Dr. Fauci: Trump's Travel Bans May Prevent U.S. From Becoming Another Italy

Matt Margolis | 5:03 PM on March 22, 2020

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speak during a press briefing with the coronavirus task force, at the White House, Monday, March 16, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was on CBS’ Face The Nation on Sunday, and during his interview, he was asked if the United States “is on the same trajectory as Italy,” which has struggled to handle the coronavirus pandemic.

“Not necessarily at all,” he said. “I mean, obviously, things are unpredictable, you can’t make any definitive statement, but if you look at the dynamics of the outbreak in Italy, we don’t know why they are suffering so terribly, but there’s a possibility, and many of us believe, that early on they did not shut out as well the input of infections that originated in China and came to different parts of the world. One of the things that we did very early and very aggressively, the president put the travel restriction coming from China to the United States and most recently from Europe to the United States because Europe is really the new China. Again I don’t know why this is happening there to such an extent, but it is conceivable that once you get so many of these spreads out they spread exponentially and you can never keep up with the tsunami.”

Are we on the same trajectory as Italy in fight against #coronavirus? @NIAIDNews head Dr. Anthony Fauci says "Not necessarily at all."

He notes the country adequately shut out the input of the virus from China early on. "You can never keep up with the tsunami," he says. pic.twitter.com/cGAZ00lYTt

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) March 22, 2020

President Trump imposed a travel ban with China on January 31, 2020. He was widely criticized for it. Joe Biden even accused Trump of “fearmongering” and “xenophobia” for the travel ban, but World Health Organization experts admitted in February that the travel ban saved lives in the United States. Dr. Fauci is now saying that the ban may prevent the United States from experiencing the same problems Italy has.

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Matt Margolis is the author of Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us From Barack Obama’s Legacy and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis