While Dr. Anthony Fauci doesn’t think we’ll go back into lockdown, he did say “things are going to get worse” due to the number of individuals who remain unvaccinated in the U.S.
“I don’t think we’re gonna see lockdowns. I think we have enough of the percentage of people in the country—not enough to crush the outbreak—but I believe enough to not allow us to get into the situation we were in last winter. But things are going to get worse,” Fauci said ABC’s This Week.
“We have 100 million people in this country who are eligible to be vaccinated who are not getting vaccinated. We are seeing an outbreak of the unvaccinated,” Fauci added while pointing to a daily surge in average cases.
“From the standpoint of illness, hospitalization, suffering, and death, the unvaccinated are much more vulnerable because the vaccinated are protected from severe illness, for the most part, but when you look at the country as a whole. And getting us back to normal, the unvaccinated, by not being vaccinated, are allowing the propagation and the spread of the outbreak which ultimately impacts everybody,” Fauci said.
An outbreak in Provincetown, Massachusetts has suggested that the delta variant is highly transmissible even with the vaccine, pushing the CDC to reinstate mask guidelines for vaccinated individuals. It seems symptoms among breakthrough cases are mild, with less than 0.08 percent of fully vaccinated Americans testing positive for the virus.
“That has much more to do with transmission,” Fauci said in reference to the guidelines. “You want them to wear a mask so that if in fact they do get infected, they don’t spread it to vulnerable people, perhaps in their own household, children, or people with underlying conditions.”
