Anthony Fauci Mystified Booster Rates Are Lagging

Dr. Anthony Fauci is mystified that the booster shot rate in the U.S. is lagging, telling reporters Wednesday, “I don’t have an easy explanation for that.”

“With regard to data — for Dr. Fauci or Dr. Walensky — what is your take on why the booster rate seems to be lagging?” Reuters’ Jeff Mason asked during Wednesday’s press conference with the White House COVID-19 Response Team. “Why would people who have decided to get vaccinated, the first and second doses, not be getting more boosters?”

Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, before turning the question over to Fauci, explained that “about half” of all eligible Americans have actually received a booster shot.

Jeff Zients (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

“Well, Jeff, you know, I’m really not sure you’re asking a good question. It’s almost a psychological or sociological question,” he said before questioning individuals who have made the choice to skip the booster shot.

“Why would people who had enough understanding of the risk to go ahead and get the primary series — why we don’t have more getting the booster,” he asked. “I don’t have an easy explanation for that.”

“That’s one of the reasons why we keep trying to put the data out. Because, as Dr. Walensky showed in her slide, the data are really stunningly obvious why a booster is really very important,” he said before attempting to sell boosters yet again:

You first need to get vaccinated before you get boosted, that’s for sure.  But when you look at the difference of how a booster, for everything you ask it to do — to reconstitute, from an immunological and from a clinical standpoint, the diminished protection that you get not only with waning naturally of immunity, but also the negative impact on some of the variants that elude the immune response — fortunately for us, when you boost with the standard vaccine, which is against the original viral sequence, that you get such a good response.

“So, the only thing that we can do is to continue to come out with the data and to make sure the American public appreciates why it is so important for optimal protection to get boosted,” he added.

The federal health official failed to address the broken promises made, as they initially pitched the vaccines to Americans as a way to return to a state of pre-pandemic normalcy. That, however, did not happen, as some states and localities reinstituted mask mandates when cases spiked, even among fully vaccinated individuals. To this day, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advises fully vaccinated individuals to wear masks when they are in areas with “substantial or high transmission.”

Mark Lennihan, File/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

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