Fauci says there's no way he'd attend Trump's Tulsa rally

Don't bother looking for Dr. Anthony Fauci in the crowd at President Trump's rally Saturday in Tulsa.

In an interview with The Daily Beast on Tuesday, Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was asked if he would attend the event. "I'm in a high risk category," he said. "Personally, I would not. Of course not." The rally will be held at the BOK Center, an indoor arena that can hold about 19,000 people. Fauci said when it comes to gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic, "outside is better than inside," but "no crowd is better than crowd," and "crowd is better than big crowd."

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence wrote that there "isn't a coronavirus 'second wave,'" and technically, Fauci said, that's correct. "I don't like to talk about a second wave right now, because we haven't gotten out of our first wave," he told The Daily Beast.

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Fauci is troubled by photos he has seen of "very risky" people crowding bars and restaurants, and said the number of infections will continue to go up if people are not vigilant about safety measures like wearing masks and social distancing. Still, he does not think cities will have to go on extreme lockdowns as long as they utilize public health measures, specifically identifying new infections, isolating those patients, and then conducting contact tracing. Read more at The Daily Beast.