they get close to me. Whenever i am in a Movie Theater or i am walking somewhere, as soon as they walk past me, that is when they cough. Or im in the Movie Theater, ive got the bubonic plague right behind me. Dr. Fauci [laughs] david do you ever have this problem where people are coughing on you all the time . And what do you say to somebody . Dr. Fauci that is very tough. To the extent you can do it within social norms, you try particularly in a flu season and the winter, where there is a lot of virus going around, to try to distance yourself. We call that social distancing. Sometimes, you get trapped. In the middle of last winter, i was literally trapped on a transatlantic flight with a woman who was doing just that. She was sneezing and coughing. I couldnt tell her to get out of there. We were sitting next to each other. Sure enough, about five days after i got back to d. C. , i got sick. David so lets talk about humans in the background and Infectious Diseases. When humans first came out of caves, more or less, lets say, homosapiens, 300,000 plus years ago, they had an average Life Expectancy roughly of 20 years old. Today, the average life inspect expectancy in the United States is 80 or Something Like that. Were Infectious Diseases a large part of the problem . Dr. Fauci there was not only just Infectious Disease then, there was survival under severe environmental circumstances. However, if you look at the 17th, 18th, 19th centuries, where there were Infectious Diseases before the vaccines. Vaccines and antibiotics greatly increased the Life Expectancy, because many children died. When children die, the average Life Expectancy goes down. David now, what was the bubonic plague that was in europe hundreds of years ago . What was that . Dr. Fauci that was a bacteria. It was a bacteria that was spread, interestingly, through fleas that were in situations in which hygiene was not very good. It would bite somebody, they would get infected. There were two types of plague. There was the bubonic plague, where people would get swollen lymph nodes, they could die from that. They generally dont spread it from persontoperson. Then, there was the pneumonic plague, in which it disseminated through the body, and you could cough and transmit it to somebody. It devastated europe in the 14th century. Onethird of the population of europe died from the plague. David the chance of that happening again is remote. Dr. Fauci not with that microbe, because it is easily treatable with an antibiotic. David when did vaccinations first start . I remember reading about the revolutionary war. Period of time, some people would get inoculated against smallpox. How did they do that . When did people first realize you could be inoculated against a disease . Dr. Fauci that was in 1796. That was edward jenner, who noticed a very interesting phenomenon, that smallpox was rampant in society then, and he noticed that the women, who were the cowmaids, who would be milking the cows, they would get a relatively mild disease called cowpox, which was very much related to smallpox. And, he noticed they would get cowpox, they would recover from it, but then be immune to smallpox. He put two and two together and said, if we could deliberately infect people with a version of smallpox, namely cowpox, that they actually would be protected against smallpox. He actually did an experiment on a young boy, which quite frankly, retrospectively, was an unethical experiment, because he vaccinated the boy with this cowpox, and then challenged the boy with smallpox, and he was protected. That all started at the end of the 18th century. David in the modern era, there has been some concern about vaccinations. Some people think it causes Infectious Disease or could cause autism. Is there any evidence that being vaccinated causes these diseases . Dr. Fauci no, the answer is absolutely not. And it is unfortunate, because there is a lot of misinformation being spread widely, leading, right now, to a diminution in the percentage of parents who vaccinate their children, particularly against measles. That is why, right now, today, as we speak, we are seeing these completely avoidable measles outbreaks throughout the country and even throughout the world. There is currently one now in new york city, in the williamsburg section of brooklyn, that is quite really quite alarming. David lets talk about a few other communicable or Infectious Diseases. Tuberculosis. Is that still a big problem in the United States and around the world . Dr. Fauci less so in the United States, but globally, it is a big problem. It is a terrible problem. There are 10 million new cases of tuberculosis each year, and 1. 6 million to 1. 