Reopening efforts as opposed to a complete shutdown. Dr. Factory spoke at a Health Hosted by the hill. Hello and welcome. I am steve clements. I am in a mask. And going to take it off now, but i want to send a message. We believe in mask wearing here. Were delighted to have you. More than ever before, our health is at stake. As we work to quell a Global Pandemic that has taken 500,000 lives, globally, it has exposed deep fissures and equity. It was under stress long before covid19 attacked us. Now we have an opportunity and responsibility to fix those gaps and make sure innovation is accompanied by prescription for affordability and access. I would like to thank our sponsor for their support of todays summit. We have a fantastic lineup of speakers for todays event, which will take place in three parts. You will hear from the highest Public Health officials in the country. The first hour, which we will kick off with an interview with dr. Fauci, will examine prescriptions from the pandemic. If shaking hands are in the past, reinvesting expertise, time, and money to fend of future attacks . How can we support physicians and nurses . The First Responders of this covid era to focus on healing and how can we build sustainability and build capacity with our health infrastructure. Well explorend, innovations and breakthroughs that give us the power to reimagine, Reimagine Health care. Alex azar, the health and Human Services secretary, will join me at the top of that. And then you get another break and i get another break. And the third and final session, well shine a light on issues related to race, affordability, and access, issues that have literally become a matter of life and death. My main guest in that our will be robert redfield, who has been a guest previously. You will not want to miss any of the sessions. Before we get underway, a few housekeeping notes. You can tweet us at thehillhelp. And if your question is short and great, i have asked my colleague, katie, to write them appear and give them to me. Well be monitoring those. We will be taking your questions. As with any live screen, you could experience trouble. I do all the time. They say we refresh the page and sometimes fix the problem. Good luck with that. My first guest is dr. Fauci. He has probably not had a good nights rest since the beginning of the year. The country and the world look to him for counsel, expertise, and hope in the fight against covid19. We are honored to have you in our midst. More than 130,000 of the 500,000 deaths are from the United States. Let the sq, what is the state of play as you see it in the most candid terms in the United States right now . Dr. Fauci steve, thank you for having me. Were still in a significant problem. As you know, we have been harder than any country in the world and what has happened is that we peaked and came down to a level instead of going all the way down to baseline, the way many of the European Countries did for a number of complicated reasons, which we can discuss. We stayed at a certain level of 20,000 cases per day until recently, when unfortunately, seven states which had not been previously impacted to a great degree, california, texas, florida, arizona, are now experiencing surges of infections that have gone up to 30,000, 40 thousand, 50,000, and most recently a total of 60,000 cases today. We need to get our arms around there and do something about it quickly because if we dont, theres a possibility we may be seeing surges and other area. Were in a difficult, challenging period right now as we speak. Dealt with, you have hiv, aids, ebola, zika, h1n1, so many other epidemics out there, and you have worked with the communities that have been impacted in those communities that might be vulnerable. What is not clicking in this case . Dr. Fauci well, first of all, the nature of the microbe itself, the pathogen, this is something i often describe and not to be hyperbolic about it it really is the perfect storm and a public disease experts worst nightmare. Its a spectacularly transmissible virus. Efficiency in which this transmits is really striking. In addition, the wide degree of variability from a certain proportion who get no symptoms up to and including people who get sick enough to require intensive care and die, that is a very complex situation to really get control of. In addition, given the efficiency of the spread, we have to have in place the capability of going from containment and keeping it contained and if, in fact, we cant contain it, to go to mitigation. And in some respects, weve been successful. If you look at the curve, for example in new york city, which was hit harder than any place in the world, has been able to successfully bring down the number of new infections, hospitalizations, and deaths to an extreme a lowlevel. Now what we need to do in this country is to successfully make that transition from baseline control to safely reopening the country. And following the guidelines are going to be critical, and i think what weve seen, unfortunately, is in some of the southern states, the states have not really follow those guidelines in some