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Monday, October 2, 2023 | 
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U.S. needs to ‘overcome’ denial of COVID-19, Dr. Fauci says

Dr. Fauci said parts of the country don’t believe in the novel coronavirus. But this needs to change.

By Herb Scribner Herb Scribnerhscribner@deseretnews.com
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Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), spoke on a new CNN special about the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), speaks during a ceremony awarding the Nobel Prize medal and prize to Harvey J. Alter, Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, at NIH in Bethesda, Md., Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2020.

Jacquelyn Martin, Associated Press

Dr. Anthony Fauci said in a speech at the Wall Street Journal CEO Council summit Tuesday that the United States needs everyone to support public health measures if the country wants to end the pandemic, CNN reports.

What’s going on:

Fauci said the next few months will be a challenging time for the United States. Things can change with mask wearing and social distancing, according to CNN.

  • “Trouble is, you go to different parts of the country, and even when the outbreak is clear and hospitals are on the verge of being overrun, there are a substantial proportion of the people who still think that this is not real, that it’s fake news or that it’s a hoax,” Fauci said.
  • “We’ve got to overcome that and pull together as a nation uniformly with adhering to these public health measures,” he said, CNN reports,
  • Fauci called this “really extraordinarily frustrating, because we feel strongly that we will be able to have a significant impact.”
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Will it go away?

Fauci said that the United States will never make the novel coronavirus disappear completely, saying it will continue to linger in pockets, according to the New York Post.

  • “I don’t think we’re going to eradicate (COVID-19) the way we did with smallpox, but I think we can do what we did with polio,” said Fauci.