October 12, 2021 • 46 mins
Alec talks with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Chief Medical Advisor to President Biden. He talks to Alec about the latest in the pandemic and his long career.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing
from my Heart Radio. This is my conversation with Dr
Anthony Fauci. Well, we're very grateful for the time you've
given us. The first question that I have for you
is about the Texas border and the Haitian immigrants. What
do you think about immigration in the time of COVID.
(00:25):
What do you think about twelve thou people trying to
come into this country. It's assumed that they're unvaccinated. Correct,
you know, my making any comment about that. You know,
everything I say gets ripped off. Try by far right
people and get on me into the usual nonsense. I
am somebody who does favor immigration. My family, my grandfather
(00:46):
and grand mothers on both sides were immigrants. So I mean,
I think that what we need to do is do
whatever we can to treat them fairly, to get them
the right medical care, and to get them vaccinated if possible.
Is that a goal to get them vaccinated? I would hope, so,
I mean, but no, that's not my per view at all,
(01:06):
but I would think that that would be important. Right.
You see a lot recently on CNN dot com about
anti virals here's the pill. They said that maybe maybe
we can get back to normal. What do you think
the hope is for anti virals in the coming months. Well,
I think not only is it a hope, Alec, I
think it really is a necessity because the primary countermeasure
(01:29):
for a respiratory born viral illness is always vaccine to
prevent it, particularly when it has an acute nature to it. However,
it is very clear that even with a vaccine that's
highly effective, that no vaccine is perfect. So there are
two ways that you can use an anti viral. You
(01:50):
can use it to treat someone who has already been infected,
to prevent them to progress their disease to the point
of requiring hospital is nation. The thing that you heard
about the other day was what Belief Fiser was saying.
They are developing a anti viral they would use for
(02:10):
what's called pre exposure prophylaxis, which means that if you
are in a family setting where a member has the
virus and inadvertently exposed you, rather than waiting to see
if you are infected. It was very similar, ALEC, to
the pre exposure profylaxis that we've developed for HIV, where
(02:32):
you have people who are in a risk situation that
they could take something that normally would be a therapy,
but they're taking it as a pre exposure prophylaxis. That's
what Fiser was talking about the other day. Now, obviously
you are very famous and have been for previous pandemics,
and in the nine eighties you were one of the
(02:53):
people that led the charge against HIV here in the
United States, and you made a statement or a comment
that I thought was very compelling where you said those
people back then were fighting for their lives, not to
defend a conspiracy theory like we often see now. How
would you compare and contrast the response you've gotten. Is
it the same? Because I know that you were attacked
(03:14):
a lot, and then Larry Kramer came around and heroicized you,
and you were given the Congressional meta and freedom and
so forth. It was very difficult for you in the
beginning of the HIV cristis correct. It was, but it
bettered me. It made me a better person. The criticism
was to catch my attention. They were iconoclastic, theatrical, confrontative.
(03:36):
But what they were saying is that this is a
new paradigm that we were going through the tried and
true slow science, slow clinical trials, slow regulatory approval. And
they was saying, we have a disease that by the
time you realize what we have is that we don't
have a lot more time to live. So you've got
(03:57):
to get us involved in the clinical I'll design. You've
got to get the FDA to be more attentive. Since
I was an openly involved federal employee, I became the
face of the federal government, so they attacked me to
gain my attention. Probably one of the best things I've
(04:17):
ever done in my life, ALEC was to put myself
in their shoes and say, well, wait a minute. These
are people, young men, usually young gay men, who are suffering.
They were pain, they were afraid for themselves and and
for their loved ones. So I said, let me put
myself in their shoes. And when I did, it was
(04:41):
a revelation. I said, I would be doing exactly what
they're doing without a doubt. So that's when I extended
myself to them, and we forged a growing relationship that
wasn't all rosy even after I reached out, but over
the years they became extraordinary value added to our effort
(05:05):
So that's what I meant when I said it was
something that was a productive confrontation that got our attention
and said, please listen to what we have to say,
and when we did, we got better at our jobs. Now,
as I recall, the bell in terms of the AIDS
(05:25):
crisis was wrung around one and that's forty years ago.
So to refresh the memories of those people listening who
aren't necessarily completely familiar with the history of the AIDS crisis,
what was the turning point in your mind that helped
you to start to, if not find a cure for
AIDS and help to manage the disease. Well, I got
(05:46):
involved as a physician taking care of desperately ill patients,
because by the time they knew there was something wrong,
they were desperately ill. So the first five patients that
presented from Los Angeles with this strange pneumonia probably had
been infected for years and did not even know it.
(06:07):
So when I saw that first report, I thought it
was a fluke and that it would go away. And
then one month later in July, the first report was
in June, there was now not five gay men from
l A, but there were twenty six men curiously all gay, like,
where does that happen? All gay men? Not only from
(06:29):
l A but from San Francisco and New York. And
it was at that point, Alec, that I made a
decision which, again among the decisions that I made that
were good decisions, I decided I was going to put
aside the things I was doing, which I was very
successful at, and start studying these young gay men who
were coming down with this devastating disease. And the first
(06:53):
few years of that were really the dark years of
my life and my professional career, because everybody that we
took care of died and it was eerie and painful.
But the thing that kept us through it is realizing
the courage and the resilience of these young men who
were being attacked by a disease that barely had a name.
(07:14):
We used to call it GRID back then Gay related
him into deficiency, and we certainly didn't know what it was.
The big breakthrough came in four when the virus was discovered,
so now we knew who the enemy was. Before it
was like just pain of putting band aids on hemorrhages
(07:34):
and you didn't know what the cause of leading was.
That you were with N I A I D. Then yes,
I was. I was a a senior attending physician at
the time doing research on the immune system and this
relationship to infectious diseases. So when this disease came along,
I said, oh, my goodness. If ever there was a
(07:55):
disease for which I was trained as an immunologist and
as an effectious disease person, this was it. So that
came in four. The thing that was a dark Oh
my god, like I got hit by a truck. Was five.
When what happened was we did the diagnostic test and
(08:17):
we found that the people that we were taking care
of who was sick, We're just the tip of the iceberg,
because when we started to test people in Los Angeles,
in the Castro district of San Francisco, in Greenwich Village,
we found out, to our horror that like the game men,
(08:37):
were infected, and that was inconceivable, that they were already
infected with the disease that I had spent the last
three years watching people die from. So the next landmark
would be, Okay, so now you've got the virus. So
now you know who's infected, you gotta get a therapy
(08:57):
and that's when all of the incredible work went into
developing anti virals in an incremental way. First with a
z T which helped got them a little better, but
then they went down again. Then two drugs did pretty well,
and then the breakthrough when the triple combination which was
initiated with the protease inhibitors. But what since Now we
(09:21):
have much much, much better drugs in the sense that
we now went from my watching in an incredible painful
way every one of my patients, with few exceptions, die
eight two, eighty three, eighty four, eighty five two. Now
that we hardly have any patients as in patients. They're
all out patients. They're all leading essentially normal lives with
(09:46):
maybe a couple of years of life expectancy clipped off.
But now they're living vibrant, contributory lives. So that's the
long journey of forty years. Now similar, I mean no
out different as far as you're consumed as a physician
and a scientist, But to me similar in a way,
which is did we ever find out the cause of AIDS?
(10:09):
Just as the question becomes do we need to continue
to find the cause of COVID because it seems to
have dropped off the national conversation here as to what
caused us in order for us to learn how we
can prevent it from happening again. I presume, yeah, sure
that that's a really great question. Well, let me just
fine tune one thing that you said, Alec, we know
the cause, we don't know the origin of the cause. Okay,
(10:31):
So the cause is HIV. It's a virus. We know
now by doing a phylogenetic tree that there's no doubt
that decades ago this virus jumped very likely from a
chimpanzee into a human a blip of an affection, person died,
went away, jumped again in through a human blip of infection.
(10:53):
Then all of a sudden, the right circumstances, the dissolution
of colonization, the impact of commercial sex work, the truck
up trade that goes back and forth, the disruption of
family unit. Then you had an outbreak that's spread through
the rest of the world because it was sexually transmitted.
So we know for sure what went on there. We
(11:15):
know for sure what the cause of COVID nineteen is.
