Dr. Anthony Fauci on Thursday said there’s a “big possibility” this week’s Bike Week motorcycle rally in Daytona Beach, Florida, could become a coronavirus superspreader event.
The 10-day rally, expected to attract 300,000 people, is “really ill-advised” and could lead to a major COVID-19 outbreak, like the Sturgis motorcycle rally in South Dakota in August, the nation’s top infectious disease expert said in an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.
Footage of motorcycle enthusiasts attending the Florida rally “gave me chills just looking at it,” Fauci added.
“I mean, I understand people want to get out and enjoy themselves and get back to what would have been normal a couple of years ago but we really just got to hang on a bit longer,” said Fauci, who is President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser.
“We’re really going in the right direction,” he said, citing a drop in the number of infections, hospitalizations and deaths, and the ramping up of the vaccine program.
But “it’s really ill-advised to do something like that because you know, as a matter of fact, that people are not uniformly going to keep their masks on,” Fauci said. “When they finish with the rally, they’re going to go to bars, they’re going have fun, which is understandable ... But they are likely going to be pulling back from some of the prudent public health measures.”
“I just hope we don’t have another surge in that area from that, It is really ill-advised,” Fauci added.
Watch the interview here: