Former FDA commissioner predicts the pandemic will soon slow — but there will be 'a lot of death and disease along the way'

President Trump has ramped up his claims that a COVID-19 vaccine will soon be available in the U.S., tweeting Monday that "the Vaccines (Plus) are coming, and fast!" It's not clear what "Vaccines (Plus)" means, but on Sunday former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb poured some cold water on the administration's vaccine hype, telling CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday the chances we'll have a widespread vaccine by the end of 2020 are "extremely low." Any vaccine this year would be rolled out in a "targeted" way to high-risk groups, rather than made available to everyone at the same time, Gottlieb said.

He added that the virus' spread could soon slow in the U.S. due to the sheer number of people already infected. "The reality is that if we continue to see spread at the rate that we're seeing it now or something higher than what we're seeing now, by the end of the year upwards of 20 percent of the population in the U.S. could have been exposed to the coronavirus and we're likely to see the virus itself start to slow down" in early 2021 as part of the "natural progression" of the pandemic. He went on: "I think the tragic consequence of that is there's going to be a lot of death and disease along the way, but I think by the end of this year, we're likely to be through at least the most acute phase of this epidemic in part because it's gonna end up infecting a lot more people between now and then."

Watch Gottlieb's comments in their entirety on Face the Nation.

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