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Dr. Anthony Fauci

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125 graduates of the Renaissance School of Medicine (RSOM) at Stony Brook University received their MD degrees in 2024. Photo by Arthur Fredericks

By Daniel Dunaief

On May 14, the Renaissance School of Medicine celebrated 50 years since its first graduating class, as 125 students entered the ranks of medical doctor.

The newly minted doctors completed an unusual journey that began in the midst of Covid-19 and concluded with a commencement address delivered by former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Dr. Fauci currently serves as Distinguished University Professor at the Georgetown University School of Medicine and the McCourt School of Public Policy and also serves as Distinguished Senior Scholar at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law.

“I have been fortunate to have had the privilege of delivering several commencement addresses over the years,” Dr. Fauci began. “Invariably, I have included in those addresses a reference to the fact that I was in your shoes many years ago when I graduated from medical school.”

This graduating class, however, has gone through a journey that “has been exceptional and, in some cases unprecedented,” Dr. Fauci added.

Indeed, the Class of 2024 started classes remotely, learning a wide range of course online, including anatomy.

“Imagine taking anatomy online?” Dr. Bill Wertheim, interim Executive Vice President for Stony Brook Medicine, said in an interview. “Imagine how challenging that is.”

Dr. Wertheim was pleased with the willingness, perseverance and determination of the class to make whatever contribution they could in responding to the pandemic.

The members of this class “were incredibly engaged. They rolled up their sleeves and pitched in wherever they could to help the hospital manage the patients they were taking care of,” said Wertheim, which included putting together plastic gowns when the school struggled to find supplies and staffing respite areas.

“Hats off to them” for their continued zeal and enthusiasm learning amid such challenges, including social issues that roiled the country during their medical training, Wertheim said.

Student experience

For Maame Yaa Brako, who was born in Ghana and moved to Ontario, Canada when she was 11, the beginning of medical school online was both a blessing and a curse.

Starting her medical education remotely meant she could spend time with the support system of her family, which she found reassuring.

At the same time, however, she felt removed from the medical community at the Renaissance School of Medicine, which would become her home once the school was able to lift some restrictions.

For Brako, Covid provided a “salient reminder” of why she was studying to become a doctor, helping people with challenges to their health. “It was a constant reminder of why this field is so important.”

Brako appreciated her supportive classmates, who provided helpful links with studying and answered questions.

Despite the unusual beginning, Brako feels like she is “super close” to her fellow graduates.

Brako was thrilled that Dr. Fauci gave the commencement address, as she recalled how CNN was on all the time during the pandemic and he became a “staple in our household.”

Brako will continue her medical training with a residency at Mass General and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where she will enter a residency in obstetrics and gynecology.

Mahesh Tiwari, meanwhile, already had his feet under him when medical school started four years ago. Tiwari, who is going to be a resident in internal medicine at Robert Wood Johnson Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey, earned his bachelor’s degree at Stony Brook.

He was able to facilitate the transition to Long Island for his classmates, passing along his “love for the area,” recognizing the hidden gems culturally, musically and artistically, he said.

After eight years at Stony Brook, Tiwari suggested he would miss a combination of a world-class research institution with an unparalleled biomedical education. He also enjoyed the easy access to nature and seascapes.

A look back

Until 1980, Stony Brook didn’t have a hospital, which meant that the medical students had to travel throughout the area to gain clinical experience.

“Students were intrepid, traveling all across Long Island, deep into Nassau County, Queens and New York City,” said Wertheim.

In those first years, students learned the craft of medicine in trailers, as they awaited the construction of buildings.

Several graduates of Stony Brook from decades ago who currently practice medicine on Long Island shared their thoughts and perspective on this landmark graduation.

Dr. Sharon Nachman, Chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, graduated from Stony Brook Medical School in 1983.

In the early years, the students were an “eclectic group who were somewhat different than the typical medical school students,” which is not the case now, Nachman said.

When Nachman joined the faculty at Stony Brook, the medical school didn’t have a division of pediatric infectious diseases. Now, the group has four full time faculty with nurse practitioners.

The medical school, which was renamed the Renaissance School of Medicine in 2018 after more than 100 families at Renaissance Technologies made significant donations, recognizes that research is “part of our mission statement.”

Stony Brook played an important role in a number of medical advances, including Dr. Jorge Benach’s discovery of the organism that causes Lyme Disease.

