Americans vaccinated against Covid-19 cannot simply return to their pre-pandemic way of life, Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Wednesday.
“It won’t be like it was in 2017 and 2018, when we didn’t worry about getting a respiratory pathogen,” said the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner on the “Squawk Box” website. “We will worry about it, even if we get vaccinated.”
However, he said, “I think we’re going to worry a lot less than we’re worrying now, I hope.”
The new coronavirus emerged in late 2019 in Wuhan, China and has spread worldwide, causing a total of nearly 86.6 million infections and more than 1.87 million deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University in the morning of Wednesday. The United States, in the midst of another increase in cases and fatality, was responsible for more than 21 million of these global cases and more than 357,000 of deaths.
Gottlieb, who led the FDA in the Trump administration from 2017 to 2019, compared the possible post-coronavirus changes in life in America by flying on a plane after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. For example, he said he believed, due to the pandemic, that public places can continue doing temperature tests. There may also be a reluctance to “crowd 50 people into a conference room with a capacity for ten,” he added.
“I just think things will be different, just as they are different when you pass an airport now after 9/11,” said Gottlieb, who serves on the board of Pfizer, which makes a Covid-19 vaccine. “I don’t think masks will be mandatory next fall and winter if we can increase the vaccination rate and if these new variants disappear or don’t become prevalent. But I think a lot of people are going to want to wear masks, and that’s okay.”
Gottlieb cited some reasons behind his beliefs, including some people’s reluctance to be vaccinated against Covid-19, just as there is no universal vaccination against seasonal flu. In addition, he emphasized that vaccines protect people from developing symptomatic Covid-19, not necessarily from being infected with the coronavirus.
“It will take some time to answer that question completely because we will depend on real-world evidence, but conventional wisdom … is that the vaccine is probably preventing some people from being infected and probably reducing the likelihood of people who are infected. [from transmitting] the virus, “said Gottlieb.” What we don’t know is the magnitude of this effect. “
Gottlieb said he believed that “if we do things right” in the United States, in the fall and winter, Covid-19 will be less of a problem than it is now. Instead, he said it could be more like “very bad season flu”.
“We will still see sick people. There will still be people who will die from Covid next winter, but it will not be an epidemic,” he said. “It will circulate. There will be outbreaks. Vaccinated people will have a substantially reduced risk of having a bad result.”
Gottlieb’s comments followed a warning he issued on Tuesday night about the new coronavirus strain circulating in South Africa, telling CNBC’s Shepard Smith that he is “very worrying” because he may have mutated in a way that could limit the effectiveness of antibiotic drugs.
Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and a board member of Pfizer, a start-up of genetic testing Tempus and the biotechnology company Illumina. He also serves as co-chair of the “Healthy Sail Panel” for Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings and Royal Caribbean.