Dr. Fauci's Neighbors Put Up 'Thank You' Signs In Their Yards To Show Appreciation For His Work

The signs line the streets of Fauci’s neighborhood where he’s lived for over 40 years

Dr. Anthony Fauci skyrocketed to fame as a member of the White House’s coronavirus task force. More recently, Trump has turned against Fauci for disagreeing with his take on the very fine job he believes he’s done during the pandemic. As this plays out in the news, Fauci’s neighbors want him to know that despite the President’s negative comments, they very much appreciate all the work he is doing to help keep Americans safe.

Fauci, who is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has lived in the same Northwest Washington neighborhood with his wife since 1977. They are known for taking power walks through that neighborhood nightly, and that’s when he began seeing signs pop up with his name on them, thanking him for the work he is doing on the task force, Washington Post reported.

“I have been, for so long, a quiet, inconspicuous person in my neighborhood, and now there are signs up telling me that they love me,” Fauci said. “I think it’s great, but I certainly don’t let anything like that go to my head.”

Fauci has been a consistent voice for social distancing and mask-wearing and over the course of the past few months has been disagreeing with Trump’s version of a pandemic, he says, will “just go away.”

“Wrong!” Trump wrote in a retweet of a video where Fauci explained to a House subcommittee that the U.S. coronavirus cases are higher than European countries because it chose not to have a nationwide lockdown. “We have more cases because we have tested far more than any other country, 60,000,000. If we tested less, there would be less cases.”

The president has also retweeted messages calling for Fauci’s firing and called him “a little bit of an alarmist” when it comes to his recommendations about how to fight the coronavirus. Fauci responded, calling himself “more a realist than an alarmist,” to CNN’s Jake Tapper.

The yard sign idea was the work of Ida Bergstrom, a physician who spent a month of her residency working for Fauci, as a way to say thank you for his work and as a gesture to let him know that, despite Trump’s about face on Fauci, there are a lot of Americans who believe he is the expert to listen to.

“In the academic circles of medicine, his name is on the covers of books, and he’s very prestigious,” Bergstrom said. “But he’s a very real person, and for anyone to sustain what he’s going through must be taxing. And I’m not really a sensitive person, but how can you not be affected by all that?”

Bergstrom customized the signs to read, “Thank you Dr Fauci” and an exclamation mark with a heart where the dot should be. She inquired with neighbors on social media to see if anyone would be interested in buying them and before she knew it, she’d sold over 200. What’s more, the profits for the signs go to Life Pieces to Masterpieces, an organization that uses art to develop leadership skills in Black boys in some of D.C.’s poorest areas.

“It’s reflective of people’s feeling that they need someone to be an advocate for good science, and I appreciate that,” Fauci said. “I look at it almost as an endorsement of the entire scientific community.”

“It’s not a political statement,” another neighbor added. “Let’s all do what’s right for each other.”