Highlights: Dr. Anthony Fauci on the Coronavirus Pandemic

MATTHEW OKRENT: Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, joined GU Politics Executive Director Mo Elleithee and Georgetown Senior Advisor for Global Health John Monahan for a discussion on the ongoing coronavirus pandemic in a virtual event on July 14. Fauci shared his thoughts on the role and responsibility of young people in containing the pandemic, and answered student questions on vaccine progress, virus transmission, and the politicization of the crisis. 

Fauci opened by describing the U.S. infection rates as “sobering” and called the nation’s response efforts “a mixed bag.” Describing the lack of a federal strategy as disadvantageous, Fauci stated that the U.S. “never got down to baseline” with regard to virus transmission. “When history looks back at it, it will be comparable to what we saw in 1918,” he said. 

While the national picture may be worsening, Fauci doesn’t think that deaths will necessarily rise as high as they had in April due to the newer infections’ concentration among young people.     

Commenting on vaccine progress, Fauci expressed optimism about the results of the Moderna vaccine trial, which is slated for a late 2020 to early 2021 completion window. It is still unknown whether people who recover from the virus actually have immunity and how long that immunity lasts, as well as what that means for the state of vaccine development.   

Later in the discussion, Fauci commented on the virus’s disproportionate impact on Black and Latino Americans. Communities of color in the United States are overly represented in service sector jobs that cannot be performed remotely, making social distancing impossible for large portions of those demographic groups. This, in combination with disparities in wealth and health care access, result in infection rates among Black and Latino communities that are three times as high as white populations.

Fauci urged direct action to combat these socioeconomic forces. “Concentrate resources in the areas where they are demographically overrepresented, so that they can have easy access to testing, better access to health care, so that if and when they do get infected, they can get into proper care early enough to maybe mitigate some of the negative consequences,” he said.  

In turning to student questions, Fauci was asked what young people could do to depoliticize the current crisis, responding that taking precautions, not getting infected, and staying out of ideological discussions was the best thing anybody could do at the moment.  

Receiving a question on the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), Fauci described it as a “complicated situation.” Though he described the organization as “imperfect,” Fauci also expressed his support for the WHO at large. “There are some very good people at the WHO,” he said. “The world does need a WHO for outbreaks like this for the general health of the globe,” he said.

On the recent developments that the Trump administration had moved data collection from the CDC to the Department of Health and Human Services, Fauci offered no comment.  

Fauci closed the event by reiterating the role that young people, such as students in attendance, have in limiting the spread of the virus. “We’re all in this together,” he said. “Everybody has a place and role to play in getting this under control.”

Mathew Okrent is a junior in the College from East Setauket, New York.