|
 "We have a baseline of infections now that varies between 40 and
50,000 per day. That's a bad place to be when you're going into the
cooler weather of the fall and the colder weather of the winter,"
Fauci told CNBC.
He spoke as Trump began his rally in Florida on Monday evening,
three weeks before the Nov. 3 election in which opinion polls show
the Republican president trailing Democrat Joe Biden.
"We're in a bad place now. We've got to turn this around," said
Fauci, who has been director of the National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984 and a key member of the
White House coronavirus task force.
"If we do five fundamental things: Universal wearing of masks,
maintaining physical distance, avoiding congregate settings or
crowds ... doing things more outdoors, as opposed to indoors and
washing your hands frequently, those simple things ... can certainly
turn around the spikes that we see and can prevent new spikes from
occurring."
Asked what the consequences would be of not following such steps,
Fauci replied: "I think we're facing a whole lot of trouble."
In an earlier interview with CNN, Fauci said Trump's campaign team
should withdraw an advertisement that draws on a statement Fauci
made that he says is being used out of context.
He called the ad, which was released last week, "unfortunate and
really disappointing."
The ad discusses Trump's effort to recover from COVID-19, as well as
his administration's work to address the coronavirus pandemic. The
30-second spot uses public remarks from Fauci in a way that suggests
he was praising the president.
The remarks came from a March interview where Fauci discussed the
broader effort to fight the new coronavirus, including by the White
House task force.
Fauci has said that he has never publicly endorsed a political
candidate for public office.
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Fauci has sometimes been diplomatically critical of the president, including for
holding rallies that attract thousands of people. The disease has infected more
than 7.8 million people in the United States and killed more than 214,000.
Opinion polls show most voters disapprove of the president's handling of the
crisis.
Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh defended the ad on Sunday, saying the
words from Fauci "are accurate, and directly from Dr. Fauci’s mouth."
'CERTAIN SUBSET'
Earlier on Monday, senior Trump administration officials briefing reporters by
telephone, said Americans should be cautiously optimistic about the U.S.
response to the coronavirus, and that there was no need for society to be
paralyzed with extensive lockdowns.
The officials, who asked not to be identified, told reporters that the virus was
dangerous only for a "certain subset of population," and children were at
extremely low risk of serious illness related to the highly contagious disease.
Trump has repeatedly called for states to reopen their economies and Fauci said
people did need leeway to do the things important for their livelihoods.
"We're not talking about shutting down the country," he said.
"But we're talking about truly careful, serious, public-health considerations,
like wearing a mask, like avoiding congregate settings. That's not very
difficult to do, and it should not interfere with getting the economy open
again."
(Reporting by Diane Bartz and David Brunnstrom; Additional reporting by Andrea
Shalal and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Tim Ahmann and Peter Cooney)
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