“I’m sorry, I know people must like to have their individual freedom and not be told to do something, but I think we’re in such a serious situation now that under certain circumstances mandates should be done.” – Dr. Anthony Fauci, Aug 10, 2021
NPR – Dr. Anthony Fauci says COVID-19 vaccines should be mandatory for schoolteachers, citing the need to protect children who are too young to be vaccinated during a pandemic that has grown worse with the spread of the delta variant.
“I’m going to upset some people on this, but I think we should [require teacher vaccinations],” Fauci said Tuesday morning in an interview on MSNBC.
“I mean, we are in a critical situation now,” he said. “We’ve had 615,000-plus deaths, and we are in a major surge now as we’re going into the fall, into the school season. This is very serious business.”
[There were estimated 3.7 million teachers in fall 2020 — 3.2 million teachers in public schools, 0.5 million teachers in private schools. – National Center for Education Statistics]
Mandates will spread when vaccines get full approval
The mandates won’t come from the federal level, said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who is also President Biden’s chief medical adviser on COVID-19.
“Governments and employers increasingly worry that mandates are the only answer for the fast-spreading delta variant.” – Bloomberg Businessweek, Aug 12, 2021
Instead, he said, the vaccine requirements will come at the state and local levels — and Fauci predicted they’ll proliferate when the Food and Drug Administration gives full approval to coronavirus vaccines, rather than their current status of being authorized for emergency use.
“It’s gonna happen. Guaranteed it’s gonna happen,” Fauci said of the FDA’s full approval, adding he hopes it happens “very soon.”
For now, people who refuse to get vaccinated because of that discrepancy are seizing on a technicality, Fauci said:
“There’s no doubt that these vaccines are going to get fully approved.
This idea about, ‘It’s not fully approved,’ is really a false narrative. It really is. I mean, you should consider this as good as fully approved and get vaccinated.”
“Mandatory Covid vaccines for troops are coming.” – Politico, Aug 9, 2021
Teachers unions are showing less opposition to mandates
Fauci’s remarks echo the sentiments of Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who said over the weekend that her union should be working with school districts on vaccine mandates … READ MORE.
