NYT "When Will We Throw Our Masks Away? I Asked Dr. Fauci"
In a new interview, he tells us how to survive the coming months, and confesses how stunned he is when people still insist the virus is “fake news.”
Elisabeth Rosenthal
By Elisabeth Rosenthal
Contributing Opinion Writer
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/opinion/anthony-fauci-covid-interview.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
As a health journalist, a physician and a former foreign correspondent who lived through SARS in Beijing, I often get questions from friends, colleagues and people I don’t even know about how to live during our current pandemic. Do I think it’s safe to plan a real wedding next June? Would I send my kids to school, with appropriate precautions? When will I trust a vaccine?
To the last question I always answer: When I see Tony Fauci take one.
Like many Americans, I take my signals from Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert and a member of the White House task force on the coronavirus. When he told The Washington Post that he was not wiping down packages but just letting them sit for a couple of days, I started doing the same. In October he remarked that he was bringing shopping bags into the house. He just washes his hands after unpacking them. (Me too!)
Now we are in a dangerous political transition, with cases spiking in much of the country and Dr. Fauci and the original task force largely sidelined. President-elect Joe Biden has appointed his own, but it can’t do much until the General Services Administration signals that it accepts the results of the election. And Dr. Fauci told me he has not yet spoken with the Biden task force. President Trump has resisted the norms on transition in which the old and new teams brief each other and coordinate.
The past tumultuous months have been filled with information gaps (we’re still learning about the novel coronavirus), misinformation (often from the president) and a host of “experts” — public health folks, mathematical modelers, cardiologists and emergency room doctors like me — offering opinions on TV. But all this time, the person I’ve most wanted to hear from is Dr. Fauci. He’s a straight shooter, with no conflicts of interest — political or financial — or, at 79, career ambition. He has no interests, other than yours and mine.
snip - lots of to and fro with Fauci -
last question and answer
When do you think we’ll all be able to throw our masks away?
I think that we’re going to have some degree of public health measures together with the vaccine for a considerable period of time. But we’ll start approaching normal — if the overwhelming majority of people take the vaccine — as we get into the third or fourth quarter [of 2021].
sorry about the paywall. worth a read.
= new reply since forum marked as read
