Daily US Times: The top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said he has had no contact with President-elect Joe Biden’s coronavirus transition team. He also said he sees no reason to quit Trump to join that effort when there is so much to do now to fight the surging pandemic.
In an interview on Thursday ahead of next week’s Reuters Total Health conference, he said: “I stay in my lane. I’m not a politician. I do public health things.”
Fauci has served on President Donald Trump’s White House Coronavirus Task Force since January, a position that has frequently put him at odds with the president, who has sought to downplay the coronavirus pandemic and focused instead on opening the economy. There are times when tensions between the two rises, but neither Fauci quit Trump, nor did Trump.
Dr Fauci said: “There’s absolutely no reason and no sense at all for me to stop doing something in the middle of a pandemic that is playing a major role in helping us get out of the pandemic.”
Hi said his advice for the president-elect is “exactly the same” as what he is recommending now – social distancing, washing hands, avoiding crowds, wearing masks.
“Public health principles don’t change from one month to another or from one administration to another,” the health expert added.
Fauci has served six White House administrations and came to the public eye fighting the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan.
As director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, his “day job” is developing vaccines and therapeutics, a work that is starting to bear fruit.
Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech SE announced on Monday that their experimental coronavirus vaccine was more than 90% effective – significantly higher than most experts had anticipated.
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