Following are excerpts from the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director & White House Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, on “Squawk Box” (M-F, 6AM-9AM ET) today, Friday, December 17th. Following are links to video on CNBC.com:
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Fauci On Recommendations
The recommendations are what we have always said. We got to get the unvaccinated people vaccinated and boosters really help, very, very much in protecting you against infection but particularly against severe disease.
Fauci On Optimum Vaccination
There is no doubt that optimum vaccination is with the booster. There is no doubt about that. Whether or not the CDC is going to change that is certainly on the table and open for discussion.
Fauci On J&J vs mRNA
Well the shift and the change right now that occurred yesterday regarding a recommendation of a preference for the mRNA over the Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) really was nailed down by the very recent data that there are more of these adverse events than was originally thought. Still one can use the J&J but what the CDC was saying that when you look at the overall data particularly taking into account the safety data with regards to adverse events that if you had the choice favor the mRNA.
Fauci On Celebrating Holidays
If you're vaccinated, your family is vaccinated, you have friends who are vaccinated and hopefully also boosted you can still enjoy a social gathering generally in a home. You got to be careful when you go into large public indoor spaces where there are a lot of people there.
Fauci On Potential Of Delayed Adverse Reactions
It would be unprecedented to see something 6 months, a year from now associated with any vaccine. We’ve never seen that. Usually you get reactive genicity which occurs within 24 to 48 hours after a vaccine and then there are adverse events. Almost all of those adverse events occur within 30 days or 45 days at the most. The idea of having an unexpected adverse event occur six months or year later – nothing is impossible, but that would be absolutely unprecedented if that occurred.
Fauci On Virus Being Extraordinarily Transmissible
One of the things we have to be careful about that if you start assuming – and it really is only an assumption – that it might be less severe in general. That could be complete overrided by the fact that it is so extraordinarily transmissible that even though you have lesser of a percentage of people who get hospitalized. When you have a larger number of people getting infected, the total amount of hospitalization is going to be more and that is just simple math.
Fauci On Breakthrough Infections
We have to admit we are seeing a lot of breakthrough infections and there are a number of reasons for that. One, there is waning immunity which is the reason why we strongly recommend that when people are eligible to get boosted, that they get boosted.
Fauci On Mandates
We are never going to get out of this outbreak if we still have 50 million people who for reasons that are still very difficult to understand refuse to get vaccinated when you have a virus that has killed 800,000 Americans and caused 50 million infections. So if people still do not want to get vaccinated, sometimes you have to, for the common good, make requirements.
