Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical advisor to the President and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said, “It’s close, you know, it’s neck and neck, to be honest with you.” It’s a race between the virus and the vaccines.
We all waiting coronavirus to be ended soon, but this endemic isn’t over yet, cases are just “too high,” she said. Yesterday he spoke with KCBS Radio (San Francisco) in California and gave a warning about the variants.
He explained how we could have another surge, and what you need to do to stay safe during what we hope will be the final months of this terrible outbreak. He showed concerned on 6 warning everyone should hear—and to ensure your health and the health of others.
1 Dr. Fauci Warned the Variants are Dangerous
Dr. Fauci was asked who’s winning the race between the vaccine and the variants. “It’s close, you know, it’s neck and neck, to be honest with you,” he answered. “If you want to get metaphorical about it, it really is because we’re doing a really, really good job in vaccinating people.
We’re vaccinating between 3 and 4 million people a day. 30% of the adult population is fully vaccinated. 50% of the adult population has had at least one of two doses of the two dose vaccine, 80% of seniors greater than 65 years old have had at least one vaccine. So we’re doing really, really well.
However, on the downside of the situation, we’re still seeing around an average per week of around 60,000 infections per day. That will ultimately go down if we continue each day to vaccinate 3 to 4 million people, because we’ll reach a point where you will get the majority and then hopefully an overwhelming majority of people vaccinated, which will then create a veil of protection that the virus will continue to come down and down.”
2. Dr. Fauci Warned He’s Worried We Could Have More Surges
The interviewer said to Fauci: “We’re certainly in a better place than we were over the winter.….how fragile would you say those gains are? How quickly could it turn the other direction if people kind of let their guard down and we see concerns about more surges?”
“That’s the thing that I get concerned at,” answered Dr. Fauci, “because one of the first questions you asked me a moment ago was where we are in this race between the variants and a vaccine. Well, fortunately for us, the dominant variant is…is the UK version. Namely one that was first recognized in the UK.
Fortunately for us, the vaccines work very well against that variant, but you’ve got to get vaccinated if you want the vaccine to work well. This variant happens to have a characteristic of spreading much more efficiently from human to human, including young kids than the standard original Wuhan strain. And now we have this influx and expansion of the 1.1.7. So you’re going to look at it metaphorically like we’re in a race every day, more people get vaccinated, the vaccine gets the upper hand.”
3. Dr. Fauci Warned About Disregarding Public Health Measures
“If you pull back on public health measures like masking, avoiding congregate settings, keeping physical distance—if you prematurely pull back on that, then the variant is going to have the advantage. So you want to do two things simultaneously”—keep “the virus in check by public health measures.
At the same time, as you put a full court press on getting more people vaccinated every single day, then you will reach a critical turning point where the number of people vaccinated will be so high that the virus will have no place to go.”
4. Dr. Fauci Said “It’s Up To” You to Stop COVID—and Then We Can End the Public Health Measures
“It really is up to us,” said Dr. Fauci. “It’s in our hands to be able to stop this. And when we stop it to get ourselves back to some form of normality, that all of us crave so much, because this has been a 14 month, 15 month ordeal, we all want to get back to normality.
So the easiest way to do that is a combination of maintaining public health measures and getting vaccinated. And when you get enough people vaccinated, you could pull back on those public health measures regarding masking and congregate settings and things like that.”
5. Dr. Fauci Said the CDC is Meeting Today to Discuss the J&J Vaccine
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been paused due to a possible connection to blood clots. The CDC will meet and “they’ll make their recommendation. And then the FDA will make the decision about allowing this to be returned to the process of vaccination.
I don’t want to get ahead of the CDC recommendation, but the European medicines agency, which asks the same question about the use of the J&J product in Europe has made the determination that they will allow it to be given because they feel that the risk of COVID-19 far outweighs the very rare, rare occurrence of this serious adverse events.
So they’re letting the vaccine go out with a warning to people about what to look for about what the risk is. I wouldn’t be surprised though, again, I don’t want to get ahead of their decision, that’s up to them, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they came out with something similar to that.”
6. Dr. Fauci Said Vaccine Hesitancy Could be a Problem
“We saw what would be a natural dip, associated with the questions that arise regarding hesitancy when you have an adverse event,” said Dr. Fauci about a drop in vaccinations post-J&J news. “And that’s the reason why we’re putting a special effort in getting out to people through trusted community core of entertainers, sports figures, clergy, people to whom the community relates very well and get those people to explain that.
In fact, even though you might ask a question about safety, given the pause for the J&J the fact that the CDC and the FDA actually called a pause with such a rare six out of 7 million, such a rare of van to the point that people criticized them for pulling the trigger and calling a pause. If they call a pause for such a rare event, you can be sure that they take safety very, very seriously.
And so if any degree of hesitancy is related to a continued concern about safety, you just need to look at the system, which is highly sensitive in using a surveillance to look for adverse events.” So get vaccinated when it becomes available to you, and to protect your life and the lives of others.