Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, listened during a Senate Committee hearing on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in Washington, DC, on June 30. Al Drago / Pool / Getty Images
Leading infectious disease expert in the United States, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said the White House coronavirus task force leader, Mike Pence, did “an excellent job.”
Fauci and the task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx regularly sounds alarms about pandemics at briefings or in interviews, while Pence has touted good work of the Trump administration.
“He is trying in his role as vice president to really, in a certain sense, also show some things that are going well,” Fauci told the Wall Street Journal in a podcast Wednesday.
“So he is an optimist and he does a very good job as a leader of the task force, I must say.
“I look at data, I analyze data and I give the best opinion based on evidence.”
Fauci said there were many facets to the task force discussion, and he and his colleagues mainly focused on public health. Pence, he said, had other concerns.
“There are problems and needs, from an economic perspective, to be open,” Fauci said. “So all of that goes into the mix and then you see the kind of recommendation that comes out but you know as a member of forced duty, I tell you that we have a serious situation that we really need to overcome.”
Fauci said public health and economic policies need to work together. Other health experts are worried that President Donald Trump has pushed his economic priorities at the expense of the lives of Americans. So far, more than 132,000 Americans have died from Covid-19.
“We should not think of it as one against the other because once you start thinking there is public health and there is an economic opening it looks like they are against power,” Fauci said.
“So, what we are trying to do is get a public health message, if heard and implemented, becomes a gate to facilitate opening and an easier way than there are men on this side and men and women on the other side.”
