Live updates: ‘Let’s stop this nonsense,’ Fauci says of federal coronavirus response as he comes under fire

NOTE:  This article is provided free of charge by The Washington Post.
Sidelined by the White House and harshly criticized in an extraordinary op-ed from a top adviser to the Trump administration, Anthony S. Fauci — the nation’s top infectious-disease expert — said in an interview with the Atlantic published Wednesday that the country needs to focus on a surging virus “rather than these games people are playing.”

“We’ve got to almost reset this and say, ‘Okay, let’s stop this nonsense,’ ” he said after being asked to state “the truth about the federal response to the pandemic” in the United States. “We’ve got to figure out, How can we get our control over this now, and, looking forward, how can we make sure that next month, we don’t have another example of California, Texas, Florida, and Arizona?”

Meanwhile, support for mask mandates continued to grow a day after another of the country’s top health officials said universal face-covering could bring covid-19 “under control” in the United States. In Alabama, Kay Ivey (R) became the latest governor to change their tune after initial resistance and issue a statewide mask order, while Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, said it would require all shoppers to wear face masks.