In a video uploaded to her YouTube channel on Aug. 31, actor Tiffany Haddish opened up about her experience with COVID-19 and interviewed Dr. Anthony Fauci about how the virus specifically affects the Black community.
Haddish said that she had the coronavirus around three months ago after two people she had been in contact with contracted it.
“I was working on a movie, and someone in the movie contracted coronavirus, right? 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,” Haddish said. “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.”
After she felt better, Haddish got tested for the antibodies and was told she had them. But, when she got tested again, they had disappeared.
“I’ve been tested 12 times now,” Haddish said.
Fauci, who has served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, encouraged Haddish that she did the right thing by getting tested often and quarantining in her household once she found out she was sick.
“The most important thing is that you have the societal responsibility not to be propagating the outbreak,” Fauci said. “To be part of the solution, not the problem.”
Fauci and Haddish also spoke about the disparity in COVID-19 infections within minority communities, and how the virus can take a greater toll on Black and Latinx people.
“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,” Fauci said. “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.”
In order to prevent contracting the virus, Fauci said that physically distancing oneself from others not in their household is still the best way to go, and commented on its political implications.
“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.”
Watch the full interview below.
