Anthony Fauci Anthony FauciFauci warns US needs to 'hunker down' for fall, winter: 'It's not going to be easy' Three ways to keep communities moving forward Poll: Most Americans wouldn't take a COVID-19 vaccine before the election MORE, the nation's top infectious diseases expert, warned Thursday that the U.S. should prepare for a difficult few months in the fight against COVID-19 as flu season approaches.
“We need to hunker down and get through this fall and winter because it’s not going to be easy,” Fauci said during a panel discussion with doctors from Harvard Medical School.
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases went on to warn against underestimating the pandemic’s potential to cause continued destruction.
Fauci, who was one of the world’s leading AIDS researchers in the 1980s, compared the coronavirus pandemic to the early days of HIV when the epidemic started with a few gay men to decades later with millions of deaths and infections.
“We've been through this before,” he said. “Don't ever, ever underestimate the potential of the pandemic. And don't try and look at the rosy side of things."
His comments come after tapes released Wednesday by journalist Bob Woodward revealed that President Trump Donald John TrumpWarren: I feel 'deep down fury' that Trump downplayed pandemic NYT reporter removed from Trump rally in Michigan Trump says he didn't share classified information following Woodward book MORE admitted in an interview to purposely downplaying the pandemic in the early months of the virus because he didn’t want to “create a panic.”
During Thursday’s panel, Fauci added that vaccine trials are “progressing very well,” and repeated his prediction that one will likely be available by the end of the year or by early 2021.
Fauci also reiterated that different U.S. cities should expect to see post-Labor Day surges, with the expert saying last week that the country was heading into the fall with an “unacceptably high” level of COVID-19 cases.
“We're right around 40,000 new cases, that's an unacceptably high baseline,” Fauci said at the time. “We've got to get it down, I'd like to see it 10,000 or less, hopefully less.”
coheedcollapse on September 11st, 2020 at 03:22 UTC »
People I know who were taking this seriously in the previous months have now totally given up on taking any measures except those which are enforced.
I'm still distancing, a few friends are, but it doesn't seem like anyone else is.
I think we are in for a really, really bad fall and winter. If this shit gets out of control, it's going to be impossible to get people back to lockdown again.
gojennyo on September 11st, 2020 at 03:03 UTC »
Combine this with living through terrifying apocalypse like sky's while living near California's wildfires. Last year I thought to myself that it couldn't get much worse. Oh how sad I am that I was wrong. The fires are worse, the orange sky, dark during the day in the middle of a pandemic has me stressed and depressed.
BenGrowinGreens on September 10th, 2020 at 22:23 UTC »
Taiwan gave citizens 30$ a day to hunker down.
Whats our incentive? Gotta work. Gotta take care of the kids. Gotta send them to school. Gotta socialize and exercise for mental health. 7 months we've been at this and our leaders show they're incapable of containing this or persuading the nefarious to comply.
Let's just keep giving out advice with no action or action plan that suggests all of the costs and responsibilities should be shouldered by citizens who were mostly struggling before this ever happened.
Where is our leadership? Oh thats right. Hunkering down (aka recessing) on 6 figure salaries.
Edit: Didnt expect this to blow up. So let me clarify -
The 30$ a day in taiwan was for a 2 week period in areas with enforced lockdowns and only to those affected by the virus - not every single citizen. Combined with other measures (like enforced quarantine by cellphone tracking with law enforcement, contact tracing, etc) and because they caught it very early on, this was very effective in halting the virus.
Source: https://m.dw.com/en/taiwan-coronavirus/a-52724523
Now, I'm not saying we should all get 30$ a day. I'm saying that combined with enforced lockdown; incentivizing citizens can be an effective way to get them to quarantine for a short period of time - for whatever reason you want them to (exposure, positive test, high risk, community spread, etc). Preferably part of that incentive would be financial.
Lets say it WAS 30$ per day? ~420$ per person for 2 weeks is not very much money - however if the hunkering down is only for 2 weeks - it makes more sense then wtf were doing now...and we'd be living relatively normal lives already.