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Images of an audience cheering for vaccine opposition at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas are “gruesome,” Fauci said. Former President Donald Trump was scheduled to address the meeting on Sunday.
“It’s almost scary to say, ‘Hey guess what, we don’t want you to do something to save your life,'” Fauci said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to promote trusted local figures, such as the clergy, to spread the message about the vaccine and has said it is sending “emergency response teams” from federal agencies to help states to combat the spread of the more contagious delta strain.
The teams have become a partisan flashpoint, with some Republicans describing them as excessive government interference after Biden called last week for “door-to-door” neighborhood efforts to persuade people to get vaccinated.
Missed target
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican whose state has one of the lowest vaccination rates among U.S. states, said community groups, including churches, had previously attempted to get vaccinated the residents.
“Nobody wants an agent to knock on a door,” he told ABC. “But we want those who don’t have access otherwise to make sure they know it and have the information. If that means walking into a community door by door and telling them about it, then that’s okay. “
“You overcome resistance and stubbornness by saying this is important to our community, and it is important to the health of our state and our nation,” he said.
Fauci said “I really don’t have a good explanation” for why some people refuse vaccines. “It’s ideological rigidity, I think,” he told CNN.
More than two-thirds of adults in the United States, or 67.5%, have received at least one dose of the Covid vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Still, daily vaccinations have dropped in recent weeks and Biden missed his goal of getting at least one dose to 70% of adults by July 4.
“We have more vaccines in this country than we know what to do with it,” Fauci said on CBS’s “Face the Nation”. “It’s a very frustrating situation.
While it is “highly conceivable, perhaps likely” that booster shots of Covid will eventually be needed, especially for people with underlying illnesses, initial data from an early human study from Pfizer Inc. released last week is not yet enough to trigger an official recommendation, Fauci says.
“This is really a firm recommendation against an opinion,” he said. At the same time, institutions such as the National Institutes of Health are conducting studies on boosters.
“Right now we are getting full geared to do boosters if we need them,” Fauci said.
© 2021 Bloomberg LP
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