Dr. Anthony Fauci featured in Leon Panetta lecture series
MONTEREY, Calif. (KION) Dr. Anthony Fauci will be featured in the Panetta Institute for Public Policy's "2021 Leon Panetta Lecture Series New Leadership in a New Decade -- Can America be Healed? " discussion.
During the lecture series, Dr. Fauci seemed cautiously optimistic during his conversation with former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. Ultimately, he says the U.S. will be able to go back to normal as more and more of the public vaccinated.
"Am I confident we're going to be out of the woods this time around? I have to say that things look good Leon because we have vaccines that we're rolling out and hopefully people will adhere to the public health measures but the variants are troublesome," says Fauci.
The U.K. variant is feared to be more transmissible and predicted to be the prominent strain in the U.S. soon. Fauci says it's a race against the clock to get Americans vaccinated.
But once people get the vaccine, are they able to visit family? Dr. Fauci says soon.
"A scenario that is going to be more and more common Leon, is let's say I'm doubly vaccinated and my wife is doubly vaccinated, we're in the house together and our daughter who happens to live in another city is doubly vaccinated when she comes home. Can we all, since we're all vaccinated, act in a somewhat normal way? I believe the answer is going to be yes," says Fauci.
In order to get to this level of normalcy, Fauci says a majority of Americans need to be vaccinated and he hopes to dispel myths about the vaccine.
"When we say that something is safe and effective, that process was both transparent and independent and I think if we continue to explain that to people, many of them will come around," says Fauci.
Dr. Fauci also warns of the possibility of new variants of emerging in countries without access to the vaccine stating that global pandemics need global solutions.
