VIRUS WON’T BEAT US
Fauci full of optimism for city as he gets shot
Brooklyn native Dr. Anthony Fauci, fresh off getting his COVID-19 vaccine, predicted his hurting hometown will rebound from this year’s crushing pandemic.
“I have every confidence that New York City, the New York metropolitan area, will come through fine,” Fauci said Tuesday in an exclusive interview with the Daily News. “We need to get [New Yorkers] vaccinated. Once you get the vaccine going, they will be fine.”
The nation’s top infectious diseases expert, who turns 80 on Christmas Eve, said he expects his role in combating the virus that has killed more than 320,000 Americans will continue and expand under the Biden administration — in contrast with his oft-contentious interactions with President Trump.
“I believe that my relationship with President-elect Biden will be on a much more frequent basis until we get this COVID-19 under control, in the sense of dealing with him directly much more,” said Fauci.
“He is very much interested in personally seeing that this gets under control and that’s very clear from the conversations I’ve had with him.”
Fauci took questions from The News’ editorial board just a couple of hours after rolling up his left sleeve to take the vaccine in a live-streamed medical procedure.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I really didn’t notice anything ... Right now I feel like nothing happened.”
Fauci said he spends time almost daily on social media addressing the skepticism of Americans, many of them Black and Latino, that the vaccine was produced recklessly or pushed forward under pressure by the government or pharmaceutical companies.
“When you have mixed messages, or when you have a situation where scientists of some repute are questioned, then people get confused,” he said without directly addressing the Trump administration. “So that’s the reason we’ve got to be very consistent as much as we possibly can.”
The doctor hailed the medical community for its quick turnaround in developing a vaccine before the end of 2020 — noting the rapid COVID-19 response was a good sign for health care professionals facing the next pandemic.
“The fact that we’ve now shown that using this vaccine platform technology is extraordinary in doing something in amazingly record time, we can now apply this in the future to other new viruses that emerge,” he said. “To be sure, we’re going to have the emergence of new viruses.We’ve had them forever, before recorded history ... If this was a decade ago, it would have taken truly years to get a safe and effective vaccine.”
Fauci offered the positive prognosis for his hometown after a brutal 10 months where nearly 25,000 people died and another 388,000 were infected in the five boroughs, where businesses closed down and schools were shuttered.
“I was born and raised on the streets of
New York,” said Fauci. “I’m a New Yorker in my DNA ... I think New York did quite well after you got hit really badly. You got a sucker punch ... You recovered, and then you did actually quite well in keeping the level of infection down.”
Fauci stressed the vaccine’s development did not signal an instant end to the need for the social distancing, masks and hand-washing that remain crucial to stopping the viral spread.
“I think you just need to keep practicing the public health measures that we all talk about ... [and] we’ll be fine,” he said. “I do believe we will.”
Fauci, asked if he would continue to wear a mask, replied: “Oh, you bet. Yeah.”