On Sunday, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the White House Coronavirus Task Force appeared on CBS’ “Face the Nation” with host Margaret Brennan to speak about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Brennan first asked Fauci about what Americans “should … be preparing for” given President Trump’s remarks about near-term deaths, as well as Dr. Birx’s recommendation that people avoid leaving their homes as the virus approaches the apex.
Fauci replied, saying that it’s “going to be a bad week.” He added that according to projections, the United States will “continue to see an escalation,” but that he hopes “to see a flattening out of the curve” soon, “within a week, maybe a little bit more.”
He then stated that mitigation is vital in the United States being able to turn the corner:
The mitigation that we’re talking about, that you just mentioned, is absolutely key to the success of that. So on the one hand, things are going to get bad, and we need to be prepared for that. It is going to be shocking to some. It certainly is really disturbing to see that – but that’s what’s going to happen before it turns around. So we’ll just buckle down, continue to mitigate, continue to do the physical separation because we’ve got to get through this week that’s coming up because it is going to be a bad week.
Brennan asked for clarification: “Are you saying … that despite the deaths that we may see, that mitigation is working and that you do have this outbreak under control?”
Fauci replied in the affirmative that mitigation is working. As for having the virus “under control,” the doctor made sure to stress that such a claim would be “false.”
I will not say we have it under control, Margaret. That would be a false statement. We are struggling to get it under control, and that’s the issue that’s at hand right now. The thing that’s important is that what you see is increases in new cases, which then start to flatten out, but the end result of that, you don’t see for days if not weeks down the pike because as the cases go down, then you get less hospitalizations, less intensive care, and less death.
So even though you’re getting … really improvement in that the number of new cases is starting to flatten, the deaths will lag by, you know, one or two weeks or more. So we need to be prepared that even though it’s clear that mitigation is working, we’re still going to see that tail off of deaths.
Fauci went on to stress that the thing to watch is stabilization of new cases, which he said is being witnessed in Italy, and will “hopefully be” seen shortly in New York, the COVID-19 epicenter in the United States.
Brennan proceeded to ask Fauci what New York’s Governor Cuomo means when he says that the state “is not yet at the apex.”
“And what happens on the other side of that apex?” Brennan asked.
Fauci replied:
You know, what the governor is saying is that we are still going to see an increase. The curves that we show at the conferences often is that the epidemic curve goes up, and it hits the top a bit and then it starts coming down. So what Governor Cuomo was saying is that we haven’t yet reached that peak. And when you do, you’ll start to see a bit of a flattening and come down. So, where we are right now is really approaching that apex, and that’s why what he’s saying and what we’re saying is that this next week is going to look bad because we’re still not yet at that apex. And I think within a week, eight days or nine days or so, hopefully you’re going to see that turn around.