The New Yorker Radio Hour - Anthony Fauci Then and Now, and the Writer-Director Radha Blank

Episode Date: October 9, 2020

At the moment that Donald Trump was leaving Walter Reed Hospital, not yet recovered from a case of COVID-19, Dr. Anthony Fauci sat down with Michael Specter to discuss the coronavirus and its impact on America. For the President—and all of us counting on a vaccine to miraculously deliver us back to normalcy—Fauci offers a reality check. “Let’s say we have a vaccine and it’s seventy per cent effective. But only sixty per cent of the people [are likely to] get vaccinated. The vaccine will greatly help us, but it’s not going to eliminate mask-wearing, avoiding crowds, and things like that.” Plus, Vinson Cunningham talks with Radha Blank about her loosely autobiographical new film, which won her best director at Sundance. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Donald Trump's absolute disregard for scientific reality, whether it's the coronavirus or climate change, has been a signature of his presidency. His open contempt for putting on a mask was a threat from the first to the countless Americans who choose to emulate him. It endangered, in the end, the president's own life. and the lives of everyone around him. Last week, just as Trump was leaving Walter Reed Hospital after a stay of three days, Dr. Anthony Fauci sat down for a conversation with the New Yorker's Michael Specter.

Fauci is the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is a branch of the NIH, and he's really the most public voice in this country for medical reason. Michael is a longtime staff writer at the New Yorker, covering medicine and the sciences. They spoke on Monday. As we are speaking, the president of the United States is scheduled to leave the hospital any minute, and he's going to go back to the White House.

And I'm not going to ask you to comment on his strange regimen of drugs or how he's feeling. I know you're not his personal physician, and that's not your thing. But I do want to talk about public health because this afternoon he tweeted, COVID, no big thing. Don't be afraid of it. And, you know, 210,000 Americans have died and 7 million have been in 4.7 million have been in, Is it fair to say no big thing? Don't be afraid of it? Yeah, well, you know, Michael, that's been one of the things that have been sort of a bone of

contention and communication of the seriousness of this. I mean, obviously, it's a very unusual pathogen that can have virtually no effect in the sense of 40%, 45% of people can be without symptoms. And then for those who have symptoms, the overwhelming majority of them are mild. But there are a group of individuals who fall into a certain subset or category, namely the elderly and those with underlying conditions at any age who can have a severe outcome. So when you look at the now 210,000 people in the United States of America who've died and you talk about the million have been infected, and the one million who've died globally, I think anybody who's looking at this realistically has to say that this is a very serious disease that we need to reckon.

The White House will now not do any contact tracing from the September 26th Rose Garden event to celebrate the nomination of Judge Amy Coney-Barrant. Are you comfortable commenting on that? You know the answer to that? No. I'm not. I don't want to get into what the White House is or is not doing. That becomes nonproductive and doesn't really help the messages that I'm trying to get across. Sorry, Michael. Well, let me just, yeah, it was a try. But let me ask it in a slightly more general way.

How can we stamp this thing out if we don't contact trace? How can we know who's infected and who isn't infected if we don't follow the people who are infected and see who they were in contact with? Is there a way other than contact tracing? You know, we do need contact. Contact tracing is important. I mean, it's one of the many tools that we have to try and contain an outbreak.

It is likely, we haven't proven it yet, but likely that an asymptomatic person during that gathering at the White House began the chain of transmission that obviously occurred within that group. I must tell you, Michael, that in this situation that we're in, where infection comes to a great extent

from people without symptoms, it becomes very difficult and problematic to do adequate contact tracing, even if you wanted to do adequate contact tracing. The community spread among people or without symptoms make that very, very, very difficult. We have a real problem in this country with people believing in vaccines.

They are hesitant. I'm not even talking about the hardcore anti-vaccine activists, just people who are afraid. And what has gone on with the discussion of the vaccine until now has not made people more confident. They already say to the tune of about 40 percent that they won't take the vaccine. How do we get people back to the point where they think the things that will save their lives will actually save their lives. You know, Michael, there's not going to be an easy answer to that. First of all, we need to be completely transparent and consistent in what we do. This is true for

everyone out there. It becomes even more imperative to do that with minority communities, because traditionally and historically, minority communities have not been served well by the government and by society in general. And they don't trust authority for a number of reasons, many of which are really justified. So you've got to overcome that barrier. And that's what we try to do. We try to get community people who they trust

to go into the community and try to get them to understand the importance for their own health, but also for the health of the community. It would be tragic. If we do get a safe and effective vaccine, But they don't benefit from it because, A, they refuse to get involved in the clinical trials, or B, once the clinical trials are over, they don't believe that the vaccine is safe and effective for them and they don't take it.

