June 11, 2020 • 20 mins
Dr. Anthony Fauci, breaking down the facts and myths of the COVID-19 pandemic
Dr. Anthony Fauci is an American physician and immunologist who has served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984 and who has been the medical lead for the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, descifra los datos y los mitos de la pandemia COVID-19
El Dr. Anthony Fauci es un médico inmunólogo Norte Americano, que ha servido como director del Instituto de Alergias y Enfermedades Infecciosas desde el 1984 y ha sido el rostro médico de la pandemia COVID-19 en los Estados Unidos.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Alah. My name is and Riquez at those podcasts.
Hey it's Brad Pitt. I'm kidding. Dr Faucci, thank you
so much. All right, thank you, it's good to be
with you. Thank you, sir. It's America's top expert on
infectious diseases. Dr Anthony Fauci, thank you so much for
(00:30):
joining us or gas. Thank you. How's how's the Espano?
Very poor? I'm sorry. I wish you were better, but
I'm not very good. I gotta teach you some words
that got Dr Faucci. Um. Social distancing can be challenging
for some Latino households tend to have more and more
(00:51):
members living under one, uh, the same roof What do
you recommend for those in the situation like this that
want to as safe as possible. Yeah. Well, one of
the issues, as you probably know very well, is particularly
among the vulnerable people, and I know from my Latino
(01:13):
friends that they're multi generational, that you may have grandma
grandpa in the house with you. UH is to try
and best as possible to protect the vulnerable. And I
think when you're in a household, if you're fairly certain
that everybody in the house is uninfected, which you can
(01:33):
you know, if you have the availability of testing, you
have to suspicion find But if you don't wearing a mask,
when you cannot stay the six ft apart, But when
you're in a household, that's almost impossible to do that.
So to the extent that you can wear a mask,
that would be appropriate if you are in a household
whereas you've gone for an extended period of time without
(01:57):
any necessary outside contact with people, so you can feel
fairly comfortable that you have family unit is not infected,
then you're okay. But when you go outside, that's the
way you get the protection. So when you go outside,
wear a mask, stay six ft away, avoid crowds, wash
(02:19):
your hands as frequently as you can, so that when
the members of the household get together in the house,
you could at least feel secure in your own home.
It's protecting on the outside that you need to worry about.
Are are you satisfied with the rate in which states
are are reopening? You know Florida had a single day
(02:39):
high with one thousand, four d and nine new cases
last Thursday alone. Do you think that Florida opened too soon?
You know, I don't want to pass any judgments on
on on location states, towns, cities, counties. But the only
thing I could say is what I say continually and
consist the league that, to the extent possible locations which
(03:05):
are different from one to another, must do the opening
in accordance with the level of infection in your particular location.
So one size does not fit all. If you are
in an area where there's very few infections, and there
are so many different counties throughout the country, I didn't
(03:25):
realize it until I looked it up. There are three
thousand and seven counties in the United States, and there
are counties that are near big infection outbreaks, and there
are counties where there are very few infections. When you're
opening up, you've got to do it according to the
guidelines that match your location. So if you have a
situation where the guidelines say be careful, go slowly, you
(03:50):
really should. Once you start leap frogging over the benchmarks
of concern the gateway the phase one of the phase two,
you obviously increase the risk that you will have an
acceleration of infection. And that's one thing that I do
worry about. So although I understand I very well understand
(04:11):
the need to return to some form of normal, the
need to get the economy going. You've got to be
careful that you do that in a prudent way that
doesn't rush it to the point where you actually increase
greatly the risk of their being a resurgence of infection.
You're listening to Olah, my name is the Enricus out
(04:33):
those podcasts? All right, this is Alah. My name is
(04:55):
the Enricus on those podcasts. Um, some are still in disbelief.
