The country’s top infectious disease expert is open to the possibility of a temporary national lockdown in order to halt the spread of the dreaded coronavirus.

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci told interviewers that Americans “should be prepared that they’re going to have to hunker down significantly more than we as a country are doing.”

When asked if he consider a “national lockdown”, where people is strongly advised to stay at home and avoid restaurants and bars, he said he’d “like to see a dramatic diminution of the personal interaction that we see” in the said places.

He added, “Whatever it takes to do that, that’s what I’d like to see.”

“I would prefer as much as we possibly could. I think we should really be overly aggressive and get criticized for overreacting,” he said in another interview.

As a key member of the Trump administration’s coronavirus task force, he believes that Americans need to come to terms with the fact that life will drastically change while the country battles against the spread of the disease.

He said, “We need to be very serious about — for a while, life is not going to be the way it used to be in the United States. We have to just accept that if we want to do what’s best for the American public.”

According to him, the goal is to “blunt” the curve of confirmed cases, and to keep the number of infected low enough to avoid overwhelming the U.S. hospital system.

“If you let the curve get up there, then the entire society is going to be hit.”

Some states have banned large gatherings and shut down schools, while dozens of national and local events have been cancelled or postponed in response to the pandemic.