Fauci Calls for Thanksgiving to be Cancelled This Year: ‘You May Have to Bite the Bullet’

Dr. Anthony Fauci is advising Americans against celebrating Thanksgiving this year.

Asked in a Wednesday interview by CBS host Norah O’Donnell what his advice was with respect to Thanksgiving, Fauci replied, “You may have to bite the bullet and sacrifice that social gathering unless you’re pretty certain that the people that you’re dealing with are not infected. Either they’ve been very recently tested, or they’re living a lifestyle in which they don’t have any interaction with anybody except you and your family.”

Fauci, the 79-year-old chief of the federal government’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Americans could make exceptions if they lived a lifestyle similar to that of Fauci and his wife. “We almost do nothing with anybody else except each other, so I’m not worried about my infecting my wife, or my wife infecting me,” Fauci said. “When you’re talking about relatives that are getting on a plane, being exposed in an airport, being exposed in a plane, then walk in the door and say, ‘Happy Thanksgiving,’ that, you have to be careful about.”

He also said that he was adhering to his own prescription. “My Thanksgiving is going to look very different this year. I would love to have it with my children, but my children are in three separate states through the country,” Fauci said. “And in order for them to get here, they would all have to go to an airport, get on a plane, travel with public transportation.

“They, themselves, because of their concern for me and my age, have decided they’re not going to come home for Thanksgiving,” he added.

Watch above via CBS News.