In an effort to argue that the COVID-19 vaccines still have some virtue, President Biden’s chief medical adviser said out loud what had become clear to most of the world, that the shots down’t protect people from infection as was promised.
Dr. Anthony Fauci – who tested positive for COVID-19 last month after being quadruple vaccinated – acknowledged Tuesday to the Fox News Channel’s Neil Cavuto that the vaccines “don’t protect overly well” from infection.
“One of the things that’s clear from the data [is] that even though vaccines – because of the high degree of transmissibility of this virus – don’t protect overly well, as it were, against infection, they protect quite well against severe disease leading to hospitalization and death,” Fauci said.
However, an analysis of Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccine trials found the mRNA shots are more likely to land a recipient in the hospital than to provide protection from a severe adverse event. The findings were similar to those of a recent pre-print analysis that found “no evidence of a reduction in overall mortality in the mRNA vaccine trials.” And a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that two doses of the mRNA vaccines increased the risk of COVID-19 infection during the omicron wave.
Fauci went on to say that “even though [vaccination] didn’t protect me against infection, I feel confident that it made a major role in protecting me from progressing to severe disease.”
“And that’s very likely why I had a relatively mild course. So my message to people who seem confused because people who are vaccinated get infected – the answer is if you weren’t vaccinated, the likelihood [is] you would have had [a] more severe course than you did have when you were vaccinated.”
But the omicron variants that are now dominant have produced relatively mild symptoms in those who are unvaccinated.
See the interview:
Fauci: Vaccines ‘virtually 100% efficacious’
At the launch of the vaccines, Fauci, other health officials, pharmaceutical companies and media declared the coronavirus shots to be virtually 100% effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 then gradually lowered their estimations to as low as 20% after only six months.
Fauci is seen in a media interview touting the vaccines as “virtually 100% efficacious” and stating in congressional testimony that the “real world effectiveness is even more impressive than the results of the clinical trial.”
Moderna boasted its vaccine was 100% effective in teenagers. Pfizer said its vaccine was 100% effective in preventing COVID infections. In other statements, the shots were declared to provide 100% protection against severe disease, hospitalization and death.
However, by October 2021, a study of real world data showed Pfizer’s COVID vaccine was only 20% effective against infection after six months.
A CNN headline one year earlier, before the vaccines were launched, said “Past vaccine disasters show why rushing coronavirus vaccine now would be ‘colossally stupid.”