Fauci returns to White House briefing room under Biden, calls it ‘liberating’

WASHINGTON, DC -- The nation's top expert on infectious diseases and President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci offered a glimmer of hope at a White House press briefing on Thursday, saying that despite "a very, very high rate" of new infections, he thinks that cases may be hitting a plateau.

"Right now, it looks like it might actually be plateauing in the sense of turning around," Fauci said. "Now, there's good news in that, but you have to be careful that we may not be seeing perhaps an artifact of a slowing down following the holidays."

Fauci also said he felt like he had "deja vu," as around this time last year he was talking about the acceleration of cases in late winter into early spring.

Fauci's presence at the White House marks a return from a months-long absence, after former President Donald Trump soured on Fauci for not hewing to Trump's false claims about the pandemic, including frequent repetitions that the virus would simply "go away."

At the press conference addressing the Biden administration's response to Covid-19, Fauci said there were aspects of Trump's response to the pandemic that were "not based on scientific fact."

"I don't want to be going back, you know, over history, but it is very clear that there were things that were said, be it regarding things like hydroxychloroquine and other things like that that was uncomfortable because they were not based on scientific fact," Fauci told reporters.

"I can tell you, I take no pleasure at all in being in a situation of contradicting the president. So it was really something that you didn't feel that you could actually say something and there wouldn't be any repercussions about it. The idea that you can get up here and talk about what you know, what the evidence -- what the science is, and know that's it, let the science speak, it is somewhat of a liberating feeling," he added.

Fauci is one of the few holdovers in the Biden administration from Trump's Coronavirus Task Force. When asked how the new government would be different from the last, Fauci pledged that it would be transparent.

"One of the things that was very clear as recently as about 15 minutes ago when I was with the president, is that one of the things that we're going to do is be completely transparent, open and honest," Fauci said.

"If things go wrong, not point fingers, but to correct them, and to make everything we do be based on science and evidence. I mean, that was literally a conversation I had 15 minutes ago with the president. And he has said that multiple times."