Dr. Anthony Fauci: If People Aren’t Wearing Masks, Maybe We Should Mandate It

Appearing Friday on CNN, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, said the United States may want to mandate wearing masks to combat the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus.

A transcript is as follows: 

ERIN BURNETT: I understand you don’t want to wade into politics, but masks are not political, right? They shouldn’t be political, right? We see the president at these rallies and people don’t wear masks. Joe Biden does have a really different plan, right? Today he talked about it and he specifically talked about making mask-wearing mandatory.

FORMER VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: First, all go to every governor to mandate mask-wearing in their states and if they refuse, I’ll go to the mayors and county executives and get local mask requirements in place nationwide.

ERIN BURNETT: He also wants to make masks mandatory in federal buildings, interstate transportation. Do you think this is a good idea? Is this what a President of the United States would be helpful if they were doing?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: One of the issues people talk about mandating not being a good idea, because then they’ll say they have to enforce it and there’s going to be a difficulty in enforcing it. But if everyone agrees that this is something that’s important and they mandate it and everybody pulls together and say we’re going to mandate it, but let’s just do it, I think that would be a great idea to have everybody do it uniformly. One of the issues, I get the argument, they say if you mandate a mask, then you’re going to have to enforce it and that will create more of a problem. Well, if people are not wearing masks, then maybe we should be mandating it.