this is bbc news. the latest headlines: the families of the victims of one of america's worst mass school shootings in the us state of florida have criticised the decision by a jury to spare the gunman the death penalty. relatives say the jury's decision on nikolas cruz sets a bad precedent. the us congressional committee investigating the storming of the capitol in 2021 has ordered donald trump to give evidence. the chairman said there was no doubt the former president led an effort to upend american democracy. mr trump has dismissed the hearing as a witch hunt. the british chancellor, kwasi kwarteng, has cut short his visit to the international monetary fund in washington as pressure mounts on the uk government to reverse parts of its mini—budget.

there's been turmoil in british markets since the government announced unfunded tax cuts three weeks. it's 4:30. good morning. now on bbc news, hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. last month, president biden told americans the covid pandemic was over. a striking statement, given that us covid deaths are still running at an average of close to 400 a day. the overall covid death toll in the states has topped 1 million. on many measures, america's pandemic performance has been relatively poor. my guest is the soon—to—retire chief medical adviser to president biden, dr anthony fauci, the scientist at the centre

of america's covid storm. what lessons has he learned? dr anthony fauci in bethesda, maryland, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. it's good to be with you. it's great to have you on the show. now, let's start with that big statement by president biden. "the pandemic is over," he declared. do you agree with that view? well, certainly, if you're talking about the pandemic as a widespread disease throughout the world, it's not over. what the president was referring to...

but it's understandable how there could have been some varied interpretations of that. he was referring to the very fulminant phase of the outbreak when, for example, in the united states, we were having about 800,000 to 900,000 infections a day and up to 3,000 to 4,000 deaths per day. we are not at that point now. we're much better off, but technically speaking, we still are in the middle of a pandemic, as you mentioned correctly in the beginning. we're having about 400 deaths per day, which is an unacceptably high level of deaths of any infectious disease, certainly any that we have experienced recently. and so, we really have a ways to go before we can say we're comfortable enough to feel that we're really out of this. we're not there yet. right. so i just wonder whether you think president biden�*s words

are helpful, because it seems to me that, you know, many people, and i would have to say, maybe even at times, you have consistently underestimated covid's staying power, and maybe that's a recurring problem. well, it is. and one of the problems we're having is that we don't want that statement to be interpreted by people to say that we have to let and can let our guard down. we still have to do much better with vaccinations. you know, as a rich country, an enlightened country, we're not doing very well. we only have... ..about 68% of our population has been vaccinated and only one half of those have gotten their boost. we need to do much better than that. if you rank us among countries in the world, even among low— and middle—income countries, we are not at the top of the list in our compliance with getting our citizens vaccinated. so we need to do much better than that. right. isn't one big issue —

and has been for the last 2.5 years in america — the question of trust? the citizens�* trust in the public officials who are organising the covid response. and maybe when biden said what he said, he's yet again sowing seeds of mistrust amongst the population. if 400 people are dying every day... i'lljust give you the words of one respected professor who writes on public health and medicine, josh barocas, who's a professor at the university of colorado school of medicine. he said, "you know what? biden ran on the covid issue. "he ran on the science. "he ran on listening to scientists. "and if he truly believes it's over, he's now duping us. "that comment," says the professor, "was incredibly damaging to public health." would you agree? no, i think that's being a bit unfair. i don't know who that person is, but might have a political agenda. i'm not sure. the president could have used better words than that.

but i don't want this to be a politicisation. everybody understands in the united states that president biden takes the covid outbreak very seriously, as do all of us. so i think we might be just stretching it a bit by essentially making something out of this which it is not. but in terms of the removal of some of... ..many of the restrictions, is there now, for you as a public health expert, is there an acceptable level of covid death? well, you know, it's very difficult to say an acceptable level of death. you do as best as you can to get the level of morbidity and mortality as low as possible. you have to accept some reality and take a look at the various stages of control of an outbreak. for example, we're not going to eradicate sars—cov—2.

