“I just think it was avoidable and it’s really disappointing that we still don’t have adequate evidence, that the credibility of top scientists like you and the CDC is being undermined and until recently those parts of the administration were questioning whether people should even follow the basic best practices like wearing masks, “said Zuckerberg.
The United States faces new records of coronavirus infection every day. Although many other countries have struggled to contain the disease, the trajectory of infections in the United States is off the charts.
“This government and our administration have been considerably less effective in handling this,” said Zuckerberg.
Fauci explained that some states opened their economies too quickly and skipped their own guidelines for reopening, ignoring the advice of experts. He noted that other states adequately followed protocols to reopen safely, but some citizens “went from confinement to caution to the wind.” And Fauci said the United States as a whole never allowed coronavirus infections to sink to a reasonable baseline, allowing infections to get out of control again.
“That’s a recipe for getting into trouble,” said Fauci.
Zuckerberg praised Fauci, who has been criticized (on and off the record) by the Trump administration for his leadership in leading responses to the pandemic. But Zuckerberg said Fauci brushed aside his explanation for the coronavirus’s return to active government ignorance and directives to disobey scientists’ best advice.
“It can be quite generous in your description of the government response,” said Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg’s criticism of the Trump administration is particularly notable because he has been widely rebuked for being so kind to Trump. Facebook, for example, has refused to remove or point to Trump’s controversial, hateful, misleading, and false statements, which Zuckerberg has said remain important to public discourse.
After Trump posted “When the looting begins, the shooting begins,” Twitter said the post violated its rules, but Facebook made no such mention. That prompted more than 140 scientists who have received funding and support from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the nonprofit initiative of Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, to write an open letter to Zuckerberg urging him to “consider stricter policies on disinformation and incendiary language. “
Zuckerberg’s decision to leave Trump’s posts has also alienated many of the company’s own workers. Last month, some Facebook employees staged a virtual strike over inaction.
An employee even quit his job in June, telling CNN Business that he was concerned that Facebook would be used to further increase violence in the United States.
In response, Zuckerberg and Chan said in June that they were “disgusted” by Trump’s comments on national protests against racial injustice.
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