I am a health law student at georgetown law. I am focusing my studies on access to health care. I am also working with the Oneill Institute on various projects. Recently the collaborative project on covid19 laws and policies. Before joining georgetown, i received my bachelors degree in law from kingstown university in saudi arabia. I am pleased to introduce our guest today, dr. Anthony fauci. Dr. Fauci is one of the u. S. s most visible leaders in Public Health. Dr. Fauci also currently serves as the director of the National Institutes of allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of health. He is also a member of the White House Coronavirus task force. We are thrilled to have dr. Fauci with us today to discuss the covid19 pandemic and the unique risks and responsibilities young people have in mitigating the spread of covid19. Please join the conversation on social media using the hashtag fauciatgu. For our students, please remember to submit your questions for dr. Fauci using the q a feature at the bottom of your screen. Please remember to include your school and year. This event will be moderated by mr. John monahan, a Senior Advisor to the president who helped organize georgetowns Global Health initiative over the past three years. Prior to this role, mr. Monahan served as senior Global Health physician at the department of health and Human Services and the state department during the obama administration. Our second moderator is the gu politics executive director. I will turn it over to them now to kick us off. Thank you very much. John thank you. That was terrific. I appreciate it. Off by wanted to start thanking you for joining us on the webinar today. Over the years, you have been so generous in sharing your time with our students. We are delighted you are able to join us today. I should also add we deeply appreciate your enduring commitment to public service, your commitment to Public Health and science, in your many years at nih, so thank you for being here. In. S just jump to set the stage, it would be terrific if you can provide us with an overview of where we the covid19h pandemic, hotspots, how the u. S. Compares. Cases,ates have rising what populations are most at risk and have been most impacted. And if you could because i know you take history seriously if you could put this in some context. 1918red to the pandemic of or other coronavirus outbreaks we have seen, if you could help put this experience we are going through in that context as well. Dr. Fauci thank you, john. You asked a lot of questions. [laughter] i will do it sis and like. We are in the middle of the sebel it sis inked uccinctly. Ravagedd19 pandemic many parts of the world. It is a mixed bag in the United States. We have areas that have been hit very badly like the new york metropolitan area, doing quite well now in getting the outbreak under control and trying in a prudent fashion to open. The numbers are quite sobering. We had over 135,000 deaths in this pandemic for the United States. We have over 3 million cases. If you look globally, there is close to 600,000 deaths and about 13 or 14 million infections. This is a pandemic of historic proportions. We cant deny that fact. It is something that, when history looks back on it, it will be comparable to what we saw in 1918. The current challenge that we are facing right now is the resurgences of infections in the south and southwestern part of the country, particularly in areas like california, florida, arizona, and texas. They are seeing record numbers of cases, mostly among young individuals, strongly suggesting the link between attempting to asn, and in many respects, we saw pictures and photos and films and i will get back to this in a moment about response esponsibility, where young people were seen without masks, which adds fuel to the fire. Our challenge tomorrow and next week is to get back on track of not only being able to contain, but open safely. It is a serious situation in the United States, the United States being very heterogeneous demographically and in many other ways it is a mixed bag. Some areas of the country are doing quite well and others are being challenged. You said to compare it. If you look at the magnitude of the 1918 pandemic, where to 100e from 75 million Million People died globally, that was the mother of all pandemics. I hope we dont even approach that with this, but it has the inings of approaching that seriousness. I hope the interventions we are implementing will not allow that to happen. It does have strong similarities with that in that it was the emergence of a brandnew infection, influenza. This is coronavirus. That essentially thrusts itself onto the human population. It had two characteristics that make it the perfect storm. That is a virus that jumps species, but that almost immediately has a capable and efficient way of spreading from human to human, simultaneously with having a considerable degree of mortality. You asked me to compare it with other outbreaks. I can give you examples of each of those. One or the other of those characteristics, but not both. That is what i refer to when i say the perfect storm. Lets take the threat of the bird flu that you and i had a lot of experience when we were at the department. It jumped from a chicken to a human. It had prepandemic potential, but it didnt spread from human to human. If you were unlucky enough to get infected, you had a 37 , 45 mortality, but it was a dead end mostly with humans. It did not go from human to human. Then you had