Anthony Fauci, MD, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, detailed his take on the COVID-19 pandemic, what went wrong, what went right and how it all ties back to the overarching picture of public health in the U.S. during a lengthy interview published April 24 in The New York Times.
With more than 1.1 million deaths from COVID-19 and one of the lowest vaccination rates of developed countries at just 68 percent — Dr. Fauci blamed these "unacceptable" statistics not on political divides or even misinformation alone, but rather said, "it has to do with the fracturing of our health care delivery system in this country," he told the Times. "We have let the local public-health and health care delivery system really suffer attrition. And the health disparities — racial and ethnic health disparities. Every country has a little bit of that, but we really have a lot of it."
While every country struggled navigating a global pandemic, the U.S. ranked as one of the worst during the pandemic for excess mortalities, according to the Times. Dr. Fauci pointed out "inadequacies in both preparedness and response that varied among different nations," but suggested making significant improvements in two areas: scientific preparedness and response as well as public health preparedness and response he told the Times.
As a physician who became the face of the U.S. pandemic response, Dr. Fauci also addressed the criticisms against him, noting that as a whole, communication from every angle, including from him directly to former President Donald Trump, could have been better.
"When I was [accused of] 'changing the numbers,' it was a garbled conversation," Dr. Fauci said. "What I was trying to tell Donald was that we don’t know what the threshold of herd immunity would be. But I probably could have been more clear that we were talking about a moving target, because we didn’t know how transmissible the virus was."
As for the future of public health preparedness in the face of another eventual pandemic, the reforms needed in the sector are many, he said, but what is not needed in the future is "an infinite budget," rather, it is "a sustained commitment to science and public health."