Fauci shuns Trump’s politicization of COVID-19 science to focus on ‘public health message’

Dr. Anthony Fauci: I’m having more pause than optimism at this point, for the simple reason that the numbers are not actually in our favor. I was hoping that as we entered the cooler months of the fall and the colder months of the winter, that we would have a much lower baseline of daily infections in the United States. And, you know, we were stuck at around 40,000 new cases per day for a while. And now it’s actually going up. It’s between 40 and 50,000 per day. And if you look at the map of the United States, there are so many regions that are starting to see upticks in the test positivity, which, in the past, has been a pretty good and ominous predictor that you’re going to have an upsurge of cases.

You could anticipate that if you do not put the extra effort into public health measures to control upticks, then they’re going to get out of hand. You would expect that there would be an uptick as people go indoors. But what we had hoped for is that those upticks would not turn into substantial surges.

What I see is exactly what you’re referring to. In the Northern Hemisphere, countries that originally got hit, then went down to a good baseline and did well — like many of the European Union countries, the UK, some of the Asian countries. After an initial really difficult time, they all seemed to have things under pretty good control. But now, as the weather gets cooler simultaneously with trying to open up the economy, we’re seeing these upticks of global cases throughout the world. And unfortunately, we’re starting to see that here.

Yes, absolutely. There’s lessons to learn from that. When you’re dealing with the community, you’ve got to be transparent with them and you’ve got to be very consistent. You know, unfortunately, we haven’t had a total consistency in the messaging. And I think the point that you brought up [is right]. The wearing of masks became more of a political issue where there were, you know, those in favor and those against. It became almost an ideological thing as opposed to what it really is. It’s a public health issue. It doesn’t know politics. The common enemy is the virus. So, it really doesn’t make any sense if you have a political divide about whether you should be wearing a mask or not. It has nothing at all to do with politics. I mean, people do not like to be told what to do, but sometimes just common sense of looking at what’s going on around you when you see upsurges of infections should be enough to get people to realize. Things that are not that difficult to do and shouldn’t be steeped in politics or ideological divide really need to be done. It’s not that much of a big deal to do these public health measures.

The CDC is really a great organization. Historically, they have been in so many respects — and still are — the leading public health agency in the world. That’s the thing that they do. They do disease surveillance and disease control. And they have been the group that has led us, in many respects, through serious outbreaks that we’ve had all the way going back in my own history to HIV/AIDS and Ebola and Zika and pandemic flu. So, we’d like to see them reassume their position of being a very articulate and vocal defender of public health measures, which they can. They have very good people down there.

I know almost all of the people down there. I think many of them are frustrated, but I don’t really see in the cards mass resignations. I think that they’re going to transcend politics and continue to do their job, which they do very well.

I’ve come out publicly and I’ll say it now. I think that that’s inappropriate, what they’re doing. As you said correctly, I’ve been in public service for five decades now, and I have never either indirectly or directly endorsed a political candidate. And I think to take me and thrust me into that, against my will — and besides, taking words that I said in a completely different context and make it look like it’s in the context of a campaign ad — is inappropriate and wrong. And I wish they would not do that.

There are things I don’t have control over, but the thing I do have control over is giving the American people the public health message based on data and based on evidence and based on facts. I’ve done that all along, not only with COVID-19 but with every other outbreak that I’ve been involved with. And I’ll continue to do that. What other people do, whether or not they distort things, I just don’t have any control over that.

No, I actually want to stay within the confines of my own position. You know, I am a government employee. I have worked for the Department of Health and Human Services for decades and decades. I want to continue my messaging within the context of my position. I mean, I could go outside of that. That would only be provocative. And I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to be a provocative troublemaker. I want to just continue to give a solid public health message to the American people and in some respects to the rest of the world about what we can do to contain this outbreak. If I start doing it in different venues, it might, you know, create more noise than it would create effective messaging.

It really depends on where you are and where family members are coming from. Particularly when you have a short holiday like Thanksgiving, which is really measured just in a couple of days. You may need to really restrict things to immediate close family members, because when you try to have a big congregate and you don’t know where people are coming from, they may come from a place with a high rate of infection. By the time you get through any quarantine, the holiday’s over. If you can get tested, that would be helpful. But I think each individual family has to make up their own mind about the relative risk, for example, to people in the family who are elderly or who have underlying conditions. I don’t think it’s going to be a one-size-fits-all recommendation for families during the holidays, particularly during Thanksgiving. We are facing the same situation myself with my daughters — who are coming from all different parts of the country — whether it be worth their while to come to Washington just for a couple of days when they all have important jobs in different states throughout the country. Would they have to quarantine? Would they have to get tested? They’re all obviously a little concerned because I am in a risk group because of my age and they’re very conscientious. They don’t want to put me at risk. So we have to make a decision, as a family, about what we’re going to do.

Yes, it is. Definitely.