Dr. Fauci begins speaking at 10 minutes
ST. LOUIS – Dr. Anthony Fauci took part in a discussion with Washington University medical students Thursday morning. It was a virtual visit to St. Louis.
He gave the visiting professor lecture for Washington University’s “Grand Rounds”. The title of the session is “Insights into the COVID-19 Pandemic.”
Dr. Fauci began by saying, “we are in a very, very difficult situation right now.”
He said it’s almost been a year since we started having cases in the United States and the numbers are stunning.
“The numbers are so extraoridary that we’ve become numb to them,” explained Dr. Fauci.
He said the nation has topped more than 360,000 COVID deaths and about 200,000-300 new infections a day.
Dr. Fauci says the situation is expected to get even worse by the end of January or the beginning of February because of the recent holiday travel season.
He did say the vaccinations are a light at the end of the tunnel.
Also, he said moving forward one concern will be about COVID-19 mutations and their impact on the efficacy of the vaccine.
Dr. Fauci was also asked about politics and public health.
“This is something never seen before in public health,” said Dr. Fauci. “Public health has been immersed in a divisive society which has made it very, very difficult to have a uniform response.”
With the HIV outbreak in the 1990s, Dr. Fauci said it was stigma, not political divisiveness that hindered what public health experts did.
