MILWAUKEE (AP) — The United States’ top infectious disease specialist is getting his own bobblehead.
The creation from the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum in Milwaukee features Dr. Anthony Fauci wearing a suit as he makes a motion showing how the nation needs to “flatten the curve” in the coronavirus pandemic.
The museum in Milwaukee picked Fauci because many people see the plain-speaking expert on the coronavirus as a hero right now, said co-founder and CEO Phil Sklar.
“He isn’t trying to spin things,” he said. “He isn’t trying to make people happy and tell him what they want to hear. He’s actually telling them, you know, how he sees it as an expert. And I think that’s really what we need him this time.”
Fauci’s face also appears on socks. And a Rochester, New York, shop is selling doughnuts with his face, surrounded by white frosting and topped off with red, white and blue sprinkles.
Sklar said the bobblehead museum plans to donate $5 from every $25 Fauci bobblehead that’s sold to the American Hospital Association, in support of that group’s effort to get masks and other personal protective equipment for health care workers.
“Hopefully it does help a lot of people through the donation and also brings a smile to people’s faces as we all could also use something to smile about right now,” he said.
Fauci, who is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has served as an adviser to every president since Ronald Reagan. President Donald Trump has called him a star on his administration’s coronavirus task force.