Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Friday that he believes that many Americans will begin holding group meetings well ahead of President Joe Biden’s Independence Day goal.
In an interview with the Squawk Box, the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner said he believed the timeline that Biden drew in his prime-time speech on Thursday was very conservative compared to how people really will behave.
“I think most Americans will meet long before July,” said Gottlieb, who led the FDA during the Trump administration from 2017 to 2019. He now serves on the board of Pfizer, which is one of three Covid vaccines released for use emergency in the USA
Biden’s Thursday night pandemic speech sought to highlight the collective tribute that Covid took last year, while offering two forward-looking public health goals. The first: Instructing states to make all adults eligible for coronavirus vaccines by May 1. The second: A goal for Americans to safely gather in small groups with friends and loved ones to celebrate the 4th of July.
“I think we should give public health advice that is in line with where people are,” said Gottlieb. “[When] people feel that the risk is decreasing because they have been vaccinated, because they see the levels of infection decreasing in many parts of the country, they will be willing to take more risks because they feel that their vulnerability is decreasing. And you know what? They are right. “He predicted,” People are going out this summer and are going to be out well before July. “
The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on Gottlieb’s comments.
Earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a new guideline that said fully vaccinated people can safely meet indoors with other fully vaccinated people – and certain unvaccinated individuals – without masks or social distance.
The guidance came at a time when states in the United States lifted restrictions from the pandemic era in recent weeks, as vaccinations spread and daily coronavirus infections fell well below January’s peak. However, senior health officials in the Biden government have warned that the decline in cases is beginning to stabilize, claiming that states should be more cautious about removing capacity restrictions at companies and masking mandates.
Last Friday, Gottlieb said the masks’ mandates should be the last state and local policy to be suspended after Texas and Mississippi announced the end of their facial coverage rules.
The United States generally has an average of 53,798 new cases per day for the past seven days, according to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins University data. This represents a 15% drop compared to the previous week. New cases in the U.S. on Thursday totaled 49,356, down almost 84% from a January single-day record.
A key factor that helps to slow the spread of the virus is the increase in immunity levels in the United States population, said Gottlieb. He estimated that about half of the US population has some form of protective immunity to the coronavirus, taking into account diagnosed and undiagnosed infections along with those who have been vaccinated.
About 64 million Americans have received at least one dose of the Covid vaccine, which is equivalent to about 19% of the US population of 330 million people, according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One in 10 Americans is fully vaccinated.
Vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, which Americans have been receiving since December, require two vaccines to fully protect against Covid’s development. However, studies suggest that some immunity is created after the initial dose. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the latest entry into the United States market, is just a shot.
The United States has about 29.3 million confirmed cases of coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins. The real number is greater than that, said Gottlieb, reiterating a position he has held since the early days of the pandemic. He argues that not all people who have been infected have been tested and had their positive results recorded.
“We are probably diagnosing one in four infections, perhaps a little better than that now,” said Gottlieb, who previously estimated that a third of Americans may have contracted Covid. “Therefore, we are over 50%” of the population with some form of immunity, he added.
“At that level, you won’t get such a rapid transfer of infections. It is not exactly herd immunity, but you will get immunity in the population, ”he said.
Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and board member of Pfizer, Tempus genetic testing start-up, health technology company Aetion and biotechnology company Illumina. He also serves as co-president of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings‘ and Royal Caribbeanof the “Healthy Candle Panel”.