WASHINGTON (AP) – Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of the US government’s pandemic response, has donated his personal 3D model of the COVID-19 virus to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
The museum honored Fauci with its Great Americans Medal on Tuesday.
“Dr. Fauci has helped save millions of lives and improved the treatment and understanding of infectious and immunological diseases in more than five decades of public service,” said Anthea M. Hartig, director of the museum. a true example of what it means to be a great American. “
The museum asked Fauci to contribute a personal artifact to mark the pandemic, and he chose the lumpy blue and orange ball he used to explain the complexity of the virus in dozens of interviews.
Created with a 3D printer, the model shows what the Smithsonian’s announcement calls “the various components of the SARS-CoV-2 virion (the complete, infectious form of the virus), including the spike protein.”
Fauci showed his new medal in a video call Tuesday night, calling it “an extraordinary and humble” honor.
“This has been a terrible year in so many ways,” he said. “In decades, people will be talking about the experience we’ve been through.”
Fauci, 80, is the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. After serving as the beleaguered and often sidelined face of the Trump administration’s COVID response, Fauci was detained as a senior adviser to President Joe Biden.
The Great Americans Medal was established in 2016. Previous awards have included former Secretaries of State Madeleine K. Albright and General Colin L. Powell, tennis star Billie Jean King and musician Paul Simon.
Fauci received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor, in 2008 from then President George W. Bush for his decades of work, dating back to the earliest days of the AIDS crisis.