It saws kovie two. It very likely, given the history
of coronavirus, is saws Kovie one Mayor's the Middle East
respiratory syndrome ebol uh Zekea that these things jump from
animals to human What we haven't yet nailed down is
(11:38):
the precise lineage of from a bat to an intermediary
to the human, or directly from a bat to a human.
We know that in the environment in China there are
bats that have viruses that are not absolutely very close,
but close enough to make you want to do surveillance
(11:59):
and find out what's going on in that animal human
interface that may have allowed it to jump species. That's
Dr Anthony Fauci. If you like conversations with people at
the forefront of public health, go to our archives and
listen to my talk with Dr Joanne Lou who at
the time was president of Doctors Without Borders. The threat
(12:23):
of being abducted was so huge back then, and we
knew that if something were ever to happen to the staff,
the MSF staff, then we will pull out. So we
were praying for not having anything bad happening to us,
because we knew they were delivering really needed aid. On
the other end, it was so nerve wracking. You can
(12:46):
hear the rest of that conversation at Here's the thing
dot org when we returned more of my conversation with
Dr Anthony Faucci. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
hear is the thing? Now? More of my conversation with
(13:08):
Dr Anthony Fauci. Should we check our antibodies before getting
a booster? You mean a third shot if you've been
vaccinated first. No, And that's a firm answer to tell
your wife that boosters are given for the durability of protection,
as manifested by clinical observation both in the United States
(13:32):
cohorts that the waning of protection goes down. I mean
the immune parameters go down too, but it doesn't really
matter when you look. It's clinically what counts, ALEC. So
it goes down for protection against infection and mild to
moderate disease, it goes down less so, but it still
(13:53):
goes down against protection against hospitalization and debts. We believe
that at least I do as a physician and a scientist,
that sooner or later, at the end of the day,
we're going to realize that that third shot is going
to be part of what the normal, complete, optimal vaccine
(14:15):
regiment is so in some respects, and I'll say this
it sounds crude, but it isn't. Is that I don't
really care what the level of anybody is. In your wife,
I think when her turn comes to get the boost,
she should get the boost. Can you mix vaccines? Our
friend had J and J and was recommended to get
(14:36):
a dose of maderna. Can you mix vaccines safely? It
is optimal to be given the same product that you
got originally. But the answer to your question is literally
in real time being answered. We're doing a grid of
mix and match. It's called whereas you take people that
have either gotten Moderna FISA or Jay and Jay. You
(15:01):
give them the third dose for an m R and
A and a second dose for J and J, and
you start. You give Moderna as the third dose, you
give J and J as the dose, you give FISER
as the dose, and you examine is it's safe and
does it induce an immune response that you would predict
would be protective. We're already finished with the MODERNA study.
(15:25):
The J and J study is going to be done
by the end of September the beginning of October, and
the FISER one will be done by the first the
second week. When I say done, Alec, I mean the
data will be collected enough to give to the company,
which then will give it to the FDA for approval.
So we're almost there. Does this also include vaccines outside
(15:48):
the US like astra Zeneca. We are not doing the
mix and match yet. For astro Zenica, the Brits have
done that, So the data from the Brits have done that,
and it looks like there's not a problem there at all. Now,
I know you've been asked this question every ten minutes,
but I'm gonna ask you anybody because it's my wife.
I'm sure you understand. Um, when can we really expect
(16:12):
kids to get vaccinated? And will it be two shots? Okay,
your your wife is something in common with millions of
wives and mothers. So the answer is, as you know, Alec,
that adolescents from twelve up to seventeen now are already
with FISER approved to get vaccinated. The question your wife
(16:35):
is asking is eleven down to five and then ultimately
five to let's say six months. So Fiser has done
the study already in children from five to eleven. They
announced yesterday that they have completed the study. They will
be submitting the data to the f d A imminently,
(16:57):
he said, within days the f d A. You never
want to get ahead of them. You don't want to
predict what they're going to be able to do. But
if in fact they find that those vaccines are safe
and predictive of inducing an immune response that would be protective,
then it is likely if they approve it. Because I
(17:18):
always want to be careful, I don't get ahead of
the f d A. If they improve it, it very
likely will be before the end of October. Interesting, when
a mother is pregnant and she's vaccinated to do the
babies have antibodies. Yes, what happens is two things. The
anybody's go across the placenta to the baby. Number one,
(17:40):
so when the baby is born, the baby already has
the mother's anybody in his or her Sarah point number one.
If the mother breastfeeds, that's another source of anybody for
the baby. Now I'm gonna pivot here too. Things that
are more broader and more historical. I'm sure having been
(18:01):
through what you went through with the AIDS crisis, which
was a section of society, a relatively small section of society.
I mean that doesn't minimize the suffering. But now we
have something in which the entire country, as people have said,
it's changed the way we live forever. This thing has occurred,
(18:22):
and you are a man who is the face of
the United States government. Now, the weight of the world
is not all that on your shoulders. You've got colleagues
around the world that are working very hard in other
countries to fight this, but certainly the weight of this
country and how we live and how we don't live, masks, vaccines, distancing, quarantining, lockdowns,
(18:49):
all of this madness. How was this difference for you
where the entire country was looking to I've got a
variety of questions about this, the pressure on you. Did
you ever feel like my God, I don't know if
I can see this through. Did you ever have any
self doubts? Well, Alec, I have to tell you I
never have, and it isn't a question of self doubt.
(19:11):
Is that this is what I do, This is the
life I chose idea of God. Yeah, this is the
business we've chosen. Yeah, but you know, when you go
into global health and public health, you have to expect anything.
You know, HIV are absolutely correct, and I like the
(19:31):
way you framed it, because it actually is triggering in
my own mind, you know, another way. I'll have to
take the time to reflect on that. You're absolutely right,
it was a segment, generally, a segment of our population,
even though it's a global pandemic uh HIV is, which
is sort of an interesting distortion that we've had. What's
(19:53):
going on in Sub Saharan Africa is a much different
thing that's going on in the United States. But you're right,
you have to be paired when you're dealing with a
public health crisis. It's got to be driven by public
health principles. And one of the things that is different now,
and I've said this publicly many time, if there's ever
(20:15):
a time when you don't want societal divisiveness is when
you're in the middle of a pandemic. And one of
the things that has made life extremely unusual for me
is the fact that I am trying and I and
I do, and I've I've made the decision that's my life.
If I wanted to do something else, I would have
(20:35):
made the choice. I didn't expect that it would be
as public as it is, which you know is not
something that I seek or care that much about it's
the public health. It's the fact that when you go
into public health, when you're a physician and you're a scientist,
you have a responsibility as a physician to the individual patient,
(20:58):
and you have a responsibility to society as a public
health official, which are all Society becomes your patient and
you want to do everything that's best for the patient.
And one of the things that that has been very difficult,
I must say, but nonetheless you just gotta suck it
up and do it, is that at the same time
(21:20):
that you're trying to promote public health principles, you've become
not only disliked but hated by people. I mean, that
is something you just don't ever imagine when you're training
in a profession to help people to save their lives
as individuals, which I've done in the many, many, many
(21:42):
thousands of patients that I've taken care of, and as
a public health official. When I got involved in public
health issues, I never would have been imagined that the
politicization of a public health issue would have caused not
only pushback, but absolute scorn. You've gotten death threats, I have,
(22:04):
You've got you've gotten some of the extreme far edge
of that. But at the same time, beyond that, beyond
the insanity of that kind of thing. What's a criticism
of the work you've done that's been the most painful
for you. What's the one that you think they really
misunderstand what you're trying to do, you know, And it's
what they call saying since they don't understand, I believe
(22:24):
the scientistic acts. But he flip flops, he changes his
mind on things. Well, when you're dealing with an evolving
outbreak in which every week and every month you get
dated that you did not have last month, well last week,
it would be unconscionable for you do not to change
(22:45):
the way you think about things based on the current data.
And the thing they keep bringing up is the issue
early on with the use of masks. Ah, he said
you didn't really need to have masks back then, and
now he's out there saying everybody should be wearing a mask. Well,
the reason for the evolution in thinking is solid. It
(23:06):
had to do with availability, It had to do with
proof that they actually work. It had to do with
the realization, which was stunning Alec that more than fifty
of the infections were transmitted by someone who is without symptoms.