I'd say some people think that COVID nineteen is a conspiracy, right,
maybe since they don't personally know someone that has been affected,
actually affected. What would you tell these folks, Well, I
would you. I would not criticize them, because that would
(05:17):
only turn them off. I would say, when you're dealing
with something as serious as a health issue that has
already killed a hundred and ten thousand people in the
United States, that is now spread throughout the world, that
look at the data and the information and make up
your mind based on real facts. And although you may
(05:40):
not know someone who has been infected and who has
gotten sick or as died, there are plenty of people
out there. I mean, look, at what happened in New
York City. It was very unfortunate. They got hit very
very badly, and they had one period of time had
more than half of the infections and debts were in
(06:02):
New York City. That's changed now because they're doing much better.
So this is not a hoax. I think all you're
doing by thinking it's a hoax is fooling yourself, putting
yourself in danger. But as important, you may be inadvertently
putting your loved ones in danger because if you think
it's okay for you to get infected, maybe because you're
(06:24):
young and you're very healthy, and the likelihood if you're
getting a serious consequence is low. If you infect someone
a relative or a friend, or a loved one who
has an underlying condition, you could be responsible for their
getting into a lot of trouble and even dying. You know,
and I have to ask you because so many of
my listeners bring this up on the radio program. Does
(06:47):
radiation from five G towers weaken your immune system and
make you more susceptible to the virus? No, there's there's
no evidence at all. That's folklore, that's not a scientific fact.
Act some of these conspiracies might seem funny, might seem
like like like a joke, but some have made you
(07:08):
personally out to be uh villain, like the bad guy
in this whole thing as a As a matter of fact,
I know you've been attacked on social media. You've received threats.
Is this new for you? Have you ever previously been
in a situation where it was politics versus public health? Uh?
I have been, but it has never been as intense
(07:32):
and as deep seated as now. During the very early
years of the HIV outbreak, where I was devoting my
entire professional life to fighting HIV, there were some sort
of hate male threats of homophobic people you know, who
(07:55):
were telling me that I was, you know, uh involved
in spreading false information because I was kind of linked
up with the gay community, which I certainly was an
am as as a public health official and as a
member of the l g B t Q plus community.
I thank you for that, sir. Yeah. And then when
(08:18):
we were doing Ebola in Africa, uh, and we were
putting resources there, there were some people who were threatening
me and making uh inferences that I cared more about
black Africans than I cared about Americans, which is crazy.
I care about old people equally, um, but what's going
(08:40):
on now is a different It's a different level. And
the the amount of of threats on my own life,
on harassing my family, my children, and my wife is well,
well well beyond anything that I've ever experienced before. It's
really unfortunate the divisiveness that we see in our society now,
(09:03):
where people put political implications on things that should have
nothing to do with politics. It's all about public health
and the safety of the American people and the safety
of the entire world. So it's very disappointing when you
get those kinds of dark web type threats. How difficult
(09:24):
is it to be uh, tossed up into that situation
without wanting to be in a press conference having to
bite your tongue knowing what you know that what your
job is based on science and really trying to save
lives and not trying to get into a situation where
you're adding more fuel to the fire politically speaking, Yeah,
(09:45):
I mean that that's difficult. You've got to continue to focus,
like a laser being on what the job that you're
supposed to be doing, and that is to protect the
public health, to do the science and the discovery that
gets us drugs, that gets us to better understand the infection,
(10:06):
that gets us to develop a vaccine to make the
proper public health recommendations. Two dampen the spread of infection.
When you focus on what your job is, you've got
to screen out all of those other pressures that get
in the way of telling things the way they are.
(10:27):
What's been admirable to watch you in this process and painful.
We feel for you. I feel for you. Uh you
know you've recommended never shaking hands again to protect against
not only COVID but against the flu as well. But
Latinos are very warm people. We hug and we kiss
and sometimes we we kiss on both cheeks and it's
part of our our culture. Are are hugs and kisses
(10:50):
canceled forever? No, no, no, I'm a kind of a
hugging guy too. Being at the American background, it's uh,
not quite as huggy as you guys, but close so
um no, I just for now, I I think that
that would be an exaggeration to say that. I think
(11:11):
while we're having active infection, as part of the broad
approach toward avoiding as much as possible physical contact. I
think shaking hands and hugging should be put in suspension
for a while. If we get a vaccine for uh,
this terrible disease, and get it and delegated to history,
(11:33):
relegated to history as opposed to the threat that it is,
I think we could have some degree of normality, including
the wonderful custom that you have of hugging your loved
ones and your friends. Talking about the vaccine. How far
away are we from actually having a vaccine. I think
we're making extraordinary progress in a very very uh abbreviated
(11:55):
time frame. Abbreviated not by sacrificing any element of safety,
and certainly not by sacrificing any element of scientific integrity.
