Dr. Anthony Fauci says caution should be taken when fully reopening bars and restaurants, but his cousin, Italian restaurant owner Anthony Fauci, says he doesn't agree.
“They shouldn’t do the lockdowns. Especially now. If you don’t abide by the rules … shut that area down, but don’t shut down the whole industry,” said the 84-year-old founder of La Fontana in Staten Island, reports The New York Post.
The restauranteur's son Joe Fauci, 57, now runs the restaurant and said he agrees with his father, but he still admires his more famous relative.
“In the beginning, I thought he was fabulous, but then a few times he flip-flopped on different things," he said. "They should have loosened things up when it was slowing down in the summer. Everything else was loosening up except the restaurant business.”
Dr. Fauci has in recent months said a nationwide shutdown probably will not be necessary to stop the spread of coronavirus, but he still questions decisions to reopen bars and restaurants to full capacity.
“My father and his father were first cousins. His grandfather and my grandfather were brothers,” Anthony Fauci told The Post about the doctor. However, they took different paths, with La Fontana opening in 1983 and becoming a GOP meeting place and a neighborhood favorite.
Joe Fauci, meanwhile, thinks his famous cousin is doing a "spectacular job" leading the White House coronavirus task force and said he's "very proud of him."
However, the family restaurant has been forced to operate at 25% capacity both at its original location and at its second business in Annadale, La Fontana Sorellena, which the Fauci family opened in 2017. Joe Fauci said he thinks things are going to get worse for restaurants.
He and his father also are not happy with how New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio have handled the pandemic and doesn't understand how the mayor can allow Black Lives Matter protesters to "riot and protest" when "we can't go to church with 10 people."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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