Dr. Anthony Fauci corresponded with a Chinese health official early in the pandemic, acknowledging the “crazy people in this world” and vowing to “get through this together,” a new report revealed Tuesday.
The nation’s top expert on infectious diseases received an email March 28, 2020, from George Gao, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, in which Gao apologized for saying the US and other countries were making a “big mistake” by not encouraging people to wear masks from the get-go, according to correspondence obtained by the Washington Post.
“How could I say such a word ‘big mistake’ about others? That was journalist’s wording. Hope you understand,” Gao wrote Fauci. “Lets work together to get the virus out of the earth.”
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases responded, “I understand completely. No problem. We will get through this together.”
The correspondence came as then-President Donald Trump blamed China for the coronavirus outbreak.
As Fauci faced criticism for his handling of the pandemic, Gao reached out again.
“I saw some news (hope it is fake) that [you] are being attacked by some people. Hope you are well under such a irrational situation,” Gao wrote April 8, 2020.
Three days later, Fauci replied and thanked his longtime friend for his “kind note.
“All is well despite some crazy people in this world,” Fauci wrote, the newspaper reported.
The exchange was among more than 866 pages that the newspaper obtained of Fauci’s emails from March and April 2020 through a Freedom of Information Act request.
In the email trove, Fauci also corresponded with an executive at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a medical director of the National Football League Players Association and documentary filmmakers working on a Disney-backed documentary film about him.
“I was getting every single kind of question, mostly people who were a little bit confused about the mixed messages that were coming out of the White House and wanted to know what’s the real scoop,” Fauci told the newspaper of the correspondence.