There's no other disease that can actually kill you by
(23:28):
a respiratory route. That is that people, half of them
don't have any symptoms. When we realize that, it became
clear that we really needed to do mass. But yet
people who want to be ultraly critical will say, and well,
you know, I could understand why, Oh, he flip flops,
he flip flops on this, he flip flops on that.
(23:48):
You know, does it bother me? It does because you
don't like people to think that you're a flip flopper.
But you'd like to say, let me sit down with
you and explain that if you don't change your mind
with the evolution of the new information, then you are
really guilty of something that's not good. The only thing
(24:10):
worse than being perceived as a flip flopper is not
flip flopping, or exactly as you say, letting things evolve
is the it is a better phrase. Now let me
ask you this question, what grade do you give the
American people for the way that they responded to this
pandemic alec. I don't want to give it a grade.
And the reason I don't I do respect the fact
that you're asking a very reasonable question, but people will
(24:32):
watch this and the next thing we knew, it's the
sound bite of the year, spread across by people who
don't mean me. Well, are you concerned about the way,
because what I was going to say is what I
wanted to say is a prelude. Is I view the
COVID pandemic as the dress rehearsal for the climate change
reality that's coming, where people are going to be asked
(24:53):
to make significant changes, to go without, to make sacrifices
about water usage and g usage so forth. I believe
that the COVID was the dress rehearsal for the climate
change that's looming. But what what? What are your thoughts
about how we've done There are many many people in
the country who have done it correctly and appropriately and
(25:14):
have considered not only their health the health of their family,
but the health of society. One of the things that
I find difficult is that I can't get the point
across two people that as part of society, with all
the benefits of being in society, you have a responsibility
(25:36):
to society and to say I don't want to get
vaccinated because I'll take my own chances. If I get infected,
let me worry about it. So what Well, that's not
the way it works, my friend. What it works is
that you could get infected and even get no symptoms
or minimally symptomatic, and inadvertently, and I'll even is the
(26:00):
word innocently, pass it on to someone else a lethal dose,
a lethal dose. And that's the way you've got to
think about it. And you know, you talk about nobody's
gonna tell me to wear a mask, and nobody's gonna
tell me to do this, and nobody's gonna tell me
to do that. I get that, I understand the reluctance
to that. But when you match it against the fact
(26:23):
that already six hundred and eighty thousand Americans have died
and close to five million people worldwide have died, sometimes
societal interests should take precedence over your own feeling about
what your individual liberties are. Do you think that the
uh what I would call I'm not going to ask
(26:44):
you to call it this, but do you think that
the anemic condition of science education in this country is
a part of this suspicion that people have. I think
you're onto something really really correct there, alec I think
we really need to do much more so that everybody
gets at least a modicum of science education to understand
(27:08):
you don't have to understand the intricacies of science with
great formulas. You need to understand the importance and the
relevance of science in society. Well, one of the things
that I think would make it difficult, and I say
this with great respect, you are dazzlingly and effortlessly. You
(27:30):
handle the political side of these questions quite well. What
you need to do. I mean, you've got a job
to do, and part of it is to avoid unnecessary controversy.
But I'm wondering what it's like for you to be
You know, they go to the bullpen and they bring
in Anthony Fauci again. Anthony Faucci has called in to
help us to take on the pandemic. And you're a
(27:51):
scientist and you're standing alongside of president who's telling people
to drink bleach in order to address the COVID. What
can you say not about the former president himself, but
what could you say about the challenges of the early
days of the COVID and the back in March of
last year, were the things you knew we had to do.
(28:14):
Did you have strong feelings about things you wanted to
do and you realized that it was an uphill battle
to convince the people who were in charge. Yeah, so
I will answer your question directly, Alec. But one thing
I do want to make clear to the listeners of
this podcast that you said, you know they bring me
in from the bullpen. You know, I may have been
brought in, but we have a really, really good team,
(28:36):
and I want to make it clear that I am
thought of a very strong team. I'm probably may be
more recognizable than other members of the team, but they're
really a solid team already have. Yeah, please note that,
because I really do mean that sincerely, not just superficially,
but directly. Answering your question is that you always have
(28:57):
to let the science be your guide. I've told the
story multiple times, and I'll very briefly relate it now
because it really is what has guided me through advising
seven presidents is that the first time I walked in
to answer some questions of Ronald Reagan about the aid's outbreak.
(29:19):
You know, even before we knew a lot about it,
someone who is a wise friend of mine who worked
in former White Houses, told me I have a little
bit of advice for you. I would have hoped that
I would have come to that conclusion even without his advice.
But his advice was, when you walk into the White House,
(29:40):
whether to brief the President or other people in power,
just tell yourself when you walk through that awning to
the West wing, that this may be the last time
I'm walking into this space, because I might have to
tell the President or someone else something that's a truth,
but an inconvenient truth that they may not want to hear,
(30:04):
and the message may never got asked back again. And
that's what I've done. I've just told the truth. So
when things were being said during the last administration that
I found what contrary to the facts and the evidence,
I did not take any pleasure in contradicting a president
(30:26):
of the United States, because I have a great deal
of respect for the presidency of the United States. But
I had to disagree, and sometimes I was put into
the very awkward position of having to do it publicly.
I think you've seen that on TV during those press
conferences where the President would say something about hydroxychloric whan
(30:47):
or about something else, and then the reporter would ask me,
and I'd have to say, now is the moment You're
either going to have to tell the truth, maintain your
own integrity and possibly cannot get to ask back or
do the other thing, which would be unconscionable for me.
So I went with my integrity and I told the truth.
(31:08):
Now that triggered an incredible amount of backlash, not necessarily
from the President, to be quite honest with you, but
from some of the people around him who began doing
opposition research on me and writing editorials that I didn't
know what I was talking about. That was uncomfortable. I
I I did not take any pleasure in having to
(31:31):
speak about something that was contrary to what the president
was saying. You know, the people who throw darts at
me say, oh, I was just trying to bring down
the president. Absolutely not. I was trying to just tell
the truth. When I would watch you on TV back
in those days, it's what we call the highest form
of acting, which is your face gives away nothing, but somehow,
(31:56):
almost telepathically, we understand what's going on inside your your mind,
just in your eyes. The president would be holding forth
about hydroxy chloro quinn and the camera would cut to
you and to see you managing your thoughts and your feelings.
Like I would like we say, some of the greatest
acting I've ever seen was you maintain them self control
(32:16):
during these conferences. Now, let's say the President wants to
order that you can't get on a US airplane domestically
without showing a vaccination card. How does that happen? Meaning
does the President make that call the c d C,
the f d A, who's in charge there. Well, again,
just so that your audience is clear that this is
(32:38):
something that is discussed but is not actually implemented at
all or even decided on in fact what the president
has said, as you will know that if people refuse
to wear masks on planes, they will double the fine
just to make it more difficult for that. The process
will be that nothing like that would happen unless obviously
(32:58):
the President gives it the okay. But the mechanism whereby
it's implemented would very likely be some sort of a
recommendation from the c d C that would then be
implemented by the airlines, and they would be the ones
that would very likely monitor that. Now, I have some
(33:19):
friends of mine who are hardcore anti factors. Bobby Kennedy Jr.
Has been a friend of mine for decades, and he
comes out and not necessarily him, but other people, they
cast you in a very harsh light. They say that
you are the public health equivalent of a war profiteer,
that you are lining your pockets as a result of
(33:40):
these pandemics. Yeah, well, I like that is clearly all
conspiracy theory. My finances are public knowledge, so my financial
statement that's required by my position will be very very
clear that I make zero when not a little zero. Uh,
(34:04):
And that's very clear, and anybody that knows anything about
government regulations would know that. So I mean the things
that have been said about me and about my wife,
I mean that she's making millions too, like and she's
another government employee who has devoted her entire life to
the health of patients. But that's the world we live in.
So that's just nonsense. That's a little fantasy. What's one
(34:28):
thing that anti factors? If anything, we're saying that you
kind of understand their fear and their trepidation. I have
always the same way that when the activists with HIV
who are being confrontative and theatrical and iconoclastic, I always
try to see is there something about what they're saying
that I need to pay attention to. And I think
(34:48):
one can understand that if people don't understand what a
vaccine is and what it will do and what its purposes,
and they just feel somebody's injecting something into my body
and it's my body and I don't want to do it.
