A new AP interview with Anthony Fauci is just out, and he is pushing back against Trump and his lunatic fringe supporters, albeit, gently:
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, said Tuesday the U.S. does not yet have the critical testing and tracing procedures needed to begin reopening the nation’s economy, adding a dose of caution to increasingly optimistic projections from the White House.
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Fauci said a May 1 target is “a bit overly optimistic” for many areas of the country.
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“I’ll guarantee you, once you start pulling back there will be infections. It’s how you deal with the infections that’s going count,” Fauci told the AP.
Key is “getting people out of circulation if they get infected, because once you start getting clusters, then you’re really in trouble,” he added.
He also essentially says his appearances at Trump’s daily train wreck are wasting precious hours for him. I’m guessing Trump won’t appreciate this:
Fauci said his public role is important but conceded that the duration of those briefings — Monday’s ran for nearly two-and-a-half hours — was “really draining” and that doesn’t even count preparation and waiting for it to start.
“If I had been able to just make a few comments and then go to work, that would have really been much better,” he said. “It isn’t the idea of being there and answering questions, which I really think is important for the American public. It’s the amount of time.”
As for the future…
The problem: Most of the (anti-body) tests have not yet been proven to work well, Fauci cautioned.
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Fauci, infectious disease chief at the National Institutes of Health, said his staff is working with the Food and Drug Administration to validate those tests. That means proving what level of antibodies it takes to really be immune; if particular types of antibodies are key rather than an overall level; and how long that protection lasts.
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Looking ahead, Fauci said a second wave of infection isn’t inevitable. But he added: “if you mean it goes way down and then come September, October, November, we have another peak, I have to say I would not be surprised. I would hope that if and when that occurs, that we jump all over it in a much, much more effective way than we have in these past few months.”
Meanwhile, Trump is rewteeting #FireFuaci from the anti-vaxxer lunatic fringe. From Politico:
After Trump gave the hashtag a retweet, the fringe, conspiracy-laden movement was ready with a replacement: “Dr. Shiva,” who pushes a variety of medically dubious claims.
Not surprising that our lunatic president is retweeting lunatic conspiracy theorists. But it is frightening for us as a nation.