8 million deaths. David how do you catch tuberculosis . Dr. Fauci predominantly, it is respiratory spread. If you get close and prolonged contact with somebody who has tb, that is how it gets transmitted. David what about malaria . How does one get malaria, and how do you prevent getting malaria . Dr. Fauci well, malaria is a parasite that is being transmitted by a mosquito. And you get it by mosquito bite and only by a mosquito bite. Rarely, you can get it from being transfused with blood of someone who has malaria, but that is very unusual. Mostly, it is a mosquito bite that transmits malaria. David ok, so you avoid mosquitoes, you are not going to get malaria. Right . Dr. Fauci exactly. David president george w. Bush asked you what you could do about hiv and aids in africa. Dr. Fauci he felt, as a rich nation, we have a moral responsibility. Can we actually give treatment, care, and prevention . That has saved now about 14 million to 15 million lives. David lets talk about hiv. It originated in humans or not humans . Dr. Fauci it started centuries ago in nonhuman primates and chimpanzees, and then it jumped species from the chimpanzees to humans. David is jumping species a common thing . Dr. Fauci you know, 70 to 75 of all the new infections that man gets infected with come from an animal. It is called zoonotic. Namely, it is predominantly an animal virus, but for one reason or other, encroaching upon the environment of an animal or mutating a bit, influenza is fundamentally an infection of birds. Hiv, we said, came from chimpanzees. A variety of other infections, zika and other infections, came come from an animal. David in africa, the health abilities we have in the United States are not prevalent, so hiv and aids are still a big problem there. Dr. Fauci right. We better not downplay it in the United States. There are still about 38,000 to 40,000 new infections in the United States. It is very concentrated both demographically and geographically. It is very interesting that 12 of the population of the United States is african american, and yet about 45 to 50 of all the new infections with hiv are among african americans. David i guess a few years back, when president george w. Bush was president , he asked you to come to the oval office and asked you what you could do about hiv and aids in africa. What did you tell him . Dr. Fauci well, he sent me to africa to do a factfinding and come back with the feasibility of doing something. Because he said, and told me, that he felt that, as a rich nation, we have a moral responsibility, now that we have drugs that can treat and prevent infection, that other individuals, who because of where they live, they dont have access to that, and they will essentially die from a disease merely because of where they were born and raised, i. E. , in the developing world. So, he sent me to africa to figure out, can we actually give treatment, care, and prevention . And we put together a program called the president s emergency plan for aids relief, or pepfar. And that is probably one of the most important parts of the george w. Bush legacy, because that has saved now about 14 million to 15 million lives, thus far, and more coming, merely by providing Subsaharan Africa and other developing countries with the proper drugs that can save their lives, as well as prevention. David who is paying for this . The u. S. Government . Dr. Fauci the u. S. Government pays completely for the pepfar program, and then we also have the global fund to fight aids, tb, and malaria, and the u. S. Pays onethird of that. David we are at the nih offices, and one of the buildings we are in is one where research is done on ebola. Dr. Fauci correct. David can you explain what ebola is, why it is so dangerous, and what the problem is right now in the congo . Dr. Fauci ebola is another virus. It happens to be a particularly lethal virus. If left untreated, it has a high rate of mortality. You know, depending upon how you get treated or cared for, it can be anywhere from 60 to 90 . It is spread by direct contact between an individual who is very sick and has body fluids that are easily contaminating the people who take care of them. It is highly lethal. It is now a major outbreak in the democratic republic of the congo. And it is still not under control. Ebola, someen people with ebola came to do United States years ago, and you were involved in treating them . Dr. Fauci i did. I took care of two patients. One was a nurse who got infected in texas when she was taking care of a person who came from liberia. I took care of her. And then another person who got infected in sierra leone, was air evacd here to the nih, and my team and i took care of him. David when you take care of them, i remember pictures, you have to wear like a spacesuit, astronaut outfit. Dr. Fauci it is very difficult. They are very sick, so you have to take care of them under intensive care circumstances. And you have to put on, literally a spacesuit, to protect every single square inch of your body from being exposed to the contaminating fluids. David you are the head of the division. You are the head of the institute. Dr. Fauci right. David wouldnt it have been easier to get somebody below you , who maybe isnt so valuable to do this work, rather than you doing it . Dr. Fauci that was the exact reason i did it. We all knew that Health Care Workers in africa, at the time, were getting sick in large numbers and dying. 