the situation with the h1n1, which was very efficiently transmitted from human to human. Yeargenically, deaths that were less than the seasonal flu. One transmitted well, didnt kill. One killed, but didnt transmit well. What we have now is a virus that is capable of spreading from human to human. Even though it has a wide range of impacts, from 2 to 40 20 to 40 of those without symptoms, to those serious enough to go to the hospital, serious enough to get to intensive care, ventilation and even death. So the range of severity is great and wide, which leads to confusion on the part of people as to whether this is serious as some people say it is. It is not serious for some people, but deadly serious for others. That is the overview. John my followup is, because i think the virus has this disparate impact, as you described, there are issues in the public debate that you could help clear up. There is this discussion about whether a rise in total u. S. Cases is the result of testing alone. Two, should we take comfort that death rates are declining even as infection rates increase . Then this recent discussion about the stability of the virus aerosolized form rather than droplets. If you would be able to help us understand what the science shows us. On, i want tog write down your questions. [laughter] okay, sorry, i was distracted with that. The first question is, is this just an increase because of testing there is no doubt it is both. The more you test, the more you pick up. Increased testing will give you increases. There is no doubt there are more infections. We know that because of the percentage of the cases tested that are positive is increasing, therefore you are seeing truly more new cases. In addition, we are seeing now more hospitalizations, which lag behind infections. We will see, though not as much as we have seen, very likely more deaths. Clearly there are more infections. The second question is itn should we take comfort is the death rate is declining . Dr. Fauci the big spike in the death rates we saw with the terrible situation in the new york city metropolitan area and situations in chicago, new orleans, detroit, that death rate is happily going way down. We will likely see more deaths as people get hospitalized, but i doubt it is going to go up to the extent we have seen before, mostly for a couple reasons. One is that if you look at the age range of the individuals getting infected now as opposed to a few months ago, it is about a decade to a decade and a half younger. Even if young people, which some do, get sick enough to be hospitalized, it is highly unlikely that the death rate among them will be the death rate that we saw in the real core of the explosion that we saw in the northeastern part of the country. John the last question is the extent to which the virus is transmitted through aerosol. Dr. Fauci that is still debatable. Two minutes before i came in, i just read an analysis of it. It is almost certain that there is a degree of aerosol occurrence. The degree of transmission aerosolwise is unclear. Most people think it is not the dominant modality of transmission, but the definitive proof has not been put. I dont think it is dominant. I think it occurs. For those listening, to know the difference, that droplet type of transmission goes beyond six feet. If you talk or cost, a droplet cough, a droplet would drop to the ground, which is why we talk about staying six feet away. An parasol is less than five micrometers parasol i ae rosol has the capability of getting behind or in the mask. That is what they talk about with aerosol. John let me turn this over for the next question. Thank you for joining us. Lets turn to the response. As we already talked about, the disease has hit the u. S. Harder than many other nations around the world. It is not entirely because of testing. Picture first, some of the nations that have dealt with this more effectively have had more of a coordinated national response, whereas we have opted for more of a statebased, Regional Response in the United States. Is that part of the disparity . Can we even have a National Coordinated response . Dr. Fauci it is always easy to look back and say, if we had done this, would it have been different . It everyn analyze which way. Some of the things i believe have an impact on the differences and i dont think we can fully explain it in europe and in some of the asian countries, where they shut down, they locked down to the tune of 90 plus. They really locked down. We have a large and really heterogeneous country with different risks geographically and demographically. Even though we locked down considerably, the estimate is only around 50 , 55 or so. When we had the outbreak in europe, they peaked, then they came down to baseline. They really did go down from thousands of infections to handfuls or so of infections. Whereas in the United States, if you look at our curve, for better or worse, we peaked, we came down, and we never came down to baseline. We stayed around 20,000 a day of new cases until the most recent surge where we went to 30,000, then 60,000. The issue is we never got down to the baseline so that when you started to open up you had relatively few amounts of infections to deal with. Whereas when we opened up now, you are seeing the search. The reasons for that are complicated, and there are many. The issue of how one does a response we live in a country that from its founding had a federalist bent. States had independent rights of doing things their own way. In many