Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leading member of the White House coronavirus task force, in an interview Tuesday gave his blessing for hooking up with strangers met online through apps like Tinder, Bumble or Grindr, saying it is “your choice regarding a risk.”
Dr. Fauci or Dr. Ruth? File screen image from C-SPAN interview, April 13.
Fauci has advised President Trump to lock down the country to protect Americans from the COVID-19 Chinese coronavirus based on models that have wildly over-estimated–for now–the number of infections and deaths, resulting in the crashing of the U.S. economy.
And now Fauci says go ahead and have sex with strangers?
Excerpt from Fauci’s interview with Peter Hamby for the Snapchat streaming show Good Luck America as published by Vanity Fair
Hamby: “On the opposite side of that spectrum, people are cooped up, they’re a little stir crazy. If you’re swiping on a dating app like Tinder, or Bumble, or Grindr, and you match with someone that you think is hot, and you’re just kind of like, “Maybe it’s fine if this one stranger comes over.” What do you say to that person?”
Fauci: “You know, that’s tough. Because it’s what’s called relative risk. If you really feel that you don’t want to have any part of this virus, will you maintain six feet away, wear a mask, do all the things that we talk about in the guidelines? If you’re willing to take a risk—and you know, everybody has their own tolerance for risks—you could figure out if you want to meet somebody. And it depends on the level of the interaction that you want to have. If you’re looking for a friend, sit in a room and put a mask on, and you know, chat a bit. If you want to go a little bit more intimate, well, then that’s your choice regarding a risk. The one thing you don’t want to do is make sure the person is feeling well. Even though there’s a lot of asymptomatic infections, that’s one of the things that’s really troublesome. That if everybody transmitted would only transmit when they’re sick, that would be much easier. But what we’re seeing, which becomes really problematic, is that there’s a considerable amount of transmission from an asymptomatic person. And we’ve got well-documented now, you know, that situation on the nuclear carrier, the Roosevelt, USS Roosevelt, where hundreds of sailors have gotten infected from people that were not sick. That’s tough.
Fauci has served since 1984 as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the NIH where he has focused on ending the HIV/AIDS pandemic, however after his 36 years at the helm there is still no vaccine.