YNW Melly is currently awaiting trial on two counts of first-degree murder in a South Florida jail, and now he has more bad news: The rapper’s team revealed that he’s tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
The news was shared in an Instagram post, with a caption that reads, “He’ll be filing a motion for restricted release in hopes of better care due to any jails not being prepared to treat this new virus. He hopes for your support and to recover soon #prayformelly send positive energy to him please.” The news arrived as the Boward Sheriff’s Office, the Florida city where Melly is currently awaiting trial, revealed that two inmates in the jail tested positive for COVID-19.
Melly’s name adds to a growing list of celebrities who have recently contracted the virus. Yesterday, Founders Of Wayne bassist Adam Schlesinger passed away following complications from COVID-19, and just a few days ago CNN’s Chris Cuomo revealed that he had tested positive for the coronavirus.
The news arrives mere weeks after YNW Melly’s “Suicidal (Remix)” was updated with a new verse from the late Juice WRLD. Nearly two weeks later the song was paired with a matching video in which neither rapper appears.
If you want to watch G-Eazy‘s new, retro-styled video for “Still Be Friends” featuring Tory Lanez and Tyga, I regret to inform you that you won’t find it here. In fact, if you do want to watch it, you’ll have to hit one of the internet’s most notorious websites: PornHub. No, we aren’t linking to it — I’m sure you know the way.
That’s right: The new video is available only on PornHub, and for good reason — the video’s cast includes a plethora of “Vixen Angels,” the official brand ambassadors for the popular Vixen site. The faces may or may not be familiar to you, but the girls dance and cavort around the three rappers as they perform the track in the “Vixen Villa,” a parodic reference to the Playboy Mansion.
The video’s concept pays homage to the mansion’s heyday in the 1970s, from the rappers’ stylings — G-Eazy rocks a suitably creepy mustache, while Tory gets into the turtleneck-and-medallion look — to the grainy filter that gives the video the look of old documentary footage from the time. Compton rapper YG also makes a cameo appearance, but you likely won’t be looking out for him in the first place.
While G-Eazy’s partnerships with both Vixen and PornHub may seem like nothing more than an excuse to frolic with semi-naked women, as it turns out, there’s a strategic aspect as well. With P-Hub’s traffic on the rise thanks to coronavirus quarantines, it’s an inventive workaround to maximize the number of eyeballs on the clip. G-Eazy is also helping out in other ways, providing free meals to Bay Area kids for the rest of the month.
You can check out the safe-for-work version of the video above. The other one can be found on Vixen’s Pornhub page.
Keeping true to its word, Disney+ has updated The Simpsons fans on how soon to expect episodes of the classic animated series be made available in its original aspect ratio. The fledgling streaming service had promised a fix by 2020, and according to a latest tweet, fans should be good to go by the end of May.
We appreciate our fans’ patience and are working to make the first 19 Seasons (and part of 20) of #TheSimpsons available in 4:3 versions on #DisneyPlus. We expect to accomplish this by the end of May.
When Disney+ launched in November, Simpsons fans were quick to notice that older episodes looked noticeably off. Like most television series before the advent of flatscreen TVs, the show originally aired in a 4:3 ratio. To avoid showing black bars on each side of the picture, Disney+ used versions of the show that were cropped into 16:9 format, which cut off visual gags and led to characters looking stretched and distorted in certain scenes as shown below:
Not only are the classic Simpsons episodes on Disney+ awkwardly cropped, but they’re stretched in a lot of places too. Bart’s head looks 4 inches wider here: pic.twitter.com/fCpmTPasGj
In Disney+’s defense, the cropping issue also occurred when FXX started airing The Simpsons marathons, and it’s believed the streaming service simply imported those versions after acquiring Fox. However, Disney was quick to respond to fan reactions, and within days of launch, it promised to offer viewers a choice of aspect ratios in a statement to The LA Times:
“We presented ‘The Simpsons’ in 16:9 aspect ratio at launch in order to guarantee visual quality and consistency across all 30 seasons. … Over time, Disney+ will roll out new features and additional viewing options. As part of this, in early 2020, Disney+ will make the first 19 seasons (and some episodes from Season 20) of ‘The Simpsons’ available in their original 4:3 aspect ratio, giving subscribers a choice of how they prefer to view the popular series.”
