Chief White House Medical Adviser Anthony Fauci has a grim warning for those who doubt the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic. During a recent interview, Fauci predicted that America could record anywhere between 100,000 and 200,000 COVID-19 cases by the fall.
“Remember, just a couple of months ago, we were having about 10,000 cases a day,” Fauci said.
“I think you’re likely going to wind up somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 cases.”
Fauci’s prediction is backed up by a recent spike in COVID-19 cases. Recently, America recorded a seven-day rolling average of 79,951 COVID-19 cases per day. Just three weeks ago, that figure was below 20,000 new COVID-19 cases per day.
Fauci explains that this recent spike has been propelled by those who are eligible to be vaccinated, but have decided not to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Many health experts believe unvaccinated adults are the cause of increasingly contagious COVID-19 variants such as the delta, delta plus and lambda variants.
“What we’re seeing, because of this increase in transmissibility, and because we have about 93 million people in this country who are eligible to get vaccinated who don’t get vaccinated — that you have a significant pool of vulnerable people,” Fauci added.
Just 50.3% of Americans have been fully vaccinated against the virus. While this number is far ahead of other developed nations, it still leaves much of American society vulnerable to stronger variants.
“If we don’t crush the outbreak to the point of getting the overwhelming proportion of the population vaccinated, then what will happen is the virus will continue to smolder through the fall into the winter, giving it ample chance to get a variant which, quite frankly, we’re very lucky that the vaccines that we have now do very well against the variants — particularly against severe illness,” Fauci added.
“We’re very fortunate that that’s the case. There could be a variant that’s lingering out there that can push aside delta.”
