The current trajectory of the novel coronavirus suggests that normality could return this spring, according to Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.
What’s going on: Gottlieb said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that COVID-19 case numbers are “going to continue to come down as we get into the spring and the summer.”
- The U.S. needs to consider reducing restrictions when that happens.
- He added that people can return to their normal lives “hopefully this spring.”
- “We don’t see anything on the horizon that’s going to dramatically alter that trajectory.”
Yes, but: We’ve heard this from experts, including Gottlieb, before about the trajectory of the pandemic. There was a stage where federal health officials saw the delta variant as the end of the road. That was until the omicron variant popped up and changed our winter plans.
The bigger picture: Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, said earlier in January that the end of the pandemic might not come so quickly because coronavirus is still spreading heavily throughout the world, as I reported for the Deseret News.
- “There are different scenarios for how the pandemic could play out and how the acute phase could end. But it’s dangerous to assume that omicron will be the last variant or that we are in the endgame,” he added.
- “On the contrary, globally, the conditions are ideal for more variants to emerge.”