Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) immunologist at the forefront of the effort to combat the spread of the coronavirus, said Tuesday that the blame for the slow pace of testing for the disease in the U.S. does not lie with either President Trump or really, anyone in particular.
“Nobody’s fault. There wasn’t any bad guys there. It just happened,” Fauci told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt during his Tuesday morning broadcast.
“The system itself as it was set up, which serves certain circumstances very well, was not well-suited to the kind of broad testing that we needed the private sector to get involved in,” he explained. “The regulatory constraints, which under certain circumstances are helpful and protective of the American people were not suited to the emergence of this particular outbreak. So there was a confluence of a bunch of things.”
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, told Hewitt that handing over much of the testing to private sector “heavy hitter companies” was the right way to go. “I think what you’re going to be seeing looking forward is a major, major improvement in the availability of testing,” he said.
Hewitt asked Fauci if the testing issues were President Trump’s fault, or something every president would have run into.
“Oh, absolutely,” Fauci replied. “This has nothing to do with anybody’s fault, certainly not the President’s fault.”
LISTEN: Dr. Fauci clears up testing issues. Getting rid of regulatory roadblocks was key, "nothing to do with anybody's fault."
"We've got it right now because we're handing much of it over to the private sector, the heavy hitter companies that do this for a living." pic.twitter.com/8idxyRdIYl
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) March 17, 2020
When asked what it was like to work with President Trump, Fauci said that it was “an interesting experience.”
“You know, each president has their own unique character. He’s somebody who is very active, a lot of things going on, very direct, very decisive.”
Dr. Fauci on working with @realDonaldTrump:
"He's somebody who is very active. Very direct. Very decisive."pic.twitter.com/8idxyRdIYl
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) March 17, 2020
Hewitt also asked the doctor the $100,000 question about the coronavirus endgame, noting that the “Great Influenza” of 1918 first appeared in Kansas in the spring of 1918 and was more deadly with each subsequent wave. Sometimes diseases, however, disappear during the summer and never come back.
“Is there any science to tell us if we’re like getting crowd immunity, or if it’s going to come back in a more virulent form?” he asked.
“You know, we do not know,” Fauci responded. “When we suppressed the SARS Coronavirus, it went away and never came back. We are hoping that if we can suppress this by mitigation and by containment over the next few months that when we get into the deep summer, that it will disappear.”
Even if the virus doesn’t disappear, Fauci noted that the summer “will give us more breathing room to develop therapies as well as a vaccine.”He added, “But the direct answer to your question is we do not know if it will come back and how it will come back. It’s a possibility, but we just need to be prepared for it.”
At a press briefing today with his Coronavirus Task Force, President Trump expressed total optimism that the U.S. will conquer the virus and when that happens, “the economy will go through the roof.”
"We will win. We will win. And when that victory takes place, our economy is going to go through the roof." 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/UqCVmtu2Cx
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) March 17, 2020
The president also praised his team effusively, calling them “total pros.”
👇👇👇
"I'll tell you my best decision, the people behind me are total pros." pic.twitter.com/TjnCrV0zEB
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) March 17, 2020