He’s the nation’s top expert on infectious diseases, has served under six presidents, and is now advising the nation on the coronavirus pandemic. This is Dr. Anthony Fauci.
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00:00When you're dealing in the interface of politics, policy, and medicine,
00:06the thing that I have found to be very effective is be consistent,
00:11be totally honest, and don't tell people things that you think they might want to hear.
00:30I think this had a major influence on me, and what I did, is the issue of service to others.
00:51My father was raised early on in the Little Italy section of New York and Manhattan,
00:56moved to Brooklyn, and then our family was raised in Brooklyn.
00:59He went to Columbia University College of Pharmacy, became a pharmacist,
01:04and that's what he did for all his life.
01:26We don't know a lot about AIDS, but we also know an incredible amount about it.
01:55From our experience over the past three or four years.
02:26One of the toughest decisions, I had a few, was when I made a decision
02:31during the middle of the early years of the AIDS pandemic
02:38to bring the activist community into our deliberations.
02:43Because most of the scientific community, including my own staff, were totally against that.
02:55I also want to thank Tony Fauci.
03:15He works for the NIH.
03:18He is on the leading edge of finding the vaccines that will help those who suffer from AIDS.
03:26I love Tony's commitment to humans, to what's best for mankind.
03:49I love to run, so it's one of the few things that I don't need to look for motivation.
03:53I don't look outside and say, oh gee, I have to go out and run.
03:56I look outside and say, I can't wait to get out there.
04:18I think what we're seeing is a catastrophic health crisis in West Africa and an epidemic of fear here.
04:32I mean, I don't disrespect that fear and I don't criticize it,
04:36but you've got to evaluate your risk and relative risk based on scientific evidence.
04:44And to this day, two people have gotten infected in the United States of America.
04:50Two people have gotten infected while they're here.
04:53Both of those people were brave nurses who were putting themselves in harm's way
04:59by taking care of an Ebola patient in a hospital.
05:15I can say we will see more cases and things will get worse than they are right now.
05:35How much worse we'll get will depend on our ability to do two things.
05:40To contain the influx of people who are infected coming from the outside
05:45and the ability to contain and mitigate within our own country.
05:50Bottom line, it's going to get worse.
05:52I'm not totally sure what the president was referring to,
06:11but I believe he's referring to a report that used both hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin together
06:19to have some possibility of being in effect.
06:22Many of the things that you hear out there are what I had called anecdotal reports.
06:28They may be true, but they're anecdotal.
06:31The president is talking about hope for people.
06:34I've got to do my job as a scientist and others have other things to do.