But we've been able to move quickly by the advances
in technology that we have that enabled us to move
very quickly from the time we first recognized this virus
to the time we went into a clinical trial, which
(12:17):
was the fastest on record. It really was the virus.
The sequence of the virus was published in January t
I called a meeting of my staff on the eleventh.
We started working on a vaccine on the fourteenth of January.
Sixty two days later, we had the first dose into
a human for a safety trial. We're going to start
(12:39):
advanced trials for efficacy in the beginning of July, and
hopefully as we get to the end of the fall
and early winter, we will know whether a vaccine works.
There's a lot of ifs about vaccine development. It's very risky.
There's no guarantee that you're going to get a effective vaccine.
But we have an aspirational hope that we will get
(13:02):
there by the end of this year, so that we
might have vaccine available to people by the end of
this year December or so in January, February March of
next year. It's not a promise, it's a hope, but
I'm cautiously optimistic about it because this has moved so
so fast. How comfortable do you think people will feel
actually getting the vaccine once it is available. Yeah, I
(13:23):
think that's important. That's why I said this is this
type of quickness in doing it is by no means
sacrificing the safety elements of making sure we're dealing with
a vaccine that's safe. The way you get people to
accept the vaccine is that you do good community outreach.
You're very transparent, you answer the questions that the community has,
(13:47):
and you reach out to the community as opposed to
expecting them to believe you and everything you say. You've
got to reach out to them. You think it's going
to make a difference whether it's going to be a
Chinese vaccine if they developed that first, or if it's
an American vaccine. Well, I think that the vaccines are
going to probably come out at about the same time.
(14:07):
The Chinese are no further ahead of us than we are.
There are so many different candidates were involved directly or indirectly.
With four or five of these candidates, I believe even
more than one will likely get to the finish line.
This is not going to be a race with there's
only one winner. I believe that there are possibilities and
(14:29):
I feel that it is likely that you'll see more
than one candidate prove itself to be both safe and effective.
You're listening to Pola My name is theos podcasts. All right,
(15:15):
welcome back to Alah. My name is the Abkasanto's podcast.
With that said, we know that the President has canceled
our our health to the World Health Organization. As Americans,
how concerned should we be about that? How concerned are
you about that? Well, I've been dealing with the World
Health Organization ever since I got involved in public health
(15:36):
and medicine. You know, from the beginning of my career,
I've developed a lot of friends in the public health
community who work at WHO I know personally the director
general of WHO, who's a very competent person, Dr ted
ros So. I. I will continue my interactions with them
(15:56):
despite anything else that's going on. Yeah. Um, the death
of George Floyd, of course we all know, has uh
police custody and men in Minneapolis has sparked protests around
the world, as we all know, what do you tell
the Black Lives Matter protesters? Uh, how can they protect themselves?
(16:16):
How can they effectively exercise their rights? And specifically here
in the United States, there are you know, our constitutional
rights and voice their concerns but still be safe. Well,
first of all, I'd like to say that I am
very aware of and sympathized and sympathetic with the need
and and and in many respects the compelling reason to
(16:40):
demonstrate peacefully for a cause that you feel is as
important as this, and it is a very very important
cause in a perfect world, you'd say, because of the
crowdedness that occurs when you demonstrate and the risk of
infection that you shouldn't do that. But I think the
(17:01):
reality of the situation is whether I say do it
or not, it's going to get done. So if you're
going to do it to the best of your knowledge,
protect yourself as best you can. Wear a mask at
all times. Try and keep as far away from others
as possible, which becomes extremely difficult in a demonstration because
(17:22):
you were in a crowd. But one thing you can do,
because when you look at the film clips of it,
when people get animated and they start shouting and chanting,
they generally pull their masks down. Avoid doing that. If
you're going to be there, leave the mask on at
all times, because that would clearly diminish the likelihood that
(17:43):
you'll be spreading in infection. And talking about masks, there's
been so much back and forth. Um knowing what we
know today, who should be wearing a mask? Anyone that
can tolerate a mask should be wearing a mask. It
really should be almost universal. When I'm outside I live
in Washington, d C. When I'm outside in the public,
(18:07):
even though I try and succeed in keeping a six
ft distance. I always have a mask on. Only now
when there's nobody in the room but me, am I
without a mask. But when I'm in a situation where
I actually have the possibility of contact within six ft
of someone, I wear a mask. And I think that
(18:28):
should be a general rule until the infection is so
low that people don't need to wear masks anymore, and
hopefully that will be very soon. Do you recommend vitamins
or supplements to to boost your immune system? You know,
vitamins are important if you're a vitamin deficient and some
people are. I mean particularly vitamin IS, like vitamin D.
