On the podcast, Fauci brought up the continued threat that the coronavirus pandemic poses, but he also urged people to remember that this will not be the last time we encounter such a health crisis. “I think you have to assume that there are more viruses that are still lurking because we know historically we’ve had outbreaks long before I’ve been around, even before recorded history,” he said. Fauci later added that while he’s worried about the trajectory of COVID-19, he’s thinking about the next pandemic, too. “I tend not to be pessimistic, but I tend to be realistic about the foibles of our society and of our human nature,” he said. “So I think we’re going to have outbreaks after this outbreak.”
Fauci’s outlook on the future is not a change in tone. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director touched on how he had been predicting looming viral outbreaks and pandemics for years. In 2016, Fauci did an interview with BuzzFeed News and was asked: “What actually keeps you up at night? What should we actually be worried about?” In response, he said, “A respiratory disease like influenza, that’s easily spread and highly lethal.” He also warned in 2017 that we would “no doubt” face an infectious disease outbreak during President Donald Trump’s tenure.ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb RELATED: For more up-to-date information, sign up for our daily newsletter. That said, the seriousness of the current pandemic is hardly lost on Fauci, who sees struggles against major outbreaks such as HIV/AIDS as longstanding, slower-moving disasters that must still be addressed. To him, COVID-19 is different because of the speed at which we’ve been affected by it. “We’ve had outbreaks of different diseases over decades and decades,” he told Pulse Check. “When you’re talking about a respiratory infection that involves the entire planet, this is the most challenging and difficult public health crisis that we have faced since the global pandemic of 1918. [But] what we have here is an explosive challenge that essentially thrust itself upon us in a matter of months and has in many respects gripped the world like nothing else we’ve experienced in the past 102 years.” However, that doesn’t mean we won’t see something like it in the future. And for more on what’s to come with this pandemic, Dr. Fauci Says This Is the Sign That a COVID-19 Surge Is Coming.
