Céline Gounder MD, an infectious disease expert, is a frequent writer about viruses and vaccines, providing solid scientific information to counter the sea of “alternative facts” that surround contagious illnesses. The purveyors of misinformation have not been pleased with her. “I’ve been getting, you know, threats—rape threats, death threats—for years now because of my work.

”When she joined President Biden’s COVID-19 Advisory Board, she became even more visible to rabid conspiracists. Undeterred, she went on advocating for Covid vaccinations as the best way to save lives in the pandemic.

Her life exploded when her husband, sports journalist Grant Wahl, collapsed and died while covering the World Cup in Qatar. A healthy 49-year-old, his death stunned the sports world, and his family. Close on that shock, a deluge of hate hit Gounder. Conspiracists flooded social media with claims that Wahl died as a consequence of a Covid-19 shot—her insistence that the shots were safe had killed her husband.

Despite dealing with grief and the shock of such cruelty, Dr. Gounder decided she had a public responsibility to counter that false information immediately, so people would not be deterred from getting protection during the raging pandemic.

She arranged for Wahl’s body to be returned to the US and autopsied post haste, the results published far and wide—he was killed by a massive aortic aneurysm. The Covid vaccine had nothing to do with it.

When the claims that it did kill him raged on, Gounder wrote an OpEd in the New York Times and did national interviews denouncing the disinformation about vaccines, knowing she’d get even more threats.

Lives were at stake, and Céline Gounder is committed to saving lives.