WASHINGTON (AP) – Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of the US government’s pandemic response, donated his personal 3D model of the COVID-19 virus to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
The museum honored Fauci on Tuesday with the Great Americans medal.
“Dr. Fauci helped save millions of lives and promoted the treatment and our understanding of infectious and immunological diseases in more than five decades of public service, ”said Anthea M. Hartig, the museum’s director. “His humanitarianism and dedication truly exemplify 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 irregular blue and orange ball he used to explain the complexities of the virus in dozens of interviews.
The model was made with a 3D printer and shows what the Smithsonian ad calls “the various components of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (the complete infectious form of the virus), including the spike protein”.
Fauci showed off his new medal on a video call Tuesday night, calling it an “extraordinary and humiliating” honor.
“This has been a terrible year in many ways,” he said. “In decades, people will be talking about the experience we went through.”
Fauci, 80, is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the United States. After serving as the besieged and often marginalized face of the Trump administration’s COVID response, Fauci was hired as a senior adviser to President Joe Biden.
The Great Americans Medal was founded in 2016. Previous honorees include former state secretaries 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 biggest civilian award, in 2008, from then President George W. Bush, for his decades of work, which go back to the early days of the AIDS crisis.