Dr. Fauci Makes Eye-Opening Revelations In 60 Minutes Interview

It feels like a lifetime since COVID-19 was first revealed to be in the country earlier this year. And since the early days, we've seen the pandemic take over the country, with The New York Times' latest COVID map showing a 28 percent upward change in the country's daily infection rate — now 8.1 million cases across the country. The death toll as a result of the coronavirus is now at close to 220,000. 

Because the Trump administration has been flip-flopping over the seriousness of COVID-19, its not surprising that Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has stayed on message the entire time, has become the most credible voice with regard to the pandemic, which now appears to be heading for yet another new high. And while Dr. Fauci is determined to address the COVID surge, there are some things he will and will not do, as the country's leading disease expert and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He opened up in an interview Sunday night on CBS' 60 Minutes, and some of what he said raised eyebrows. 

Dr. Anthony Fauci will talk about science. He'll talk about research findings related to COVID-19, and any other disease that he has worked on. But one thing he won't do is political endorsements. Fauci told CBS during his 60 Minutes interview, "I do not and nor will I ever, publicly endorse any political candidate. And here I am, they're sticking me right in the middle of a campaign ad. Which I thought was outrageous. I was referring to something entirely different. I was referring to the grueling work of the task force that, "God, we were knocking ourselves out seven days a week. I don't think we could have possibly have done any more than that."

This is why an ad from the Trump campaign quoting Fauci out of context had him seeing red, and the soft-spoken doctor admitted that seeing the ad made steam come out of his ears "... quite frankly. I got really ticked off," he said during the interview. Given that we regularly see Dr. Fauci speak softly and carry and big microscope, we're guessing that's the strongest expression of anger that we're likely to get.

Anti-maskers who might use Dr. Anthony Fauci's early pandemic pronouncement about masks to defend their own positions against masks are in for a letdown. The nation's pandemic expert explained that masks were discouraged at the start of the pandemic because he was worried the country would run out of surgical masks for healthcare workers. But that changed — because science. "So let's see if we could put this to rest once and for all. It became clear that cloth coverings, things like this here, and not necessarily a surgical mask or an N95, cloth coverings, work," he said during his 60 Minutes interview. "So now there's no longer a shortage of masks. Number two, meta-analysis studies show that, contrary to what we thought, masks really do work in preventing infection."

And even with his experience (or probably because of it), Dr. Fauci says you don't double down when science proves you wrong about something. "When you find out you're wrong, it's a manifestation of your honesty to say, 'Hey, I was wrong. I did subsequent experiments and now it's this way,'" he told CBS.

Some people might have been surprised that President Donald Trump came down with COVID-19, but Dr. Anthony Fauci was not one of them. He also calls it the way he sees it, telling CBS that he was "absolutely not" surprised by the outcome. "I was worried that he was going to get sick when I saw him in a completely precarious situation of crowded, no separation between people, and almost nobody wearing a mask. When I saw that on TV, I said, 'Oh my goodness. Nothing good can come outta that, that's gotta be a problem.' And then sure enough, it turned out to be a superspreader event."

At least seven people, including the president, Melania Trump and several members of the GOP tested positive as a result of the event (via The Cut). Other people who might not have been on the sidelines also reported testing positive, including two students and a teacher at a school attended by Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett (via The Washington Post).