‘Asking for trouble,’ Fauci says of Trump rallies as COVID-19 surges in some states
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, says President Donald Trump’s planned campaign rallies are “asking for trouble.”
The president is back on the campaign trail after being released from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center where he was being treated for COVID-19 last week. He held his first public event post-diagnosis on Saturday at the White House, where he spoke to several hundred supporters gathered on the South Lawn, and held a rally Monday night in Florida.
He has other events planned this week, including stops in Pennsylvania, Iowa and North Carolina, according to his campaign website.
In the months before contracting COVID-19, Trump held several campaign rallies during which many of his supporters didn’t wear masks or observe social distancing.
“Put aside all of the issues of what political implications a rally has and just put that aside and look at it purely in the context of public health,” Fauci said Monday on CNN when asked how worried he is about the rallies. “We know that that is asking for trouble when you do that. We’ve seen that when you have situations of congregate settings where there are a lot of people without masks. The data speak for themselves.”
Fauci pointed out that “a number of states” are seeing an increase in positive cases and that “we should be doubling down” on public health measures.
“Now is even more so a worse time to do that,” he said of the gatherings.
The rallies come as Trump has said he’s “immune” to the coronavirus — a comment that was later flagged as misleading on Twitter. The White House released a statement Saturday from presidential physician Dr. Sean Conley saying Trump is “no longer considered a transmission risk to others” and has met criteria for discontinuing isolation.
Conley reported Monday evening that Trump tested negative “on consecutive days” and reiterated he isn’t a transmission risk, CBS News reports.
But the president’s doctors and others in the White House have refused to answer many questions about his health — including the date of his last negative test prior to his diagnosis, which could provide insights into when he was contagious and who else may have been exposed.
Fauci said on CNN that Trump is likely no longer contagious but it would be “appropriate” for him, and others who have recently recovered from the virus, to wear a mask and limit their contact with others.
Trump has received backlash for his rallies in the past.
Last month he was slammed for holding a large, indoor campaign rally in Nevada that violated the state’s COVID-19 regulations and during which supporters were packed together — many without masks, McClatchy News previously reported.
He held another event in June in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that health experts have since blamed for “more than likely” contributing to a subsequent surge in cases in the area, Axios reports.
Fauci previously called the president’s Rose Garden ceremony announcing Amy Coney Barrett as his Supreme Court nominee a “superspreader event,” NBC News reports.
Several who attended the event have since tested positive for COVID-19.
This story was originally published October 13, 2020 at 6:24 AM with the headline "‘Asking for trouble,’ Fauci says of Trump rallies as COVID-19 surges in some states."