Stony Brook is “not just a medical school, it’s part of the university setting,” added Nachman. “It’s a hospital, it has multiple specialties, it’s an academic center and it’s here to stay. We’re not just the new kids on the block.”

Departments like interventional radiology, which didn’t exist in the past, are now a staple of medical education.

Dr. David Silberhartz, a psychiatrist in Setauket who graduated in 1980, appreciated the “extraordinary experience” of attending medical school with a range of people from different backgrounds and experiences. He counts three of the members of his class, whom he met his first day, as his best friends.

Silberhartz, who planned to attend commencement activities, described the landmark graduation as a “wonderful celebration.”

Aldustus Jordan III spent 43 years at the medical school, retiring as Associate Dean for Student Affairs in January 2019.

While he had the word “dean” in his title, Jordan suggested that his job was to be a “dad” to medical students, offering them an opportunity to share their thoughts, concerns and challenges.

As the school grew from a low of 18 students to a high of 150 in 2021, Jordan focused on keeping the small town flavor, so students didn’t become numbers.

“I wanted to make sure we kept that homey feeling, despite our growth,” said Jordan.

Jordan suggested that all medical schools recognize the need for doctors not only knowing their craft, but also having the extra touch in human contact.

“We put our money where our mouth is,” Jordan said. “We put a whole curriculum around that” which makes a difference in terms of patient outcomes.

Jordan urged future candidates to any medical school, including Stony Brook, to speak with people about their experiences and to use interviews as a chance to speak candidly with faculty.

“When you have down time, you have to enjoy the environment, you have to enjoy where you live,” Jordan said.

As for his own choice of doctors, Jordan has such confidence in the education students receive at Stony Brook that he’s not only a former dean, but he’s also a patient.

His primary care physician is a SBU alumni, as is his ophthalmologist.

“If I can’t trust the product, who can?” Jordan asked.

As for Fauci, in addition to encouraging doctors to listen and be prepared to use data to make informed decisions, he also suggested that students find ways to cultivate a positive work life balance.

“Many of you will be in serious and important positions relatively soon,” Fauci said. “There are so many other things to live for and be happy about. Reach for them and relish the joy.”

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Anthony S. Fauci, MD, addressing the RSOM graduating Class of 2024. Credit: Arthur Fredericks

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Speaking in a front of a receptive, appreciative and celebratory audience of 125 graduates of the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University who gave him a standing ovation before and after his commencement address, Dr Anthony Fauci, former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, shared some thoughts on the hard lessons learned from the last four years.

Dr. Fauci currently serves as Distinguished University Professor at the Georgetown University School of Medicine and the McCourt School of Public Policy and also serves as Distinguished Senior Scholar at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law.

“I speak not only of lessons we have learned that can help us prepare for the next public health challenge, but, more importantly, of lessons that will apply to your future professional and personal experiences that are far removed from pandemic outbreaks,” Fauci said, after complimenting the class on persevering in their training despite the challenges and losses.

To start with, he suggested these new doctors expect the unexpected. In the early phase of the pandemic, the virus revealed multiple secrets, “some of which caught us somewhat by surprise,” Fauci said. “As well prepared as we thought we were, we learned that SARS-Cov2 is often transmitted from people who are infected but have no symptoms.”

Additionally, the virus continually mutated, forming more transmissable variants that caused illness even in those who had already contracted the virus.

“Each revelation not only humbled us, but served as a stark reminder that, when facing novel and unanticipated challenges in life, as you all will I promise, any predictions we might make about what will happen next or how the situation will unfold must always be provisional,” Fauci said.

Dealing with these challenges requires being open-minded and flexible in assessing situations as new information emerges.

He cautioned the new doctors and scientists to beware of the insidious nature of anti science.

Even as doctors have used data and evidence learning to gain new insights and as the stepping stones of science, anti science became “louder and more entrenched over time. This phenomenon is deeply disturbing” as it undermines evidence-based medicine and sends the foundation of the social order down a slippery slope.

Even as science was under attack, so, too, were scientists. “During the past four years, we have witnessed an alarming increase in the mischaracterization, distortion and even vilification of solid evidence-based findings and even of scientists themselves,” Fauci continued.

Mixing with these anti science notions were conspiracy theories, which created public confusion and eroded trust in evidence-based public health principals.

“This became crystal clear as we fought to overcome false rumors about the mRNA Covid vaccines during the roll out” of vaccines which Dr. Peter Igarashi, Dean of the Renaissance School of Medicine estimated in his introduction for Dr. Fauci saved more than 20 million lives in their first year of availability.