we've only eradicated one infectious disease in the history of global health, and that's smallpox, because we had, with smallpox, a virus that doesn't change or vary, it's rather stable. and the protection that's induced by either infection or vaccination is durable to the point of measured in decades, if not a lifetime. the next question is — can we eliminate it the way we have eliminated measles and polio in the united states and the uk and in other developed nations? and the chances are we're not going to completely eliminate it. and again, the reason being is that, unlike polio and measles, which are very stable and don't change and which, in fact, degree of immunity it imparts

is quite durable, we don't have that with covid, in which the variants continue to occur every several months, and the durability of the protection is measured in months as opposed to decades. right. so just... sorry to interrupt, butjust to be clear, then, one key point you seem to be making is that we must expect new variants. we always have to be anticipating that we will see variants, because, historically, over the last three years, we've seen multiple variants. but getting back to what i was saying a moment ago, what can we hope for? we can hope for a level of control of the infection that's low enough that it doesn't disrupt the social order the way it has over the last two and three—quarter years. and you can do that by getting much greater proportion of the global population vaccinated and boosted so that, hopefully, after a period of time,

there will be enough of a level of immunity that even if you do get new variants, there would be enough cross—reactivity to protect you, at least against severe disease, which brings up the point of needing, very likely, although we don't know for sure, we very likely would need a regular enhancing of immunity by a booster shot similar to what we do every year with influenza, so that you can continue to get the level of immunity throughout the world at a level enough that you don't get serious disease. i believe, though i don't know for sure, that we're heading towards that, towards a cadence where you get, like, seasonal vaccinations similar to what we do with flu. but as you've already pointed out to me, america's vaccination rate,

compared to many parts, certainly of the wealthy world, is very poor. and your overall covid performance, frankly, if you look at many measures, is poor in relative terms. why do you think that is? well, there are a number of complicated reasons why that's the case. i can tell you a few that are clear. one, the health care system in our country is one that leads to health disparities, particularly when you're talking about minority populations, brown and black people, who not only have, because of the levels of their employment and their economic situation, have a higher level of chance of getting infected. and when they do get infected, they have a higher level of underlying conditions — hypertension, obesity, diabetes — which render them more susceptible to complications that lead to hospitalisations and death. that's the first thing. but probably something

that's even more important than that is the fact that we have an extraordinary amount of divisiveness in my country, political divisiveness, which has spilled over into our response to a public health crisis. it is really unacceptable and, in many cases, really unprecedented, that you have the acceptability of very proven interventions such as vaccination are determined by one's political ideology. it's very clear that that's the case in the united states. if you look at the states or regions of the country that are what we call red states or predominantly republican or right leaning, the level of vaccination in those places is far less than the level of vaccination in those areas of the country which are centre left or blue states.

that is a fascinating phenomenon, and it points again to this word "trust", and that, in many ways, the federal government and key officials dealing with the covid response, such as yourself, were clearly not trusted by a significant portion of the population. would you accept that you made some pretty significant missteps in the way you communicated your public health messages at the beginning and during the course of this pandemic response? well, help me out. tell me what you think was a misstep and then perhaps i can respond to it. well, let's start with masks and your message on the efficacy of mask—wearing. you appeared at the beginning to suggest it really wasn't very important, that masks made very little difference and there wasn't much point people wearing them. only later did you concede that there was significant evidence that masks really did matter.

yeah, and that was because the evidence was changing. certainly, i take responsibility for the fact that that message in the beginning was not the correct message. but if you look at the circumstances and the data and evidence upon which we based that particular message, it had to do with a number of factors. first of all, there was felt to be a shortage of good masks in the country, that we did not want to get people hoarding masks and taking them away from the healthcare providers who needed them. the second thing, it was not fully appreciated that outside of the healthcare setting, namely the hospital setting, that masks actually were effective. and, importantly, it wasn't appreciated at the time at all that the virus was spread by aerosol, as well as droplets, and even more importantly, that about 50% to 60%

of the transmissions were from someone with no symptoms at all. that's what we thought at the time. right. so your contention is the evidence changed and your opinion changed with the evidence? exactly. yeah, i get that. 0k. you say you want specifics. here's another one. and that's your view on the importance of getting as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible. you said in public, if america could get 75% of the public vaccinated, you believed that that would deliver a very strong chance of establishing herd immunity. other scientists questioned that. and then you backed off and you said, "ah, well, iwasn�*t really telling the truth "because in my own mind "i knew the figure had to be much closer to 90%. "but i daren�*t say that to the american public "because i felt it might discourage them from actually "making the effort to go and get a vaccination." was it your role

