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- Thank you, good morning, everyone, I'm Katty Kay.
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As Mike Bloomberg just mentioned,
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public health leaders have been ignored
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and even attacked during this pandemic.
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That brings us to our first guest in this News Break,
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Dr. Anthony Fauci.
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Dr. Fauci, you are one of the busiest people
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in America at the moment,
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so thank you very much for joining this summit.
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I want to ask you about,
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what is kind of an anomaly around the world.
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And that is the politicization
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as Mike Bloomberg just mentioned of this pandemic,
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why did it become political in America?
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- Well, it evolved, Katty,
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at a time when there was just an extraordinary amount
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of divisiveness in our country,
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totally unrelated to COVID-19.
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I mean, it was there, it was essentially deep seated,
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we saw more and more strident divisiveness over the years,
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antedating COVID-19.
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And then COVID-19 happened
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right in the middle of an election year.
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So I think you combine inherent divisiveness to begin with,
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with the stress and strain of an election year,
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and it was the worst possible combination you could have
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for a public health crisis.
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Because when you have a public health crisis,
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what you need is everybody pulling together
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in the same direction.
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- You have been very clear and warning
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about the next couple of months.
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Europe's been heading the same direction,
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and yet we've seen European nations,
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in many cases start to flatten the curve.
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What do you think America needs to do,
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most urgently, over the next few months
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in order to follow the European model?
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- Well, I think everybody uniformly
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needs to admit that we have a real problem,
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we've got to own the problem.
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If you don't own the problem,
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you're never gonna fix the problem.
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And we can have,
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as we're seeing in some parts of the country,
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what would be equivalent of almost denial, Katty,
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where people still don't think this is a big deal.
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They think it's kind of fake news,
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or a little bit of a hoax or what have you.
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It's not, it's real, the numbers are absolutely real.
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We're having record numbers of hospitalization,
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record numbers of cases,
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and most recently, deaths.
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We have a serious issue.
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We're just coming out of the Thanksgiving holiday,
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which I'm sure is gonna lead to some sort of a blip
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if not a surge, in cases,
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which you usually see two to three weeks after the event.
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And that leads right up into the beginning
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of the Christmas and Hanukkah holidays,
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which are gonna be more travel and more congregating
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and social settings where people are indoors.
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- We are having a lot of good news on the vaccine front.
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But there are alarming studies
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that show that there is a lack of trust in the vaccine
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and that a lot of people may not choose to take it.
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What can you say, and particularly to communities of color
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to try to encourage people
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to go ahead and take the COVID vaccine when it's released?
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- Well, we've gotta be doing a lot of community engagement
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and community outreach to get people to understand.
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The two things that bother people,
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they say, "Well, maybe we did this too quickly."
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They need to understand
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the speed is really a reflection
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of the extraordinary scientific advances
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that have been made
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that allowed us to do things in weeks to months
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that normally would have taken several years.
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That was not compromising safety,
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nor was it compromising scientific integrity.
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The process that went into deciding the safety and efficacy
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was both independent and transparent.
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We need to make sure people understand that,
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particularly those demographic groups
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that have not been treated well historically,
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by medical establishment.
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And I refer specifically to the African American population
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and to some extent, the Latinx population.
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So we have a task cut out for us
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that we've gotta go the extra mile
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to reach out and engage the community.
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- And you will still be working on that.
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Dr. Fauci as ever, thank you.
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- Good to be with you, thank you for having me.
