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As the United States allows Covid-19 vaccines for emergency use, the task at hand is to encourage people to get vaccinated against Covid-19 “is something you want to do for yourself, to your family, for the future of our nation, ”Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said Thursday.
There has been so much misinformation about vaccines that even healthcare workers are reluctant to get vaccinated, Collins told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
“I am a doctor. I am a scientist. I run the NIH. I was fortunate to be intimately involved at every stage of the development of these vaccines, ”Collins said. “No shortcuts were taken. There is no hidden information. There are no Bill Gates tokens in the syringes – all the crazy stuff you read on social media, but people have been hit by all kinds of crazy information. “
Collins warned that if the United States did not achieve 70-80% immunization, “we could lose even more lives and that would be the worst possible tragedy.”
He urged Americans to take the raging coronavirus pandemic seriously.
“Let me make a plea to the Americans,” Collins said, as the death toll from Covid-19 surpassed 4,000 on Wednesday and hospitalizations and the number of cases continued to break records.
“Anyway, as far as the conclusion about your own ability to turn the tide, put it aside,” he urged, “and let me talk to you for a minute here.
“We know that these masks that we are all asked to wear are not political statements, they are medical devices that save lives,” Collins said.
“If we were willing today to decide to put aside all these arguments about politics and invasions of freedom and all the rest and just say, I’m going to wear this when I’m away from home, I’ll avoid gather inside with other people, especially if they don’t have masks, I will be part of the solution to protect myself but also to protect my neighbors, my grandparents, all those people who are still there and who could still be the next victims, we might have a chance to drag this out over the next few months while waiting for the vaccine, ”he said.
“We still have a few dark months ahead of us,” Collins said. “If we don’t do anything at this point to try to stop this terrible upward trend in hospitalizations, cases and deaths.
More than 310,000 Americans have died from Covid-19 and more than 17.1 million have been infected, according to Johns Hopkins University.
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