respects, that works to our advantage in other situations. Possibly that was a disadvantage here. Very difficult to make a definitive comment about the paid and the that difference between what we see here and in europe. Mo we all have so many more questions. People will try to get through john and mine before we get to the students. This is a reminder to students, you can still submit your questions using the q a tab at the bottom of your zoom screen. John speaking of the schools and students, many schools around the country are announcing hteir guidance their guidance for the fall. Just yesterday, the l. A. County and San Diego CountyPublic Schools announced they would be online for the entire fall. The president and many others were talking about reopening schools fully as quickly as possible. ,he cdc issued guidance describing steps schools can take to open safely. I would like you to step back and help us think how should schools approach the upcoming epidemic Academic Year . The risk k12, higher ed present to themselves and their families, what is the right way to think about this Going Forward . Dr. Fauci for clarity, lets talk about elementary, middle, high school, and not university, because there are major differences. I think people are much more focused on school. I start off with a general principle, and work toward the operational aspects and the exceptions. Wea general principle, should try as best as possible to keep the children in school for the reasons that the unintended downstream Ripple Effect consequences of keeping the kids out of school and the impact on working families and on other aspects of society can be profound, not to mention the negative effect on the children. As a principal, we should try principle, we should try as a default to get kids in school. However, that will vary where you are in the country and the dynamics of the outbreak in you r particular region. The one other guiding principle that is overriding is the safety and welfare of the children and of the teachers. Eve got to take youve got to take that into consideration. If you are in a part of the country where the dynamics of the outbreak are minimal, there is no problem in getting back. If you are in outbreak mode, the you leave it up to local individuals, as you said, in certain california and making sureols, that the safety of the students and teachers are paramount. Lets try and get them open to the extent that we can, but lets look at the dynamics of the infection in the area that youre in. This maybe is a bit less about the response from the government, more about the response from citizens. Glad you are here. Im glad youre speaking out. I am glad you are giving students a chance to speak with the. A lot of people are confused about the state of the pandemic and what they should be doing. My wife and i every night try to sit down and figure out what we are allowed to do with our kids based on pieces of guidance we picked up. The confusion can be attributed to three main issues. One, the evolving nature of the pandemic has resulted in new information. Two, a growing body of deliberate misinformation and disinformation that is being spread, much of it online. Andthree, the polarization growing politicalization of the pandemic. Even the past weekend, the white house pointing to some of your tovious comments in order question the guidance. Misinformation, evolving guidance, increased politics in the conversation, how do people synthesize this information to make the right decision . How do they know who to trust . Dr. Fauci that is a good question. You adifficult to give definitive answer, except that, truste most part you can respected medical authorities. I believe i am one of them, so i think you can trust me. But i would stick with respected medical authorities who have a track record of telling the truth, who have a track record of giving information and policy and recommendations based on Scientific Evidence and good data. Advice to youive and your family and friends, i would say that is the safest bet, to listen to the recommendations from that category of people. It is entirely understandable how the public can get mixed messages and get confused about what they should do. Mo let me ask one quick followup. Just mentioned data. There was a story that broke moments before we convened here today about that Data Collection will bypass the cdc and go straight to hhs. I wonder if you have any thoughts on that latebreaking news. Dr. Fauci one of the bad ideas about commenting on breaking news that you didnt read is a surefire way to shoot yourself in the foot. I think i will pass. Mo we will go to john, and after that, right to student questions, which will be better than any of my questions. Is i last question know we asked a lot of questions, but it does so far get to the complexity of the experience most of the country is going through. Most of the people on this webinar are students. They are young adults. As we start to bring people on, given everything we have talked tout, what is your message young adults, teenagers . As more states open up, some are pausing, but focusing on the risks and response abilities of onsibilities resp of young people . Dr. Fauci it is key to what is going on right now with the resurgence is a resurgences in some of the southern states. Some this with trepidation, because i dont want to seem preachy. If you look at what is going on in the country, that the infections among young people contributed in part to what you see on tv, of