800 Health Care Workers got infected in africa during that outbreak, and 500 of them died, so i did not like the idea of asking my staff to put themselves at risk of getting infected if i was not willing to do it myself. David what did your wife and three daughters say about the fact that you were going to be doing this . Dr. Fauci they were not happy. My wife, who is she was also a nurse, so she understands disease. She supported me, but she asked with a quizzical look, do you really want to do that . I said, i think i really have to do it, because it is my team, and i did not want to put them at risk for something i was not willing to do myself. David the best treatment for ebola is liquids . Flushing out . Dr. Fauci it is essentially intensive care. The patient we took care of here at nih was one of the sickest patients that i have ever treated. I have taken care of thousands david and what happened to the patient . Dr. Fauci he is alive and well, and back home right now with his family. David really . Dr. Fauci this is the ugly ebola. This is what ebola looks like. It is called filovirus, because it is like a thread. Filo, the latin word for thread. In 1995, there was an outbreak in the democratic republic of the congo. A person who survived ebola, this man here, came to the nih. We took his bcells, we cloned the bcells, and we made the antibody, which means we made his cells produce an antibody, in large amounts, that actually binds to this lipoprotein right here. David right. Dr. Fauci now, this antibody, as we are speaking, is being tested in the democratic republic of the congo as one of the potential treatments for ebola. David so if somebody comes to me and says, i had ebola and i am ok now, it is ok to shake their hand . Dr. Fauci oh, yeah. David they are safe . Dr. Fauci well, you may remember when we discharged the young nurse who got infected in texas, and i discharged her from the nih. We had a press conference, and i put my arm around her and hugged her, and it made the front page of the washington post. The reason i did that deliberately was to show the rest of the world that when you recover from ebola david what did your wife say . Dr. Fauci she thought it was fine. [laughs] david all right. This is something you decided you wanted to do in medical school or something . When i was in graduate school, i worked on hiv. And nobody knew much about ebola then, but i noticed that the glycoprotein that hiv uses had some similarities, we thought, to the glycoproteins that ebola uses. So i thought this would be a Good Opportunity to make headway into a new disease that people did not know much about. David ok. Dr. Sullivan and dr. Fauci gave me that opportunity. David the best way for me to prevent getting an Infectious Disease and having to have you as my doctor is what . Wearing a mask . Dr. Fauci no, no, no. David if someone is getting ready to sneeze or cough, walk away . Dr. Fauci you avoid the paranoid aspects and do something positive. A, good diet. B, you dont smoke, i know. Get good sleep. I think that the normal lowtech, healthy things are the best things you can do, david, to stay healthy. David lets talk about your background. You grew up in brooklyn. Dr. Fauci i did. David you went to Catholic School . Dr. Fauci i went to catholic elementary school, Regis High School in manhattan, holy cross college. David did you always know you wanted to be a doctor . Did you think you wanted to be something more important like a lawyer, a private equity investor, or Something Like that . [laughter] dr. Fauci well, i cant say i always felt i wanted to be a doctor. I was very interested in the humanities. I took classical background courses, which is likely because i went to a jesuit school, in greek, latin, philosophical, psychology, the philosophies. So i had an interest in the humanities, but i also had an aptitude and interest in science. I figured the best way to combine an interest in the humanities with science is to be a physician. David you first came to nih in 1968. Dr. Fauci correct. David when you were here, there were a lot of other people entering the class with you. Some of them, in fact, many of them, have gone on to win nobel prizes. Dr. Fauci right. David dr. Varmus, among others. Dr. Fauci mike brown, joe lefkowitz, they all won nobel prizes. David how come you have not won a nobel prize yet . Dr. Fauci [laughter] i am the stupid one in the group. No, actually, my work did not i probably would not have won one anyway, but my work was on broader National Infectious<\/a> Disease Institute<\/a> of the National Institutes<\/a> of health, which he has led since 1984, 35 years. That is a pretty long time to be leading the institute at nih. Is that a record . Dr. Fauci it is. Indeed. It is. David you havent gotten tired of doing this for 35 years . Dr. Fauci no, because things keep changing. We get new Infectious Disease<\/a>s, new outbreaks, new challenges. So it is almost like a different job every year or two. David i always worried about getting a flu, so if i want to avoid catching the flu, should i take a flu shot . Dr. Fauci yes. Influenza vaccination clearly protects you. It is not a perfect vaccine. It does not protect you 100 , and it varies from year to year, but the best way to avoid influenza is to get your flu shot every year. David do you get one every year . Dr. Fauci i do. I do. David i usually dont get them, and i will tell you why. I am often afraid i will get the influenza shot for a different flu than the one that comes out this season. Is that a problem . Dr. Fauci influenza tends to drift or change from season to season, but essentially, every year, you get vaccinated with a vaccine that we hope matches well with the circulating virus. But, it is possible that you make a vaccine against one, and it will change a little by the time the season comes, and then it isnt a best match. But it is still always better to get vaccinated. David 100 years ago, around 1918, 1919, about 100 Million People<\/a> in the world were killed by influenza. Why was that . Why was it not treated better in those days . Dr. Fauci it was a pandemic. A pandemic means that it is a virus that no one had any previous experience with. It was a brandnew influenza, and it happened to be one that spread very rapidly and was very virulent. It was a catastrophe. David is Something Like<\/a> that not likely to happen again . Dr. Fauci hopefully not as severe as that. We had a pandemic in 2009. H1n1, the swine flu of 2009. It was a pandemic because it was a brandnew virus. The good news is that it was not particularly virulent. So although it spread rapidly, it did not kill as many people. David you are the leading Infectious Disease<\/a> person in the United States<\/a>, maybe the world. How many times per day do you wash your hands . Dr. Fauci i would say at least six, seven, eight, nine times. David does it look bad if you shake someones hand, and then you go and wash them right away . [laughter] dr. Fauci if you make it obvious. Dont make it obvious. David so you avoid making it obvious . Dr. Fauci i avoid embarrassing people. David i have a theory that when someone is ready to cough, they get close to me. Whenever i am in a Movie Theater<\/a> or i am walking somewhere, as soon as they walk past me, that is when they cough. Or im in the Movie Theater<\/a>, ive got the bubonic plague right behind me. Dr. Fauci [laughs] david do you ever have this problem where people are coughing on you all the time . And what do you say to somebody . Dr. Fauci that is very tough. To the extent you can do it within social norms, you try particularly in a flu season and the winter, where there is a lot of virus going around, to try to distance yourself. We call that social distancing. Sometimes, you get trapped. In the middle of last winter, i was literally trapped on a transatlantic flight with a woman who was doing just that. She was sneezing and coughing. I couldnt tell her to get out of there. We were sitting next to each other. Sure enough, about five days after i got back to d. C. , i got sick. David so lets talk about humans in the background and Infectious Disease<\/a>s. When humans first came out of caves, more or less, lets say, homosapiens, 300,000 plus years ago, they had an average Life Expectancy<\/a> roughly of 20 years old. Today, the average life inspect expectancy in the United States<\/a> is 80 or Something Like<\/a> that. Were Infectious Disease<\/a>s a large part of the problem . Dr. Fauci there was not only just Infectious Disease<\/a> then, there was survival under severe environmental circumstances. However, if you look at the 17th, 18th, 19th centuries, where there were Infectious Disease<\/a>s before the vaccines. Vaccines and antibiotics greatly increased the Life Expectancy<\/a>, because many children died. When children die, the average Life Expectancy<\/a> goes down. David now, what was the bubonic plague that was in europe hundreds of years ago . What was that . Dr. Fauci that was a bacteria. It was a bacteria that was spread, interestingly, through fleas that were in situations in which hygiene was not very good. It would bite somebody, they would get infected. There were two types of plague. There was the bubonic plague, where people would get swollen lymph nodes, they could die from that. They generally dont spread it from persontoperson. Then, there was the pneumonic plague, in which it disseminated through the body, and you could cough and transmit it to somebody. It devastated europe in the 14th century. Onethird of the population of europe died from the plague. David the chance of that happening again is remote. Dr. Fauci not with that microbe, because it is easily treatable with an antibiotic. David when did vaccinations first start . I remember reading about the revolutionary war. Period of time, some people would get inoculated against smallpox. How did they do that . When did people first realize you could be inoculated against a disease . Dr. Fauci that was in 1796. That was edward jenner, who noticed a very interesting phenomenon, that smallpox was rampant in society then, and he noticed that the women, who were the cowmaids, who would be milking the cows, they would get a relatively mild disease called cowpox, which was very much related to smallpox. And, he noticed they would get cowpox, they would recover from it, but then be immune to smallpox. He put two and two together and said, if we could deliberately infect people with a version of smallpox, namely cowpox, that they actually would be protected against smallpox. He actually did an experiment on a young boy, which quite frankly, retrospectively, was an unethical experiment, because he vaccinated the boy with this cowpox, and then challenged the boy with smallpox, and he was protected. That all started at the end of the 18th century. David in the modern era, there has been some concern about vaccinations. Some people think it causes Infectious Disease<\/a> or could cause autism. Is there any evidence that being vaccinated causes these diseases . Dr. Fauci no, the answer is absolutely not. And it is unfortunate, because there is a lot of misinformation being spread widely, leading, right now, to a diminution in the percentage of parents who vaccinate their children, particularly against measles. That is why, right now, today, as we speak, we are seeing these completely avoidable measles outbreaks throughout the country and even throughout the world. There is currently one now in new york city, in the williamsburg section of brooklyn, that is quite really quite alarming. David lets talk about a few other communicable or Infectious Disease<\/a>s. Tuberculosis. Is that still a big problem in the United States<\/a> and around the world . Dr. Fauci less so in the United States<\/a>, but globally, it is a big problem. It is a terrible problem. There are 10 million new cases of tuberculosis each year, and 1. 