When, in fact, they stand to benefit the most from a safe and effective vaccine. When you describe this, it makes me wonder how short of a very effective vaccine, which even if we're lucky, it's not going to happen soon, and it's not going to be distributed immediately, we are going to get out of this. It looks like we have a long way to go in this pandemic before we go to the movie. Are we ever going to go to the movies again? Yes, we are, Michael,

and I'll even buy you a ticket. We'll go together to alleviate your anxiety. You know, we will. So I get at a question all the time. When are we going to get back to something that closely resembles or is in fact normal as we knew it. It is likely that we will know that we have a safe and effective vaccine

by, let's say, November or December of this year. That I have cautious optimism that we will have a vaccine. We're already making doses, a lot of doses, tens and hundreds of millions of doses, to be ready, first at least in graded numbers, at the end of the year in November, December, and then as we get into January, February, March, April, by the time we get to April,

we likely will have doses to be able to vaccinate anybody who needs to be vaccinated. But you need to have a highly effective vaccine, and you need to get a substantial proportion of the population vaccinated. So let's say we get a 70% effective vaccine, which I hope we will get, but only 60% of the people get vaccinated.

There are going to be a lot of vulnerable people out there, which means that the vaccine will greatly help us to pull back a bit on the restrictions that we have now to maintain good public health. But it's not going to eliminate things like mask wearing and avoiding crowds and things like that. So I think we can approach normality. we may have theaters where you've got to make sure that you don't have full capacity

that may be wear a mask at the theater. That may go on for months and months. I can't predict how long, but I don't think we're going to be back to normal until the end of 2021. And that's just, you know, a prediction. We may do better than that. I hope so, but I don't think so. I want to switch a bit to the AIDS era. there was a guy who died this year who was very important to both of us.

He called both of us murderers at different points in our life, but we ended up both being somewhat close to him. And I wanted to play just one little interaction between you. And the person I'm talking about for those who are out there is Larry Kramer, who was a signature AIDS activist and a really remarkable person who was both difficult and thrilling at the same time. And I'd like to play in exchange. This is from the 90s when Tony and Larry were on a television talk show together.

We're not going to get the answer tomorrow. And the kinds of inroads that are made, as small as they are, science works in small building blocks of knowledge. Oh, Tony, stop it. Yes, the answer could come tomorrow. Why do you automatically take such a negative attitude? You're not going to get it. Let me finish. It happens in big building blocks.

as well as little building blocks. It's all of this rhetoric of yours than everybody else in a bureaucracy. I want to say something about Tony Fauci because I think the world must think I hate him or something in the way of going on tonight. I love Tony. Actually, I think I probably have a more complicated relationship

with Tony than anybody in my entire life. He is a man, an ordinary man who is being asked to play God, and he is being punished because he cannot be God. and that is a terrible situation to be in, to be the lightning rod for all of us. True? Yeah, to a certain extent, I wouldn't as be. You know, Larry would be very theatrical and confrontated,

but there was so much wisdom in his words. And to an extent, he was true, because I was put in a position that I was the face of, of the government, and I was leading the biomedical research effort. And the biomedical research effort could not possibly have moved quickly enough to save so many of the people back then who you and I know and knew, some of whom were very close to me, who were infected and who died of AIDS before we had the life-safing drugs that we had now.

And I was called upon to do this what took years, to do it tomorrow. But these activists had certain things that they were confronting that I said to myself very clearly, it was unambiguous. I said, if I were in their shoes, I would be doing exactly what they were doing. in fact, maybe even more forcefully. You honestly felt many years ago that that was the end of it, right? But it's gotten pretty difficult, hasn't it, on a personal level? Why do you think that is?