young people gathering at bars, crowded places, congregating, many without masks. There is an understandable situation where a young person could say, you know, statistically the chances of my getting into trouble by getting infected are much smaller than an elderly person and a person with an underlying condition. Sense i as since i as a young mindn am healthy, i dont sipping my margarita in a crowd. However, what they need to understand is that, given the nature of this outbreak, even if you get infected and have no symptoms and never get sick, you are inadvertently propagating the pandemic. You are part of the problem and not the solution. By propagating the pandemic, i mean it may not matter to you, because you are probably not going to get any symptoms, but chances are you will infect someone who will then infect someone who will be a Vulnerable Person who can get sick, who can get hospitalized, who can even die. Not only are you propagating the outbreak, but you are putting other people in danger. I would hope you could appeal to the young people, to not only take the individual personal responsibility, but think about your societal responsibility. That is what i mean when i say we are all in this together. Everybody has a place and a role in getting this outbreak under control. You are not caring whether you get infected your not caring whether you get infected or not is not a good way to get the outbreak under control. You dont let yourself get infected and you dont spread to anybody else. I say that with some trepidation. I am not blaming anyone. I think people do this innocently. They dont mean to be part of the problem, but inadvertently they are part of the problem. That is the message we have got to get across. John thank you very much. I will turn this back to mo, because we will be able to bring in student questions next. Mo weve got a lot of questions, so we will try to get through them as many of them as we can. Our staff will notify students ttingwe are ready ge close to being ready to call on you. When we do, make sure you are broadcast ready, because you will be up on screen asking dr. Fauci your question correctly. Tell us who you are, where you are zooming in from, your field of study, so that dr. Fauci has a little context. Our first question. Introduce yourself. Fauci, thank you for coming to speak with us today. Inm a senior majoring International Political economy. I am currently zooming in from plano, texas. I am in a covid hotspot at the moment. My question has to do with what young people can do to contribute to depoliticizing the pandemic. I feel like a lot of the ordemic has been controlled impacted by politics. I was wondering what young people can do to make it more about science and less about politics. Dr. Fauci that appears to be a simple question, but it is a complicated situation you are asking about. Tough for young people to have an impact on debullet is asian other than politicization. We are all in this together. The way you can do that is by fortifying each other in what to essentially be part of what i just said, protect yourself. The best thing you can do is protect yourself and fortify your colleagues in their attempts, hopefully successfully, to prevent themselves from getting infected. The way to squash an outbreak is to have not anybody get infected. You not getting infected is a big contribution to what we need to do. Hang in there and dont get involved in any of the political nonsense. That is a waste of time and a distraction. Mo next up. Excuse me if i am mispronouncing any of the names. Introduce yourself to dr. Fauci. I am coming to you from bryn mawr, pennsylvania. I am a rising junior in the school of foreign service. I am a Global Business major. My question was, what kind of studies can we do right now in the middle of the pandemic about masks and transmission of the disease, or are we just relying on anecdotal evidence because we are not able to do those kinds of studies right now . Dr. Fauci that is a good question. Analysesok at the meta about the efficacy of masks, both for preventing you from infecting someone else as well as someone else infecting you, are pretty good. I would not want to do a randomized controlled study, because that would be having people not wear masks and see if they do better. I am convinced enough in the summation, and i would say the totality of the data that has been analyzed, that i am convinced that the benefit of wearing a mask clearly is better than not wearing a mask. I think to do that study would be difficult, because he would have to tell people not to wear masks, and i am not about to tell them that. Mo thanks for the question. Next up. Go ahead and introduce yourself. Thank you, dr. Fauci. I am a senior in the school of foreign service, currently zooming in from washington dc. The Trump Administration have o. And havethe w. H. Submitted plans to withdraw from the organization. Ow do you believe the w. H. O has done in terms of coordinating a Global Response to the pandemic, and what are your thoughts on the plans to withdrawing . Dr. Fauci obviously this is a complicated situation. I have been dealing with the w. H. O. Heavily in the last 36 years i have been director of the institute of allergies and diseases. They are an imperfect institution. They have made mistakes, but i would like to see the mistakes corrected and for them to be much more in line with the kinds of things that we need. There are some very good people at the w. H. O. , including the director general, who