“Everything will be on the table for discussion” when asked if he will be discussing the possibility of introducing COVID-19 vaccine passports and potential mandatory vaccinations at a local level, including in schools, in his role as chief medical adviser to President-elect Biden.
It’s not up to me to make a decision. But these are all things that will be discussed.
Fauci does not believe that the country will make the vaccine mandatory on an individual basis.
We almost never mandate things federally [with regards to health].
I’m not sure it’s [the COVID-19 vaccine] going to be mandatory from a central government standpoint, like federal government mandates. But there are going to be individual institutions that I’m sure are going to mandate it.
For example, influenza and Hepatitis B vaccines are mandated at many hospitals. Here at the NIH [National Institutes of Health], I would not be allowed to see patients if I didn’t get vaccinated every year with flu and get vaccinated once with Hepatitis [B]. I have to get certified every year…if I didn’t, I couldn’t see patients.
So in that regard I would not be surprised, as we get into the full scope of [COVID-19] vaccination, that some companies, some hospitals, some organizations might require [COVID-19] vaccination.
When asked about schools mandating the vaccine, he said,
That is possible but that’s something that’s mandated at the state level and city level. A citywide school system might require it in some cities but not other cities. And that’s what I mean by things not being done centrally but locally.
Newsweek sights that Israel has mandated the issuing of “green passports” to residents who have received the Covid-19 vaccine. The passport will lift some restrictions, including mandatory quarantine following exposure to an infected person, and allow residents to travel abroad without having to be tested for the virus, as currently required.
Fauci was asked if this could happen in the U.S.
Anything is on the table. Anything is possible, of course.
Asked whether those who do get vaccinated can still pass the virus onto others, Fauci told Newsweek,
That’s a good question. We don’t know that yet. We do not know if the vaccines that prevent clinical disease also prevent infection. They very well might, but we have not proven that yet.
Given this unknown, asked if issuing vaccine passports could potentially encourage people to let their guard down and ignore public health safety measures, such as social distancing and limiting travel, Fauci said: “Exactly, they [people might] do anything they want to do [once they’ve been vaccinated].
That’s the reason why I keep saying that even though you get vaccinated, we should not eliminate, at all, public health measures like wearing masks because we don’t know yet what the effect [of the vaccine] is on transmissibility.
We don’t know that vaccinating people prevents infection. We certainly know that it [vaccination] prevents symptomatic disease, we don’t know if it prevents infection.
Fauci was also asked if airlines would make the vaccine mandatory. To this, he believes “That is quite possible.”
Well, you know, of course [it would be good for COVID-19 to become a standard travel vaccine]. I mean if everybody gets vaccinated, of course that’s good.
But yellow fever’s a good example. So we, in this country, don’t require [people] to get a yellow fever vaccine when you go [to] some place. It’s the place to which you are going that requires it.
I went to Liberia during the ebola outbreak. I had to get my yellow fever vaccine or they would not let me into Liberia.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
Of course it would be good to get a vaccine that “We do not know if the vaccines that prevent clinical disease also prevent infection.” This is Fauci at his best: talking in circles.
I think the vaccine being mandatory in schools, hospitals, and airlines, (and others), are only a formality and will be inevitable. But let us fervently pray that they do not, but especially the children: they go through enough as is, and I pray they do not need another vaccine that will wreck their health for potentially the rest of their lifetime.
But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
Matthew 18:6
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