Fmr FDA Chief Says People Will Need to Make ‘Individual Assessments’ of Their Personal Covid Risk Going Forward

Former FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said on Sunday that given how mask mandates are being relaxed across the country, we’re now entering a stage where people will need to rely on their own “individual assessments” of their personal covid risk.

On CBS’ Face the Nation, Gottlieb told John Dickerson said the decline in hospitalizations are very encouraging, because “the people most likely to get into trouble with covid have now been protected through vaccination,” citing stats on the overwhelming number of vaccinated seniors.

Dickerson raised the issue of how people can navigate the beginning of a “post-pandemic stage.”

Gottlieb said people will need to protect themselves “based on our own assessment of our risk and our own comfort.”

So if you’re unvaccinated, you’re going to be at higher risk. If you’re in a high prevalence area where there’s still a lot of infection, you’re going to be at higher risk. If you have a preexisting medical condition that could put you at higher risk because you’re either immunocompromised, because of medicine you might be on, or you have a risk factor like heart disease or lung disease, you’re going to be at higher risk as well. So I think people may need to make individual assessments of their risk as they make judgments about what they should and should be doing, like wearing a mask in an indoor setting and also judging the setting.

He acknowledged that people will probably still be wearing masks even if they don’t necessarily need to.

“And in some places, it’s the etiquette. If you go into a pharmacy or a doctor’s office, people expect you to be wearing a mask. So people have also got to make an assessment about what their comfort level is,” Gottlieb said. “The good news is that I think culturally we’ve changed in that if you’re walking around with a mask right now, you’re not looked upon in an odd fashion. Whereas, you know, two years ago, if you wore a mask, everyone would take a step back from you.”

You can watch above, via CBS.