Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Monday that he believes US coronavirus cases will continue to decline in the spring and summer, allowing Americans to ease some pandemic precautions for the time being.
However, in an interview with Squawk Box, the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner stopped disagreeing with the recent article in The Wall Street Journal entitled “We’ll Hear Immunity by April.” It was written by Dr. Marty Makary, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and has sparked discussion since it was published Thursday.
Covid cases in the United States have dropped 77 percent in the past six weeks, Makary notes in the article, saying the decline is largely due to the fact that the level of natural immunity in the US population is “almost certainly” higher than antibody studies suggest. When he considers this according to the pace of vaccinations, Makary writes: “I expect Covid to disappear for the most part by April, allowing Americans to resume normal life.”
Gottlieb said he “does not necessarily agree” with some of the numbers Makary used to support his arguments, but added: “I think the feeling is right.”
Makary writes that about 55% of people in the country have natural immunity to a previous coronavirus infection. Although he agreed that the total number of cases confirmed by Johns Hopkins in the United States of 28.1 million is insufficient, Gottlieb told CNBC that he believes that about 120 million people – or about 36% of the American population – have been infected with coronavirus throughout the pandemic.
After considering vaccination data, Gottlieb estimated that about 40% of US residents now have antibodies from previous infection or inoculation – a percentage that will increase as more people are vaccinated. According to the CDC, 43.6 million Americans have received at least one dose of two-shot Covid vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer since receiving an emergency authorization for emergency use from the FDA in December.
“When you reach 40% or 50% of the population with some form of protective immunity, you don’t have herd immunity, but you have enough immunity in the population that it [virus] it just doesn’t transfer as easily, “Gottlieb said.
“I think as we get warmer, as we vaccinate more people, and given that at least a third of Americans have had this, I think infection levels will drop dramatically during the spring and summer,” he said. said Gottlieb.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House chief adviser, previously said that 75% to 85% of the population should develop immunity to create a protective “umbrella”. CDC officials also said recently that more than 85% of people should be covered to get so-called herd immunity if a rapidly spreading virus variant, such as B117, was first reported in the United States. The United Kingdom is becoming the dominant strain in the United States
The presence of several variants of the contagious virus means that some parts of the US have higher infection rates this summer “than they would have been otherwise,” Gottlieb added. “But I don’t think it changes the general trajectory.”
If this trajectory is maintained and is a “low prevalence environment” in the coming months, Gottlieb said he expects children to be able to safely attend summer camp, for example. “I think people will go out and do a lot of things this summer, a lot of requests for consumer spending,” he said.
“I think in the autumn we will have to take some precautions, but we will come back doing things. Then, as we enter the deep winter, because this is starting to circulate again … I think December is coming, it would be we could start retiring, “Gottlieb said. “This does not mean that we will stop and do what we have done [past] December, but it means we may not have holiday parties, December board meetings could be Zoom rather than in-person meetings. “
Gottlieb stressed that he believes that the US recovery from the pandemic will not be a “linear progression”, in which the risk of coronavirus constantly decreases month after month. The winter months could be more difficult because it is a respiratory pathogen, he warned. “Once winter returns in 2021, 2022, we will have to take some precautions. I think if it is a normal hour in the next 12 months, it will probably be this spring and summer.”
Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and a board member of Pfizer, a genetic testing start-up Tempus, Aetion medical technology company and biotechnology company Illumina. He is also co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings‘ and Royal CaribbeanThe healthy panel of the ship.