information with general michael flynn and who went on to become the president's national security adviser and pled guilty in investigations and the current attorney general dropped that case. thanks for joining us today. see you back here this time tomorrow. busy news day. brianna keilar picking up our coverage right now. have a good day. hi there. i'm brianna keilar and i rb viewers here in the united states and around the world. tore the tenth time in two weeks the u.s. reports more than 1,000 deaths from coronavirus in a single day. marking more than 10,000 american deaths since july 22nd. yet the president "still doesn't get it" from a source familiar with the coronavirus task force meeting. the first meeting the president attended since april. the source says the president still does not have a grasp of the severity of this pandemic six months in. experts attempting to explain how dire the situation is the president kept changing the

subject. in an interview on fox this morning he downplayed, continued down playing the crisis. >> some states are going up a little bit, but they will very shortly, they're under control. they'll be coming down. >> cnn also learning this hour that the pandemic is dramatically altering a look at the national political conventions just weeks a y awaa. joe biden no longer accepting his nomination at the party's convention in milwaukee. instead accept it from his home state of delaware and president trump is weighing giving his convention speech in the white house. now to the decision that is facing millions of parents. what to do about school? yesterday we compared it to the president telling you to jump out of a plane without telling you ho you to use a parachute or even providing one. actually, the president doesn't think you need a parachute shuc all because he thinks he knows how to fly and better than the health experts telling us children can contract

coronavirus and transmit it. here's how he made the case for kids going back to school on an interview on fox this morning. >> in my view, schools should be opened. if you look at children, children are almost, and i would almost say definitely, but almost immune from this disease. so few. they've got stronger, hard to believe, i don't know how you feel about it, but they have much stronger immune systems than we do somehow for this, and they do it, they don't have a problem. they just don't have a problem. >> now, just a note before pe we talk about this the president said in that interview older teachers should stay home. fewer teachers would mean, of course, more crowded class loro against the advice of his own government experts like those at the cdc. ka kaitlan acollins at the white house. fact check here. this claim about children being

basically immune is not only wrong, it's irresponsible? >> reporter: completely. it's completely wrong. i don't know where help is getting this. he seems to be just pulling things out of his hat. children are not immune to this infection. we know that they get infected, and that they get as sick as adults? no. more mild illnesses, sometimes no illness but are getting infected. brianna, it's important, they transmit it to other people. my husband and i used to call our daughters lovingly our little disease vectors. they are little disease vectors for covid-19 as well. trump's own surgeon general said that children can get other people sick. he needs to listen to his medical experts. >> and kaitlan, the president claims the country is doing just fine and just democrats want schools to stay closed. let's listen. >> but to democrats, they're standing in our way. they don't want their states open.

even if the state is in good shape, because you know, much of country's in really good shape. we see the red spots and we have them in red, you know, the covid areas, but the country's in very good shape, and we're set to rock 'n' roll, but the big problem we have is democrats don't want to open their schools. >> now, the president met with his coronavirus task force in the oval office yesterday. cnn has new reporting what happened inside, kaitlan. >> reporter: yeah. basically sources in that meeting did not think that the president is taking the coronavirus seriously, and you can see that from his public comments. where he is saying things like, things are going to be fine by november when it comes to concerns about voters going to the polls ame and peel in the president's own age group worried about going there. that's the question. that he's still not taking this seriously. what will change that, if anything. that doesn't seem to be the case. so that's really the question going forward about, you know,

the president's strategies here. he is now going and attending task force meetings. the first one we note he attended since april, but as the president was talking, as he was saying in that clip, talking about going away, talking about that's not backed up by anything his own health experts are saying, and he says he may actually do his nomination speech from the white house, kaitlan. speaker of the house says he can't do that. you tell us. >> reporter: even republicans are asking that question. if it's legal for the president to give this kind of a major political speech from a taxpayer funded venue like the white house. i don't think that's ever been done before. the president floated it today during that interview but seemed to hint there was a chance he could get backlash for doing it. seems that's already happening. saw house speaker nancy pelosi saying he could not give a political speech from the white house, that could only fuel him to want to give it there. aides planning how for him to do this. it speaks to how the president

views this, and the hashtag, the law that prevent political aides in the white house or aides from inside the white house doing political events, that doesn't apply to the president and to the vice president, but could apply to other aides. even if they're found to be in violation of it like kellyanne wonwa wa conway, up to the president to reprimand. he took in action against kellyanne. unlikely he would do it against other aides, either. >> elizabeth, tell us about testing now. such a big topic. the lag time between testing results that can be as much as ten days. then there are rapid tests. the ten-minute tests they're using at the white house. the president says they're doing great there. let's listen. >> we're 50% on the tests, avid test or equivalent. goes up to 15 minutes. a great test. by the way, that test didn't even exist until we came up with that test.

