Dr. Anthony Fauci has revealed a number of things over the last year — when you can spend time with your family, what’s next in the COVID-19 surge and how to stay safe in the coronavirus pandemic.
Now, Fauci has revealed why people don’t like him.
Fauci recently told ”Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace that he is a polarizing figure because he supports “science, data and hard facts” rather than conspiracy theories.
- “I have stood for always making science, data and evidence, be what we guide ourselves by,” Fauci said. “And I think people who feel differently, who have conspiracy theories, who deny reality, that’s looking them straight in the eye.”
Fauci said his support for facts can be “inconvenient” for those who enjoy conspiracy theories.
- “Those are people that don’t particularly care for me, and that’s understandable because what I do, and I try very hard, is to be guided by the truth,” he said. “And sometimes the truth becomes inconvenient for some people, so they react against me.”
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said recently that the coronavirus pandemic has been getting better, as I wrote for the Deseret News. But he’s still cautious about what could happen if we don’t increase vaccination.
- “If we don’t do very well in that regard, there’s always the danger that there will be enough circulating virus that you can have a stalling of the diminishing of the number of cases and when that happens, as we’ve seen in the past with other waves that we’ve been through, there’s the danger of resurgence,” Fauci said.
Earlier in October, Fauci told Bloomberg there could be a new coronavirus variant if the virus continues to circulate.
- “As long as you have virus freely circulating in the environment in society, jumping from person to person, that virus, by the fact that it continually replicates, gives itself ample opportunity to mutate,” Fauci said. “And when you give it ample opportunity to mutate, sooner or later you will get an accumulation of mutations that will lead to another variant. So that’s the reason why we say, the best way to prevent the future emergence of variants that might be problematic. The best way to do that is the don’t give the virus the opportunity to freely spread.”