In a time of national and even global public health emergency, one might hope that a top public health official for the United States could focus on some topic other than getting the president to stop publicly shaking hands and conducting similar physical interactions while a highly communicable virus spreads. But lo and behold — Trump is the one in charge, and this weekend, top infectious disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci from the National Institutes of Health subtly but surely criticized Trump’s behavior during an appearance on ABC’s This Week.
As one reporter pointed out to Trump’s face at a Saturday press conference, his incessant handshaking and more is sending “mixed messages” to observers, and that’s perhaps particularly relevant for his own followers, who might already be thinking that concern over the Coronavirus is a “hoax” anyway, since that’s the terminology Trump used at a recent rally.
Asked about Trump’s behavior, Fauci told host Jonathan Karl, in reference to greeting some way other than a handshake:
‘I’m working on getting the boss to do this. I may not be successful, but I’m working on it… Sometimes there are things you have to do — if I didn’t put the microphone down, you would’ve seen the microphone in front of my face like that… I’m practicing as much social distancing as I possibly can. I don’t go out — I have a job that’s a 19 hour a day job, I have no interest in going to the movies, to restaurants, or to getting on a plane.’
“I’m working on getting the boss to do this,” Dr. Anthony Fauci tells @jonkarl, making an elbow knocking motion, when asked about President Trump continuing to shake hands amid coronavirus threat. “I may not be successful, but we’re working on it.” https://t.co/b3vhObQa4c pic.twitter.com/TmOxsn6MxD
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) March 15, 2020
The thing is — quite recently, Trump himself was encouraging listeners that in some cases where they might have the Coronavirus, they could still go into work anyway! But, that’s not true. The virus is highly communicable, and it’s especially threatening to plenty of physically vulnerable populations, even if many carriers might be fine. Trump so brazenly claimed otherwise during an appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, at which time he also claimed — among other things — that the World Health Organization’s then-documented fatality rate for the virus was wrong, on the basis of what he called a “hunch.”
This weekend, Fauci also addressed some of those broader issues. He joined the chorus of those calling on people to limit their social interactions in an attempt to stop the Coronavirus spread. That idea has sparked closures across the country. Fauci commented:
‘What we should be doing is absolutely making it much, much different, not making it business as usual — you gotta just chill down. Some areas of the country, particularly the areas where it’s clear you’re having a lot of community spread, may be more vigorous in shutting things down… We don’t want to lose sight of the fact that when you’re doing that interpersonal interaction that you’re trying to calm down… we gotta make sure that the vulnerable ones are the ones we protect… the elderly and those with underlying conditions.’
Watch:
Dr. Anthony Fauci says it can’t be “business as usual” amid coronavirus threat and you need to "chill down" social interactions.
“We gotta make sure that the vulnerable ones are the ones we protect — the elderly and those with underlying conditions.” https://t.co/YJ2h02tqtA pic.twitter.com/BUKIC8AzWs
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) March 15, 2020
Fauci has directly contradicted the Trump administration before, although he’s hardly a partisan. At a recent Congressional hearing, he acknowledged, for instance, that the state of Coronavirus testing in the U.S. was a “failing.” Currently, the U.S. is at just over 3,000 confimed cases of the Coronavirus, with some 60 deaths.