The nation’s leading infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, on Friday issued a stern response to Sen. Ron Johnson’s skeptical comments questioning why everyone needs to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.
The Wisconsin Republican said Thursday he was “highly suspicious” over the federal push for everyone to receive a vaccine, arguing, “The science tells us that vaccines are 95% effective, so if you have a vaccine, quite honestly, what do you care if your neighbor has one or not?”
He later sought to clarify his remarks during a radio program on Thursday and sent out a public statement Friday, saying, “I strongly supported Operation Warp Speed, and celebrated its astonishingly rapid success.”
Still, Fauci responded hashly to Johnson’s questions, explaining the coronavirus vaccine effort is the key to bringing the pandemic under control during an interview on MSNBC.
RON JOHNSON ‘HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS’ OF FEDERAL VACCINATION PUSH
“We are dealing with an emergency,” Fauci said. “How can anyone say that 567,000 dead Americans is not an emergency?”
Johnson’s Thursday remarks were made during a conversation with conservative radio host Vicki McKenna. The senator told her the distribution of effective vaccines should be “limited” to those who are highly vulnerable to severe illness, such as the elderly population.
Johnson said the leading vaccine options available are all still in emergency use authorization phases and had not been fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
Government health experts have urged all adults, not just the most vulnerable, to get vaccinated when they can. Anyone over the age of 16 is now eligible to take a COVID-19 vaccine.
Fauci reiterated on Friday he estimates it may take “somewhere between 70 and 85%” of the population to either take the vaccine or have an immunity due to prior infection in order to achieve herd immunity.
Johnson said in his Friday statement he thinks it “is a legitimate question to ask whether people at very low risk of suffering serious illness from Covid, particularly the young and healthy, should be encouraged to take a vaccine … before it has been fully tested and approved.”
The senator from Wisconsin said he was a proponent of the Trump-back “Right to Try” legislation, saying “a reasonable corollary to that is the right to choose or not to choose treatment.”
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“Right to try” legislation passed into law in May 2018, which was designed to give terminally ill patients the right to try experimental treatments.
