Decades before Dr. Anthony Fauci led the US response to COVID-19, he shepherded the country through a different epidemic: the HIV/AIDS crisis. In 1981, when Fauci was head of a laboratory at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, researchers discovered that a growing group of Americans — predominantly young, gay men — were dying of cancers and infections. Scientists thought a virus might have been the root cause, but it wasn't until 1984 that researchers discovered that HIV leads to a host of life-threatening illnesses now known as AIDS. Doctors were watching helplessly as patients rapidly deteriorated. Fauci...