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Dr. Anthony Fauci complained during a talk Tuesday evening that many Americans see forced masking policies as a violation of their liberties.
During the talk, Fauci, who is President Biden’s chief medical adviser and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, expressed concern about Americans’ aversion to both forced masking and receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. He characterized individuals’ concerns with such policies as “inexplicable.”
“When you tell people they need to mask in an indoor congregate setting when you’re in a zone that has a high dynamic of infection — that is looked upon by a lot of people, not everybody, as an encroachment on your freedom,” Fauci remarked during the event hosted by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center campus in Seattle.
“We’ve never had that before,” he added. “It’s almost inexplicable.”
FAUCI ADMITS THAT COVID-19 VACCINES DO NOT PROTECT ‘OVERLY WELL’ AGAINST INFECTION
Prior to his comments on mask mandates, Fauci also lamented that, while the majority of Americans have been vaccinated against COVID-19, most people haven’t received a booster shot.
“You have people who don’t want to get vaccinated for any of a variety of reasons, ranging from pure anti-vax to just because we’re telling them to get vaccinated,” Fauci said. “We’re in a very difficult situation.”
FAUCI SOUNDS ALARM ON ‘NEED’ FOR COVID VACCINES THAT ‘PROTECT AGAINST INFECTION’
“We have 67% of our population vaccinated. Of those, one half are boosted,” Fauci continued. “That means a third of the people in the country are vaccinated and properly boosted. How could that possibly be when you have a disease that’s killed one million Americans and you have a hesitancy to use a life-saving intervention which is a vaccine and a booster?”
“It seems like — what world are we living in?”
Dr. Anthony Fauci is pictured during a White House meeting on Jan. 4. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images) (Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
New COVID-19 cases nationwide have steadied to between 300-400 cases per million people over the last several months compared to the mid-January peak of 2,396 cases per million, according to Johns Hopkins University data. COVID-19 deaths have stayed below 1.70 deaths per million since April.
Nearly 80% of Americans over the age of five-years-old have received one dose of the vaccine while 67% are fully vaccinated, 32% have received a booster and 10% have opted for a second booster.
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Fauci, meanwhile, recently suggested that the pandemic wouldn’t go away anytime soon.
“I think we’re going to be living with this,” Fauci told Politico in July.
