Fauci interview: How to stay healthy, gather safely until summer 2022 - Business Insider

And when that happened, he'd be called down to the White House."Be careful what you wish for," he said.Though he suspects that we may never eradicate the novel coronavirus, Fauci is confident that by the end of 2020, we'll have some kind of working, effective vaccine — though it won't be available widely. But let's say a safe bet will be the end of this calendar year.By the time you deploy the vaccines effectively to the hundreds of millions of people in the United States that will need it. Your question is, what about us, here?I believe that by the time we get to the end of 2021, if everyone gets vaccinated and we continue to implement the public-health measures that I have been talking about incessantly over the last several months — they're not universally adhered to — if we do that, plus the vaccine, we'll get to the point where the level of virus will be so low, and maybe even, you know, close to absent.I don't think we're going to eradicate it.We may not completely eliminate it, but if you get it down to such a very low level, and enough of the population is protected — either by a vaccine or by previously having been infected — then you'll develop a degree of herd immunity that you won't have an outbreak.So when people say spring of 2022, I think that's quite reasonable, because I think that if we deploy a vaccine and we implement public health measures, I think it might even be sooner than that. Like, what kinds of things can we relax about a little, and where and how can we do that safely?Well, I don't think we need to go by my routine, which is probably unusual.I'm working seven days a week, 18 hours a day. So it isn't going to be universally available to people.So how long do you think we will need the vaccine to exist before we can stand shoulder to shoulder with strangers again? And sort of similar timelines for crowded restaurants or indoor concerts?Yep. Yep.Then my last question for you is, is there a big misconception that you'd like to clear up around the coronavirus vaccine, or how it'll work, or what we'll need to do when it's here?Well, I don't know if there's a misconception, but there's a real concern that perhaps we're moving too quickly.And I think people need to understand that speed is not related to a compromise of safety nor to a compromise of scientific integrity. And the intensity of the public-health measures would depend on the level of infection in the community.If there's almost no infection in the community, together with the vaccine, you might want to be able to say "I can safely congregate with people."You may want to do it with a mask, or without a mask.It's all going to depend on the level of infection in the community, and how low you got it down with your vaccine.I think that's a helpful clarifying point for people.