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Transcript: Anthony Fauci on “Face the Nation”
The following is a transcript of an interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci that aired Sunday, March 22, 2020, on “Face the Nation.”MARGARET BRENNAN: Doctor Anthony Fauci is the director at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at NIH, and that is where he joins us from this morning. Dr. Fauci, thank you for…
The following is a transcript of an interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci that aired Sunday, March 22, 2020, on “Face the Nation.”
MARGARET BRENNAN: Doctor Anthony Fauci is the director at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at NIH, and that is where he joins us from this morning. Dr. Fauci, thank you for making time for us.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: Good to be with you.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You just- you just heard that report from our Liz Palmer about Italy. Are we on the same trajectory as Italy?
DR. FAUCI: No, not necessarily at all. I mean, obviously, things are unpredictable. You can't make any definitive statement. But if you look at the dynamics of the outbreak in Italy, we don't know why they are suffering so terribly. But there is a possibility and many of us believe that early on they did not shut out as well the input of infections that originated in China and came to different parts of the world. One of the things that we did very early and very aggressively, the president, you know, had put the travel restriction coming from- from China to the United States and most recently from Europe to the United States, because Europe is really the new China. Again, I don't know why this is happening there to such an extent, but it is conceivable that once you get so many of these spreads out, they spread exponentially and you can never keep up with this tsunami, and I think that's what unfortunately our colleagues and our dear friends in Italy are facing. They are very competent. It isn't that they don't know what they're doing.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.
DR. FAUCI: I think they have a situation in which they've been so overwhelmed from the beginning that they can't play catch up. And in direct answer to your question, MARGARET, it is may be, and I hope and I think it will be the case, that we will not be that way because we have from the beginning been able to put a bit of a clamp on it. We're going to get hit. There's no doubt about it. We see it in New York. New York is ter- is terribly suffering. But the kinds of mitigation issues that are going on right now, the things that we're seeing in this country, this physical separation, at the same time as we're preventing an influx of cases coming in, I think that's gonna go a long way to preventing us from becoming in Italy.
MARGARET BRENNAN: This was an animal virus that jumped to a human.
DR. FAUCI: Correct.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Then it started spreading human to human. Is the virus mutating? Is it changing?
DR. FAUCI: Well, this is an RNA virus, MARGARET. And it always will mutate. The real question is so that people don't get confused. Viruses commute- mutate with no substantial impact on its function. So I have no doubt it's mutating as all RNA viruses mutate. We have not seen thus far any type of change in the way it's acting, but we are keeping a very close eye on it because it is conceivable that it could mutate and change some of the ways that it performs. But we have not seen that yet, but we're not going to just not pay attention to it. We're going to follow it closely.
MARGARET BRENNAN: That's very important to highlight there. You know, one of the things that stood out this week in some of the briefings we heard from the White House, was this mentioned, particularly from your colleague, Ambassador Birx, that young people in Europe seemed to be affected in a way that was unexpected.
DR. FAUCI: Right.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And we heard from the CDC this week, 20 percent of the hospitalizations in this country were between the ages of 20 and 44. Why–
DR. FAUCI: You're absolutely–
MARGARET BRENNAN: –are young people getting affected this way when it wasn't expected?
DR. FAUCI: You're absolutely correct. And you just nailed the very important critical issue that we're looking very closely at. You know, it looks like there's a big difference between that demography, as we call it, from China and what we're seeing in Europe. Now, we have to look at the young people who are getting seriously ill from the European cohort and make sure it isn't just driven by the fact that they have underlying conditions because we know that underlying conditions, all bets are off. No matter how young you are, if you have an underlying serious medical condition, you're going to potentially get into trouble. But if they don't have underlying conditions, that will be something we have to really examine as to why we're seeing it here, but we didn't see it in China. So we're going to look at that very closely.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You mentioned in particular New York and what may be coming there. The president has tweeted this morning that Ford, GM and Tesla have been given the go ahead to make ventilators. There's been this back and forth over whether the president actually has ordered companies or not to produce needed medical equipment. What have these companies agreed to do and when will medical professionals have what they need?
