Fauci: US political division by masks caused half a million deaths from COVID-19

Anthony FauciAnthony FauciPublix offers employees receiving the COVID-19 vaccine a 5-store gift card presented Sunday: COVID-19 dominates as Fauci approaches: 500,000 coronavirus death milestones are “devastating” MORE, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, said Monday that the political divide over the use of masks contributed to the death toll from coronavirus in the United States.

Fauci made the comments on the same day that the number of deaths in the country reached half a million people a year after the start of the pandemic. Fauci, calling the macabre milestone “impressive” in an interview with Reuters, Fauci said the split over the masked suit, which divided Americans politically during a year of presidential elections, made the health measure public in a political statement.

“Even in the best of circumstances, this would have been a very serious problem,” Fauci said.

“However, this does not explain how a rich and sophisticated country can have the highest death rate and be the most affected country in the world,” Fauci said.

Fauci also described as incomprehensible the ignorance on the part of some governors and mayors of the recommendations on how to reopen the country safely after the closures of almost the entire country last spring.

“When the American spirit is so divided, that made me sad,” he said.

While Fauci would not put all the blame on the former Trump administration, he noted that “the lack of involvement at the top of the leadership to try to do everything that was based on science was clearly detrimental to the ‘effort’.

Although the United States has 4 percent of the world’s population, it has nearly 20 percent of all coronavirus deaths, according to Reuters.

“This is the worst thing that has happened to this country in terms of the nation’s health in over 100 years,” Fauci said.

Fauci told Reuters that it was difficult to predict when the pandemic would end due to the emergence of new coronavirus variants from South Africa and Brazil. Some studies have indicated that these strains are more resistant to existing coronavirus vaccines.

Fauci has suggested that Americans could regain pre-pandemic life at Christmas, but has warned that the restrictions could last until next year.