Consider This from NPR - The Mask Debate Is Over; Fauci On Mandates, Vaccine Skepticism

Episode Date: July 1, 2020

As Arizona hits new records of coronavirus cases and deaths, the state announced they will pause their reopening plans.More and more Republicans are speaking up in support of face masks. Even Vice President Mike Pence has been wearing one in public lately. Dr. Anthony Fauci tells NPR the coronavirus surges we're seeing now are partly the result of too few people wearing masks. Fauci said it's especially hard to explain the risk to young people, because the virus has such a broad range of severity.Plus, a group of scientists who wanted to make it easier to track the virus in your community created an online risk assessment map. NPR's Allison Aubrey and Carmel Wroth reported on the new tool.Find and support your local public radio station. Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Things really do not look good in Arizona. Joining us right now is Dr. Kara Christ, the head of the Arizona Department of Health Services. Dr. Christ, where are we with the new numbers? So this morning we are going to be reporting a record number of cases. On local radio, KTAR, Arizona's health director said Wednesday there were almost 5,000 new cases in the state. And 88 people who died just yesterday. Both of those numbers are record highs. And here's another number. ICU beds in Arizona are at 89% capacity.

And that's why we wanted to put those mitigation measures into effect. This week, the state paused plans to reopen. Now, bars, gyms, movie theaters, and water parks are closed again. A lot of the states across the country are seeing the same thing that we are. Cara Christ said younger people, 20 to 44 years old, many of them asymptomatic, might be what's driving the spread. They don't even know that they're sick, but are going out and seeing friends and continue to spread the disease. Coming up, it turns out the mask debate is over and a new tool to analyze risk where you live.

This is Consider This from NPR. I'm Kelly McEvers. It's Wednesday, July 1st. If you were watching Fox News on Tuesday morning, something we know the president does a lot, you might have heard something new from the top Republican in the House, a key ally of President Trump, Kevin McCarthy. Wearing the mask is the best opportunity for us to keep this economy open, keep us working, keep us safe, and help us as we build towards that vaccine. Masks do seem to help. Doesn't that mean the president should wear one in public? I just don't see any downside in the president being seen more often wearing it. More Republicans are speaking up in support of wearing masks. Sean Hannity did it on his show recently. I think they work. And I said, especially if I wear a mask and it opens up baseball,

concerts, NFL football, I'd rather wear the mask and go to the game to protect grandma, grandpa. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tweeted this week, we must have no stigma, none, about wearing masks. And now, more than three months into a pandemic that has killed more than 100,000 people in this country, the message is morphing even more. Masks don't just help, they're American. Obviously, it's patriotic because you're not only protecting yourself,

you're protecting other people. I've heard that there are people around the president who say, no, you shouldn't wear it. But nonetheless, it would be a powerful symbol. It would. I mean, for the Fourth of July, we could all show our patriotism with a red, white, and blue mask going out there. Great idea. Surgeon General Jerome Adams on Tuesday...

This face covering actually is an instrument of freedom. Said something similar. It adds to your convenience and your freedom because it allows us to open up more places and it allows those places to stay open. And even Vice President Mike Pence has been wearing a mask in his public travel lately. Wear a mask whenever your state and local authorities say it's appropriate. But still, the head of the Republican Party, President Trump, has long been skeptical of masks. He's even refused to be seen in one, saying at a Ford plant in May he didn't want to give the media the satisfaction. I wore one in this back area, but I didn't want to give the press

the pleasure of seeing it. Whatever the, where I had it in the back area... Whatever the president does, his political allies and many administration officials are turning up the volume about the importance of masks and other public health measures. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that 76 percent of Democrats said they wore a mask all or most of the time in stores or other businesses in the past month. For Republicans, the number was 53 percent. Dr. Anthony Fauci talked to NPR about this today. He said the signals being sent by these senior Republicans and by the vice president are good.

I'm very encouraged by that. I think it was very important to see senior leaders and to see the vice president out on his trip when he went out to some of those states to wear the mask. Fauci also talked to my colleague Mary Louise Kelly about how it's going with vaccine development, about why convincing people to wear masks is so tough, and why the surge in cases as states reopened was caused in part by not enough people wearing them. What we did see were people out there congregating in bars, congregating in crowds, in people getting together in a celebratory way, understandably, because they felt cooped up, without wearing masks. That is, you know, in many respects,

if I might use the word, it's a violation of the principles of what we're trying to do. And that is the social distancing, the wearing of masks, because we can actually make this happen in a way if we let public health measures be a gateway to opening up as opposed to an obstacle. And if you do things that essentially enhance the outbreak, then you're part of the problem. You're not part of the solution. Does there need to be more of a coordinated federal plan? Do there need to be requirements? Or is it wise to have the strategy remain, leaving this largely to states and local governments to figure it out? You know, Mary Louise, you bring up a good point, and there's a lot of argument about that, about how this country is set up, where you have the states that have the capability of making decisions because of the different and peculiar nature of things that go on in different states.

