Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), said that mask mandates, even for those who have been vaccinated, are “under active consideration” among top U.S. health officials.
On CNN’s State of the Union, anchor Jake Tapper said, “Sources are telling CNN that top health officials are weighing whether to revise mask guidelines for vaccinated Americans. Are you part of those conversations? If so, what are you advising? Do you think masks should be brought back for vaccinated Americans?”
Fauci replied, “You know, Jake, this is under active consideration. If you’re asking, am I part of the discussion? Yes, I am part of the discussion. But I think what you are seeing, even though as of our conversation at this moment, the CDC still says and recommends that if you are vaccinated fully, that you do not need to wear a mask indoors.”
He went on to express support for local governments that are imposing masks on even the vaccinated.
However, if you look at what’s going on locally in the trenches, in places like L.A. County, the local officials have the discretion, and the CDC agrees with that ability and discretion capability to say, you know, you’re in a situation where we’re having a lot of dynamics of infection. Even if you are vaccinated, you should wear a mask.
That’s a local decision that’s not incompatible with the CDC’s overall recommendations that give a lot of discretion to the locals. And we’re going to see that in L.A. We’re seeing it in Chicago. We’re seeing that in New Orleans because the officials there, many of them are saying even if you’re vaccinated, it’s prudent to wear a mask indoors. That’s a local decision.
Policymakers have been reintroducing previously relaxed coronavirus restrictions due to the supposed “surge” of cases related to COVID-19’s “Delta variant.”
Fauci has encountered widespread criticism since becoming the face of the “lockdown” approach to handling the coronavirus. Part of the criticism has centered on the fact that his NIAID gave funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where the virus originated in the first place. The funding was used for gain-of-function research, which explores how viruses can jump from bats to humans.
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Fauci defended the $600,000 his outfit provided for this research, telling Tapper that it would have been “negligent” not to do so.
“[The proposal was] to be able to go and do a survey of what was going on among the bat population because everyone in the world was trying to figure out what the original source of the original SARS CoV-1 was,” Fauci added.
He continued, “It was almost as if you didn’t pursue that research, you would be negligent because you were trying to find out how you could prevent this from happening again.”
“If we were starting to look for bats in Secaucus, New Jersey, or Fairfax County, Virginia, it wouldn’t contribute very much to the standing of where SARS COV-1 originated,” Fauci concluded.
Localities are reimposing previously lifted coronavirus restrictions or creating new ones in the face of the Delta variant. These policies often limit the freedom of those who have not received the vaccine, even though reports suggest it isn’t as effective as its proponents claim for stopping the spread.
In Britain, for example, about half of all new COVID cases are among individuals who have been vaccinated.
That hasn’t stopped places such as Montclair, California, requiring city workers to wear a sticker confirming they have gotten the shot in order for them to be able to go maskless.
Meanwhile, countries such as Italy, France, and Israel are enacting sweeping prohibitions on the unvaccinated from being able to attend public places such as shopping centers, concerts, sports games, and movie theaters. In Israel, citizens may not even enter synagogues without a certification of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test.
Israeli Prime Minister Neftali Bennett stated, “Those who refuse vaccines hurt us all because if all of us were vaccinated, we would all be able to maintain daily life. But if one million Israelis continue to not get vaccinated, this will oblige the eight million others to shut themselves in their homes.”
So much for two weeks to flatten the curve.