>> fact check that for us. what's reality on rapid tests, elizabeth? >> reporter: first of all it's unclear exactly what the president is saying. sounds like maybe ease saying 50% of the tests out there in the united states are rapid tests. if that's what he's saying i don't know where he's getting that from. we've seen no tally saying 50% are this kind. 10% this kind. 20% this kind. we don't even know where that's coming from. secondly, rapid tests have a problem. yes, speedy. experts told me you get in speed or forgo accuracy. too many faulse results. that's a problem. tests that take longer are more accurate but of course, we'd rather have a rapid test. what we need to do and so many months into this you think we would have done it already. come up with a rapid test that is rapid and accurate. >> all right. thank you to both of you. kae katelyn and elizabeth.

listen in to dr. anthony fauci speaking now with cnn's dr. sanjay gupta. let's listen in. >> questions coming in from all over. we'll get to those. first, let me introduce the man of the hour. joined by dr. anthony fauci. director of the nicig, as you all know. taking questions and also from the distinguished faculty at harvard chancellor of public health and streaming on cnn.com for people that want to watch that there. go ahead and start sending in those questions. we want this to be as engaged and interactive as possible. the latest installment, however, when public health is in business. dr. fauci, welcome. >> thank you, sanjay. great to be here. thank you for having me. >> i've got to -- so much to ask you. every time we get together and you're so generous with your time when i call and i appreciate that. there's so much that people want to flknow. let me ask, how are you doing?

i know it's been a very long six months. you've been doing amazing work. tirelessly. how are you? >> you know, in general, sanjay, i'm fine. i'm adjusted to the chronic exhaustion. i think one of the good things about having done my internship and residency during a period of time when we were on every other night and every other weekend before those rules were changed, i think this is my internship on steroids here. so -- i'm doing fine. so i can't complain. i think the energy and the adrenaline rush and the focus comes from what you said, the importance of the problem and what the president said this is a historic situation we're facing. so we just got to focus in on our jobs and worry about relaxing later, but not now for sure. >> i should point out you were seeing patients earlier today.

still staying clinically active. i as well. one. great joys of continuing to be able to practice medicine. you have told me, and told others, you have no intention of not staying in this job, as tough as it's been, frankly, lately. so let me ask the question a little differently. you and i also share, both have wives and three daughters. hows christine dealing with all of this? is she worried about you? does she suggest maybe you pull back at all? >> well, she doesn't suggest i pull back. she's fine. the girls are fine. they're geographically distributed. they're young women now, and have their own jobs and their own professions. in three separate cities so i miss sees them. the only stress i think more on the children, chris is a rock. she's my anchor. it's the -- the really unseemly things that crises bring out in the world. you know, it brings out the best of people and the worst of

people. you know, getting death threats for me and my family and harassing my daughters to the point where i have to get security is just, i mean, it's amazing. i wouldn't have imagined in my wildest dreams that people who object to things that are pure public health principles are so set against it and don't like what you and i say, namely in word of science, that they actually threaten you. i mean, that, to me, is just strange. so other than that, which they're handling well, i wish that they did not have to go through that. >> well, i'm sorry that you're going through that and your daughters and christine. i know it can't be easy. ian williams referred to a war on science, dr. fauci. we're talk a little about that, but you are the face of science for so many right now. not just here in the united states but around the world. i am sorry that you're going through that. there isn't an excuse for that. we have a public health crisis

through which your helping us navigate ourselves. let's get to that. i want to show this animation of what's going on in the world with regard to covid in early countries around the world. get an idea look at the timetable, obviously things started in china. in middle march there. then the united states takes over there, dr. fauci, you can see. i think you can see this graphic. takes up to august 5th. as was asked, how did we get here? >> you know, as she also said, it's such a complicated situation, sanjay, of how we got here. first of all, we got hit really hard by a historic pandemic that has characteristics that make it very difficult even under the best of circumstances to respond adequately, and that is an outbreak of a virus that has extraordinary, unprecedented

