You're listening to Comedy Central now. Dr. Fauci, welcome back to The Daily Social Distancing Show. Thank you. Very nice to be with you. Thank you for having me.

Before I ask you about us, I'm going to try, as we do in African culture and ask you about you. I know that you had surgery on your vocal cords, something I'm very sensitive to because I, too, had polyps and I had to get them surgically removed. How are you and how is your voice? I'm actually fine.

Trevor, thank you for asking. I should have had this done literally months ago. I had kind of strained my voice. I had actually an upper respiratory infection and had a little tricky itis usually rest and let it go away. But that's when things started to explode with covid-19. And I was literally constantly and I say not hyperbole, you know, 17, 18 hours a day, talking to the point where I just strained it in, strained it and strained it.

And then I realized my voice was gravelly and I could not get it back to normal. But the surgery was very successful. They removed the benign polyp. And now this is my regular voice. So I joke around. And instead of sounding like Vito Corleone from The Godfather, I sound like Tony Fauci from the NIH as somebody who is having the surgery and how horrible it can be.

So I'm glad that you have your voice back and there are a few people who need their voices more than you do, especially considering what's going on right now, not just in America, but around the world. I spoke to you six months ago. The country saw you every day. We had a routine. We wake up, we see Dr. Pouchy gives us an update. We know what we're doing on what we're not doing. Then you disappeared. And now I have to rely on Facebook to know how to not or not fight the virus or fight the virus.

So where have you been?

You know, there's been a change in the intensity with which the coronavirus task force, the White House coronavirus task force, has been involved. It used to be on a daily basis when we were talking about the public health issues. Then there was kind of a switch in pivoting that was focusing mostly on opening the economy and opening the country, which is a good thing. So we did we're not meeting as as frequently. And you remember, we used to have like a press conference every single day and they decided that they were not they were going to pull back and have mostly the president give the press conference.

And then we are sometimes on the media, sometimes not. It's kind of erratic, like on the classic media. You might see me a couple of days in a row and then I'm off for a while. And it's just a question of whether they have a message that they want out. And if it's the message that they want out at that particular day, then you might go out. If not, you don't go out. And that's the reason why I value the the opportunity to speak with you and to others, because I think we can get the public health measure that I really feel is very important for the health of the American public to be able to say it in a way that's received by the people who really would benefit from it.

Yeah, because I'm not going to lie to you, Doctor, for you right now. It feels like everyone is making this up as they go along because it doesn't feel like the public has a solid source from which to deal with you. You'll hear one thing from the CDC then another thing from the CDC. We don't know when it gets updated or not. Then the director of the CDC says something, then the president contradicts him. Then then we hear that this is happening with mosques or not mosques.

We hear that this is happening with vaccines, with vaccines. Is there a reason there isn't a centralized source of information like there is in many other countries around the world?

Well, you know, Trevor, that that's a difficult question to give a satisfactory explanation for, because as a matter of fact, there there has been switches in how the messages have gone out. And you're right, I you know, from a research and public health standpoint, I try my best. And I think I'm successful in giving a consistent message as often as I can get the message out, something that is just based on the scientific data, based on evidence, which is something that is really very important.

One of the things that I think gets in the way is that we we are in such a divisive state in society that it tends to get politicized. It's almost the one side versus the other. And the thing that I keep saying, and I'll say it very briefly now, because I think it's important that everybody feels we need to open the economy to get people back to work, to get people back to school. But the public health messages that we've given and that you've heard me give back months ago when we used to have the press conferences from the White House, is that public health measures should be more of a gateway and a pathway to opening the country as opposed to the obstacle to opening the country.

So what what is evolved now is that almost people take side. Like wearing a mask or not is a political statement, and that's really very unfortunate, totally unfortunate, because this is a purely public health issue. It should not be one against the other. And I think the confused messages that you're alluding to, correctly and appropriately, is that you don't have a single message when messages get sort of thrown into political buckets. And that's something that I really wish that, you know, conversations like you and I are having now would dispel that and put that aside and say, for goodness sakes, I've never had any political ideology that I've made public.

I'm really just talking to you about public health. When I'm telling you, wear a mask, keep social distancing, avoid crowds, wash your hands, do things outdoors more than you do. There's nothing political about that. That's that's a public health message that we know works, because every time groups of people have done that in situations where you've had a surge of infections, the surge has come around and come down. So we have within our capability the ability to turn this around.

If you were to rate America's response to the coronavirus on a scale of one to 10 as an epidemiologist, where do you rate?

Well, you know, it's very interesting because if you look at the numbers, Treva, the numbers are telling. We have in this country now, you know, close to 200000 deaths. We have six million plus infections. You can't look at that and say, that's terrific. You know, but if you look at the country, there are parts of the country that have done well, that are doing well right now. What I'm liking, what I'm seeing is that some of the numbers are coming down.

What I'm concerned about is that our baseline is still very, very high. It's like it never got below 20 thousand new cases a day. When we tried to open up the economy, as it were, some states jumped ahead of the guidelines. Some people didn't listen to what the governors and what the mayors was saying. And remember, we went way up to 70 thousand and now we're coming back down to 30 or 40 thousand. But the thing I'm concerned about is that as you go into the fall and winter and more things will have to be done indoors rather than outdoors, you want to start off with the lowest possible baseline that you can have.