While May pushes the limit of “early 2020,” it’s understandable that Disney has had its hands full, as the pandemic has forced the company to scuttle release dates for major blockbusters like Black Widow and Mulan while halting production on a variety of upcoming projects headed for theaters and Disney+.
There’s nothing better than bingeing some good scary movies on Netflix on a dark, stormy night. From ghosts to vampires and zombies just about every morbid fantasy that your demented mind can conjure has representation. We’ve watched the best horror movies on Netflix streaming right now, and here they are, in their beastly, blood-curdling glory. It’s perfect for that late night movie binge to keep you wide awake all the way through 2020.
Writer/director Trey Edward Shults followed up his unnerving family portrait in 2015’s Krisha with a look at another family under the most desperate of circumstances. After an unknown illness has wiped out most of civilization, a number of threats — both seen and unseen — come for a family held up in their home out in the wilderness. It’s a subtle, dream-like tale that stars Joel Edgerton and Christopher Abbot as two patriarchs intent on keeping their families safe, no matter the cost.
Surprisingly, despite internet leaks and constantly rewritten scripts, this sequel to Wes Craven’s cult slasher flick performed even better than its predecessor, especially with critics. The story treads along the same lines as the first: we’re still following Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell) around, this time as she navigates college life. But when a copycat killer begins donning Ghostface’s disguise and stalking her, she’s forced to turn to some old friends for help. The whole world feels more lived in, and Craven’s not afraid to take shots and exploit sequel clichés, which makes this a terrifying, at-times hilarious, follow-up.
Before Ben Feldman played a lovable know-it-all on Superstore, the guy was surviving a terror-filled jaunt through the catacombs of Paris in this horror movie. Feldman plays George, a reluctant sidekick to Scarlett (Perdita Weeks), a young alchemy scholar and his former girlfriend. Scarlett convinces George a few others to venture into the famous Paris underground in order to find the fabled philosopher’s stone (Harry Potter kids should know all about this thing, we’re not explaining it here). What they find instead is basically Dante’s Inferno come to life as they face down cults, demons, ghosts, and all manner of horrific beings. Let this be a warning, children: Nothing good happens this far below street level. Nothing.
Allison Williams, who’s become something of a scream queen after her work in Get Out, continues her horror track record with this thriller about a gifted musician who befriends the talented student who replaced her. Strange happenings begin to occur, events that sabotage the young girl, but as terrifying as this story is, there’s absolutely no way you’ll be able to predict its ending.
This South Korean period zombie flick is just weird and gory enough to stick with you long past its end credits. The basic premise follows a clash between an exiled prince and a minister of war set to the backdrop of a zombie plague, but the horror elements spring up while zombie hordes attack villages and during creepier, nerve-wracking moments between its main characters.
Jeremy Saulnier is someone who knows how to make a story of thrilling and brutal violence. Director of Blue Ruin and Green Room, he manages to make his stories gripping and tense with slight touches of offbeat humor. Well, for his first feature, that offbeat humor is just as extreme as the violence. An awkward guy finds an invite to a random Halloween party and decides to attend, unbeknownst to him that he’ll be the murdered main attraction for a group of eccentric artists. It’s a slow build toward its inevitably over-the-top and bloody conclusion, but it’s a fun ride for a low-budget gory comedy.
Mia Farrow stars in this iconic horror classic that’s probably influenced every other film on this list. The movie follows Rosemary Woodhouse (Farrow) and her husband, Guy. They’re a pair of newlyweds who move to a new apartment where they’re quickly surrounded by strange neighbors and even more worrisome happenings. When Rosemary mysteriously becomes pregnant, she becomes paranoid that the people around her, including her husband, are out to get her.
Robin Tunney and Neve Campbell star in this cult classic about a group of teenage girls who use their burgeoning powers to cause all kinds of trouble. Tunney plays Sarah, the new kid at a Catholic prep school who falls in with a trio of outcasts led by Nancy (a deliciously unhinged Fairuza Balk). The girls are witches, and Sarah’s latent abilities make the spells they cast even more powerful. Hexing the popular kids, brewing love potions, and summoning Satan soon follow before Sarah realizes Nancy’s brand of occult just isn’t for her.
Despite a cast that includes Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine, and Glenn Close, this unusual, post-apocalyptic film got a bit overlooked during its brief theatrical release. It’s best enjoyed without knowing too much of the plot. Suffice it to say that Melanie (Sennia Nanua), the girl of the title, isn’t quite what she seems, and there’s a reason that she, and others her age, are kept in a secure military facility. But the best trick of the film, thanks in large part to Nanua’s winning performance, is the way its innovations go beyond just putting twists on a familiar genre and, instead, making us question where our sympathies ought to lie.
When a punk rock group accidentally witnesses the aftermath of a murder, they are forced to fight for their lives by the owner of a Nazi bar (Patrick Stewart) and his team. It’s an extremely brutal and violent story, much like the first two features from director Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin and Murder Party), but this one is made even tenser by its claustrophobic cat-and-cornered-mouse nature. Once the impending danger kicks in, it doesn’t let up until the very end, driven heavily by Stewart playing against type as a harsh, unforgiving, violent character.
Robert Eggers’ Sundance hit attracted some of the oddest complaints directed at any film in recent years when some disgruntled audience members suggested it wasn’t scary enough. Maybe they were watching a different movie? Set in colonial New England, the austere film follows a family outcast from their strict religious community and trying to make it on their own at the edge of some deep, dark woods. It essentially takes the witch-fearing folklore of the era at face value, watching the family disintegrate under the insidious influence of a nearby witch. It’s a slow-burn horror movie, light on shocks, heavy on unease, and thematically rich in ways that only become apparent later.
Patrick Wilson stars in another horror flick on this list, this time as the father of a little boy trapped in a coma who’s been possessed by evil spirits. Rose Byrne plays his wife, and while the story itself is a bit muddled, the premise is solid nightmare fuel. Really, is there anything more terrifying than a demon child?
This indie comedy has quickly become a cult classic, turning familiar scary movie tropes on their heads in bloody and hilarious ways. Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine star as two bumbling-yet-well-meaning hillbillies who get pulled into a nightmare scenario when a group of horny coeds think they’re trying to kill them. In a series of events that escalates in violence, Tucker and Dale try to do the right thing while managing to stay alive in the process. As one of the best horror comedies, it’s a hidden gem waiting to be discovered by those looking for off-the-beaten-path hilarity.
This Thai horror film follows a young man named Tun and his girlfriend, Jane, who accidentally run over a young woman after a party and are haunted by her spirit. Hauntings and horror go hand-in-hand, but this film digs deeper into the supernatural trope by revealing a surprising, gruesome connection between the woman’s ghost and the film’s protagonist. We won’t spoil anything here, but let’s just say there’s a reason this death follows this guy wherever he goes.
When a graduate student in Chicago who’s completing her thesis on urban legends accidentally summons the ghost of an artist murdered in the late 19th century, things become a bit hellish. The Candyman was the son of a slave who grew up in polite society, became a painter, and fell in love with a white woman before a lynch mob cut off his painting hand, replaced it with a hook, and doomed him to his current existence. It’s a terrifying commentary on race relations and what we inherit, but even if that flies over your head, you’ll still be sufficiently spooked.
Mike Flanagan, who directed Oculus and Ouija: Origin of Evil, expertly directs this simple tale of a deaf woman being menaced by a masked (and later unmasked) killer in her remote home. This is nothing you haven’t seen before, but Flanagan brings real panache and visual energy to a film that could have easily felt redundant in the hands of a lesser filmmaker.
Succession’s Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch star in this horror mystery about a father-son coroner team attempting to identify a Jane Doe who was harboring all kinds of dark secrets. When a corpse is brought into a small-town coroner’s lab, he and his son begin to experience supernatural phenomena. Tommy (Cox) and Austin (Hirsch) try to escape the lab but quickly realize that they’re dealing with something far more dangerous than a dead body while demonic spirits, old curses, and witches come to life.
