And what you see now is the reflection of what likely happened a few weeks ago. But when you’re dealing with viruses, they stay silent. I mean, obviously, if you knew everything that was going on as it was happening, you might have acted sooner. And we acted quickly, relatively speaking. So I think that, given the circumstances, we were ahead of the curve. In fact, you might recall we received a lot of criticism for doing that and even more criticism for sealing off and restricting travel from Europe. Well, I mean, I think that we sealed off from China very quickly with regard to the realization of what might happen. from international travel? Or was the die already cast by that point? anthony fauci Was this a moment to begin essentially sealing off the U.S. Meaning that any travelers from those countries could bring the virus to the U.S. had detected infections in multiple countries, not just China. For example, by the time you all decided to ban travel from China - I think that was the end of January, January 31 - the W.H.O. But I want to zero in on a couple of items in particular. I know people like you are loathe, justifiably, to second-guess decisions in the middle of a crisis. And I want to focus for a moment on the steps that could be taken to limit that back in the beginning.
So I want to explore how it is that we got from that moment of recognition back in December and January to this moment where the situation is so dire. And you told Americans that up to a quarter of a million of us could ultimately die from this pandemic in the best-case scenario, which was a very terrifying kind of best-case scenario. Let’s explore how we got to where we are. This is “The Daily.” Today, a conversation with Dr. įrom The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. And that’s exactly when I realized we were in really bad trouble. Those two things together are the things that really are the makings of a public health nightmare. And that was somewhere in the middle of January, when it was clear that China was seeing not only extremely efficient transmissibility, but also a disturbing degree of morbidity and mortality. Then as soon as I found out - which was literally days to a week or so later - that it was really circulating in China likely for several weeks, it became clear to me that we could potentially be dealing with a global catastrophe. So the thing that rang the bell for me, that made me say, uh-oh, we really have a problem here, is when the coronavirus was first identified in very early January, it was clear that this was something that had jumped from an animal species in Wuhan, China to humans. I think it relates to the issue of its efficiency of transmissibility. At what point did you realize that the coronavirus was going to be of an entirely different speed and scale than those when it came to the U.S.? Was there a moment where that became clear to you? anthony fauci And then you stayed in that role through the Ebola outbreaks, SARS, H1N1, swine flu. Fauci, you became head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease in the 1980s when the AIDS crisis was becoming a national issue. Thank you very much for being with us and for recording yourself, above and beyond. Fauci talks about containing the virus, his hopes for America’s legacy after this crisis and why he feels like he’s making decisions in “the fog of war.” michael barbaro Fauci on ‘The Daily’ Hosted by Michael Barbaro produced by Alexandra Leigh Young and Eric Krupke with help from Robert Jimison and edited by Lisa Chow and M.J. Transcript Listen to our conversation with Dr.