On Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hosted a live broadcast discussion with Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health, and during that discussion, Zuckerberg sharply criticized the U.S. government’s response to the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic. Fauci himself has borne some of the brunt of the administration’s fumbling; amidst their mixed, sometimes even self-contradictory messages, some figures in the administration have been lashing out, trying to depict Fauci — who’s been advocating for the science since day one — as somehow out of step. By any metric, the Trump administration’s own response to the virus has failed — about 140,000 Americans have died.
Zuckerberg pointed out:
‘At this point it is clear that the trajectory in the US is significantly worse than many other countries, and that our government and this administration have been considerably less effective at handling this.’
That’s an understatement. The U.S. has been left with the guy at the helm who thought that injecting household disinfectants might be a useful treatment plan to combat the Coronavirus. Trump eventually claimed that he was joking when he made that remark, but first of all — he didn’t seem to be joking at the time. Secondly, even if he was “joking,” the Coronavirus is not a joke!
Zuckerberg continued, addressing Fauci directly:
‘I was certainly sympathetic early on when it was clear that there would be some outbreaks no matter how well we handle this… But now that we’re here in July, I just think that it was avoidable and it’s really disappointing that we still don’t have adequate testing, that the credibility of our top scientists like yourself and the CDC are being undermined, and that until recently, that parts of the administration were calling into question whether people should even follow basic best practices like wearing masks.’
Watch Zuckerberg’s full conversation with Fauci below:
Some of the political side of the Trump administration’s most recent contentions with the CDC have centered on the issue of schools reopening — or not. Amidst the rising numbers of cases around the country, some have been working to ensure safety at schools, but the president himself has lashed out against CDC guidelines, characterizing them as supposedly too restrictive. Trump and some of his allies have pointed out that some European countries have successfully implemented school reopening plans — but they consistently fail to mention that those countries have also contained the virus on a societal level. The U.S. has not.
