Top government infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci warned that an “anti-science bias” is pervasive in the United States.
“One of the problems we face in the United States is that unfortunately, there is a combination of an anti-science bias that people are — for reasons that sometimes are … inconceivable and not understandable, they just don’t believe science, and they don’t believe authority,” Fauci said in a Wednesday episode of the Department of Health and Human Services’s Learning Curve podcast.
Fauci has served as a member of the coronavirus task force since the pandemic began and has become one of the most trusted public health authorities in the federal government.
The coronavirus, which has affected nearly 2.2 million people in the U.S. and killed at least 117,700, has recently hit states that had been relatively spared early on, such as Arizona, Texas, and North Carolina. Meanwhile, states that began as viral epicenters, such as New York and New Jersey, have seen a stabilization in the rate of new coronavirus cases and hospitalizations as well as a decline in daily fatalities.
Fauci said that many people still do not understand the gravity of the pandemic or the necessity of social distancing to prevent more outbreaks.
“So when they see someone up in the White House, which has an air of authority to it, who’s talking about science, that there are some people who just don’t believe that, and that’s unfortunate because, you know, science is truth,” Fauci said.
He added, “If you go by the evidence and by the data, you’re speaking the truth.”
People, he said, will believe someone with a long record of reporting the facts based on evidence, “and I’ve done that … through six administrations.”
