Anthony Fauci has run the National Institutes of Healths infectious diseases agency since Ronald Regan was president and has played key roles in virtually every public health intervention and policy since then. That is, until his candor about the novel coronavirus pandemic contradicted President Donald Trump s falsehoods.

For months, the White House largely disregarded Faucis advice. Trump, his allies and right-wing media painted the soft-spoken Brooklyn native as a villain. Trump repeatedly threatened to terminate Faucis employment (something he cant really do ). Crowds at Trump rallies chanted Fire Fauci! Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon said Fauci should be executed and his head placed on a pike on the White House grounds.

But Fauci has kept a relentless pace trying to correct the countrys coronavirus course.

Each day is different, Fauci told HuffPost in an interview on the day before Thanksgiving. Its just, you know, drinking out of a firehose trying to keep ahead of everything thats going on.

The night before, hed been awake until around 11 p.m. sorting through a mountain of email until he was too tired to continue. I get like over a thousand emails a day and when they screen it, they screen it down to those few hundred that I have to deal with, he said. Then you have a day that is wall-to-wall, literally.

He was back up at 5:10 a.m. on Wednesday, facing a day with a mere 20 minutes of unscheduled time. He expected to lose that break as new business arose over the course of the day.

With a national holiday on the horizon, the biggest portion of his 18-hour workday was to be spent doing press.

Heres what Faucis Thanksgiving eve looked like.

• 5:10 a.m. to 6 a.m. Showered and shaved

• 6 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. Resumed dealing with email

• 6:30 a.m. to 7 a.m. Appeared on ABC News Good Morning America

• 7 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. Left home for NIH

• 7:30 a.m. to 8 a.m. Appeared on C-SPANs Washington Journal

• 8 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. Appeared on WNYC-FMs The Takeaway

• 8:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. Interview with Chicago television station

• 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. Visited two severe COVID-19 patients under treatment at the NIH Clinical Center and their primary physicians

• 10 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. Video meeting with senior National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases staff

• 10:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. Interview with newspaper reporter

• 11:00 a.m. to 11:50 a.m. Video meeting with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, NIH Director Francis Collins, CDC Director Robert Redfield, FDA Administrator Stephen Hahn and other health officials

• 11:50 a.m. to 12 p.m. A bathroom break and more email

• 12 p.m. to 12:30 p.m. Interviewed with Byron Allen for theGrio on skepticism about the vaccine among Black Americans

• 12:30 p.m. to 1 p.m. HuffPost interview

• 1 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Another television appearance

• 1:30 p.m. to 1:50 p.m. The elusive scheduled break

• 1:50 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. Another newspaper interview

• 2:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. Interview with scientific journal

• 3 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Prep for an upcoming speech to the centers for science and international something-or-other, one of those think tanks in Washington

• 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Video meeting with White House Coronavirus Task Force

• 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Video meeting with NIH vaccine scientists

• 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Responding to phone calls

By 7 p.m., he hoped to be on his way home, where his day would end with a 45-minute power walk alongside his wife, Christine Grady , a nurse and the chief of the Department of Bioethics at the NIHs Clinical Center. Then, he planned to have dinner followed by more calls and emails until he couldnt keep his eyes open.

Theres not much room for a personal life these days. Fauci doesnt ride Washingtons Metro or run errands. He hasnt attempted to safely socialize with friends or family. His adult children didnt come home for Thanksgiving this year, as hed begged others not to do as well. The extent of his indulgences is ordering takeout.

He cant afford to contract the disease he spends his days fighting. One, because nobody wants to get infected, but two, I really have an important job that Id hate to be laid up for because I got infected, he said.

But he and Grady have also become more cautious amid the violent rhetoric from Trump and other conservatives, which has included death threats and harassment.

I have federal agents that protect me. So they drive me to work, they stay here, they make sure that nobody tries to break in [to my home] and, as Steve Bannon would like, have somebody behead me, Fauci said. I dont socialize. Its my wife and I and the federal agents. Weve sort of become like a new family unit.