Thursday, November 19, 2020

Opinion Today: ‘You know, I used to go to a bar’

An especially personal interview.
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By Honor Jones

Cover Stories Editor

Dr. Anthony Fauci seems like a cool guy. “You know, I used to go to a bar,” he told Elisabeth Rosenthal on Wednesday afternoon. “I used to like to sit at a bar and grab a hamburger and a beer.” It’s “kind of fun because it’s social,” he said, “but it’s not fun when this virus is in the air.”

Like most of you, I have read or listened to many interviews of Fauci at this point. But this one felt especially personal.

He described how “stunned” he’s been by “the fact that in certain areas of the country, even though the devastation of the outbreak is clear, some people are still saying it’s fake news. That is a very difficult thing to get over. Why people still insist that something that’s staring you right in the face is not real.”

That’s one reason he’s hesitant to call for a national mask mandate, even though he thinks all Americans should definitely be wearing masks. “Things that come from the national level down generally engender a bit of pushback,” he said, with that classic Fauci understatement. He pointed out that we’re already dealing with a “reluctant populace that doesn’t like to be told what to do.”

What else? He’s very optimistic about the new vaccine candidates. He thinks reliable tests we could administer to ourselves at home would make an enormous difference. And he says he’s still — rarely — venturing out for a haircut.

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