Fauci: I Understand Personal Liberties ‘but This Is a Very Unusual Time in Our History’

Tuesday, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci addressed the push to get everyone vaccinated, including mandates, to stem more spikes in coronavirus cases.

Fauci said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that he “can understand the need for people’s personal liberties” but argued that the ongoing pandemic “is a very unusual time in our history.” He said that is why the nation’s leaders are using “whatever means necessary” to get people vaccinated.

“If you let the virus smolder, it’s not going to just smolder benignly. If it goes from person to person, you give it ample opportunity to mutate,” Fauci advised. “When you have a virus like this, the only way you get … at it really well is you crush it. You get as many people vaccinated as you possibly can. And I might say, not only in the United States, but worldwide, and that’s why you also hear me talking about what I think is our obligation to play a major role with other major countries in getting vaccines to low and middle-income countries because even though we can be relatively well protected in this country if you get the overwhelming majority of people vaccinated, you don’t want to have a mutation and a variant from another country with all the travel that goes on get to the United States.”

He continued, “We have the tools to stop this. And that’s the thing that’s so painful and frustrating. We have 615,000 or more people in this country that died from this. We have to take this seriously. So when you hear people saying, ‘Well, I don’t really want to be told to get vaccinated,’ you know, I can understand the need for people’s personal liberties, but this is a very unusual time in our history, and that’s the reason why we have got to do unusual things. And that means use whatever means possible to get people vaccinated.”

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