Since the coronavirus pandemic first began, Dr. Anthony Fauci has aggressively advocated for tough measures to control the disease’s spread.
Yet during an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, the chief White House medical adviser offered a very different piece of advice: live with it.
“I mean, we’ve heard people say, understandably, they’re trying to look for a metric to give to the public that we’re going to have to start living with COVID,” the Washington Examiner quoted Fauci as telling host Margaret Brennan.
I believe that’s the case, because I don’t think we’re going to eradicate it,” the official went on to admit, noting, “We’ve only eradicated one infection of mankind, and that’s smallpox . I don’t think we’re even going to eliminate it.”
Brennan at one point asked whether rising COVID cases are evidence that the United States has entered into a fifth wave of the pandemic.
“Well, we certainly have the potential to go into a fifth wave,” Fauci replied. “And the fifth wave, or the magnitude of any increase, if you want to call it that it, will turn into a wave, will really be dependent upon what we do in the next few weeks to a couple of months.”
Fauci offers shifting advice
That Fauci would now advocate a strategy of simply living with the threat posed by COVID may seem odd to some since as recently as recently as October Fox News reported that he was cautioning vaccinated people about traveling for Thanksgiving.
In fact, Fauci was even quoted as saying that two of his own daughters had decided to cancel plans to see him due to concerns surrounding the virus.
“They’re adult women, I would love to see them – but they themselves are concerned about getting on a plane, being in an airport, coming in for a couple of days with their father, me, who is in an age group that is vulnerable, and they’ve made the decision that they are not going to do that,” he said.
Fauci expressed home that the situation may have changed “hopefully by Christmas” but stressed, “Each individual family needs to make the decision based upon the risk situation in your own family.”
However, during an interview with The Hill last week, Fauci appeared to have changed course, declaring, “In the family setting, particularly among vaccinated people, enjoy the holiday.”
Those remarks didn’t go over well with Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy, who complained that Fauci is “turning families against each other.”
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