National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases head Dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” that it was “folly” to think you will be fine without getting vaccinated against the COVID-19.
Guest-host Tiffany Cross said a lot of people have a lot of questions. When I come across people who haven’t been vaccinated, they say, ‘I’ve been OK so far. I haven’t caught COVID. I’m more anxious about the vaccine than catching covid. What is your advice to those folks tonight?”
Fauci said, “I think they just need to look at the numbers that you just mentioned. Ninety-nine-point-five percent of the people who have been hospitalized and died and or died from COVID-19 are unvaccinated, and about 0.5 % are among the vaccinated individuals. If you look at the numbers you just mentioned, we have a large percentage of the new infections that we’re reporting every day are in those regions of the country where the vaccination rate is very low. It’s really very unfortunate for someone to say I have not gotten infected yet. That means I’m OK. It’s just not facing the reality of the high degree of effectiveness of the vaccine.”
He continued, “We really need to reach out to people. That’s probably done best by trusted messengers who might try to convince them that the folly of thinking that everything is going to be OK if people don’t get vaccinated. It is going to be a real problem. We likely have two types of America, those who are vaccinated and those who are not. The risk for those who are not vaccinated is substantial.”
Fauci added, “We are fortunate we have vaccines that work even against this very troublesome variant which all the more reason why it is stunning why people do not want to get vaccinated when you have an effective tool that can be life-saving.”
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