The stark comments represented a new kind of diagnosis from the country’s top infectious disease expert.
By QUINT FORGEY
04/01/2020 12:44 PM EDT
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, predicted on Wednesday that the effects of the coronavirus pandemic will be “imprinted on the personality of our nation” for years to come.
The stark comments represented a new kind of diagnosis from the country’s top infectious disease expert, who has emerged as a steadying fixture in the national consciousness as one of the leading administration officials working to both combat and better understand the public health crisis.
In a podcast interview with CNN’s Sanjay Gupta, the 79-year-old physician and immunologist elaborated on the “profound” mental and emotional burdens wrought by the novel coronavirus, made evident during conversations with his three daughters.
“I could hear it in the inflections in my daughters’ voices when I speak with them on the phone,” Fauci said. “This is going to be imprinted on the personality of our nation for a very long time. I think this is going to be something that will be with them and have some impact, subconsciously or otherwise, for a very long time in their lives.”
Elected officials and public health experts at all levels of government have furiously mobilized alongside first responders and health care workers as the rate of transmissions of Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, soars in the United States. Although the virus emerged in China, the U.S. has since become the global epicenter of the outbreak, reporting more confirmed cases than anywhere else in the world.
More than 4,000 Americans have already perished as a result of the illness, and the total number of confirmed Covid-19 infections in the U.S. is surging toward 200,000 — although experts agree the actual number of those sickened is likely much greater because of limited testing capacity.
Meanwhile, people across the country have been ordered to remain confined in their residences, laid off or furloughed from jobs, forced to shutter their businesses, and told to stay home from school for months at a time. The rapid wind-down has left hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans on unsteady economic footing.
The less tangible consequences of this once-in-a-lifetime disease, not easily enumerated by statistics such as death tolls or unemployment rates, are certain to shape politics and art, institutions and industry in unforeseen ways, upending countless facets of American culture.
And when society does finally return to a semblance of normalcy, Fauci warned, people practicing their old routines of daily life might be met with significant difficulty as they adjust to a post-coronavirus world.
“I’m not a psychiatrist, so I don’t want to go into that realm,” he said, “but I think that when we do get the all-clear, in some respects, there’ll be relief — but I think there’s going to be some subliminal post-traumatic stress syndrome that we’re all going to face.”
