Dr. Anthony Fauci certainly made his rounds on the Sunday morning shows.
On CNN's "State of the Union," host Jake Tapper mentioned that Italy is going back into yet another round of lockdowns, which Fauci warned "it definitely is of concern." Fauci specifically spoke of his concerns of how "they plateaued and they pulled back on public health measures."
According to Fauci, we really will have to wait until Biden's Fourth of July prediction, which Fauci spoke of as a time when "we really will have a considerable degree of normality," though that's not a given, and he can't say for certain what that will entail:
First of all, there will be a greater degree of confidence. When you have a situation where you have 70,000 infections per day, I mean that is a feeling that you don't feel very secure about mingling, about having people around feeling comfortable about it. If by the time we get to the fourth of July, with the rollout of the vaccines, we get the level of infection so low, I'm not gonna be able to tell you exactly what the specific guidelines of the CDC are. But I can tell you for sure they will be much more liberal than they are right now about what you can do.
Tapper pressed on about the CDC guidelines, asking out loud what a lot of us were already thinking:
Tapper: The CDC finally released some guidelines for people who have fully vaccinated. But those people are not allowed to have medium-size gatherings. They're still not allowed to travel according to the CDC. Why? Why? What do you as a health expert need to see to say it's okay to travel or be in a crowd. It doesn't make sense to a lot of people.
Fauci: Well, Jake, let me tell you how it goes with the regard to the CDC. The CDC is a science-based organization. So they really would like to get the data that would allow them to get to the next step. If they don't have the data, they will do modeling. If they don't have the modeling, they will use as you say common sense expert opinion. So, what we've seen was the first installment of what you can do if you are vaccinated. And that's what you just mentioned, what you can do in the home setting, with vaccinated people together or vaccinated people with an unvaccinated person. You're gonna see very soon similar types of influence for the American public with regard to travel, the work place, all kind of different things that you are asking right now. You will imminently be seeing those types of guidelines coming out. They just want to make sure that they get it right. Now, some people think that is a little bit too slow. But they're gonna get there. And they'll get there soon.
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To "some people?" Try a lot of people.
Then, on "Fox News Sunday," Fauci claimed, "to pull back now prematurely would be ill-advised." He also said "I think it's risky and potentially dangerous," with Texas opening completely up. Fauci responded that "I think the Fourth of July projection is really quite reasonable."
Host Chris Wallace and Fauci did acknowledge that Trump was responsible for the vaccine rollout, but focused on lamenting why the former president wasn't encouraging more people to get it:
Fauci: Chris, I think it would make all the difference in the world. He's a a very widely popular person among Republicans. If he came out and said go and get vaccinated, it's really important for your health, the health of your family and the health of the country, it seems absolutely inevitable that the vast majority of people who are his close followers would listen to him. He is such a strongly popular person, I cannot imagine that if he comes out that they would not get vaccinated. It would be very helpful to the effort for that to happen. I'm very surprised at the high percentage of Republicans who say they don't want to get vaccinated. I don't understand where that's coming from. This is not a political issue. This is a public health issue and the history of facts analogy tells us when you look at smallpox, polio, measles, all the things that vaccines have been so incredibly helpful in getting us out of difficulty with those infections, I just don't get it, Chris, why they don't want to get vaccinated.
Wallace: Well, let me ask another question. You know, as we say, President Trump was largely responsible for the fact that we have all these vaccines available now. Why do you think he hasn't spread that message, didn't participate in the PSA, and got the vaccine in private and
didn't make it public in January when he was still in the White House?
Fauci: Yeah. Again, it's puzzling to me. I mean, clearly Operation Warp Speed started in the Trump Administration. It was very successful in getting us the vaccines we have right now. It seems like an intrinsic contradiction, the fact that you had a program that was started during his presidency and he is not out telling people to get vaccinated. I wish he would. He has such an incredible influence over people in the Republican party. It would really be a game changer if he did.
If only these contributions from the Trump Administration were acknowledged so "clearly" by others. Instead, the current Biden Administration would do away with all memory of Trump's role if Biden had his way.
Fauci also appeared on "Meet the Press," where he told host Chuck Todd that he gets "so anxious when I hear pulling back completely on public health measures," when he called "a risky business."
Todd and Fauci also focused on vaccine hesitancy, in a particularly impassioned response: what may have been one of Fauci's most impassioned responses:
Todd: I want to talk about vaccine hesitancy here, because we're noticing something at least in polling, that it is not the conventional wisdom about vaccine hesitancy that you see this divide by race. We're seeing a bigger divide by politics. We talked about it earlier. For instance among Trump voters, 47% have said that they will not be vaccinated, 30% say yes. Among Biden voters, 58-10. Among Republican men, half of Republican men say they're not going to take this vaccine. You have the PSA with all the former president except one, President Trump in there. Do you think he needs to be enlisted here at all toll get his voters to take this vaccine?
Fauci: Chuck, I hope he does because the numbers that you gave are so disturbing, how such a large proportion of a certain group of people would not want to get vaccinated merely because of political considerations. It makes absolutely no sense. I have been saying that for so long, we got to disassociate political persuasion of what's common sense, no brainer public health things. The history of vaccinology have rescued us from smallpox and measles and other diseases, what is the problem here? This is a vaccine that's going to be life-saving for millions of people. How some groups would not want to do it for reasons that I just don't understand, I don't comprehend what the reasons for that is when you have a vaccine that's 94% to 95% effective and it is very safe. I don't get it.
When asked by Todd when someone could have an indoor wedding, Fauci couldn't give much of an answer:
If we keep going down and get to a low level, when we are there and we have a good proportion of the people vaccinated, I think you will see weddings in the normal ways within a reasonable period of time. There is always the caveat it is not going to happen if you have a surge.
Considering what "normal" and "reasonable period of time" means to the likes of Biden and Fauci, I wouldn't bet on that being any time soon, sadly.
Sadly, Fauci was not asked why Biden was not giving Trump any credit for the vaccine, nor if the surge of migrants at the border was creating further concerns with curbing the virus.
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