随着COVID-19大流行在美国境内激增，特朗普政府领导联邦努力减缓病毒传播的特别工作组继续在其会议上传递一些乐观的信息。
但据美国最高传染病专家、特别工作组的重要成员安东尼·福奇博士称，这些说法并不总是与他从危机前线收到的报告相符。
作为黄金时段特别节目的一部分，美国广播公司将于周二晚播出深度采访，“美国灾难:我们是如何来到这里的?Fauci被要求解释为什么在COVID-19首次到达美国几个月之后，美国政府仍在努力为美国人提供足够的测试和为必要的工人提供足够的个人防护装备。
Fauci说:“当我们参加这些特别工作组会议时，我们不断听到这些问题正在得到纠正。”“但当你走进战壕时，你还是会听到这个消息。”
2020年3月27日，在华盛顿，安东尼·福奇博士在白宫新闻发布室聆听关于冠状病毒大流行的简报。
请在美国东部时间周二晚上9点收听美国广播公司的“20/20”特别报道“美国灾难:我们是如何来到这里的?”
福西说，他没有一个“好的答案”，也“无法解释”这种差异，特别是因为这些问题不是他“日常”责任的一部分，但问题的一部分源于“我们需要的许多东西不是美国生产的。”
美国政府最终与其他受疫情影响的国家争夺这些材料，白宫最终不得不动用紧急权力来推动美国公司提供帮助。
福西承认，疾病控制中心的早期测试失误加剧了这些挑战。疾病控制中心开发的测试最初“不起作用”，因为——事实证明——它们的结果是基于潜在的污染样本。这迫使联邦政府进一步依赖私营企业。
当被问及他自己可能犯的任何错误时——包括最初告诉公众普通美国人不需要戴口罩——他说，这样的决定是“基于当时的信息。”
他说:“作为一名科学家，你必须始终保持谦虚的态度，知道当你获得额外的信息，甚至是可能与之前的感觉相冲突的信息时，你就会改变你的观点，并根据这些数据改变你的建议。”“这就是科学的全部。科学是一个学习的过程。”
2020年3月24日，华盛顿，美国国家过敏和传染病研究所所长安东尼·福西在白宫听取唐纳德·特朗普总统关于新型冠状病毒的每日简报。
美国总统唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)周四在白宫的一次简报会上宣称，美国的测试能力“大幅提高”，迄今为止已在全国范围内进行了5100多万次测试，并坚称美国“在供应方面非常强大。”
"记得我以前说过橱柜是空的吗?"特朗普说。“嗯，现在橱柜是相反的。”
特朗普还表示，这是美国对抗COVID-19的“了不起的一周”，他坚称，“我们在全国都做得很好。”
然而，在接受ABC新闻采访时，Fauci对南方几个州的病例“激增”表示担忧，他说，这是由“社区传播激增”造成的，在这种情况下，感染了这种疾病但没有表现出症状的人正在把它传播给其他人。
他说:“这是一个非常严重的问题。”“他们需要关注，因为即使他们自己可能得不到任何严重的结果，他们也是大流行传播的一部分。”
安东尼·福奇博士于2020年6月30日在华盛顿参加了参议院健康、教育、劳工和养老金委员会的听证会。
福奇说，美国政府当然不是唯一一个犯代价高昂的错误的政府。福奇在接受美国广播公司采访时表示，特朗普政府对这一日益严重的流行病的反应受到了中国政府在疫情最初蔓延至全国期间缺乏坦诚的严重阻碍。
福奇说:“我们仍然从中国人那里听说，它没有有效地在人与人之间传播。”“几个星期过去了，事情变得很清楚，情况就是这样，真的会有麻烦。”
福奇说，中国政府甚至禁止美国官员访问受致命病毒影响最严重的地区。
“他们不被允许实时去那里看看发生了什么，”他说，“这让我们非常不安。”
直到一月份，中国政府最终公布了病毒的科学组成，福奇才完全意识到情况的严重性。
“好吧，”他回忆当时的想法。“全体人员集合。”
2020年7月23日，在华盛顿国家公园，纽约扬基队和华盛顿国民队比赛前，安东尼·福西博士在扔出第一个仪式球后，受到了华盛顿国民队的肖恩·杜立特的迎接。
请在美国东部时间周二晚上9点收听美国广播公司的“20/20”特别报道“美国灾难:我们是如何来到这里的?”