(18:49):
When you don't get enough sunlight, you should supplement with that.
Vitamin C is a good antioxidant. Uh, there's nothing wrong
with taking vitamin if you have normal levels of vitamins.
It's unlikely that that's going to boost your immune system
that much, even though there's a lot of advertisements that
say will the data that indicated that. Uh, But supplemental
(19:14):
vitamin is good because you never know when you're actually
uh deficient in the vitamin, particularly important ones like vitamin D.
You mentioned a couple of days ago that had been
weeks since you last spoke to the president, or that
the President has spoken to you. Has that changed. Yeah,
I spoke to him a few days ago. Yeah, I
did last week, So today's uh Monday, I spoke to
(19:34):
him less, uh Tuesday and Thursday both. Yeah. Right. In closing,
Dr Fauci, your message to all Americans that are concerned
and want to keep safe. Yeah, my concern is hanging there.
This will end. This is not going to be forever.
I know it's exhausting sometime to abide by the conditions
(19:57):
that were under now to avoid further infections, but it
is working. The mitigation and the physical distancing that we're
doing has prevented us from having many, many, many more
infections than we already have. I know it's tough, but
hanging there. It will be over, This will end, and
we will get back to normal. Dr Fauci, thank you
(20:20):
for your tireless work and educating and supporting all Americans
and for keeping us uh informed. We know it has
not been very easy for you, but most importantly, thank
you for for keeping us healthy. Faucci
This is Alah. My name is and Riquez at those podcasts.
Hey it's Brad Pitt. I'm kidding. Dr Faucci, thank you
so much. All right, thank you, it's good to be
with you. Thank you, sir. It's America's top expert on
infectious diseases. Dr Anthony Fauci, thank you so much for
(00:30):
joining us or gas. Thank you. How's how's the Espano?
Very poor? I'm sorry. I wish you were better, but
I'm not very good. I gotta teach you some words
that got Dr Faucci. Um. Social distancing can be challenging
for some Latino households tend to have more and more
(00:51):
members living under one, uh, the same roof What do
you recommend for those in the situation like this that
want to as safe as possible. Yeah. Well, one of
the issues, as you probably know very well, is particularly
among the vulnerable people, and I know from my Latino
(01:13):
friends that they're multi generational, that you may have grandma
grandpa in the house with you. UH is to try
and best as possible to protect the vulnerable. And I
think when you're in a household, if you're fairly certain
that everybody in the house is uninfected, which you can
(01:33):
you know, if you have the availability of testing, you
have to suspicion find But if you don't wearing a mask,
when you cannot stay the six ft apart, But when
you're in a household, that's almost impossible to do that.
So to the extent that you can wear a mask,
that would be appropriate if you are in a household
whereas you've gone for an extended period of time without
(01:57):
any necessary outside contact with people, so you can feel
fairly comfortable that you have family unit is not infected,
then you're okay. But when you go outside, that's the
way you get the protection. So when you go outside,
wear a mask, stay six ft away, avoid crowds, wash
(02:19):
your hands as frequently as you can, so that when
the members of the household get together in the house,
you could at least feel secure in your own home.
It's protecting on the outside that you need to worry about.
