He is the winner of the National Medal of science and the president ial medal of freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States. We are grateful for his lifetime of a and particularly thankful for his candor and expertise and during this time here let me ask you for a broad overview of the pandemic. Where are we now . Dr. Fauci we are in a difficult situation. We have a large outbreak. As you probably know, there has been close to 140,000 deaths and we have several million infections. That is sobering news. There are some bright spots we need to capitalize on, namely areas of the country like the new york metropolitan area, which had been through a difficult time, probably worse than any other regional area of a big city in the world, but have turned it around and come down. As we are seeing now, if you follow the news carefully, it is obvious there are sections of the country, particular group of southern states, particularly california, florida, texas and arizona, as well as others, seeing a resurgence where we had a baseline of about 20,000 cases 30,day that have gone up to 40, 50, it is a significant issue. Resurgence is something weve got to be able to suppress. We want to ultimately, and as soon as we possibly can and as safely as we possibly can reopen the country, get it back to some stepbystep direction towards normality, and the way you do that is by careful process of opening up under certain types of guidelines weve put out from the White House Task force. Those are the things we want to get back in step. The time has come to take a look at what is going on and see if we can intensify the things we do to prevent a resurgence that we are seeing. What does the fall look like . Dr. Fauci it is very difficult to predict. One of the things about this virus, in certain areas, it has been unpredictable, certain things are predictable, and that is if you do not do certain things and the virus is left to its own devices, it will continue to spread through the population. Is the virus changing . I dont want to get too technical, but this is an rna virus, and they mutate, thats part of their Natural Evolution in their replication cycle. The question is, have they mutated so much as to change substantially . There has been a recent study that has not necessarily been applied to people that has been shown in a situation where you look at the evolution and mutation of the virus in a certain way. It binds a bit better to the receptor with a certain mutation. But i dont think we can say anything about that from a practical standpoint until we get more data. Bottom line answer, there isnt anything different about this virus that gives us further insight to what happens in the fall. I think we should put aside thinking of the fall, people talk about the possibility of a second wave in the fall, that is a historic terminology related to another time and another outbreak. We need to concentrate on where we are right now. If you talk about waves, we are essentially still in the first wave. When you are having up to 70,000 new infections in certain areas of the country, that is something you need to focus on right now, as opposed to looking ahead to what will happen in september or october. We have questions from the audience on video. The first one from anne gill in arizona. Caller good morning. Im the president and ceo of the chamber of commerce. My question for you today is, did things open up too earlier was it the way we reopened that result in the current spike in cases . Dr. Fauci that is a good question and it is a mixed bag. Im not going to name any individual states, but if you look at the criteria for the stepwise fashion of socalled reopening, we put out guidelines from the Coronavirus Task force that had what is called a gateway, a criteria for the lessening of the number of cases over a certain number of days. If you pass that gateway, you would go to phase i, and if you were there at a certain amount of time in the cases were steady and going down, you could go to phase 2 and phase 3. When you look at that, clearly there are some states that actually skipped over one or more of what you call benchmarks or checkpoints. That could have been one of the issues that led to the surge. There are other situations where the states and cities, essentially, officially did it perfectly correctly, but the citizenry, the people themselves did not abide by what those recommendations were, and that is what we have seen so dramatically with film clips we have seen on tv of people congregating in bars without masks, or in crowded places without masks, be it beaches, boardwalks, or whatever, and that almost certainly has led at least in part, is a partial explanation to the kinds of resurgences we have seen. It is a mixed bag, doing a bit too quickly on the part of some and trying to do it correctly but people did not cooperate on the part of other locations. Host we have talked a lot about testing. Getting testing under control. Is it hard for the United States to get effective testing . Dr. Fauci we got off to a slow start with regard to testing for a number of reasons that have been very much dissected, considerably, so we need not now go back, but things in regard to testing are better than they were before, and if you look at the number of tests that have been done in the projection over the next month or two of the number of tests we can be able to do, i believe you will start to see and hopefully we will see a change for the better in the availability of the tests, when you get the results back more quickly, in some cases we got them back, all of those things can certainly use a degree of improvement but they are much better now than they were in the past. Host the u. S. Chamber represents businesses of every size, every sector, every Community Across the country. One thing we hear a lot from Business Leaders and Community Leaders is, which data should we be