Fauci warns against complacency as Covid infections decrease

Dr. Anthony Fauci on Sunday warned Americans to guard against Covid-19’s sense of complacency, even when coronavirus infections plummet and some scientists predict that collective immunity is coming.

“The slope that is going down is really incredible – it is very steep and it is going down very, very quickly. But we are still at a very high level,” said Fauci, one of President Joe Biden’s top pandemic aides, at NBC’s. ” press.”

Fauci said he did not want people to think that just because the number of infections was in sharp decline “we are out of danger now”.

“We are not. Because the baseline of daily infections is still very, very high,” said Fauci. “It’s not the 300,000 to 400,000 that we had for some time, but we want to get that baseline very, very, very low before we start to think that we are out of danger.”

The pandemic that hit the country at the beginning of last year has entered a new phase, as the pace of vaccinations increases and the number of new infections decreases, even when the US is about to reach the grim 500,000 Covid-19- related deaths.

The 7-day moving average of new infections was 71,717 on Saturday, according to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins University data, less than half of the 146,034 new daily infections reported earlier in the month, also an average of 7 days.

More than 497,000 people in the US died of the disease as of Sunday.

Fauci’s comments to host Chuck Todd came in response to an opinion article published Thursday in The Wall Street Journal by Dr. Martin Makary, a surgeon at Johns Hopkins University, who predicted the country will achieve collective immunity in April .

Makary wrote that his prediction was based on data and science, as well as anecdotal evidence. He said that, in particular, some medical experts agreed with his out-of-consensus view, but warned him against discussing it so that he did not inadvertently encourage the public to become complacent, not take precautions or refuse to receive the vaccine.

“On the current track, I hope that most of Covid left in April, allowing Americans to resume normal life,” wrote Makary, saying that current estimates of natural immunity are likely to be low.

Fauci said he was “not so sure” that the recent decline in infections could be attributed to herd immunity or the phenomenon in which a critical number of individuals become resistant to the virus as a result of previous exposure or vaccination.

“Certainly, the number of infected people is contributing to this. In addition, some contribution to vaccines, not much,” said Fauci. “I think we haven’t vaccinated enough people yet to get collective immunity. I think you’re seeing the natural peak and the fall.”

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former head of the Food and Drug Administration, also voiced his opinion on Sunday, saying in an interview with CBS News’s “Face the Nation” that he expected the current decline in cases to continue.

Gottlieb said the infection rate could be significantly reduced if only 40% of the population had any form of immunity, down from the 75% that Fauci estimated was the level of herd immunity.

In some parts of the country, added Gottlieb, “this is what we have now”.

“We must be optimistic, in my opinion. I think we will continue to see infection rates drop in the spring and summer,” he said.

The debate over the state and momentum of the virus comes a year after prolonged blockades and other preventive measures that closed much of the economy, inflicted mental health traumas in an untold number and forced families to separate.

Biden said achieving collective immunity by the end of next summer could be a difficult task, forcing parents to struggle with the idea of ​​starting another school year in pandemic conditions.

Even if the country contains the virus significantly, it is possible that some measures to protect against its spread will continue. Fauci said on CNN on Sunday that Americans may be wearing masks to prevent the spread of Covid-19 next year, even when the country reaches a degree of normality.

“This may be the case,” said Fauci of using masks in 2022. “It depends on the level of virus dynamics in the community. If you see the level dropping very, very low, I want you to keep coming to a baseline so low that … there is a minimal, minimal threat that you will be exposed to someone who is infected. “

Biden’s cautious approach is a reversal of the abundant and sometimes reckless optimism offered by his predecessor, former President Donald Trump. The Biden government’s thoughtful comments have inspired criticism in the opposite direction, with some saying the government sets targets that are too low in the face of encouraging data.

The increase in the number of vaccinated individuals has stimulated limited optimism. About 1.7 million vaccines are administered each day, above the White House target of 1.5 million per day. Public health experts said the rate could double by the end of the month, if supplies persist.

Despite these optimistic projections, concerns about a number of new coronavirus mutations remain, some of which have been shown to be more transmissible than the dominant strain in the United States. It is possible that mutant strains may prove resistant to vaccines that have been approved by regulators, although experts have said that they expect current vaccines to work.

A particularly worrying strain, first identified in the UK, is doubling its presence in the United States every 10 days, according to a study published earlier this month.

Although the study found that the strain was circulating at low absolute levels, it supported the modeling produced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that predicted that the strain, known as B.1.1.7., Could be the dominant strain in the U.S. next month .

Dr. Michael Osterholm, a former consultant to the Biden transition team, said on January 31 that B.1.1.7 would likely lead to an increase in “the next six to 14 weeks”.

“And if we see this happening, what my 45 years in the trenches tell me that we will see, we will see something that we have not seen in this country yet,” warned Osterholm.

The CDC identified three mutant strains in the US that “in particular have concerned global public health and health leaders so far”, including B.1.1.7 and variations first identified in South Africa and Japan. The variant identified in Japan it was found in travelers from Brazil.

Gottlieb said the variants pose “some risk”, but that “enough protective immunity already exists for us to see these [positive] the trends continue. “

The variants, he said, “will not be enough to reverse these trends at this point.”