Dr. Anthony Fauci issued a bleak warning to the nation on the future of eradicating the coronavirus, saying herd immunity is unlikely if too many people refuse to receive a coronavirus vaccine.
In an interview with the nonprofit think tank the Aspen Institute, Fauci warned that the anti-vaccine movement could lead to reluctance for some people to get vaccinated for the coronavirus once a vaccine is developed.
“There is a general anti-science, anti-authority, anti-vaccine feeling among some people in this country, an alarmingly large percentage of people relatively speaking,” said the nation’s leading expert on infectious diseases.
The government says herd immunity, or community immunity, is an “important” reason to get vaccinated.
“Germs can travel quickly through a community and make a lot of people sick. If enough people get sick, it can lead to an outbreak. But when enough people are vaccinated against a certain disease, the germs can’t travel as easily from person to person — and the entire community is less likely to get the disease,” the Health and Human Services Department says on its vaccines website. “That means even people who can’t get vaccinated will have some protection from getting sick. And if a person does get sick, there’s less chance of an outbreak because it’s harder for the disease to spread. Eventually, the disease becomes rare — and sometimes, it’s wiped out altogether.”
Fauci said one way to help encourage people to get vaccinated is to work with local communities to help inform people of how the federal government is handling the pandemic.
“We have to make sure we engage the community as we’re doing now … for people to understand that we are doing everything we can to show that it’s safe and that it’s effective and it’s for the good of them as individuals and for society to take the vaccine,” Fauci said.
The United States is experiencing a spike in cases in a handful of Southern states, prompting governors to reconsider their plans to reopen. More than 2.5 million cases of the coronavirus have been recorded in the U.S., and more than 125,000 COVID-19 patients in the country have died.
President Trump predicted last week that a vaccine would be ready “before the end of the year.” But Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, cast doubt on whether such a vaccine would be fully effective.
“I doubt seriously that [any] vaccine will ever be 100% effective,” Fauci said. “I would settle for a 70%-75% effective vaccine because that would bring you to that level, that herd immunity level.”
He also discussed how the country has handled lockdowns throughout the pandemic, saying that there were huge discrepancies within some states and that people were taking an all or nothing approach to public health guidelines.
“People took the attitude in some places of either all or none,” Fauci said. “Either you’re locked down, or you just let it fly and you just ignore many of the guidelines of physical distancing, wearing a mask, shaking hands, avoiding crowds. … Even in states that are telling their citizens to do it correctly, they’re doing that. There are crowds. They’re not physical distancing, and they’re not wearing masks. That’s a recipe for disaster.”
