After repeatedly taking subtle jabs at former President Trump, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, now says that talking about the past administration’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic is “not productive.”
Speaking on “America Reports,” Fauci said “a lot of good things” happened with Operation Warp Speed and that he felt no reason to talk about President Trump despite spending all last week bashing President Trump.
“I really don’t want to go back and rehash. That is not productive,” he said, adding that the goal during the Biden administration is to get a “broader plan” for vaccine distribution.
“A lot of good things did happen with Operation Warp Speed during those months, several months ago,” he later added. “Right now, let’s look forward about what … President Biden has said, how we’re going to try and get as many doses into as many people as quickly as we possibly can. That’s why he has his plan, which I want to emphasize is a floor, not a ceiling, to get 100 million doses into people in the first 100 days.”
Fauci later expressed understanding about the “strain” that local businesses now feel and hoped that resources will be available to keep them from going under.
“I understand greatly the strain that is on local businesses and restaurants and others, that that’s the reason why we need help,” he said. “We need to be able to get resources [so] that if indoor dining is going to be prohibited, we’ve got to have help to the owners of those organizations so that they don’t go under during a period of time when we’re trying to correct and get our arms around this outbreak.”
Regarding children going to school, Fauci said that kids could be back in their classrooms if they follow the safety guidelines of the CDC.
“Children in school right now, it appears that if you follow the safety guidelines of the CDC, that they are less likely to be getting infected than the community rate of infection,” he said. “That’s the reason why, as President Biden has said, we’re going to try as best as we can within the framework of following the CDC guidelines to get children back to school. And I’ve been saying that for months and months.”
Speaking with The New York Times recently, Fauci lamented about how the president would often scold him for being so “pessimistic.”
“It isn’t like I took any pleasure in contradicting the president of the United States,” Fauci said. “I have a great deal of respect for the office. But I made a decision that I just had to. Otherwise, I would be compromising my own integrity and be giving a false message to the world. If I didn’t speak up, it would be almost tacit approval that what he was saying was OK,” he said.
“That’s when I started to get into some trouble,” he continued. “The people around him, his inner circle, were quite upset that I would dare publicly contradict the president.”
Fauci added that the president would sometimes call upon him to be more positive.
“There were a couple of times where I would make a statement that was a pessimistic viewpoint about what direction we were going,” Fauci said, “and the president would call me up and say, ‘Hey, why aren’t you more positive? You’ve got to take a positive attitude. Why are you so negativistic? Be more positive.’”
Related: Fauci: Trump Would Often Scold Me For Being ‘Pessimistic’