Here’s part of an interesting interview between Jennifer Senior of the New York Times and Dr. Fauci, in Opinion side of today’s paper. To save space I removed some questions at …Whole article below.
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You said it would be nicer if some things were more uniform. Like what?
The fundamentals. Wear a mask. Avoid crowds. Close the bars. Bars are the hot spots — —
But Americans have already been told this, right? And we still don’t do those things. If you were an executive for the day, what lever would you pull?
But Jennifer, would you want me to say something that’s directly contrary to what the president is doing? That’s not helpful. Then all of a sudden you don’t hear from me for a while.
I definitely don’t want anyone weaponizing anything you’re saying.
I’ve just been doing this for so long, and I’m trying to do my best to get the message across without being overtly at odds, OK? The only thing I can do is to get out there with whatever notoriety or recognition I have and say, these are the four or five things. Please pay attention to them. And if we do that, I feel confident that we’ll turn this around.
What I’ve been trying to do is appeal to the younger generation. If you look at the age average of the new cases that are going on in the South, it’s about 10 to 15 years younger than what we previously saw.
So it’s clear what’s going on. Young people are saying to themselves: “Wait a minute. I’m young, I’m healthy. The chances of my getting seriously ill are very low. And in fact, it is about a 20 to 40 percent likelihood that I won’t have any symptoms at all. So why should I bother?”
What they’re missing is something fundamental: By getting infected themselves — even if they never get a symptom — they are part of the propagation of a pandemic. They are fueling the pandemic. We have to keep hammering that home, because, as much as they do that, they’re completely relinquishing their societal responsibility.
How much faith do you have in people to pivot and change their behaviors?
It’s disconcerting when you see people are not listening. I could show you some of the emails and texts I get — everybody seems to have my cellphone number — that are pretty hostile about what I’m doing, as if I’m encroaching upon their individual liberties.
Can you read me one?
No.
Just trying to get a glimpse into your inbox.
It’s not good
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Are you reaching out to individual governors?
The governors call me frequently. It’s not a rare situation where governors and senators get on the phone with me and in good faith ask, “What do you think I should be doing? What about this? What should I do about that?”
Have you spoken to Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, who opposed a mandate to wear masks in Atlanta?
I haven’t specifically spoken to Kemp, no.
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Is there a time in recent American history when we as a nation would have been better able to get this pandemic under control?
In some respects, we are better off because of the technological advances. I mean, 20 years ago, we never would have been able to get candidate vaccines ready to go into Phase 3 trials literally within a few months of the discovery of the new virus. That is unprecedented.
But there was a time when there was much more faith and confidence in authority and in government. It’s very, very difficult to get the country to pull together in a real unified way. Maybe the last time that we ever did that was 9/11.
Is there anything about this virus, as a pathogen, that has surprised you ?
Absolutely! You know, it’s extremely unique, and I think that is one of the reasons why there is such confusion and misunderstanding about the seriousness of it. Of all the viruses and outbreaks that I have been involved with over the last four decades, I have never seen a virus in which the spectrum of seriousness is so extreme. This disease goes from nothing to death! So that has really surprised me.
Is there nothing else like this in nature?
There are extreme differences in certain diseases, but none that have exploded into pandemic proportions.
You’ve said before that there could be some kind of vaccine by the end of the year. But at what point will most families be able to get a vaccination?
I think it’s going to be sometime in 2021. I don’t know whether that’s going to be the first quarter of 2021, the first half — it’s difficult to say.