"Tony," I said, "you're a great scientist but a lousy administrator."

As Tony Fauci returns to the private sector and finally retires, a wealthy close friend -- a man living with HIV since 1985, arrested 10 times but with no criminal record for activism thanks to pro bono work -- comes clean on Fauci's weaknesses for overseeing the work being performed under him.

He likely didn't know what he was funding in the gain of function trials in Wuhan, because he was a "lousy administrator" with sloppy practices even back when HIV was the unknown virus...

Dr. Fauci walked through the fire with us, and his friendships with AIDS activists deepened with time, bound by a shared trauma. In those early years, while some in our community were accusing him of not caring enough about AIDS, he didn’t tell us about the hundreds of gay men he had tried to save under his care at the N.I.H. hospital. Until this month, he still did rounds there, a clinician above all else.

When Covid hit and the rest of the world got to know Dr. Fauci, he leaned on us for guidance. David Barr, another ACT UP veteran, set up and hosted weekly calls with him and health officials from various frontline cities, allowing Dr. Fauci to counter the rosy spin from other members of the White House task force with a well-informed “That’s not what I’m hearing.” I’ve always been a politician among the activists, and it’s been the honor of my life that he leaned on me hard during his tumultuous year navigating “team normal” and “team crazy” in President Donald Trump’s orbit.

Over multiple bottles of wine, Dr. Fauci tried to placate us with what I called “the full Fauch,” an optimistic friendliness with a Brooklyn-smarts spin and a love of lively debates. Two opposing truths confronted us: We couldn’t help but love the guy, but his research program sucked. “Tony,” I said, “you’re a great scientist but a lousy administrator.”

...

Like all of us, Dr. Fauci has his flaws, but I’ve never met a man more willing to let a friend rip into him. Our conversations are filled with F-bombs. His willingness to give absolutely everyone the benefit of some shared humanity — “I just met Jared, and he seems like a good guy” — is almost freakish but has come in handy over his stretch of working for seven presidents.

Because he crossed Mr. Trump, Dr. Fauci was turned into a villain for the MAGA crowd, providing fodder for those who thrive on conspiracies and hate. There has rarely been a larger gap between a mob’s viciousness and its target’s decency.

So glad this man is out.  Nice guys can do the world an awful lot of harm when they neglect their duties, and others -- less wealthy others who can't access the top-of-the-line healthcare Mr. Staley can afford -- pay the price...

Why was Fauci administering grant money in Wuhan anyway?  Why did he help to create the virus (oh... we're not certain it came from the lab yet? haha) through funding that killed so many worldwide?

Sounds like everybody knew he should have been relieved of those duties long long ago.  Good riddance to a nice guy who failed at his job in recent years.  Sorry Tony, all the bottles of fine wine in the world won't change the scientific facts.

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NIH grants supported theconstruction of mutant SARS-related coronaviruses that involved blending different types together. The result was a lab-generated virus that could infect human cells, he said, adding that at least three of the lab-generated viruses "exhibited >10x to >100x higher viral loads in humanized mice." A humanized mouse is a mouse that has been bio-engineered to mimic certain biological characteristics similar to humans, such as the immune system, so that they can be tested on in labs as a human surrogate. They are commonly used in research.