Doctor Anthony Fauci on Saturday slammed President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak as the country is approaching winter and seeing a spike in cases, saying that “it’s not a good situation.”
“We’re in for a whole lot of hurt. It’s not a good situation,” Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force and the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, told The Washington Post in an interview this weekend.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that “all the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season, with people congregating at home indoors.”
“You could not possibly be positioned more poorly,” he continued.
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The renowned doctor warned of the country reaching a point where it could see more than 100,000 coronavirus cases recorded daily if it does not reverse course quickly when it comes to public health practices. His comments come shortly after the country recorded a surge in COVID-19 infections last week and as multiple states have reported record numbers of cases in recent weeks.
Fauci told the newspaper that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign “is taking it seriously from a public health perspective,” while President Trump is “looking at it from a different perspective” by focusing on “the economy and reopening the country.”
He revealed that the coronavirus task force has been having fewer meetings, despite rising cases in the country and that “the public health aspect of the task force has diminished greatly.”
Fauci told The Post that the president is not as accessible to him and White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx as he once was. Fauci said the last time he and the president spoke was around the start of October.
“The last time I spoke to the president was not about any policy; it was when he was recovering in Walter Reed, he called me up,” Fauci told the news outlet.
