[D66] Interview Anthony Fauci

[R.O.]

  * 25 Sep 2020
  * Newsweek International


  “IT WOULD BE BLOWN OUT OF THE WATER PUBLICLY.”


    DR. ANTHONY FAUCI says that the White House would not succeed in
    forcing the release of a COVID-19 vaccine before election day

AMERICA’S MOST WIDELY-KNOWN expert on the coronavirus pandemic is no 
stranger to disease crises and the political turmoil that surrounds 
them. Fauci’s been head of the National Institute of Allergy and 
Infectious Diseases since 1984, through AIDS and Ebola. Now he is 
contending with a president who is flirting with the idea of rushing the 
release of a COVID-19 vaccine before the election on November 3.

In a Newsweek interview, Fauci was characteristically frank. A 
presidential edict to force the approval of a COVID-19 vaccine before 
election day on November 3 “will be blown out of the water publicly by 
the people who understand what it takes to declare a vaccine safe and 
effective,” he says. “It would be a public embarrassment.” Here are 
excerpts:

Q. Will political pressure to release a vaccine early hurt the effort?

A. Let’s get down to the imaginary scenario where, all of a sudden, 
somebody from the White House calls up the [Food and Drug 
Administration] commissioner and says, we want this vaccine out there 
now: do it, or I’ll fire you. If that happens, it will be so publicly 
blasted. It seems inconceivable.

There are checkpoints in that process that would make it very difficult 
for politics to have an influence on whether a vaccine is approved for 
use before it was shown truly to be safe and effective. The accumulation 
of data and the analysis of data is unbiased. An independent group 
called a Data and Safety Monitoring Board is associated with every 
clinical trial that has NIH fingerprints on it. And then you have the 
scientific community, like me and Francis Collins, who’s the director of 
NIH. We have not been shy about being vocal concerning prematurely doing 
an Emergency Use Authorization.

Q. Do you worry that the politics will give momentum to anti-vaxxers?

A. Oh, yes. Obviously, the statements that have come out of the White 
House about the FDA being a Deep State; the FDA giving an emergency-use 
authorization to hydroxychloroquine and then withdrawing it; the 
president being obviously favorably disposed to hydroxychloroquine and 
me being publicly against it. All of that stuff clearly feeds into 
people having an issue [with vaccines].

Q. Is there any preliminary data from Moderna vaccine trial?

A. Nothing right now. [Moderna is] still enrolling volunteers, and most 
of them

have not yet even received the second dose. By the end of September, we 
will probably get a feel for where we are. Q. You have no way of knowing 
how long the trial will last?

A. If you asked me to put down my 10-cent bet on that, I would say it 
likely would be November or December.

Q. What’s your 10-cent bet on how effective the Moderna vaccine will be?

A. If you look at the phase one study, which was only a small study of 
45 people, [the vaccine] induced neutralizing antibodies and at a robust 
level, equivalent to or better than what you see with natural infection. 
Historically, that is a good sign. I would guess that it’s going to be 
around 70 to 75 percent effective, but that’s purely a guess.

Q. What do you say to people who won’t take a vaccine that only works 
three-quarters of the time?

A. Any degree of protection is better than no degree of protection.

Q. Will we still be wearing masks and staying socially distant in 2021?

A. At a minimum, we’re going to be doing this well into 2021. By June or 
July of 2021, you may have most of the population vaccinated. As we turn 
the corner halfway through 2021, getting into the summer and fall, I 
would predict that we’re going to be approaching a certain degree of 
normality—not completely, because we’re still going to have some 
coronavirus circulating around, but it’s not going to be something 
that’s immobilizing society the way it currently is.

Q. Journalist Bob Woodward says the president intentionally understated 
the severity of the pandemic in the spring. What do you make of this?

A. While that was going on, I and my colleagues were saying what it 
really was like. I was sounding the alarm about community spread and 
other things. To the extent that people have trusted me and listened to 
me, there was no doubt that we were saying it was serious.

Q. But Trump has a bigger bully pulpit than you do.

A. Yes, right. That’s unfortunate that that happened.


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