Tom Holland’s ’80s horror flick managed to take a benign children’s toy and transform it into a waking nightmare. The film stars Catherine Hicks as Karen Barclay, a single mother who gifts her son Andy a doll he’s been wanting. Unfortunately for Andy, that doll is possessed by the soul of a serial killer and very quickly, Chucky then begins to wreak havoc on the family.
Stephen King’s 1992 novel transpires mostly in one isolated lake house’s bedroom where its protagonist, Jessie, lies bound to a bed after her husband dies in the midst of a sex game. That makes it a tough story to film, which may explain why it took 25 years to get turned into a movie. But the wait was worth it: director Mike Flanagan delivers a resourceful, disturbing adaptation anchored by a great Carla Gugino performance (with some fine supporting work from Bruce Greenwood). Forced to find a way out of her situation, while confronting her own past, Gugino’s Jessie is made to go to extremes, which leads to, among other things, one of the squirmiest scenes in recent memory.
This Iranian horror flick manages to tie in relevant world events with a darker story of demonic possession. The film follows Shideh, a former medical student and mother trapped in her home during the bombings of Tehran with her daughter, Dorsa. The pair are soon haunted by a djinn, a malevolent spirit who can possess a human by taking what’s most important to them. For Dorsa, it’s her doll, for Shideh, it’s a medical textbook her dead mother gave her. The two fight to survive the bombs and this evil spirit, and you’ll be fighting to get to sleep after the nightmares from this one begin
After losing her father, young Veronica (Sandra Escacena) and two classmates attempt to contact the other side with a Ouija board during a solar eclipse. Something more sinister breaks through, though, as Veronica is haunted by a dark presence everywhere she goes. Even though it has just been released in 2018, it’s already been called one of the scariest movies ever made. While that is certainly open for debate, what Veronica does do is excel phenomenally in the cliche horror bits every viewer has seen a thousand times over, such as mishandled Ouija use, frightening entities that only the protagonist is privy to, and twisted dreams. Based on a true story, the film relies on the strong performance of newcomer Escacena, highlighted by her haunting expressions of terror and anguish.
Aubrey Plaza and Dane DeHaan star in this horror comedy about a guy named Zach, who’s mourning the loss of his girlfriend, only to discover she’s come back to life. Plaza stars as Beth, the dead girl revived, who begins exhibiting strange behavior, eventually going into full-blown zombie mode while her devoted boyfriend Zach (DeHaan) tries to manage her mood swings and her pesky craving for human flesh. John C. Reilly and Molly Shannon play Beth’s parents, who hilariously try to cover-up their daughter’s current undead state, and though things go off the rails in the final act, watching Plaza play a moody, angst-ridden walking corpse is one hell of a good time, even if it does give you nightmares.
Another ’80s flick, this Sam Raimi creation launched the director’s career and has since become a cult classic. The story follows a group of college students vacationing in an isolated cabin in a remote wooded area when they find an audio tape that somehow releases a legion of demons and spirits. Most of the group suffer varying degrees of possession which leads to gory mayhem (hence the film’s NC-17 rating).
One of the better found-footage movies to come down the pike in Paranormal Activity‘s wake is this creepy gem about a videographer (director Patrick Brice) who answers a strange Craigslist ad from a man (Mark Duplass) who requests to be followed around with a camera for 24 hours. There are a few points late in the narrative where suspension of disbelief becomes an issue (a not-atypical problem for the genre), but if you can look past that, you’ll be treated to a very scary turn by Duplass and a supremely-unnerving epilogue.
(Spoilers for Creep🙂 What could have very well been a stand-alone character exploration in 2014’s Creep is heightened in Creep 2, which sees Mark Duplass’ chameleon-like killer seeking a different kind of self-portrait. Burned out on his string of murders, Aaron reaches out to a woman who’s looking for her own kind of story by meeting and filming the lonely people she meets online. Instead of a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing path the killer normally follows, he tells the woman what he is off-the-bat and what he wants: An ending to his journey. With all his cards (seemingly) on the table — and her hiding some of her own — it’s an even more fascinating tale than the original.
