Dr. Morrison: Let me say a bit more about the achievements and ask you. I mean, we – it seems to me that in overcoming some of the resistance and skepticism in America about our response, we need to remind ourselves about the courage and bravery of health providers and public health officials. We need to remind people of the mobilization that happened in this nation on an unprecedented scale. We seldom seem to even reference these things today when we’re talking about the tough challenges that are on the table. I’ll get to the tough challenges in a moment, but my question to you is, how do we get back to a point where we acknowledge the scale and the depth of the achievements that have come from the American people, health providers, that have come from Congress acting in a deliberate and strategic way at the right moment?
Dr. Fauci: Well, the answer is, the only way to do it, Steve, is to do it. It’s as simple as that. We’ve got to talk about it. We’ve got to write about it. We’ve got to make it part of the discourse.
You’re absolutely right – the courage, the bravery, the fortitude, the resilience of the healthcare providers is just astounding in a very, very positive way, and I think it showed the very best of our healthcare profession – no doubt about that. The resolve and the resiliency of the United States of America as a country – you know, as you mentioned, the very, very insightful and brave approach of an Operation Warp Speed to take those scientific advances that I mentioned, that were the result of decades of investment in biomedical research, to make them relevant in a confined, limited, restricted period of time that first year, which got us safe and effective vaccines that were available for distribution within less than a year, during the Trump administration. And then during the Biden administration, to get an extraordinary process of getting vaccines and tests and drugs available to the American public. That is an extraordinary set of accomplishments. It’s not one. It’s a constellation of accomplishments that need to be stressed to show what we can do, and what we need to continue to do.
Dr. Morrison: Thank you. Let me turn to some of these very difficult, monumental challenges. You’ve referenced some of this. If you look at the virus itself, it’s becoming endemic. We’re having to come to terms with the reality that we’re likely to face 100,000 to 250,000 [deaths] annually. At the same time, living with this uncertainty you indicated about the reality of new subvariants coming forward. And we have an urgent need for new technological innovations. For vaccines we need to stop infections, we need greater, deeper durability. We need the ability to address multiple subvariants.
We face a money impasse. We’ve had repeated impasse – repeated failures over the course of this year that put at risk our national stockpiles, our ability to accelerate the development of new tools. We’re leaving ourselves very vulnerable in this period. And we’re giving the ground over for innovation to some of our competitors, India and China in particular. We face a political and psychological impasse with the acute polarization that’s happened that’s – I think shocked everyone at the level in which that partisanship and polarization set in. And we have a shared sense of exhaustion and anger fueled by disinformation and anti-science.
And our own institutions we’ve seen afraid. We’ve seen Rochelle Walensky – Dr. Walensky step forward with admitting mistakes and beginning a process of internal reform. And the last thing that hangs over us, I think, is the uncertainty around long Covid, and what that’s going to mean. So the question to you, how do you bring these across in a coherent, clear way, this combination of threats that we face as a country right now? Despite the historic achievements, we also have these very daunting challenges that have to be better communicated, it seems to me, to the American people to understand the gravity of what we face.
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