Dr Anthony Fauci made an apology for comments made during an NPR interview, where he indicated the US may not have COVID-19 under control for another year.
During the interview, the controversial doctor said, “as we get into the fall and the winter, we could start to really get some good control over this as we get into 2022.”
This comment set off speculation and created confusion as to a path forward for America to get back to normal. Fauci about-faced during an interview on CNN, when he said “I have to apologize. When I listened to the tape, I meant to say the spring of 2022. So I did misspeak.”
Fauci went on to say, “In the conversation with Mary Louise Kelly, she was saying, when do I think we can get some control. I said if we can get through this winter and get really the majority, overwhelming majority, of the 90 million people who have not been vaccinated, vaccinated, I hope we could start to get some good control in the spring of 2022. I didn’t mean the fall. I misspoke, my bad.”
Fauci went on to use the opportunity to highlight his perspective of the importance of being vaccinated. he said, “We thought we were going to have that degree of freedom as we got into the fourth of July and the summer. And then along comes a sucker punch with the Delta variant which is extraordinary in its ability to spread from person to person. So we hope we’ll be there at the time frame I mentioned, correctly being the spring of 2022, but there’s no guarantee because it’s up to us.”
Fauci also said, “If we keep lingering without getting those people vaccinated that should be vaccinated, this thing could linger on, leading to the development of another variant which could complicate things.”