“I can confirm today that Bill Gates [the former CEO of Microsoft] and I did not put chips in the Covid vaccines,” Fauci said. “And, no, Covid vaccines are not responsible for more deaths than Covid.”

The worldwide disparagement of scientific evidence is threatening other aspects of public health, he said, as parents are opting out of immunizing their children, which is leading to the recent clusters of measles cases, he added.

Elements of society are “driven by a cacophony of falsehoods, lies and conspiracy theories that get repeated often enough that after a while, they become unchallenged,” he said. That leads to what he described as a “normalization of untruths.”

Fauci sees this happening on a daily basis, propagated by information platforms, social media and enterprises passing themselves off as news organizations. With doctors entering a field in which evidence and data-driven conclusions inform their decisions, they need to “push back on these distortions of truth and reality.”

He appealed to the graduates to accept a collective responsibility not to accept the normalization of untruths passively, which enables propaganda and the core principals of a just social order to begin to erode.

Fauci exhorted students to “seek and listen to opinions that differ from your own” and to analyze information which they have learned to do in medical school.

“Our collective future truly is in your hands,” Fauci said.

Fauci also urged these doctors and scientists to take care of their patients and to advance knowledge for the “good of humankind.”

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Pixabay photo

Over the last month, the pandemic trends continue to improve in Suffolk County and in the country.

After a rocky start to the New Year, brought on by an omicron variant that was more contagious than either the original strain of the virus or the delta variant, the percentage of positive tests in Suffolk County continues to decline.

As of Feb. 7, the percentage of positive tests over a seven-day average in Suffolk County was 4.9%, according to the New York State Department of Health. That is down from 14% on Jan. 21 and 27% on Jan. 7.

The trends on Long Island are following similar patterns in other parts of the world that experienced the omicron infection earlier.

South Africa “experienced the omicron wave first,” Dr. Gregson Pigott, health commissioner of the Suffolk County Department of Health Services, wrote in an email. “Almost as steeply as cases rose, they fell.”

Indeed, at Port Jefferson’s St. Charles Hospital, Dr. Sunil Dhuper, chief medical officer, said there has been a “significant” drop in the number of patients hospitalized and in the number of Emergency Room visits, while the use of monoclonal antibodies to treat patients in the early stages of an infection has also dropped dramatically.

“We are not seeing the kind of volume we were seeing a few weeks ago,” Dhuper added.

The Department of Health for the country reported that the reinfection rate, which reached a peak in the last week of December and first week of January, has also been declining.

The number of hospitalizations throughout the country has fallen enough that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to President Joseph Biden (D), recently said in an interview with the Financial Times that the country is almost past the “full-blown” pandemic phase. While he didn’t offer a specific timetable, he suggested that virus restrictions could be lifted within a matter of months.

Area doctors suggested that vaccinations and more mild symptoms among those who contracted the virus helped alleviate the strain on the health care community.

“The vast majority of those hospitalized for respiratory or other COVID-type illnesses have not been vaccinated,” Dr. Sharon Nachman, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, explained in an email.

While the overall number continues to decline, the county, and the country, need to make continued progress in reducing the overall infection rate before the all-clear signal.

Sean Clouston, associate professor in the Program in Public Health and the Department of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, suggested that the current number of infections still leaves room for improvement.

A positivity rate above 5% which was the figure earlier this week, is “still extremely high,” Clouston explained in an email. “Currently, the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] would recommend that no one in the globe travel to Long Island, which doesn’t seem like we ourselves see this as safe objectively.”

Health care providers highlighted the difference between the reported and the actual infection numbers.

When the pandemic started in March of 2020, Dhuper estimates that the ratio of reported to actual cases was close to 1 to 10. With Delta, that number likely dropped to closer to 1 to 5, and with omicron, that’s probably about 1 to 3 or 4.

With the increase in at-home testing, the numbers “we see are more of a sampling, showing the approximate prevalence of COVID-19 virus circulating in the population,” Pigott explained.

Nachman added that Stony Brook is following guidelines from the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when it comes to vaccinations for people who tested positive for COVID-19.

These public health authorities generally recommend a booster dose after people feel well, which is usually 10 days to two weeks after an illness.

Doctors said they are monitoring a new version of the omicron variant, called BA.2

The new variant seems a “bit more” contagious” than the original omicron, Dhuper said. Vaccines, however, have a “reasonable level of protection to prevent hospitalizations and death.”

