Chief White House medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci on Monday clarified remarks he made over the weekend when he said it was “too soon to tell” if Christmas gatherings will be advised during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Fauci told CNN’s “At This Hour” that his comment from the day before “was taken completely out of context” and “misinterpreted.” He added that he encourages people, “particularly the vaccinated,” to have a normal Christmas with family.
“You know, I also said something over the weekend that was taken completely out of context,” Fauci stated. “I was asked what could we predict for this winter, for like December and Christmas.”
“I mean, I say you hold off on that. I said we don’t know because we’ve seen slopes that went down and then came back up,” he continued. “The best way to assure that we’ll be in good shape as we get into the winter would be to get more and more people vaccinated. That was misinterpreted as my saying we can’t spend Christmas with our families, which was absolutely not the case. I will be spending Christmas with my family. I encourage people, particularly the vaccinated people who are protected, to have a good, normal Christmas with your family. But … the way all of the other disinformation goes around, you say something talking about a landmark of a time, and it gets misinterpreted that I’m saying you can’t spend family Christmas time, which is nonsense. You can.”
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