i know very well. I have a lot of colleagues that i interacted with over the years. I hope this kind of tension between the United States and the w. H. O. Ultimately gets settled in a favorable way. Forworld does need a w. H. O. Outbreaks like this, and even for the health of the general globe to coordinate it. I hope this thing gets resolved in a way that we find is favorable. Mo thanks for the question. Next up. Go ahead and introduce yourself. Hello, i am from bethesda, maryland. Fauci, whatis, dr. Tothe best policy solution divert the cost of testing as schools reopen . It is anna normas cost addition cost is an enormous addition. Dr. Fauci i dont have a good answer for that. When i talk about money and cost, i am out of my area. A lot of the testing can actually be free of cost, depending upon where you are and what you are doing. There are many things that have to do with testing and treatment of covid that is without cost. Since i am not as familiar with it as i would like to be, i would refrain from making comments. That often gets one into trouble. I occasionally like to avoid that. Mo thanks. Next up. Go ahead. Hi, thanks for taking my question. I am a rising junior in the college studying psychology and economics. I am assuming in from the boston zooming in from the boston area. Can you outline some of the reasons from your perspective as pandemice covid19 disproportionately affected poor communities and communities of color, and how to mitigate these inequalities in the future . Dr. Fauci great question. I was hoping someone would ask it. If you look at minority communities, africanamerican, latinx, native americans and alaskan americans, there are two areas in which they find themselves disadvantaged. One does notough like to generalize, but as a demographic group, minorities find themselves, because of their economic and employment situations, in a situation where it is less easy for them to protect themselves from getting infected. They have less of a chance of sitting in front of a computer teleworking as opposed to being outside with jobs that require exposure. So their chances of getting infected are greater than the general population. That is disadvantage number one. Disadvantage number two is when they do get infected, given the social determinants of medicine that have been around for so long, they have a much greater incidence and prevalence of comorbidities, which lead to a poorer outcome. Diabetes, hypertension, obesity, cardiovascular disease, those kinds of things which put them in a higher risk category. It is what you call a double negative whammy that they get. What can we do now and what can we do in the long run . What we can do now is concentrate resources in the areas where they are demographically overrepresented so they can have easy access to testing, better access to health care so that if and when they get infected they can get into proper care early enough to mitigate some of the negative consequences. That we can do now. The longerrange is, do we have a commitment to eliminate health disparities, which is a decadelong commitment. You are not going to do that overnight. There are so many things you can do to modify the reasons why they have more hypertension, they have more diabetes, more obesity. We can make a commitment now and to do things in the long run. Mo next up. Introduce yourself. A freshman in the school of foreign service. I am just going to enter my freshman year this year. I know some things about foreign policy. I had a question about how International Relations affects our ability to contain pandemics and how greater Cooperation Amongst nations can help us prevent a future incident. Thank you for your service, dr. Anthony fauci. You dont know how amazing this is to speak to you. Dr. Fauci it is nice to speak to you. You bring up an important point. Pandemic almost answers your question, because pandemic means all. It essentially is global. If you are going to talk about identifying, responding to, and containing pandemics, you have got to think globally. Cant think in the vacuum of your own country. International relationships, transparency, agreements to have things like Global Health security network, which we try to have, those are all critical to an adequate response. We have so many examples of when those things were not optimal, that our response was slowed and we could have done better. Couple of students involved in the study of foreign service. If there is anything of a challenge that requires international cooperation, it is a pandemic by the very definition of what a pandemic is. Mo thanks for the question and welcome to georgetown. Next up, weve got hunter. I am a rising senior at georgetown. I am currently in new haven, connecticut. Seems weon is, it still dont know whether having had the virus confers community. When will confers immunity . When will we find out . Could it mean you get more sick if you get the virus a second time . Dr. Fauci good questions. We will not have the definitive answer to your question until we months and a year or more to determine the durability. I can say with a degree of confidence that if you get infected and you recover, it was because your immune system and immune response suppressed and ultimately eliminated the virus. If you were infected, i can say confidently that you have immunity. What i cant tell you is how long that immunity is going to last. I would hope it lasts a substantial period of time, but we dont know because we have only been involved in the outbreak for 5. 