Tipsheet

Dr. Fauci: 'I Hope' We'll Be 'Normal' By 'Next Mother's Day' with 'Some Conditions'

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  May 09, 2021 8:00 PM

It was a few weeks ago when Dana Perino said during an episode of "The Five" that perhaps Dr. Anthony Fauci doesn't need to do the Sunday shows every week. He has yet to listen. On May 9, he went on both ABC's "This Week" and NBC's "Meet the Press."

What's getting particular attention is his "hope" for when things will be "about as close to back to normal as we can" during his appearance on "This Week."

George Stephanopoulos had specifically asked about "next Mother's Day," which is why his answer focused on that timeline. That being said, if Dr. Fauci didn't want to peddle so much in fear mongering, he would have given a much more encouraging answer.

Here's that part of the exchange:

Stephanopoulos: Give everyone a sense of what the country is going to look like next Mother’s Day.

Fauci: Well, George, I hope that next Mother’s Day, we’re going to see a dramatic difference than what we’re seeing right now. I believe that we will be about as close to back to normal as we can. And there’s some conditions to that, George.

We’ve got to make sure that we get the overwhelming proportion of the population vaccinated. When that happens, the virus doesn’t really have any place to go. There aren’t a lot of vulnerable people around. And where there are not a lot of vulnerable people around, you’re not going to see a surge. You’re not going to see the kinds of numbers we see now.

That being the case, I think we can approach what we use to remember as normal before all of this tragedy happened.

For Fauci to use the line that "there’s some conditions to that," is a lot more chilling than people might initially think. It calls to mind the promise that President Biden made during his address to the nation on March 11, that maybe we could go back to normal for the 4th of July. The key word there is "maybe." During April 23 remarks he made about vaccines, he snuck this in towards the end, that "To celebrate our independence from this virus on July 4th with family and friends in small groups, we still have more to do in the months of May and June.  We all need to mask up until the number of cases goes down, until everyone has a chance to get their shot."

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Notice all the qualifying terms there. 

As you can imagine Twitter was not having this nonsense.

Don't forget that Fauci also went on NBC's "Meet the Press," however. While it's his "hope" that we'll get back to normal for next Mother's Day, masking up might be a more "seasonal" practice that people "elect" for:

I think people have gotten used to the fact that wearing masks, clearly if you look at the data it diminishes respiratory diseases, we’ve had practically a non-existent flu season this year merely because people were doing the kinds of public health things that were directed predominately against Covid-19.

So it is conceivable that as we go on a year or two or more from now that during certain seasonal periods when you have respiratory borne viruses like the flu, people might actually elect to wear masks to diminish the likelihood that you’ll spread these respiratory borne diseases.

Please, nobody tell Oregon's Gov. Kate Brown, who is, of course, a Democrat. They just went for a permanent mask mandate in places of businesses. 

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) was less than pleased with the segment for another reason, as host Chuck Todd did not ask Fauci about the origin of the virus as it pertains to a particular Wuhan lab.