Zombie movies have been done to death, brought back to life, and repeated a few more times. But that doesn’t mean there still aren’t entertaining stories to be found in the genre. Train To Busan doesn’t bring anything exceptionally original to the walking undead, but it’s no less of a thrilling ride. An overworked dad is riding the rails with his neglected daughter when a Z-word outbreak strikes, causing savagery from corpse and living alike. Its fast-moving, contorted foes are genuinely freaky in the movie’s cramped setting, making the story feel like a zombified Snowpiercer. It’s a fun action flick with a slightly heavy-handed but solid emotional core that’s unsurprisingly getting an English remake.
After back-to-back big studio bombs, Karyn Kusama returned to her scrappy indie roots with this contained, brilliantly suspenseful study of the darkness that can arise when people don’t allow themselves to feel. The Invitation isn’t a perfect film, but Kusama does a lot with the scant resources she had to play with here, and you have to appreciate her willingness to tackle grief so directly in a genre that tends to have little time for genuine human emotion.
A varied group of people is stuck in a bar after a man is gunned down outside. As the paranoia spreads and they turn on one another, they discover a mysterious sickness could be the culprit. It’s a bottle-type plot that has been done before — locking a bunch of frenzied folks in a cage and let instincts take their course — but this Spanish horror comedy injects its own dark humor and keeps the answers to a minimum, making an entertaining story that unfortunately favors the “dark” over the “comedy” in its final act.
Naomi Watts stars in this horror mystery from director Gore Verbinski, playing a journalist who investigates a videotape that seemingly causes the death of anyone who watches it. Watts plays Rachel, whose sister dies exactly one week after watching a mysterious video. When Rachel watches the same video and begins to experience paranormal hauntings, she uncovers the terrible family secret fueling the horrible deaths. It’ll make you swear off VHS players for life.
A man (Legion‘s Dan Stevens) travels to an island to infiltrate a brutal cult in the hopes of saving his kidnapped sister. As the group’s leaders close in on discovering his identity, the dark secrets of the island start to present themselves. Written and directed by The Raid: Redemption director Gareth Evans, Apostle is a tense, beautifully shot thriller that doesn’t even seem like a horror film from the get-go. Stevens provides another icy, powerful performance alongside Michael Sheen’s turn as the leader of the harsh cult. It’s certainly a highlight among the Netflix original films.
At a recent press conference, after his brother Chris was diagnosed with COVID-19, New York governor Andrew Cuomo kept reiterating two sentiments: “We’re all in this together,” and “This virus is the great equalizer.”
I understand the sentiment. I’ve said and written the “We’re all in this together” line several times myself over the past few weeks.
And in one sense—an important sense—it’s true. This pandemic is impacting the entire planet like nothing we’ve seen in our lifetimes. No one is untouched by it in some way. Anyone, rich or poor, can get sick and die from this virus. In that sense, it unites us as human beings, and I hope it will awaken us to our essential oneness.
But Cuomo was wrong on the second point. The fact that this is an equal opportunity virus doesn’t make it “the great equalizer.” The coronavirus pandemic doesn’t equalize anything. In fact, it merely highlights and magnifies our existing inequalities.
I’ve been thinking lately about the sinking of the Titanic. Those 2,240 passengers and crew members were on that boat together. Everyone was a part of the fear and the tragedy as it sank.
They were all in it together. No one escaped the terror. They were all touched by it.
But they were not touched by it equally.
Gov. Cuomo seized the historical moment with a rousing speech to the National Guard: This is a ‘rescue mission’
Passengers aboard the Titanic ranged from some of the wealthiest people on Earth to third-class steerage passengers, who were mainly working-class immigrants. And during the voyage, the third-class passengers had to stay in their designated area of the ship, which was gated off from the top three decks where the wealthier passengers hung out. Ship stewards could open the steerage gates in an emergency, but otherwise, they stayed closed.
In the chaos of the ship sinking, some of those gates never got opened, which prevented some third-class passengers from getting to the deck with the lifeboats. Those folks drowned trapped in their assigned place, the only place they could afford, without even a fighting chance of survival.
The fact that they were “all in it together” didn’t change the structures in place before the tragedy—structures that directly impacted their fate on that ship.
Of course, as we know, there weren’t enough lifeboats for all of the passengers anyway. Barely half, in fact. Having an adequate number of lifeboats would have made the first-class top deck look “cluttered,” which the wealthy ship owner didn’t want for his wealthy passengers. Besides, the ship was supposed to be “unsinkable.”
