Dr. Anthony Fauci says the United States is “not even at half-time” in it’s fight against the coronavirus.
Dr. Anthony Fauci is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and was recently interviewed by Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski on his radio show on SiriusXM called Basketball and Beyond. In the interview, Fauci addressed the current coronavirus pandemic and how he feels the United States is “not even at half-time” in the fight against coronavirus.
Fauci emphasized that we need way more time before we can really turn a corner in terms of recovery and containment. On the show, Coach Krzyzewski quizzed the doctor on the United States’ healthcare system in relation to how it’s been handling this pandemic, however, the Coach asked for him to explain it in terms of basketball, for his more sports-oriented listeners, to which Fauci responded “we’re not even at halftime Coach K,”.
Dr. Anthony Fauci is a prominent member of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force and has been managing the over 200,000 positive covid-19 cases that have been rapidly appearing all over the country. So far the United States has the greatest number of cases reported for any country around the world, so quarantining those who are positive, locking down areas in the country where individuals are still healthy, and slowing down the spread is obviously a priority.
“What would be really nice, to continue the [basketball] analogy, is that if we can just hold our own and then when we get back in the second half, just come out, like, blazing. And that’s what we really need to do; otherwise, this stuff is going to be really, really very harmful to us as a society,” Fauci Said.
As previously stated there have been almost 250,000 positive cases of the coronavirus in the United States, with over 6,000 deaths and almost 10,000 full recoveries recorded. Globally speaking, over 54,000 people have died since the outbreak initially began in Wuhan, China in the fall; according to Johns Hopkins University which has been recording data and tracking the virus since cases were first appearing.
Over 200,000 individuals worldwide have made a full recovery, meaning a lot of the cases have proven to be non-fatal, which is something celebrate and remember when we get overwhelmed, however, that doesn’t mean that we can stop taking this virus seriously, which if you can believe it, people still aren’t. This is one of the main reasons Fauci wants a national lockdown as soon as possible, many individuals don’t want to completely change their lives unless it’s legally enforced.
Last month, Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, another physician on Trump’s coronavirus task force, predicted that if the United States didn’t take more immediate measures to combat the virus before it started spreading here, up to 250,000 Americans could die. Now, one month later, the United States has become one of the most infected countries in the world, and it all happened within a matter of days.
New York, which is also the most infected state in America with over 33,000 positive cases, recently joined the likes of California, Texas, and the 41 other states that have issued “stay at home” orders for their residents.
“There are some cities that have not yet even begun to spike and it’s our absolute responsibility to make sure that in those cities that people understand what they need to do to prevent that explosive spike that New York City has seen, that New Orleans has seen, that parts of New Jersey have seen,” Fauci said.
Fauci went on in his interview with Coach K to acknowledge how difficult it’s been to coordinate different responses for different states needs because of the fact that spikes in cases appear in various places at different times. So while the government is paying attention to one metropolitan area, another is discovering its initial cases and working on preliminary containment efforts.
This is why Fauci believes a national lockdown is the only way around this. We can’t continue to funnel our resources into one area of the country only for another to need it the next day. There needs to be universal containment efforts put into place by the federal government so that residents of the US really take this seriously, because if you can believe it many still aren’t.
“The game is going to go on for several weeks, Coach K. The issue is that we have a large country and we have different metropolitan areas. We are not yet at the point where we’re turning the corner and we’re coming around the bend and coming down as a country,” he explained.
Fauci also explained that even when we have case numbers down and under control, we’ll need to immediately begin preparing for the next wave of the virus, which he believes could hit the world in early fall of 2020 if we don’t prepare properly for what the world will be like after all of this is over. We can’t take the rapid nature of this virus for granted once this is over and we need to prepare for the fact that it could linger around for quite some time.
“We can never allow it to gain the foothold that it did this first time around. Whether we do that with better preparation for testing for identification with a vaccine and even hopefully with some treatments that might actually work, and we’ll probably know in the next several months whether we do have any treatments that work.”
Regardless of what policies are currently in place, Fauci’s main point is that he wants US residents and government workers to look at the state of the world right now and take this virus seriously by staying home. Wash your hands, disinfect, and don’t leave the house unless you absolutely need to. We need to find a balance in remaining calm, while also understanding the severity of all of this.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
