Dr. Scott Gottlieb Calls For Lifting Covid Mitigation Mandates As Aggressively As They Were Put in Place

Dr. Scott Gottlieb encouraged public health officials to lift Covid-19 mitigation mandates as aggressively as they enacted so that the very same officials could maintain credibility and authority with a nation exhausted by the pandemic.

The former Trump administration FDA director has become a clear-eyed and reliable voice on all things coronavirus-related over the past two years. He appeared on Morning Joe early Friday to offer insights and analysis on the current state of the pandemic as the omicron variant both abates and peaks in various regions across the nation.

“As a sort of mentally exhausted country deals with this, what would you say about, you know, being done with Covid and where we are right now and how we should be thinking about mask mandates in schools and all of these things that people frankly are just done with?” co-host Wilie Geist asked him.

Gottlieb continued something of an optimistic view, hedged with phrases like “this is going to be a persistent risk.”

He focused his insights on seasonal peaks, saying, “We have to think differently about respiratory pathogens in the wintertime. I think infection levels will continue to come down as we get into the spring and summer. Hopefully, we have the quiet summer I thought we would have last year until delta came along.”

Gottlieb then laid out statistical data in support of why things appear to be getting better, namely that “upwards of 50% of the population will be infected with omicron by the time the wave is over, and a lot of people have been vaccinated. 85% of Americans have had at least one dose, 63% of Americans have been fully vaccinated.”

“The final point is, I think we need to prescribe clear goalposts how we take the mitigation measures off. When do we lift the vaccine mandates, when do we stop wearing masks in schools? ” he asked. “As conditions improve, we should be willing to raise these conditions that create acrimony, particularly with masks in schools where we want kids back to normalcy.”

“We should be as aggressive as lifting them as we were about putting them in place as it will help us preserve authority among public health officials to reimplement measures in the future if, in fact, this returns next winter.”

Watch above via MSNBC.