Fauci calls Trump's rallies 'whole lot of trouble', urges people to avoid mass gatherings

With US President Donald Trump back on his campaign trail, and his down south Sanford, Florida rally largely witnessing unmasked crowd with zero social distancing, US’ top disease expert Dr. Fauci on October 12 warned Americans about the “whole lot of trouble” with no universal face masks at the gatherings. 

In his televised address with US’ leading broadcaster CNBC, Fauci said that people needed to avoid the large assembly, especially now when the baseline of infections varies between 40 and 50,000 per day. “That’s a bad place to be,” Fauci said in a live-streamed address, adding, just about when the country was entering into the bad weather of winter. This comes as the US recorded nearly 44,600 new cases of the novel coronavirus as of October 12, with seven-day average soaring to 49,200 infections, a 14 percent spike from the previously recorded, last week. Dr. Fauci has also put the death toll projection in the United States at 400,000. 

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director, concerned about the uncontrolled infections, warned that American people had to “turn this around”, urging safe practices such as wearing masks, socially distancing, avoiding congregate settings, and washing hands.

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Trump's rallies “asking for troubles”

Further, in his interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Fauci said that Trump’s campaign rallies were “asking for troubles” as the crowd didn’t adhere to health precautionary measures. There are a lot of people without masks, Fauci said in a televised interview, when asked about Trump’s rallies. Now was even more so a worse time to do that, he pointed out, citing the surge in the percentage of the coronavirus infections in the US. Fauci warned that the events that conglomerated large crowd were unsafe and that the US was going in the wrong direction right now, whereas, the health safety measures needed to be tightened. 

Having held a rally in Florida, Trump is expected to rally in Johnstown, Pa., Des Moines, Iowa, and Greenville, N.C., later in the week. Trump has held numerous public gathering events before contracting the coronavirus himself, which, Dr. Fauci had called as ‘Superspreader’ events. However, Trump made clear that he would be holding the campaign trails just approximately three weeks ahead of Election Day, as polls showed Biden trailing by a decisive margin in several swing states.

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