Dr. Anthony Fauci is cautioning parents against letting their children trick-or-treat on Halloween this weekend unless the kids are sporting a mask as part of their costume.
Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), expressed support for a national mask mandate earlier this week in an interview on CNBC. On Friday, Dr. Fauci said parents should take the initiative to ensure their children are wearing them as part of their costumes.
“As I always joke around when people ask me, I don’t want to be the Grinch that steals Halloween and the Grinch that steals Thanksgiving,” said Dr. Fauci to Survivor Corps, a group focused on fighting coronavirus. “But I would really be careful about having kids just going from house-to-house, unless as part of their costume they had a mask and you made sure that they had a little Purell with them after each house [and] they would wipe their hands off.”
Dr. Fauci said he did think trick-or-treating could be “reasonably safe” so long as the children do not spend much time around strangers, but he noted that his own family was skipping celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday in November together because of their fear.
“My three daughters, who are adult professional women living in different parts of the country, they have decided because they’re worried about their daddy that they don’t want to bring an infection in inadvertently because they have to get on a plane, go to an airport, travel here to Washington, D.C., and only have a couple of days with me,” Dr. Fauci said. “They would rather, even though they really want to see me, they would rather just let it be a pass for this year and concentrate on next year.”
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.
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