Dr. Anthony Fauci appears to have surrendered to the inevitable regarding further federal government restrictions as COVID-19 panic subsides. instead urging it’s now up to the American people to assess their own medical risks and decisions.
“This is not going to be eradicated, and it’s not going to be eliminated,” Fauci told ABC’s “This Week.” “And what’s going to happen is that we’re going to see that each individual is going to have to make their calculation of the amount of risk that they want to take.”
The White House chief medical adviser claimed Americans will certainly need to consider aspects such as their age, vaccination status, and whether they live with susceptible individuals regarding coronavirus precautions.
“We’re at that point where in many respects … we’re going to have to live with some degree of virus in the community,” he said.
“The best way to mitigate that is to get vaccinated. If you’re not, to get boosted if you’re eligible to be boosted.”
Fauci’s remarks about the state of the pandemic were in direct contradiction to far more dire warnings he offered early on in 2020.
They also come amidst the spread throughout the nation of the now-dominant BA.2 variant, which is highly transmittable but notably much less severe than the previous strains.
Fauci stated that while “there is concern that we are seeing an uptick in cases,” it’s “not unexpected that you’re going to see an uptick when you pull back on the mitigation methods.”
“It was said that if we do start seeing an uptick, particularly of hospitalizations, we may need to revert back to being more careful and having more utilizations of masks indoors,” Fauci said. “But right now, we’re watching it very, very carefully, and there is concern that it’s going up, but hopefully we’re not going to see increased severity.”
New COVID Czar Dr. Ashish Jha seemed to agree per NPR, saying, “If you think about where we are, as a country, we are at a really good moment,” Jha said. “Infection numbers are relatively low. We have fewer people in the hospital right now than at any point in the pandemic.”
“Obviously, we want to keep infections down, but eliminating all infections is not the goal. The goal has got to be to keep infections down and protect people from serious illness.”
