Fauci: Vaccinated, Unvaccinated Regions Becoming ‘Two Americas’

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases head Dr. Anthony Fauci said Tuesday on CNN’s “Don Lemon Tonight” that the different coronavirus vaccination rates among the states are revealing “two Americas.”

Lemon said, “The president had wanted 70% of people to have some degree of vaccination or second dose. So my question is the U.S., we’re going to fall short of what President Biden’s goal of vaccinating 70% of adults with at least one dose by July Fourth. Largely because of states like Alabama, Arkansas, my home state of Mississippi, Wyoming, they have less than 35% of the population fully vaccinated. A former FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb, is concerned there’ll be very dense outbreaks in these areas. What do you think?”

Fauci said, “I agree with Dr. Gottlieb. That is something that we are very concerned about. When you have such a low level of vaccination super-imposed upon a variant that has a high degree of efficiency of spread, what you are going to see among under-vaccinated regions, states, cities or counties you’re going to see these individual types of blips. It’s almost like it’s going to be two Americas. You’re going to have areas where vaccination rate is high, where more than 70% of the population received at least one dose.”

“When you compare that to areas where you may have 35% of the people vaccinated, you clearly have a high risk of seeing these spikes in those selected areas,” he continued. “The thing that’s so frustrating about this, Don, is that this is entirely avoidable, entirely preventable. If you are vaccinated, you diminish dramatically your risk of getting infected and even more dramatically your risk of getting seriously ill. If you are not vaccinated, you are at considerable risk.”

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