From a public health perspective, would it be better if the federal government were taking a more assertive role? Well, it might not be. I mean, I'm one that does take an assertive role. If you hear what I say whenever I'm talking, as I am on this program, you know, it is really saying that we must do these things, hopefully, and I'm seeing it right now after yesterday's numbers came out, that many of the governors and the mayors are actually demanding and saying it is mandatory. Now, if you're going to go out, you have to have a mask on. But you're right, there will be arguments. I'm one for more directive way of doing things. But in many respects, that's not the way this country works. And may I just push you on your hope that we can turn things around, turn these numbers around, without shutting down at least as aggressively as things were in March and April?

I'm thinking of another thing you said in your testimony yesterday, which is that you were talking about why Europe has largely succeeded and the U.S. has failed to control the virus. And you talked about how when the U.S. shut down, it was in reality only about 50 percent of activity was really shutting down, whereas in Europe it was more like 90 or 95 percent. Yeah. And that makes it sound like we had a shot and we blew it. You know, that's a very provocative word, blew it. But certainly if you look at it, and I meant it, the numbers are true. If you look at the Europeans and look at what they did and what their curve, they got the curve way down. If you never get the curve down, and if you look at our curve, it peaked, it came down a little, and then it stayed about flat until just recently when it resurged up again.

So we're in a bad position because of what happened earlier on your right. We only shut down about 50%. That's in the past. What we've got to do now is we can get control of it if we do the things that I spoke about at the hearing yesterday. Let me turn you to vaccines. You have said we should have a vaccine by the end of this year with production ramping up next year.

Whether that vaccine works and how long it may work for, whether we may be protected for life or just for a few months? Are those still open questions? They are. They are. Because right now, the one thing that is going well is the procedure of multiple different candidates. And there are candidates all over the world. There are several that are being looked at here in the United States with variable degrees of help from the federal government. And as I've said, say it again, Mary Louise, there's no guarantee that you're going to get a safe and effective vaccine, but the early indications from the trial make me, I use that word, cautiously optimistic

that we are on the right track. I join you in hoping that we stay on that right track. But I have to ask, what if people won't get it? You'll have seen the same polls I have showing that half of the U.S. is reluctant to get a coronavirus vaccine. Yeah. And that gets back to another thing that we've spoken about, that there is an anti-vaccine type of an attitude and even an anti-science attitude, anti-authority, like, why are these people telling me that I want to get a vaccine? I don't trust it. It is up to us to mitigate that by getting a very strong degree of community engagement. And when I say engage the community, I get people who look like, act like, feel like the people that you're trying to engage so they can trust them as one of their own.

It was very successful with HIV. I hope we can do the same engagement of the community with COVID-19. This is interesting. And let me stay here for a minute because you are right. The federal government has led all kinds of successful public health campaigns to do with HIV and safe sex. I'm thinking about seatbelts and that we should wear them, thinking about healthy eating. Why has it been so hard in this case to help Americans understand

if we want to slow the spread of the coronavirus, there are these guidelines and we all have to follow them? You know, Mary Louise, it's a complicated issue. I've been involved with viruses now for the last 40 years, dating back to the beginning of HIV, but I've never seen an emerging virus that has such a broad range of almost contradictory manifestations, where you have 20 to 40 percent of a population get no symptoms at all. And then there are those who get some modest symptoms, some get sick enough to be home for weeks and some require hospitalization

that might require intensive care, intubation, ventilation and death. So when you're trying to explain the risk and the seriousness, you're explaining it to younger people who say, wait a minute, so many of my friends, they get infected, it doesn't even bother them. We've got to convince them.

You can't think of it only as yourself. You've got to think about it as your societal responsibility. But that message is very difficult to get across. Do you ever get tired of trying to persuade people to do what you as a scientist know is in their own best interest? No, I don't. I don't get tired, Mary Louise, because it's such an important problem. And people's lives depend on it, their health, particularly the vulnerable. You know, and that's how you judge society. How do you care for your vulnerable? And there are people who are very vulnerable to serious consequences. And that's what I mean. And I'm not blaming, and there's no reason for that,

because people do it really inadvertently and innocently. So when you see people, devil may care, at bars and crowds, not really caring, I think about what the consequences of that might be for the vulnerable people. But boy, that's a difficult message to get across. Dr. Anthony Fauci talking to Mary Louise Kelly. If you're looking for data about the virus and how it's spreading, it's not too hard to find national and statewide numbers. But it's not always clear how to interpret these numbers or how to compare them to other numbers. A big challenge has been the absence of a unified, national way of presenting

data and talking about how to think about risk. So now Harvard's Danielle Allen and a group of other scientists have built a new website, globalepidemics.org, where you can track cases in your county, compare it to other counties across the country, and see how each county ranks in terms of risk. Green, yellow, or red. A risk level based on new daily cases per 100,000 people. It allows you to compare a rural area in upstate New York compared to New York City. Georgetown University's Ellie Graydon helped build the project. And that's the real value of this effort. We're now communicating and all agreeing

on the same basic thresholds for the types of actions that need to be taken. You can find a link to that website and a story about it from NPR's Alison Aubrey in our episode notes. I'm Kelly McEvers. We'll be back with more tomorrow. Comedian Nicole Byer doesn't consider herself body positive.

She just accepts herself as is. I hate that there's a name for, like, not hating a part of who you are. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, it's insane. Nicole Byer on her new book, Very Fat, Very Brave, and How to Love Yourself. Listen to It's Been a Minute from NPR.