President Joe Biden's coronavirus advisory team Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci changes his prediction again by saying that the United States may not reach herd immunity "by Thanksgiving," which comes later than previously stated.
Fauci, as per The Blaze, has previously predicted that herd immunity will be experienced come second quarter of 2021 in the United States if 75%-80% of Americans have been administered with the COVID-19 vaccine.
"As I've said before, once we get into mass vaccination when the general public starts getting it by the end of the spring-April, May, June," Fauci said in an interview as per The Daily Beast, "and we get past any vaccine hesitancy, then we should be able to reach that 70 or 75 percent mark. We're going in the right direction."
The Beast explained that Fauci is "cautiously optimistic" of achieving the target come Fall this year and "still think that it is possible" because of the new variants of COVID-19 that have now been detected in the country.
Fauci reinforced this last Monday during a press conference stating that the B117 variant--the one spotted from the United Kingdom--as a "sobering news" since it ""could become dominant by the end of March."
"The two things that we can do is, A, make sure we adhere to the public health measures," Fauci pointed out during the press conference, "and, B, get as many people vaccinated as quickly as we possibly can."
The Blaze explained that the new variants might make current vaccines less effective. Add to this the problems in the distribution of vaccines and that there is no precise prediction as to how many Americans are actually needed to be vaccinated to reach herd immunity. Fauci,, in fact, only previously predicted that herd immunity will be attained by Thanksgiving to "deceive Americans" into getting the vaccine.
Similarly, Biden and Centers for Disease Control Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky have also echoed Fauci's statement. During a CBS Evening News sit-down interview, Biden remarked that it "is very difficult" to achieve herd immunity before the end of summer due to vaccine production.
"Look, it was one thing if we had enough vaccine, which we didn't. So we're pushing as hard as we can to get more vaccine manufactured," he said.
Walensky said Monday, as per the Daily Beast, that the COVID-19 variants "remains of great concern and is a threat that could reverse the recent positive trends we're seeing."
"The more transmissible those strains of viruses, the higher threshold you need for herd immunity," former Centers for Disease Control Director Tom Frieden elaborated.
"The good news is that even with B117 as a dominant variant in the U.K. and elsewhere," he added, "cases plummeted when people stop having contact, when people wore masks, when you have people not sharing indoor air with people not in your household. That is the key. We need to give a viral enemy less chance to speak."
All authorities stressed that returning to the "basics" is necessary to keep cases low--that is adherence to public health guidelines of masking, social distancing, and limiting indoor contact, the Daily Beast said.
