July 13, 2024
Source: Newsweek
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Fauci Says Unvaccinated Americans Responsible For Up To 300,000 Deaths
Top immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci revealed on Saturday during an appearance on CNN that his "next worst nightmare" would be a "repeat" of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fauci served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for 38 years before retiring in 2022. During the pandemic, he was one of the lead members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force under former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden.
"Unfortunately, my worst nightmare came true with COVID. When I think about my next worst nightmare, it's a repeat of what we've just seen," Fauci told CNN's Christiane Amanpour when he was asked about recent warnings regarding the spread of Dengue fever and avian flu. "Whether that's a pandemic influenza or another coronavirus that's respiratory borne...that efficiently spreads from person-to-person that can make you very sick and kill you. That's the thing that can be a devastating pandemic."
He added on Saturday: "There are very few other infections that have those characteristics with easy transmissibility with a devastating degree of mortality."
Between 2020 and 2023, COVID-19 killed more than 1.1 million Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and killed more than 5 million people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). At the height of the pandemic, nearly 26,000 deaths were recorded in the United States for the week ending January 9, 2021.
Fauci, who has long had a tumultuous relationship with Trump and conservatives, was recently back in the spotlight in June when he provided testimony about the country's response to the pandemic. The testimony grew tense at one point, with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican and close ally to Trump, saying that he "belongs in prison."
He also has a new book called, On Call: A Doctor's Journey in Public Service. The book details his complicated relationship with the former president throughout the pandemic, with the disease emerging as a politically divisive issue in recent years.
Individual COVID-19 cases are no longer tracked, but health officials analyze wastewater to monitor where the virus may be spreading. The CDC says current wastewater levels are "low" nationwide, but are inching up, with higher levels noted in Florida, Utah, California and Hawaii, according to a report in late June by the Associated Press.
Experts recently warned of a potential "summer wave" of COVID-19 cases as a new coronavirus variant rose to dominance across the U.S.
Nicknamed "FLiRT," due to the positions of the mutations in their spike proteins, the new class of COVID subvariants has quickly spread. However, at present, CDC data suggests that deaths and hospitalizations are down due to the disease.
Last month, the CDC recommended new COVID vaccinations for all Americans this fall. Most Americans have some degree of immunity from being infected, from past vaccinations or both, making the need for shots not as dire as it was amid the pandemic, according to health officials.
Americans have been told to expect a yearly update to COVID-19 vaccines, similar to fall recommendations for a flu shot to protect against the latest flu strains.
As of last month, less than one-quarter of U.S. adults and 14 percent of children were up to date in their COVID shots, according to the AP. Surveys show less Americans think COVID-19 is a major health threat to the population and many indicate that their doctors aren't urging them to get the latest vaccine.
When reached by Newsweek via email Saturday, a spokesperson for the CDC said, "COVID-19 activity tends to fluctuate with the seasons, meaning it has some seasonal patterns. Data from four years of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths show that COVID-19 has winter peaks (most recently in late December 2023 and early January 2024), but also summer peaks (most recently in July and August of 2023)."
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