Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is a member of President Trump's Coronavirus Task Force. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

(CNSNews.com) - Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said getting the country back to more-or-less normal will depend on "where you are in the country."

He talked about a "rolling re-entry" in a Sunday morning interview with CNN's "State of the Union."

It is not going to be a light switch that we say, OK, it is now June, July or whatever, click, the light switch goes back on. It's going to be depending where you are in the country, the nature of the outbreak that you have already experienced, and the threat of an outbreak that you may not have experienced. So, it's going to -- having to look at the situation in different parts of the country. Obviously, New York, who went and is going through a terrible ordeal, is going to be very different from Arkansas...and very different maybe from some places on the West Coast, like Washington State, which have been successfully able to prevent that big spike. I think it's going to have to be something that is not one-size-fits-all.

Host Jake Tapper asked Fauci when he thinks a gradual, rolling reentry could start:

You know, I think it could probably start, at least in some ways, maybe next month. And, again, Jake, it's so difficult to make those kinds of predictions, because they always get thrown back at you if it doesn't happen, not by you, but you know by any of a number of people. We are hoping that, at the end of the month, we could look around and say, OK, is there any element here that we can safely and cautiously start pulling back on? If so, do it. If not, then just continue to hunker down. And that's what, at least for me standpoint of the public health aspect, that we look at. Other decisions are going to have to be made at the level of the president and the governors about what they are going to do with all of the information they get. The only thing I and my colleagues in public health and medicine can do is to give a projection of the kinds of things that may or may not happen when you make these steps.

In an effort to get Dr. Fauci to assign blame for the severity of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak, host Jake Tapper asked him if he agrees with (TV Dr.) Sanjay Gupta that the United States was too slow to respond to the virus outbreak:

"You know, it isn't as simple as that, Jake. I'm sorry," Fauci said.

"I mean, to just say this is all happening because we got started too late, obviously, if you look, could you have done something a little bit earlier, it would have had an impact, obviously.

"But where we are right now is the result of a number of factors, the size of the country, the heterogeneity of the country. It's -- I think it's a little bit unfair to compare us to South Korea, where they had an outbreak in Daegu, and they had the capability of immediately, essentially, shutting it off completely in a way that we may not have been able to do in this country.

"So, obviously, it would have been nice if we had a better head start, but I don't think you could say that we are where we are right now because of one factor. It's very complicated, Jake."

Tapper tried again to blame Trump, telling Fauci: "The New York Times reported yesterday that you and other top officials wanted to recommend social and physical distancing guidelines to President Trump as far back as the third week of February, but the administration didn't announce such guidelines to the American public until March 16, almost a month later. Why?"

"You know, Jake, as I have said many times, we look at it from a pure health standpoint," Fauci replied. "We make a recommendation. Often, the recommendation is taken. Sometimes, it's not. But we -- it is what it is. We are where we are right now."

Tapper asked Fauci if "lives could have been saved" if social distancing guidelines and other measures had started in late February, rather than mid-March:

"You know, Jake, again, it's the what-would-have, what-could-have. It's -- it's very difficult to go back and say that.



"I mean, obviously, you could logically say, that if you had a process that was ongoing, and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that.

"But what goes into those kinds of decisions is -- is complicated. But you're right. I mean, obviously, if we had, right from the very beginning, shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then."

Fauci acknowledged the "need" for the country "to try and get back to normal." But, he emphasized, "You want to make sure you don't do something prematurely and precipitously."