6 million to 1. 8 million deaths. David how do you catch tuberculosis . Dr. Fauci predominantly, it is respiratory spread. If you get close and prolonged contact with somebody who has tb, that is how it gets transmitted. David what about malaria . How does one get malaria, and how do you prevent getting malaria . Dr. Fauci well, malaria is a parasite that is being transmitted by a mosquito. And you get it by mosquito bite and only by a mosquito bite. Rarely, you can get it from being transfused with blood of someone who has malaria, but that is very unusual. Mostly, it is a mosquito bite that transmits malaria. David ok, so you avoid mosquitoes, you are not going to get malaria. Right . Dr. Fauci exactly. David president george w. Bush asked you what you could do about hiv and aids in africa. Dr. Fauci he felt, as a rich nation, we have a moral responsibility. Can we actually give treatment, care, and prevention . That has saved now about 14 million to 15 million lives. David lets talk about hiv. It originated in humans or not humans . Dr. Fauci it started centuries ago in nonhuman primates and chimpanzees, and then it jumped species from the chimpanzees to humans. David is jumping species a common thing . Dr. Fauci you know, 70 to 75 of all the new infections that man gets infected with come from an animal. It is called zoonotic. Namely, it is predominantly an animal virus, but for one reason or other, encroaching upon the environment of an animal or mutating a bit, influenza is fundamentally an infection of birds. Hiv, we said, came from chimpanzees. A variety of other infections, zika and other infections, came come from an animal. David in africa, the health abilities we have in the United States<\/a> are not prevalent, so hiv and aids are still a big problem there. Dr. Fauci right. We better not downplay it in the United States<\/a>. There are still about 38,000 to 40,000 new infections in the United States<\/a>. It is very concentrated both demographically and geographically. It is very interesting that 12 of the population of the United States<\/a> is african american, and yet about 45 to 50 of all the new infections with hiv are among african americans. David i guess a few years back, when president george w. Bush was president , he asked you to come to the oval office and asked you what you could do about hiv and aids in africa. What did you tell him . Dr. Fauci well, he sent me to africa to do a factfinding and come back with the feasibility of doing something. Because he said, and told me, that he felt that, as a rich nation, we have a moral responsibility, now that we have drugs that can treat and prevent infection, that other individuals, who because of where they live, they dont have access to that, and they will essentially die from a disease merely because of where they were born and raised, i. E. , in the developing world. So, he sent me to africa to figure out, can we actually give treatment, care, and prevention . And we put together a program called the president s emergency plan for aids relief, or pepfar. And that is probably one of the most important parts of the george w. Bush legacy, because that has saved now about 14 million to 15 million lives, thus far, and more coming, merely by providing Subsaharan Africa<\/a> and other developing countries with the proper drugs that can save their lives, as well as prevention. David who is paying for this . The u. S. Government . Dr. Fauci the u. S. Government pays completely for the pepfar program, and then we also have the global fund to fight aids, tb, and malaria, and the u. S. Pays onethird of that. David we are at the nih offices, and one of the buildings we are in is one where research is done on ebola. Dr. Fauci correct. David can you explain what ebola is, why it is so dangerous, and what the problem is right now in the congo . Dr. Fauci ebola is another virus. It happens to be a particularly lethal virus. If left untreated, it has a high rate of mortality. You know, depending upon how you get treated or cared for, it can be anywhere from 60 to 90 . It is spread by direct contact between an individual who is very sick and has body fluids that are easily contaminating the people who take care of them. It is highly lethal. It is now a major outbreak in the democratic republic of the congo. And it is still not under control. Ebola, someen people with ebola came to do United States<\/a> years ago, and you were involved in treating them . Dr. Fauci i did. I took care of two patients. One was a nurse who got infected in texas when she was taking care of a person who came from liberia. I took care of her. And then another person who got infected in sierra leone, was air evacd here to the nih, and my team and i took care of him. David when you take care of them, i remember pictures, you have to wear like a spacesuit, astronaut outfit. Dr. Fauci it is very difficult. They are very sick, so you have to take care of them under intensive care circumstances. And you have to put on, literally a spacesuit, to protect every single square inch of your body from being exposed to the contaminating fluids. David you are the head of the division. You are the head of the institute. Dr. Fauci right. David wouldnt it have been easier to get somebody below you , who maybe isnt so valuable to do this work, rather than you doing it . Dr. Fauci that was the exact reason i did it. We all knew that Health Care Workers<\/a> in africa, at the time, were getting sick in large numbers and dying. 