We are now having 30,000 new cases a day. I would not be surprised if we go to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around so im very concerned. Good morning. I am bob costa of the Washington Post and welcome, doctor fauci, director of the National Institute of allergy and Infectious Disease at the nih and a member of the president s task force on the pandemic and he threw out the first pitch at the opener thursday night when the nationals played his hometown new york yankees. We appreciate your time. Good to be with you. Was that a flat curve . It went in the wrong direction. I joked around after and said i used to be a shortstop when i played ball as a young boy and thought i was supposed to throw a first base. We wont hold it against you. Heres my first pitch. We are both glad baseball is back but is it too soon . I dont think so if it is done carefully. If you look at the protocols Major League Baseball has put together to protect the players and other personnel associated with the organization getting them tested frequently, doing protocols that are quite safe as well as having no people in the stands. When we were discussing how to open up baseball again, i was one of many people that they consulted with and one of the things we said was important is paramount to safety for the players and their families, safety for the personnel and safety for anyone who might be a spectator. What theyve done as we did last week, the players that followed strict protocol. I think it can be done. It is a little different because there are no spectators in the stands. Really craving for the relief and restrictions, would love to see baseball in any form. Encouraging college football, you expected to return this fall. I give some fundamental tenets of Public Health of People Associated with those organizations who asked me for advice. And it is inherently contact sport at the professional or College Level that you would have to look at how they are trying to do it, what the protocols are. I cannot be the judge of that. I can only talk to people about what the risks are and safety procedures must be. You dont seem to be encouraging the idea. Guest i dont want to come across as encouraging or discouraging. Just trying to be realistic about with the challenges. If you do a good enough protocol you probably can do it but wants to make sure it is well thought out, paramount in your consideration. Host when you look at the data and the mask, where the us is today. Guest one of the things that has always concerned me that we talk about a lot in the discussions at the Coronavirus Task force. If you look at the plotting of the curve for europe it went way up, multiple Different Countries in the European Union but if you look at it as a group they go way up and then came back down to a true baseline of tens, hundreds of new cases a day as opposed to thousands, tens of thousands of new cases. The issue is when we shut down in contrast to the European Union, 50 or so in reality, the European Union shutdown 90 , when he went to the peak as a country, he came down and plateaued at around 20,000 cases a day and when we saw the resurgence in the Southern States we went up to 30, 40, 50, 60 and even reached 70,000 per day. Thats not a good place to be. My concern is we have a challenge in front of us and i hope we can meet the challenge of bringing that baseline way down almost to a real baseline so when we proceed to open up the country again which i think we all should try hard to do, we are starting off from a baseline that is low enough that when we get these cases, will be able to contain them rather than have these surges, the way we have seen recently in florida, texas or california. If you were in charge of the plan to get us out of this mess you just described starting now, what would it be . It would be a few things. In the states that have been trying to open particularly the Southern States that got into trouble the first thing is you dont necessarily have to go back to a shutdown but you have to paz and maybe a backing up a bit. Backing up for those not familiar with the guidelines, the guidelines for reopening starting with a gateway. Look at where you are and have decreases in cases over a period of time, 14 days, you go to the next step which is phase i, then go to phase 2 etc. Some of the states have essentially skipped over some of those check points. My advice would be timeout and go back to a prior check point and tried to proceed in a measured, prudent way. If we do that i think we can control the surging in those states. Please look at the example of what happens when you open in a way that might be too quickly. As you are opening everybody should be trying to reopen america again but do it in a way that is in accordance with the guideline. Finally, there were certain fundamentals that we should be doing almost universally and that is universal wearing of masks when outdoor. Number 2, outdoor better than indoor, avoid crowds, keep physical distancing and continue with hand hygiene like washing your hands. If we did just that, there have been analysis studies that have shown that you can diminish the transmissibility by a significant amount. There are some relatively easy things that can be done to get to the goal of where we want to be. Host lets pause on the final point, universal wearing of face coverings. To the federal government put some muscle behind that it and have a National Mandate to wear masks . There is always a lot of debate about that. Is not the we should or should not wear masks, the debate is about the concept of a mandate that if you put a mandate in you have to enforce it and if you enforce it, what other problems is that going to lead to. Many people feel rather than making a mandate, be explicit about the consistency of your message, that everyone from the top down says you should be Wearing Masks and we strongly, strongly urge you to wear masks at all times when you are outside. We have a lot of questions readers are interested in hearing from you on different fronts. One of them, candace gray of kansas asks do you have any projections about the combination excuse me of covid19 and the flu during the fall and winter. If we get anything that resembles a typical influenza season, there will be complications because then you would have if we have covid19 in the fall and winter which is likely we will, we have a little bit and not a lot but certainly we will have some of it that if you have two cocirculating respiratory diseases it makes things more complicated. One of the things we can do is make sure we get as many people vaccinated for influenza as we possibly can, because that would ultimately help to mitigate at least one of those two potential recirculating respiratory diseases so it is going to complicate the situation and the question you just read is an important question. Host we live in a time where conspiracies gain traction on social media, some americans are wary of vaccines. How