capability of transmitting efficiently from human to human. you know, when viruses jump from an animal host to a human, as we see with the original sars, which we're able to contain by public health measures, or with the bird flu which jumped to human with no capability of really going from human to human, we now have one that jumped from an animal, in this case a bat, certainly, and then maybe an intermediate host, that evolved and developed an extraordinary capability of spreading from human to human so that by the time you really got your arms around this, you had penetration into the community, and every country has suffered. we, the united states, have suffered as -- as -- worse or, you know, as much or worse than anyone. i mean, which you look at the number of infections and the number of deaths, it really is,

it's quite concerning. and, again, the factors that got us there, we can go over one by one. i don't think -- i'd have to give a slig kwi soliloquy to go them. >> i understand. a contagious vishrus, that's tr. the graphic was really meant to show the united states, comparison to the rest of the world and i realize there's a lot in there. when you say we're one of the worst. reminding me not quite some of the world's population yet represent 20% to 25% of the world cases coupetively. 20% to 25% of the world in deaths. is that not the worse? >> yes. quantitatetively it is. i mean, the numbers don't lie. >> get to questions right away and we'll keep coming back to this topic. dr. arne epstein has a question specifically for us.

>> dr. fauci, the title of the series is "when public health means business." this far seems we haven't meant business at all. the united states has 4% of the world's population but 25% of the world's covid cases and deaths. for a country that is the most affluent and influential my question is, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently before the next pandemic or during it? >> well, i think there's two parts to that question, sir. one is, you know, how we might explain how this happened and what i would do different, and then what you would do different for the next pandemic. i think preparedness. we put together a pandemic preparedness plan as we were trying to respond to the threat of the pre-pandemic bird flu back in 2005, and, again it was a plan that was a reasonable

plan. and, in fact, when it was evaluated independently by johns hopkins, it stated that it was our preparedness for a pandemic, essentially number one in the world. but what happened when the rubber hit the road on this, and we did get hit, we had to kind of, the kind of response not as well suited to what the dynamics of this outbreak is, and what happened is we had a bit of a disparate response. we live in a very big country and we often leave the decisions about the inchmentatimplementat things at the loecal level. we've seen a great disparity how individual states, cities, et cetera responded. the critical issue i think we need to look at, how we can get that down is that when you look at the curves and it relates to sanjay's graph, that when we went up and then started to come

down, everybody got hit badly. china got hit badly. europe, particularly italy, france and spain. when they went up, and they responded, they came all the way down to a base line so that when they started to reopen their countries in a very careful way, they had to deal with little blips that could easily be controlled. when you looked at our curve, it's telling. that's the thing that bothers me. we went way up and when we came down, we came down through a plateau of 20,000 cases per day. that is not a good base line. we needed to get further down. so that as we went along over weeks and months, we stayed at 20,000 per day. some parts of the country did very well. they came up and they came way down. other parts of the country held it so it didn't even go up, but

there was so many different players, as it were, in the country, that the totality of the country, the sum net of that was a flat line that was very high, and then when we decided with the guidelines of how we can open america again, for reasons that we obviously couldn't stay shut down forever. having terrible economic consequences. terrible consequences on employment. we decided we would try to take steps to open, and when we did, we didn't do it uniformly. some states did not pay attention to the -- the blen benchmarks or the checkpoints. others did it fine, but the citizenry within a state or within a city actually did it all a phenomenon. we're locked down now we're just going to let it fly. you could say, no, that didn't happen.

but the numbers tell you what happened. because what happened, as we began to open we went from 20,000 a day to 30,000, 40,000, 50,000, 60,000 and even peaked at 70,000 new infections. deaths had gone down nicely. that was good. now they're starting to go up because of the cases that went up. oh we have a disparate response. we didn't all row together. we had some went up and some went down and parts of the country you could look at that did very well. but totally, as a nation, we are in that situation where we've got to get that control way down to a low base line. >> so, dr. fauci, let me just -- summarizing. we were ill-prepared to deal with this pandemic in the first place, sounds like, and then you called the response sort of a disparate response. sounds like it was a failed response? we never really fully implemented a therapy? i mean, in medicine, if you give a half a therapy you wouldn't

call it a disparate therapy. you would say you gave inadequate therapy toy actu act treat the problem. did we let the american people down with our response? >> sanjay you know if i make the statement we let the american people down it would be distracting. that would be the sound bite and i wouldn't want to get the message i'm trying to get across where i think we can handle this if we have some fundamental principles that i hope and i know you'll let me get the opportunity to articulate, because we can do much better, and we can do much better without locking down. and i think that -- that binary approach, that lockdown where you let it all fly, there's some place in the middle when we can open the economy and still avoid these kind of surges that we're seeing. and i hope we get a chance to discuss that. >> maybe we can get right to that now, sir.

