The CDC's director says she and Fauci are 'easy targets' for pandemic anger and frustration: 'People want somebody to blame'

• CDC Director Rochelle Walensky sat down for an exclusive interview with Insider, a year into her job.
• She called the pandemic a natural disaster and said we "can use science to try and cope" with it.

Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Rochelle Walensky have both been blamed for a lot since the pandemic began.

Fauci, who directs the US infectious-disease response at the National Institutes of Health, heads up the massive federal agency that helps develop vaccines and treatments.

Walensky, who's been at the helm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for a year, runs the agency that tallies who's getting sick and who's dying from COVID-19, in addition to measuring how well vaccines are working and making recommendations for schools, hospitals, businesses, and people across the country about the best ways to stay safe from the virus.

Fauci has spoken openly about the hate mail, suspicious powders, and threatening calls he and his family have received during the pandemic. He said the divisiveness and raw hatred he saw today was far worse than any of the protests or deaths threats he received during the HIV crisis in the late 1980s and early '90s.

"I have threats upon my life, harassment of my family and my children with obscene phone calls, because people are lying about me," he said earlier this month during a US Senate hearing.

Speaking with Insider on her first anniversary at the helm of the CDC, Walensky said Fauci's experience "resonates with me."

Walensky said there was a simple, psychological reason some people were so eager to point a finger and threaten her and Fauci.

Fauci and Walensky are the 'easy targets' for people who want 'somebody to blame,' the CDC head says

"Certainly, there are people who are unhappy," she told Insider during our exclusive Q&A, alluding to the toll the pandemic has taken on the nation's mental health and the hit it has delivered to our collective economic and social stability. "Many people want somebody to blame. And so we become easy targets, right?"

Walensky and Fauci aren't the only ones.

Amid the pandemic, nurses, doctors, and public-health officials in charge of pandemic response in states and cities across the country have been quitting in droves, and many said on their way out the door that they'd simply had enough of all the hate and death threats.

"If you equate this pandemic to a natural disaster, which is what I think it is, we have many different ways that we can use science to try and cope and to improve outcomes, improve life, life expectancy, survival from this natural disaster," Walensky said.

She acknowledged that the agency had room for improvement in its COVID-19 response, in terms of clear and honest communication to the public and in speeding up the science that undergirds recommendations and shifts in guidance.

"We even have to act in times where we have imperfect information because the situation is imperfect," she said.

"I want to read and hear the criticism," she added, "but I also want to make sure that it's balanced by all these incredible people who have been here to support me."

Read our full interview with CDC Director Rochelle Walensky here.