Zuckerberg, Dr. Fauci discuss resurge of COVID-19 cases in hour-long Facebook Live

Thursday, July 16, 2020
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- In an hour-long Facebook Live Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg joined Dr. Anthony Fauci to discuss the recent resurge of coronavirus cases, a potential vaccine, and the U.S. response to the pandemic.

"I got to say you are quite generous in your description of the government's response here," Zuckerberg said to Dr. Fauci.
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"I just think this was avoidable."

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The Facebook CEO expressed his disappointed about the lack of adequate testing.

"The credibility of our top scientists, like yourself and the CDC are being undermined," Zuckerberg added.



Dr. Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert, explained part of the resurgence in cases is tied to failures in reopening.

"The citizenry of the state or the city had the impression you went either from lock down to caution to the wind," Fauci said.
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"What we saw were people at bars, congregating, no masks no distance... that's what I believe is at least part of the explanation."

The other factor Fauci pointed out: what did other countries do that we didn't?

"When you looked at what happened in European counties, when they had their peak, they locked down. They locked down to 90 to 95 percent," he said.



Analysis showed stricter lock downs in Europe, resulted in fewer new cases. But as Fauci pointed out, that didn't happen in the U.S.

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"When we went up and peaked and started to come down... we never really went down to the baseline," Fauci said. "We plagued to about 20,000 per day until we into the resurgence."

Is another lock down the answer? Fauci says no, it should be a reset.

"When I say reset button, I say OK, timeout... everybody regroup," he said.

"If you get into a situation where you shouldn't have jumped over the check points you got to think about pulling back."

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