Dr. Fauci Confirms It: The White House Celebration of Amy Coney Barrett Was a “Superspreader Event”

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In an interview with CBS News, Dr. Anthony Fauci stated plainly what many people had suspected: The largely mask-free gathering at the White House to celebrate Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court was a “superspreader event.”

After Fauci explained to CBS’s Steven Portnoy the importance of wearing masks given that asymptomatic people can spread the virus, Portnoy pointed that the White House’s prevention strategy relied on routine testing rather than mask usage. “What did we learn about the efficacy of that strategy in terms of preventing the spread of coronavirus?” he asked.

“Well, I think the data speak for themselves,” Fauci replied. “We had a superspreader event in the White House, and it was in a situation where people were crowded together and were not wearing masks.”

In the interview, Fauci also said that Trump’s repeated use of the word “cure” to refer to the therapeutic treatments he’d received could lead to “confusion.” “I think you really have to depend on what you mean by a ‘cure,'” he said. “We have good treatments for people with advanced disease who are in the hospital.”

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We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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