800 Health Care Workers<\/a> got infected in africa during that outbreak, and 500 of them died, so i did not like the idea of asking my staff to put themselves at risk of getting infected if i was not willing to do it myself. David what did your wife and three daughters say about the fact that you were going to be doing this . Dr. Fauci they were not happy. My wife, who is she was also a nurse, so she understands disease. She supported me, but she asked with a quizzical look, do you really want to do that . I said, i think i really have to do it, because it is my team, and i did not want to put them at risk for something i was not willing to do myself. David the best treatment for ebola is liquids . Flushing out . Dr. Fauci it is essentially intensive care. The patient we took care of here at nih was one of the sickest patients that i have ever treated. I have taken care of thousands david and what happened to the patient . Dr. Fauci he is alive and well, and back home right now with his family. David really . Dr. Fauci this is the ugly ebola. This is what ebola looks like. It is called filovirus, because it is like a thread. Filo, the latin word for thread. In 1995, there was an outbreak in the democratic republic of the congo. A person who survived ebola, this man here, came to the nih. We took his bcells, we cloned the bcells, and we made the antibody, which means we made his cells produce an antibody, in large amounts, that actually binds to this lipoprotein right here. David right. Dr. Fauci now, this antibody, as we are speaking, is being tested in the democratic republic of the congo as one of the potential treatments for ebola. David so if somebody comes to me and says, i had ebola and i am ok now, it is ok to shake their hand . Dr. Fauci oh, yeah. David they are safe . Dr. Fauci well, you may remember when we discharged the young nurse who got infected in texas, and i discharged her from the nih. We had a press conference, and i put my arm around her and hugged her, and it made the front page of the washington post. The reason i did that deliberately was to show the rest of the world that when you recover from ebola david what did your wife say . Dr. Fauci she thought it was fine. [laughs] david all right. This is something you decided you wanted to do in medical school or something . When i was in graduate school, i worked on hiv. And nobody knew much about ebola then, but i noticed that the glycoprotein that hiv uses had some similarities, we thought, to the glycoproteins that ebola uses. So i thought this would be a Good Opportunity<\/a> to make headway into a new disease that people did not know much about. David ok. Dr. Sullivan and dr. Fauci gave me that opportunity. David the best way for me to prevent getting an Infectious Disease<\/a> and having to have you as my doctor is what . Wearing a mask . Dr. Fauci no, no, no. David if someone is getting ready to sneeze or cough, walk away . Dr. Fauci you avoid the paranoid aspects and do something positive. A, good diet. B, you dont smoke, i know. Get good sleep. I think that the normal lowtech, healthy things are the best things you can do, david, to stay healthy. David lets talk about your background. You grew up in brooklyn. Dr. Fauci i did. David you went to Catholic School<\/a> . Dr. Fauci i went to catholic elementary school, Regis High School<\/a> in manhattan, holy cross college. David did you always know you wanted to be a doctor . Did you think you wanted to be something more important like a lawyer, a private equity investor, or Something Like<\/a> that . [laughter] dr. Fauci well, i cant say i always felt i wanted to be a doctor. I was very interested in the humanities. I took classical background courses, which is likely because i went to a jesuit school, in greek, latin, philosophical, psychology, the philosophies. So i had an interest in the humanities, but i also had an aptitude and interest in science. I figured the best way to combine an interest in the humanities with science is to be a physician. David you first came to nih in 1968. Dr. Fauci correct. David when you were here, there were a lot of other people entering the class with you. Some of them, in fact, many of them, have gone on to win nobel prizes. Dr. Fauci right. David dr. Varmus, among others. Dr. Fauci mike brown, joe lefkowitz, they all won nobel prizes. David how come you have not won a nobel prize yet . Dr. Fauci [laughter] i am the stupid one in the group. No, actually, my work did not i probably would not have won one anyway, but my work was on broader Global Health<\/a> issues. They discovered really exciting, specific things. David you have won the president ial medal of freedom. Dr. Fauci i have. David and the lasker award. Is there any award in medicine you have not won . Dr. Fauci the nobel prize. [laughter] david ok, that is the only one. I would nominate you if i knew how to do that. [laughter] let me ask you, you have written i think it is 1200 articles, coauthored, edited. 