Tuesday on FNC’s “Your World,” White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said the COVID-19 vaccines did not perform “over well” against infection of the virus.
Instead, he argued the vaccine helped protect from the symptoms of the virus.
“Let me ask you about this because when people heard, oh, my gosh, this happened to Dr. Anthony Fauci, everyone knows someone who’s gotten this again, and sometimes again after that,” host Neil Cavuto said. “And they’re beginning to wonder about the regimen for treating it, whether you get two vaccination shots, whether you get a booster, another booster. They just don’t know. What do you tell them?”
“Well, that’s a great question. And thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify it, Neil,” Fauci replied. “There’s no doubt that the vaccines themselves, particularly vaccine plus a booster at the appropriate time when you become eligible for a booster, for more than one booster — if you’re over 50 years old, you get eligibility for two boosters.
“One of the things that’s clear from the data is that, even though vaccines, because of the high degree of transmissibility of this virus, don’t protect overly well, as it were, against infection, they protect quite well against severe disease leading to hospitalization and death,” he added. “And I believe that’s the reason, Neil, why, at my age, being vaccinated and boosted, even though it didn’t protect me against infection, I feel confident that it made a major role in protecting me from progressing to severe disease,” he added. “And that’s very likely why I had a relatively mild course.”