Dr. Emily Litella
Dr. Anthony Fauci, Sunday:

BRENNAN: But we can gather for Christmas, or it’s just too soon to tell?

FAUCI: You know, Margaret, it’s just too soon to tell. We’ve just got to — concentrating on continuing to get those numbers down. . . .

BRENNAN: Yes.

FAUCI: . . . and not try to jump ahead by weeks or months and say what we’re going to do at a particular time. Let’s focus like a laser on continuing to get those cases down. And we can do it by people getting vaccinated and also, in the situation where boosters are appropriate, to get people boosted, because we know that they can help greatly in diminishing infection and diminishing advanced disease, the kinds of data that are now accumulating in real time.

“It’s just too soon to tell” is not, “Yes, you can gather with your family members for Christmas.” Yesterday’s Jolt raked Fauci over the coals, and of course many folks insisted I was the one being unreasonable.

But somewhere between Sunday and Monday, Fauci decided he was being misinterpreted:

“The best way to assure that we’ll be in good shape as we get into the winter would be to get more and more people vaccinated,” Fauci, the government’s top infectious diseases expert, said Monday on CNN. “That was misinterpreted as my saying we can’t spend Christmas with our families, which was absolutely not the case. I will be spending Christmas with my family, I encourage people, particularly the vaccinated people who are protected, to have a good, normal Christmas with your family.”

As the great Gilda Radner used to say in her persona of the oft-confused old lady, “Never mind.”

[Post edited by JMHoo at 10/05/2021 2:27PM]