-Our first guest is the director of the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
and the chief medical adviser to the president.
Please welcome to the show Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Thank you so much for being here, Doctor.
-Thank you. Thank you for having me.
-Your office looks about the way I expect it --
a lot of books.
Maybe a new addition is the bobblehead there.
I'm assuming that was a gift
and you didn't have to buy your own bobblehead?
-That's true. It was a gift.
-How do you -- Do you feel like they did a good job
depicting you in the bobblehead?
-Well, yeah, I guess so.
I mean, we're so immersed in what we're doing,
I don't pay that much attention to it,
but it looks pretty good.
-I guess I'd be pretty upset if you were sending notes
back and forth to the bobblehead people.
-Yeah, that wouldn't be good.
-So, I have to ask -- it strikes me that the question
that you probably get asked the most
that maybe is a little hard to answer
and maybe you don't like having to answer is
people asking, "When are things going to back to normal?"
How do you respond when you're asked that question now?
-Well, you know, you really can't give
a definitive answer at all because there are
so many moving parts to this.
There are so many things in play.
We can say, if you look at the fact
that we now have three and soon to be more
highly efficacious vaccines, that we really do see
the light at the end of the tunnel.
I mean, we still have the challenge
that we went way, way, way up in a bad winter
and then we started to come down precipitously.
But we are plateauing now at around 50,000 cases a day.
We can't declare victory now.
That would really be ill-advised,
because we see what happened in Europe.
They did the same thing.
They're generally three to four weeks ahead of us
in the dynamics of the outbreak.
They went up, started to come down.
They plateaued.
They pulled back on the public-health measures,
and now they are rebounding.
We desperately have to avoid that.
If we just keep pushing along,
vaccinating 2 million to 3 million people per day,
keep a lid on it,
keep the public-health measures going,
I think we're going to be in good shape.
I think as the months go by -- April, May, June, July --
I think we're going to continue to do better and better.
When you say "normal," Seth,
I'm not sure what you mean.
It's not going to be exactly the way it was before this happened,
but it's going to be a heck of a lot better
as we approach the late spring, early summer
and get into the fall.
I would say it was approaching a degree of normality
as we get into the late summer and early fall.
-We talk about public-health measures.
Of course, that means things like masks.
What is your response -- You must pass people
in the street or in public that are not wearing masks.
Do you say something?
Do they get a dirty look from you?
-You know, I don't do that, Seth,
because that, in some respects, would sort of be
futile to do that just get into
that kind of a hostile exchange.
But it really is disturbing to me,
because I've been through all of these phases
that we have been through, like when we tried to
open up the economy last summer, and then, all of a sudden,
everybody pulled back on everything
and we had this big surge.
We know what happens --
First of all, we understand the need
and the feeling that you really want to get back normal.
You want to put these things behind you.
But if you do it prematurely,
it's going to come back to bite you.
We've seen that happen multiple times in this country,
and it's going on right now in Europe.
So we've just got to hang in there a bit longer.
This is going do end.
We're not going to be this way forever.
But if we pull back prematurely, we're going to get into trouble.
-Obviously, one of the problems here is,
a virus does not appreciate what we've all gone through
and the sacrifices we've made.
I think sometimes, that's the way, as human beings,
we react to news that things might get worse again.
Variants strikes me as something that when we heard about it,
again, it's very natural to think,
"I can't believe there's something else."
But could you speak to the seriousness
and maybe explain to people who don't understand
exactly what variants are.
-Yeah, variants are mutational changes in the virus
that make it a little bit different.
Sometimes, it changes the function of the virus,
makes it more easy to transmit,
sometimes makes it even more serious
when you get infected, regardless of the illness.
The thing that we worry about the most --
that it will essentially evade the protection of the vaccine.
Right now, there's one variant that originated in the U.K.
They're given numbers that people generally
don't need to understand.
This one is called 117.
It's starting to become dominant in the United States.
Fortunately for us,
our vaccines seem to protect pretty well against it.
There's another variant that originated in South Africa
and a version of which is in Brazil
that's a little bit more problematic,
which means that the antibodies
that the vaccines that we all get --
those antibodies are diminished in their efficacy
when they confront this particular variant,
so which means that the efficacy of the vaccine
might diminish a bit, which means we might have to
boost people either with the original vaccine
or with a version of the new vaccine.
We don't have to do that yet, Seth,
and we may not have to do that, but you got to prepared,
because you have to take the variant seriously.
I don't think they're showstoppers for us.
I don't think they're going to just diminish greatly
what we're doing, but we have to pay attention to it.
-When a new variant turns up,
do you ever say to one of your colleagues,
"Could one of you tell people this has happened?
Because I feel like I've given
so much bad news over the last year.
I would love it to come from somebody else."
-Yeah, you know, occasionally, I feel that way,
but that's not going to be in the cards for what I do.
I have to be out there with
the good news and the bad news, unfortunately.
-You testified before Congress today --
not for first time, but for the first time
under the Biden administration.
Did it feel any different for you?
-No, it was about the same.
I mean, it was -- When you get these kinds of hearings,
for the most part, they ask good questions about
things that they want to know.
Occasionally, depending upon the party,
somebody will get snippy and want you to answer a question.
Like today, somebody said,
"A 'yes' or 'no' answer to this,"
when there was no "yes" or "no" answer.
"But we want a 'yes' or 'no' answer."
So, you know, you sort of
play around with that and circumvent it.
-I'm sure you're getting good at
that part of the job, unfortunately.
Hey, we're going to be right back.
I have a few more questions with Dr. Anthony Fauci.