#Fauci to graduates: ‘Virus is the enemy

Dr. Anthony Fauci told graduating college students on Sunday that the pandemic brought out deep-rooted divisions in society.

“Societal divisiveness is counterproductive in a pandemic,” Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, said in a video commencement speech to Emory University students.

“We must not be at odds with each other since the virus is the enemy, not each other.”

Fauci, who was awarded the president’s medal from the university, urged the graduates to incorporate public service into their lives even if it is not part of their full-time careers.

He told them that the pandemic shone a light on health disparities in the country and it would be a decades-long commitment to undo the inequities.

“That an infectious disease disparately hospitalized and kills people of color does not fade after we return to some form of normality,” he said.

Fauci spoke from Washington to graduates in Atlanta, saying that during the COVID-19 pandemic African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans were more likely to be exposed to the virus as essential workers.

People of color were more likely to have existing health risks like diabetes or high blood pressure, he added.

“Now, very few of these comorbidities have racial determinants,” Fauci said. “Almost all relate to the social determinants of health dating back to disadvantageous conditions that some people of color find themselves in from birth regarding the availability of an adequate diet, access to health care and the undeniable effects of racism in our society.”

Fauci said the graduating class deserved “enormous respect” for completing their studies during the difficulties of the last year amid the pandemic.

He also told them to expect the unexpected, relating a story of his own when he was to begin an infectious disease fellowship at the National Institutes of Health.

As he drove from New York to the NIH in Maryland, he contemplated some health scholars’ view that infectious disease study was a vanishing speciality in the medical field.

“Fortunately for my career but unfortunately and tragically for the rest of the world, even so-called pundits are not always correct,” Fauci said.

With Post wires