5 to six months. Does that impact vaccination . It is. We hope when we do vaccinate individuals, that the vaccine would give action long enough protection long enough for one full seasonal cycle. There is always the opportunity to give someone a booster. That is the answer to your first two questions. The third question is if you get infected before and get infected again, could it make it worse . You are talking about what they called enhancement. That is a phenomenon we are studying now. I hope it will be a big deal. There are some infections where preexisting low level inadequate immunity leads to an enhanced infection. We have seen that with dengue, and we hope we dont see it with covid. That is why when you start a vaccine trial, you Pay Attention to safety. Mo next up, introduce yourself. I am a graduate student. Thank you for being here today and discussing these things with us. Contentious political climate, how do you bridge that divide between the necessities to disseminate information about the seriousness of a disease and the need for that advice to actually be accepted on both sides . Dr. Fauci the most important thing to do is when you are dealing in what i think you are referring to as a divisive toosphere in the country, is stick to the science and to the evidence and avoid at all costs getting involved in any of the political, ideological divisiveness. If you want to get a message across, build up the confidence and others that you are speaking the truth in others that you are speaking the truth and advising on the basis of evidence and science. That is the thing that is clean and crystalclear. There is not ideology involved. There is not political persuasion involved. Just stick with the data and use that to make whatever recommendation. You can get past all of the other stuff that is unfortunately background noise that gets in the way of what you are trying to do. Mo thanks. And introduce yourself. Thank you for being here. I am a rising junior in the college studying government. I am from long island, new york. My question has to do with the work i do with the Georgetown Disability Alliance in Mental Health. How do people around the world reconcile the Mental Health component of going out and leaving quarantine and isolation with the risks it might bring along with it . Dr. Fauci that is a great question. I am glad you asked it. A complicated situation. Outbreak, contain the and the kinds of confinements and physical distancing, shutting down, if you will, have played a successful role in getting cases down. The reason why it is important to open the country again and to try to get back to some degree of normality it is not just because of the inconvenience, not just because of the economic impact, but what you are interested in is also important. The strain on the morale and Mental Health of people being put in an abnormal situation like lockdown is one of the things you have to consider and balance. You dont want to open up and create a big surge again that will cause you to take a step backwards, but on the other hand you have to try in a prudent, careful way to get back to some form of normality. It does have a negative impact on everything from the health of kids to Mental Health in general. Thanks for that question. Andnext up, go ahead introduce yourself. I am a rising senior at georgetown college. I am working as a contact tracer this summer. What steps should policymakers consider to make sure countries get a effective vaccine first, that this does not magnify existing geopolitical inequalities . Dr. Fauci thank you for being a contact tracer. I applaud that. We need you. The idea about equities, not only in the distribution of vaccines and therapies, but in the Clinical Trials that determine if they work or not, you want equitable distribution. You want to make sure that when you test something, it is save and effective in safe and effective in a minority and majority of people. We have outreach in the community. We have community engagement. Mechanismsumber of of getting people together to make sure that first of all, enough forwill have everyone who needs it, but as it is being rolled out, you often have to make a choice of who gets it first. A general principle, though i will leave it up to discussions, is to give it to those who are most vulnerable man who would most benefit from it, such as first responders, health care providers, essential members of society, people with underlying conditions. Hopefully you can quickly get everybody vaccinated, but sometimes you have to make difficult decisions. That is the reason you want to go by the strongest medical and Ethical Principles to guide you. John just a quick followup, can you give us a couple sentences on the state of Vaccine Development given where we are right now . Your sense of the likely timeline. Dr. Fauci there is good news coming out today or tomorrow. The publication of the phase one trial for one of those candidates that showed really good neutralizing antibodies. Safe, no adverse events. That will go into phase three at the end of this month, the end of july. There are other candidates that will soon be following at the end of the summer, mid fall. I think we are in a pretty good place when it comes to vaccines. Obviously you want to prove it is safe and effective, but if things work out the way they hope they do,y we by the beginning of calendar year 2021, we will have enough information to know whether the candidates we are dealing with are safe and