In 2017, just over a week before the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States, Dr Anthony Fauci predicted the Trump Administration would face a “surprise” infectious disease outbreak.
During a January 10, 2017 keynote address titled, Pandemic Preparedness in the Next Administration, Dr Fauci, the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the chief medical advisor to the president made the prediction, warning it would be a mistake not to look beyond the nation’s borders for the source of the coming pandemic.
“Given, as you heard from the introduction, that I have been around for a while and have had the opportunity and the privilege and the pleasure of serving in five administrations, I thought I would bring perspective to the topic today, [which] is the issue of pandemic preparedness,” Dr Fauci said.
“And if there’s one message that I want to leave with you today based on my experience, and you’ll see that in a moment, is that there is no question that there will be a challenge to the coming administration in the arena of infectious diseases, both chronic infectious diseases in the sense of already on-going disease, and we have certainly a large burden of that — but also there will be a surprise outbreak.
“I hope by the end of my relatively short presentation you will understand why history, the history of the last 32 years that I’ve been the director of NIAID will tell the next administration that there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that they will be faced with the challenges that their predecessors were faced with.”
Dr Fauci went on to say: “I think the mistake that so many people have made is something that several of our panelists have already referred to, and that is a failure to look beyond our own borders in the issue of the globality of health issues. Not only things that are there that will come here, but surprises that we have.”
WATCH (the first 5-minutes, in particular):