And so it was that the economic inequality clearly delineated in the ship’s voyage played out in its sinking as well.
Because they were already on the upper decks, wealthy passengers got to the lifeboats first. Some were lowered into the ocean and rowed away from the ship before their boats were even full.
Despite the standard “women and children first” rule of saving people at sea, 52 out of the 79 children from third-class died in the sinking—about the same percentage as first-class men.
Overall, 61% of first-class passengers, 42% of second-class passengers, and 24% of third-class passengers survived.
Some might say, “Well of course fewer third-class passengers survived—they were farther from the lifeboats,” and that’s exactly the point. The wealthier passengers had an advantage from the get go. The poorer passengers had farther to go, and some of them were cut off completely.
The Titanic passengers were all in that boat together, but that didn’t mean they were equally impacted by its sinking. And we will see the same impact of inequality play out in this pandemic as well.
It’s true that wealthy people aren’t immune from the virus, and some will die. But they still have an advantage from the start. Wealthy folks have access to the best medical care and the ability to afford it. For goodness knows what reason, the wealthy appear to be able to get tested for the virus even without showing symptoms, while the average American has a hard time getting a test unless they are ICU-level ill.
Poor people are starting at a disadvantage, as they are a) more likely to have underlying health conditions, b) less likely to seek medical help early over fears of not being able to afford it, and c) more likely to work in the vital-but-low-paying service industries we are now relying on to feed us, keep our grocery stores and hospitals clean, and transport our food and garbage, putting them at higher risk of exposure.
Wealthy nation offers concrete rectangles to people without homes during pandemic
Shaun King/Instagram
So yeah. We’re all in this together. But that doesn’t change the fact that our vast economic inequality means this pandemic will affect people differently. This will be true both here in the U.S.—where 1 in 9 Americans in our “booming” economy were living below the poverty line—and around the world, where 1 in 3 do.
We learned from the Titanic that disasters don’t play out equally, even if they impact everyone. We will learn the same thing with this crisis, and with every tragedy that follows until we make some fundamental changes in our economic systems.
If we want to claim that we’re all in this together, let’s make sure we have enough lifeboats for everyone and do something about the gates that keep people trapped in the lower decks before this ship sets sail again. Since we’ve clearly hit an iceberg and will need to rebuild the economy anyway, perhaps we can purposefully build it in a way that works for all, not just those on top.
Amid the AIDS epidemic in 1983, the FDA banned gay and bisexual men from donating blood in an attempt to stop the spread of the virus. Back then, little was known about the disease and there were no quick tests to determine if someone had it.
These days HIV testing can be done in as little as 15 minutes and the disease can be detected as little as 18 days after initial exposure. The disease is also no longer a death sentence. Those who get proper medical treatment can live as long or almost as long as those who are HIV negative.
In 2015, the FDA lifted the lifetime ban for gay and bisexual males and reduced it to any men who had homosexual sex within the past year.
For many, these blood donation bans seemed to stem from homophobia.
Although HIV is more prevalent among gay and bisexual men, heterosexuals also engage in high-risk sexual behavior. But they were only banned from donating blood if they had sex with a prostitute, accepted payment for sex or injected drugs.
Now, given the need for blood during the coronavirus crisis, the FDA has made big changes to its blood donation rules. On April 2, the FDA announced it had shortened the period of gay-sex abstinence from 12 months to just three.
“To help address this critical need and increase the number of donations, the FDA is announcing today that based on recently completed studies and epidemiologic data, we have concluded that the current policies regarding the eligibility of certain donors can be modified without compromising the safety of the blood supply,” the notice says.
“As a result of this public health emergency, there is a significant shortage in the supply of blood in the United States, which early implementation of the recommendations in this guidance may help to address (even though the recommendations in this guidance are broadly applicable beyond the COVID-19 public health emergency),” the memo says.
The new ruling also reduced the ban on donations from women who have had sex with a man who has had sex with a man to three months as well.
The new policy also reduces the 12-month deferral to people who’ve had tattoos to three months and the lifetime ban for those who’ve exchanged sex for money and accepted money for sex to just three months.