to second—guess how the american public might respond to the actual truth? well, i actually have to, with all due respect to you, say you are misconstruing. what i said really rather significantly... 0k. so the issue of herd immunity... and that's unfortunate that you're doing that. i would hope that you would not, but you did. so let's address it. the issue is that the idea of herd immunity is based on the fact that once you get infected, that you are then protected against re—infected. we did not know until it became clear to me and others, and i was always transparent, based on the data that we had at a given time, that this virus is very unusual, because once you do get infected, you don't have a durable degree of immunity that you have, for example, when you get infected or vaccinated with measles

or smallpox or polio. it was a very unique experience to see that we were dealing with a situation where, if you got infected, a virus could change or drift the way we have seen multiple times now over the last two and three—quarter years with covid. those are things that are evolving. and it gets back to, i think, the fundamental principle of the difference between what you're saying and what i'm saying. certainly, if we had known things at the time that they were happening that we know now, retrospectively, we would have made different statements and different recommendations. but all we had to deal with was the data and the evidence at the time. i understand what you are saying about decision—making at the time and how difficult it was. but one more specific, if i may, and, again,

based on some critics�* belief that you didn't always level with the american people, and it became a very big partisan one, this one, because it concerns china, and what your critics say was a flip—flop from you on whether you would countenance the possibility that the covid pandemic originated from a lab leak in wuhan, china. you dismissed that, your critics say, early in the pandemic. you said that it was nothing more than a conspiracy theory. but by the middle of last year, you changed your mind and said that it was well worth investigating the possibility of a lab leak. why did you change? well, again, i believe — again, with all due respect — i got to get back at you for this. you're really misconstruing what happened. so let me respond to you. i have always, always kept an open mind that there is any possibility.

the point that i was making — because something is possible, it doesn't mean it's probable. and what people were saying was there's an equal likelihood that it was a lab leak as it was a natural occurrence. and what happened over a period of months to most recently, very well put together, peer—reviewed papers by a large group of international scientists and evolutionary virologists with no agenda have come to the conclusion that, although we all, myself included, still keep an open mind, it looks like the likelihood and the evidence that is accumulating that this is a natural occurrence far, far outweighs any evidence, if any — and there may be no evidence at all — except conjecture that this is a lab leak.

so i repeat what i've always said. i keep an open mind and i'm always open to new data and new evidence. but the scientific data now, though not absolutely conclusive, strongly points to a natural occurrence. that is the reality, not the way you spelled it out, with all due respect, sir. in reflective mood, how do you think, in future, the situation where a hugely influential science voice such as yourself becomes the figure of such political partisan debate? how can that be avoided in future? i'm sure you saw the poll at some point last year, where 52% of the american public, according to polls, wanted to see you fired. but you're a non—partisan scientist. how can america get out of that situation? right. there is no easy solution to that. and it is an unfortunate reflection of the profound

degree of political divisiveness in my country, which is very unfortunate. where truth does not matter, where unreality and distortion is clear, you can see that, even if you're paying a little bit of attention to what's going on in my country, where you have tens of millions of people who believe that the election was stolen and that president biden is not the valid president, when the overwhelming investigation into that clearly indicates that this was about as fair and well—scrutinised election as we've ever had in the country. and then there are many, many people who believe that the assault on our democracy onjanuary 6th was something that either didn't happen or wasn't particularly important. when you have that kind

of divisiveness... right. let me finish. when you have that kind of divisiveness in the country, you bring up the point of, quote, my popularity, and people saying i'm a divisive figure. well, i'm a divisive figure because i'm telling the truth when i say that hydroxychloroquine does not work, and other people say it does. am i the divisive figure when all the data shows that it doesn't work? no. listen, it's a very fair question. i'm just very mindful, in your long career, and much of your career was devoted to fighting, combatting hiv/aids in the us and around the world, at the beginning of the hiv/aids crisis, many of the activists who wanted us government action to help combat the terrible toll, they were disappointed in you. some of them were furious with you.