Are are you satisfied with the rate in which states
are are reopening? You know Florida had a single day
(02:39):
high with one thousand, four d and nine new cases
last Thursday alone. Do you think that Florida opened too soon?
You know, I don't want to pass any judgments on
on on location states, towns, cities, counties. But the only
thing I could say is what I say continually and
consist the league that, to the extent possible locations which
(03:05):
are different from one to another, must do the opening
in accordance with the level of infection in your particular location.
So one size does not fit all. If you are
in an area where there's very few infections, and there
are so many different counties throughout the country, I didn't
(03:25):
realize it until I looked it up. There are three
thousand and seven counties in the United States, and there
are counties that are near big infection outbreaks, and there
are counties where there are very few infections. When you're
opening up, you've got to do it according to the
guidelines that match your location. So if you have a
situation where the guidelines say be careful, go slowly, you
(03:50):
really should. Once you start leap frogging over the benchmarks
of concern the gateway the phase one of the phase two,
you obviously increase the risk that you will have an
acceleration of infection. And that's one thing that I do
worry about. So although I understand I very well understand
(04:11):
the need to return to some form of normal, the
need to get the economy going. You've got to be
careful that you do that in a prudent way that
doesn't rush it to the point where you actually increase
greatly the risk of their being a resurgence of infection.
You're listening to Olah, my name is the Enricus out
(04:33):
those podcasts? All right, this is Alah. My name is
(04:55):
the Enricus on those podcasts. Um, some are still in disbelief.
I'd say some people think that COVID nineteen is a conspiracy, right,
maybe since they don't personally know someone that has been affected,
actually affected. What would you tell these folks, Well, I
would you. I would not criticize them, because that would
(05:17):
only turn them off. I would say, when you're dealing
with something as serious as a health issue that has
already killed a hundred and ten thousand people in the
United States, that is now spread throughout the world, that
look at the data and the information and make up
your mind based on real facts. And although you may
(05:40):
not know someone who has been infected and who has
gotten sick or as died, there are plenty of people
out there. I mean, look, at what happened in New
York City. It was very unfortunate. They got hit very
very badly, and they had one period of time had
more than half of the infections and debts were in
(06:02):
New York City. That's changed now because they're doing much better.
So this is not a hoax. I think all you're
doing by thinking it's a hoax is fooling yourself, putting
yourself in danger. But as important, you may be inadvertently
putting your loved ones in danger because if you think
it's okay for you to get infected, maybe because you're
(06:24):
young and you're very healthy, and the likelihood if you're
getting a serious consequence is low. If you infect someone
a relative or a friend, or a loved one who
has an underlying condition, you could be responsible for their
getting into a lot of trouble and even dying. You know,
and I have to ask you because so many of
my listeners bring this up on the radio program. Does
(06:47):
radiation from five G towers weaken your immune system and
make you more susceptible to the virus? No, there's there's
no evidence at all. That's folklore, that's not a scientific fact.
Act some of these conspiracies might seem funny, might seem
like like like a joke, but some have made you
(07:08):
personally out to be uh villain, like the bad guy
in this whole thing as a As a matter of fact,
I know you've been attacked on social media. You've received threats.
Is this new for you? Have you ever previously been
in a situation where it was politics versus public health? Uh?
I have been, but it has never been as intense
(07:32):
and as deep seated as now. During the very early
years of the HIV outbreak, where I was devoting my
entire professional life to fighting HIV, there were some sort
of hate male threats of homophobic people you know, who
(07:55):
were telling me that I was, you know, uh involved
in spreading false information because I was kind of linked
up with the gay community, which I certainly was an
am as as a public health official and as a
member of the l g B t Q plus community.
I thank you for that, sir. Yeah. And then when
(08:18):
we were doing Ebola in Africa, uh, and we were
putting resources there, there were some people who were threatening
me and making uh inferences that I cared more about
black Africans than I cared about Americans, which is crazy.
