Fauci 'misspoke' over fall 2022 deadline for COVID 'control'

Fauci flip-flops yet again! COVID tsar says he ‘misspoke’ when he said US would have ‘control’ of virus by fall 2022, claims it could be beaten by spring – then warns variant caused by unvaccinated could cause further chaos

• Dr. Anthony Fauci has corrected his claim that the US will ‘get control’ of the coronavirus pandemic by the fall of next year, saying ‘my bad’ after his error
• The National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases expert apologized, saying he ‘misspoke’ and the US can beat COVID by spring
• The infectious disease expert caused further confusion by warning there is ‘no guarantee’ the spring deadline will be met if not enough people get vaccinated 
• He told CNN Monday evening that COVID was a ‘a very wily virus’

Dr. Anthony Fauci has backtracked on his claim the US will ‘get control’ of the coronavirus pandemic by the fall of 2022, saying he ‘misspoke’ and the country can actually beat the COVID-19 by spring next year.

After apologizing for his latest gaffe, the top infectious disease expert caused further confusion by warning there is ‘no guarantee’ the spring deadline will be met if not enough people get vaccinated and another variant develops. 

The director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases told Anderson Cooper on CNN Monday evening that COVID was a ‘a very wily virus’ that could ‘linger on’ if more people did not get vaccinated. 

Fauci, who is President Biden’s chief medical advisor, had told NPR that coronavirus would still be a problem by next fall.

Just hours later, Fauci flip-flopped on the deadline when questioned on ‘Anderson Cooper 360,’ telling the host the error was ‘my bad’. 

Dr. Anthony Fauci (right) told Anderson Cooper (left) on CNN Monday evening that COVID was a ‘a very wily virus’ that could drag on if more people did not get vaccinated

Fauci clarified: ‘I have to apologize… I meant to say the spring of 2022, so I did misspeak.

He added: ‘If we can get through this winter and get the overwhelming majority of the 90 million people who have not been vaccinated, vaccinated, I hope we could start to get some good control in the spring of 2022. I didn’t mean the fall. I misspoke, my bad.’ 

The White House COVID tsar said ‘control’ of the virus would come from the ‘overwhelming majority’ of the population getting the vaccine, including those who have already been infected with the coronavirus. 

‘If we can do that with the people who have been infected, get them revaccinated, the people who are unvaccinated now, that 90 million people… I think we can get a degree of overall blanket protection of the community.

Fauci would not specify how many people will need to be vaccinated. He told Cooper: ‘When people try to ask me and pin it down, you know how you’re going to know? Just get as many people vaccinated as you possibly can. When you get control, that will be the number.’

He added: ‘As we get into the spring we could get back to a degree of normality, namely reassuming the things that we were hoping we could do. Restaurants, theaters, that kind of thing.’

However, the infectious disease expert warned of ‘a big caveat there.’

‘This is a very wily virus,’ he said. ‘We thought we were going to have that degree of freedom as we get into the fourth of July and the summer. And then along comes a soccer punch with the delta variant which is extraordinary in its ability to spread from person to person. 

‘So we hope we’ll be there at the time frame I mentioned, correctly being the spring of 2022, but there’s no guarantee because it’s up to us. If we keep lingering without getting those people vaccinated that should be vaccinated, this thing could linger on, leading to the development of another variant which could complicate things.   

 Fauci’s retraction of the fall deadline is the latest in a line of contradictions. Earlier in August, he warned Americans that COVID vaccine booster shots are on the horizon less than a month after saying he didn’t think the injections were necessary.

The White House COVID tsar told CNN he’s ‘strongly in favor’ of speeding up the booster shot process for higher risk people. 

The total amount of deaths in the US has climbed over 600,000

There have been nearly 38 million COVID cases in the US since March 2020

He also initially told Americans not to worry about wearing face masks early in the COVID crisis in spring 2020. He later became a huge supporter of public masking, and claimed his early dismissal of face coverings had been to try and conserve then-tight supplies for medical staff.

The veteran immunologist – who has served as director of the National Institutes of Health since 1984 – has faced criticism for initially steering conversation away from claims that COVID may have leaked from a Wuhan virus lab, insisting the virus had almost certainly leapt into people from an animal. He now says he is open to that theory.

Fauci has previously defended his contradicting advice, saying that people who criticize him for his COVID-19 ‘flip-flopping’ are actually condemning science itself.

He claimed any changes in his recommendations were solely based on evolving data as the COVID crisis continued.

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