Fauci says he wears mask as ‘symbol’ of good behavior
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, revealed Wednesday he wears a mask while in public partly as a “symbol” of best practices during the coronavirus pandemic — breaking with President Donald Trump, who has resisted criticism that he should model similar behavior for Americans.
“I wear it for the reason that I believe it is effective,” Fauci told CNN. “It’s not 100 percent effective. I mean, it’s sort of respect for another person, and have that other person respect you. You wear a mask, they wear a mask, you protect each other.”
But apart from wanting “to protect myself and protect others,” Fauci also said he chooses to wear a face covering “because I want to make it be a symbol for people to see that that’s the kind of thing you should be doing.”
The remarks from the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases come as the president has refused to yield to increasing pressure to wear a mask at public events.
The difference of opinion between Fauci and Trump on the issue of masks was thrown into stark relief earlier this month at a Rose Garden news briefing focused on the development of a vaccine for Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
At that event, public health officials, including Fauci and White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, donned masks before reporters, while Trump and political appointees, including Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, did not cover their faces.
Ever since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began encouraging the use of cloth masks when outside the home in early April, the president has repeatedly ignored his own administration’s guidance, opting to appear maskless in public.
Although Trump could briefly be seen wearing a navy blue face covering while visiting a Ford Motor Co. plant in Michigan last week, he declined to put on a mask during his public tour of the facility or model it for members of the media. “I didn’t want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it,” he explained.
In his apparent disdain for the personal mitigation measure, the president went so far Monday as to mock a journalist for wearing a mask during an outdoor news briefing at the White House, telling Reuters reporter Jeff Mason to uncover his face and accusing him of wanting “to be politically correct” when he refused to do so.
Public health experts and congressional Democrats have expressed frustration over Trump’s aversion to mask-wearing, while former Vice President Joe Biden — the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee — has embraced face coverings and called Trump an “absolute fool” for belittling the preventive practice.
After Biden wore a mask Monday to visit a veterans memorial in Delaware, his first public outing since mid-March, Trump retweeted a message seemingly ridiculing his likely general election rival.
Biden responded to the barb in an interview Tuesday on CNN, asserting that “this macho stuff” exhibited by Trump is “costing people’s lives,” and adding that “presidents are supposed to lead, not engage in folly and be falsely masculine.”
