Fauci says things might not go back to normal until the end of 2021

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned Friday that the world might not go back to normal any time soon, as the development of a vaccine against the coronavirus pandemic continues. Fauci said in an interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that it may take more than a year to return “to a degree of normality” that resembles the situation before the pandemic. “It’s gonna be well into 2021, maybe even towards the end of 2021,” he said. The timeline is tied to the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine and getting the majority of the U.S. population “vaccinated and protected,” which Fauci said is “likely not gonna happen until the mid or end of 2021.” Fauci previously told a House panel in July that he is “cautiously optimistic” that a COVID-19 vaccine will be developed within the year. However, once the vaccine is proven to be safe and effective, it will still need to be mass-produced and distributed, which likely plays a factor in Fauci’s forecast of when the world will go back to where it was pre-COVID-19. As of September 11, there are 6.42 million cases of COVID-19 in the United States, with about 192,000 reported deaths. While researchers continue to work on a vaccine, there has been major progress in the tests to detect COVID-19, which is one of the primary ways of fighting back against the pandemic. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted emergency use authorization to a saliva-based testing method for the coronavirus. The method, named SalivaDirect, was developed by Yale University, and is less invasive than swab tests while maintaining effectiveness. The FDA also recently granted the same authorization to the BinaxNOW test by Abbott Laboratories, a nasal swab procedure that takes just 15 minutes to produce a result and costs only $5.
Audi is currently holding cars that arrived after the tariffs took effect, on April 3, in U.S. ports. But it still has around 37,000 vehicles in its U.S. inventory, which should be able to meet demand for about two months, according to Reuters.
Automakers on average hold enough cars to meet U.S. demand for about three months, according to Cox Automotive.
Audi should be particularly affected by the tariffs: The Q5, its best-selling model in the U.S., is produced in Mexico, while other models, such as the A3, A4, and A6 are produced in Germany.
Holding shipments is obviously a temporary measure to buy time for Audi and parent company Volkswagen. If tariffs stay in place, vehicle prices would likely have to go up accordingly, unless some production is shifted to the U.S. Volkswagen already has a plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and is planning a new plant in South Carolina. That latter plant, however, isn’t expected to be operational until 2027 and is currently dedicated to building electric vehicles for VW’s Scout Motors brand.
Other global automakers have also taken drastic measures in response to Trump’s tariffs. Jaguar Land Rover on April 5 said it is pausing shipments of its its UK-made cars to the United States this month. The British sports-luxury vehicle maker noted that the U.S. market accounts for nearly a quarter of its global sales, led by the likes of Range Rover Sports, Defenders, and Jaguar F-PACE.
And on April 3, Nissan, the biggest Japanese vehicle exporter to the United States, announced it will stop taking new U.S. orders for two Mexican-built Infiniti SUVs, the QX50 and QX55. In an iconic scene from the 2002 sci-fi film Minority Report, on-the-run Agent John Anderton, played by Tom Cruise, struggles to walk through a mall as he’s targeted by a multitude of personalized ads from the likes of Lexus, Guinness and American Express, everytime hidden detectors identify his eyes.
It was clearly meant as a warning about a not-so-desirable dystopian future.
Yet, 23 years later that future is at least partlially here in the online world and threatens to spread to other areas of daily life which are increasingly ‘connected’, such as the inside of cars. And the new testing grounds, according to online security researcher Jane Manchun Wong, might very well be automated-driving vehicles, such as Waymo’s robotaxis.
On X, Wong unveiled an unreleased version of Waymo’s privacy policy that suggests the California-based company is preparing to use data from its robotaxis, including interior cameras, to train generative AI models and to offer targetted ads.
“Waymo may share data to improve and analyze its functionality and to tailor products, services, ads, and offers to your interests,” the Waymo’s unreleased privacy statement reads. “You can opt out of sharing your information with third parties, unless it’s necessary to the functioning of the service.”
Asked for comments about the unreleased app update, Waymo told The Verge that it contained “placeholder text that doesn’t accurately reflect the feature’s purpose”.
Waymo’s AI-models “are not designed to use this data to identify individual people, and there are no plans to use this data for targeted ads,” spokesperson Julia Ilina said.
Waymo’s robotaxis, which are operating on the streets of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Austin, do contain onboard cameras that monitor riders. But Ilina says these are mainly used to train AI models for safety, finding lost items, check that in-car rules are followed, and to improve the service.
The new feature is still under development and offers riders an opportunity to opt out of data collection, Ilina says.
But as we all get used to ads targeting based on everything that’s somehow connected to the web, it seems a once-distant vision of the future may be just around the corner.