Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic

by Scott Gottlieb

Picking up that thread, Frost asked Fauci: “Some people in the last couple of days in particular have started to elevate their concerns as to whether this disease is already present in the US and spreading across people who are otherwise apparently healthy. Is that something that is impossible to know either way for sure and how worried are you about that possibility?”12 Fauci replied, “Well, certainly it’s a possibility but it is extraordinarily unlikely and let me explain why. The reason is if there were people who were actually spreading it, you would not have them identified, isolated, and contact tracing which means you would have almost an exponential spread of an infection of which we are all looking out for. We have not seen that, so it is extremely unlikely that it is happening.