Dr Anthony Fauci on Sunday advocated raising the bar for his projections on herd immunity to COVID-19, insisting it has only been offering “estimates” all along.
“We have to realize that we have to be humble and realize what we don’t know. These are pure estimates, “Fauci told CNN presenter Dana Bash on” State of the Union. “
Fauci in an interview with the New York Times last week predicted that up to 90% of Americans need to be vaccinated or infected to get herd immunity.
Citing polls on COVID-19 vaccines, Fauci suggested it be made public with the new projections, in part because the country was finally ready to hear it, according to the newspaper.
But when asked on Sunday why “to begin with he was not direct with the American public,” Fauci denied that he had been covering up his predictions.
“No, Dana, I don’t think it can be interpreted as straight or not,” the director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases said.
In Sunday’s interview, he said he now predicts the range to range from 75 to 85 percent of the population.
“The calculations I made 70, 75 percent, is a scope. The range will range from 70 to 85 percent, ”he said.
“The reason I started saying 70, 75 percent, I got it to 85. It’s not a big leap.”
He noted that he had incorporated into the new calculation what experts know about measles, which he believes is more contagious than coronavirus.
“When 90 per cent of the threshold population vaccinated with measles is lowered, an advance against herd immunity begins to be seen,” he said.
“So I made a calculation that COVID-19 is not as transmissible as measles … I imagine you would need something that needs something less than 90 percent; here I came to 85,” he continued.
But when asked whether he “based his recommendation on voting and what people could accept,” Fauci acknowledged that it was “a bit of that.”
“I want to encourage people in the United States and around the world to get vaccinated and so many others [people] as we get vaccinated, we will get closer to the herd’s immunity. The bottom line is that it is an estimate. I gave a rank, ”Fauci said.