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Fauci: ‘I Don’t Think You Can Say We’re Doing Great’ With the Coronavirus

The face of the nation’s COVID-19 response is downcast.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of the federal government’s response to the new coronavirus, conceded in an interview Thursday that the United States is handling the pandemic poorly. Speaking to Five Thirty-Eight, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said, “I don’t think you can say we’re doing great. I mean, we’re just not.” When asked why, he said that some states had done well in containing the disease but others like Florida had jumped the gun on reopening, a fact that made European Union travel sanctions against the U.S. “understandable” to him. Partisanship, he added, was partly to blame: “You’d have to make the assumption that if there wasn’t such divisiveness, that we would have a more coordinated approach.” He closed by saying he was “skeptical whether we would get permanent, sustained control of this without having a vaccine.”