The Thanksgiving table at Dr. Anthony Fauci’s home is going to feel a lot emptier this year, with his three adult children skipping the trip to Washington D.C. for the holiday.
For UCSF’s Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, it will be a Zoom holiday, with extended family dining together while apart. Dr. George Rutherford, also of UCSF, is inviting the kids to make brief “cameo appearances” — and plans to order food online for delivery, dodging germs in the cranberry aisle.
Welcome to The Great Thanksgiving Opt-Out.
Enlisting strategies unimaginable to the Pilgrims, the nation’s public health experts are reinventing the quintessential American holiday.
“What we don’t want is five generations of people at some big table, with everybody bumping elbows and passing food to each other,” said Rutherford, a UCSF epidemiologist. “If somebody’s sick, they could spread it around to…