Dr Fauci says we need to learn to live with COVID because ‘We’re not going to get rid of it’

Amid growing fears about a new super mutant COVID-19 variant looks like it will quickly spread around the world, Dr. Anthony Fauci Last weekend said Americans “will have to start living” with the virus because “we will not eradicate” it.

Nearly two years after an ongoing pandemic has killed millions worldwide and more than 750,000 in the United States, Global markets were appalled last week after coronavirus cases spiked in South Africa. The spike was attributed to the Omicron variant and prompted the US to place travel restrictions on eight African countries.

However, at the same time, the new virus strain has been detected in several European countries and Hong Kong, raising concerns among health officials that Omicron is not only highly transmissible but could also evade current COVID-19 vaccines. In making the rounds on Sunday, Fauci warned that “we really need to prepare” for the increased Omicron transmission.

Explained on NBC’s Meet the press that Omicron has “32 or more variants in the virus’s very important mutant protein,” the nation’s top infectious disease expert said the mutations “strongly suggest that it will have an advantage in transmissibility and it may evade “immunological protection” from monoclonal antibody therapy or even vaccines.

“So it’s not necessarily going to happen, but it’s a strong indication that we really need to be prepared for that,” added the White House’s chief medical adviser.

However, while raising the possibility that this latest variant could be resistant to current COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, Fauci said the emergence of “troublesome” Omicron would sound like a resurgence. alarm bells for unvaccinated people to finally get vaccinated.

“It may not be as good at protecting against the initial infection, but it has a very important impact on minimizing the chance that you will get a serious outcome from it,” he said. Meet the press. “So this is a call for clarification where I am concerned to say let’s put aside all the differences we have and say, ‘If you haven’t vaccinated, get vaccinated. If you are fully vaccinated, strengthen your health and get your kids vaccinated too. ‘ Now we have time. ”

However, the underlying message throughout Fauci’s most recent appearances is that the country will eventually have to accept the fact that COVID-19 is now endemic and will never truly go away.

“We certainly won’t remove it. We only eradicated one virus, and that was smallpox. Fauci told NBC News host Chuck Todd. “I don’t think we’ll be there with this. But what I think we should be able to do is have a low enough level of control that it doesn’t affect our functioning, it doesn’t have a huge impact on society and what we do. It won’t disappear. “

He added: “The lower we get it, the better we will be. And you’ll get to that low when the majority of the population is vaccinated and healthy. So, as I’ve said many times, Chuck, it’s up to us to understand how we can live with the virus. The lower we get sick, the lower the dynamics of the virus in the community, the lower the risk to everyone, including those who have been vaccinated.”

He sent a similar message in a CBS News’ sit-down interview Facing the nation, told anchor Margaret Brennan that the goal is to reduce new cases to an acceptable level so that the US can “live with COVID”.

Acknowledging that he had previously said he would like to see the US have less than 10,000 daily infections, Fauci stated that the current national level of 80,000 new daily infections is “unacceptable” before in insisting that the virus is still here.

“I mean, we’ve heard people say, understandably, they’re trying to find some metric to give the public that we’re going to have to start living with COVID,” he stated. “I believe so because I don’t think we are going to eradicate it. We have only eradicated one human infection, and that is smallpox. “

Fauci concluded: “I don’t think we’re even going to get rid of it. The way you eliminated polio from the United States, you eliminated malaria, you know, decades and decades ago. We got malaria right here in Washington, DC. We eliminated measles because we had a very, very intensive vaccine campaign that did that. So we are looking at control.”