Fauci: US Political Divide Contributed to ‘Stunning’ COVID-19 Death Toll

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci listens during the daily CCP virus briefing at the White House on April 9, 2020. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci suggested Monday that the “intense divisiveness” in U.S. politics likely contributed to the nation’s COVID-19 death toll, which surpassed 500,000 late Monday.

The United States surpassed half a million CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus-related deaths on Monday, according to government data collated by Johns Hopkins University—in a grim milestone that marks almost a year since the outbreak first reached the United States.

Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in an interview with Reuters that the political divide in the United States amid the raging pandemic is one of the most “compelling” reasons why the United States has “done worse than we should’ve done.”

He said he doesn’t believe that “a rich and sophisticated country” such as the United States“ should have had the most percentage of deaths and be the ”hardest-hit country in the world.”

“I don’t know if this is true but it feels this way to me, as a public health person, that if you ever did not want to have an outbreak of any sort in a certain condition, it would be in the condition where there was intense divisiveness in society, which is what we have,” said Fauci, who served on then-President Donald Trump’s White House Coronavirus Task Force.

“There’s Red states and Blue states, that are almost hostile to each other in some respects, because of political differences—I think that’s the worst possible ingredients to be able to address an outbreak of an infection that even, under the best of circumstances, would be a formidable challenge.”

According to Reuters, the United States has just about four percent of the global population but has recorded nearly 20 percent of all COVID-19 deaths. The official figures, however, do not account for governments such as the Chinese Communist Party—which has incessantly underreported and covered up its CCP virus numbers, numerous investigations by The Epoch Times have found. The United States is also one of the best equipped countries for high levels of community testing for the virus.

In his interview on Monday, Fauci placed blame on the recommendations of some U.S. governors, mayors, and Trump to ease parts of the country out of lockdown, despite rising CCP virus cases and deaths nationwide.

“When the American spirit is so divided, that really, really made me sad,” he said. “This is the worst thing that’s happened to this country with regard to the health of the nation in over 100 years.”

Former White House deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” in an Feb. 21 interview that although U.S. officials were “deeply seized” by the threat presented by the pandemic amid an impeachment, they made the “grave misstep” of approaching the CCP virus as if it were a flu, which delayed advice for Americans to wear masks due to a fear of shortages.

“I never encountered anyone at a senior level who was not deeply seized by the major weight of what we were facing. I do think that people did their best,” he said.