Tiffany Haddish Interviewed Dr. Fauci About COVID-19 And How It Affects Black, Latinx People

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, is no stranger to being interviewed by journalists and celebrities alike. Not only is Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and member of the White House coronavirus task force, a frequent guest on stations such as CNN and a consistent, reliable source of coronavirus-related information, but Fauci has also been known to chat virtually with celebrities, like award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey and, most recently, Tiffany Haddish.

In a 30-plus-minute video posted to her YouTube, Haddish interviewed Dr. Fauci about COVID-19 and “the ways it specifically affects the African American community,” the video description states. “We talk about vaccines, whether supplements and vitamins can improve your immune system to keep you safe, and the other ways people can protect themselves.”

“I think particularly the African-American community, which over decades, historically, have suffered from being taken advantage of by medical community testing, we need to engage the community, to be very transparent, and tell them everything they want to know: exactly what’s in the vaccine, what the risks are, etc.” Dr. Fauci told Haddish.

Fauci continued to say that “not only do they have a greater chance of getting infected, because they usually — not always, it’s dangerous to generalize — but people know they usually have jobs that don’t allow them to talk to a computer. They’re out on the front lines, doing the manual labor jobs that require interaction with people. Then when you look at the African American and Latinx population … they have a much greater likelihood of having the underlying conditions that means that when you do get infected, you likely would have a serious outcome.”

Haddish also revealed that she tested positive for COVID-19 — and that she’s been tested 12 times.

“I was working on a movie, and someone in the movie contracted coronavirus,” Haddish started. “I wasn’t in direct contact with them, but they sent all of us home and stopped the movie. Then they suggested that I go get tested. I went and got tested, got the results two days later, they said I did not have the coronavirus. Then someone else I know who was around the week before, they contracted the coronavirus and so I went and got tested again… Anyway, I get the test, I’m not feeling any symptoms or anything, it comes back two days later and they say I did have the virus.”

The whole interview, which also tackles Haddish’s concerns about the virus, the best preventative measures to take, and the promise of a vaccine, is interesting and definitely worth the watch. And why wouldn’t it be? It’s Haddish and Fauci.

“The thing that we’re facing that is unfortunate is the divisiveness in our society is making it almost a political thing,” Fauci said. “Trying to do public health things is the enemy of opening the country, that’s nonsense. We should use the public health measures as a vehicle and as a pathway to safely reopening the country.”

“The most important thing,” he emphasized, “is that you have the societal responsibility not to be propagating the outbreak — to be part of the solution, not the problem.”