8:10 p.m. ET, September 11, 2020
Fauci tells pandemic deniers to look at the data and science
From CNN's Andrea Kane
Dr. Anthony Fauci can’t explain pandemic deniers in “any logical way.”
“The data speak for themselves. The 190,000 deaths are real deaths. The six-plus million people who were infected are real infections,” Fauci told CNN today.
Friday marked six months since the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic.
When asked who the American public should listen to — the President, who claimed Thursday that the country is “rounding the corner” of the pandemic, or himself — Fauci said people should trust facts.
“I say look at the data; the data speak for themselves. You don't have to listen to any individual. And the data tells us that we're still getting up to 40,000 new infections a day and 1,000 deaths. That is what you look at. Look at the science, the evidence and the data and you can make a pretty easy conclusion,” he said.
Responding to comments made by an attendee at President Trump's rally Thursday night, who said he wasn't wearing a mask because this is “fake pandemic,” Fauci called it a tragedy.
“If you deny the reality of it, then you don't put all of your efforts into doing something about it. You've got to admit the problem before you address the problem,” he said. “It's just a distortion of reality — people who don't want to face the reality that we are dealing with a serious situation that we can do something about.”