“President Trump wants those who wish to donate blood and for those who accept the donations to be able to do so safely,” White House Deputy Secretary Judd Deere said via email to the Washington Blade. “Today’s decision is driven by health and science. The White House supports the Commissioner on this action.”
Sarah Kate Ellis, the CEO of GLAAD, celebrated the change but believes more has to be done.
“This is a victory for all of us who raised our collective voices against the discriminatory ban on gay and bisexual men donating blood,” Ellis said.
“The FDA’s decision to lower the deferral period on men who have sex with men from 12 months to 3 months is a step towards being more in line with science, but remains imperfect, Ellis added. “We will keep fighting until the deferral period is lifted and gay and bi men, and all LGBTQ people, are treated equal to others.”
Anthony Fauci is a name that will come to define this generation. The 79-year-old head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was most likely preparing to wind down an already historic career having helped lead the fight against other world changing epidemics like AIDS and Ebola. But it is almost surely his work as the face in the war against the coronavirus for which he will be most remembered.
And it’s increasingly obvious that the main reason Fauci will be seen as perhaps the leading hero of this pandemic is in the masterful way he has risen above politics, steered clear of the catastrophic governmental incompetence that has plagued this crisis and in how his honest, blunt and occasionally reassuring tone has helped steer our collective psyche into calmer waters.
Part of Fauci’s job has been making the rounds giving interviews to a long list of media outlets. But it was an interview he gave on Tuesday that has so far best encapsulated the way his persona is bringing most Americans together, united against this terrible disease. Some highlights:
On how much he dealt with President Trump before the virus and how much he interacts with him now:
“Well, I had some interaction. And now I see him for at least an hour or more every single day … I see him so often and for so long I almost never have to call him directly because I know that literally I’m within a few feet of talking to him if I want to anyway.”
On he and Trump both being New Yorkers:
“He’s an action person. I mean he likes to get things done. He doesn’t want to waste a lot of time. He wants to just get right to it.”
On navigating the pandemic in an era of heightened political partisanship:
“Well, I just stick very strictly to the science and the evidence base. I’m not new to this. I’ve been doing this now for over 30 years, starting with the HIV/AIDS issues with President [Ronald] Reagan, and I have found, and it’s proven time and time again: stick with the science, stay completely out of the politics. I have no ideology. My ideology is health, public health, and science. You do that. You can make it uncomplicated. If you get involved in political rhetoric, then it gets complicated.”
Fauci has regularly appeared on the Fox News Channel where they earlier were resistant to his claims about the threat of the virus. On how he reacts to an overly skeptical media and if that forces him to be political even in subtle ways:
“One of the great things about messaging is consistency. If you consistently stick with the science, sometimes you might be contradicting something that someone says and sometimes you may be agreeing with it, but as long as you’re consistent with the science then you are fine.”
Fauci has publicly disagreed with Trump on several occasions. Typically, that leads to someone quickly exciting the White House, either voluntarily or by direct order. But Fauci’s position — and relationship with Trump — only seem to be getting stronger by the day. On if it’s “tough” debating your boss when your boss is the commander-in-chief:
“Has it been stressful? Uh, yeah. This is a very, very stressful situation for everybody, including me.”
And if he’s ever worried those disagreements will cost him his job:
“Not at all. I take the tack that I will say what’s true and whatever happens, happens. As a matter of fact, in fairness to him, the president has listened very carefully to what I’ve said. He’s taken my recommendations almost invariably, and he has never really contradicted things that I have recommended to him. He listens. I mean, there’s a lot out there in the press about conflict between the both of us. There’s absolutely none. There really isn’t.”
Finally, Fauci explained what has been the biggest challenge so far. In short, other people:
“It wasn’t any particular event that happened. It was just a realization a few weeks ago when the stress was overwhelming. I was getting 3,000 emails, a couple of hundred phone calls, every senator, every governor, every congressman wanted to speak to me and I was getting like two to three hours sleep. I realized then that I could not go on that way. I’m a very conscientious person. I like to answer calls. But I had to get myself used to the fact that I cannot do that. I’ve got to focus on what my primary responsibility is.”
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Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
