Dr. Anthony Fauci indicated China’s refusal to be completely open about the COVID-19 outbreak was the reason why he did not immediately realize its severity.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during a White House coronavirus task force briefing on Monday that, early on, “the information wasn’t as forthcoming as I would’ve liked.”
He added: “I’m not perfect, and maybe — I wouldn’t say made mistakes — but maybe I should’ve really tried to delve into that a little more about what was going on.”
He appeared to be referring to China’s well-documented efforts to cover up the spread of the coronavirus. He has previously blamed China by name for spreading misinformation. China muzzled whistleblowers, misled the World Health Organization, and attempted to block outside health experts.
“This was a virus that was much worse than what I had thought it was going to be based on what we had learned early on, when it was first thought to be something that just jumped from an animal to a human and didn’t really have much capability of going human-to-human,” Fauci said. “And then, all of a sudden, you find out that, not only was it not just animal-to-human — that’s probably the way it started — but then, as you go back, you realize there were probably a lot of infection that maybe, if we had delved into that a little bit more, we could’ve learned that, not only is it infecting human-to-human, but it’s transmitting really efficiently.”
Reports showed Chinese doctors knew in about late December and early January that human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus was almost certainly happening, but the Chinese government silenced medical professionals who attempted to go public. The WHO tweeted on Jan. 14 that “preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission.”
Fauci said he soon realized he was dealing with his “worst nightmare”: a “brand new virus that’s respiratory transmitted, that has a high degree of transmissibility, that has a high degree of morbidity and mortality.”
“It was just an evolving thing that we finally realized and went, whoa, this is really worse than we could’ve imagined,” he said.
“I don’t want to use the word ‘mistakes’ because, when you’re in the fog of war, … it’s always a moving target,” Fauci said. “Could things have been done better? Of course. I mean, nothing is perfect, and you can always do better.”
