Fauci: Lack of transparency on COVID during Trump presidency ‘very likely’ cost lives
Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the nation’s top infectious diseases experts, said that the lack of candor and facts during former President Donald Trump’s administration “very likely” cost lives during the coronavirus pandemic.
“When you start talking about things that make no sense medically and no sense scientifically, that clearly is not helpful,” Fauci told CNN on Friday.
“There’s no secret, we’ve had a lot of divisiveness, we’ve had facts that were very, very clear, that were questioned,” Fauci continued. “People were not trusting what health officials were saying. There was great divisiveness, masking became a political issue.”
Fauci has served under seven presidents as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, but he was lambasted by Trump, who called Fauci a “disaster” and once suggested that he would fire him after the November presidential election.
“People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots,” Trump said in a call in October, adding without evidence that if the administration listened to Fauci, there would be hundreds of thousands more deaths.
Trump faced criticism for his response to the pandemic, downplaying the COVID risk and resisting precautions advocated by his own administration’s health experts. Trump initially refused to wear a mask in public but changed his stance later on in the pandemic, telling his supporters it’s “patriotic” to wear one. Trump also held large indoor and outdoor rallies, flouting coronavirus rules.
Fauci said Thursday that working under President Joe Biden’s presidency is “a refreshing experience” so far, Politico reported.
“It’s obviously a very different situation. It’s complete transparency,” Fauci said. “Nobody is telling you what to say, at all. They are just saying ’go out there and let the data guide you on what you are saying.’”
Regarding the Trump administration, Fauci said: “There were things that were said, be it regarding things like hydroxychloroquine and other things like that, that really was an uncomfortable thing because they were not based on scientific fact. I can tell you, I take no pleasure at all being in a situation with contradicting the president.”
Trump frequently touted the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for coronavirus through mid-2020 despite the lack of evidence that it treats COVID-19.
The U.S. remains divided over how to respond to the pandemic. Some health care workers have refused to take the COVID-19 vaccine over fears of safety, while other people are angry about the coronavirus restrictions that have shut down businesses and closed schools as cases continue to climb.
There are more than 24 million coronavirus cases in the U.S. and more than 411,000 deaths as of Jan. 22, according to Johns Hopkins University.
This story was originally published January 22, 2021 at 11:28 AM with the headline "Fauci: Lack of transparency on COVID during Trump presidency ‘very likely’ cost lives."