Throwing gasoline onto the fires of conspiracy theories everywhere, NIAID Director and COVID task force mastermind Dr. Anthony Fauci said that face masks and social distancing mandates will need to be continually enforced even after a vaccine against the coronavirus is distributed to the public.
“I would recommend to people to not to abandon all public health measures just because you’ve been vaccinated. Because even though for the general population it might be 90 to 95 percent effective, you don’t necessarily know for you how effective it is,” Fauci, who once discouraged people from wearing face masks in the early days of the pandemic, told CNN anchor Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” Sunday.
Fauci also suggested that government enforcement of certain orders will need to be maintained following widespread public vaccination.
“I can feel more relaxed in essentially not having the stringency that we have right now, but I think abandoning it completely would not be a good idea,” said Fauci, who recently advised people cancel their holiday plans with their families to avoid spreading a virus that carries an above 99 percent survival rate for the vast majority of the population.
The statement comes on the heels of a major announcement that drug company Pfizer is currently working with the federal government on final testing followed by a mass production and distribution plan for a vaccine they’ve developed that they say carries a 90 percent success rate against the coronavirus. Other drug companies, including AstraZeneca, are also developing their own versions of a COVID vaccine.
And it’s a baffling statement to make, given that the entire point of developing a COVID vaccine in record time – and why someone might want to get it – is to be able to resume life as normal without social distancing, face masks, or any of the other ever-changing and inconsistent government mandates that have been laid down in the name of “public safety," and which have caused no small amount of headache and general misery from the elderly forcibly cooped up in nursing homes to business owners fighting to stay afloat amid endless state-enforced shutdowns.