Dr Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Monday that he believes coronavirus cases in the US will continue to decline in the spring and summer, which will for the time being enable Americans to alleviate certain precautions from the pandemic.
However, in an interview on ‘Squawk Box’, the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner did not quite agree with the recent opening in The Wall Street Journal entitled “We’ve Heard Immunity in April.” It was written by dr. Marty Makary, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, has been unleashing the discussion since its publication Thursday.
U.S. Covid cases have dropped 77% in the past six weeks, Makary says in the article, and he claims that decline is largely because the level of natural immunity in the U.S. population is “almost certainly” higher than antibody studies indicate. Taking this into account with the rate of vaccinations, Makary writes: “I expect Covid to mostly disappear in April so that Americans can resume normal life.”
Gottlieb said he did not necessarily agree with some of the numbers Makary used to substantiate his argument, but said: “I think the sentiment is right.”
Makary writes that about 55% of the people in the country have a natural immunity to a previous coronavirus infection. While agreeing that Johns Hopkins’ confirmed $ 28.1 million U.S. case is a countdown, Gottlieb told CNBC he believes about 120 million people – or about 36% of the U.S. population – are infected with the coronavirus throughout the entire pandemic. is.
After considering the vaccination data, Gottlieb estimated that about 40% of Americans currently have antibodies from previous infection or vaccination – a percentage that will increase as more people are vaccinated. According to the CDC, 43.6 million Americans who have received at least one dose of the two-shot Covid vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer have received emergency approval from the FDA in December.
‘If you reach 40% or 50% of the population with some form of protective immunity, you do not have herd immunity, but you have enough immunity in the population that it [virus] just does not transfer so easily, ‘Gottlieb said.
‘I do think that if we get into the hot weather because we vaccinate more of the population and given the fact that at least a third of Americans have it, I think infection levels will drop dramatically. in the course of spring and summer, ‘Gottlieb said.
White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci previously said that 75% to 85% of the population would need to develop immunity to create an “umbrella” of protection. CDC officials also recently said that more than 85% of people need to be covered to establish so-called herd immunity as a rapidly spreading virus variant, such as B117, which was first reported in the UK, the dominant strain word. in the usa
The presence of more contagious virus variants means that some parts of the U.S. have higher infection rates this summer than they otherwise would have, Gottlieb added. “But I do not think it changes the overall trajectory.”
If the track does make money and the coming months are a “low appearance environment”, Gottlieb said he expects children to be able to go safely into summer camp, for example. “I think people are going to do a lot of things this summer, a very pent-up demand for consumer spending,” he said.
“I think we’ll have to take some precautions in the fall, but we’ll be back to do things again. Then, when we get into the deep winter as it starts circulating again … I think come December, we can start pulling back, “Gottlieb said.” That does not mean we are going to do closures and do what we did [past] December, but that means we may not be holding holiday parties, but that the board meetings in December may be Zoom rather than personal meetings. ‘
Gottlieb stressed that he believes that the US recovery from the pandemic will not be a ‘linear progression’, with coronavirus risk gradually declining month after month in a row. Winter months can be more challenging because it is a respiratory pathogen, he warns. “As soon as it becomes winter again in 2021, 2022, we will have to take certain precautions. I think if it is going to be a normal time for the next 12 months, it will probably be this spring and summer.”
Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a contributor to CNBC and is a member of the boards of Pfizer, drafting 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.