Deep inequities. The Health Care System was under pressure before covid19. Now we have an opportunity and responsibility to fix those gaps. I would like to thank our sponsor, bio similar forum, for supporting todays summit. We have a fantastic lineup for today event, which will take place in three parts. The first hour will kick off dr. An interview with Anthony Fauci and examine prescriptions from the pandemic. Up our past,nds is are we investing time and expertise to fend off future attacks . How can we sue doctors and nurses, the first responders, so they can focus on healing . And how can we build sustainability and capacity within our health infrastructure, the second part will1 15 to 2 30 eastern explore breakthroughs. R, health and Human Services secretary, will join me at the top of that band. Then we get a break and debt 3 30 eastern, we will shine a light on issues related to race, affordability, and access, issues that have become a matter of life and death. My main guest in that hour will be cdc director robert redfield, who has been a guest previously. You will not want to miss any sessions. Before we get underway, housekeeping notes. You can tweet us at the hill health. You can also tweet questions. If your question is short, i have asked my colleague to write them up and give that to me. We will be monitoring those. We are broadcasting live event will be taking your questions. As with any live stream, you could experience occasional trouble. They say, refresh the page and and mow cases that most cases that will fix the problem. Guest, dr. Anthony fauci, director of the National Institute of health and Infectious Diseases, has probably not had a good nights sleep in more than a year. We are honored to have you in our midst. Of the 500,000 global deaths, more than 130,000 are from the u. S. Let me ask you, what is the state of play, in the most candid terms, for the u. S. Right now . Have aci we still significant problem. We have been heart we have been hit harder than any country in the world. We peaked and then we came down to a level, and instead of going all the way down to the baseline, the way European Countries did, for a number of reasons which we can discuss, we stayed at a certain level of about 20,000 cases per day until recently, when unfortunately, southern states, which had not been previously impacted to a degree, california, texas, arizona, florida, are now experiencing surges of infection that have gone up to 30,000, 40,000, 50,000, and most recently, 60,000 new cases per day. We need to get our arms around that and do something quickly, steve. If we dont, there is a possibility we could see surges in other areas. We are at a very difficult, challenging time right now, as we speak. Hiv, you have dealt with aids, ebola, sica, h1n1, so many other epidemics, and you have worked with communities that have been impacted, and communities that might be vulnerable. What is not clicking in this fauci the nature of the microbe it self, the pathogen. Hyperbolic, it is the and an Infectious Disease persons worst nightmare. It is spectacularly transmissible. The efficiency with which this transmits is really striking. There is a wide degree of variability, certain portion of people 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 get control of read in addition, given the efficiency of the spread, we have to have the capability of going from containment, and keeping it contained, and if we can contain it, to go to mitigation. And in some respects, we have been successful if you look at the curve in new york city, which was hit harder than any place in the world, really, as been able to successfully bring down the number of new infections, hospitalizations and deaths, to an extremely low level. So now, but 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 about to be critical. What we have seen, unfortunately, is that in some southern states, the states have not followed those guidelines in some respects. They have jumped over the benchmarks and the points that needed to be checkpoints, we have to do better than that, we really do. Steve you have set the states that have the most severe outbreaks right now want to consider shutting down again, that the stakes for Public Health are so high right now that we might now 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 think in 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 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. We 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 guideposts. Thats not the way to go. Youve got to rethink that and do it differently. Steve your job is, in part, offering this Public Health guidance, like dr. Birx, dr. Redfield, alex azar and others, some of whom will be on todays show, but your other job, part of your job, is the science, is actually looking and dealing with vaccine and Vaccine Development, as you have in the past. And we see this mad rush from derrida ike mo novi and inovio and 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 moderna 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 in many respects that , will be coming in later. We do hope, given the favorable data that weve seen at of the phase one 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 program 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 the beginning of 2021, we will have a vaccine that will begin to deploy to people who need it. Obviously, the entire population, but priority to those most vulnerable. Steve last years future of the hillm organized, i had the pleasure of interviewing you and you shared what your nightmare was, and you described almost 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, steve. 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 and phase two, 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. And to your specific question, we need to get better at that and do more. , there will be many lessons andthere 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 than 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 every day. And i asked them, what do you most need out there . What does Ronnie Davidson of illinois need, what does Donna Shalala need . And what 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 do to get that . 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 when we 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 of divisiveness. And thats something that i hope now that were so deeply deeply involved in this, that as a country, we realize that. One of the things thats so disturbing is that this issue, particularly now with the resurgences, is of the young people that feel they will get significant difficulty from a young people feel that it is less likely that 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. And 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 efforts. 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. Dr. Anthony fauci, 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. Live, daily, unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, our countries are linked by trade or travel. Issues that impact you. Theo save lives and meet needs of our states, our health care workers. Thelong with briefings on coronavirus pandemic, Supreme Court decisions, and the latest from campaign 2020. Your calls and comments, welcome. Be part of the conversation every day with our live, calling journalwashington and if you missed any of the coverage, watch on cspan. Org or listen with the three cspan radio app. A, sunday night on q journalist aaron geiger smith talks about the history of voting and issues surrounding voting today in her book, thank you for voting. A massive impact on Voting Rights, and there isnt any Voting Rights advocate or attorney that doesnt see it as a ground shaking impact. So while voting laws that are discriminatory are still illegal, there is not federal oversight of states with a history of discrimination, the kind of stopgap where they need federal approval to make voting changes. Watched sunday night at 8 00 p. M. On cspans q a. The republican and democratic parties and the campaigns of President Trump and joe biden are adjusting convention plans, already reshaped by the coronavirus pandemic. The democrats will convene for a scaledback convention in milwaukee starting august 17 through the republicans begin the convention the following charlotte,t 24, and north carolina, before moving onto jacksonville, florida. The democratic and Republican National conventions, live on cspan beginning monday, august 17, and watch anytime on cspan. Org or listen live on the three cspan radio app. Cspan, your unfiltered view of politics. Unusual to say this, is july 15. Grover norquist, president of americans for tax reform, joining us to talk about tax day this year, an unusual one with the delay from april 15. What do you think the pandemic has done to the coffers, the anticipated revenues of taxes . Revenues have come down because the government shut