Dinging Trump, Fauci Says Consistency Could Have Led To 'Different' COVID-19 Outcome
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious diseases expert, said the dire COVID-19 situation in America “would have been different” had the Trump administration shown more consistent leadership.
“I think if we had the public health messages from the top, right down through the people in the trenches, be consistent, that things might have been different,” Fauci said in a CBS News interview slated to air on Sunday. “In fact, I’m pretty sure they would have been different.”
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"Things might have been different."
Dr. Anthony Fauci speaks frankly about the difficulties the country has experienced dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and on his renewed expectations of success in getting Americans vaccinated pic.twitter.com/0eIxMoOuct— CBS Sunday Morning (@CBSSunday) January 22, 2021
Since President Joe Biden took office on Wednesday, Fauci — who served on Trump’s coronavirus task force and is now the chief medical adviser on Biden’s COVID-19 team — has not minced words about the former president’s failure to effectively lead the nation through the pandemic.
On Thursday, Fauci said at a White House press briefing that Trump and his administration had made pronouncements about COVID-19 that were “not based on scientific fact.” In contrast, Fauci said the Biden administration had vowed to tell the public the truth about the virus, rooted in science and “evidence.”
“It is somewhat of a liberating feeling,” he said, to “let the science speak.”
Echoing this sentiment, Fauci told CBS News that a major failure in the Trump administration’s pandemic response had been “mixed messaging.”
“You can’t have mixed messaging,” Fauci said. “You cannot have the politicization of public health messages. I mean, the idea that wearing a mask or not became a political statement ... That makes it beyond difficult to implement a good public health measure.”
Fauci, the longtime director of the...
