Dr. Anthony Fauci warned the public against comparing the United States to other countries during the coronavirus outbreak.
The U.S. recently surpassed Italy and became the country with the most COVID-19 virus deaths in the world, prompting many to compare the American coronavirus situation to that of other countries.
During a Sunday interview on CNN, host Jake Tapper asked Fauci why countries such as South Korea seem to be handling the coronavirus better than the U.S. In response, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases warned Tapper against making such assumptions.
“You know, it isn’t as simple as that, Jake, I’m sorry. I mean, to just say this is all happening because we got started too late. Obviously, if you look, could you have done something a little bit earlier, and would it have had an impact? Obviously,” Fauci explained. “But where we are right now is the result of a number of factors: the size of the country, the homogeneity of the country,”
He continued, “I think it’s a little bit unfair to compare us to South Korea where they had an outbreak in Daegu, and they had the capability of immediately, essentially, shutting it off completely in a way we may not have been able to do in this country. So obviously, it would have been nice if we had a better head start. But I don’t think you can say we are where we are right now because of one factor. It’s very complicated, Jake.”
As of Sunday, the U.S. had more than 524,000 confirmed coronavirus cases and 21,489 related deaths.
