We’ll have a shot
Fauci sees vaccine, hits Don on fight
Dr. Anthony Fauci told lawmakers on Friday he’s “optimistic” that the U.S. will have a coronavirus vaccine ready to roll by the end of the year, though he also raised concern about what he characterized as a dangerous rush to return to normalcy in some states.
Testifying before the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis, the Brooklyn-born top pandemic doc said U.S. researchers have made remarkable progress in developing vaccine candidates over an unusually short period of time.
“I feel cautiously optimistic that we will have a vaccine by the end of this year and as we go into 2021,” he said. “I believe, ultimately, over a period of time in 2021, that Americans will be able to get it.”
The U.S. is currently focusing on two vaccine candidates. The first candidate, sponsored by pharmaceutical giant Moderna, is entering Phase 3 clinical trials that will involve vaccine testing of 30,000 adults. Fauci said about 250,000 people have already signed up on a government website to volunteer in the trials.
Earlier in the hearing, the subcommittee’s chairman, Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), asked Fauci why European countries have been able to contain the virus better than the U.S., which has already seen more than 152,000 deaths.
Fauci cited two reasons. “When they shut down, they really did it to the tune of about 95-plus% of the country,” Fauci said, referring to stay-at-home orders in countries like Italy and Spain. “When you actually look at what we did, even though we shut down, even though it created a great deal of difficulty, we only shut down about 50%.”
Secondly, many Southern and Midwestern states skipped crucial steps of the administration’s phased reopening plan, resulting in the current virus resurgences crushing many parts of the country, Fauci said.
“There were some states that did it very well and there were some states that did not,” Fauci said.
States that rushed to reopen their economies, including Florida, Arizona and Texas, in many cases did so at the urging of President
Trump. Those states have now been forced to slow down their reboots amid new outbreaks. By contrast, New York has been able to avoid resurgences, thanks in large part to a more cautious reopening approach, according to Fauci.
Clyburn’s line of questioning did not get the same measured response from Trump, who fired off an insulting tweet as the South Carolina lawmaker used a chart to highlight U.S. coronavirus infections during the hearing.
“Somebody please tell Congressman Clyburn, who doesn’t have a clue, that the chart he put up indicating more CASES for the U.S. than Europe, is because we do MUCH MORE testing than any other country in the World,” Trump wrote. “If we had no testing, or bad testing, we would show very few CASES … Sad!”
Clyburn didn’t respond to Trump’s jab.
But Fauci, who’s had a rocky relationship with Trump, smacked down the president’s debunked claim about testing.
“Obviously, if you do more testing, you’re going to see more cases, but the increases that we are seeing are real increases, as also reflected by increases in hospitalizations and increases in deaths,” Fauci said.
Friday’s hearing, which also featured testimony from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield and Trump administration testing czar Brett Giroir, was called to highlight the need for a sweeping federal strategy for coronavirus response.
Trump has rebuffed calls for such a unified approach, instead punting responsibility to individual states.
“Regrettably, nearly six months after this virus claimed its first American life, the federal government has still not yet developed and implemented a national strategy to protect the American people,” Clyburn said. “The result of these decisions is that the virus has continued to rage out of control, and our nation’s economic misery has continued.”
The subcommittee’s Republicans spent most of their allotted hearing time criticizing Fauci because they claim he’s not speaking out about recent large protests against police brutality, but he is endorsing social distancing restrictions on churches.