Dr. Fauci is one of the nation leading epidemiologist and top advisor to President Trump in all matters regarding the science, treatment and medical protocols to curtail the advancement of this clear and present danger.
The NIH (National Health System) is coordinating all sorts of studies on the virus. They are allowing all different treatments to be tried with the condition that the results need to be reported back to NIH. When Dr. Fauci talks about the “N” number in the middle of the interview, he is referring to the number of patients they have actual data on. A large number of data points is needed, which in this case means the data and results from a large number of patients and each treatment was tested on before your statistical analysis has a high confidence that the conclusions you are making are correct. As soon as something is giving statistically significant beneficial results the NIH plans to make it available to the medical community at large.
The response of the medical and research institutions regarding experimental treatments for the novel corona virus has been amazing. These institutions are literally coordinating so each medical facility tests a few ideas so there would be no duplicity of one treatment while no institution is testing another.
The last pandemic major pandemic, the 1918 Spanish flu, happened when most people did not understand what germs were. Virology was a new science then, and until the dawn of the new millennia, there was no effective method to combat virus. Antibiotics can kill many different bacteria, but until we developed technology for mapping and manipulation of their genome, virus were beyond our abilities to treat. Today, armed with decades of new knowledge from the huge efforts that went into fighting HIV, then SARS and MERS, we have tools to face the pandemic: this time the nation and their science institutions can try to fight back.
According to Dr. Fauci, a total lock-down could give us some time to come out during the summer and make more comprehensive preparations for another infections wave in the fall. Without a complete lock-down, the NIH thinks there will be too much virus going around and it will be risky to open things up again. All swings in the definition of essential on how many people the Federal Government want working to run “essential” services. Right now every business manager in the country is saying their business is essential and cannot be closed.
There has been a debate about how to save the economy while saving lives. Different parties have different opinions, some defending a soft lockdown to preserve the economy while other state that saving lives and reducing casualties the soundest and more economical course of action. The pandemic is a broad problem at a civilization level, not a simple line on a macroeconomics accounting ledger. Today so many people are dying in Guayaquil, Ecuador, that the bodies are left on the street to decompose. If decisive and prompt action is not enacted by policy, the USA might be the next Ecuador.
Link to the Interview
Here is a link to the interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfcJecd6jtE
People dying on the street.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/03/americas/guayaquil-ecuador-overwhelmed-coronavirus-intl/index.html