watching . How do we know what is actionable . Where do we look for information . What would you advise Business Leaders . Dr. Fauci the cdc forever has been the lead agency in both surveillance and response outbreaks and you can get on a daily basis and even some real time information not only about the extent and the location and the dynamics of the outbreak on the country at a whole, but you can get it city by city and state by state. So i would point you to the cdc website for information that would be valuable to you. Other websites, others have similar information, the Johns Hopkins website has one. There are other websites, but i recommend for the purposes you are asking that you stick with the cdc. Host the idea of advising people in their communities leads to the next audience question from california. Caller my name is kirk rothsberg, and my question, what is the best advice i can give to my staff who are fearful . Dr. Fauci that is a very commonly asked question. You are in california. California is responding now. I have been in contact multiple times with your governor and mayors in california. The thing you do is take a look at the state in which your particular location is. Are you in gateway, phase i or phase ii . And follow the guidelines that are clearly delineated. All you need to do go to coronavirus. Gov and youll see guidelines for opening america. Having looked at them the minimal thing you should do is the kinds of things we have been talking about constantly. Wearing a mask, maintaining 6 feet of distance, avoiding crowds, washing your hands as much as you can with soap and water, with the kinds of substances that are around, purell, those are the fundamental things you need to do. Because the virus will not be able to do anything if you keep a physical distance. If you are in an open bakery, you have to be physically closer. Wearing a mask is something everyone should do. You should ask it of your customers. Host france just mandated masks in all public places. Is that something we need local and state governments to do here . Dr. Fauci no. I think it is going to be, as we all know, our society from the beginning of the Founding Fathers is a Federalist Society in which the states have certain prerogatives, powers, and responsibilities. I can say as a Public Health official that i would urge the leaders, local, political and other leaders in states and cities and towns to be as forceful as possible in getting your citizenry to wear masks. Masks are important. Physical distancing is the most important. But practically, when you are living your life and trying to open up the country, you will come into contact with people, and for that reason, we know masks are really important and we should be using them everywhere. Host that leads to a question from this member of michigan. Caller my name is michelle with the Lansing Regional Chamber of commerce in lansing, michigan. Dr. Fauci, thank you for joining us. My question is around masks and businesses, businesses are in the unfortunate position of being the mask police. They are anxious for the revenue, but desperate to stay healthy and open and have to often confront patrons who are not Wearing Masks. This has led to uncomfortable and even dangerous encounters what advice would you have for Business Owners and Staff Members to manage or address the situation . What would be a message to the community at large to drive home the critical importance of wearing a mask . Dr. Fauci thank you, michelle. The answer to the second part of your question is probably the answer to the first part. I am totally aware, because ive spoken to many in the same situation, commercial people in lansing. It gets difficult that people dont want to cooperate and you dont want a hostile environment in your business for obvious reasons, but on the other hand, you want to maintain the highest levels of safety. What i have been trying to do in my discussions, i will mention it briefly now because i do it every opportunity that i can, to get people to appreciate an individual to protect yourself. Because if you get infected, even if youre a young person and have a higher chance of not having a serious outcome, by getting infected, even if you never get symptoms, you are part of the propagation of the pandemic. So even though deep down you want to open up the country and get back to normal, by getting infected, youre propagating the process of the pandemic and slowing down the process of opening up. Even though you think it only involves you in a vacuum, it doesnt. If you get infected, the chances are, youre going to infect someone else and the chances that person will infect someone else, then sooner or later, probably sooner, youre going to infect someone who is a Vulnerable Person who could get seriously ill. That could be somebodys grandmother, grandfather, father, child on chemotherapy, mother, from leukemia, a woman getting radiation, all of the kinds of people that are at higher risk of serious outcomes. We need to try to have societal responsibility. So it isnt just i dont want to wear a mask into your place to buy a loaf of bread or whatever it is you are going to buy because i dont want anybody telling me what to do. This has been a free country from the very birth of the country, this is really different, this is everybody pulling together in a serious situation. If we can get more people to understand that, hopefully we will get more people willing to wear masks. Host speaking of being a good Public Citizen and civic responsibility, a number of Chamber Leaders and Business Leaders play other roles in their community, volunteers, a number of them are being called on by their local School Boards and local government officials to help grapple with how and when to open schools. Speaking to thought leaders and communities across the country how should they be participating in that conversation and what factors should they