I try when I talk to people, that way to
go step by step with them is to what it
(35:09):
is that they object to and why do they object
to it, never ever ever being judgmental, because once you
start to be judgmental, then you've turned them off against
you completely and it's a lost cause. But try to outreach.
The other thing, Alec is that the messenger is as
(35:30):
important as the message in that you want to get someone,
and we call it trusted communicators and trusted people in society.
So if you get someone who really is very very
much attuned to the church, whatever that church is and religion,
and you get someone who's a pastor a minister that
(35:53):
they trust to get them to sit and talk about it.
Some people trust sports heroes or entertainment figures or very
famous actors like yourself that they would say, well, you know,
I kind of admire that person. If they say it,
don't think about it. Whereas if somebody like me who
is is an obvious public figure that works for the
(36:15):
federal government, they may instinctively not want to hear what
I have to say. So, even though a lot of
people do listen to what I have to say, there
are many people who feel differently. So you've got to
match the messenger with the receiver of the message. More
of my conversation with Dr Anthony Faucci. When we return,
(36:48):
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing
once again, my conversation with Dr Anthony Faucci. Now, during
your career, your long career, and even looking back his
storically prior to when you were working in this field
of public health. Who's someone who's a hero of yours.
Who's someone who you know who dedicated their life to
(37:09):
the work you're doing now, who you thought did great work.
His name is Maurice Hilleman, and many people don't know
who he is. Maurice Hillerman was a man responsible for
the development of about twelve or more of the vaccines
that are given to children that have saved hundreds of
(37:29):
millions of lives. And he was a guy from Montana
who was a tough son of a gun who took
no prisoners, did what he felt was important, worked hard,
let the science drive what he did, and and didn't
care at all about credit or prizes or things. He
(37:52):
just did his thing. So he's really one of one
of my heroes. For preventing future pandemic. Some people recommend
the creation of a new federal agency to mount a
faster response at the first outbreak. For COVID nineteen, this
type of agency would have been stockpiling and then distributing
PPE for example, to be funded continuously, not just in
(38:14):
the time of crisis. What's your feelings about that? Well,
I'm not sure. I would say an agency that would
be solely interested in the next pandemic. What the problem
you're going to run into, Alec, is that the space
between pandemics with me, What are they that they're gonna do?
(38:37):
You still need a c d C for surveillance of
things that are not pandemic. For all the public health things,
you still need an ni H to do the basic
and clinical research that quite frankly lad to the successful
vaccines in record time. Some people don't appreciate. It was
the decades of research done by scientists that people never
(39:00):
heard of. There was the Manhattan Project, Right, You've got
to be careful of creating a new agency. What we
do need is we need the current agencies to be
able to go into motion ahead of time. The n
i H through the research for better prototype pathogen vaccines,
(39:22):
the CDC to get better surveillance, communication and local health,
the companies to be able to get the capability of
getting a vaccine and absolute record time. Now, if you
want to coordinating group above that to make sure that
you get pandemic preparedness, that's fine. But to create yet
(39:43):
again another agency might not be a great idea. Now,
looking out over the arc of the next year. Because
like everybody else, I was sitting at a table in
Brooklyn rehearsing a television program. We were about to shoot
for five months all of March, April, May, June, blah,
blah blah. We were all getting ready to go. We
(40:04):
shut down, we go home, we go back in October,
and we had some pretty intense COVID protocols. The crew
had to wear smart watches, and there was a director
at a table and they had a system, whereby once
they cut the camera because everybody congregates to shoot the scene,
and once we cut the camera and we're going to
(40:24):
move on to the next shot, the next angle. The
system was engaged and everybody who was wearing the smart
watches and the crew, if you were within six ft
of the person for more than ten seconds, the watch
went off. They didn't want anybody around. We only had
four cases. We had five cases, and only one in
the shooting crew. The other four were extras who came
(40:45):
from outside of our bubble, so to speak. We had
one COVID case on a crew of two hundred people.
Production office, drivers, unitcast, everything, shooting crew, everything was It
was really everybody. What you see, as you know, is
people working so hard. Have my children's school. The people
are working. They're saying, please don't blow it. You know
(41:06):
what I mean. We got the kids in school, all
the staff has vaccinated, all the faculty is vaccinated. We're
moving along. It's like the little engine that could. You know.
We're trying to get the kids get back in school,
which is what we need, besides improving vaccination rates and
going to whatever lengths we have to pressure people to
get vaccinated. What do you predict we're going to see
(41:28):
over the arc of the next twelve months. What would
you like to see? Well, what I would like to
see is something that I know is scientifically true, is
that if we combine the successful implementation of vaccine, getting
those seventy million people who are eligible already to be vaccinated,
(41:51):
not counting your children who are not yet eligible, but
those who are already eligible, to get the vast majority
of the vaccinated at the same time that we make
a major effort about our responsibility for the rest of
the world to get them vaccinated, so that we as
(42:12):
a leading rich country, together with the European Union and
Australia and Canada and all the others, to get the
world vaccinated, because a global pandemic requires a global response.
Having said all of that, my arc of the next
year is that, at least in this country, if we
do that together with the kind of mitigation methods that
(42:36):
you and your crew used, I believe that by the
time we get through this winter and into the spring,
and we get through it okay, and we get the
people vaccinated, we could start proceeding towards some sort of normality.
Now it is very difficult to predict because getting back
to a question you asked me before, if we don't
(43:00):
get there, they'll say there he goes, he flip flopped again.
So I have to start off by saying a, I
don't know, but be we have it within our power
to do this, you know, being with diseases, if I
might just take an extra thirty seconds, Alec, because it really,
it really is important having dealt with diseases in which
(43:23):
you don't have an effective remedy, you don't have a
vaccine or you don't have a therapy. To be with
a disease in which you have the answer but you're
not implementing the answer is a very tough thing to swallow.
It really is. Now, what's something that Dr Anthony Thauci
(43:46):
loves to do that he's not getting to do anymore
because of the COVID. How's it affected your day to
day life? Well, my my day to day life is
very unusual, Alec, because it is totally consumed. You know,
I could say something that is not whining about it.
It's true I haven't taken a day off in twenty months,
and that's probably not healthy and kind of silly. My
(44:07):
wife keeps pushing me, and my friends keep pushing me.
But every time you think you're gonna take a day off,
there's something else that has to be done. People are
counting on you. Yeah, so you don't do it. What
I would love to do, is I did it recently,
is to have my three daughters, who I adore easily
able to come and visit me and to not be
(44:29):
afraid that they're going to get a breakthrough infection. They're
vaccinated and give it to their eighty year old father. Because,
as a matter of fact, you said something that resonated
with me. You were joking about yourself that I'm eighty
years old and I'm late in life dad too. And
I have three girls, one as young as in her twenties,
(44:49):
so you can imagine I'm sort of I'm sort of
in the same in common with your Wow. Now, my
last question is flu season. Are you concerned about blue season?
You know I am, And the reason I am is
that I don't want people to get such fatigued with
COVID that they do not get their flu vaccine. What
(45:10):
you don't want is the conflation of two outbreaks that
are respiratory born. It will be confusing, it will be frustrating,
and it will give the hospitals a big, big strain.
So if you've had the COVID injection, if they've had
both shots, go get the flu shot as well. Absolutely
absolutely interesting, Absolutely well listen, let me just say you know,
(45:32):
you are someone who I can't imagine how you've lived
your life these last twenty much. You have had the
weight of the world on your shoulders. You and your
colleagues and everyone else you work with at your institution,
and f d A and c d C, any government
agency around the world that's working assiduously to try to
address this problem. These are people who have taken the
weight of the world on their shoulders because we've never
(45:53):
seen anything like this, and I pray to God we've
never seen anything like this again. But I wanted to
thank you for taking your valuable time to come on
with us. Thank you very much, Alec. It has been
a pleasure and an honor. I mean that, thank you
for having me. Take care my thanks to Dr Anthony Fauci.
We're produced by Kathleen Russo, carried, Donna Hu and Zach McNeice.
(46:17):
Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Hi'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing.
Is brought to you by my Heart Radio
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing
from my Heart Radio. This is my conversation with Dr
Anthony Fauci. Well, we're very grateful for the time you've
given us. The first question that I have for you
is about the Texas border and the Haitian immigrants. What
do you think about immigration in the time of COVID.
(00:25):
What do you think about twelve thou people trying to
come into this country. It's assumed that they're unvaccinated. Correct,
you know, my making any comment about that. You know,
everything I say gets ripped off. Try by far right
people and get on me into the usual nonsense. I
am somebody who does favor immigration. My family, my grandfather
(00:46):
and grand mothers on both sides were immigrants. So I mean,
I think that what we need to do is do
whatever we can to treat them fairly, to get them
the right medical care, and to get them vaccinated if possible.
Is that a goal to get them vaccinated? I would hope, so,
I mean, but no, that's not my per view at all,
(01:06):
but I would think that that would be important. Right.
You see a lot recently on CNN dot com about
anti virals here's the pill. They said that maybe maybe
we can get back to normal. What do you think
the hope is for anti virals in the coming months. Well,
I think not only is it a hope, Alec, I
think it really is a necessity because the primary countermeasure
(01:29):
for a respiratory born viral illness is always vaccine to
prevent it, particularly when it has an acute nature to it. However,
it is very clear that even with a vaccine that's
highly effective, that no vaccine is perfect. So there are
two ways that you can use an anti viral. You
(01:50):
can use it to treat someone who has already been infected,
to prevent them to progress their disease to the point
of requiring hospital is nation. The thing that you heard
about the other day was what Belief Fiser was saying.
They are developing a anti viral they would use for
(02:10):
what's called pre exposure prophylaxis, which means that if you
are in a family setting where a member has the
virus and inadvertently exposed you, rather than waiting to see
if you are infected. It was very similar, ALEC, to
the pre exposure profylaxis that we've developed for HIV, where
(02:32):
you have people who are in a risk situation that
they could take something that normally would be a therapy,
but they're taking it as a pre exposure prophylaxis. That's
what Fiser was talking about the other day. Now, obviously
you are very famous and have been for previous pandemics,
and in the nine eighties you were one of the
(02:53):
people that led the charge against HIV here in the
United States, and you made a statement or a comment
that I thought was very compelling where you said those
people back then were fighting for their lives, not to
defend a conspiracy theory like we often see now. How
would you compare and contrast the response you've gotten. Is
it the same? Because I know that you were attacked
(03:14):
a lot, and then Larry Kramer came around and heroicized you,
and you were given the Congressional meta and freedom and
so forth. It was very difficult for you in the
beginning of the HIV cristis correct. It was, but it
bettered me. It made me a better person. The criticism
was to catch my attention. They were iconoclastic, theatrical, confrontative.
(03:36):
But what they were saying is that this is a
new paradigm that we were going through the tried and
true slow science, slow clinical trials, slow regulatory approval. And
they was saying, we have a disease that by the
time you realize what we have is that we don't
have a lot more time to live. So you've got
(03:57):
to get us involved in the clinical I'll design. You've
got to get the FDA to be more attentive. Since
I was an openly involved federal employee, I became the
face of the federal government, so they attacked me to
gain my attention. Probably one of the best things I've
(04:17):
ever done in my life, ALEC was to put myself
in their shoes and say, well, wait a minute. These
are people, young men, usually young gay men, who are suffering.
They were pain, they were afraid for themselves and and
for their loved ones. So I said, let me put
myself in their shoes. And when I did, it was
(04:41):
a revelation. I said, I would be doing exactly what
they're doing without a doubt. So that's when I extended
myself to them, and we forged a growing relationship that
wasn't all rosy even after I reached out, but over
the years they became extraordinary value added to our effort
(05:05):
So that's what I meant when I said it was
something that was a productive confrontation that got our attention
and said, please listen to what we have to say,
and when we did, we got better at our jobs. Now,
as I recall, the bell in terms of the AIDS
(05:25):
crisis was wrung around one and that's forty years ago.
So to refresh the memories of those people listening who
aren't necessarily completely familiar with the history of the AIDS crisis,
what was the turning point in your mind that helped
you to start to, if not find a cure for
AIDS and help to manage the disease. Well, I got
(05:46):
involved as a physician taking care of desperately ill patients,
because by the time they knew there was something wrong,
they were desperately ill. So the first five patients that
presented from Los Angeles with this strange pneumonia probably had
been infected for years and did not even know it.
(06:07):
So when I saw that first report, I thought it
was a fluke and that it would go away. And
then one month later in July, the first report was
in June, there was now not five gay men from
l A, but there were twenty six men curiously all gay, like,
where does that happen? All gay men? Not only from
(06:29):
l A but from San Francisco and New York. And
it was at that point, Alec, that I made a
decision which, again among the decisions that I made that
were good decisions, I decided I was going to put
aside the things I was doing, which I was very
successful at, and start studying these young gay men who
were coming down with this devastating disease. And the first
(06:53):
few years of that were really the dark years of
my life and my professional career, because everybody that we
took care of died and it was eerie and painful.
But the thing that kept us through it is realizing
the courage and the resilience of these young men who
were being attacked by a disease that barely had a name.
(07:14):
We used to call it GRID back then Gay related
him into deficiency, and we certainly didn't know what it was.
The big breakthrough came in four when the virus was discovered,
so now we knew who the enemy was. Before it
was like just pain of putting band aids on hemorrhages
(07:34):
and you didn't know what the cause of leading was.
That you were with N I A I D. Then yes,
I was. I was a a senior attending physician at
the time doing research on the immune system and this
relationship to infectious diseases. So when this disease came along,
I said, oh, my goodness. If ever there was a
(07:55):
disease for which I was trained as an immunologist and
as an effectious disease person, this was it. So that
came in four. The thing that was a dark Oh
my god, like I got hit by a truck. Was five.
When what happened was we did the diagnostic test and
(08:17):
we found that the people that we were taking care
of who was sick, We're just the tip of the iceberg,
because when we started to test people in Los Angeles,
in the Castro district of San Francisco, in Greenwich Village,
we found out, to our horror that like the game men,
(08:37):
were infected, and that was inconceivable, that they were already
infected with the disease that I had spent the last
three years watching people die from. So the next landmark
would be, Okay, so now you've got the virus. So
now you know who's infected, you gotta get a therapy
(08:57):
and that's when all of the incredible work went into
developing anti virals in an incremental way. First with a
z T which helped got them a little better, but
then they went down again. Then two drugs did pretty well,
and then the breakthrough when the triple combination which was
initiated with the protease inhibitors. But what since Now we
(09:21):
have much much, much better drugs in the sense that
we now went from my watching in an incredible painful
way every one of my patients, with few exceptions, die
eight two, eighty three, eighty four, eighty five two. Now
that we hardly have any patients as in patients. They're
all out patients. They're all leading essentially normal lives with
(09:46):
maybe a couple of years of life expectancy clipped off.
But now they're living vibrant, contributory lives. So that's the
long journey of forty years. Now similar, I mean no
out different as far as you're consumed as a physician
and a scientist, But to me similar in a way,
which is did we ever find out the cause of AIDS?
(10:09):
Just as the question becomes do we need to continue
to find the cause of COVID because it seems to
have dropped off the national conversation here as to what
caused us in order for us to learn how we
can prevent it from happening again. I presume, yeah, sure
that that's a really great question. Well, let me just
fine tune one thing that you said, Alec, we know
the cause, we don't know the origin of the cause. Okay,
(10:31):
So the cause is HIV. It's a virus. We know
now by doing a phylogenetic tree that there's no doubt
that decades ago this virus jumped very likely from a
chimpanzee into a human a blip of an affection, person died,
went away, jumped again in through a human blip of infection.
(10:53):
Then all of a sudden, the right circumstances, the dissolution
of colonization, the impact of commercial sex work, the truck
up trade that goes back and forth, the disruption of
family unit. Then you had an outbreak that's spread through
the rest of the world because it was sexually transmitted.
So we know for sure what went on there. We
(11:15):
know for sure what the cause of COVID nineteen is.
It saws kovie two. It very likely, given the history
of coronavirus, is saws Kovie one Mayor's the Middle East
respiratory syndrome ebol uh Zekea that these things jump from
animals to human What we haven't yet nailed down is
(11:38):
the precise lineage of from a bat to an intermediary
to the human, or directly from a bat to a human.
We know that in the environment in China there are
bats that have viruses that are not absolutely very close,
but close enough to make you want to do surveillance
(11:59):
and find out what's going on in that animal human
interface that may have allowed it to jump species. That's
Dr Anthony Fauci. If you like conversations with people at
the forefront of public health, go to our archives and
listen to my talk with Dr Joanne Lou who at
the time was president of Doctors Without Borders. The threat
(12:23):
of being abducted was so huge back then, and we
knew that if something were ever to happen to the staff,
the MSF staff, then we will pull out. So we
were praying for not having anything bad happening to us,
because we knew they were delivering really needed aid. On
the other end, it was so nerve wracking. You can
(12:46):
hear the rest of that conversation at Here's the thing
dot org when we returned more of my conversation with
Dr Anthony Faucci. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
hear is the thing? Now? More of my conversation with
(13:08):
Dr Anthony Fauci. Should we check our antibodies before getting
a booster? You mean a third shot if you've been
vaccinated first. No, And that's a firm answer to tell
your wife that boosters are given for the durability of protection,
as manifested by clinical observation both in the United States
(13:32):
cohorts that the waning of protection goes down. I mean
the immune parameters go down too, but it doesn't really
matter when you look. It's clinically what counts, ALEC. So
it goes down for protection against infection and mild to
moderate disease, it goes down less so, but it still
(13:53):
goes down against protection against hospitalization and debts. We believe
that at least I do as a physician and a scientist,
that sooner or later, at the end of the day,
we're going to realize that that third shot is going
to be part of what the normal, complete, optimal vaccine
(14:15):
regiment is so in some respects, and I'll say this
it sounds crude, but it isn't. Is that I don't
really care what the level of anybody is. In your wife,
I think when her turn comes to get the boost,
she should get the boost. Can you mix vaccines? Our
friend had J and J and was recommended to get
(14:36):
a dose of maderna. Can you mix vaccines safely? It
is optimal to be given the same product that you
got originally. But the answer to your question is literally
in real time being answered. We're doing a grid of
mix and match. It's called whereas you take people that
have either gotten Moderna FISA or Jay and Jay. You
(15:01):
give them the third dose for an m R and
A and a second dose for J and J, and
you start. You give Moderna as the third dose, you
give J and J as the dose, you give FISER
as the dose, and you examine is it's safe and
does it induce an immune response that you would predict
would be protective. We're already finished with the MODERNA study.
(15:25):
The J and J study is going to be done
by the end of September the beginning of October, and
the FISER one will be done by the first the
second week. When I say done, Alec, I mean the
data will be collected enough to give to the company,
which then will give it to the FDA for approval.
So we're almost there. Does this also include vaccines outside
(15:48):
the US like astra Zeneca. We are not doing the
mix and match yet. For astro Zenica, the Brits have
done that, So the data from the Brits have done that,
and it looks like there's not a problem there at all. Now,
I know you've been asked this question every ten minutes,
but I'm gonna ask you anybody because it's my wife.
I'm sure you understand. Um, when can we really expect
(16:12):
kids to get vaccinated? And will it be two shots? Okay,
your your wife is something in common with millions of
wives and mothers. So the answer is, as you know, Alec,
that adolescents from twelve up to seventeen now are already
with FISER approved to get vaccinated. The question your wife
(16:35):
is asking is eleven down to five and then ultimately
five to let's say six months. So Fiser has done
the study already in children from five to eleven. They
announced yesterday that they have completed the study. They will
be submitting the data to the f d A imminently,
(16:57):
he said, within days the f d A. You never
want to get ahead of them. You don't want to
predict what they're going to be able to do. But
if in fact they find that those vaccines are safe
and predictive of inducing an immune response that would be protective,
then it is likely if they approve it. Because I
(17:18):
always want to be careful, I don't get ahead of
the f d A. If they improve it, it very
likely will be before the end of October. Interesting, when
a mother is pregnant and she's vaccinated to do the
babies have antibodies. Yes, what happens is two things. The
anybody's go across the placenta to the baby. Number one,
(17:40):
so when the baby is born, the baby already has
the mother's anybody in his or her Sarah point number one.
If the mother breastfeeds, that's another source of anybody for
the baby. Now I'm gonna pivot here too. Things that
are more broader and more historical. I'm sure having been
(18:01):
through what you went through with the AIDS crisis, which
was a section of society, a relatively small section of society.
I mean that doesn't minimize the suffering. But now we
have something in which the entire country, as people have said,
it's changed the way we live forever. This thing has occurred,
(18:22):
and you are a man who is the face of
the United States government. Now, the weight of the world
is not all that on your shoulders. You've got colleagues
around the world that are working very hard in other
countries to fight this, but certainly the weight of this
country and how we live and how we don't live, masks, vaccines, distancing, quarantining, lockdowns,
(18:49):
all of this madness. How was this difference for you
where the entire country was looking to I've got a
variety of questions about this, the pressure on you. Did
you ever feel like my God, I don't know if
I can see this through. Did you ever have any
self doubts? Well, Alec, I have to tell you I
never have, and it isn't a question of self doubt.
(19:11):
Is that this is what I do, This is the
life I chose idea of God. Yeah, this is the
business we've chosen. Yeah, but you know, when you go
into global health and public health, you have to expect anything.
You know, HIV are absolutely correct, and I like the
(19:31):
way you framed it, because it actually is triggering in
my own mind, you know, another way. I'll have to
take the time to reflect on that. You're absolutely right,
it was a segment, generally, a segment of our population,
even though it's a global pandemic uh HIV is, which
is sort of an interesting distortion that we've had. What's
(19:53):
going on in Sub Saharan Africa is a much different
thing that's going on in the United States. But you're right,
you have to be paired when you're dealing with a
public health crisis. It's got to be driven by public
health principles. And one of the things that is different now,
and I've said this publicly many time, if there's ever
(20:15):
a time when you don't want societal divisiveness is when
you're in the middle of a pandemic. And one of
the things that has made life extremely unusual for me
is the fact that I am trying and I and
I do, and I've I've made the decision that's my life.
If I wanted to do something else, I would have
(20:35):
made the choice. I didn't expect that it would be
as public as it is, which you know is not
something that I seek or care that much about it's
the public health. It's the fact that when you go
into public health, when you're a physician and you're a scientist,
you have a responsibility as a physician to the individual patient,
(20:58):
and you have a responsibility to society as a public
health official, which are all Society becomes your patient and
you want to do everything that's best for the patient.
And one of the things that that has been very difficult,
I must say, but nonetheless you just gotta suck it
up and do it, is that at the same time
(21:20):
that you're trying to promote public health principles, you've become
not only disliked but hated by people. I mean, that
is something you just don't ever imagine when you're training
in a profession to help people to save their lives
as individuals, which I've done in the many, many, many
(21:42):
thousands of patients that I've taken care of, and as
a public health official. When I got involved in public
health issues, I never would have been imagined that the
politicization of a public health issue would have caused not
only pushback, but absolute scorn. You've gotten death threats, I have,
(22:04):
You've got you've gotten some of the extreme far edge
of that. But at the same time, beyond that, beyond
the insanity of that kind of thing. What's a criticism
of the work you've done that's been the most painful
for you. What's the one that you think they really
misunderstand what you're trying to do, you know, And it's
what they call saying since they don't understand, I believe
(22:24):
the scientistic acts. But he flip flops, he changes his
mind on things. Well, when you're dealing with an evolving
outbreak in which every week and every month you get
dated that you did not have last month, well last week,
it would be unconscionable for you do not to change
(22:45):
the way you think about things based on the current data.
And the thing they keep bringing up is the issue
early on with the use of masks. Ah, he said
you didn't really need to have masks back then, and
now he's out there saying everybody should be wearing a mask. Well,
the reason for the evolution in thinking is solid. It
(23:06):
had to do with availability, It had to do with
proof that they actually work. It had to do with
the realization, which was stunning Alec that more than fifty
of the infections were transmitted by someone who is without symptoms.
There's no other disease that can actually kill you by
(23:28):
a respiratory route. That is that people, half of them
don't have any symptoms. When we realize that, it became
clear that we really needed to do mass. But yet
people who want to be ultraly critical will say, and well,
you know, I could understand why, Oh, he flip flops,
he flip flops on this, he flip flops on that.
(23:48):
You know, does it bother me? It does because you
don't like people to think that you're a flip flopper.
But you'd like to say, let me sit down with
you and explain that if you don't change your mind
with the evolution of the new information, then you are
really guilty of something that's not good. The only thing
(24:10):
worse than being perceived as a flip flopper is not
flip flopping, or exactly as you say, letting things evolve
is the it is a better phrase. Now let me
ask you this question, what grade do you give the
American people for the way that they responded to this
pandemic alec. I don't want to give it a grade.
And the reason I don't I do respect the fact
that you're asking a very reasonable question, but people will
(24:32):
watch this and the next thing we knew, it's the
sound bite of the year, spread across by people who
don't mean me. Well, are you concerned about the way,
because what I was going to say is what I
wanted to say is a prelude. Is I view the
COVID pandemic as the dress rehearsal for the climate change
reality that's coming, where people are going to be asked
(24:53):
to make significant changes, to go without, to make sacrifices
about water usage and g usage so forth. I believe
that the COVID was the dress rehearsal for the climate
change that's looming. But what what? What are your thoughts
about how we've done There are many many people in
the country who have done it correctly and appropriately and
(25:14):
have considered not only their health the health of their family,
but the health of society. One of the things that
I find difficult is that I can't get the point
across two people that as part of society, with all
the benefits of being in society, you have a responsibility
(25:36):
to society and to say I don't want to get
vaccinated because I'll take my own chances. If I get infected,
let me worry about it. So what Well, that's not
the way it works, my friend. What it works is
that you could get infected and even get no symptoms
or minimally symptomatic, and inadvertently, and I'll even is the
(26:00):
word innocently, pass it on to someone else a lethal dose,
a lethal dose. And that's the way you've got to
think about it. And you know, you talk about nobody's
gonna tell me to wear a mask, and nobody's gonna
tell me to do this, and nobody's gonna tell me
to do that. I get that, I understand the reluctance
to that. But when you match it against the fact
(26:23):
that already six hundred and eighty thousand Americans have died
and close to five million people worldwide have died, sometimes
societal interests should take precedence over your own feeling about
what your individual liberties are. Do you think that the
uh what I would call I'm not going to ask
(26:44):
you to call it this, but do you think that
the anemic condition of science education in this country is
a part of this suspicion that people have. I think
you're onto something really really correct there, alec I think
we really need to do much more so that everybody
gets at least a modicum of science education to understand
(27:08):
you don't have to understand the intricacies of science with
great formulas. You need to understand the importance and the
relevance of science in society. Well, one of the things
that I think would make it difficult, and I say
this with great respect, you are dazzlingly and effortlessly. You
(27:30):
handle the political side of these questions quite well. What
you need to do. I mean, you've got a job
to do, and part of it is to avoid unnecessary controversy.
But I'm wondering what it's like for you to be
You know, they go to the bullpen and they bring
in Anthony Fauci again. Anthony Faucci has called in to
help us to take on the pandemic. And you're a
(27:51):
scientist and you're standing alongside of president who's telling people
to drink bleach in order to address the COVID. What
can you say not about the former president himself, but
what could you say about the challenges of the early
days of the COVID and the back in March of
last year, were the things you knew we had to do.
(28:14):
Did you have strong feelings about things you wanted to
do and you realized that it was an uphill battle
to convince the people who were in charge. Yeah, so
I will answer your question directly, Alec. But one thing
I do want to make clear to the listeners of
this podcast that you said, you know they bring me
in from the bullpen. You know, I may have been
brought in, but we have a really, really good team,
(28:36):
and I want to make it clear that I am
thought of a very strong team. I'm probably may be
more recognizable than other members of the team, but they're
really a solid team already have. Yeah, please note that,
because I really do mean that sincerely, not just superficially,
but directly. Answering your question is that you always have
(28:57):
to let the science be your guide. I've told the
story multiple times, and I'll very briefly relate it now
because it really is what has guided me through advising
seven presidents is that the first time I walked in
to answer some questions of Ronald Reagan about the aid's outbreak.
(29:19):
You know, even before we knew a lot about it,
someone who is a wise friend of mine who worked
in former White Houses, told me I have a little
bit of advice for you. I would have hoped that
I would have come to that conclusion even without his advice.
But his advice was, when you walk into the White House,
(29:40):
whether to brief the President or other people in power,
just tell yourself when you walk through that awning to
the West wing, that this may be the last time
I'm walking into this space, because I might have to
tell the President or someone else something that's a truth,
but an inconvenient truth that they may not want to hear,
(30:04):
and the message may never got asked back again. And
that's what I've done. I've just told the truth. So
when things were being said during the last administration that
I found what contrary to the facts and the evidence,
I did not take any pleasure in contradicting a president
(30:26):
of the United States, because I have a great deal
of respect for the presidency of the United States. But
I had to disagree, and sometimes I was put into
the very awkward position of having to do it publicly.
I think you've seen that on TV during those press
conferences where the President would say something about hydroxychloric whan
(30:47):
or about something else, and then the reporter would ask me,
and I'd have to say, now is the moment You're
either going to have to tell the truth, maintain your
own integrity and possibly cannot get to ask back or
do the other thing, which would be unconscionable for me.
So I went with my integrity and I told the truth.
(31:08):
Now that triggered an incredible amount of backlash, not necessarily
from the President, to be quite honest with you, but
from some of the people around him who began doing
opposition research on me and writing editorials that I didn't
know what I was talking about. That was uncomfortable. I
I I did not take any pleasure in having to
(31:31):
speak about something that was contrary to what the president
was saying. You know, the people who throw darts at
me say, oh, I was just trying to bring down
the president. Absolutely not. I was trying to just tell
the truth. When I would watch you on TV back
in those days, it's what we call the highest form
of acting, which is your face gives away nothing, but somehow,
(31:56):
almost telepathically, we understand what's going on inside your your mind,
just in your eyes. The president would be holding forth
about hydroxy chloro quinn and the camera would cut to
you and to see you managing your thoughts and your feelings.
Like I would like we say, some of the greatest
acting I've ever seen was you maintain them self control
(32:16):
during these conferences. Now, let's say the President wants to
order that you can't get on a US airplane domestically
without showing a vaccination card. How does that happen? Meaning
does the President make that call the c d C,
the f d A, who's in charge there. Well, again,
just so that your audience is clear that this is
(32:38):
something that is discussed but is not actually implemented at
all or even decided on in fact what the president
has said, as you will know that if people refuse
to wear masks on planes, they will double the fine
just to make it more difficult for that. The process
will be that nothing like that would happen unless obviously
(32:58):
the President gives it the okay. But the mechanism whereby
it's implemented would very likely be some sort of a
recommendation from the c d C that would then be
implemented by the airlines, and they would be the ones
that would very likely monitor that. Now, I have some
(33:19):
friends of mine who are hardcore anti factors. Bobby Kennedy Jr.
Has been a friend of mine for decades, and he
comes out and not necessarily him, but other people, they
cast you in a very harsh light. They say that
you are the public health equivalent of a war profiteer,
that you are lining your pockets as a result of
(33:40):
these pandemics. Yeah, well, I like that is clearly all
conspiracy theory. My finances are public knowledge, so my financial
statement that's required by my position will be very very
clear that I make zero when not a little zero. Uh,
(34:04):
And that's very clear, and anybody that knows anything about
government regulations would know that. So I mean the things
that have been said about me and about my wife,
I mean that she's making millions too, like and she's
another government employee who has devoted her entire life to
the health of patients. But that's the world we live in.
So that's just nonsense. That's a little fantasy. What's one
(34:28):
thing that anti factors? If anything, we're saying that you
kind of understand their fear and their trepidation. I have
always the same way that when the activists with HIV
who are being confrontative and theatrical and iconoclastic, I always
try to see is there something about what they're saying
that I need to pay attention to. And I think
(34:48):
one can understand that if people don't understand what a
vaccine is and what it will do and what its purposes,
and they just feel somebody's injecting something into my body
and it's my body and I don't want to do it.
I try when I talk to people, that way to
go step by step with them is to what it
(35:09):
is that they object to and why do they object
to it, never ever ever being judgmental, because once you
start to be judgmental, then you've turned them off against
you completely and it's a lost cause. But try to outreach.
The other thing, Alec is that the messenger is as
(35:30):
important as the message in that you want to get someone,
and we call it trusted communicators and trusted people in society.
So if you get someone who really is very very
much attuned to the church, whatever that church is and religion,
and you get someone who's a pastor a minister that
(35:53):
they trust to get them to sit and talk about it.
Some people trust sports heroes or entertainment figures or very
famous actors like yourself that they would say, well, you know,
I kind of admire that person. If they say it,
don't think about it. Whereas if somebody like me who
is is an obvious public figure that works for the
(36:15):
federal government, they may instinctively not want to hear what
I have to say. So, even though a lot of
people do listen to what I have to say, there
are many people who feel differently. So you've got to
match the messenger with the receiver of the message. More
of my conversation with Dr Anthony Faucci. When we return,
(36:48):
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing
once again, my conversation with Dr Anthony Faucci. Now, during
your career, your long career, and even looking back his
storically prior to when you were working in this field
of public health. Who's someone who's a hero of yours.
Who's someone who you know who dedicated their life to
(37:09):
the work you're doing now, who you thought did great work.
His name is Maurice Hilleman, and many people don't know
who he is. Maurice Hillerman was a man responsible for
the development of about twelve or more of the vaccines
that are given to children that have saved hundreds of
(37:29):
millions of lives. And he was a guy from Montana
who was a tough son of a gun who took
no prisoners, did what he felt was important, worked hard,
let the science drive what he did, and and didn't
care at all about credit or prizes or things. He
(37:52):
just did his thing. So he's really one of one
of my heroes. For preventing future pandemic. Some people recommend
the creation of a new federal agency to mount a
faster response at the first outbreak. For COVID nineteen, this
type of agency would have been stockpiling and then distributing
PPE for example, to be funded continuously, not just in
(38:14):
the time of crisis. What's your feelings about that? Well,
I'm not sure. I would say an agency that would
be solely interested in the next pandemic. What the problem
you're going to run into, Alec, is that the space
between pandemics with me, What are they that they're gonna do?
(38:37):
You still need a c d C for surveillance of
things that are not pandemic. For all the public health things,
you still need an ni H to do the basic
and clinical research that quite frankly lad to the successful
vaccines in record time. Some people don't appreciate. It was
the decades of research done by scientists that people never
(39:00):
heard of. There was the Manhattan Project, Right, You've got
to be careful of creating a new agency. What we
do need is we need the current agencies to be
able to go into motion ahead of time. The n
i H through the research for better prototype pathogen vaccines,
(39:22):
the CDC to get better surveillance, communication and local health,
the companies to be able to get the capability of
getting a vaccine and absolute record time. Now, if you
want to coordinating group above that to make sure that
you get pandemic preparedness, that's fine. But to create yet
(39:43):
again another agency might not be a great idea. Now,
looking out over the arc of the next year. Because
like everybody else, I was sitting at a table in
Brooklyn rehearsing a television program. We were about to shoot
for five months all of March, April, May, June, blah,
blah blah. We were all getting ready to go. We
(40:04):
shut down, we go home, we go back in October,
and we had some pretty intense COVID protocols. The crew
had to wear smart watches, and there was a director
at a table and they had a system, whereby once
they cut the camera because everybody congregates to shoot the scene,
and once we cut the camera and we're going to
(40:24):
move on to the next shot, the next angle. The
system was engaged and everybody who was wearing the smart
watches and the crew, if you were within six ft
of the person for more than ten seconds, the watch
went off. They didn't want anybody around. We only had
four cases. We had five cases, and only one in
the shooting crew. The other four were extras who came
(40:45):
from outside of our bubble, so to speak. We had
one COVID case on a crew of two hundred people.
Production office, drivers, unitcast, everything, shooting crew, everything was It
was really everybody. What you see, as you know, is
people working so hard. Have my children's school. The people
are working. They're saying, please don't blow it. You know
(41:06):
what I mean. We got the kids in school, all
the staff has vaccinated, all the faculty is vaccinated. We're
moving along. It's like the little engine that could. You know.
We're trying to get the kids get back in school,
which is what we need, besides improving vaccination rates and
going to whatever lengths we have to pressure people to
get vaccinated. What do you predict we're going to see
(41:28):
over the arc of the next twelve months. What would
you like to see? Well, what I would like to
see is something that I know is scientifically true, is
that if we combine the successful implementation of vaccine, getting
those seventy million people who are eligible already to be vaccinated,
(41:51):
not counting your children who are not yet eligible, but
those who are already eligible, to get the vast majority
of the vaccinated at the same time that we make
a major effort about our responsibility for the rest of
the world to get them vaccinated, so that we as
(42:12):
a leading rich country, together with the European Union and
Australia and Canada and all the others, to get the
world vaccinated, because a global pandemic requires a global response.
Having said all of that, my arc of the next
year is that, at least in this country, if we
do that together with the kind of mitigation methods that
(42:36):
you and your crew used, I believe that by the
time we get through this winter and into the spring,
and we get through it okay, and we get the
people vaccinated, we could start proceeding towards some sort of normality.
Now it is very difficult to predict because getting back
to a question you asked me before, if we don't
(43:00):
get there, they'll say there he goes, he flip flopped again.
So I have to start off by saying a, I
don't know, but be we have it within our power
to do this, you know, being with diseases, if I
might just take an extra thirty seconds, Alec, because it really,
it really is important having dealt with diseases in which
(43:23):
you don't have an effective remedy, you don't have a
vaccine or you don't have a therapy. To be with
a disease in which you have the answer but you're
not implementing the answer is a very tough thing to swallow.
It really is. Now, what's something that Dr Anthony Thauci
(43:46):
loves to do that he's not getting to do anymore
because of the COVID. How's it affected your day to
day life? Well, my my day to day life is
very unusual, Alec, because it is totally consumed. You know,
I could say something that is not whining about it.
It's true I haven't taken a day off in twenty months,
and that's probably not healthy and kind of silly. My
(44:07):
wife keeps pushing me, and my friends keep pushing me.
But every time you think you're gonna take a day off,
there's something else that has to be done. People are
counting on you. Yeah, so you don't do it. What
I would love to do, is I did it recently,
is to have my three daughters, who I adore easily
able to come and visit me and to not be
(44:29):
afraid that they're going to get a breakthrough infection. They're
vaccinated and give it to their eighty year old father. Because,
as a matter of fact, you said something that resonated
with me. You were joking about yourself that I'm eighty
years old and I'm late in life dad too. And
I have three girls, one as young as in her twenties,
(44:49):
so you can imagine I'm sort of I'm sort of
in the same in common with your Wow. Now, my
last question is flu season. Are you concerned about blue season?
You know I am, And the reason I am is
that I don't want people to get such fatigued with
COVID that they do not get their flu vaccine. What
(45:10):
you don't want is the conflation of two outbreaks that
are respiratory born. It will be confusing, it will be frustrating,
and it will give the hospitals a big, big strain.
So if you've had the COVID injection, if they've had
both shots, go get the flu shot as well. Absolutely
absolutely interesting, Absolutely well listen, let me just say you know,
(45:32):
you are someone who I can't imagine how you've lived
your life these last twenty much. You have had the
weight of the world on your shoulders. You and your
colleagues and everyone else you work with at your institution,
and f d A and c d C, any government
agency around the world that's working assiduously to try to
address this problem. These are people who have taken the
weight of the world on their shoulders because we've never
(45:53):
seen anything like this, and I pray to God we've
never seen anything like this again. But I wanted to
thank you for taking your valuable time to come on
with us. Thank you very much, Alec. It has been
a pleasure and an honor. I mean that, thank you
for having me. Take care my thanks to Dr Anthony Fauci.
We're produced by Kathleen Russo, carried, Donna Hu and Zach McNeice.
(46:17):
Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Hi'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing.
Is brought to you by my Heart Radio
Host
Alec Baldwin
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