Dr. Anthony Fauci Friday strongly disagreed with President Donald Trump's contention during a Michigan campaign rally that the United States is "rounding the corner" on coronavirus, as the statistics are still "disturbing."
He also told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell he does not believe the United States will return to a state of normalcy until the middle of or even until late in 2021.
"By the time you mobilize the distribution of the vaccinations and you get the majority or more of the population vaccinated and protected, that's likely not going to happen until the mid- or end of 2021," Fauci told Mitchell, adding that the United States won't be back to "normalcy" until at least that point.
Fauci, a key member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, also said he disagrees with Trump because the United States' caseload is plateauing at around 40,000 new cases a day, with deaths at around 1,000, and that is an uncomfortably high level.
He also said he's concerned heading into the fall season, as people will be indoors more.
"That's not good for a respiratory-borne virus," said Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "You don't want to start off already with a baseline that's so high."
He added that he's concerned about increasing rates in states such as North and South Dakota and Montana, and he feels that the country will be in a "more precarious situation" this fall and winter if the new case numbers don't start to drop.
Fauci said he's also concerned about a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study showing that adults testing positive for COVID-19 were twice as likely to have reported dining inside a restaurant before getting sick.
"If you go indoors in a restaurant, whatever capacity, 25, 50% or what have you, indoors absolutely increases the risk," said Fauci. "If we want to get back to the normal existence of being able to enjoy being in a restaurant, the best way to do that is to get the community level of infection at the lowest level possible."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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