On Monday, Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN that he would be spending Christmas with his family and that he encouraged people, especially those who were protected as they had been vaccinated, to spend a “good, normal Christmas” with their families. Earlier on Sunday, he told CBS that it was “too soon to tell” whether families could spend Christmas and that created a flurry of criticism on social media, mainly from Republicans.

On Monday, Dr. Fauci, who one of the nation’s leading experts on COVID-19, said that his comments had been misinterpreted and that he had not told people to stop having family get-togethers. He said that he had said that the he believed that the best way that the nation would be in “good shape” in winter would be when more and more people got vaccinated.

Over the weekend, Margaret Brennan host of CBS’ Face the Nation had asked Dr. Fauci about the holiday in December, after he said that he was cautiously optimistic about the fall in the number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. He also said that he wanted the nation to remain vigilant.

He said that it was it was too early to predict the outcome of the pandemic. He said that they had to continue to concentrate on keeping the numbers down. He said that he did not want to “jump ahead” and predict what would happen weeks or months later.

Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, Fauci also disagreed with Republicans who had said that immigrants had been increasing the number of COVID-19 cases. He said this after CNN host Dana Nash asked him about a Kaiser Family Foundation poll. The poll reported that 55 percent Republicans and 40 percent of the unvaccinated said that immigrants and tourists brought the coronavirus to the country and that they were responsible for high rates of infection.

Image Credit White House