Fauci Says 'Death Toll Would Be Enormous and Totally Unacceptable' If U.S. Tried for Herd Immunity
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An attempt to possibly reach herd immunity through community spread amid the ongoing novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic could lead to an "enormous" death toll, according to a top health expert.
In a new Instagram conversation with Matthew McConaughey on Thursday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned how allowing society to freely spread the coronavirus with the not-yet-proven goal of achieving a herd immunity could result in a deadlier public health crisis.
"If everyone contracted it, even with the relatively high percentage of people without symptoms ... a lot of people are going to die," Fauci said, according to CNN. "You look at the United States of America with our epidemic of obesity as it were. With the number of people with hypertension. With the number of people with diabetes."
"If everyone got infected, the death toll would be enormous and totally unacceptable," he explained.
According to the Mayo Clinic, herd immunity can be achieved through two routes: developing a vaccine (which the experts say is "ideal"), or by allowing natural infections and hoping the majority of a community recovers and develops antibodies.
"However, there are some major problems with relying on community infection to create herd immunity to the virus that causes COVID-19. First, it isn't yet clear if infection with the COVID-19 virus makes a person immune to future infection," explains the Mayo Clinic.
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Last month, Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, spoke at a webinar for Journal of the American Medical Association, or JAMA, when he said Americans should brace for what will likely be a "difficult" fall and winter season.
"I do think the fall and the winter of 2020 and 2021 are going to be probably one of the most difficult times we've experienced in American public health because of ... the co-occurrence of COVID and influenza," said Redfield at the time.
“Keeping the health care system from being overstretched, I think, is really going to be important," he added. "And the degree that we're able to do that, I think, will define how well we get through the fall and winter."
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In another press conference around the same time, Redfield assured that the best tactic to help curb the spread of COVID-19 and reduce its public health severity is by simply wearing a mask in public.
“If all of us would put on a face covering now for the next four weeks, six weeks, we could drive this epidemic to the ground,” he said. “... We are not defenseless against this virus. We actually have one of the most powerful weapons you could ask for — the most powerful weapon we have that I know of is wearing face coverings.”
Redfield added: “The most important thing that I could ask the American public to do is to fully embrace face coverings, to fully embrace careful hand hygiene, and to fully embrace social distancing.”
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