Dr. Fauci: ‘Light at the end of the tunnel’
In a Friday video conference with leaders from California State University, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, acknowledged the state faced dark days ahead but described the light at the end of the pandemic’s tunnel as glowing “brighter and brighter.”
“California is being hit as hard as any state in the Union, to the point where you’re at the verge of — in some sections of the state — having your health care system overrun with running out of beds,” Fauci said. “That’s the bitter part. The sweet part and the light at the end of the tunnel is that as these weeks and months go by if we hang in there things will get better and better … . We’re really at the crossroads of an extraordinary time in our country and in the state of Cali
fornia, where you’re really being challenged in an extraordinary way.”
Fauci said he was enthusiastic about the distribution of the Pfizer vaccine, as well as the approval of the Moderna vaccine.
“As we implement a vaccine over the coming months that will ultimately turn around and put this outbreak behind us, but it is going to be a very challenging few months,” he said. “We now have five vaccines that have been supported in our various stages of clinical trials… one of which has been given an emergency use authorization by the FDA and people are getting vaccinated right now even as we speak. The Moderna product has followed Pfizer literally by a few days.”
Responding to a question from CSU Chancellor Timothy White, Fauci confirmed vaccinating teachers and students as a top priority.
“The idea of vaccinating teachers is very high up in the priority, as well as doing surveillance in the schools,” Fauci said. “One of the things that we’ve learned in the universities that really is interesting if you do testing of students like before they might enter into a term and then do surveillance testing intermittently and you do it often enough you don’t have to test people with the highly sensitive PCR test. You can do the surveillance with the rapid tests that are referred to as antigen tests, which are not as sensitive, but can give you a considerable amount of important information.”
Acknowledging that the pandemic has disproportionately affected people of color, White asked Fauci to explain how vaccine distribution will compensate.
“As you get the tens of thousands of people enrolled (in clinical trials) you have to put in an effort because, quite frankly, in reality, it is more difficult to get minority populations — Latina, Latino and African American — into clinical trials,” Fauci said. “Particularly clinical trials that have a major component run by the federal government because of the understandable distrust on the part of minority communities because of a very difficult history of how they have been treated by the federal government in the context of things like medical research.”
Fauci said researchers made a great effort to accurately reflect minority populations within the clinical trials. For example, about 13% of the United States population is African American. In the Moderna trial, about 11% of the participants identified as African American, he said.
“It’s really important to get minorities represented in the trial, because when the trial is shown to be safe and effective you can then look the community in the eye and say this vaccine is safe and effective in you,” Fauci said. “That’s much better than saying take the vaccine and take our word for it.”
Fauci answered questions from CSU Presidents, including Humboldt State University President Tom Jackson Jr.
“Dr. Fauci, you have modeled extraordinary leadership during challenging times,” Jackson said. “On occasion, and may have appeared, that your efforts were perhaps undermined or misunderstood. For our students and for everyone listening, what have you learned about leadership through this experience?”
“When you’re leading, you have to lead by example,” Fauci responded. “If you’re going to be a leader, that means that people are going to be following you. In order to follow you effectively, you’ve got to be crystal clear in what your goal is, and you’ve got to articulate that goal so everybody knows where you want to go and how you want to get there … . If you do that, leadership in many respects just essentially works on its own.”