Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted to 60 Minutes Sunday night many troubling aspects of how the Trump administration has handled the pandemic.
The administration blocked Fauci's media access, discouraged wearing masks and covered up details of Trump's infection of the virus.
In the first few minutes of the CBS interview, the preeminent scientist in the US in dealing with viruses said that Trump administration blocked many requests for him to appear on national television to inform the public. This has been reported by ABC News, CNN, as well as other networks.
It's no secret that Trump is silencing Dr. Fauci, because the scientific community is at odds with the way Trump is handling the coronavirus. Trump is more worried about his reelection than the health of the US population.
Trump's answer to COVID is to hire Fox News huckster Dr. Scott Atlas to promote the right-wing fringe ideas that masks don't work and that a herd Immunity is the answer to defeating the virus.
Was Fauci surprised Trump caught COVID19?
60 Minutes aired a video clip of the Amy Coney Barrett nomination in the Rose Garden.
Dr. Jon LaPook: Were you surprised that President Trump got sick?
Dr. Anthony Fauci: Absolutely not. I was worried that he was going to get sick when I saw him in a completely precarious situation of crowded, no separation between people, and almost nobody wearing a mask. When I saw that on TV, I said, "Oh my goodness. Nothing good can come outta that, that's gotta be a problem." And then sure enough, it turned out to be a superspreader event.
Even with all the protections surrounding a United States president, flaunting the CDC guidelines caused Trump to become infected and possibly infected others including the First Lady and their son Baron.
A bit later in the interview they played video of Trump blaming Dr. Fauci for saying masks don't work (which was at the beginning of the pandemic) to gaslight how the Trump administration has handled the coronavirus afterwards.
But a month later, Fauci reversed course after, he says, it turned out people without symptoms were a significant source of spread. And masks, even homemade ones, could help stop transmission.
Dr. Anthony Fauci: So let's see if we could put this to rest once and for all. It became clear that cloth coverings, things like this here, and not necessarily a surgical mask or an N95, cloth coverings, work. So now there's no longer a shortage of masks. Number two, meta-analysis studies show that, contrary to what we thought, masks really do work in preventing infection.
Dr. Jon LaPook: No doubt.
Dr. Anthony Fauci: So, no doubt.
Dr. Jon LaPook: So when you find out you were wrong, you don't double down?
Dr. Anthony Fauci: No. When you find out you're wrong, it's a manifestation of your honesty to say, "Hey, I was wrong. I did subsequent experiments and now it's this way."
The full interview, via 60 Minutes on Youtube, is below:
