Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, said that the nation’s condition is “not a good situation” even as incumbent republican president candidate Donald Trump tours swing states saying that the US is “rounding the turn” with the coronavirus, the Washington Post reports.

Fauci called for an “abrupt change” in the national policy as the United States sees new records in daily reported coronavirus cases.  It marks the first time Fauci has overtly questioned the administration’s policy and management of the pandemic.

While the public views Fauci as a more trusted source for information on the coronavirus, Trump has dismissed the advice of the medical professionals like public health experts and virologists on the coronavirus task force.

“Right now, the public health aspect of the task force has diminished greatly,” Fauci said.  “The last time I spoke to the president was not about any policy; it was when he was recovering in Walter Reed, he called me up.”

Trump is instead relying on political advisors like Dr. Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist who came to the White House from the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank.  Atlas has no public health experience.

“I have real problems with that guy,” Fauci said of Atlas. “He’s a smart guy who’s talking about things that I believe he doesn’t have any real insight or knowledge or experience in. He keeps talking about things that when you dissect it out and parse it out, it doesn’t make any sense.”

Fauci’s statements have reflected the opinions offered by former members of the Trump administration, who have spoken publicly about Trump’s unwillingness to alter policy and listen to experts.

“We need to plan now for how we turn the corner in 2021, and one thing we should be doing is laying the foundation to get public schools reopened in the late winter or early spring,” said Trump’s former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, Scott Gottlieb. “If we don’t plan now, we’ll lose the opportunity to prioritize opening what should be most important to us, just as we lost that chance in the fall because we didn’t plan appropriately this summer.”