President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said that he does not expect the United States to return to lockdowns, despite the growing risks of COVID-19 infections posed by the Delta variant.
Speaking on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, Dr. Fauci warned of “some pain and suffering in the future” as coronavirus cases continue to rise, but he said he doesn’t foresee more lockdowns in the U.S.
Fauci added that things will only get worse because so many Americans are still unvaccinated. With the Delta variant fueling an increase in COVID-19 cases, and vaccination rates beginning to pick up across the nation, still, only about 60 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated.
The Associated Press is reporting that Fauci argued that the unvaccinated are affecting others because they’re “allowing the propagation and the spread of the outbreak.”
“We have 100 million people in this country who are eligible to be vaccinated who are not getting vaccinated,” he said.
Fauci also pushed back at critics that insist that getting vaccinated is an individual decision. Fauci said that those who choose not to get vaccinated are actually impacting the rights of Americans particularly prone to infection because they’re “encroaching on their individual rights” by “making them vulnerable.”
The average number of new cases reported each day has nearly doubled in the past 10 days and the number of hospitalized patients in many states is surging, according to a Reuters analysis.
Dr. Fauci also pointed out the number of Americans getting vaccinated has increased. And it is basically a change in the messengers and not necessarily the message.
“I’m also gratified by seeing that even people who in the beginning were reluctant to promote vaccination are now doing it. I mean, people like Republicans like Stephen Scalise or even Governor DeSantis are talking about getting people vaccinated.”