Fauci: I’d skip prez’s rallies

Dr. Anthony Fauci says he woudn’t attend events such as President Trump’s Tulsa, Okla., rally because, at 79, he’s “in a highrisk category” for the coronavirus and adds that the nation faces a resurgence of the deadly illness if states fail to remain vigilant.

“Personally, I would not. Of course not,” the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease told The Daily Beast on Tuesday when asked if he’d attend the president’s rallies.

Fauci added that when it came to the packed events, “outside is better than inside, no crowd is better than crowd [and small] crowd is better than big crowd.”

Fauci also said he doubted that there would be another scene similar to that of New York City in April, when hospitals were overcome by a deluge of coronavirus patients.

“I don’t think that could happen under today’s circumstances of our full awareness of the potential of this virus,” he said.

And in an appearance on NPR’s “1A” on Tuesday, Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert and a key member of the president’s coronavirus task force, wouldn’t say if some states had reopened “too soon” but offered that “certainly [they opened] before they got to the benchmarks they needed to get.”

The uptick in COVID-19 cases in some states was likely due to people who are “not really adhering to the structured type of guidelines that belong to the phase that they’re in,” he added, lamenting the perception that social-distancing restrictions were “all or none.”

“It isn’t as if you stay locked down or you open up and leave caution to the wind,” he said, adding that a second wave of the virus was “not inevitable” if “we do what we need to do to prevent it from happening.”