you've made the list the other day. i'll rattle them off for the audience. wore masks, kept physical distance. shut down bars or at least indoor, close and crowded situations, large gatherings, and washed hands often. out of those five things -- >> outdoors, much better than indoors. that's a good point. >> if we did those five points. not shutting down, but if we did those five things, what would the country look like in three or four weeks? >> it may take a little longer than three or four weeks's what it would look like in a month or a mo a month and a half, i think the kind of turnaround. the southern states that got hit badly. southern california. arizona. texas, and florida. what arizona did is that they finally did say, wait a minute. we're in trouble. we're going to institute those it fundamental principles, and

they came right down in a nice curve. which is really good. so here's the point i want to make. it's that -- and it seems simple. it's that one of the things working against it. the good news about covid-19 is that 40% of the population has no symptoms when they get infected. that's good. you get infected, you have no symptoms. the bad news for messaging is that 40% of the population get 2340 symptoms. because if you want a unified response, what is most usual, a most usual virus, sanjay. i don't think anything has come close to that in my 40 years experience. 40% of people with no symptoms and some get minor symptoms, some serious in bed several weeks and even residual effects

i hope we can talk about later. some ventilation, some deaths. if you look at the population as a whole, to get a unified message that everybody understands, you have some people who they know statistically it's not going to bother them individually as a person, because the chances are they're not going to get symptoms and even if they do they'll be mild. then you get others. the ones we have spoken about on your show a lot. elderly. those with underlying conditions. even young people with underlying conditions. who it is a significant threat of serious disease and death. so if you wanted to get control over it, it would be nice if everybody was singing from the same tune when you want to get it down. but what's happened, sanjay? look at the reality. what has happened is that we have a situation where we say, open up in a measured, prudent

way. >> yeah. >> you get some that do it fine, and then you see the pictures of people at bars with no masks. not social distancing. i'm not blaming them, because i think they're doing that innocently, because what they're saying incorrectly is that if i get infected, i'm in a vacuum. it doesn't bother anybody else. i'm not bothering them. don't bother me. that's incorrect. because even though you are likely not going to get symptoms you are propagating the ue inin meaning you'll infect someone who will infect someone who then will have a serious consequence. get to a major point. trying to think about some sort of a metaphor and analogy to get peoplementioned my daughters. i bragged to you once, one of my daughters was a pretty good varsity crew member at a

division i college. there were eight people on the boat, and the thing i learned. i knew nothing about crew. but the thing i learned when watching every one of their meets was that you have eight people. the only way you're going to win the race is that when all eight are rowing in unison. you get one that catches a crab, as it were, with, or the oar goes that way or you don't row, you don't win. so as long as you have any member of society, any demographic group who's not seriously trying to get to the end game of suppressing this, it will continue to smolder and smolder and smolder, and that will be the reason why in a non-unified way we've plateaued at an unacceptable level. now, i'm sorry for the long-winded answer, but i think that's the problem. >> so we will keep this line of conversation going, because i think it does then raise the

question, if we can't get to that point where people, either because of trust or because of diligence, with these bake public health measures, if it just isn't happening do we need to do something more aggressive in this country? before you answer, think about that. this goes into our next question. flay that as well. >> the last several months i've spent a great deal of time talking to the community, to the lay about the covid pandemic and advances in hard covid research. i know you've done the same times ten. i have been disheartened by threads of mistrust in the public towards science. i have received questions about, the legitimacy and frankly of the studies and political motivation of the scientists

