Anthony Fauci said on Tuesday that the US is approaching the “threshold” of learning to live with the COVID-19 as a tolerable disease; despite rising cases and record-high hospitalizations.
Speaking to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Fauci, the top US scientist said eliminating COVID-19 is unrealistic. Also, that “Omicron, with its extraordinary, unprecedented degree of efficiency of transmissibility, will ultimately find just about everybody.”
Given the virus’s contagiousness, proclivity for mutating into new variants, and enormous pool of uninfected people, “there’s no way we’re going to eradicate this,” he said.
Those who have had their vaccines up to date are still protected from serious consequences; although vaccine efficacy against infection has decreased.
But “as Omicron goes up and down,” the country will hopefully enter a new phase “where there’ll be enough protection in (the) community, enough drugs available so that when someone does get infected and is in a high-risk group, it will be very easy to treat that person,” said Fauci.
“When we get there, there’s that transition, and we may be on the threshold of that right now,” he said. While also stressing that the country currently recording almost a million infections a day. Nearly 150,000 people in hospital, and more than 1,200 daily deaths, “we’re not at that point.”
COVID-19 hospitalizations
Official data revealed that there are presently 145,982 COVID-19 hospitalizations. Many of them are presumably in the hospital “with” rather than “because of” the illness.
In an uncharacteristically passionate congressional speech, the 81-year-old head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases lambasted vaccination skeptic Republican Senator Rand Paul for unleashing “crazies” who were threatening his life and tormenting his family.
President Joe Biden’s top officials, including chief medical advisor Fauci, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Rochelle Walenksy, and acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock, were to appear before the Senate regarding the pandemic.
Many lawmakers questioned Fauci about the lack of adequate testing and the unclear new guidelines in the US on how sick people should release from covid isolation. Paul has railed against vaccine mandates and refuses to get the vaccines. He claimed Fauci was personally responsible for people’s deaths.
“Fire Dr. Fauci”
The great majority of those killed were unvaccinated. Health experts, including Fauci, have continuously advocated for vaccines. But Paul blamed Fauci for hundreds of thousands of deaths since Biden assumed office.
“You personally attack me and with absolutely not a shred of evidence of anything you say,” Fauci responded.
“All of a sudden that kindles the crazies out there and I have life threats upon my life, harassment of my family and my children with obscene phone calls.”
Fauci recalled an incident in late December. A man armed with an AR-15 assault weapon and many rounds of ammunition was apprehended on his way from California to the nation’s capital, Washington.
The individual claimed he wanted to assassinate Fauci because he claimed the blood was on the scientists’ hands.
Fauci then displayed a printout from Paul’s website, which featured the banner “Fire Dr. Fauci” alongside an invitation to donate to the Republican’s campaign.
Omicron causes severe cases at a lesser rate than Delta. But because of its great infectiousness, it is affecting a larger number of people.
According to data from New York state, the age-adjusted vaccination efficacy against hospitalization was 92 percent by December 27.
