Dr. Anthony Fauci on Sunday defended raising the bar for his herd immunity projections for COVID-19 – insisting that he’s been just “guessing” the whole time.
“We have to realize that we have to be humble and realize what we don’t know. These are pure estimates, ”Fauci told CNN anchor Dana Bash on“ State of the Union ”.
Fauci predicted in an interview with the New York Times last week that as many as 90 percent of Americans must be vaccinated or infected to achieve herd immunity.
Citing polls on COVID-19 vaccines, Fauci suggested he make the new projections public, in part because the country was finally ready, according to the paper.
But when he asked on Sunday why he was “not being fair to the American public at first,” Fauci denied covering his predictions with sugar.
“No actually, Dana, I don’t think it can be interpreted as straight or not,” said the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
In Sunday’s interview, he said he now predicts the reach is somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of the population.
“The calculations I’ve made 70, 75 percent, it’s a range. The range will be anywhere from 70 to 85 percent, ”he said.
“The reason I started saying 70, 75 percent was because I took it to 85. That’s not a big jump.”
He noted that in the new calculation he had taken into account what experts know about the measles, which he says is more contagious than the coronavirus.
“If you get below 90 percent of the vaccinated population with measles, you start to see a breakthrough against herd immunity,” he said.
“So I made a calculation that COVID-19 is nowhere near as transmissible as measles … I imagine you need something you need, just under the 90 percent – that’s where I got to 85, he continued.
But when pressed whether he was “basing his recommendation on opinion polls and what people could accept,” Fauci acknowledged it was “a bit of that.”
“I want to encourage the people of the United States and worldwide to get vaccinated and as much as possible [people] if we are possibly vaccinated, we get closer to the immunity of the herd. The bottom line is that it is an estimate. I’ve given a range, ”Fauci said.