I mean, the activists never threatened us in a serious way. They wanted to gain our attention. Their motivations were all pure, and we developed extraordinarily good relations with them. The threats that I would get back then of the people who, I guess, the extremist far rights were very upset that they felt I was expending a lot of time worrying about these gay guys, these queers or whatever it is that they were calling them because I was very empathetic to the gay community. And these were a minor group of people that I just blew off. And I mean, and their threats were nothing but silly things. The threats that we get now are real. I mean, threats on life, harassment of family, harassment of my wife, harassment of my children.

That requires our needing security. But right now, I believe, Michael, it's a reflection of the extreme divisiveness in our society when a public health message becomes opposing political. views. Everybody wants to get the country back to normal again. The enemy is not the public health mandates. The enemy is the virus. Let's get that clear. The enemy is the virus. But it seems that that's not the way things are rolling out here. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Aller and Infectious Diseases. He spoke with staff writer Michael Specter on the first day of the New Yorker Festival, which runs through October 11th. Michael

is also the author of Fauci, a new audio biography published by Pushkin Industries. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour with more to come. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. I'm going to turn things over now to staff writer Vincent Cunningham. So Rana Blank started out life as a playwright in New York, and for years she struggled as a playwright. She never quite got that big production that put her on the map. Like a lot of playwrights, she taught writing in public schools and community centers. But unlike a lot of playwrights,

Rada also started a sideline as a rapper. She performed in New York under the name Rada Must Prime. Somewhere in the middle of all this, Rada wrote a movie. It's called the 40-year-old version. That's V-E-R-S-I-O-N version. It's about a struggling playwright named Rada who decides to pursue a career as a rapper. No doubt.

So what should call yourself? Huh? So what they call you? What they call you? Rada. Prime. What? Roder Miss Prime?

Oh, shit. Like Optimus. Yeah, yeah, shit. What happened next was like something out of a struggling playwright's fantasy. First, Lena Waithe got hold of the script and offered to actually produce it. And she wanted Rada to both direct and star in it. Then the movie got into the Sundance Film Festival, which is a big deal for her.

anybody's first movie. Then Rada won an award for directing at that festival, making her only the second black woman to ever win that award. You're so much better lit than I am. When you say lit, you are both more lit than I am in the colloquial sense, but you're also better lit in the technical sense of location. There's a distinction. I appreciate that. I spoke to Rada Blank last week. I just wondered just on a personal level, what it was for you, would like to move from, as you say, this sort of struggling in the theater world to then winning the director's award at Sundance. Just what ran through your mind in that moment? How was that? In that moment, I was like, oh, shit, they got that wrong. But I see myself having

already won some other awards. Like the fact that black people go to see the movie and say it's black as fuck. Like, that's a huge compliment to me. When New Yorkers see the film and they say, oh my God, you know, that's my hometown and now I am in it, you know. That's a huge award for me. Rada. Excuse me, Liza. Rada, hey.

How are you? Just puckering up to the patrons as usual. How are you? Archie tells me you're teaching. I've been teaching for a while now. Well, theater misses you. Does it? Is it looking for me?

Because I've been here. So Rada, what was your thing? theater work like? What were your concerns when you were writing primarily for theater? And how has that, if at all, how has that made its way into the 40-year-old version? You know, I feel like as a storyteller, I've always kind of, even if it was comedic, it was always through the lens of social commentary and social justice. And theater was where I really kind of lived in that world. No, no, no. It's about gentrification. And how this young couple struggles to you didn't like it. The idea is powerful. But? It rang a little inauthentic.

Well, thank you for that note. I appreciate it. There's something there. Okay. I just wish you hadn't shied away from darkness. I mean, if you're going to call it Harlem Ave, you've got to give me Harlem Ave. I should write in a teen mother shooting up in an alley. No, no, no. It's nothing to speak ill of those black favorites who are getting produced.

I just feel like the people who show up tend to satisfy the urges of a particular sect of people. I call them the silver hair patrons. These are people who can afford between $100 and $150 for a ticket to theater. And so they then dictate what shows up on stage. And so it's their version of blackness. One that is, you know, conflict shows up as pain, you know, in a black story, or they're dancing and they're singing, or it's a period piece. But, you know, what it definitely avoids is being an indictment of white privilege and white culture. Oh, no, look, sweetheart.

