Anthony Fauci, M.D., clarified his stance on whether family holiday gatherings are okay this year after receiving some criticism for comments he says were “misinterpreted.”
Dr. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, initially said it was “just too soon to tell” what the situation would be this holiday season in a CBS News interview on Sunday, during a broader discussion about how aerosol transmission of COVID-19 could increase as people spend more time indoors during the cold weather.
Face the Nation anchor Margaret Brennan asked the country’s top infectious disease expert if people should say it’s “just too risky” to have holiday family gatherings that include unvaccinated children. Dr. Fauci first responded by referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidance that vaccinated people should wear masks while indoors in areas where there is a substantial level of community spread, and emphasizing the importance of increased ventilation.
“But we can gather for Christmas, or it’s just too soon to tell?” Brennan asked again. “It’s just too soon to tell,” Dr. Fauci responded. “We’ve just got to concentrate on continuing to get those numbers down, and not try to jump ahead by weeks or months and say what we’re going to do at a particular time.” He added that increasing vaccination rates (and booster shots where necessary) was the way to continue these promising downward trends.
After several Republican congresspeople and pundits condemned those remarks, as Rolling Stone reported—one Fox News host claimed Dr. Fauci was “about to cancel Christmas”—Dr. Fauci said that this interpretation was “nonsense” and addressed the controversy on CNN.
“I said something over the weekend that was taken completely out of context,” Dr. Fauci told Kate Bolduan on Monday. “I was asked, ‘What could we predict for this winter, for December and Christmas’…I said, ‘We don’t know,’ because we’ve seen slopes that went down and then came back up,” he explained. “That was misinterpreted as my saying we can’t spend Christmas with our families, which was absolutely not the case.”
Dr. Fauci clarified that his “too soon to tell” comment was referring to whether he could “predict what the state of the pandemic would be when we get to December,” not whether people should celebrate the holidays with their families. He took the opportunity to reassure vaccinated people especially that they can spend the holidays with their loved ones, adding that he himself plans to. “I encourage people, particularly the vaccinated people who are protected, to have a good, normal Christmas with your family.”
And while it is difficult to know where the country will be in a couple of months, Dr. Fauci reiterated that it is “within our power” to ensure that falling case numbers stay low into the holiday season if we increase vaccination rates. “That was the point that I was making—not that you’re not going to be able to spend Christmas with your family,” he explained. “I certainly am. That’s for sure.”
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