be considering . Dr. Fauci a very important point you bring up, because this is obviously being discussed intensively as we get into the summer and prepare for the end of summer and early fall particularly when children in lower, intermediate and high school are going back to high school, particularly children going into lower or Elementary Schools as we used to call it. My advice is that we need to take a look, go to 40,000 feet and look at the big picture. If you look at things that come out from the American Academy of pediatrics, if you look at the wellknown, downstream, unintended consequences that are ripple effects of keeping children out of school, namely the impact on the kids themselves, the impact logistically on the parents, because of the fact that it impacts their ability to go to work, that the default position should always be we need to do the best we possibly can within the framework of safety, the best we possibly can to have our default position to get the children back to school. Having said that, living in a big country that is geographically and demographically diverse, we are not unidimensional. There will be parts of the country where the level of virus activity is so low, you dont have to modify anything at all, just send the children back to school. But clearly, if you look at what is going on right now, parts of the country have a significant degree of viral activity that make you want to pause and say, if we are going to bring the children back to school, we have to make sure there is paramount safety for the children and safety for the teachers. So we may want to modify, logistically or otherwise, what we do. Separate the desks by a certain amount, Wearing Masks for children within any group in which masks are at least feasible, perhaps rotating the kind of schedule, morning, afternoon, every other day, or what have you. Always thinking we will do whatever we can to get the schools open and children back to school, but always remember that safety and the health of the children and teachers comes first. I think if we keep that in mind, we will go a long way to getting the schools open safely. Host our interns have had different experiences this year given the virus. Our interns have a serious question, we have an intern who asks, are we are going to back to the way things were . Dr. Fauci the answer to that is yes. We are going to get over this, we will get over this difficult period. Sometimes, you get so exasperated and run down by it that you think it is never going to end. It will end through Public Health measures and science will come to our rescue. Hopefully, sooner rather than later, we will go as fast as we can with development of therapeutics, development of a vaccine, which we have been speaking of for a while. We have favorable results in early studies of vaccines. One of the candidates will be going into an advanced phase 3 trial by the end of this month, by the end of july, and other candidates will be entering advanced Clinical Trials as we get into midsummer, late summer and early fall. We feel cautiously optimistic that we are on the road, as bleak as it may sound, that we are on the road of getting this under control. You can tell your intern, yes, we will get back to normal with schools, and we will ultimately get back to normal with every aspect of our lives. Host that is a wonderful thing to center on and make us think more seriously about social distancing, washing her hands. There is a normal on the other side. The sooner we can act appropriately, the better. Let me ask about another optimistic note. You hear how the virus has impacted business, but it is also true business has impacted virus, you talk about vaccines and therapeutics and other things, but talk about the role of the private sector in fighting this pandemic . Dr. Fauci the role of the private sector is paramount. The federal government, academia, is part of the private sector. Pharmaceutical companies are part of the private sector, so every single candidate, therapeutic, diagnostic, and certainly vaccine we are dealing with in trying to develop has a major influence from the private sector. There is no way government alone, be it federal, state, or local government is going to fix this. It is a marriage and a collaboration between government authorities and the private sector. It has always been that way, and it is that way now, and i believe it always will be that way. The answer to your question is absolutely, the private sector plays a major role. Host the chamber is a Firm Believer in the role of the private sector and how these publicprivate partnerships across a lot of societys challenges are so important to success for all of us. Speaking of other partnerships, we have another question from the audience from another sector, you mentioned academia, we have a question from enid kramer at john hopkins. Good morning, i am the Deputy Director of institute of private studies. My question is, how can the Business Community achieve Public Health priorities in improving the current infrastructure needs . Dr. Fauci you make a good point, i respect coming from Johns Hopkins that you would do that. I will put in a plug that i hope everybody will appreciate, one of the most important aspects of responding to an outbreak, in both the Health Care Infrastructure locally and Public Health infrastructure locally, it becomes very, very difficult to adequately respond, including things like identification, isolation, Contact Tracing. If you do not have adequate local health infrastructure, manpower, and capability. And unfortunately, in some respects, historically, we have been the victims of our own success, because we have done so well in containing, controlling, and even eliminating some of the deep killers and neighbors and diseases that cause a great degree of morbidity over decades and decades that we have maybe declared our success too prematurely and lef