Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Friday that he believes many Americans will begin holding group meetings long before President Joe Biden’s Independence Day target.
In an interview with Squawk Box, the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner said he thought Biden’s timeline in his Thursday primetime speech was too conservative compared to how people would actually behave. .
“I think most Americans will gather long before July,” said Gottlieb, who led the FDA during the Trump administration from 2017 to 2019. He is now a member of Pfizer’s board of directors, which makes him one of three Covids. vaccines disposed of for emergency use in the United States
Biden’s speech on the pandemic on Thursday night tried to highlight the collective tax that Covid has taken over in the last year, while offering two public health goals for the future. First: Guidance states that all adults be eligible for coronavirus vaccines by May 1. Second: A goal for Americans to gather safely in small groups with friends and loved ones to celebrate July 4th.
“I think we should provide public health advice that is consistent with where people are,” Gottlieb said. “[When] people feel that the risk decreases because they have been vaccinated, because they see that the level of infections decreases in many parts of the country, they will be willing to take more risks because they feel that their vulnerability decreases. And you know what? They are right. He predicted: “People will come out in the summer and they will come out long before July.”
The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on Gottlieb’s comments.
Earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidelines that fully vaccinated people can gather safely indoors with other fully vaccinated people – and some unvaccinated people – without masks or social distances.
The guidance came as US states lifted pandemic-era restrictions in recent weeks as vaccinations unfolded and daily coronavirus infections fell well below their January highs. However, senior health officials in the Biden administration have warned that the decline in cases is beginning to level off, with states arguing that they should be more cautious about removing capacity restrictions for businesses and masking mandates.
Last Friday, Gottlieb said mask warrants should be the last policies states and localities lift after Texas and Mississippi announced the end of face-covering rules.
Overall, the US has an average of 53,798 new cases a day over the past seven days, according to a CNBC analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University. It was down 15% from a week ago. New US cases totaled 49,356 on Thursday, down nearly 84 percent from a one-day record on Jan. 2.
A key factor in helping to slow the spread of the virus is increasing the level of immunity in the US population, Gottlieb said. He estimated that about half of the US population has some form of protective immunity to coronavirus, taking into account both diagnosed and undiagnosed infections, along with those that have been vaccinated.
About 64 million Americans have received at least one dose of Covid vaccine, equivalent to about 19 percent of the U.S. population of 330 million people, according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One in 10 Americans is completely vaccinated.
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which Americans have been receiving since December, require two vaccines for complete protection against Covid development. However, studies suggest that some immunity is created after the initial dose. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the latest to enter the US market, is just one shot.
The United States has about 29.3 million confirmed cases of coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins. The real number is higher than that, Gottlieb said, reiterating the position he has held since the early days of the pandemic. He believes that not every person who was infected was tested and had a positive result.
“We’re probably diagnosing one of four infections, maybe a little better than that right now,” said Gottlieb, who previously estimated that about a third of Americans could have taken Covid. “So we are over 50%” of the population with some form of immunity, he added.
“At this level, you will not get such a rapid transfer of infections. It is not really the immunity of the herd, but you will get immunity in the population,” he said.
Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and is a board member of Pfizer, the genetic testing start-up Tempus, the medical technology company Aetion and the biotechnology company. Illumina. He is also co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings‘ and Royal Caribbean“The panel with healthy sails”.