Dhuper said he continues to “keep an eye” on that variant.

Nachman suggested that the available vaccines continue to help.

“Right now, the [two omicron variants] do not seem to be radically different,” she suggested, as both have a short incubation period and people are protected by the vaccine.

With the number of people contracting the virus and developing more severe symptoms declining, Dhuper said the demand for the effective monoclonal antibody treatment continues to fall.

Dhuper said a recent New England Journal of Medicine study indicated that the antiviral treatment remdesivir, manufactured by Gilead Sciences, was effective at treating mild to moderate illnesses on an outpatient basis over a three-day period.

“Given under controlled conditions, (remdesivir) could be one of the best alternatives that we have,” Dhuper said.

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Photo from Deposit Photos

Looking back on the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, expressed his frustration with the reaction to recommended safety measures.

“Public health issues got entangled in the profound divisiveness in our society,” Fauci said in a public discussion with the College of William & Mary president, Katherine Rowe, last week. “When you’re dealing with a common enemy, which is the virus, it is very counterproductive to be divisive over virtually everything you do.”

Fauci was frustrated that wearing a mask became a political statement, calling that “ridiculous” and suggesting that it “accounted for a less-than-optimal response that this country had.”

“I believe we’re going to get there within this calendar year.”

— Dr. Anthony Fauci

The disagreements were based “not on facts and science, but on political differences,” he said. In the next year, however, Fauci expressed hope that the country would have the virus under control and that it would eventually no longer threaten public health.

“I believe we’re going to get there within this calendar year,” Fauci said on the William & Mary call. “The problem is that a global pandemic requires a global response and if we don’t participate as [have] the other developed nations in the EU and in the U.K. and Canada and Australia, if we don’t participate in a program, in COVAX, that helps provide vaccines for the developing world … our problem will never go away.”

Indeed, last week, President Joe Biden (D) pledged $4 billion to the COVAX program at the G7 meeting.

Fauci pushed an initial estimate back for the time when vaccines for the virus would be available broadly to the United States population.

“One of the disappointments, which made me change [the] estimate, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which we anticipated would be coming in significant quantities in March and April, we learned that they will not have significant quantities until likely May and June,” Fauci said.

Reacting to a question from William & Mary Student Assembly president, Anthony Joseph, Fauci said, “Somebody like yourself, a young person, will likely have to wait until May.”

In response to a question about whether a vaccinated individual could be a carrier for COVID-19, Fauci said it is a “theoretical possibility — how likely that is, we do not know.”

The vaccination might prevent someone from showing clinical signs of the disease, but it might not keep someone from being a carrier.

He recommends people who have received the vaccine continue to wear a mask when they’re in the presence of people who have not been vaccinated, to prevent the possibility of infecting someone else.

New York State vaccinations

Snowstorms throughout the country this winter have disrupted the process of distributing vaccines.

New York State Department of Health said facilities where people scheduled appointments will connect with them before and during storms.

“As has been the case for past postponements, if any vaccine appointments at state-run sites are impacted by winter weather, they will be rescheduled over the following seven days,” a DOH spokesman said in a statement. “New Yorkers with appointments scheduled will receive an email or text message to reschedule their vaccination.”

Each resident who received a first dose at a state-run site will get a reminder email 24 hours before their second dose appointment.

When residents of the Empire State receive their first shot, they are required to schedule a second dose during that appointment.

Anyone who missed their appointment for a second shot should contact the call center to reschedule, if possible.

The state is required to keep a second dose on hand up to 42 days after a first shot, even though people who receive the Pfizer vaccine should get their second dose three weeks after the first shot and those who get the Moderna vaccine should return four weeks later. After 42 days, the state site can give the vaccine to someone else.

New York State requires all providers to keep a daily list of standby eligible people, in the event that an appointment opens up.

“As soon as providers are aware that there are more doses than people to be vaccinated, standby eligible individuals should be called, or other steps must be taken to bring additional eligible recipients to the facility or clinic before the acceptable use period expires,” the Health Department said in a statement.

Recognizing that the vaccination process can go awry during storms, providers can administer the vaccine to other public facing employees if extra doses remain at the end of a clinic and no one from a priority population can arrive before the doses expire.

As an example, the DOH suggested that commercial pharmacists who had already vaccinated eligible residents can offer the vaccine to members of the pharmacy department, store clerks, cashiers, stock workers and delivery staff.