conducting those studies. and i am in sort of despair about the state of relations between the scientific community and the public, and i was wondering if there are lessons you have learned about building trust between parts of the communities and the public that could help us move forward now? >> you know, that's a very good question, sanjay, and a very good comment. yes, there is a degree of anti-science feeling in this country. and i think it is not just related to science. it's almost related to authority and a mistrust in authority that spills over, because in some respects, scientists, because they're trying to present data, may be looked t eed at, looked s being authoritative figure and pushing back on authority, they're pushing back on

government, it's the same as pushing back on science. unfortunately, that's not what scientists are. and i think we need to be more transparent in reaching out to people and engaging society and understanding why science and evidence-based policy is so important. but the person who just made that comment is absolutely correct. that is really a very difficult thing to do and i know when i say that if we follow these five or six principles, we can open up, we don't have to stay shut. we can push and open up if we do this. some people are just, they don't, believe me, they don't pay attention to that and that's unfortunate. because that is the way out of this. we can continue to go towards normality without doing the drastic things of shutting down if we follow some fundamental principles. >> just because we're talking about things happening realtime and trying to look to the

future, and i want to be optimistic about this, as do you, dr. fauci, but we've tried this. i think you've made the case about the benefit of these simple public health measures. i've made the case. look, these basic public health measures helped eradicate diseases off the face of the earth. and yet we're still not doing it in this country. >> right. >> so just in the interests of where we are going what do we have to do, if that doesn't happen over the next few weeks. do you think we'll have to go into shutdown mode? >> i don't think we'll have to go into shutdown mode. sanjay, i am -- you know, i'm cautiously optimistic. i do have a stake in america's spirit and i say that's the reason i invest the time and love being on with you in any forum because we can start talking about the science, and the more we give a consistent message, the more people are

going to start to understand what we need to do. i think the most part we've been through some terrible times, and once you realize that everybody's in it together, you know, when we had 9/11, everyone was frightened. particularly because we had anthrax after that and that's how i got involved and you and i spent a lot of time on tv talking about that. when that happened, everybody felt threatened. so there was this kind of synergy among different demographic groups about hold together as a nation. now, there's such a divergence of how people view this and such a divisiveness that is now crept into the -- remember a little while ago, you know, it depends whether you wear a mask on how you feel politically. which was completely ridiculous, because a mask is a public health tool. it doesn't make any difference, and yet we've gotten into this.

so the atmosphere that we're in right now is not conducive to you know, to the kinds of things you're talking about. >> i do want to talk about the certainty by which we speak of things. you know, making a comment to someone the other day, dr. fauci, that science, account science for public health is not like math. it's not two plus two equals four. there is a process by which we arrive at conclusions and things like that. when you talk about these five things, wearing mask, physical days answering avoiding large crowds, et cetera. how confident are you that those strategies would work? >> well, good. that's the good question and you're leading up to something that we've discussed a lot over the months and years, yeah. >> sanjay. that is -- i mean, the scientific process is one that's inherently self-corrective, because you look at data at a

given time. you make a decision, a policy, a recommendation, a guideline, whatever want to say, based on that. but the true nature of science is that particularly when you're in an evolving situation, you've got to be flexible enough and humble enough to say you know, two months or three months down the line, we're starting to see a different set of data and a different set of facts that we may want to modify a bit the kinds of decisions and recommendations that we make. it can't be -- if we were in a completely static situation, the facts wouldn't change. i mean, it just doesn't change, but we have uncharted territory. we have something brand new, historic. nothing like it in 102 years, and it's evolving. as it evolves, that's when you make your recommendation, and

particularly things like masks and crowds, indoor/outdoor, aerosol, not aerosol. these are things we're learning as time goes by, and you do the best you can to make the recommendation based on the data that you have right now. >> we do this thing beginning of the town halls that you've been so kind to join us at called "what we know. what we don't know." stick to a kubasic science questions. we know this is a virus. >> correct. >> and novel? meaning unique, something the world hasn't seen before? >> yeah. well, we know the class of virus it is. it's a coronavirus. so the world has seen coronaviruss before. but if you look at the incredible data bank you have and go in, you can see that this virus was not in humans. it was evolving in bats to a point where it was very close, likely jumped to an intermediate

host and now it's in humans. so i am certain from what we know now and the data available that we've never seen this virus before. we've seen coronaviruses as you know. that's the benign ones, before, that cause human common colds have been around forever and they cause anywhere from 15 to 30% of all the common colds that you and i get every year. but this one is new. >> there was some recent literature about the fact that there was evidence of t cell reactivity in 40% to 50% of the people, whose blood studies, studies of their blood. people not exposed to this virus before how could they have this t cell reactivity? and is that a good thing? is that potentially immunity? >> tell you what we do know and hopefully will find out.

