The 81-year-old said he does not have a specific retirement date in mind and hasn’t started the process but insisted he expects to leave government before the end of Biden’s current term, which ends in January 2025.
“I am not going to be on this job forever, but I can tell you that I will almost certainly step down before the next term, in other words by the end of Joe Biden’s first term, which is January 2025. I never ever planned to go beyond Joe Biden’s first term even if he gets a second term I don’t plan on being there for that. It has nothing to do with pressure, nothing to do with all of the other nonsense that you hear about, all the barbs, the slings and the arrows. That has no influence on me,” said Dr. Fauci.
Dr. Fauci was appointed director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 1984 and has led research in HIV/AIDS, respiratory infections, Ebola, Zika, COVID-19 and now Monkeypox. He has advised seven Presidents and is Biden’s current chief medical adviser.
Meanwhile, Dr. Fauci has said that the Monkeypox outbreak needs to be taken more seriously citing that the number of Monkeypox cases is being undercounted.
“This is something we definitely need to take seriously. We don’t know the scope and the potential of it yet, but we have to act like it will have the capability of spreading much more widely than it’s spreading right now.
Whenever you have the emergence of something like this, you are always probably looking at what might be might be, we don’t know the tip of the iceberg, so that’s the reason why we have got to get the testing out there in a much, much more vigorous way because you want to protect the people at risk, not only the people who might have had an exposure that they know of, but also people, by the virtue of the fact that they are in a risk situation, that they need to get vaccinated,” Dr. Fauci.
Monkeypox is a pox virus, related to Smallpox and Cowpox. The virus generally causes pimple or blister-like lesions and flu-like symptoms such as fever.
The virus spreads through close contact including direct physical contact with lesions as well as respiratory secretions shared through face-to-face interaction. Touching objects that have been contaminated by Monkeypox lesions or fluids may also risk the spread.
TORONTO – Ontario is pushing through several bills with little or no debate, which the government house leader says is due to a short legislative sitting.
The government has significantly reduced debate and committee time on the proposed law that would force municipalities to seek permission to install bike lanes when they would remove a car lane.
It also passed the fall economic statement that contains legislation to send out $200 cheques to taxpayers with reduced debating time.
The province tabled a bill Wednesday afternoon that would extend the per-vote subsidy program, which funnels money to political parties, until 2027.
That bill passed third reading Thursday morning with no debate and is awaiting royal assent.
Government House Leader Steve Clark did not answer a question about whether the province is speeding up passage of the bills in order to have an election in the spring, which Premier Doug Ford has not ruled out.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
