Fauci: Lack of facts ‘likely did’ cost lives in coronavirus fight

Anthony Fauci on Friday said that a lack of facts “likely did” cost lives over the last year in the nation’s efforts to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

In an appearance on CNN, the nation’s leading infectious diseases expert was directly asked whether a “lack of candor or facts” contributed to the number of lives lost during the coronavirus pandemic over the past year.

“You know it very likely did,” Fauci said. “You know I don’t want that … to be a sound bite, but I think if you just look at that, you can see that when you’re starting to go down paths that are not based on any science at all, that is not helpful at all, and particularly when you’re in a situation of almost being in a crisis with the number of cases and hospitalizations and deaths that we have.”

“When you start talking about things that make no sense medically and no sense scientifically, that clearly is not helpful,” he continued.

The lack of candor and facts “likely did” cost lives last year, Dr. Fauci says.

“There’s no secret. We’ve had a lot of divisiveness, we’ve had facts that were very, very clear, that were questioned. People were not trusting what health officials were saying.” pic.twitter.com/naqYQhvgJK

— New Day (@NewDay) January 22, 2021

President Biden on Thursday unveiled a new national coronavirus strategy that is, in part, aimed at “restoring trust in the American people.”

When asked why that was important, Fauci recognized that the past year of dealing with the pandemic had been filled with divisiveness.

“There’s no secret. We’ve had a lot of divisiveness, we’ve had facts that were very, very clear that were questioned. People were not trusting what health officials were saying, there was great divisiveness, masks became a political issue,” Fauci said.

“So what the president was saying right from the get-go was, ‘Let’s reset this. Let everybody get on the same page, trust each other, let the science speak.’”

Fauci, who was thrust into the national spotlight last year as part of former President Trump’s coronavirus task force, often found himself at odds with the former president. Trump frequently downplayed the severity of the virus and clashed publicly with Fauci.

Speaking during a White House press briefing on Thursday, Fauci said it was “liberating” to be working in the Biden administration.

There have been more than 24,600,000 coronavirus infections in the U.S. since the pandemic began, according to a count from Johns Hopkins University. More than 410,000 people have died.