we're going to start looking at this. yes. t cell immunity has a degree of specificity or even lack of, so that you could have been exposed to coronaviruses that you and i were sure exposed to and you could develop antibodies that likely will diminish over time, but you would have t cell memory there that could likely cause react with the current coronavirus. if that's true, sanjay, now you've got to get into the realm of other t cells that recognize coronavirus? fact. yes. do those t cells protect you against the coronavirus we're facing? i don't know. but we're going to try and find out, because it is likely that if they really do recognize epitopes on this particular vir

virus, it could explain why some people, particularly children, who might be closer to the response of the common cold coronavirus, why they may be not getting ill. now, how do you do that? you screen a whole bunch of children, and you find out if they have these t cells more than adults. so that's one in which you can make a reasonable assumption, but you don't declare it a fact until you get the data. and that's what we want to do. >> along those lines, there's clearly been data on who is most vulnerable to getting sick, or even dieing from this. people who are elderly, people who have certain preexisting conditions. yet there are these stories, as you know, dr. fauci, of young people seemingly oishz healthy. maybe not kids, in 30s and 40s, not vulnerable patients who also get very sick all of a sudden and need the ventilator, need to be on medication and all of this. is it still random or do you

have a better idea why some of these other patients get so sick? >> yeah. the answer is we have some clear idea, and there's still some things that are unknown. so in the typical biological world you and i live in there's a famous bell shaped curve. okay? so if the big part of the bell is the people you know have a higher degree of likelihood of a serious outcome. the ed letterlderly and those w diabetes, obesity, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, et cetera. they have a much higher likelihood. you look at data. data nails that down. 90%-plus of the people who die are over a certain age. then you get the people on the tails of the bell shaped curve. and that is the people who are young, seemingly healthy, and we're seeing more and more of

them who get a serious outcome to point they get hospitalized and sometimes die. i have to tell you without any names, i have even close to me in the brother of a very close relative of mine. a 32-year-old young man vibrant man, otherwise healthy, got a typical coronavirus infection. got symptoms. developed a cardio myopathy and died. that happens. that just happens. it isn't the -- the majority by any means, because if you look at the bar graphs that you're familiar with, when you look at the hospitalization per 100,000 and you look at the age, it goes like this. where it's hundreds per 100,000 when you're an elderly individual and it's like four to five when you get down here. there's no doubt. but that doesn't mean that there are individuals there who are not going to suffer like the

person i'm referring to. however, we don't know why. i mean, if a person had diabetes or obesity, good explanation. but some people are otherwise perfectly normal's is that a genetic thing? don't know. is that a big expression of age h2 receptors in airways and lungs? could be. we don't know yet. when i say, sanjay, we've got to be humble that we don't know. we can give the's possibilities, but we don't know. >> the things we talk about like this and this will come up a couple more times. are they knowable and we just don't know yet? back to the intricacies of science. ghent, you say this -- sorry to hear about your friend's brother. i have a friend a nurse i know as well, 34 years old who died, and the question that comes up, i think, from families obviously and people, was there any way to have known and predict? you're saying, no, at this

point. we don't know. but is it knowable? will we know at one point that 30-year-old despite other fine medical history is julier y e vo this disease? >> could be genetic. we know from good studies there are certain infections some individuals can lead a perfectly normal life so long as they don't come into contact with a particular pathogen. it isn't every pathogen. you know and i know, and probably many viewers, that if you have a view immunodeficiency there are multiple infections you are susceptible to. but there are some genetic poly morphisms you have a defect that would never bother you at all unless you came into contact with a particular virus like a herpe virus or whatever, and then all hell breaks loose. it could be that. and we can find that out with enough clinical experience. >> let's get to another

question. this one coming from professor joe allen at the school of public health. >> airborne transmission and healthy buildings first line of defense of coronavirus in february. doing forensic investigation tell tale signs from the cruise ship biogen outbreaks airborne transmission was happening and examples from sars and mers airborne spread could happen. knew enough to act at that time and seemed little down side taking precautions like higher ventilation rates and filtration. every piece of evidence e supported this hypothesis. experts in my field wrote a letter to w.h.o. 239 of us. why do you think they have been reluctant to acknowledge airborne transmission? do you think airborne transmission is happening? if so, are you a proponent of including healthy building strategies like enhanced ventilation and filtration in

