Dr. Anthony Fauci, after having been a leading voice in the battle against coronavirus for months, now says he's limiting his speaking times after undergoing surgery last month to remove a polyp from his vocal cords after he tried to do too much too soon.
"We had a bunch of emergency, catastrophic, White House-related — I guess the right word [is] crises," the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Coronavirus Task Force member told NBC News' Sheinelle Jones in a "Today" interview on Wednesday. "I had to get involved in a lot of animated discussion. And then I kicked myself after that because what I did feel that night was it didn't feel 100% great the way it did five days after the surgery."
Now, Fauci said, while comparing notes with Jones, who had the same surgery this year, he's pulling back and "talking maybe 10 minutes in a row, but not the 35, 40-minute things that really knock you out."
The doctor said he believes the polyp came from a bout of flu in December, complicated by an inflamed trachea and a great deal of talking after the coronavirus pandemic started.
Jones told him she thought she heard the polyp in his voice while she was recuperating from her own surgery, telling him she took off work for six weeks and didn't talk for two weeks.
Fauci said he had his surgery on a Thursday and was told not to talk until that Sunday, but he "didn't strictly listen to him," but he will now because he thinks he's re-irritating his throat.
He added that he was told that after the silent period, he could talk for four to five-minute periods, but not for longer lectures or interviews.
He said he thought something was wrong because he wasn't rebounding from long lectures like he had before and by the time he got to March, "it was clear that my voice was shot."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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