Dr Anthony Fauci, the White House’s chief medical adviser, has said countries have failed to unite to provide an adequate global response to prevent the “tragic” coronavirus outbreak.
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr Fauci, appeared on MSNBC to discuss how we can come together and defeat coronavirus.
According to Fauci, people who have had Covid-19 and later got vaccinated may have more protection against highly contagious variants.
“Public health is not a political issue. Public health is what affects all of us,” said Fauci. “And that was really one of the issues that’s so troublesome is that we’ve been through and still are going through a historic pandemic in the midst of, and in the context of extreme divisiveness in our country, which is really unfortunate because we should all be pulling together in this the same way you do when you are at war.”
“Vaccines are highly efficacious,” Fauci said during a White House Covid briefing. “They are better than the response you get from natural infection.”
Moreover, the chief medical adviser to the president said that we need to reach out to “the people who are hesitant to get vaccinated and try to get trusted messages, people that they trust. They could be anything from a sports figure to an entertainment figure to a clergy person to their family doctor.”
“It really is a significant issue because the solution to the problem of getting us back to normal and getting the number of cases down to a very low level is vaccination,” said Fauci.
“And with this particular disease itself,” said Fauci, “we have highly efficacious and safe vaccines, plural, more than one. And we’re fortunate enough in this country that we have a supply of vaccines where we can literally vaccinate everybody in the country.”
Furthermore, Dr. Fauci has also warned unvaccinated young people can seriously harm others inadvertently. “A significant proportion of the people who don’t want to get vaccinated are young people,” said Dr. Fauci. “And they say to themselves for any of a number of reasons, [say], I don’t want to get vaccinated.”
Statistically, if you were young and healthy and you get infected, the chances are, you know, maybe 40% that you won’t even get any symptoms.
“So people like that would often say, well, then the heck with it, let me get infected and do whatever the heck I want to do and not restrict my freedom as it were,” he continued. “The only thing wrong with that dialogue is that means you’re looking at yourself in a vacuum is, well, if I get infected, it’s not going to impact anybody else.”
“I want the virus to stop when it gets to me and not infect me and make me an instrument of its spread,” said Dr. Fauci, “so even if you don’t get any symptoms, you can actually be an instrument of the spread of the virus.”