As Mike Bloomberg just mentioned,

public health leaders have been ignored

and even attacked during this pandemic.

That brings us to our first guest in this News Break,

Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Dr. Fauci, you are one of the busiest people

in America at the moment,

so thank you very much for joining this summit.

I want to ask you about,

what is kind of an anomaly around the world.

And that is the politicization

as Mike Bloomberg just mentioned of this pandemic,

why did it become political in America?

- Well, it evolved, Katty,

at a time when there was just an extraordinary amount

of divisiveness in our country,

totally unrelated to COVID-19.

I mean, it was there, it was essentially deep seated,

we saw more and more strident divisiveness over the years,

antedating COVID-19.

And then COVID-19 happened

right in the middle of an election year.

So I think you combine inherent divisiveness to begin with,

with the stress and strain of an election year,

and it was the worst possible combination you could have

for a public health crisis.

Because when you have a public health crisis,

what you need is everybody pulling together

in the same direction.

- You have been very clear and warning

about the next couple of months.

Europe's been heading the same direction,

and yet we've seen European nations,

in many cases start to flatten the curve.

What do you think America needs to do,

most urgently, over the next few months

in order to follow the European model?

- Well, I think everybody uniformly

needs to admit that we have a real problem,

we've got to own the problem.

If you don't own the problem,

you're never gonna fix the problem.

And we can have,

as we're seeing in some parts of the country,

what would be equivalent of almost denial, Katty,

where people still don't think this is a big deal.

They think it's kind of fake news,

or a little bit of a hoax or what have you.

It's not, it's real, the numbers are absolutely real.

We're having record numbers of hospitalization,

record numbers of cases,

and most recently, deaths.

We have a serious issue.

We're just coming out of the Thanksgiving holiday,

which I'm sure is gonna lead to some sort of a blip

if not a surge, in cases,

which you usually see two to three weeks after the event.

And that leads right up into the beginning

of the Christmas and Hanukkah holidays,

which are gonna be more travel and more congregating

and social settings where people are indoors.

- We are having a lot of good news on the vaccine front.

But there are alarming studies

that show that there is a lack of trust in the vaccine

and that a lot of people may not choose to take it.

What can you say, and particularly to communities of color

to try to encourage people

to go ahead and take the COVID vaccine when it's released?

- Well, we've gotta be doing a lot of community engagement

and community outreach to get people to understand.

The two things that bother people,

they say, "Well, maybe we did this too quickly."

They need to understand

the speed is really a reflection

of the extraordinary scientific advances

that have been made

that allowed us to do things in weeks to months

that normally would have taken several years.

That was not compromising safety,

nor was it compromising scientific integrity.

The process that went into deciding the safety and efficacy

was both independent and transparent.

We need to make sure people understand that,

particularly those demographic groups

that have not been treated well historically,

by medical establishment.

And I refer specifically to the African American population

and to some extent, the Latinx population.

So we have a task cut out for us

that we've gotta go the extra mile

to reach out and engage the community.

- And you will still be working on that.

Dr. Fauci as ever, thank you.

- Good to be with you, thank you for having me.