Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House chief medical adviser on the novel coronavirus, said over the weekend that wearing masks could continue as a seasonal method to stop ourselves from getting sick.
Fauci — who spoke on NBC’s “Meet the Press” over the weekend — said the public has become used to wearing face masks, which have stopped the spread of viruses like the flu and the common cold.
- “We’ve had practically a nonexistent flu season this year merely because people were doing the kinds of public health things that were directed predominantly against COVID-19,” Fauci said.
Per The Washington Post, Fauci said it’s possible people will continue wearing masks during seasonal periods to avoid the prevalent illnesses floating around.
Wearing masks and vaccination
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former chief of the Food and Drug Administration, told CBS’ “Face the Nation” over the weekend that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention might want to start revising guidelines for indoor and outdoor mask use.
- We are at the point where we can “start lifting these ordinances and allowing people to resume normal activity. Certainly, outdoors, we should not be putting limits on gatherings anymore and we should be encouraging people to go outside,” he said, according to CNBC.
He said indoor mask guidances should be lowered in states where this is a low COVID-19 transmission rate, too, CNBC reports.
- “COVID won’t disappear, we are going to have to learn to live with it but the risks have substantially reduced as a result of vaccination and as a result of immunity that people have acquired through prior infection,” Gottlieb said.