Dr. Anthony Fauci said that he will not see his three adult children for Christmas and pleaded people to follow his lead and forgo typical gatherings this holiday season.
“I’m going to be with my wife — period,” Fauci told the Washington Post.
“The Christmas holiday is a special holiday for us because Christmas Eve is my birthday,” said Fauci, who is turning 80. “And Christmas Day is Christmas Day. And they are not going to come home. … That’s painful. We don’t like that. But that’s just one of the things you’re going to have to accept as we go through this unprecedented, challenging time.”
Fauci lamented that people largely ignored guidance not to gather for Thanksgiving and said that Christmas cannot be “business as usual.”
Despite the fact that many people did ignore Fauci’s advice ahead of Thanksgiving, the promised surge in COVID-19 cases because of their insubordination has yet to materialize.
But Fauci insisted that people have to treat Christmas differently.
“Stay at home as much as you can. Keep your interactions to the extent possible to members of the same household,” Fauci said. “This cannot be business as usual this Christmas because we’re already in a very difficult situation, and we’re going to make it worse if we don’t do something about it.”
The nation’s top infectious disease expert did offer some optimism, saying that the pandemic was “not going to last forever,” in large part thanks to the development and distribution of vaccines.
“It is highly likely that with vaccines being distributed, that we will be back to normal by next Christmas,” Fauci said.
According to reports from AAA and GasBuddy, the public doesn’t seem keen on taking Fauci’s advice to heart. A total of 84.5 million Americans are expected to travel for the holidays, AAA said. Meanwhile, a GasBuddy survey revealed that over one-third of Americans will be traveling by car around the holidays.
“Many Americans have deeply rooted traditions for the holiday and are unwilling to let them slip away like the rest of the year,” Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, said in the report. “We’re expecting to see heightened driving activity across some of the most hard-hit areas of the coronavirus.”
