Top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci suggested on Monday that the current nationwide surge in COVID-19 cases was due to the United States not shutting down completely in its initial response to the virus.
“We did not shut down entirely and that’s the reason why we went up,” said Fauci during a virtual conversation hosted by Stanford Medicine. “We started to come down and then we plateaued at a level that was really quite high, about 20,000 infections a day. Then as we started to reopen, we’re seeing the surges that we’re seeing today as we speak.”
California and other states are experiencing an alarming surge in cases and hospitalizations. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the Trump administration’s virus response team, said that the government’s initial guidelines for phased re-openings had not gone as planned, and called for caution as states moved forward.
“We made a set of guidelines a few months ago… unfortunately, it did not work very well for us,” Fauci said. “We can get a handle on that. I am really confident we can if we step back.”
The discussion came just two days after White House officials appeared to undercut the popular infectious diseases expert. The officials released a list of statements made by Fauci since the start of the COVID-19 crisis and expressed concern about “the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things,” according to the Washington Post. The president himself last week said on Fox News that Fauci has “been wrong on a lot of things.”
But Stanford Medicine Dean Lloyd Minor made no mention of that as he introduced Fauci as “the most relied upon official for information regarding the COVID-19 pandemic” and highlighted his past work addressing the nation’s HIV-AIDS crisis in the 1980s.
The conversation steered mostly clear of politics — President Trump wasn’t mentioned once — and Fauci instead reiterated calls for states pursuing reopening to do so gradually and slowly.
“You don’t necessarily need to shut down again,” Fauci said. “But pull back a bit. And then proceed in a very prudent way.”
Fauci also called on young people, who he said comprise the majority of new infections in recent surges, to recognize their “societal responsibility” in preventing the spread of coronavirus.
“We’ve got to convince them that just because they get infected and the likelihood is that they’re not going to get seriously ill, doesn’t mean that their infection is not a very important part of the propagation of the outbreak,” he said.
Fauci didn’t comment in particular on any other developments from the administration over the weekend, or the government’s push for a reopening of schools. But he stressed that people would continue to die of COVID-19, and there are still many unknowns surrounding the virus.
“The best way to open the country and to get back to normal is to be very prudent in protecting yourself from getting infected,” Fauci said. “That’s a difficult message when people don’t take something seriously, but we’ve got to hammer that home.”
On vaccines, Fauci remained “cautiously optimistic” and suggested that one could be available at the end of the year or the beginning of 2021. According to Fauci, “one or two” candidates would be going into the third phase of clinical trials, where they’re tested for efficacy among thousands of people, “literally at the end of this month.”
Distributing that vaccine, though, will be another challenge. Fauci spoke on the need for community engagement to convince people of the importance of getting vaccinated — “particularly in this era of anti-vax and anti-science” — and appointing experts and ethicists to determine how to prioritize the initial distribution of vaccines.
“The distribution will have to be done in as equitable a way as possible,” he said.
Fauci also spoke on the need to rebuild public health infrastructure in the U.S., which he described as in “tatters.”
“It’s one of those things where you’re a victim of your own success,” Fauci said. “We were so good at controlling smallpox, polio, tuberculosis, that we let the infrastructure locally go unattended… And now when we need good local public health capability, it’s not as good as it should be. We’ve got to build it up again.”
Fauci didn’t say much on the situation in California specifically, noting the “mixed bag” of case numbers between the northern and southern parts of the state. Though he praised Governor Newsom — “I believe he’s doing a really good job” — Fauci paused when asked to grade the Bay Area’s coronavirus response.
“No,” he said. “I get into trouble when I grade people.”
Wire services contributed to this report.
