Dr. Anthony Fauci, the federal government’s top infectious disease expert, testified before the Senate on Tuesday—and his public health advice didn’t bolster President Donald Trump’s push to reopen the country ASAP. Warning that the “consequences could be really serious” if areas reopen prematurely, Fauci quashed the Trump administration’s claims that the public health crisis is in the rearview mirror. “If you think we have it completely under control,” Fauci testified, “we don’t.” Fauci particularly urged caution when it comes to reopening schools, even in the fall, and argued against the notion that children are unaffected by COVID-19, given the recent emergence of a new coronavirus-linked syndrome. “The idea of having treatments available or a vaccine to facilitate reentry of students into the fall term would be something that would be a bit of a bridge too far,” Fauci said, and the expert stressed that people should not be “cavalier in thinking that children are completely immune to the deleterious effects” of the disease.
Trump, however, has naturally chosen to not to heed the respected public health expert’s advice. When asked about Fauci’s reopening warnings Wednesday while meeting with governors at the White House, Trump said that Fauci was trying “to play both sides of the equation.” The president specifically took issue with Fauci’s comments on reopening schools, which Trump said was “just not an acceptable answer” for the infectious disease expert to give. “I was surprised by his answer actually,” Trump said, going on to argue that the only “acceptable” restrictions when it comes to schools would be to have only older teachers and professors temporarily stay home and “take it easy” for a few weeks rather than put themselves at risk. “This is a disease that attacks age, and it attacks health,” Trump said. “But with the young children, and the students … just take a look at the statistics, it’s pretty amazing.” The president continued to “strongly say” that schools should reopen during the Wednesday press conference, arguing that “states aren’t open if the schools aren’t open.” “I think that they should open the schools, absolutely … it’s had very little impact on young people,” Trump said. “Our country’s gotta get back, and it’s got to get back as soon as possible, and I don’t consider our country coming back if the schools are closed.”
While the coronavirus has statistically hit older people and those with preexisting conditions by far the hardest, Trump’s assertion that the coronavirus “attacks age” and “health” while leaving the young alone still isn’t entirely true. Along with numerous instances of young, healthy people facing severe, and sometimes fatal, cases of COVID-19, there’s been a recent trend of children suffering from an often-serious inflammatory condition resembling Kawasaki Disease, which at least one study found is likely linked to the coronavirus. Connecticut Children’s Medical Center physician-in-chief Dr. Juan Salazar told NBC New York that the condition often appears to present itself two to four weeks after a child recovers from COVID-19, and cases of the syndrome, which can be fatal, are being investigated in 15 states so far, along with instances in Europe. And while children are statistically far more likely to have an asymptomatic or mild case of COVID-19 itself, there are exceptions. “The idea that children either don’t get COVID-19 or have really mild disease is an oversimplification,” Dr. Adam Ratner, the director of pediatric infectious diseases at New York University School of Medicine and Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone Health, told the New York Times, saying that his hospital has “had some extremely sick children.” (When it comes to opening schools, there’s also, of course, the risk of adult faculty and staff members contracting the coronavirus, along with the possibility that children could pick up the virus at school and unknowingly spread it to adults at home.)
Trump’s dismissiveness of Fauci’s comments is indicative of many in his party, as a number of Republicans hell-bent on reopening the economy have shrugged off the expert’s warnings. Senator Rand Paul openly railed against Fauci’s cautious view of reopening during the Senate hearing, and Republican Sen. Mike Braun predicted to Politico that “when we get this in the rearview mirror and do the dispassionate debrief, Sen. Paul’s going to be closer to right than Fauci.” “It was classic Dr. Fauci, and that’s why he’s on the task force,” Sen. Kevin Cramer told Politico about Fauci’s testimony. “But it’s also why he’s not the only member of the task force, and why the president has the responsibility of looking at the whole, not just one aspect of it.” (There are, of course, Republicans who have backed Fauci, including Sens. Mitt Romney and Lindsey Graham, who told Politico the expert is “the gold standard” and said he will “continue to listen to him.”) Fauci’s warnings also come as a number of states have started to reopen their economies—often ill-advisedly—and the conservative media pushes the lockdowns as a partisan issue rather than a life-saving public health measure. Wisconsin’s conservative-leaning Supreme Court even struck down their state’s stay-at-home order Wednesday, ruling that Democratic Gov. Tony Evers had overstepped his authority by extending it through executive action.