effective. And hopefully we will be able to distribute it in an equitable manner. I am cautiously optimistic about that. Mo thanks for the question. Next up. Go ahead. Incoming first year at the college. I will be studying linguistics. The question i had was answered a little bit, but i wanted to take it to vaccines. When will it be released across the globe and when should we expect to have complete immunity and get over covid19 . Dr. Fauci okay. [laughter] good group of questions. When you talk about when we will be able to give it to everybody, that is assuming my timetable is correct. If it is, into the year of 2021, the Companies Involved in making the vaccines promised we will tune of 100 million doses. Another Company Hopes they could have up to one billion. Im feeling much better about getting a vaccine distributed not only within our own country, but that they will have doses for those throughout the world that cannot afford, nor is it easy for them to get vaccinated. You should know that no vaccine is going to be 100 protective. We hope that with a combination of people already being exposed and fm 75 effective, that there will be enough herd immunity that there will be a time when you and i dont have to worry about getting infected with this awful virus. I hope that time will be reasonably soon. When i say soon, i say within the next year to year and a half. Mo we are getting close to the end of our time, but i want to squeeze in a couple more student questions if possible. Go ahead and introduce yourself. I am a secondyear student at georgetown law school. Do you believe that a comprehensive Contact Tracing program can be implement it on a National Scale in a way that would evade accusations about privacy violations . Dr. Fauci yes, i do, firmly. If done properly, with people who are the contact tracers that ie trustworthy and competent, think this can be done. Contact tracing is not the only part of pandemic control, but it is an important part. It becomes much more important when you are in containment mode as opposed to mitigation mode. When you have such a wide outbreak at the Community Level and you dont really know, because you have so many asymptomatic carriers, Contact Tracing can be very problematic. But in the conditions where you have a low enough rate of infection, i think it can be done under the conditions where you will not worry about privacy issues. Mo thanks so much. We are running out of time. Dr. Fauci, i want to ask one last question. That is about our frontline works. Workers. They are out on the front lines, not only in health care settings, the grocery stores, transit, other essential industries. Are we doing enough to protect them . What steps should we take to protect them and their families, especially as this pandemic continues to unfold . Question one of the students asked about prioritization of essential workers with vaccines and therapies, what you would do to protect them is what you would do to protect everybody. A broad feeling of messaging in a way that they do what is necessary to protect themselves and give them the resources to do it. Everyone should be wearing a mask when they are out, should be avoiding crowds, should keep distance, should be washing hands, should be doing the almost obvious things that you need to do. If we did that, whether you are an essential person, a grocery worker, the chances are you are not going to get infected. What we can do for people Like Health Care workers, we have to make sure they have the proper personal protective we should never be in a situation where people are in harms way to take care of others and putting themselves at an unreasonable risk. That is one definitive thing we can do, make sure we have the resources and equipment to protect people who are doing essential jobs for us. Thank you. I think this our has been unbelievably informative and inspiring. You, the time i first met you have been an inspiration to all of us about public service, health and science. I am confident we will benefit from your message today. Thank you for all you have done and all you do for our country. Thank you for your time. Dr. Fauci thank you for having me. It is enlightening and enjoyable dealing with you and the students of georgetown. Thank you for having m on tuesday, officials testify before house subcommittee. Watch live at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan three, cspan. Org, or our cspan radio app. House andek, the Senate Return to legislative business for the recess. Monday and tuesday, the house picks up the 2021 National Defense authorization act and the bill has policies for programs. Folks are expected early on monday. Wednesday, the house will consider a bill for the author of the 1857 dred scott ruling from the Old Supreme Court chamber and to address the issue of federal statues on display in the u. S. Capitol. On Senate Resumes the debate director of office of management budget. Annual Defense Authorization act. The house coverage of on cspan, live coverage of the senate on cspan2, and any time on cspan. Org or listen on the with the free cspan radio app. Next, National Security advisor and u. S. Ambassador to the u. N. Susan rice, in a conversation with a Washington Post columnist. Includes her potential as a running mate for joe biden. Susan we are at a moment where our democracy is at stake. Where are leadership role of the world is at stake for the lives of tens of thousands of americans are on the line with incompetence and callous leadership that could l