Fauci: Political divisions contribute to the US’ 500,000 death toll [Video]

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• Dr. Anthony Fauci said that the political division in the US has contributed to the nation’s 500,000 COVID-19 fatalities.
• The lowest point of his task force tenure was when state leaders disregarded his recommendations on how to carefully reopen their states.
• Fauci said that it is not yet known when the country would actually overcome the pandemic.

During an interview with Reuters on Monday, the nation’s lead infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said that the political divisiveness in the US has largely contributed to the COVID-19 death toll, which had reached 500,000.

Fauci said that when the coronavirus came, the country was facing strong political divisions that even wearing of face mask was tagged as a political statement instead of being a simple preventive measure.

“Even under the best of circumstances, this would have been a very serious problem,” he said, while also arguing that amid strict enforcement of safety protocols, other nations like the UK and Germany were overwhelmed by the virus outbreak.

“However, that does not explain how a rich and sophisticated country can have the most percentage of deaths and be the hardest-hit country in the world… That I believe should not have happened,” Fauci added.

“This is the worst thing that’s happened to this country with regard to the health of the nation in over 100 years,” Fauci said. He also noted that people will be talking about “that horrible year of 2020, and maybe 2021,” in the next decades.

Fauci has largely served under former President Donald Trump’s White House COVID-19 task force last year. He often found himself on the other end as Trump, who was not really into science, consistently played down the pandemic, and declined to implement a nationwide mask mandate.

Despite their rollercoaster relationship, the top doctor said that the country’s failure to mitigate the virus should not be blamed entirely on Trump.

“But the lack of involvement at the very top of the leadership in trying to do everything that was science-based was clearly detrimental to the effort,” he said.

The lowest point of his task force journey came when other states and cities refrained from following his recommendations on how to safely reopen the economy after the lockdowns.

Citing the officials’ disobedience, Fauci said: “Incomprehensible to me (when) you could see right in front of your eyes what was happening… When the American spirit is so divided, that really, really made me sad.”

He also noted that the entry of more contagious and aggressive COVID-19 variants has made it more challenging to determine when the US will ultimately recover from the pandemic. He, with President Joe Biden, projected though that life should go back to normal by Christmas.

Almost 20 percent of the global COVID-19 deaths came from the US, even if the nation is only four percent of the world’s total population.

Per Reuters tracking, the US has over 28 million COVID-19 infections with 500,054 fatalities as of Monday afternoon.

Source: AOL.com