Anthony Fauci: Open up all schools — but close the bars

Dr. Anthony Fauci says that the United States should open up — and keep open — all schools, but should close bars amid the coronavirus pandemic.

What are the details?

In a Sunday interview on ABC's "This Week," the infectious diseases expert spoke with ABC News' Martha Raddatz, who asked Fauci if a Biden administration could work on a plan to reopen schools.

Fauci said, "Martha, that's a good question. We get asked it all the time. We say it, not being facetiously as a sound bite or anything, but you know, close the bars and keep the schools open, is what we really say."

He continued, "Obviously, you don't have one size fits all, but as I said in the past, and as you accurately quoted me, the default position should be to try as best as possible within reason to keep the children in school or to get them back to school."

He also pointed out that mitigating community spread will help keep children in school.

"If you mitigate the things that you know are causing spread in a very, very profound way, in a robust way, if you bring that down, you will then indirectly and ultimately protect the children in the school because the community level is determined how things go across the board," Fauci explained.

He then went on to insist that schools largely have not been behind large swaths of community spread.

"So my feeling would be the same thing. If you look at the data, the spread among children and from children is not really very big at all, not like one would have suspected," he reasoned.

Fauci concluded, "Let's try to get the kids back, but let's try to mitigate the things that maintain and just push the kind of community spread that we're trying to avoid."

(H/T: The Daily Caller)