Anthony Fauci Addresses Columbia Mailman School (Twice)
It’s been a very busy year for Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and celebrated public face of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Even so, he found time to speak not once but twice at webinars organized by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health this December.
Watch videos of his
presentations as a part of the Dean’s Grand Rounds on the Future of Public Health and an ICAP at Columbia’s World AIDS Day event below.
Speaking at Grand Rounds, Fauci, who earlier this month was named chief medical adviser on COVID-19 in the Biden Administration, reviewed the latest science on COVID-19 and the “staggering” number of Americans who have been infected and died in the pandemic. While the brunt of the COVID-19 was felt early on in New York City and the Northeast, he said subsequent waves of infections in the early summer and late fall have spread the virus so that nearly every part of the country has been hit by COVID-19 in equal measure, on a per capita basis.
Scientists know how the virus spreads through airborne droplets, but many people who have COVID-19 don’t know they have it, let alone how they got infected. An estimated 40 to 45 percent of infections are asymptomatic, a situation Fauci said makes contact tracing difficult. As a result, prevention efforts have relied on mask-wearing and physical distancing. Starting this month, vaccines are available to healthcare workers and the elderly in long-term care facilities. All these measures require the public’s cooperation, which has been uneven.
One of the biggest impediments to fighting COVID-19 in the United States is politics, as some Americans characterize mask-wearing and other public health restrictions as an infringement on their rights. Fauci’s response: “When you’re dealing with a public health issue there should be no such thing as politics. … There’s absolutely no room for political divisiveness when we’re trying to end a historic pandemic.” He noted a related challenge in the way each state can set its own policies—a system he said works against the kind of coordinated national response needed in a pandemic. “The only way we can do this is all together,” he said.
overlapping Pandemics
In his World AIDS Day talk, Fauci spoke about the overlapping challenges of COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS. Deaths due to HIV/AIDS are projected to rise in low-income countries due to disruptions in antiretroviral treatment during the pandemic. In the United States, more than half of those living with HIV are age 50 or older, and older people are at high risk for severe COVID-19. Among those living with HIV who receive treatment and whose viral load is undetectable, he said their immune system does not put them at increased risk for severe COVID-19; rather it is their potential HIV co-morbidities like obesity, diabetes, pulmonary disease, and smoking.
Fauci pointed to “overlapping disparities,” with higher rates of both HIV and COVID-19 in communities of color—disparities that stem from social and environmental injustices. Going forward, one challenge for public health officials is overcoming Americans' skepticism of the vaccine, particularly among Black Americans who have been historically subjected to unwanted and unethical medical experimentation. Fauci said it was a “critical issue” to convince all Americans that the vaccines are both safe and effective and that mask-wearing and other physical distancing measures will continue to be needed in the months ahead. The good news is that due to the overlap between HIV and COVID-19, the effort to fight the coronavirus “will clearly facilitate ending the HIV epidemic in the United States,” he said.