Dr. Anthony Fauci will never, ever miss an opportunity to veer left of optimism and view things through the most cautious, guarded, pessimistic lens he has tucked away in his doctor kit.
Case in point, his appearance Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press.
The 80-year old infectious disease expert felt he needed to ‘warn’ Americans against COVID-19 complacency, even in the midst of plummeting numbers of infections.
While Fauci only drinks from half-empty glasses and has risen to Picasso type performances when it comes to his ability to paint worse-case and doomsday scenarios, there are other highly educated, accomplished, and much much younger doctors and scientists that do not work for the federal government who say herd immunity is around the corner.
“Not so fast” Fauci said Sunday. He wanted to make sure he pounded home the point, yet again, that any American foolish or hopeful enough to think we’re out of the woods when it comes to big numbers of COVID cases was making a big mistake. “We’re not,” he said.
“Because the baseline of daily infections is still very, very high. It’s not the 300,000 to 400,000 that we had some time ago, but we want to get that baseline really, really, really low before we start thinking that we are out of the woods.”
Okay. Well, Fauci won’t like this, but there’s evidence indicating something much different. CNBC analyzed data from Johns Hopkins University, and reported that the 7-day moving average of new infections was 71,717 Saturday. That is less than half of the new infections daily that were registered in early February.
That’s what is called progress. And reason for optimism. And if things continue to improve, Dr. Fauci, the highest-paid federal government employee and one of, if not the oldest, won’t find himself being invited on television news programs anymore.
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