DR. FAUCI: Well, I mean, as yesterday in the press conference that- that I'm sure you heard, what the president was saying is that these companies are coming forth on their own. And I think that's an extraordinary spirit of the American spirit of not needing to be coaxed. They're stepping forward. They're making not only masks, but PPEs and now ventilators. So what we're going to be seeing, and- and we're seeing it already, in the beginning, obviously, there was an issue with testing. The testing now- a large number of tests are available now, out there because the private companies have gotten involved. The–
MARGARET BRENNAN: But like the mayor of New York has said this week that he was going to run out of medical equipment–
DR. FAUCI: Right.
MARGARET BRENNAN: –in a matter of two weeks.
DR. FAUCI: That's true.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So when will medical- it is true he will run out?
DR. FAUCI: No, no.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Will the federal government get him what he needs?
DR. FAUCI: True, true to both of them. Let me explain.
MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.
DR. FAUCI: We were at- at the task force meeting yesterday, and it was very clear that the issue in New York was right on the front burner. And the situation is now that the resources that are being marshaled are going to be clearly directed to those hotspots that need it most. And clearly, that's California, Washington state, and obviously, New York is the most hard hit. So not only is New York trying to get resources themselves, but we're going to be pouring it in from the federal government. So it would be a combination of local and federal. But it's very, very clear that they are a very high priority.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You are the leading infectious disease expert in the U.S. government. You said this week that you differed from the president in his assessment that a combination of two drugs, hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin combined could have the outcome that he described to the public. They possibly could. Where- who is the president listening to? And do you see a concern here that those drugs could become, you know, basically oversubscribed and there could be a shortage that could impact people who have persistent medical issues like lupus and need those?
DR. FAUCI: OK. So, MARGARET, there's an issue here of where we're coming from. The president, as heard, as we all have heard, what are what I call anecdotal reports that certain drugs work. So what he was trying to do and express was the hope that if they might work, let's try and push their usage. I, on the other side, have said I'm not disagreeing with the fact anecdotally they might work but my job is to prove definitively from a scientific standpoint that they do work. So I was taking a purely medical, scientific standpoint and the president was trying to bring hope to the people. I think there's this issue of trying to separate the two of us. There isn't fundamentally a difference there. He's coming from it from a hope layperson standpoint.
MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.
DR. FAUCI: I'm coming from it from a scientific standpoint.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And we wish you the best. Thank you very much, Doctor.
DR. FAUCI: Good to be with you.
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Uncategorized
Transcript: Anthony Fauci on “Face the Nation”
The following is a transcript of an interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci that aired Sunday, February 16, 2020, on “Face the Nation.”MARGARET BRENNAN: Joining us now is Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at NIH. Dr. Fauci, it’s good to have you here. DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: Good to be…
The following is a transcript of an interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci that aired Sunday, February 16, 2020, on “Face the Nation.”
MARGARET BRENNAN: Joining us now is Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at NIH. Dr. Fauci, it's good to have you here.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: Good to be with you.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We were just hearing about the State Department sending planes to help evacuate some of these Americans who were on that cruise ship. Debora said more than 40 now. What can you tell us in terms of the Americans have been exposed and infected?
DR. FAUCI: Well, 40 of them have gotten infected. They are not going to go anywhere. They're going to be in hospitals in Japan. People who have symptoms will not be able to get on the evacuation plane. Others are going to be evacuated starting imminently to Air Force bases in the United States. If people on the plane start to develop symptoms, they'll be segregated within the plane. So there's a very firm plan with this 747 that is going to take these passengers now who have been there. If you want to stay in Japan, your last chance would be to get on the plane and leave or you stay there. When you come back to the United States, importantly, they're still subjected to a 14 day quarantine. And the reason for that is that the degree of transmissibility on that cruise ship is essentially akin to being in a hot spot. A lot of transmissibility on that cruise ship.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So for the Americans who are infected, what does that actually mean? What is the state of their health?
DR. FAUCI: Yeah, well, it varies. I mean, you could be infected and have minimal symptoms, but you still have the possibility of transmitting it to someone else.
MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.
DR. FAUCI: Or you could be infected and have some significant lung disease that would require hospitalization and perhaps even some serious intervention.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Now, Malaysian health authorities have also said there was an 83 year old American woman who had been on a different cruise ship which ended up docking in Cambodia. She landed in Malaysia and then tested positive. This kind of spread, does this indicate this is becoming a pandemic?
DR. FAUCI: Well, a pandemic is when you have multiple countries throughout the world that have what's called sustained transmission from person to person to person, multiple generations. Right now, there are 24 countries in which there were over five hundred cases. Several of them are starting to get to the second and third transmission. So technically speaking, the WHO wouldn't be calling this a global pandemic, but it certainly is on the verge of that happening reasonably soon unless containment is more successful than it is right now.
MARGARET BRENNAN: As Debora said, there are experts landing in China this week.
DR. FAUCI: Right.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Americans will be among them.
DR. FAUCI: Right.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Is there anyone from your team and- and what is the difference–
DR. FAUCI: Yeah.
MARGARET BRENNAN: –if, say, the CDC had been allowed in–
DR. FAUCI: Right.
MARGARET BRENNAN: –versus the WHO?
DR. FAUCI: You know, MARGARET, to be honest with you, we really should not be talking about that because the sensitivity of coming out ahead of the Chinese of making any kind of announcement. But you're correct, there certainly–
MARGARET BRENNAN: But the Chinese ambassador was on this program last week and he indicated Americans were on that list.
DR. FAUCI: Well, then if he says it, then they're on that list. Yes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But- but what is the difference there? Why would it be more beneficial to have–
DR. FAUCI: Well, for two reasons–
MARGARET BRENNAN: –your agency be able to send people, have CDC officials there?
DR. FAUCI: Well, the reason is because first of all, this- our CDC are the best epidemiologists in the world. They can be helpful to the Chinese as well as get information firsthand, eyes, ears and boots on the ground. So it really is to be helpful as part of the WHO group.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Because the WHO has been criticized, perhaps being too careful around the Chinese government in their part of the U.N. agency. They receive international funding. China has tremendous power over them. Is that criticism fair?
DR. FAUCI: You know, I don't know if it's fair or not, but certainly it's been spoken about. I mean, clearly, the director of WHO, Dr. Tedros, is really an outstanding person. And under very difficult circumstances, I think he's doing a very good job.
MARGARET BRENNAN: The president has said at least twice so far that the virus could tick down in these warmer months ahead. He indicated–
DR. FAUCI: Right.
MARGARET BRENNAN: –President Xi told him that.
DR. FAUCI: Right.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Is that how the virus actually works?
DR. FAUCI: This virus, we don't know. But it is not unreasonable to say that influenza, for example, which peaks in the winter, you would certainly expect it by March, April and May to taper down, as well as typical common cold coronaviruses. That's not an unreasonable statement. However, we do not know what this particular virus is gonna do so. So we would think it would be a stretch to assume that it's going to disappear with the warm weather. We don't know that. It's completely unknown.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You said recently that you could have some kind of vaccine within a year or so.
DR. FAUCI: Right, right.
MARGARET BRENNAN: How do you speed up that timeline and how do you fix the problem you said you have, which is finding a manufacturer?
DR. FAUCI: Right. Well, first of all, MARGARET, that one year timeline would be the world's indoor record of ever getting a vaccine out, at least to be able to early deploy. You can't do any better than that. If you go any faster, you'll be cutting dangerous corners.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And no manufacturer, yet?
DR. FAUCI: Oh yeah manufacturers. Once you get a vaccine that, you know works, the difficulty is having companies take that risk of hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to scale up to make it available.
MARGARET BRENNAN: All right. So you're still looking for a partner on that?
DR. FAUCI: I think we're gonna get them–
MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.
DR. FAUCI: –because I'm seeing interest on the part of pharmaceutical companies that we did not see with SARS and other outbreaks.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Dr. Fauci, thank you for this update. I appreciate it.
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