I care about old people equally, um, but what's going
(08:40):
on now is a different It's a different level. And
the the amount of of threats on my own life,
on harassing my family, my children, and my wife is well,
well well beyond anything that I've ever experienced before. It's
really unfortunate the divisiveness that we see in our society now,
(09:03):
where people put political implications on things that should have
nothing to do with politics. It's all about public health
and the safety of the American people and the safety
of the entire world. So it's very disappointing when you
get those kinds of dark web type threats. How difficult
(09:24):
is it to be uh, tossed up into that situation
without wanting to be in a press conference having to
bite your tongue knowing what you know that what your
job is based on science and really trying to save
lives and not trying to get into a situation where
you're adding more fuel to the fire politically speaking, Yeah,
(09:45):
I mean that that's difficult. You've got to continue to focus,
like a laser being on what the job that you're
supposed to be doing, and that is to protect the
public health, to do the science and the discovery that
gets us drugs, that gets us to better understand the infection,
(10:06):
that gets us to develop a vaccine to make the
proper public health recommendations. Two dampen the spread of infection.
When you focus on what your job is, you've got
to screen out all of those other pressures that get
in the way of telling things the way they are.
(10:27):
What's been admirable to watch you in this process and painful.
We feel for you. I feel for you. Uh you
know you've recommended never shaking hands again to protect against
not only COVID but against the flu as well. But
Latinos are very warm people. We hug and we kiss
and sometimes we we kiss on both cheeks and it's
part of our our culture. Are are hugs and kisses
(10:50):
canceled forever? No, no, no, I'm a kind of a
hugging guy too. Being at the American background, it's uh,
not quite as huggy as you guys, but close so
um no, I just for now, I I think that
that would be an exaggeration to say that. I think
(11:11):
while we're having active infection, as part of the broad
approach toward avoiding as much as possible physical contact. I
think shaking hands and hugging should be put in suspension
for a while. If we get a vaccine for uh,
this terrible disease, and get it and delegated to history,
(11:33):
relegated to history as opposed to the threat that it is,
I think we could have some degree of normality, including
the wonderful custom that you have of hugging your loved
ones and your friends. Talking about the vaccine. How far
away are we from actually having a vaccine. I think
we're making extraordinary progress in a very very uh abbreviated
(11:55):
time frame. Abbreviated not by sacrificing any element of safety,
and certainly not by sacrificing any element of scientific integrity.
But we've been able to move quickly by the advances
in technology that we have that enabled us to move
very quickly from the time we first recognized this virus
to the time we went into a clinical trial, which
(12:17):
was the fastest on record. It really was the virus.
The sequence of the virus was published in January t
I called a meeting of my staff on the eleventh.
We started working on a vaccine on the fourteenth of January.
Sixty two days later, we had the first dose into
a human for a safety trial. We're going to start
(12:39):
advanced trials for efficacy in the beginning of July, and
hopefully as we get to the end of the fall
and early winter, we will know whether a vaccine works.
There's a lot of ifs about vaccine development. It's very risky.
There's no guarantee that you're going to get a effective vaccine.
But we have an aspirational hope that we will get
(13:02):
there by the end of this year, so that we
might have vaccine available to people by the end of
this year December or so in January, February March of
next year. It's not a promise, it's a hope, but
I'm cautiously optimistic about it because this has moved so
so fast. How comfortable do you think people will feel
actually getting the vaccine once it is available. Yeah, I
(13:23):
think that's important. That's why I said this is this
type of quickness in doing it is by no means
sacrificing the safety elements of making sure we're dealing with
a vaccine that's safe. The way you get people to
accept the vaccine is that you do good community outreach.
You're very transparent, you answer the questions that the community has,
(13:47):
and you reach out to the community as opposed to
expecting them to believe you and everything you say. You've
got to reach out to them. You think it's going
to make a difference whether it's going to be a
Chinese vaccine if they developed that first, or if it's
an American vaccine. Well, I think that the vaccines are
going to probably come out at about the same time.
(14:07):
The Chinese are no further ahead of us than we are.
There are so many different candidates were involved directly or indirectly.
With four or five of these candidates, I believe even
more than one will likely get to the finish line.
This is not going to be a race with there's
only one winner. I believe that there are possibilities and
(14:29):
I feel that it is likely that you'll see more
than one candidate prove itself to be both safe and effective.
