Fauci: Back-to-normal may be back next year
Daily life could nearly reach the normality of prepandemic times by the end of next year, Dr. Anthony Fauci said, but it all depends on how many people get a coronavirus vaccine.
“We may actually have enough herd immunity protecting our society that as we get to the end of 2021, we could approach very much some degree of normality that is close to where we were before,” said Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease doctor.
That would require 7580% of the population taking a coronavirus vaccine, a move that many Americans are considering with caution. Fauci said if only 40% or 50% of the population get it, it’s going to take “quite awhile” to reach sufficient immunity levels.
Reaching coronavirus testing milestones, which has been a struggle for the country since the outbreak began, is also feasible, said Fauci.
“We can get home tests that are point-of-care, sensitive, specific, cheap without the necessity for a prescription. That’s eminently doable,” said Fauci speaking in a Wednesday webcast hosted by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Achieving new levels of testing will provide yet another dimension for being able to control the outbreak by understanding infection in real time.
Fauci, who started off the pandemic making frequent public speeches with government officials, has been missing from those settings in recent months.
He said under Biden’s administration, he expects that will change.
“The president-elect wants me as the chief medical advisor and in that capacity I cannot imagine that it will not include being out there in the public giving the kinds of messages that I have in the past,” said Fauci.
The United States has seen gut-wrenching levels of mortality and infection during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in recent weeks with record-breaking case counts and deaths that could leave some feeling numb.
CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta, moderating the discussion, asked Fauci if there are days during which he just wants to throw up his hands in frustration,
Fauci said he would never do that, “You’ve just got to suck it up and keep going no matter how frustrating it gets.”