Dr. Fauci is probably in for another round of Trump sycophants bashing him after he displayed some honesty and use of facts instead of conspiracy theories during an appearance on CNN.
On Jake Tapper's CNN's State of the Union program this morning Tapper said that the U.S. announced its first confirmed case of the coronavirus at the same time as South Korea, yet the United States has 30% of the world's cases and almost 20% of deaths related to COVID-19.
Tapper asked Fauci if it's because we got started too late in our response to the virus, a dangerous question.
Dr. Fauci is keenly aware of the immense pressure Trump and his Fox News minions have put on anybody who dares to contradict him so he tried to soft-pedal it as much as possible saying South Korea has an easier time to respond to this type of the situation.
Still, Dr. Fauci admitted, "It would have been nice if we had a better head start."
"The New York Times" reported yesterday that you and other top officials wanted to recommend social and physical distancing guidelines to president Trump as far back as the third week of February, but the administration didn't announce such guidelines to the American public until March 16th, almost a month later," Tapper observed. "Why?"
Dr. Fauci replied that the health team looks at everything from a purely health standpoint (obviously) and some of their recommendations are taken and some are not.
"It is what it is," he said.
Tapper pressed on that. "Do you think lives could have been saved if social distancing, physical distancing, stay-at-home measures, had started the third week of February instead of mid-March?"
Dr. Fauci tried to deflect before admitting, "Obviously you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously no one is going to deny that."
Trump is and has been denying it. He's taken no responsibility and told the country that and early on he characterized the fears associated with the virus outbreak as a Democratic hoax to hurt his reelection chances.
"But what goes into those kinds of decisions is complicated," Fauci continued. "But you're right, I mean, obviously, if we had right from the very beginning shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different, but there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then."
Who were the people offering resistance and pushing back against out top medical professionals? Who refused to take swift actions at the beginning of the virus outbreak?
Trump, Fox News and his team of economists turned the initial outbreak into a political game. They were more worried about the stock market and Trump's reelection plans than the health and welfare of the American public.
