Dr. Anthony Fauci said Thursday that people in the U.S. should prepare to spend a lot of time at home as temperatures drop in upcoming weeks.
"We need to hunker down and get through this fall and winter, because it's not going to be easy," Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said, according to NBC News.
Fauci, who became America's top source for reliable coronavirus information back in March, has been giving the same advice for so long that he needed vocal cord surgery in August.
On March 15, he gave eerily similar advice, saying that Americans "should be prepared that they are going to have to hunker down significantly more than we as a country are doing."
Since then, more than 6 million Americans have tested positive for COVID-19 and nearly 200,000 have died. Projections for an upcoming "COVID winter" have suggested that another 200,000 people in the U.S. could die from the disease by Jan. 1.
"We've been through this before," Fauci said. "Don't ever, ever underestimate the potential of the pandemic. And don't try and look at the rosy side of things."
