On March 19, Mark Zuckerberg announced he’d be having a conversation with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, in a Facebook livestream.
Zuckerberg said in a Facebook status announcing the conversation, “[Fauci] will discuss the measures we can all take to fight the spread of the coronavirus and what the government is doing to respond to the pandemic. We’ll have time for some questions from the community, so if there’s a question you think I should ask, reply here in the comments.”
The conversation lasted about 37 minutes. As soon as the conversation began, Dr. Fauci said, “We are certainly still in the escalation phase, Mark…right now, we’ve gone from a handful of cases, just a few months ago, until right now, where we have close to 10,000 cases.”
Zuckerberg then asked Fauci if he had any projections for the coming weeks, in terms of “what people can expect.” Fauci replied, “If the virus is left to its own devices, you will see a major, major, major peak, which will then turn around and come on down…Europe is in the phase where they’re still accelerating…we now are still in the escalation phase. How high that gets, and how long it’s going to take to turn around, is going to depend on how well we do containment and mitigation.”
Fauci said that the current efforts of containment would go on for several more weeks, “at a minimum.”
Here’s the full video below:
Fauci has become a common fixture on televisions and in social media feeds over the course of the coronavirus outbreak, playing an increasingly prominent role as a voice of guidance for Americans seeking to understand and contextualize the coronavirus.
On March 14, Fauci said during a press conference, “With regards to the virus itself, the next few weeks for most Americans, is obviously what you’re going to see is an acceleration of cases. There’s no doubt about it because that’s how these outbreaks work.”
He continued, “Two things we are looking for. [First,] things are going to get worse before they get better. But what’s happening now with many more tests that are going out very, very shortly. With people now very seriously taking containment and mitigation into effect, hopefully, we will be able to blunt that peak. That’s what I see in the next few weeks.”
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