Fauci Warns Vaccine May Only Help Control Coronavirus Pandemic
Dr. Anthony Fauci cautioned about high expectations about the efficacy of a vaccine for the COVID-19 China coronavirus in an interview Friday with the Brown University School of Public Health.
Fauci has served since 1984 as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the NIH and is a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
In response to a question from a student about a vaccine, Fauci said:
“…So, when you’re talking about a vaccine, um, if this were measles in which you could guarantee that if you get vaccinated it’s likely you’re 97 to 98 percent uh, uh, protected. Then you don’t have to worry about anything else, but just get yourself vaccinated. When you’re dealing with a vaccine for a disease like coronavirus in which you’re talking about the natural response of immunity, generally it’s finite. In other words we don’t know yet what the efficacy might be. I believe we’ll get an effective vaccine, but we don’t know if it’s gonna be 50 percent, 60 percent, hopefully I’d like to see 75 percent or more. But the chance of it being 98 percent effective is not great. Which means you must never abandon the public health approach. You’ve gotta think of the vaccine is a tool to be able to get the pandemic to no longer be a pandemic but to be something that’s well controlled. And by well controlled is my–I won’t say my vision, that sounds too haughty–but what I’d like to see is that, you know I know you’re learning this in your course because it’s the, one of the tenants of infectious diseases: There’s control, there’s elimination and there’s eradication. We’ve only eradicated one human infection in the history of the planet–and that’s small pox. But what we’ve done very successfully is that we’ve eliminated polio from the United States and a lot of other countries. We’ve eliminated malaria. And then we’ve controlled other diseases to a really good level. So what I’m shooting for is with a vaccine and good public health measures, we could bring it down to somewhere in between really good control and elimination. That’s what a vaccine’s gonna do, but it’s not gonna do it alone.”
Transcribed by TGP.
YouTube video cued to question on a vaccine:
CNBC reported the FDA is shooting for a minimum of 50 percent efficacy:
…The Food and
Source: The Gateway Pundit
