Americans are now being told to go with the flow as White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci abandons the concept of ever being fully vaccinated.
“We’re using the terminology now ‘keeping your vaccinations up to date’ rather than what ‘fully vaccinated’ means,” Fauci said during a National Institutes of Health lecture on Tuesday, according to Bloomberg Law.
“Right now, optimal protection is with a third shot of an mRNA or a second shot of a [Johnson & Johnson],” he said. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are both mRNA vaccines.
The new level of Fauci-speak had not reached the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as of Wednesday.
“The technical definition of ‘fully vaccinated’ — two doses of an mRNA vaccine or one dose of the J & J vaccine — has not changed,” CDC spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said in a statement, according to The New York Times. “Individuals are considered fully vaccinated once they have received their primary series.”
The CDC this week recommended Pfizer vaccine boosters for Americans older than 12.
Dr. Rachel Walensky, the director of the federal agency, was still using the term “fully vaccinated” at a White House news briefing on Wednesday.
“Individuals are considered fully vaccinated against COVID-19 if they’ve received their primary series. That definition is not changing,” she said.
However, Walensky also hedged on her comments.
“But consistent with how public health has historically viewed or even talked about how we recommend vaccines, we are now recommending that individuals stay up to date with additional doses that they are eligible for,” she said.
“Someone is considered fully vaccinated if they receive their primary series of vaccines,” White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients said at the same briefing. “That has not changed and we do not have any plans to change that.”
More Fauci mendacity. Will one ever be fully vaccinated? https://t.co/Q8tFaMFQ6S
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) January 5, 2022
On Tuesday, Fauci was asked about a possible fourth shot, a tactic being tried in Israel.
“We need to find out what the durability of protection of the third shot is before we start thinking about the fourth shot,” he said.
Amid the debate over what constitutes full vaccination, new data suggests many Americans are tuning out the whole issue.
ABC News reported Wednesday that the average number of total vaccine doses administered per day has plummeted 42 percent since Dec. 14.
Story cited here.