they called you a murderer. but you found ways over years to reach out to those people like the activist writer larry kramer and many others, and you actually became friends with them, even though they'd at one point called you a murderer. can you imagine an america where you somehow are able to reach out...? you've alluded to donald trump, to your other opponents, most of them are republican, who castigated you. is there any way to build bridges? i hope so, i hope so. but that would have to really be dependent on people putting aside this profound degree of divisiveness, because, remember, when you talk about republicans, my most enjoyable and productive interactions have been in the more than 50 years that i have been at the nih and at the more than 38 years that i have been the director of the institute, those have been with republicans equally to democrats. for example, i had the honour

and the privilege of establishing and being the principal architect of the president's emergency plan for aids relief, or pepfar, which was, in fact, made possible by my interaction and collaboration with president george w bush. right. clearly a conservative republican. so i think to say republican versus democrat, it is not really correct to do that, because the degree of divisiveness in our country is founded in untruths and distortion. and that theme, if i may say so, dr fauci, has come over loud and clear in this interview. do you think that when you leave thisjob, given the divisiveness that you have seen and the direct threats and intimidation that you and your family have faced, do you think that you can live a safe and serene life in this united states that you describe

when you leave your currentjob? well, i hope so. i still have federal agent protection because of the ridiculous situation where i and other public health officials continually have our life and our safety and that of our families threatened. there's something very, very wrong with that picture. would you not agree? i would. and ijust wonder whether you see any end to it. well, i hope so. i hope... i have a great deal of faith in the ultimate emergence of the better angels in our spirit and in our country. and i do hope that, after a period of time, we do settle into a situation where we have differences, which are healthy, differences are healthy, i think that's an important part of a democracy, but that those differences don't turn into the kind of conflicting divisiveness that we've seen. hopefully that will improve.

the better part of my feeling towards humanity makes me optimistic that it will, but that remains to be seen. well, dr anthony fauci, we thank you very much indeed forjoining us on hardtalk. thanks a lot. my pleasure. good to be with you. hello there. as we head towards the weekend, it continues to be quite a messy, eclectic weather

story at the moment. this is the situation for friday — this weather front bringing some intense outbreaks of rain through scotland and northern ireland. the same time, we've got this weather front moving through channel coasts. that will just cling onto the south and produce some outbreaks of light drizzle, particularly towards the south—east as we go through the day. the best of the dry weather, wales and northern england, before this weather front starts to spill out of scotland by the middle of the afternoon. behind it, for scotland and northern ireland, brightening up, a breezy afternoon, sunny spells and noticeably fresher here — 10—13 degrees the high. but in the south—east once again, we'll see those temperatures peaking into the high teens. now, as we move out of friday, we've got more showers starting to push in from the south and west as an area of low pressure moves in. so, cloudier skies here, a milder start to saturday, but where we get some clear slots, those temperatures may well fall away. the jet stream is going to be quite a powerful one over the next few days and it's centred across the uk, and we all know it's

the jet stream that drives in areas of low pressure across us. so, as you can see, for the start of the weekend, that low pressure is going to be sitting into the far north—west. it could bring outbreaks of heavy rain to the north and west in particular, so not all of us will see rain through the weekend. one spell of heavy rain moving through northern scotland, sharper showers tucking in behind, but sheltered eastern areas may stay relatively dry and bright throughout the day. and if you dodge those showers, well, you'll still continue to see some warmth — 17—18 degrees once again. moving out of saturday into sunday, the low is still anchored to the north of scotland. that's where the heaviest of the rain is likely to be, with another front pushing in from the south—west. so, as we go through the day, a relatively dry start, the heavy rain pushing in through south—west england, wales and up along western fringes. so, once again, sheltered eastern areas may stay dry throughout the day, and in the sunshine, still relatively warm for this time of year. i did say it was quite

a messy story, but as we go into monday and tuesday, things hopefully will quieten down just a touch. that's it. take care.

hello. this is bbc news. with the latest headlines for viewers here in the uk and around the world. the british chancellor cut short his visit to washington as pressure mounts on the government to announce the tax cuts announced in the mini budget. us congressional committee investigating the storming of the capitol in 2021 votes to subpoena donald trump. the victims families criticise a us jury victims families criticise a us jury for recommending that the gunmen who murdered 17 people in an apartment shooting should be spared the death penalty. that you can allow 17 dead and 17 others shot and wounded and