Dr. Anthony Fauci Issues Ominous Winter Pandemic Warning

White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the United States, forewarned of a “double-whammy” winter surge of Covid-19 due to the convergence of waning vaccine immunity and the relentless spread of the highly virulent Delta variant.

“The somewhat unnerving aspect of it is that if you keep the level of dynamics of the virus in the community at a high level – obviously the people who are most vulnerable are the unvaccinated – but when you have a virus as transmissible as delta, in the context of waning immunity, that dynamic is going to negatively impact even the vaccinated people. So it’s a double whammy,” Fauci said in a recorded statement at the 2021 ST-AT Summit on Tuesday afternoon.

“You’re going to see breakthrough infections, even more so than we see now among the vaccinated,” he added.

New infections are rising again across the country; nearly 80,000 cases are being reported every day.

Fauci also explained that the best tool that the population has in its arsenal to ward off a potentially disastrous winter in addition to the three primary vaccines is Pfizer-BioNTech’s mRNA booster shots, which the Food and Drug Administration will approve for all adults this week, perhaps by Thursday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is slated to convene on Friday to discuss the safety and the efficacy of the extra inoculations.

There are, however, lingering unknowns.

On Friday, the FDA approved booster shots for those 18 years of age and up who are at least six months past their second jab.

Fauci, meanwhile, believes that booster shots should be automatically incorporated into the standard vaccine regimen.

“I happen to believe as an immunologist and infectious disease person, that a third shot boost for an mRNA is likely – should be part of the actual standard regimen, where a booster isn’t a luxury; a booster isn’t an add on; and a booster is part of what the original regimen should be – so that when we look back on this, we’re going to see that boosters are essential for an optimal vaccine regimen,” Fauci said.