Dr. Anthony Fauci isn’t gonna be high-fiving anyone anytime soon.
The top pandemic doctor said Thursday he was “somewhat serious” when he said Americans “may never shake hands again,” and suggested the nation faces a long and difficult battle with the coronavirus pandemic.
“When we attempt to get back to normal, we have to have in place the ability, when it starts to try and rear its ugly head, we can absolutely suppress it,” Fauci told NBC News.
Fauci said he was optimistic that the U.S. might be able to limit the death toll to close to 60,000, much lower than the 100,000 or more that models predicted just a couple of weeks ago.
He dismissed conspiracy theories that the soaring toll is a liberal hoax, although he didn’t address reports that the actual death toll is much higher because people who die at home in the pandemic are not necessarily being counted.
He appeared to pour cold water on the idea touted by President Donald Trump and some of his right-wing supporters that the nation can largely return to normal by May 1.
The virus “determines the timetable,” Fauci said, repeating a mantra that he has used to push back against Trump’s impatience to roll back social-distancing edicts.
He also took an oblique slap at Trump for failing to adequately plan for a pandemic. The president dismantled a White House team that tracked infectious diseases, blew off early warnings from aides about coronavirus and repeatedly downplayed its threat to Americans.
“When you’re talking about getting back to normal, we know now that we can get hit by a catastrophic outbreak like this,” Fauci said. “It can happen again, so we really need to be prepared to respond in a much more vigorous way.”
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