What Fauci says the U.S. really needs to reopen safely

He laid out how the country can overcome this false dichotomy as part of a keynote interview for Stopping Pandemics, an exclusive event with National Geographic that aired on August 13.“Some people think that public health measures are kind of the obstacle to opening up. “There is a golden mean in there—based on the guidelines that we carefully put together—about how you can open the country safely.”Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, shares his thoughts on getting kids back to school amid the pandemic.This golden mean—or the happy medium where life regains some parts of normalcy—has existed all along in COVID-19 recommendations on a national level, but the strategy hinges on events happening in the right sequence. Those tips include universally wearing masks, social distancing, avoiding crowds, favoring outdoor activities over indoors, and washing hands.“You can't run away from the numbers of people who've died, the number of people [who] are getting hospitalized, the surges we're seeing,” says Fauci. And in-person voting will need social distancing and masks.Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, shares his thoughts on how Americans can vote safely during the pandemic.The biggest takeaway is that no one is exempt from these basic rules, not even young adults, who are less likely to die from COVID-19—not even if a vaccine is approved. That’s why Fauci and other health regulators are aiming for a vaccine that works at least 50 percent of the time, and even then people would still need to social distance and wear masks until cases dropped to the point of elimination. “I would hope that we could get that way—I don't think that's going to be the case [with a COVID-19 vaccine].” He adds that while he would “gladly accept” a COVID-19 vaccine that is 50 percent to 75 percent effective, “that would mean not that you could throw caution to the wind and do nothing else.”The National Institutes of Health, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Academy of Medicine will soon assemble an advisory committee of ethicists, biologists, vaccinologists, and other policymakers to prioritize the vaccine rollout. But when you look at other parts of the country, this is the thing that's disturbing to me is that we're starting to see the inkling of the upticks in the percent of the tests that are positive, which we know now from sad past experience, that that's a predictor that you're going to have more surges. How do we actually get a unified response to this if we have states that are acting all very differently?Anthony FauciWell, you know, that is a simple question, Deborah, but the answer is complicated because of the great divergence of opinions throughout the country and the independence, as it were, of the states and local areas of the kinds of decisions that they want to make. I have said over and over again, and that's the reason why I welcome a dialogue with you, Deborah, to get the message across, that there are five or six things that if everyone at a minimum did that, we know from history of other countries, we know from what we've seen in our own country, that if you do that, you can turn around the surges and prevent further surges. And of the things we keep talking about, I mean, it's not that difficult of the universal wearing of masks, the social distancing, the avoiding crowds, favoring things that you do outdoors versus indoors, washing hands, et cetera.The issue is that because of the divisiveness that we've seen in this country, we have, I think, a maybe understandable because of the differences but unfortunate divergence where people say either, lock down completely, or, let it rip—have crowds go to bars. But accepting the data that young people generally do well, there's an understandable, and I guess somewhat innocent determination that if I, as I'm not, but if I were a young person and I got infected, I look around at my friends and say, you know, the overwhelming majority of them do just fine. And how long do you think we're going to be wearing them for?Anthony FauciWell, you know, I can't predict, Deborah, how long it'll be. That is probably true, but a lot of people are going to die if you do that.So I think as a society, the ingrained in our human spirit, we don't want to really see that because already more than 160,000 people in this country have died. Do you think they've actually got this vaccine and how close are we in this country to really having something and how can we begin to dispense?Anthony FauciWell, I mean, having a vaccine, Deborah, and proving that a vaccine is safe and effective are two different things. And the answer is as, as, as I think you've introduced it correctly, I believe as a default position, we should try as best as we possibly can to get the children back to school for all the reasons that you mentioned—the benefits for the children, the unintended negative consequences, if we don't—but there's a big however there and the however is or the, but is that we make sure that the primary consideration is the safety, the health, and the welfare of the children, as well as their teachers and the secondary effects of people they may come into contact with. As I said before, and doing things like possibly more physical separation, hybrid schedules, a lot of things.But finally, importantly, when you have a situation where you're in a red hot zone, where you have a lot of infection going on, I think you've really got to use judgment and carefully consider. Can people safely go out and vote in person, given that this year, there is so much concern around the vote?Anthony FauciI think if carefully done, according to the guidelines, there's no reason that I can see why that not be the case. So if you're talking about this time next year, and we have a vaccine, and we get the level of infection so low that we can successfully contain any little blips that occur and prevent those blips from becoming surges, the way we have seen and are seeing in certain states, I think that we could be in a really good place this time next year. The federal government is providing it for me.It seems inconceivable, I mean, if you just think about it, take a deep breath and think about it, that when you're trying to promote public health principles to save people's lives and keep them healthy, that there's such divisiveness in the country that that's interpreted to be so far from your own way of thinking that you actually want to threaten the person. I mean, I just, it's tough for me to figure that out except to say, Boy, I hope we get past this divisiveness in our country and get more down to, even though people have their different thoughts and different ideologies, that we get it out of the realm of such intense divisiveness that you start doing things like threatening people.