Dr Anthony Fauci warned of a sharp death toll from the coronavirus, especially among vulnerable people, as the US allows the infections to sweep the country in an attempt to achieve possible herd immunity.
“If everyone has the contract, even with the relatively high percentage of people without symptoms … many people will die,” the expert from the top infectious diseases said during a live Instagram session Thursday with actor Matthew McConaughey, CNN reported .
“You are looking at the United States of America with our obesity epidemic as it was. With the number of people with hypertension. With the number of people with diabetes. If everyone became infected, the death toll would be enormous and completely unacceptable, “said Fauci, 79, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Re-immunity is achieved when a large portion of the population – about 70 percent to 90 percent – becomes immune to a virus, either through infection and recovery, or through inoculation.
At that point, it is harder for a virus to spread, so even people who are not infected or vaccinated have some protection.
It remains unclear whether survivors of coronavirus have immunity, or for how long, although some have suggested that allowing the disease rampant may help to achieve faster immunity, CNN reported.
Using such a tactic would also be disastrous for hospitals, which are exaggerated with patients.
More than 167,000 people have died from COVID-19 and more than 5.2 million have been infected in the US, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Over the next three weeks, the number of deaths nationwide will increase to a projected total of nearly 189,000, according to an ensemble forecast published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday.
At the high end of the projection, 201,431 people would have died by 5 Sept.
A previous ensemble forecast, published on July 23, projected about 164,477 coronavirus deaths by Saturday, according to CNN.
“You can’t go away from the numbers,” Fauci said in the 40-minute live Instagram session with the Oscar-winning actor. “You can’t keep away from the number of people who have died, the number of people who have been hospitalized, the stream we see.”
Fauci, a member of the White House Pandemic Task Force, addressed a variety of topics in the broad interview, including how concerned people should be about being infected by touching a doorknob.
He said it was not about sharing close physical space with an infected person, ABC News reported.
“OK, true-false: sunlight kills the virus?” Frege McConaughey.
“It does,” Fauci responded, backed by a theory put forward by President Trump. “That’s the truth.”
McConaughey also asked Fauci if he had invested millions of dollars in a fax machine, prompting the doctor to cry.
‘Matthew, no. I got zero! I’m a government worker. I have a government salary, ‘he said.
.
