Frustration as Fauci says it’s ‘too soon to tell’ if families can gather for Christmas – and says immigrants are ‘absolutely not’ responsible for COVID spread
- Dr. Anthony Fauci said it was ‘too soon’ to say whether Americans can gather for Christmas in an interview Sunday on Face the Nation
- CBS News’ Margaret Brennan asked Fauci about the December holiday after he voiced cautious optimism about the country’s COVID-19 numbers going down
- Fauci warned that the country needed to remain vigilant
- ‘You know, Margaret, it’s just too soon to tell,’ Fauci said about Christmas
- He added, ‘We’ve just got to keep concentrating on continuing to get those numbers down and not try to jump ahead by weeks or months’
- On CNN’s State of the Union, Fauci knocked down a belief on the right that immigrants share a high degree of responsibility for the spread of COVID-19
- ‘Certainly immigrants can get infected, but they’re not the driving force of this, let’s face reality here,’ Fauci said
Dr. Anthony Fauci said it was ‘too soon’ to say whether Americans can gather for Christmas in an interview Sunday on Face the Nation.
CBS News’ Margaret Brennan asked Fauci about the December holiday after he voiced cautious optimism about the country’s COVID-19 numbers going down – however warned that the country needed to remain viligant.
‘You know, Margaret, it’s just too soon to tell,’ President Joe Biden’s chief medical expert said about Christmas. ‘We’ve just got to keep concentrating on continuing to get those numbers down and not try to jump ahead by weeks or months and say what we’re going to do at a particular time.’
Fauci was doing the rounds on the Sunday shows.
On CNN’s State of the Union, he knocked down a belief stoked by Republicans saying that immigrants were ‘absolutely not’ driving the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S.
Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday on Face the Nation that it was ‘too soon’ to say whether American families can gather for Christmas
‘When you have 700,000 Americans dead and millions and million and millions of Americans getting infected, you don’t want to look outside to the problem. The problem is within our own country,’ Fauci said. ‘Certainly immigrants can get infected, but they’re not the driving force of this, let’s face reality here.’
CNN’s Dana Bash had asked Fauci about a Kaiser Family Foundation poll that found 55 per cent of Republicans and 40 per cent of unvaccinated respondents blamed immigrants and tourists for bringing COVID-19 into the country and for the country’s high case rates.
Republicans also ranked immigrants as the biggest factor impacting COVID-19 transmission.
Fauci was also asked about Title 42, which allows the U.S. government to quickly deport border crossers due to the ongoing pandemic.
‘I am not as familiar with the intricacies of that to make any comment about that rule,’ Fauci first said before adding, ‘my feeling has always been that focusing on immigrants, expelling them or what have you, is not the solution to an outbreak.’
Bash also asked Fauci if he believed former President Donald Trump should get a COVID-19 booster shot on-camera.
Fauci didn’t immediately say yes.
‘Well, first of all, I would think everybody should get their boosters anyway, whether the president does it or not,’ Fauci answered. ‘I am sure that there are people who religiously follow what former President Trump says and does, that that – they may look at that and say, OK, I will get vaccinated.’
Fauci also offered a ‘we will see’ and ‘I don’t know.’
‘I just think we need to appeal to the rationale of why it’s important, whether Trump gets vaccinated or not,’ he continued.
‘There are very, very good reasons, beyond someone specifically getting vaccinated, for people to get vaccinated with a booster shot,’ Fauci said. ‘The protection is waning, as we know. And boosters are going to be something that will be very helpful to contain the outbreak and to protect people.’
‘That’s the reason why they should get boosted,’ Fauci added.