So in the next several weeks, what I would love to see is the country pulling together as a whole to try and get that baseline down so that when we go into the winter and the fall and we perhaps get hit with a flu season, I hope that people will get their flu vaccines, that we're not struggling at a disadvantage because you have a disadvantage when this community spread and you have 40000 new infections each day. That is not a good place to be.

Let me ask you two questions to that. Number one, how do you respond to the people who say, well, the infection rates shouldn't matter, it's only the death rates that should matter, and even then, the death rates are being inflated and some people are saying people have died from Corona when in fact people are dying with Corona and they just have Corona and they're dying. But it's not Corona that causes their death.

I think the two hundred thousand deaths that you're talking about, Trevor, are a good reflection of people that likely would not have died if they didn't have this infection. The thing that I think we need to be careful and humble about in that we don't know everything about this infection, but we're starting to see right now are a couple of things that are troubling to me. And that is that, first of all, more and more young people you see when you look at it are getting into some significant trouble.

Not a lot. Not a high percentage. That's true. The other thing is that when people get infected, we're seeing more and more of lingering signs and symptoms so that when you clear the virus, you may have weeks or months or so in which you just not quite right. And the final thing is that they've recently done a study that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, cardiology, where people who recovered even from disease that wasn't that severe.

When you do MRI or imaging sensitive imaging, you can see things like inflammation of the heart. Now, they may not be symptomatic, but we want to make sure that six months or a year from now, they don't wind up with unexplained arrhythmias or. Premature heart attacks or cardiomyopathy. So the situation is not wrapped up about what is the full impact of this, which means we have to take it very seriously, even among people who are obviously in trouble and die.

There's other people that we need to be concerned about.

Many people say that they will only take a vaccine once Dr. Fauci says the vaccine is safe. My question to you is, if everyone's asking Dr. Fauci, who does Dr. Fauci ask? When do you think a vaccine is safe?

I look at the data, Trevor. In fact, the Data and Safety Monitoring Board, which is an independent group that monitors the trials, they look at the data, they analyze it with independent statisticians and they will say this is effective. And then you look at the number of people that have been on the trial for a period of an additional 30 to 60 days. And if you don't see any obvious serious adverse events, then I would consider that effective and safe.

And I would take it myself, you know, that we should wear masks when we are indoors in a closed environment. But it feels like there's confusion when it comes to a few other things. So I'm just going to shoot a few rapid fire ones that you have written them down and you just tell me yes or no whether or not we should be wearing a mask. So should I be wearing a mask if I'm riding my bike out on the streets?

Not necessarily, no. But you should have it with you in case you come into close contact with people in the outside. But if you're alone and there's nobody near you and you're riding your bike, you don't need to wear the mask.

OK, what about if I'm eating in a restaurant where they are open? Should I put my mask on between courses because I can take it off to eat to have to put it on between the courses.

Yeah, I think because there's enough movement and people that are usually within six feet that you probably should. What I do is I put it around my neck and then I could eat, drink and then put it back up when you're waiting for the waiter or something to occur.

But now people have said that this coronavirus on your neck. So should I put it on my neck or can I get coronavirus from my neck when the mask come back to my mouth?

Good question. If you just flip it up and down, you won't you don't want to put your hand on the outside of it.

OK, got it in an empty elevator. Can I do I put my mask on.

Well, you know, the answer is when the door opens, somebody might walk in and you have no idea who's going to walk in. So you might want to just keep it on. By the way, let me show you. See this? This is what I do. You have it on you go like this. Bingo. And you're OK. Then you go like this. Bingo, it's up.

What if you're talking to somebody and they don't understand what you're saying, do you put it down to to say something or do you just like like practice saying it louder?

No, you say it again and repeat it. That's a really good point, because when you then put down, you tend to speak louder with more force. And that's when all of the particles, if they're there, if you're infected, will come out. I would leave the mask on.

All right. And then my final one, if you are in a movie theater, some people are going to movies around the country and you're watching Christopher Nolan's new movie, Tennant's right. And then there's only two people in the cinema. Do you put your mask on or do you keep it off?

If they are so physically distance away from you, you probably could keep it off. But remember, you got to be careful because in the theater, if there's not good ventilation, there could be aerosol. And then myself, what I would do, I would probably keep it on just to be safe because I'm indoors. That's the reason, because I'm indoors.

OK. Well, Dr. Fauci, I hope we see you again soon. I hope it is not six months and I hope that we don't have a worst case of coronavirus. I hope people with their masks. Thank you for taking your time. Don't forget to do vocal warm ups. It helps me a lot before I talk for a long time. And last thing last thing I will say to you is, would you consider getting one of those celebrity phone numbers?

So then you could just text everybody personally then? We could just because, like celebrities text people and go like, hey, my concern is coming up. You could do that and just tell us, hey, guys, here's the new update for Corona. Just a thought you should consider.

I will do that. Thank you for your explanation. Thank you. Look after yourself and thanks for joining us.

And you to stay safe. Take care. The Daily Show with Criminal Lawyers edition once The Daily Show weeknights at 11:00, 10:00 Central on Comedy Central and the Comedy Central Watch full episodes and videos at The Daily Show Dotcom. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and subscribe to The Daily Show on YouTube for exclusive content and more. This has been a Comedy Central podcast now.