Fauci worries Thanksgiving may be the start of a dark holiday season if COVID-19 cases continue to soar

Dr. Anthony Fauci suggested Thanksgiving may be the beginning of a dark holiday season as the surge in coronavirus cases is likely to persist, or even get worse, through December, January and February.

“If the surge takes a turn of continuing to go up and you have the sustained greater than 100,000 infections a day and 1,300 deaths per day and the count keeps going up and up ... I don’t see it being any different during the Christmas and New Year’s holidays than during Thanksgiving,” he said in an interview with USA TODAY last week.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director said the country is in a vulnerable position heading into the holiday season because infections are too high to control surges when they arise, as he is confident they will in the winter months.

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Fauci said he’s most likely scrapping Christmas plans this year as he did for Thanksgiving. Instead of receiving his three daughters this year, who live in different parts of the country, he opted to send his love over Zoom and enjoy a quiet dinner with his wife.

“For my own family, I’m saying we had a really great Thanksgiving and Christmas last year. We’re looking forward to a really great Thanksgiving and Christmas in 2021,” he said. “Let’s now make the best of the situation and show our love and affection for people by keeping them safe.”

But nearly 3 million air travelers passed through security checkpoints on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday before Thanksgiving. Sunday was the single-busiest day at airport checkpoints since March.

Ali Mokdad, professor of health metrics sciences at the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluations and chief strategy officer for population health at the University of Washington, said only about a fourth of COVID-19 cases are reported in the U. S. because testing is still not readily available to everyone and mild forms of the disease go undetected.

There were 181,490 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins University data, the 23rd consecutive day of more than 100,000 newly reported cases. But the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluations recently estimated there are about twice as many cases as reported. It ... (Read more)

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