Flubros and Flubras! Year 2 (a place for Flubros and Flubras)

https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/canada/some-universities-say-no-to-proof-of-vaccination-requirement-1.5420319

The left is really torn here. They desperately want the tyranny of vaccine passports, but, when viewed through critical race theory, they fear they could be racist. It is always enjoyable when the left starts to fracture.

Fauci says it may be time to relax indoor mask mandate. This, of course, isn’t really want he wants. He is feeling the pressure associated with dropping cases, deaths and hospitalizations. Right now the best hope for him is for some “troubling” variants to appear throughout the country.

'This Week' Transcript 5-9-21: Dr. Anthony Fauci, Fatima Goss Graves, Diane Swonk & Lareina Yee

This is a rush transcript of "This Week" airing Sunday, May 9.
By
ABC News
May 9, 2021, 9:13 AM

STEPHANOPOULOS: Maggie Rulli on the scene in New Delhi.

Let's bring in the president's chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Dr. Fauci, thanks for joining us again this morning.

You just heard Maggie Rulli right there. I know that President Biden has pledged to send vaccines to India. He's authorized transport of PPE and oxygen.

What more can be done right now?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NIAID: Well, right now, there has to be several things, one from within the country. And I've been speaking with some of them right now, actually, over the last couple of days.

They have really got to get hospital beds and do really what the Chinese did way back a year or so ago, where you essentially build up with -- the equivalent of field hospitals. You've got to get that. You can't have people out in the street not having a hospital bed.

The oxygen situation is something that was really critical. I mean, to have people not have oxygen is really tragic, what's going on over there.

But the endgame of this all, George, is going to be to get people vaccinated, as you said on the piece just a moment ago, that India is the largest vaccine-producing country in the world. They've got to get their resources, not only from within, but also from without.

And that's the reason why other countries need to chip in to be able to get either supplies to the Indians to make their own vaccines or to get vaccines donated.

One of the ways to do that is to have the big companies that have the capability of making vaccines to really scale up in a great way to get literally hundreds of millions of doses to be able to get to them.

So there’s an immediate problem which is hospital beds, oxygen, PPE, and other supplies. And then there’s the problem looking forward of how are you going to shut this down, how are you going to turn it around, how are you going to break the chain of transmission?

Vaccines is one of them but there are other ways too, like shutting down the government.I have advised them in the past that you really need to do that. You’ve got to shut down.

I believe several of the Indian states have already done that but you need to break the chain of transmission. And one of the ways to do that is to shut down.

STEPHANOPOULOS: As you know, the long term solution is vaccines. But it’s not just India, Africa’s vaccinated only 1 percent of its population compared to more than 40 percent here. And the head of the World Health Organization is calling the unequal (ph) distribution of vaccine a moral outrage.

You said the companies should be scaling up but many of those companies say that President Biden’s plan to have these patent waivers is going to prevent them from scaling up. It’s going to hamper the supply chain and actually set back the vaccine production effort.

FAUCI: Yes. I don’t think that’s the case, George. They can scale up. You know, they’ve done an extraordinary amount. You’ve got to give them credit. They’ve really just really done something that is really quite impressive in the way they’ve gotten their vaccine supply up and out for the rest of the world.

They can scale up more. I think the waiving of the patents and the TRIPS is not going to necessarily interfere with that right now.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Meantime, here at home, the vaccine demand is dropping pretty sharply. States are turning down doses across the country. We seem to be bumping against the limits of Americans willing and eager to get the vaccine.

How do we convince the hold-outs?

FAUCI: Well, you know it is a smaller group, George, you’re absolutely correct, that seem to be recalcitrant. So there are two major ways, I believe, that we can address that problem.

One is to get trusted messengers, people who they trust, to get to them to convince them why it’s important. Those messengers could be anything from sports figures to entertainment figures to clergy or even to their family doctor to explain and convince them why it’s important for their own health, for that of their family, and for the community in general.

But the other way is what we’re doing, is to make it extremely easy for people to get vaccinated. I mean, typical example, is that now, we have 40,000 pharmacies where you can actually just walk in, no computer, no online, no appointment, just walk in and get vaccinated. As well as mobile units that are going out.

So those are the two major ways, I believe, we can just get into that group that really seems to be recalcitrant to getting vaccinated.

STEPHANOPOULOS: A third possible wave may be making the benefits of the vaccine very, very tangible to people. You’ve had former -- you’ve had experts like the former head of the FDA, Scott Gottlieb, say it’s time to start relaxing the in-door mask mandates. Is he right?

FAUCI: No, I think so. And I think you’re going to probably be seeing that as we go along and as more people get vaccinated. The CDC will be, you know, almost in real time, George, updating their recommendations and their guidelines.

But, yes, we do need to start being more liberal as we get more people vaccinated. As you get more people vaccinated, the number of cases per day will absolutely go down. We’re averaging about 43,000 a day. We’ve got to get it much, much lower than that. When that gets lower, the risk of any infection indoor or outdoor diminishes dramatically.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Finally, as you know, it’s Mother’s Day, and there are a lots of questions out there about the safety of the vaccines for pregnant women and women trying to have kids. What’s your message to them?

FAUCI: Well, if you look at the data, George, there doesn’t seem to be a problem at all. There are literally been tens and tens of thousands of women who are pregnant who’ve gotten vaccinated. There are no red flags. Nothing that looks like there’s going to be any problem.

So, I think that that’s something that we really don’t need to worry about that much. It looks good.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Give everyone a sense of what the country is going to look like next Mother’s Day.

FAUCI: Well, George, I hope that next Mother’s Day, we’re going to see a dramatic difference than what we’re seeing right now. I believe that we will be about as close to back to normal as we can. And there’s some conditions to that, George.

We’ve got to make sure that we get the overwhelming proportion of the population vaccinated. When that happens, the virus doesn’t really have any place to go. There aren’t a lot of vulnerable people around. And where there are not a lot of vulnerable people around, you’re not going to see a surge. You’re not going to see the kinds of numbers we see now.

That being the case, I think we can approach what we use to remember as normal before all of this tragedy happened.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Dr. Fauci, thanks, as always, for your time and your information.

FAUCI: Thanks, George. Thank you for having me.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-21-anthony-fauci-fatima-goss-graves/story?id=77578250

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