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