They were experts in viruses, and now in pitfalls of fame

BOSTON (AP) — Dr. Ashish Jha started 2020 thousands of miles from home, taking a sabbatical in Europe from his academic post at Harvard. Then the coronavirus pandemic arrived in the U.S.

Jha, an expert on pandemic preparedness, returned to Massachusetts, and his blunt talk on the unfolding disaster was soon hard to miss on national news and social media.

Jha estimates his office fielded more than 100 media requests a day at its peak. He went from a few hundred Twitter followers pre-pandemic to more than 130,000 by December.

“For me, the purpose of doing this was to fill a void and make sure people received credible scientific information,” said Jha, who recently became dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health in Providence, Rhode Island. “I thought it would go for a week or two, but the demand never really let up.”

In another time, experts like Jha would have enjoyed the quiet esteem, respect and relative obscurity afforded by academia. But for better or worse, the coronavirus pandemic thrust virologists, epidemiologists and other normally low-profile scientists into the pop culture crucible.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a leading member of President Donald Trump's coronavirus task force, has been the unquestionable rock star among them. But a cadre of other scientists also rose to prominence this year. Many developed loyal social media followings and became regulars on the cable news circuit.

For Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a Seattle-based virologist affiliated with Georgetown University in Washington, her newfound notoriety hit home in July when she got into a Twitter debate with billionaire Elon Musk.

Rasmussen, who was then at Columbia University, criticized the Tesla CEO’s...