Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the US’ National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, responded Tuesday to Russia’s claim that it had developed a safe and effective vaccine for coronavirus.
In an interview with the National Geographic, said: “I hope that the Russians have actually, definitively proven that the vaccine is safe and effective.”
“I seriously doubt that they’ve done that.” He added that “having a vaccine” and “proving that a vaccine is safe and effective, are two different things.”
Fauci also said that the US already has “half a dozen or more vaccines.”
“If we wanted to take the chance of hurting a lot of people, or giving them something that doesn’t work, we could start doing this, you know, next week if we wanted to. But that’s not the way it works,” he explained.
According to Fauci, “announcements from the Chinese or the Russians that [they] have a vaccine” will not be the same as announcements made by the US, since the US has “a way of doing thing in this country that we care about safety.”
He noted that the Russian vaccine has “passed all necessary tests,” but its two-month trial period is worrisome.
Noting the threats he and his family have received, Fauci said that “it seems inconceivable, if you just think about it, that when you’re trying to promote public health principles to save people’s lives and keep them healthy … that that’s interpreted to be so far from your own way of thinking that you actually want to threaten the person. That’s just no way that our society can really function well and go along that way — we’ve got to get past that.”
Source: Arutz Sheva