Dr. Fauci Believes a 'Temporary National Lockdown' May Be Necessary

Dr. Anthony Fauci has become one of the administration’s top spokesmen on the White House response to COVID-19 and appears to be turning into something of a star, considering he appeared on all five major Sunday talk shows.

The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, Fauci said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he’d “like to see a dramatic diminution of the personal interaction that we see” in bars and restaurants. He said that he may support a “temporary” partial lockdown to achieve that.

Fauci, a key member of the Trump administration’s coronavirus task force, told Keilar that Americans will need to come to terms with the fact that life will begin to look much different as the country tries to slow the spread of the disease.

“We need to be very serious about — for a while, life is not going to be the way it used to be in the United States,” he said. “We have to just accept that if we want to do what’s best for the American public.”

Fauci also had some stern words for younger Americans who he doesn’t think are taking the pandemic seriously enough.

Politico:

“You are not immune or safe from getting seriously ill,” National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” when asked if younger Americans should be concerned about contracting the virus, which Fauci has repeatedly said is more lethal than the average flu.

“Even though when you look at the total numbers, it’s overwhelmingly weighted toward the elderly and those with underlying conditions,” he explained, “the virus isn’t a mathematical formula. There are going to be people who are young who are going to wind up getting seriously ill.”

So much is unknown about the coronavirus, which causes COVID-19, that the young people crowding the bars on Rush Street in Chicago tonight to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day are taking an unnecessary risk. Even if they don’t get seriously ill, they may unknowingly carry the disease and inadvertently infect others who might get seriously ill.

In addition, Fauci said it is critical for young people to understand that they can be a carrier for the virus and spread it without showing symptoms or feeling ill themselves.

“Even though you don’t get seriously ill, you could bring it to a person who would bring it to a person that would bring it to your grandfather, your grandmother or your elderly relative,” he said. “That’s why everybody’s got to take this seriously, even the young.”

Fauci told “Meet the Press,” “I think Americans should be prepared that they are going to have to hunker down significantly more than we as a country are doing.” That goes double for the revelers around the country who are out tonight and whose stupidity will probably infect more Americans.