1200 articles in your career and how do you have time to do 1200 articles in your career and run the institute and treat patients . Dr. Fauci one, my career has been quite long, so that is one of the reasons for so many articles. But doing all of that, taking care of patients, running a lab and running a Big Institute<\/a> and getting involved in Global Health<\/a> all the, i just explained it that i work a lot of hours. I am an unapologetic workaholic, and i really love what i do. David how do you stay in good shape . Dr. Fauci i used to run. I used to run marathons and 10ks. About two or three years ago, i stopped running every day. I used to run about six miles a day, and now i power walk three to four miles every day. David you are generally not sick . Dr. Fauci generally pretty healthy. Thank goodness. David if you do get a little sick and you go to a doctors office, you are sitting in the office, dont people get nervous if you are sitting there . Dr. Fauci they dont get nervous, but it is a good advertisement for the doctor i go to, because they say, if this guy is going to the doctor, he must be pretty good. David many people have come to you over the years and said, why dont you leave and do something more lucrative . I came to you once and said, why dont you come into private equity . You can figure out how to be an investor. In the healthcare world, you would be perfect. You resisted all of those. Why . Dr. Fauci i would have loved to work for you, david. Just like everyone else, i felt that i love what i am doing, and it is so exciting that that is what drives me. It isnt as if i think those other professions are not worthy. I just like what i am doing. There are still many challenges. We need an hiv vaccine. Tuberculosis and malaria are still major killers, particularly in the developing world. Those are things i think we have the opportunity to do something about, so i would like to continue to work until i cant work anymore and concentrate on those problems. David so, you have worked under many different president s of the United States<\/a>. Who was the most impressive . Of them . Dr. Fauci well, they were all different. I dont want to be pitting one against the other. I enjoyed, very much, the clinton administration, really quite enjoyable working with not only president clinton but hillary clinton. But, the person who was the warmest of them all, that was just an amazing gentleman, was george h. W. Bush, when he was president. He was the first one that i really got to know as a president. I got to know reagan a bit, but not much. But george h. W. Bush extended himself to me when he wanted to learn about what hiv was, because he wanted to do something about it. David as you look back on your career, what would you say are the characteristics that make somebody a leader . Dr. Fauci one of the things i tell people, because i feel it strongly, is that if you are leading an organization of some sort that has a purpose or a mandate, that, as the leader, you have got to articulate to the people you are leading exactly what your vision is and where you want the organization to go, because i have seen in issues in which there was not good leadership, where an organization is almost rudderless. They dont know where they are supposed to be going. You dont dictate to people, but if you let them know what your vision is, hire the best people, and then dont get in their way, that, i think, is the quality of a good leader. David lets suppose i get an Infectious Disease<\/a>, and i want to be one of your patients. How do i get to be one of your patients . Just call you . How does somebody become one of your patients . Dr. Fauci you get your doctor to give me a call or send me an email. If you have a disease that falls under one of the categories that we study, then we would be happy to see you. David and the best way for me to prevent getting an Infectious Disease<\/a> and having to have you as my doctor is what . Wearing a mask . Dr. Fauci no, no, no. David if i can see somebody is ready to sneeze or cough, walk away . Dr. Fauci you avoid all the paranoid aspects and do something positive. A, good diet. B, you dont smoke, i know. I know you dont drink, at least not very much. So, thats pretty good. Get some exercise. I know that you dont get as much exercise as you should. David that is correct. Dr. Fauci get good sleep. I think that the normal, lowtech, healthy things are the best things that you can do, david, to stay healthy. David im going to try to do that, and hopefully, when i next see you, i will be even healthier than i am today. Dr. Fauci i would imagine you would be, and i look forward to that. David thank you very much. Dr. Fauci my pleasure. David a virus takes over the world and shakes the economy to its core. This is bloomberg wall street week. Im david westin. Welcome back. This week threw us all for a bit of a loop, including here on wall street week. We missed last week as we made the transition from the world that was to the world that has become. Like most of the rest of us, we are now pretty much working from home or some other remote location. We will look different in some ways, but our mission is the same. 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