In the early months of the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, regularly appeared in White House coronavirus briefings and served as a spokesperson for the federal government response in news interviews. The past month or so, however, he’s been conspicuously absent from television—an absence that appears to be a deliberate choice on the part of the White House, who has limited the approval of TV appearances for Dr. Fauci.
Dr. Fauci has a theory as to why that’s happened. “I have a reputation, as you probably have figured out, of speaking the truth at all times and not sugar-coating things,” he told the Financial Times last week. “And that may be one of the reasons why I haven’t been on television very much lately.” One might think that an administration that claims to pride itself on “telling it like it is” would appreciate such truth-telling, but apparently not so much.
In the middle of a pandemic, we need Dr. Fauci’s voice and expertise more than ever. Thankfully, he spent 45 minutes talking with Mark Zuckerberg live on Facebook to answer questions and share his thoughts on what the experts have learned about virus transmission, the effectiveness and safety of masks, considerations for school reopenings, racial disparities among COVID-19 victims, and more.
Watch the interview here:
Thank you, Dr. Fauci, for clearly articulating what we know at any given time, explaining what has changed in what we know, reminding us that the nature of a novel pandemic is that information is constantly evolving, and encouraging us to remain flexible and humble enough to change the way we think as we get new information.
