Fauci cautions against dining out, even when vaccinated

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Fauci's comment on mask-wearing into 2022 'too pessimistic': Dr. Siegel

'Get the vaccine then we'll talk about taking off the mask,' Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel says.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top disease expert in the U.S., said Monday that Americans who have received their second vaccine jab should still exercise caution and try to resist the urge to dine out or go to the movies.

Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was at the White House giving a press briefing on vaccine distribution in the U.S., and said those vaccinated have dramatically increased their own personal safety, but he said the country is "still at an unacceptably high baseline level" of new infection, according to Business Insider.

"I still do not do dining indoors and I still do takeout," Fauci, who has been vaccinated, said. "I want to continue to support the restaurants in my neighborhood that I would normally go to."

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Data is still out on how transmissible the virus is from someone who has been vaccinated, he said. Two Israel studies into the efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine suggests that the vaccine greatly reduces virus transmission.

Fauci said in an interview on Sunday that it is "possible" Americans may still need to wear face masks in 2022, even as the country could approach a certain "degree of normality." 

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"If you combine getting most of the people in the country vaccinated with getting the level of virus in the community very, very low, then I believe you are going to be able to say you know for the most part we don’t necessarily have to wear masks," Fauci said. "When it goes way down, and the overwhelming majority of the people in the population are vaccinated, then I would feel comfortable in saying you know we need to pull back on the masks, we don’t need to have masks." 

Fox News' Lucas Manfredi and Peter Aiken contributed to this report