As the U.S. continues to ramp up vaccinations, Dr. Anthony Fauci discussed what the future holds for people who are vaccinated, whether COVID-19 worries will ever completely fade, and how divisiveness hurt efforts to fight the pandemic, at a virtual Chicago event Thursday.
Fauci spoke as he accepted an award from the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy that’s given annually to an exceptional leader who has championed analytically rigorous, evidence-based approaches to policy.
Here are five takeaways from the remarks by Fauci, who is the government’s top infectious disease expert, heading the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases:
1. Vaccinated people should still be cautious
“The instinct is to say, ‘We have a really good vaccine, I’m vaccinated, I have a 95% effective vaccine, why can’t I do whatever I want to do?’,” Fauci said. “Ultimately, you may be able to do that but not right now because there are things we don’t know.”
Fauci said it’s still unknown whether the vaccine prevents a vaccinated person from spreading the illness “so we say you’ve got to wear a mask.”
Fauci also said he thinks that if individuals get COVID-19 after being vaccinated, the level of virus in their system will likely be substantially lower than it would be in a person who hasn’t been vaccinated. “There’s a study from Israel that strongly suggests that. But we’re doing a study now to try and nail that down, and if in fact we find that out, then you’re going to see a pulling back on some of the restrictions, but we’re not there yet.”
2. Vaccines may not completely end COVID-19 worries
Harris School Dean Katherine Baicker asked Fauci whether mass vaccination will allow the world to ever truly get over COVID-19, or whether variants, booster shots, and vaccine tweaks will always be part of life.
“I don’t know the answer to that question. I just don’t, and the reason I don’t is there are too many variables in there that I don’t have control over, nor do my public health colleagues have control over,” Fauci said. “How many people are going to get vaccinated? How many variants are you going to have? And then you have the thing that we really don’t have, individually, a lot of control over, and that is a global pandemic requires a global response.”
3. Divisiveness made it more difficult to fight COVID-19
One of the challenges the pandemic response faced was that it occurred during one of the most divisive periods in recent U.S. history, Fauci said. “You have public health measures that are assuming almost a political stance, whether or not you should wear a mask, whether or not you should avoid congregate settings. That makes it extremely difficult to address a pandemic of this proportion.”
4. The U.S. could have used a more uniform response to COVID-19
“You’ve got to do some things that are really uniform. That was one of the things that actually was the weakness in our response. “ … We wanted to all pull together, and yet some states often related to their ideology of whether it was a red state or a blue state, which inherently is wrong because you’re dealing with a single common enemy,” he said.
5. COVID-19 highlighted health inequities facing brown and Black communities
Fauci said the pandemic has shown the “extraordinary health disparities we have in this country for our minority populations, for our brown and Black populations.”
“You see discrepancies that are stunning, that you have brown and Black people by the nature of the jobs they have, that are essential workers keeping the country going, they’re interfacing with people … they’re out there and they have a higher incidence of infection,” Fauci said. “Then what they have is a much higher incidence and prevalence of the comorbitities that put them into that category, at whatever age they are, of having a serious outcome of hospitalization and deaths.”
“We can’t let this be forgotten when we get out of COVID-19. We’ve got to remember the health disparities that keep coming back and biting the populations that are the most vulnerable.”
___
(c)2021 the Chicago Tribune
Visit the Chicago Tribune at www.chicagotribune.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
—-
This content is published through a licensing agreement with Acquire Media using its NewsEdge technology.
This man is a china fraud.
Anthony Fauci is one of the holders of the patent on this virus when the US CDC was studying it’s use as a possible bio-weapon for the US Military in 2003.
Of course he knows it will mutate, it was designed to mutate.
Too bad masks don’t work because this bio-weapon will be with us for the rest of time.
AS long as it lets these commucrats stay in power, we’ll NEVER BE DONE WITH covid.
People who gain fame and fortune from a crisis — especially one that they created themselves — never want the crisis to be over.
One of the most dangerous people in the U.S., a Democrat with a LITTLE power!
Just like one of the most SCARIEST phrases is “I am from the government and i am here to help”.
What a little demon this Fauci guy is , I heard he eats bugs for dinner is that true?
Well that depends. Are you referring to the bugs he owns the patent on, or the bugs not developed in China?
I hope I can get over Fauci’s blabbering mouth with all of his wisdom? Boy that guy just loves being on TV.
He has his DVR set to record ALL of them so he can watch reruns of himself!
and collecting $419,000 a year of the tax payers great great grand children’s hard earned sweat equity.
In answer to the question, Not as long as Fauci and Gates are alive.
This guy has been wrong about every decision about this virus. He was against masks then he was for them. He recommended to NOT ban travel from China. Thank God Trump didn’t listen. He said people shouldn’t change anything they do then said “shutdown for 15 days to flatten the curve”, which we are now entering year two. Instead of quarantining the sick, he said to quarantine the healthy. If Trump made one mistakes in the pandemic response, it was taking that advice. It did nothing to slow the pandemic but it devastated the economy and peoples lives. It was used to beat the **** out of Trump in an election year. As James Carville said during the 1992 election, “It’s the economy stupid”. But that was the whole point. To find a way to beat Trump. As far as I can tell the country would have been better off if we did exactly the opposite of what Fauci recommended. Instead of being put in a pedestal this guy should’ve been run out of town on a rail.
I still have not found out, WHO THE HELL told trump, to listen to a damn thing Fauci said..
I read online that Fauci was involved in an AIDS vaccine back in the late ‘70’s to early ‘80’s. He used children in the foster care system (at the time, they were wards of the state and I guess by that reasoning, the kids were indispensable) to test the vaccination, resulting in the deaths of some of the children. The article even noted that one of those deaths was a six year old who after being injected with the test vaccine, went blind first and died a slow death.
Does anyone have any information about this? As much as I hope this is untrue, at this point, it wouldn’t surprise me that he would be involved.
There still isn’t a cure for AIDS, just treatments….just like the covid vaccine, it’s not really a cure. Or is it?
I’ve heard of similar, but not found anything concrete to back it up.
Fauci has long since abandoned science and logic and good intent in favor of political power. His is not a mission to solve the covid problem but to use covid as a tool to enact more government control at the expense of personal freedoms. In this process, Fauci receives more glory as the problem lasts longer and lockdowns are extended.