Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Fauci And Birx Continue To Plea For Mask Wearing
The Hill: Birx Says It's 'Frustrating' To Hear Public 'Parrot Back' False COVID-19 Claims
Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House’s coronavirus task force, said Sunday that it’s “frustrating” to hear the public “parrot back” false claims about COVID-19, including that masks do not work. Birx told NBC News’s “Meet the Press” that when she travels to meet with state and local government officials, she also meets with community members who sometimes repeat “myths” about the pandemic. (Coleman, 12/6)
AP: Health Officials Warn Americans Not To Let Their Guard Down
With a COVID-19 vaccine perhaps just days away in the U.S., most of California headed into another lockdown Sunday because of the surging outbreak and top health officials warned Americans that this is no time to let their guard down. “The vaccine’s critical,” Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “But it’s not going to save us from this current surge. Only we can save us from this current surge.” (Groves, 12/6)
Newsweek: Fauci's Timeline For When He Thinks America Will Beat COVID
The U.S. COVID-19 outbreak will "get worse before it gets better" and the country won't see "dramatic changes" until the third quarter of next year, Dr. Anthony Fauci told Newsweek. Speaking to Newsweek, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and member of the White House COVID-19 task force said: "I think the decreases are going to start as we get into April and as more of the general population gets vaccinated. (Kim, 12/5)
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HuffPost: A Day In The Life Of Dr. Anthony Fauci
[Dr. Anthony] Fauci has kept a relentless pace trying to correct the country’s coronavirus course. “Each day is different,” Fauci, who turns 80 this month, told HuffPost in an interview on the day before Thanksgiving. “It’s just, you know, drinking out of a firehose trying to keep ahead of everything that’s going on.” The night before, he’d been awake until around 11 p.m. sorting through a mountain of email until he was too tired to continue. “I get like over a thousand emails a day and when they screen it, they screen it down to those few hundred that I have to deal with,” he said. “Then you have a day that is wall-to-wall, literally.” (Young, 12/5)
WBRC: ‘Fauci Effect’ Encourages More Medical And Nursing School Applicants
It’s known as the “Fauci Effect,” the influx of applications to medical and nursing schools as a result of the pandemic and some schools in Alabama are seeing an increase in interest. ... According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the increase in medical school applications is unprecedented, up 18% over last year. (Maxie, 12/4)
AP: Fauci's Plea 'Wear A Mask' Tops List Of 2020 Notable Quotes
A plea from Dr. Anthony Fauci for people to “wear a mask” to slow the spread of the coronavirus tops a Yale Law School librarian’s list of the most notable quotes of 2020.The list assembled by Fred Shapiro, an associate director at the library, is an annual update to “The Yale Book of Quotations,” which was first published in 2006. Also on the list is “I can’t breathe,” the plea George Floyd made repeatedly to police officers holding him down on a Minneapolis street corner. Several quotes from the presidential campaign appear including Joe Biden telling a student: “You’re a lying dog-faced pony soldier.” (12/7)