respects, and jumped over the benchmarks and the point that needed to be checkpoints. Weve got to do better than that. We really do. Steve you have said that the states that have the most severe outbreaks right now really ought to consider shutting down again, that the stakes for Public Health are so high right now that we might not have to reverse that. I want to hear more about that and do you have a receptive audience out there . Dr. Fauci well, i would hope we dont have to resort to shut down. I think that would be something that is obviously an extreme. I think it would not be viewed very favorably, even by the states and the cities involved. So rather than thinking of terms of reverting down to a complete shutdown, i would think we need to get the states pausing in their opening process , looking at what did not work well, and try to mitigate that. I dont think we need to go back to an extreme of shutting down. So if you look at the states that are most heavily involved, and for a while, even up to the present time, when you look at california, arizona, texas, and for, they are accounting for and florida, they are accounting for 50 of the infections. So we know what the target is. We have got to get them to do fundamental things, closing bars, avoiding congregations of large numbers of people, getting the citizenry in those states to wear masks, maintain six foot distance, washing hands, the fundamentals weve been talking about all along. Thats what weve got to start. If we can do that consistently, i will tell you almost certainly you are going to see a down curve of those infections. But weve got to go to that. You cant just say all or none, which is what happened. We went from shutting down to opening up in a way that essentially skipped all the guidepost. Thats not the way to go. Youve got to rethink that and do it differently. Part, your job is, in offering this Public Health guidance like alex azar and others, some of whom will be on todays show, but your other job, part of your job, is the science, is the looking and dealing with vaccine and Vaccine Development as you have in the past. And we see this mad rush from Companies Like pfizer and others, and i guess my question to you is, how hardened are you or how confident are you that vaccines are going to ride to the rescue . Dr. Fauci steve, i think the durable solution to what were in right now has to be a vaccine. There is no doubt Public Health measures are critically important. But i think if you combine the Public Health measures with a vaccine, and just a comment about that since you brought it up, were really cautiously optimistic that things are moving along quite well with more than one candidate. There are a number of candidates that are in various stages of development. The one that you mentioned, the motor no one that was moderno one, will most likely be going into advanced phase three Clinical Trials by the end of this month of july. And then there are other candidates, equally as promising, that will be coming in later. We do hope, given the favorable data that weve seen at of the phase i trials, and in the animal data, that we would be able to induce a response that you would predict would be protective. As you know, with any Vaccine Development programs, you never can guarantee success of safety and efficacy. But the early signs are proving favorable. So we hope at the end of this calendar year and 2021, we will have a vaccine that will begin to deploy to people to people who needed, obviously the entire population, but priority to those most vulnerable. Steve last years future of health form form the hill organized, i had the pleasure of interviewing you and you shared what your nightmare was, and you described almost 280, this pandemic rush to to a t, this pandemic. You said we need to think about platform responses that anticipate the zoonotic transfers from animals to humans and think more proactively. Is this the time, while we are fighting this pandemic, to make the case we should be putting money and resources behind more proactive concerns about the next wave, if you will, the next wave, the next virus . Dr. Fauci yeah, im so sorry i was so prescient when we had our last interview. I really am sorry about that. But youre right. In fact, we did do some of that proactive platform development, which actually allowed us to essentially enter into development of a vaccine and into phase i and phase ii and now coming up on phase three trials, and in absolute record speeds. It was the things we did last year, the year before, the year before that allowed us to move very quickly. Enter your specific question, we need to get and to your specific question, we need to get better at that and do more. There will be many lessons learned. Weve got to, for the future, make sure we dont lose this corporate memory of what were going through because we need to be better prepared. We clearly were much better prepared now for this onslaught then we were 10 years ago. But weve got to take it a step further to be better prepared for the next onslaught, which inevitably will occur just the way when we had our conversation