Chris Cuomo, CNN host and brother of New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, spoke with Doctor Anthony Fauci live on air about their friends...
Chris Cuomo, CNN host and brother of New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, spoke with Doctor Anthony Fauci live on air about their friendship and conversations the two had while Cuomo and his family were suffering with the coronavirus.
Doctor Fauci is recognized as one of the world's leading experts in infectious diseases, and has been a White House's key scientific spokesman during the crisis, and a vital part of the nation's coronavirus task force. But that didn't stop him from calling a friend every night.
During an interview with Fuaci on his CNN show, 'Cuomo Prime Time', the anchor said that the doctor, who is also the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, took the time to call him every day.
'I have spoken to you, almost without exception, every day,' Cuomo said. 'You have been calling me out of personal concern to make sure that I'm OK, that my wife was OK, that my son was OK. 11 O'Clock at night, later, waiting for my show to end. Saturday, Sunday morning, the rare time you have with your family.'
When Cuomo, who announced he had been diagnosed with the coronavirus on March 31, asked Fauci why he had done this, Fuaci said: 'Well, first of all because you're a friend. We have a professional relationship, but you're a friend.
'I've known you since [...] you were almost a kid. And the fact is, you were going through some difficult times,' Fauci recalled.
'I don't think that the people who were seeing you on the show were really experiencing, or realizing, how you were really sucking it up to look relatively normal. But when you finished the show and we would start chatting, at eleven, eleven-thirty at night, you were wiped out.'
During his time suffering from the coronavirus, anchor Chris Cuomo hosted his show from the basement in his home. He said that Dr Fauci would call him late at night, having waited for his show to finish at 11 p.m.
Fauci explained that Cuomo not only had difficulty with the virus replicating within him, but that he also had some of the secondary effects associated with the virus, including a fever, aches and feeling washed out.
The doctor said that for many patients who get over this stage and start to feel better, their condition can quickly relapse again for the worse, and he was concerned the same thing could happen to his friend.
'We don't even have a full grasp of the pathogenesis of why some people do what you did - you felt bad, you felt bad, and then you started getting better and better and better,' Fauci explained.
'Some people, they feel good, they feel bad, they feel bad, and then they start to feel better - then boom - they go down hill.
'We need to figure out what that is, because when we do, it will help us to intervene and do something about it,' he concluded.
Doctor Fauci (right) at the daily White House coronavirus taskforce briefings, as President Trump listens on. The pair have disagreed on how to approach lifting the coronavirus lockdown, with the doctor warning that it is still too early
The grateful Cuomo said that the reason he wanted to publicly talk about his friendship with Doctor Fauci was to highlight his humanity during the crisis.
'The only reason that I'm sharing it on TV instead of saying it to you as I have many times in person - I want people to know who they're getting in Tony Fauci. It's not just TV, it's not just 30 years of excellence in the scientific field,' Curomo said.
'The head and the heart that comes together in your body is the real deal, Dr Fauci. And that's why people believe in you.
'It's not the science, the numbers are all over the place, nobody knows what the hell they're talking about with this virus or what's going to happen. But they know that where you're coming from is a point of concern in humanity.'
To end the segment, Cuomo, who has recovered from the coronavirus, thanks Doctor Fauci for caring about him and his family, and added: 'I know you're worried as hell about where we're going, and whatever happens, we've just got to try to keep ourselves together.'
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (L) and CNN anchor Chris Cuomo (R) attend the the Tribeca Film Festival together in 2018
Chris Cuomo is not the only Doctor Fauci super-fan. Erotic novelist Sally Quinn has said she modeled the dashing hero scientist of her 1991 bestseller 'Happy Endings' on a young Dr Anthony Fauci.
Quinn, who brought to life the fictional Dr Michael Lanzer in the pages of her romance novel, has finally revealed the inspiration behind the mysterious doctor who romances the former First Lady while developing a cure for AIDS is none other than the top US scientist currently leading the nation through the coronavirus pandemic.
Quinn said she met a young Fauci at a Washington dinner party and instantly 'fell in love' with the 'sexy' scientist with his huge glasses and tie askew. 'I just fell in love with him,' Quinn told The Washingtonian.
Erotic novelist Sally Quinn (left) has said she modeled the dashing hero scientist of her 1991 bestseller 'Happy Endings' on a young Dr Anthony Fauci (right)
Fauci, who has not been far from the news since the beginning of the coronavirus, yesterday said there is 'no evidence' that coronavirus escaped from a Chinese lab - contradicting repeated claims by the Trump administration.
Fauci panned the conspiracy theory that China's outbreak began at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in an interview with National Geographic published Monday.
'If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what's out there now, [the scientific evidence] is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated,' Fauci said.
'Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species.'
He also shut down an alternate theory that someone found the virus in the wild and brought it to a lab before it accidentally leaked.
Fauci's comments came as Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have continued to suggest there is evidence supporting the lab leak theory.
During a town hall meeting on Sunday night, Trump described the pandemic as a 'horrible mistake' by China as he accused President Xi Jinping's of intentionally misleading the global community.
Hours earlier, Pompeo told ABC News: 'I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan.'
China has fiercely condemned the suggestions while charging that the Trump administration is rushing to shift blame amid criticism over how it handled the US outbreak, which has sickened more than 1.2million Americans and killed at least 69,788 to date.
The White House has been continuing an effort to restrain coronavirus task force members from testifying in Congress – on Monday extending a new policy to all members of the team amid scrutiny of the administration's response to the crisis.
The move came after the White House blocked Fauci from testifying before an oversight hearing by the House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday, calling the under-oath session 'counter-productive.'
In total, the United States has seen 1,236,500 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, with 72,133 deaths resulting from the diseases. Despite the numbers still rising, some states are beginning to lift their stay-at-home orders.