Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a live chat with Dr. Anthony Fauci on Thursday that some coronavirus outbreaks were “preventable” and criticized the administration for “questioning” whether people should wear masks.
“You know, I was sympathetic from the start when it was clear that there would be some outbreaks, no matter how well we handle this,” Zuckerberg told the country’s leading infectious disease expert.
“But now that we are here in July, I think it was avoidable and it is really disappointing that we still do not have adequate evidence, that the credibility of the best scientists like you and the CDC is being undermined, and that Until recently, parts of the administration They were questioning whether people should follow basic best practices like wearing masks, “continued the founder of Facebook.
FAUCI SAYS THE WHITE HOUSE ATTEMPTS TO DESCRIBE IT ‘BIZARRE’
Fauci responded by praising New York for its “measured” openness, although he noted that at one point the state had 50 percent of hospitalizations and deaths in the country, saying that in other regions, the sudden increases in the coronavirus are “really quite disturbing. “
Fauci said that, as a nation as a whole, “we never went down to the baseline” before reopening. “We have stalled around 20,000 new cases per day.”
Fauci added that he was asking for another round of blockades, but a “regrouping” to approach the reopening “in a more measured way.”
FAUCI LANDS ON COVER OF INSTYLE MAGAZINE, SPEAKS RELATION TO TRUMP
The comments come when some White House advisers have gone after Fauci himself. In a shocking opinion piece for USA Today, White House business adviser Peter Navarro burst into Dr. Fauci, saying he was “wrong about everything.”
“Dr. Anthony Fauci has good manners with the public, but he has been wrong about everything that I have interacted with,” Navarro wrote.
Navarro began by saying that Fauci “fought” Trump’s “brave decision” in late January to suspend flights from China when the new coronavirus began to spread, arguing that that decision “could well have saved hundreds of thousands of American lives.” .
He continued: “When I warned in late January in a memorandum of a potentially deadly pandemic, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was telling our media not to worry.”
The administration distanced itself from Navarro’s opinion piece, and Trump said he has a “very good relationship” with the infectious disease expert.
Alyssa Farah, director of strategic communications for the White House, said on Twitter that the piece “did not go through the normal White House approval processes and is Peter’s opinion alone.”
