Dr. Anthony Fauci speaks about HIV and COVID-19 while touring for his new memoir, On Call, in San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, was in San Francisco on Tuesday to promote his new book, “On Call.”

Dr. Fauci spoke to more than 100 people at Manny’s in the Mission District about his work on HIV and then about his work on the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” Dr. Fauci said, speaking of the moment he learned about HIV. “A MMWR report from the CDC landed on my desk about the case of five strangely otherwise healthy young gay men from LA who had a very strange pneumonia, pneumocystis pneumonia.”

At first he thought it was just an anomaly, but soon other MMWRs came to him with more cases. He spent years working with world leaders to develop drugs, treatments and ways to contain the spread.

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Following the discussion on HIV, he began to talk about the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I found out about it on January 1, 2020,” he said. “A reporter called me and said something strange was going on in China. Have you heard about it? Suddenly the phones started ringing and CDC and HHS were on the line.”

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Speaking about the pandemic, he said he had worked well with President Donald Trump for the most part, but things changed as Election Day approached. Dr. Fauci says work on HIV led to the development of the COVID vaccine.

“The team that worked on an HIV vaccine were the ones who developed the crucial immune gene for the success of the COVID vaccine,” he said.

Dr. Fauci has a second event at Dominican University, where he will participate in a discussion with former California Senator Barbara Boxer.

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