National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci said Thursday on CNN’s “OutFront” that the criticism of the Biden administration on their response to the demand for monkeypox vaccine doses across the United States was “justified.”
Burnett said, “Obviously, the parallels here that some are drawing is to the AIDS crisis. You were headed the NIH at that time. You’ve openly talked about the lessons you learned at the time and the criticism. The government did not act quickly enough.”
She asked, “There is frustration. There is fear. Do you see any parallels?”
Fauci said, “There are certainly parallels because of the fear and a demographic group that is somewhat restricted, that those individuals are certainly vulnerable and they are at risk. The one thing we want to do is get away from anything that stigmatizes this group. That is the enemy of public health. But some of the parallels are not very close. For example, when you showed that picture of me taking care of people in 1981, we didn’t know what it was. We didn’t have any vaccines. We didn’t have any therapies. We were swimming in the dark. Right now, we have the capabilities of stopping this. It is up to us to do that.”
He added, “When you hear frustration among the community, a good part of that is justifiable frustration. We are trying to correct that very quickly by getting as much vaccine to the community that needs it as quickly as we possibly can. But the frustration, I can understand it. In many respects, it is justified. We have got to do better and will do better.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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