Fauci: Trump’s ‘misperception’ of individual rights harms public safety during pandemic

The Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said on “CBS Sunday Morning” that former President Donald Trump’s “misperception” of people’s individual rights damaged public safety during the coronavirus pandemic.

Ted Koppel asked, “Could it have been different? If the president had directed otherwise? ”

Fauci said: “The answer is yes. But when you have leadership, you know, denying that something is as serious as it is, then you have a real problem. In that sense, it could have been different. ”

Koppel said, “Does it border on the criminal?”

Fauci said, “I wouldn’t say that because, you know, that generates a lot of, you know, unnecessary innuendo. It is something as a public health official, in mind it is serious.

For example, one of the things that were most difficult for me to accept is that we put together a good plan for how we were going to try to stop the spread of the infection from the beginning, thinking that this was accepted by everyone.

And then the next day the president says, ‘Free Michigan. Free Virginia. I did not quite understand what the purpose of that was, except to put this perception out of place about the individual right of people to make a decision that supersedes social security.

That, to me, is one of the things that, I think, went wrong in all of this.

Koppel said, “Did you ever raise that with President Trump?”

Fauci said, “You know, I didn’t get a chance to raise him. I was a bit surprised, and then I didn’t speak to him for some time after that. But it was at that point that I realized that I would have to go out myself and say things that were clearly going to be contradictory, that it was much worse than what we were saying, that it was not going to go away tomorrow. , it will not disappear as if by magic.”