Anthony Fauci, an American infectious disease expert who should hold a key position in the Biden administration, believes that the fight against the epidemic in the United States has finally dawned.
Fauci has been the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the past six U.S. government. This week, President-elect Biden revealed that he would be invited to continue to the position, in addition to “I also asked him to be my chief medical adviser and become a member of the COVID-19 team”.
Fauci later said that he “yet on the spot”.
According to a U.S. media report on December 5, Fauci said that he was surprised by the positive results of the vaccine trials of Pfizer and Moderna, and predicted that the vast majority of Americans could be vaccinated by the second quarter of next year, thus achieving herd immunity in the fall.
(Vaccinate) means you’ll have herd immunity, which will allow you to safely get people back to school in the fall and to all kinds of jobs, otherwise, when you reach the middle and final stages of summer, it will be difficult,” Fauci said.
“The Biden administration will have major adjustments to its pandemic policy, such as the government’s communication strategy on the pandemic, compared to the Trump administration,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior global health researcher at the U.S.
Council on Foreign Relations, in an interview with First Financial Reporter. Biden said he would respect science and experts more, shift the way politicians and people previously communicated, and pushed experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to the front desk.
Huang Yanzhong said. Fauci is one of the most trusted public officials on the coronavirus, polls show.
Fauci: Wearing a mask is a good idea.
In a recent interview with the American television media, Biden said that he would propose that all Americans wear masks in public within 100 days of his appointment.
Biden said widespread personal protective measures would “significantly reduce the number of new cases of COVID-19”. According to a study by the University of Washington in July this year, if Americans wear masks widely, the daily death toll in the United States can be reduced by more than 66%.
On December 4, Fauci praised Biden’s proposal, calling the plan to curb the surge in the U.S. epidemic a “good idea”. Asked if Biden’s idea was imposing a “man-made time limit” on wearing masks, Fauci dismissed the concern, “he just wants everyone to promise to do so in 100 days”.
In June, Fauci acknowledged that the government’s efforts to promote wearing masks were slow due to concerns about the shortage of personal protective equipment in the United States by the public health community.
On the issue of vaccines, Fauci said that when candidate vaccines are sent from the warehouse to the state or local distribution location, it is up to the state and local authorities to decide the distribution and logistics in their own ways.
That’s why the United States doesn’t have a broader national plan, because vaccines are distributed at the state level, “but each state and locality will make their decisions. They will distribute flu vaccines as they usually do.”
Fauci said Americans who do not have existing diseases or are not at high-risk groups may start vaccinated against U.S. regulatory approvals from April next year. If Americans are immunized, most people may be vaccinated by the end of August.
But given the political polarization and long-standing doubts about vaccines by some groups, the attitude of Americans towards vaccination deserves further observation.
Fauci said that some hospitals already have vaccine candidates in hand, and hospitals can vaccinate people after receiving the official emergency use authorization (EUA) of the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Since the Reagan administration in 1984, Fauci has served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in six administrations.
In an earlier interview, Fauci had looked forward to his work under the Biden administration: “I have served the U.S. government for six times, and I am looking forward to my seventh.”
The epidemic situation in the United States is still not optimistic.
However, Fauci still does not seem optimistic about epidemic prevention and control in the short term. He said the current surge is more severe than the outbreak just broke out earlier this year, and if people fail to comply with official advice, such as avoiding social gatherings, the holiday season will pose risks.
“The situation in the United States will be bad in January and the epidemic is expected to peak,” he warned in an interview with the media.
At least two to two and a half weeks from the trip (Thanksgiving) and maybe even three weeks later, you see a peak,” he said, usually in about two weeks, beginning to see an increase in cases, followed by an increase in hospitalizations and then an increase in deaths.
States in some regions will likely again need temporary “violent” and “draconian” measures, such as lockdowns or banning certain actions, to protect the health care system as the coronavirus pandemic is spreading rapidly, according to Fauci, because the country is facing “a wave of growth, another wave of growth.”
According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the number and death toll of COVID-19 infections in the United States have continued to rise in recent weeks, with the number of new cases per day exceeding 200,000 for at least three consecutive days.
The number of people hospitalized for COVID-19 in the United States also exceeded 100,000 for four consecutive days. For the first time since the outbreak began, there have been an average of more than 2,000 coronavirus deaths per week in the United States, and there are currently 280,000 deaths.
Biden warned in this week’s interview that due to lack of attention, an additional 250,000 people are expected to die from the coronavirus between now and January.
According to the project evaluation of the Institute of Health Measurement and Evaluation (IHME) of the University of Washington in Seattle, the epidemic in the United States will continue to escalate and peak in mid-January or late next year.
