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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – As President Donald Trump held his first campaign rally since revealing he contracted the coronavirus this month, America’s leading infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said the United States would face “a lot of trouble” if it didn’t. he encouraged the universal use of face masks and avoided mass gatherings.
“We have a baseline of infections now that ranges from 40 to 50,000 a day. That is a bad place to be when you are entering the coldest fall weather and the coldest winter weather,” Fauci told CNBC.
He spoke as Trump began his rally in Florida on Monday night, three weeks before the Nov. 3 election, in which opinion polls show the Republican president is behind Democrat Joe Biden.
“We are in a bad place now. We have to change this,” said Fauci, who has been director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984 and a key White House coronavirus member. workgroup.
“If we do five fundamental things: universal use of masks, maintain physical distance, avoid crowded environments or crowds … do things more outdoors than indoors and wash hands frequently, those simple things. .. they can certainly change the peaks we see and we can prevent new peaks from occurring. “
When asked what the consequences would be of not following these steps, Fauci replied, “I think we are facing a lot of problems.”
In a previous interview with CNN, Fauci said that Trump’s campaign team should withdraw an ad that is based on a statement Fauci made and which he says is being used out of context.
He called the ad, which ran last week, “unfortunate and really disappointing.”
The announcement looks at Trump’s effort to recover from COVID-19, as well as his administration’s work to address the coronavirus pandemic. The 30-second ad uses Fauci’s public comments in a way that suggests he was praising the president.
The comments come from an interview in March in which Fauci discussed the broader effort to combat the novel coronavirus, including the White House task force.
Fauci has said that he has never publicly endorsed a political candidate for public office.
At times, Fauci has been diplomatically critical of the president, including for holding rallies that draw thousands of people. The disease has infected more than 7.8 million people in the United States and has killed more than 214,000. Opinion polls show that a majority of voters disapprove of the president’s handling of the crisis.
Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh defended the ad on Sunday, saying Fauci’s words “are accurate and come directly from the mouth of Dr. Fauci.”
‘A CERTAIN SUBSETRY’
Earlier on Monday, senior Trump administration officials who briefed reporters by phone said Americans should be cautiously optimistic about the US response to the coronavirus and that there was no need for society to stall with extensive lockdowns.
Officials, who asked not to be identified, told reporters that the virus was dangerous only to a “certain subset of the population” and that children were at extremely low risk of serious illness related to the highly contagious disease.
Trump has repeatedly called on states to reopen their economies and Fauci said people needed leeway to do things important to their livelihoods.
“We are not talking about closing the country,” he said.
“But we are talking about really careful and serious public health considerations, like wearing a mask, like avoiding crowded settings. That’s not very difficult to do and shouldn’t interfere with opening up the economy again.”
(Information from Diane Bartz and David Brunnstrom; additional information from Andrea Shalal and Doina Chiacu; edited by Tim Ahmann and Peter Cooney)
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