The country’s leading infectious disease expert said Thursday that he is increasingly concerned about the number of coronavirus infections in the United States as cases grow at an unprecedented rate even after months of blockades.
A day after the country confirmed more than 50,000 new cases of coronavirus in a single 24-hour period, Anthony Fauci
Anthony Fauci White House seeks to make “we need to live with it” the new tone about the coronavirus: report that Rand Paul’s exchange with Fauci was exactly what the United States needed., the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), said younger people now represent a much larger part of the pandemic.
“I think it’s pretty obvious, Howard, that we’re not going in the right direction,” Fauci said in an interview with Howard Bauchner, editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association. “We have to realize that if we don’t adhere to the guidelines, as we are trying to open up, and I don’t mean officially, I mean citizenship, the people out there, we are going to be in some serious trouble.”
Fauci pointed to Arizona, California, Florida and Texas, four states that have accounted for about half of the new cases in the country this year. Hospital systems in Arizona and Texas are beginning to report that they are running out of space for patients, while hospitalizations are increasing in other parts of the country.
Massive outbreaks, he warned, threaten to overwhelm even areas that have the virus under control.
“The entire company could be at risk,” said Fauci.
But he said the number of vaccine candidates at various stages of development gives him hope that several different drugs may prove effective. Several companies have already started making vaccines at scale, even before their efficacy is proven, with hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in support of the federal government.
The goal, Fauci said, is to have hundreds of millions of vaccine doses by early 2021, and a billion or more doses by this date next year.
“When you have two or three companies that you hope will be successful, they will be making the vaccine not only for their own country, but also for availability in other countries,” Fauci said. “There is a misperception that everyone is running to be the winner. There will be no winner. I imagine from what we see that several of these vaccines will be very similar in effect, and hopefully more than one of them will.” . succeed.”
Fauci declined to name the companies that have already started production.
As school districts and universities make plans to reopen their doors in late summer or fall, Fauci said education officials are considering ways to open and operate safely.
“When you look at schools, there really is a delicate balance there, because obviously if you have massive and massive outbreaks where you have an exponential rise in a curve of new infections in a particular area, you really don’t want to have children go to school there But we really need to be much more flexible in what we can do to get kids back to school, “he said. “A fundamental principle is that, within the scope of a prudent assessment of children’s safety and impact on the community, we must try our best to get children back to school.”
“In certain circumstances where you get them back, but there are still viral dynamics in the community, there are many creative ways that school superintendents are seriously thinking about how you can mitigate the possibility of children as propagation vehicles: Alternate days of classes, morning versus afternoon, wearing masks for children who are old enough to understand what it means to wear a mask, having online capabilities for children who have underlying conditions that may put them at risk, protect teachers, ” he said. “The principle should be, how can we prudently, with sensitivity to children’s safety, get children back to school?”
Fauci has become a totem pole for Americans across the political spectrum, a hero to some and a villain to others in a way that he has not done over the course of a nearly 40-year career in the limelight. He has marveled at the role he now plays in public conversation, most recently during an encounter with the senator. Rand paul
Randal (Rand) Howard Paul The exchange of Paul and Fauci was exactly what the United States needed. Republican Arizona lawmaker says Fauci and Birx ‘undermine’ Trump Fauci’s coronavirus response: ‘We’re not going in the right direction’ MORE (R-Ky.), Which seemed to suggest that Fauci was getting in the way of allowing professional sports leagues to start their seasons all over again.
“I do not make any determination as to which sport can or should be played,” Fauci told Bauchner. “What I do is answer questions based on scientific evidence and public health judgment. I don’t tell anyone if they should or could play a season or not play a season. And yet, somehow, beyond me I got to the point where I suddenly became a professional sports goalkeeper. “
Fauci has testified before Congress hundreds of times during his tenure at NIAID, through the AIDS epidemic, the September 11 terrorist attacks, and the anthrax attacks shortly thereafter, through influenza and Ebola outbreaks, and now during the case of coronavirus. When asked who his favorite members of Congress had been, Fauci said he would not name the names of the current members, for fear of falling into hot waters.
Instead, he pointed to Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), Who was highly critical of the Reagan administration’s efforts in the initial fight against AIDS. Fauci said Kennedy “would drag me over the coals” when the cameras were on, and then put an arm around Fauci when they stopped rolling.
“It was always exciting to testify before Ted Kennedy. He was passionate about the health and well-being of the country,” said Fauci.
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