Coronavirus: It will be 2022 ‘before we have semblances of normality,’ warns Fauci

Infectious diseases expert condemned Americans for making face masks ‘political statement’

Normal life will not resume around the world until at least “the end of 2021” but more likely at some point in 2022, Anthony Fauci has warned. 

The infectious diseases expert said the only way this could happen, though, would be the “successful implementation of a Covid-19 vaccine, globally”. Dr Fauci stressed that if one country was to be vaccinated, while the rest of the world remained infectious, life as it was known “pre-December 2019” was unlikely to return. 

Dr Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, made the comments in an online panel discussion with the University of Melbourne. 

He told the panel he was “very certain” there would be a vaccine ready in the next few months but that it would likely take longer to roll out.

“If we get a vaccination campaign, and by the second or third quarter of 2021 we have vaccinated a substantial proportion of the people, I think it will be easily by the end of 2021, and perhaps even into the next year, before we start having some semblances of normality,” Dr Fauci said.

Explaining what he meant by “normal”, Dr Fauci said “when you can get people into a theatre without worrying about what we call congregate setting super infections, when restaurants can open at almost full capacity and when sporting events can happen with spectators”. 

He went on to discuss the use of face masks and how some people - and countries - will continue to wear coverings way beyond the required time. 

Comparing the situation to “countries in Asia”, after the Sars pandemic, Dr Fauci said people would likely wear face masks “outside of the context of a pandemic for many months” to make themselves feel more safe. 

Dr Fauci also took the time to criticise specifically American people who had turned wearing a mask into a “political statement”. He said if all states had complied with the same lockdown rules at the same time, it was very likely the coronavirus crisis wouldn’t have reached the point it now has in the US.

“Masks in the United States have almost become a political statement, and I know that was carried in the news globally, it was very, very difficult,” he said.

“In fact, people were ridiculed for their mask, depending upon which side of a particular political spectrum you were at.”

Dr Fauci added: “When we were trying to open up the economy again, or open up the country ... If everybody had done that uniformly, I don't think we would be in the position we're in right now,” he said.

The US recorded over 90,000 new Covid cases on Thursday, despite Donald Trump continually telling campaign rallies that the country is “rounding the corner” of the virus.