will you get people to take the vaccine whether it is for the flu or a potential covid19 vaccine . A very good question and difficult with the antiscience, antiauthority, Antivaccine Movement if you want to call that, in the United States. We need to keep articulating with clear messages and Good Community outreach to explain to people why it is so important to get vaccinated. Not only vaccinated against flu it when we have an influenza vaccine but when we have the covid19 vaccine which i think we will likely have either by the end of this year or by the beginning of 2021 that we need to do enough good, clear Community Outreach and Community Engagement to get people to understand why it is important for their own protection and to get a degree of herd immunity in the community. Host lets get to the issue of schools. On everybodys mind who has families, people in their family thinking of going back to school. One of our readers wonders, quote, if schools open in the fall would you send your kids into the building . Your children are no longer school age but how would you answer that question . Guest it is not a simple answer to the question because first of all let me say as a broad default position we should try as best as we possibly can to keep the children in the school and get them back to school when the School Season starts for the reason i think we are familiar with that the downstream unintended Ripple Effect consequences of keeping children out of school and the impact on parents on the psychological issues with the children we should try that. Having said that, when you ask that question it depends on where you are. We live in a very large country that is geographically and demographically diverse and certainly different to the extent to which there is covid19 virus activity. If you live in a county or place where there is very little activity may be nothing much you need to do but send the children back to school. If you are in an area where there is viral activity, you want to look at what the schools can do, the cdc has come out with explicit guidelines of the kind of things you need to do to protect the health and safety of the children because that needs to be paramount. The safety and welfare of the children and the teachers who have taken care and teaching the children, some schools will be doing things, separating desks, alternating schedules, hybrid schedules online versus in class, Wearing Masks, children holding up to tolerate wearing a mask so theres a lot of things to do. I would go with recommendations of the School District i am in. My children went to school when they were children, they are adults now in washington dc, i would look at what is being recommended where i am living. Do you support the cdc guidance . I do. The cdc put this in good guidance, i took a quick look at them before starting into the program by colleagues at the cdc. Host what about the fact of children under 10 as spreaders . The secretary of education said more studies show kids are stoppers of the disease. Is that true . Im not going to agree or disagree. Host where are the facts. Guest it gets taken out of context. There was a study that was done, we need to learn a lot about children, getting infected, what the percentage of their infected, a recent study came out that showed children up to 10 years old. It looks like they dont necessarily spread infection as readily as adults do. 1019 appear to be spreading as well as adult others spread to adults. There is a lot to learn about what the prevalence and incidence is and as a group do they spread, do they get antibodies, in order to answer that question, started a study on may 1st, some answers this year, a study called hero study, and covid19 infection. 2000 families to ask those questions. If they do do they transmit it to adults would they be part of the spread of infection. But doctor fauci, if we need information how do parents feel comfortable sending kids back to school . Parents are fundamentally concerned, they can get infected. Maybe not very efficient but may be very efficient. The question you just asked, when you send them to school, depending on the level of infection, where they are. The questions are related but were a little different. Host theres a lot of confusion out there. And in as little as three weeks. A reasonable question brad asked but that is in the arena we need to get more information. It indicates, you certainly recovered the infection. They have antibodies which is an indication that you have been infected, where you have antibodies. When they looked at a group of people, symptomatic we or without symptoms, a study showed there was a great deal of variability how long the antibodies last. Some individual, it lasted a matter of several weeks and others lasted months. Since we were 6 months into it we dont know how long it lasts in most of the people. As the questioner asked, in a short period of time, we need to know what that means. Are there other aspects of the immune response, with tcell immunity that could still protect them. In the weeks and months that go by, we have to admit that and be humble enough to realize when you have a process that is evil thing, there are certain things you know for sure but you need to keep an open mind as weeks and months go by, so you learn more about. Host when is the absolute earliest a vaccine might be widely available . Guest the keyword is widely available. We will likely know whether a vaccine is safe and effective given the number of phase 3 trials, next week. We should know by the end of december of this year, at the end of next year. It might be a month or two sooner. I am a little skeptical of that. But the crux of your question, when widely available, in the beginning of next year, we would have tens of millions of doses available. The Companies Involved in making these vaccines many of which the federal government is in deep collaboration and promise to get into 2021, hundreds of millions of doses. In answer to the question as we get into 2021, several months in we have a vaccine that is widely available in the United States. Host any new treatments that are effective in the pipeline . Couple treatments have shown to be effective, mostly for people involved in advance disease. Ram a direct antiviral drug, remdesafir, has shown to lessen the time to recovery in hospitalized patients with lung involvement. Another drug which is a commonly used steroid, people on ventilators for requiring oxygen that that drug when given to these people diminish the death rate. It doesnt help people early, you dont want to suppress the immune response. There are a number of drugs in Clinical Trial looking at what the effect would be, and those are antibodies with natural proteins produced in large amounts that are specific against the virus. There is hypo immunoglobulin, that we use to get. Other things going into trial, implications for covid19, a lot of the arena of therapy that is likely, we will