Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Friday that he thinks many Americans will start holding group meetings well ahead of President Joe Biden’s Independence Day target.
In an interview on “Squawk Box,” the former Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration said he believes the timeline Biden outlined in his primetime address Thursday was too conservative compared to how people will actually behave.
“I think the majority of Americans will get together well before July,” said Gottlieb, who led the FDA during the Trump administration from 2017 to 2019. He is now a member of the Pfizer board, which is one of three Covid makes. vaccines approved in the US for emergency use
Biden’s speech Thursday night on the pandemic was meant to highlight the collective toll Covid has taken over the past year, while also offering two forward-looking public health goals. The first: Urge states to make all adults eligible for coronavirus vaccines by May 1. The second: a goal for Americans to get together safely in small groups with friends and loved ones to celebrate the Fourth of July.
“I think we should provide public health advice that is consistent with where people are,” Gottlieb said.[When] people will feel the risk decreasing because they have been vaccinated, as they see the level of infection falling in many parts of the country, they will be willing to take more risk because they feel their vulnerability is decreasing. And you know what? They are right. He predicted, ‘People are leaving this summer and they will be free well before July. ‘
The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on Gottlieb’s comments.
Earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidelines that said fully vaccinated people can get together safely indoors with other fully vaccinated people – and certain unvaccinated individuals – without masks or social aloofness.
The guidelines came as states in the US lifted pandemic-era restrictions in recent weeks, as vaccinations roll out and daily coronavirus infections drop well below their January peak. However, senior health officials in the Biden administration have warned that the decline in the number of cases is beginning to level off, warring states should be more careful about removing corporate capacity constraints and masking mandates.
Last Friday, Gottlieb said mask mandates should be the last policy states and localities are lifting after Texas and Mississippi announced the end of their face-covering rules.
According to a CNBC analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University, the US counts a total of an average of 53,798 new cases per day over the past seven days. That is 15% lower than a week ago. The number of new cases in the US on Thursday was 49,356, which was nearly 84% lower than the one-day record on January 2.
A key factor helping slow the spread of the virus is rising immunity among the American population, Gottlieb said. He estimates that about half of the U.S. population has some form of protective immunity to the coronavirus, taking into account both diagnosed and undiagnosed infections along with those who have been vaccinated.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 64 million Americans have received at least one dose of Covid vaccine, representing about 19% of the US population of 330 million people. One in 10 Americans is fully vaccinated.
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which Americans have been receiving since December, require two injections for complete protection against developing Covid. However, studies suggest that some immunity is created after the first dose. Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, the latest entrant to the US market, is just a single shot.
According to Johns Hopkins, the US has approximately 29.3 million confirmed coronavirus cases. The real number is higher than that, Gottlieb said, reiterating a position he has held since the early days of the pandemic. He reasons that not every person who became infected was tested and their positive result recorded.
“We probably diagnose one in four infections, maybe a little better than that at the moment,” said Gottlieb, who had previously estimated that about a third of Americans would have gotten Covid. “So we’re above 50%” of the population with some form of immunity, he added.
“At that level, you don’t get such a rapid transmission of the infections. It’s not really herd immunity, but you get immunity in the population,” he said.
Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and serves on the boards of Pfizer, genetic testing startup Tempus, health technology company Aetion, and biotech company IlluminaHe is also co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings‘and Royal Caribbean‘s “Healthy Sail Panel.”