You're listening to Pola My name is theos podcasts. All right,
(15:15):
welcome back to Alah. My name is the Abkasanto's podcast.
With that said, we know that the President has canceled
our our health to the World Health Organization. As Americans,
how concerned should we be about that? How concerned are
you about that? Well, I've been dealing with the World
Health Organization ever since I got involved in public health
(15:36):
and medicine. You know, from the beginning of my career,
I've developed a lot of friends in the public health
community who work at WHO I know personally the director
general of WHO, who's a very competent person, Dr ted
ros So. I. I will continue my interactions with them
(15:56):
despite anything else that's going on. Yeah. Um, the death
of George Floyd, of course we all know, has uh
police custody and men in Minneapolis has sparked protests around
the world, as we all know, what do you tell
the Black Lives Matter protesters? Uh, how can they protect themselves?
(16:16):
How can they effectively exercise their rights? And specifically here
in the United States, there are you know, our constitutional
rights and voice their concerns but still be safe. Well,
first of all, I'd like to say that I am
very aware of and sympathized and sympathetic with the need
and and and in many respects the compelling reason to
(16:40):
demonstrate peacefully for a cause that you feel is as
important as this, and it is a very very important
cause in a perfect world, you'd say, because of the
crowdedness that occurs when you demonstrate and the risk of
infection that you shouldn't do that. But I think the
(17:01):
reality of the situation is whether I say do it
or not, it's going to get done. So if you're
going to do it to the best of your knowledge,
protect yourself as best you can. Wear a mask at
all times. Try and keep as far away from others
as possible, which becomes extremely difficult in a demonstration because
(17:22):
you were in a crowd. But one thing you can do,
because when you look at the film clips of it,
when people get animated and they start shouting and chanting,
they generally pull their masks down. Avoid doing that. If
you're going to be there, leave the mask on at
all times, because that would clearly diminish the likelihood that
(17:43):
you'll be spreading in infection. And talking about masks, there's
been so much back and forth. Um knowing what we
know today, who should be wearing a mask? Anyone that
can tolerate a mask should be wearing a mask. It
really should be almost universal. When I'm outside I live
in Washington, d C. When I'm outside in the public,
(18:07):
even though I try and succeed in keeping a six
ft distance. I always have a mask on. Only now
when there's nobody in the room but me, am I
without a mask. But when I'm in a situation where
I actually have the possibility of contact within six ft
of someone, I wear a mask. And I think that
(18:28):
should be a general rule until the infection is so
low that people don't need to wear masks anymore, and
hopefully that will be very soon. Do you recommend vitamins
or supplements to to boost your immune system? You know,
vitamins are important if you're a vitamin deficient and some
people are. I mean particularly vitamin IS, like vitamin D.
(18:49):
When you don't get enough sunlight, you should supplement with that.
Vitamin C is a good antioxidant. Uh, there's nothing wrong
with taking vitamin if you have normal levels of vitamins.
It's unlikely that that's going to boost your immune system
that much, even though there's a lot of advertisements that
say will the data that indicated that. Uh, But supplemental
(19:14):
vitamin is good because you never know when you're actually
uh deficient in the vitamin, particularly important ones like vitamin D.
You mentioned a couple of days ago that had been
weeks since you last spoke to the president, or that
the President has spoken to you. Has that changed. Yeah,
I spoke to him a few days ago. Yeah, I
did last week, So today's uh Monday, I spoke to
(19:34):
him less, uh Tuesday and Thursday both. Yeah. Right. In closing,
Dr Fauci, your message to all Americans that are concerned
and want to keep safe. Yeah, my concern is hanging there.
This will end. This is not going to be forever.
I know it's exhausting sometime to abide by the conditions
(19:57):
that were under now to avoid further infections, but it
is working. The mitigation and the physical distancing that we're
doing has prevented us from having many, many, many more
infections than we already have. I know it's tough, but
hanging there. It will be over, This will end, and
we will get back to normal. Dr Fauci, thank you
(20:20):
for your tireless work and educating and supporting all Americans
and for keeping us uh informed. We know it has
not been very easy for you, but most importantly, thank
you for for keeping us healthy. Faucci
Host
Enrique Santos
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