get more good results before we see the result of a vaccine which would take several months more. Host have the president s briefings been helpful or unhelpful . Guest the president has gone out there saying things that are important. Wearing masks, they have been helpful and short and crisp which is good when you are trying to get a message across. Three times the president has been out. It is important that continues, short, crisp, have a defined message to understand such as Wearing Masks and staying away from crowds. Host you believe the task force and doctors to debriefing the American Public at this critical time . Guest i think we should and we are. I am doing it right now with you. I welcome this halfhour, with important issues and members of the task force i getting out there. I would like to get out even more, messaging is very important. Host have you sought to join the president that his briefings . Guest not sure that is necessary. They have to do, with getting mixed up. At a briefing with the president people start throwing questions that have nothing to do with the issue at hand. I like to see press briefings that are crisp and to the point. Host you are still advising the president from time to time. Anything you can tell about your phone call last week . Guest we dont like to talk about details of the things you tell the president but it had a lot to do with encouraging to do the kinds of things that were being done so it was a good call. I found it was a positive call. Host when you look at your own counsel to donald trump do you feel that you made any mistakes in your own advice to him in terms of responding to the pandemic . Guest it is interesting when you use the word mistake, something you made a recommendation based on the information you had at the time which is what you should be doing, you look at the data, you look at the evidence and you make either a recommendation or a policy. When the information changes and you change what you are saying, it is because you are following the evidence in the data and that is the right thing to do. Do you then call that a mistake . Back then . Back then it wasnt a mistake because you were acting on the data you know. When you reevaluate it now in the context of the data you know now, look at what you are saying now, dont look at what you are saying now compared to back then. I guess if you want to call it a mistake back then, then call it a mistake but i dont look at it that way. I look at it recommendations based on data as you know it and as the data changes then you change your recommendations. Host is there anything in the answer you are referencing in particular . Guest for example. The issue you mentioned early on about masks. Back then the critical issue was to save the masks for the people who really needed them because it was felt there was a shortage of masks. Also, we didnt realize at all the extent of asymptomatic spread and that a person who can be without symptoms at all could be inadvertently and innocently spreading it to someone who was unaffected. You dont know you are infected because 20 percent40 of the people who are infected dont know they are infected but what happens is as the weeks and months came by two things became clear. One, that there wasnt a shortage of masks. We had plenty of masks and coverings you should put on, that took care of that problem. Secondly, we fully realized there were a lot of people who were asymptomatic spreading infection. It became clear that we absolutely should be Wearing Masks. And other things get taken out of context. Early on when there was maybe one infection when i said at this particular moment we shouldnt be telling the American People to do anything differently. For people who say that is a mistake leave out the second part of my sentence which was however, this could change dramatically and quickly and we need to be ready to respond if in fact things change. The first half of the sentence if you cut off the second half was may be misleading. I have no intention of requiring i think if anything, people think i am too candid. So i dont know where the question is coming from but in some respects thank you if you think that because a lot of people think i am being too candid. Dr. Fauci, thank you for joining us. Good to be with you, bob. Thank you for having me with you. Thank you. And thank you all for joining us here. We appreciate you taking time to listen to that conversation. And when is on the edge of the seat listening to dr. Fauci. I know i was. Next week post light will continue having more of the indepth conversations. We love two Vice President ial hopefuls, val demings of florida, senator Tammy Duckworth of the public, mary trump about her new book and former new Jersey Governor Chris Christie will all be in Washington Post live but thats it for now. This program has concluded. Thanks again for joining us, and have a great weekend. Coming up, House Speaker nancy pelosi will talk about extending coronavirus Unemployment Benefits which are set to expire. Live coverage starts at one p. M. Eastern. Later jill biden the wife of joe biden will take part in discussion on the pandemic. She is joined by texas democrats, live at 2 45 p. M. Eastern here on cspan2. Booktv on cspan2 has top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. Coming up this weekend sunday at 4 30 p. M. Eastern Princeton University professor, author of begin again James Baldwin to america and its urgent lessons for our own on race in america. Watch booktv on cspan2 this weekend. This week on q a we look back to our conversation with john lewis from 2012. Back in 1961 black people and white people couldnt be seated together on a bus. Couldnt use the same waiting room, couldnt be seated together at a lunch counter, in a restaurant. Couldnt use same restroom facilities. We were tested a decision other United StatesSupreme Court trying to make it real. Join a sunday at 8 p. M. Eastern on q a as a look back to our conversation with representative john lewis. President ial candidate joe biden sat down with former president obama this week and talked about the a number of is including president trumps handling of the coronavirus pandemic. When we came into office, even before inauguration, we had seen a historic financial crisis, irresponsibility on wall street had spread out to main street. We had to move fast not just in 100 days. We we had to move in the first month to get the recovery act passed. We are now in a situation where not only we have an economic crisis but we also have a Public Health crisis to boot. Tell me a little bit about how you were seeing the current economic crisis and how you are thinking about the economy brightness. Well, theres three pieces i see. One, weve got to sustain and keep people from going under forever. Theres only 10,000 businesses are not likely to open again, significant number of Small Business and minority businesses. Number two, when they are able to come back in the only are