Trump is afraid of Fauci !!!
No actually Trump KNOWS Fauci is NOT infallible.. Even in mid Feb Fauci was giving interviews telling people in USATODAY -- that "the risk of COVID in America is relatively small"..
So if you partisan warriors want to HOLD HIM UP as your COVID prophet and know-it-all -- HE WAS CLUELESS about what was coming EVEN ON Feb 17th !!!!!!! Try to get to Trump using Fauci as your best evidence.. It'll backfire and wound you like all the previous circular firing squads you've designed.
Did the new coronavirus start in a market? Is China fudging COVID-19 numbers? How close are we to a vaccine? Do masks work? Dr. Anthony Fauci answers.
www.usatoday.com
Q. What’s the status of the COVID-19 outbreak?
A. China is in very difficult straits. We have now over 70,000 cases there and (nearly 1,800) deaths. The rest of the world has about 30 countries that have a total of about 500 cases and three deaths. We only have 15 cases in the United States, 13 of which are travel, two of which are spouses of the travelers. As of Monday morning, we now have 14 additional ones, because we flew in the people from the (Diamond Princess) cruise ship.
Q. Is this a pandemic?
A.
The World Health Organization is not declaring this a global pandemic, because there isn't a lot of sustained transmission throughout the world. We're really kind of at that brink. If China can contain their outbreak much better than they are and prevent wide distribution, we could avoid a global pandemic. If they don't, we're gonna have a global pandemic. We're teetering right on the line of what's going to happen.
Q. Is there a hard definition of a pandemic?
A. It really is soft. There's no number. It really is open to some interpretation. The general interpretation is that when you have a new pathogen that's spreading widely throughout multiple regions of the world in which there is substantial, sustained transmission (then you have a pandemic).
Q. Could there be a lot of cases in the U.S. that we don’t know about?
A. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) is trying to find this out. Are there under-the-radar infections in this country that have gotten in before we did the airport funneling and things? They're doing a sort of a sentinel surveillance in five cities —- New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Chicago — of people who come into clinics with flu-like symptoms but who don't test positive for the flu.
Q. Bottom line, how worried should people in America be?
A. The risk of coronavirus in this country is still relatively low, but, as I said about the possibility of emerging into a pandemic, this could change.
As of today, on the 17th of February, the risk is really relatively low. But we, the public health officials, have to take this seriously enough to be prepared for it changing and there being a pandemic.
Q. How confident are you that the Chinese are doing what needs to be done?
A. They're doing things that have completely broken the paradigm of how you respond. They have been, in a draconian way, shutting down everything. They have locked down 50 million people, including the entire 11 million-person city of Wuhan. They will not allow anyone into Beijing unless they have a 14-day quarantine. They're essentially locking people who test positive in their houses. I mean, they're doing things that are almost unheard of in the annals of public health.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, answers the questions from the USA TODAY Editorial Board on Feb. 17, 2020.
Q. Will it work?
A. As unusual and extreme as it is, it might actually, ultimately, have an effect. There's this report that the number of new cases for the last couple of days in China has gone down. I don't put much strength in that unless I see it really start to come down and down and down. A few days of going down doesn't mean anything to me. But if it continues to go down, that might be a signal that they're having an effect of what otherwise would be extreme means.
Q. That would never happen here, would it? Locking down 50 million people?
A. No, not a chance. It would never happen.
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This guy is NOT a prophet or a good example of being waaay ahead of Trump on the timeline...