Dr. Anthony Fauci says the coronavirus pandemic would have to get “really, really bad” before he would favor a national lockdown. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a leading voice on the pandemic speaks to Dr. Jon LaPook for a report to be broadcast on the next edition of 60 Minutes, Sunday, October 18, at 7 p.m., ET/PT on CBS.
An excerpt of that interview was broadcast on the “CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell” Friday night.
“How bad would things have to get for you to advocate a national lockdown?” LaPook asked Fauci in the clip.
“They’d have to get really, really bad,” Fauci said. “First of all, the country is fatigued with restrictions. So we want to use public health measures, not to get in the way of opening the economy, but to being a safe gateway to opening the economy. So instead of having an opposition: open up the economy [to] get jobs back, or shut down. No. Put ‘shut down,’ away and say, ‘We’re going to use public health measures to help us safely get to where we want to go.”