福西已经与传染病斗争了将近40年，但他说COVID-19是他“最可怕的噩梦。”他说，容易传播的传染病往往“非常弱”，很少致命，而不能广泛传播的疾病往往是最致命的。但是COVID-19没有遵循这种模式。
福西说:“这两件事与我们现在正在处理的问题结合在一起——这是一种“有效传播”的致命疾病——形成了一场“完美风暴。”“当这些东西汇集在一起时……它真的具有历史意义。”
他敦促全国各地的美国人——不管他们在哪里——遵循“一些基本原则。”
他说:“基础不是火箭科学。”“大家都戴着口罩，避开人群，关闭酒吧，保持身体距离和个人卫生，洗手。…毫无疑问，您可以通过一些简单的事情来扭转这种局面。”
Fauci: Some messages from Trump's COVID-19 task force don’t match reports from 'the trenches'
As the COVID-19 pandemic surges within the United States, the Trump administration’s task force leading federal efforts to slow the spread of the virus continues to relay some optimistic messages in its meetings.
But according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, a key member of the task force as the nation’s top infectious disease expert, those claims do not always match the reports he receives from the front lines of the crisis.
During an in-depth interview that will air Tuesday night on ABC News as part of a primetime special, “American Catastrophe: How Did We Get Here?," Fauci was pressed to explain why, months after COVID-19 first reached U.S. soil, the U.S. government is still struggling to provide adequate testing for Americans and sufficient personal protective gear for essential workers.
“We keep hearing when we go to these task force meetings that these [issues] are being corrected,” Fauci said. “But yet when you go into the trenches, you still hear about that.”
Tune in to ABC on Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET for the "20/20" special report "American Catastrophe: How Did We Get Here?"
Fauci said he does not have a “good answer” and “cannot explain” the discrepancy, especially since those matters are not part of his “day-by-day” responsibilities, but part of the problem stems from the fact that “many of the things that we needed were not produced in the United States.”
The U.S. government ended up competing for those materials with other nations stricken by the pandemic, and the White House ultimately had to invoke emergency powers to push U.S. companies to help.
Those challenges were exacerbated by what Fauci admitted were early missteps on testing by the Centers for Disease Control, which developed tests that "didn't work" initially because – it turned out – their results were based on potentially contaminated samples. That forced the federal government to further rely private companies.
Asked about any missteps he may have made himself – including initially telling the public that the average American didn’t need to wear a mask – he said such decisions were “based on the information at the moment.”
“As a scientist, the thing you must always do is to be humble enough to know that when you get additional information, even information that might conflict what was felt earlier on, you then change your viewpoint and you change your recommendations based on the data,” he said. “That's what science is all about. Science is a learning process.”
During a White House briefing on Thursday, President Donald Trump declared that the United States has seen “a tremendous increase” in its testing capabilities, conducting more than 51 million tests across the country so far, and insisted that the country is “very strong on supplies.”
“Remember I used to say the cupboards were bare?” Trump said. “Well, now the cupboards are the opposite.”
Trump also said it's been "a tremendous week" for the United States in the fight against COVID-19, insisting, "We're doing very well all over the country."
In his interview with ABC News, however, Fauci expressed concern over the “explosion” of cases in several southern states, which he said is being fueled by “a surge of community spread,” in which people infected with the disease but not showing symptoms are spreading it to others.
It’s “a real serious problem,” he said. “They need to be concerned because even though they themselves may not get any serious outcome, they are part of the propagation of the pandemic.”
The U.S. government, Fauci said, certainly wasn’t the only one to make costly mistakes. In his interview with ABC News, Fauci said the Trump administration’s response to the growing pandemic was significantly handicapped by the Chinese government’s lack of candor during its initial spread throughout the country.
“We were still hearing from the Chinese that it wasn't efficiently spread from human to human,” Fauci said. “And then as the weeks went by, it became very clear that that was the case, and that there really would be trouble.”
The Chinese government even barred U.S. officials, Fauci said, from visiting the areas most impacted by the deadly virus.
“They were not allowed to go there in real-time and see what was going on,” he said, and that “was very disconcerting to us.”
It wasn’t until January, when the Chinese government finally released the scientific makeup of the virus, that Fauci fully realized the gravity of the situation.
"All right,” he recalled thinking at the time. “All hands on deck.”
Tune in to ABC on Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET for the "20/20" special report "American Catastrophe: How Did We Get Here?"
Fauci has been fighting infectious diseases for nearly four decades, but he said COVID-19 has been his “worst nightmare.” Infectious diseases that spread easily tend to be “very weak” and rarely lethal, he said, while the diseases that can’t spread as widely tend to be the most deadly. But COVID-19 hasn’t followed that paradigm.
“You have those two things coming together with what we're dealing with now” – a deadly disease that’s “efficiently spread” – creating “the perfect storm,” Fauci said. “When those things come together … it really is historic.”
He urged Americans across the country – no matter where they are – to follow “some fundamental principles.”
“The fundamentals are not rocket science,” he said. “It's universal wearing of masks, avoiding crowds, close the bars, [maintain] physical distance [and] personal hygiene, washing your hands. … No doubt you're going to be able to turn these things around with some things as simple as that.”
ABC News' Ali Dukakis, Kaitlyn Folmer and Josh Margolin contributed to this report.
