According to an interview with the Financial Times, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, has not updated President Trump on the pandemic in two months.
In that time period, however, Trump has fit eight rounds of golf into his busy schedule.
Also during that time period, the number of coronavirus skyrocketed 250% and 54,000 people have died from COVID-19.
“I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say we have a serious ongoing problem, right now, as we speak,” Fauci told Congress last week. “What worries me is the slope of the curve. It still looks like it’s exponential.”
In the FT interview, Fauci expresses dismay at some of the “facts” spouted by Trump, particularly the statistic that 99% of COVID-19 cases are “harmless.”
He notes that the American public is likely confused about the coronavirus because of the wide range of outcomes with the disease, from asymptomatic patients to death. Fauci also noted that having mixed messages from government leaders is endangering the public.