the sweep of troll mecontrol me take, hand washing, distancing and thanks for your work. >> great question. glad he's one of the signatures of that, that the letter sent. this is an area that right now i have brought this myself to the task force to really take a really good look at this, and what the individual was saying is something, again, about the humbleness of science. >> hmm. >> we would always be hearing that the six-foot distance. saying if you have a particle greater than five micrometers it's likely going to fall down. one that's less than five micrometers you can get aerosol floating. that was embedded in the literature, until some very smart and i'm going to be on a conference call with them in a next couple of days. maybe tomorrow, i don't know. write to me and say these are

people who make a living with the physics of particle and aerosolization. not reading the literature. this is what they do. and they say, you know, you really better take a bigger look at this. because from what we know about particle physics, and air flows, that there may be droplets much larger than five micrometers that continue to go around, which means it gives you some pause to think about, do we know what to do and should we investigate, and make some changes, exactly what that individual is saying? what about -- it gives you a greater reason for wearing a mask at all times. but it also tells you outdoors will likely be much better than indoors. that when you are indoors, you've really got to look at what the circulation is, and should you be doing things like filtering? with epifilters?

these are things that are unknown now, but that we are going to address, because it's something that has always been kind of hanging out there without really understanding the role of aerosol, and importantly, sanjay, exactly what aerosol is. i mean, here we are, we're going with a's definition of a particle size, and then you get people who really know what they're talking about tell us, wait a minute. you've got to relook at that because it isn't what you think. so i'm going to -- not me personally. yes, me personally, but with the team at the task force are going to take a careful look at that. >> coming back to the point that we keep hitting on. the pace of science, how we know something is conclusive. maybe because i'm a surgeon i get impatient, but take something like this issue. shouldn't we know this by now? whether it's a potentially aerosolized virus versus

something via droplets alone? seems we could, given in the middle of the worst public health crisis and that's such a salient point, why don't we already know the answer? >> it's not an easy answer to get, because you can talk about droplets that hang around. the question is, you've got to do a study to show that the virus actually transmits that way. and when you do it, you've got to do it in a vsl3 facility are which are limited amounts. so right now as we're speaking even before i got on we're on the phone with all the different groups saying, here's an important question we better answer it and answer it quickly. however, it's not going to change much. what it telling me, that if this is true that aerosol plays a much greater role than we think, then for goodness sakes, the five or six things i mentioned beginning of this discussion are

in space what you've got to do. wear a mask, avoid crowds, outdoors, indoor, all the same stuff. >> make as strategy with regard to ventilation inside buildings especially as we think about kids going back to school. if we have the answer to this aerosolization question, let's just assume it is, yes. >> right. >> it can be aerosolized. what does that mean then for indoor buildings as kids go back to school? do you see special filters, hepa fit es, have to be in place? >> those are things being discussed. one thing you can do say as best as possible, particularly in a climate you were do it. keep the windows open. i mean, that, to me, when dealing with a respiratory virus, it's simplicity, it's so, so obvious. that people don't pay attention to it. like you tell me, got a big crisis and you're telling me to open up a window?

yes. i'm telling you to open up the window. >> keep going with another line of thinking from professor mary bisset. >> dr. fauci, before i get to my question, i just want to say a couple of things. one is how relieved and proud we all are that you continue to navigate the corridors of power and in defense of the public's health. as you know, we have documented very large racial disparities in the currents of covid-19 both infection rates and in mortality. a lot has been said about co-morbidity but not much said about exposure. of course, in public health, our main interests is always in what we call primary previous, or reducing exposure. could you talk a little bit about that? exposure at home. exposure while getting to work.