“This exception is only for the purpose of ensuring vaccine is not wasted,” the spokesman said.

In remarks on Feb. 9, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) indicated that the supply of vaccines continues to lag well behind the demand.

“We now have about 10 million New Yorkers waiting on 300,000 doses,” Cuomo said. “The supply will only increase when and if Johnson & Johnson is approved. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are ramping up but the ramp-up is relatively slow, so we won’t see a major supply increase from Pfizer and Moderna, nowhere near what we would need to make rapid progress against the 10 million.”

Stony Brook vaccinations

Stony Brook University, meanwhile, announced that it reached a milestone last week when it distributed its 25,000th vaccine, exactly a month after the site started administering the vaccine. That means the university has vaccinated more than one person per minute for each of the 11 hours it’s been providing shots.

In a statement, President Maurie McInnis said she was “proud of the milestone” and called the effort by the university and Stony Brook Medicine “excellent work.”

SBU Hospital is also assisting in developing point-of-distribution sites in underserved communities on Long Island.

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Dr. Anthony Fauci

By Peggy Olness

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts” said our NY Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. This simple but important statement has re-emerged in this unusual era as a call for truth, and can sometimes be the difference between life and death. Being informed is every citizen’s responsibility, whether making sense of a cacophony of voices during a pandemic or ultimately choosing leaders on election day. Use this time of enforced and prudent social distancing to educate yourself on how to separate fact from opinion and fiction. 

Over 100 doctors and nurses serving on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic recently sent a letter to the largest social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter, Google, & YouTube, warning that misleading information about COVID-19 is threatening lives. The letter called on these organizations to more aggressively monitor the posting of medical misinformation appearing on their websites.

Misinformation about COVID-19 includes unfounded claims and conspiracy theories about the virus originating as biological weapon development and being deliberately spread by various groups or countries. Even more dangerous have been the unsubstantiated claims for “sure cures” that involve certain types of therapies or treatments with substances, many of which are poisonous or which must be monitored by a medical professional. There have been documented instances of people dying or suffering serious harm as a result of following this misinformed advice.

For COVID-19 information dependable places to start are the websites of the CDC and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was created by Congress in 1946 to focus on infectious disease and food borne pathogens. It functions under the US Public Health Service (PHS) to provide leadership and assistance for epidemics, disasters and general public health services. It is responsible for the Strategic National Stockpile, a stockpile of drugs, vaccines, and other medical products and supplies to provide for the emergency health security of the US & its territories.

Also under the PHS are the National Institutes for Health (NIH), responsible for basic and applied research for biomedical and public health, founded in the 1880’s to investigate the causes of malaria, cholera and yellow fever epidemics. A subagency, of the NIH, the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases (NIAID), is the lead agency studying the nature of the coronavirus and its treatment and prevention. 

Dr. Anthony Fauci, M.D, NIAID Director since 1984, has helped NIAID lead the US through a number of crises including HIV-AIDS, Ebola, West Nile Virus, SARS, H1N1 flu, MERS-CoV, Zika and COVID-19. Dr Fauci has been trying to communicate the facts his agency has discovered about coronavirus and COVID-19. Scientists are seekers of findings that can be replicated, and their research is constantly being updated, revised, communicated, and it is collaborative and open. 

Misinformation and rumor have always been a part of society, and the children’s game of “Telephone” has been used for generations to show how factual information can become changed or distorted when it is passed down a line of people. So what can we do about it? Before making decisions about action, be sure that the information and sources that are guiding you are reliable and trusted. During this COVID-19 crisis, actions taken by those around you can have negative consequences. Remember to use social media with an emphasis on “social;” your source for facts and your basis for decisions should be well-documented media/journalism and peer-reviewed science. Be sure, as President Reagan advised, you have trusted but also verified.  

The Suffolk Cooperative Library System, with the assistance of the Suffolk County League of Women Voters and building on the work of the Westchester LWV, has produced a 10 minute professional development video: “INFODEMIC 101: Inoculating Against Coronavirus Misinformation” which can be found on the Livebrary YouTube channel https://youtu.be/7qmy3FaCjHU

Peggy Olness is a board member of the League of Women Voters of Suffolk County, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that encourages the informed and active participation of citizens in government and influences public policy through education and advocacy. For more information, visit http://www.lwv-suffolkcounty.org, email [email protected] or call 631-862-6860.

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