Outgoing National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that Americans should not feel we’re done with coronavirus completely.
Partial transcript as follows:
FAUCI: We don’t- and people says, Oh, get another booster, an updated booster. There’s almost an intuitive feeling of goodness, I really want this over with. We have to fight that until we get it so low, that it’s appropriate to say, I don’t want to be bothered with it. But it’s not- we’re not there yet.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re not there yet?
FAUCI: No.
BRENNAN: Because I asked you a while ago, you’re- I know you’re planning to retire. And I asked you when you would feel comfortable retiring. And you said not until COVID is in the rearview mirror, you said when COVID doesn’t dominate the mental framework of our society. What you’re saying is we’re choosing not to let it dominate our mental framework.
FAUCI: Exactly.
BRENNAN: But it is still very much a risk.
FAUCI: But it’s still there. I mean, there’s a difference. And that- And that’s an important point that I want to make. If you look at where we were a year ago at this time, when Omicron started to surge, we were having 800 to 900,000 infections and three to 4,000 deaths. Today, we had less than 300 deaths. Yesterday, we had 350 deaths, and we’re having about 45,000 or anywhere from 27 to 45,000 cases. That is much, much better than we were a year ago. But if you look at it in a vacuum, it’s still not a great place to be.
BRENNAN: No.
DR. FAUCI: I don’t like reading in the newspapers or getting my report from the COVID team: today we lost 400 people, today we lost 350 people. So it’s much, much better than it was, but it is not at a level low enough where we should feel we’re done with it completely because we’re not.
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