Fauci Says The Fall And Winter Are 'Not Going To Be Easy'
Source: NBC News
By Akshay Syal, 2 hrs ago.
As the United States heads into flu season, Americans can't let up in the fight against the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Thursday. Although the number of new daily cases of coronavirus in the U.S. has slowly been declining over the last two weeks, the country is still closing in on 200,000 deaths from COVID-19 and more than 6 million confirmed infections.
“We need to hunker down and get through this fall and winter, because it’s not going to be easy,” Fauci said during a panel of doctors from Harvard Medical School. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, also spoke about the COVID-19 vaccine trials and the possibility of post-Labor Day surges, noting that as one region in the U.S. gets it under control, another hot spot emerges — and that spikes inevitably appear whenever states lift social distancing restrictions.
“It’s really quite frankly depressing to see that because you know what's ahead,” he said. Fauci, one of the world's leading AIDS researchers since the 1980s, warned about the dangers of underestimating the virus. He compared the pandemic it to the early days of HIV when the epidemic started with a few gay men to decades later with tens of millions of deaths and more than 70 million people who have been infected.
“We've been through this before,” he said. “Don't ever, ever underestimate the potential of the pandemic. And don't try and look at the rosy side of things." Fauci’s sobering comments about the need for doctors and scientists to approach COVID-19 with “humility” came a day after President Donald Trump was heard in an audio clip acknowledging in February that he had minimized the seriousness of the pandemic...
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fauci-says-the-fall-and-winter-are-not-going-to-be-easy/ar-BB18TPAP
The trials for a vaccine are “progressing very well” Fauci said and repeated cautious hope for a possible vaccine by the year's end. He didn’t remark on the vaccine trial slowed at the Univ. of Oxford this week because a U.K. participant developed a spinal cord issue.
Asked about the possibility of a second wave of U.S. cases, Fauci said, “I don't talk about second surges because we're still in the first surge.”
Starting in October it's flu season and there are worries that the health care system could be flooded. But there is also some optimism regarding the flu in Australia so far because it has had the “lightest influenza season in memory” thanks to social distancing measures in effect for COVID-19, Fauci said. It's not clear if the U.S. will fare the same.
“I don't know what's going to happen, and I'm not predicting,” Fauci said.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I doubt that number is going to be that high, but there's a huge possibility we'll get close. And yeah the rest of this year is not going to be pretty. 
I guess that's good? 
