Fauci says it would be 'great idea' to implement federal nationwide mask mandate

Infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci signaled this week that he would support a national mask mandate after several months of shying away from such a policy. 

"[I]f people are not wearing masks, then maybe we should be mandating it," he said on Friday during a CNN interview, 

"There's going to be a difficulty enforcing it," he continued, "but if everyone agrees that this is something that's important and they mandate it and everybody pulls together and says, you know, we're going to mandate it but let's just do it, I think that would be a great idea to have everybody do it uniformly."

Fauci argued that Americans are not "uniformly" wearing masks and that such habits were driving recent spikes in cases across the country, though he did not provide any evidence to back up that claim. 

A recent National Geographic poll revealed that three-quarters of Americans "always" wear masks when they leave home, while a further 18% "sometimes" do.