Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Friday that he thinks many Americans will hold group meetings before targeting President Joe Biden’s Independence Day.
In an interview on ‘Squawk Box’, the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner said he believes the timeline Biden outlined in his first speech on Thursday was too conservative compared to the way people will behave.
“I think the majority of Americans are going to meet long before July,” said Gottlieb, who led the FDA during the Trump administration from 2017 to 2019. He now serves on the board of Pfizer, which is one of three Covid members vaccinated for emergency use in the US
Biden’s speech Thursday night on the pandemic sought to highlight the collective toll Covid has taken over the past year, while also offering two forward-looking targets for public health. The first: The instruction is that all adults are eligible for coronavirus vaccines by May 1st. The second: A goal for Americans to get together safely in small groups with friends and loved ones to celebrate the fourth of July.
“I think we need to give advice on public health that is in line with where people are,” Gottlieb said. “[When] people feel that the risk decreases because they have been vaccinated, because they see infection levels decrease in many parts of the country, they will be willing to take more risks because they feel that their vulnerability is decreasing. And you know what? They looked right. “He predicted, ‘People are going to be out this summer and they’ll be out before July. ‘
The White House did not immediately respond to a request from CNBC for comment on Gottlieb’s comments.
Earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidelines stating that fully vaccinated people can safely congregate with other fully vaccinated people – and certain non-vaccinated individuals – without masks or social distance. .
The guidelines came when U.S. states lifted restrictions on the pandemic period in recent weeks as vaccinations begin and daily coronavirus infections fall well below their January highs. However, top health officials in the Biden government have warned that the decline in business is starting to slow down, and the warring states need to be more careful about lifting capacity constraints on businesses and mandating mandates.
Gottlieb said last Friday that mask mandates should be the last policies to take states and localities after Texas and Mississippi announced the end of their face-covering rules.
According to the CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins University data, the U.S. average averages 53,798 new cases per day over the past seven days. It is 15% lower compared to a week ago. New U.S. affairs on Thursday amounted to 49,356, which was nearly 84% lower than the one-day record on January 2nd.
An important factor that helps slow the spread of the virus is increasing levels of immunity in the U.S. population, Gottlieb said. He estimated that about half of the American population has some form of protective immunity to the coronavirus, which takes into account both diagnosed and undiagnosed infections along with those who have been vaccinated.
About 64 million Americans received at least one dose of Covid vaccine, equivalent to about 19% of the U.S. population of 330 million people, according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One in ten Americans is fully vaccinated.
Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines, which Americans have been receiving since December, need two shots for full protection against the development of Covid. However, studies suggest that some immunity is created after the initial dose. Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, the latest entrant to the US market, is just a single shot away.
According to Johns Hopkins, the U.S. has approximately 29.3 million confirmed coronavirus cases. The true number is higher than that, Gottlieb said, reiterating a position he has held since the early days of the pandemic. He argues that not every person who became infected was tested and that their positive result was recorded.
“We probably diagnose one in four infections, maybe a little better than that at the moment,” said Gottlieb, who previously estimated that about one-third of Americans may have gotten Covid. “So we are more than 50% ‘of the population with some form of immunity, he added.
“At that level, you will not transmit the infections as quickly. It is not a herd immunity, but an immunity in the population,” he said.
Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a contributor to CNBC and is a member of the boards of directors of Pfizer, the drafting of genetic tests Tempus, the healthcare company Aetion and the biotechnology company. Illumina. He also serves as co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings‘and Royal Caribbean‘s “Healthy Sail Panel.”