last year, i said this is what i would be most worried about. I am so sorry that it occurred and occurred so quickly after the interview. Steve dr. Fauci, ive been interviewing republican and democratic members of congress, governors, mayors, and other stakeholders in this fight against the coronavirus and i ask them what do you most need out there . What does Ronnie Davidson of whatois need or and they say is very consistent. We need consistent messaging. And we havent been seeing consistent messaging, like yours, that youve been offering consistently. What do we need to get back . What do you believe needs to happen here in washington to get consistent messaging . Dr. Fauci yeah, it needs to be a realization of what you are pointing out. We are all in this together. One of the problems were facing is that in the middle of trying to fight an unprecedented, historic pandemic, there is still divisiveness. There is divisiveness politically. We can see that women look at the different viewpoints that people take towards this. We are all in this together and we can get through this. We can be part of the solution and not part of the problem. And thats something that i hope now that were so deeply involved in this, there as a country, we realize that. One of the things thats so disturbing is that this issue, particularly now with the resurgence is of the young people resurgences, is of the young people that feel they will get significant difficulty from a health standpoint, mainly negative consequences, that theyre getting infected doesnt make that much different. It really does, steve, because not only do they owe it to themselves for an individual responsibility, because they can get severely ill from this. Young people can get severely ill. But by getting infected, they are propagating the pandemic. They are part of the evolution of the pandemic because even though innocently, and inadvertently, they may infect someone else, who then will infect someone else, and then you get a Vulnerable Person who has a very dire consequence. So you cant assume that youre in a vacuum and its only about you. For that reason, we call for and encourage people to really take the personal responsibility, which actually becomes a societal responsibility. If we do that, steve, we will get out of this and we will get out of this well. Steve final question, are you going to see this pandemic through . Dr. Fauci yes, we are. Im going to see it through and the country is going to see it through. And hopefully we will have scientific advances in the form of therapies and vaccines to complement successful Public Health. Steve dr. Anthony fauci, there have been surveys out there that say globally, you are the most trusted man in the world right now. Thank you for joining us. Look forward to seeing you again soon when we can get together in person. Thank you very much. Dr. Fauci i hope so, steve. Thank you for having me. Cspans washington journal. Every day, were taking your calls live on the air. Coming up friday morning, americans for tax reform discusses the impacts of coronavirus on taxpayers and possibilities for tax reform. Tiffany cross on her book, say it louder black votes, white narratives, and saving our democracy and the 2020 election. Watch cspans washington journal. Be sure to join the discussion with your phone calls, facebook comments, text messages, and tweets. Heres a look at our live coverage friday. 11 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan, new Jersey Governor Phil Murphy will speak with the Washington Post about the coronavirus response. At noon, more on the impact with medical experts testifying at a House Homeland Security subcommittee hearing. On cspan2, the House Appropriations committee will discover legislation that sets 2021 spending levels for environmental programs, the interior department, and the legislative branch. American history tv on cspan3, exploring the people and events that told the american story. Coming up this weekend, saturday at 2 00 p. M. Eastern on oral histories, an interview with civil rights activist courteney cox, covering his time at howard university, his involvement in this nonviolent coordinating theittee, and serving as attorney general of the panafrican congress. At four clock p. M. Eastern, the 1963 nbc news report, the American Revolution of 1953, a program on the civil rights movement, with birmingham alabama, cambridge, maryland, and englewood, new jersey, chicago, and brooklyn. At 7 00 p. M. , a discussion on congress, little parties, and the relation and polarization. Presidency, on the author andrew cohen talks about his book. Days, june 10, 1953, that defined ash 1963, the defined 1963, that defined his rights. This weekend on cspan3. The House Foreign AffairsCommittee Held a hearing on the reports of russian bounties on u. S. Troops in afghanistan and the potential impact on u. S. Relations with russia and the taliban. This is about three hours. The committee on Foreign Affairs will come to order. The chairs authorized for resource on the committee and they will have five days to submit statements, extremist material, and quon