Young and healthy people should “absolutely” receive vaccines for COVID-19, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Wednesday when asked to respond to Joe Rogan’s recent critiques of the campaign for universal vaccination.
Fauci spoke with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie to advocate for Americans to get vaccines. Young and healthy people should “get vaccinated” out of concern for others’ welfare, he said. COVID-19, he added, can be transmitted by persons with asymptomatic infections.
“You can get infected, and will get infected, if you put yourself at risk.” -Dr. Anthony Fauci responding to podcast host Joe Rogan’s suggestion that young people not get the COVID-19 vaccine pic.twitter.com/6E02GI31VV
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) April 28, 2021
Partial transcript below:
GUTHRIE: I want to ask you, popular podcast host Joe Rogan — you may have heard about this — made comments about young people getting vaccinated. It’s getting a lot of buzz, he said, “If you’re like 21 years old and you say to me, ‘Should I get vaccinated?’, I say, ‘No.’ If you’re a healthy person, you’re exercising all the time, and you’re young and you’re eating well, I don’t think you need to worry about this,” saying young healthy people shouldn’t get vaccinated.
Just quickly, your response.
FAUCI: Well, that’s incorrect, Savannah, and the reason why is that you’re talking about yourself in a vacuum then. You’re worried about yourself getting infected and likelihood that you’re not gonna get any symptoms, but you can get infected and will get infected if you put yourself at risk, and even if you don’t have any symptoms you’re propagating the outbreak because it is likely that you — even if you have no symptoms — that you may inadvertently and innocently then infect someone else who might infect someone who really could have a problem with a severe outcome.
So if you want to only worry about yourself and not society, then that’s okay, but if you’re saying to yourself, ‘Even if I get infected, I could do damage to somebody else, even if I have no symptoms at all,’ and that’s the reason why you’ve got to be careful and get vaccinated.
GUTHRIE: So you say young healthy people should get vaccinated?
FAUCI: Absolutely.
Fauci also spoke on the issue of vaccinations for children. “Children of any age will likely be vaccinated by the time we get to the end of the year,” he stated.
On Tuesday, Rogan said, “If you’re like 21 years old, and you say to me, ‘Should I get vaccinated?’ I’ll go, ‘No.’ Are you healthy? Are you a healthy person? Like, look, don’t do anything stupid, but you should take care of yourself.” You should — if you’re a healthy person, and you’re exercising all the time, and you’re young, and you’re eating well, like, I don’t think you need to worry about this.”
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