Many people had no idea who Dr. Anthony Fauci was before the COVID-19 outbreak. Truth is, this hero has been saving the lives of many generations by battling new viruses and outbreaks since 1984 as the director of NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases).
HIV? Ebola? Zika? He was there every time to find a solution and prevent the spread, which he successfully did every time.
But this time everything is different. Are we able to stop a pandemic which has been getting worse since January?
With 36 years of experience in the domain, dr. Fauci has definitely seen his share of viruses and bacteria of all kinds. However, his worst nightmare didn’t become reality until early 2020:
‘I’ve been saying for decades that my worst nightmare is the evolution of a new infection that jumps species easily from an animal model to a human that’s a respiratory virus, because those are the ones that can spread easily, and that it is highly efficient in its ability to spread from person to person, and that it has a high degree of morbidity and mortality.’
Dr. Fauci may have had the scenario of a pandemic in mind, but actually solving this unprecedented situation is a whole different matter.
However, the NIAID director is ‘cautiously optimistic’ about developing a COVID-19 vaccine due to the medical progress of the past few decades.
When asked what makes him optimistic about the current situation, dr. Fauci’s first answer was ‘the capability of our scientific community to come up with solutions.’
In fact, the COVID-19 pandemic brought the fastest response in terms of developing a vaccine to fight off the virus. The NIAID team is hopeful about deploying a vaccine by the end of 2020, as they’ve already begun testing multiple options on humans by now.
However, dr. Fauci also insistently points out that ‘You can never, ever guarantee the success of a vaccine. We just have good experience to know that we are aspirationally, cautiously optimistic that we will have one by the end of the year.’
Assuming there will be a vaccine available by the beginning of 2021, scientists still can’t guarantee its success. ‘We are producing vaccine at risk,’ Fauci explains, ‘which means we are producing it even though we don’t know yet if the vaccine works, which means if we are lucky and it does work, we will have saved several months and made it available as soon as the winter.’
No matter how optimistic we are, we can all admit that the situation is still critical. It’s still a pandemic and we must continue to be cautious and apply every safety measure recommended by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).
As Dr. Fauci says, ‘we’re got to all pull together as a community, as a nation, as a global population. Because we’re all in the same boat here. We will have control over it.’
I know those things are easy to say and hard to apply, especially after so many months of social distancing. Below, you can check out some of our other posts that may help you or a loved one deal with life during COVID-19:
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