Yes. There's definitely a voice under all those words. All those words. But the writing needs work. The good news is. I still need a writer for my Harriet Tubbin musical. You know, I think, you know, people celebrate artists when they deem the person's art either palatable or marketable

or something they can monetize. But until then, we're all just considered flaky artists. You know what I mean? And we're always confronting whether it's the gatekeeper or the audience or the silver-haired patron. there's always this kind of dance, which can sometimes feel like pandering, so that we can get in the door and support ourselves and feed ourselves, you know what I mean? So there are all of these little compromises I think that you make on this path as an artist.

I think the story is about someone who may or may not survive the compromise she's made. Yeah, and one thing I noticed about the movie is that you kind of set up this dichotomy, right? theater is a place that's got all these gatekeepers around it, all these levels to make it through. There's your agent. There's the producer. There's all these things, these screens, I guess, from your sort of vision until whatever the product is. Where this hip-hop world, there's this hip-hop producer, D, that you, and the first night that you work together, it's you sang your rhymes the way that you want them to be.

It's like this hip-hop as a place for control. Yeah. Yeah. Yo, it's poverty porn. You regular blacks are just such a yarn. Yo, if I want to get on, better write me some poverty porn. Yeah. How was that last one?

Good. Felt good. If my kids could see me now. Not my kids. I don't. I don't have kids. I mean, my students. There were so many Native New Yorkers working on the film that had

this dogged, you know, determination to tell a New York story from a different angle. You know, my DP, Eric Bronco, was one of them. He's from the Bronx, had never shot on black and white film before. And so we both were, like, kind of obsessed with how black people and people of color would show up in those shades of gray. So, you know, yeah, I'd get intimidated, but then I realized, you know, not to make it sound like I'm a priest who gets a calling from the higher source. But it felt like that, you know, some days I had to be like, girl, it ain't about you.

Just do your job, you know? I love what you said about New York. And I, you know, as a native New Yorker myself, I found myself very excited. There's a moment where you can sort of see the train going under where it does, where it comes up, you know, from 1 25th Street. Yeah. It seemed like you were kind of playing to me with these, like, the way New York has been seen in film like that the black and white brings to, you know, any number of New York films that we could, we could mention. But it just seemed like you were playing within the tradition, but then trying to also stretch it, move it forward. Right.

Like what we're doing is we're not inventing something new. I just think it's how and who is doing it. You know, I guess because I am black and I identify as a woman, you know, that is considered groundbreaking. But really, I'm just trying to create something that retrofits something into the canon of classic New York films, you know, a story that should have been told 30, 40 years ago. but so it feels both fresh and nostalgic if that makes any sense like another compliment i feel i've gotten from audiences is when is when people think the film takes place in the 90s it doesn't it takes place now we just we just we couldn't get a up-to-date bus you know city bus so but it lends itself you know as the film opens you hear electric relaxation by tribe and that was one of many

music videos in my digital lookbook. That's all I was trying to do is like, we're so used to seeing hip hop like kind of oversaturated, over-sexualized, and I think black and white forces a certain, you know, level of cool, you know, and vulnerability also for the culture. And just with you, what's your relationship to the theater now? Do you think that there is more opportunity for black artists to have control in a way that maybe is it the case or what? You know what? I couldn't answer that now. I probably have to answer that in two or three years from now because I think, you know, there's this movement of

theater artists. They call themselves, We See You, and they are calling out what they call WAT white American theater around all of the disparity in terms of who gets to greenlight projects. I think an immediate response to that was numerous theaters have employed. Black women as, you know, artistic directors, people at the gate, so to speak. I feel there's a shift, but I feel like we won't know for a while. Are you kind of off on this movie trajectory, or do you see yourself going back? I will always be a playwright, always. I feel like it's where I really got to cut my teeth and learn story and earn endings

and, you know, take my obsessive deep dives into characters and why they do what they do. But yeah, I think it'll be interesting to see how theater, I think theater is either going to love me or hate me because, you know, but that's not very different from how my career was before. They wasn't fuck up with me then because I don't think I would be the playwright they wanted me to be. You know, I don't know. It'll be bittersweet to finally have my plays, which in TV, they've become writing samples to have my plays actually be plays again, you know. Yeah. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you. This was awesome.

Roda Blank is the writer, director, and star of the 40-year-old version, which has just premiered on Netflix. You've been listening to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Vincent Cunningham. And I'm David Remnick. Thanks for joining us today and see you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts,

with additional music by Alexis Quadrato. We had assistance this week from Emery Moore in Portland. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Turina Endowment Fund.