exposure at work, if you have to continue to work outside of your home. >> yes. thank you, mary. great to see you again. mary and i were in contingent to be colleagues. great to see you again, mary. thank you for the question. so when i talk about the -- the racial and ethnic disparities among minorities including in particular african-americans, latinas and native americans i call it a double negative disparity. first of all, whether or not you have a greater chance of getting infected. one does not like it as a generalized, when dealing with ethnic demography. racial demography. the fact is the likelihood that an african-american or a la tti has a job, greater than those having a job where i can talk to

a computer and be completely safe from getting exposures. they are part of the workforce that comes into contact with people. right from the get-go, you have the likelihood much more than others of getting infected. the second part of this double negative whammy that i call it is that, because of the social determinan determinants's health that has been decades and decades in the making that african-americans and other minorities have a much greater incidence and prevalence of the underlying conditions that lead to a severe outcome, and those are the ones that are so familiar. because we as physicians see it all the time. diabetes, hypertension, obesity, real disease, cardiovascular disease. those are the kind of things that make that death rate very high in that group. and if you look at the

disparities that mary talked about, i mean, if you look at the hospitalization per 100,000, in african-americans they are at least five times what whites and caucasians are in hospitalization. all other parameters being equal. and it's because now, you can do something about the immediate and a decade's long commitment to getting rid of the others. the thing is to make sure we get testing availability and availability to get immediately into care in those areas. those regions, those counties, cities, that are over represented with the demographic group that's at risk. we can do that right now. we have an obligation and as part of the nih's red x that

you're familiar with because i know you spoke about it on your program, as the -- there's an underserved population. that we make sure we get diagnostics to these individuals to get into care quickly. >> it's a question about testing i get quite a bit. should it happen? we've talked, you and i, a few months ago, about needed break throughs in testing. leaving aside the numbers of tests that we need, what is a breakthrough in testing look like? you're testing for the virus. can you get a breakthrough that allows widespread testing that is accurate, and actionable in some ways and if so, why aren't we there yet?

>> you just described it perfectly. that's exactly what we need and exactly what -- i have been pushing for for some time right now. as you know i've spoken to you about this both publicly and privately. we don't have it yet. i hope now with the investment that has binl made about really kbeting point of care under the characteristics you're talking about. in the perfect world, which i think we can get there. and this is very specific. because right now you have tests that you want to determine if an individual is infected for contact tracing. and the gap between the time you get the tests and the time you get the result, in some respect is the reason you did the test. weevl f you have five to seven

days, you've got to correct that. the ultimate goal is you have a test in ten minutes. that's a specific and can be upscaled in the sense that you can do and you can have schools and working places. you can tell somebody's infected and do you know tomorrow? that's true. that's absolutely true. but it would still be good from a surveillance standpoint too, get your arms around what the totality of infection is. right now, what we're trying to do to decompress the load, and we were talking about this just today, on a phone call, and yesterday at the task force meeting, is to get surveillance testing done in a way nat you don't absolutely need crowd out

the testing that you need to know tomorrow whether someone's infected. when you're doing surveillance, like you need to know in the general population, you can give it to universities, get their tests activated and decompress the demand when you get a surge of infections, when you need to do contact tracing. if we do that, i think we can get those days down. what we ultimately are what you just proposed. >> and i don't want to keep belaboring the point. but one has to ask why don't we have it yet? this is doable. i'm not asking for a fantasy here. i got to tell you, dr. fauci, i was in the operating room this past monday. i got a cat scan on my patients, cardiac echo on my patient, brain surgery. could not get a covid result. as a result, we all had to put

on n 95 masks and put on our ppe, put ourselves at increased risk. a covid test, even with the situation, why do we have the situation i described? >> you know, sanjay, i could bend myself into a pretzel. and i don't know why because it's not what i do every day. but i can tell you they're trying but -- obviously, when you say something like that, it gets distorted. you are a real-world example of why we've got to do better. and i know, i've been in situations like that. i can get things done medically so fast it will spin your head. where you were in the operating room, having to put on ppe because you didn't know -- i mean, that is totally unacceptable. and for me to say anything

different is distorting reality. >> well, i appreciate that. and i'm not trying to put you in a tough spot -- >> so, we've been listening to dr. sanjay gupta and dr. anthony fauci, as they've been talking about the state of affairs with the coronavirus. we heard from anthony fouchy. he detailed a lot of thinginizecluding the fact that his family has received death threats, his grown children have been harassed and talked more broadly about the pandemics that people need to grow in univen, when it comes to public health measures and he lumeanted that the atmosphere is not conducive to that happening. so, we're going to be looking to this in a moment with the viral specialist. we'll be right back after a quick break. ♪ come on in, we're open. ♪

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