
With the big news that the FDA has given "full approval" to the Pfizer vaccine, more and more people may get their shots—or be mandated to do so by organizations that they want to frequent, including, potentially, their workplaces. (The FDA is still studying the Moderna and J&J vaccines, which were both released later.) Is this big change the game changer it's cracked up to be? Shortly after the announcement, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical advisor to the President and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, spoke with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly on All Things Considered and shared 7 points about the future that could save your life. Read on—and to ensure your health and the health of others, don't miss these Sure Signs You Have "Long" COVID and May Not Even Know It.
Dr. Fauci Said This Approval Could Have a "Major Impact"

President Biden had called the full approval something that would "change the face of the pandemic" moments before Kelly spoke to Fauci. "Could it, how big a deal is this?" she asked. "It's going to have a major impact for the following reason," said Fauci. "There are those individuals who understandably in some respects don't want to get vaccinated until they get the full stamp of approval. I believe that that will mean, and this is purely an estimate, but I think there are probably about 20 or more percent of people who were not getting vaccinated among the 90 million or so people who are eligible to be vaccinated who have not gotten vaccinated. I believe that those people will now step forward and get vaccinated. So you're going to have a group of people who otherwise would not have got vaccinated." Keep reading to hear what he says about mandates and more.
Dr. Fauci Said Now Organizations Would be More Willing to Mandate the Vaccine

"What I think is going to be equally as impactful would be that there are going to be organizations and enterprises and companies, whoever are going to feel much more empowered now to mandate vaccines," said Dr. Fauci. "That could be college, the Pentagon, universities, and even major organizations of places of employment. The large corporations may say, this is it. If you want to work for us, you've got to be vaccinated. So I think you're going to see a lot more mandates and hopefully a combination of people who on their own decide because of this stamp of approval that they want to get vaccinated combined with the mandates, that we may, may be able to make a big dent in that 90 million people or so who are eligible, but not vaccinated."
Dr. Fauci Called the Full Approval the "Gold Standard"

Dr. Fauci said the full approval "really proves the independence and the capability of the FDA. You know, the FDA is the gold standard of regulatory agencies throughout the world. All of the other countries, regulatory agencies look to the FDA for their stamp of approval for the principles that guide the care that the FDA puts into this. And I believe that they actually now have shown that they have done it expeditiously, but they did not rush it. They dotted all the I's and they crossed all the T's and now we have something that's essentially really a firm imprimatur."
Dr. Fauci Said He Has Seen the Vaccine Hesitancy First Hand

"I've been out there trying to counter vaccine hesitancy by providing as much of factual information about the effectiveness and the safety at multiple different forum," said Fauci. "I mean, with younger individuals, older individuals, minority groups, et cetera, and the idea of waiting and feeling that this was done too quickly with the emergency use and they really want to wait for the full approval. So I do believe that there is a basis, a sociological basis, to the fact that people do want to wait for that, but that's not the only thing."
Dr. Fauci Actually Sounded Hopeful—Here's Why

When the host mentioned he sounded uncharastically hopeful, Fauci said "you're detecting something that's real in me because obviously, you know, as a public health person who sees the extraordinary advantage of vaccination and realizing that the only way we are really going to get control of this outbreak and get back to the kinds of normality that we all crave and long for is through a highly, highly successful vaccination program. And I see this as another step in that very important direction."
Dr. Fauci Said This is When We May Be Back in More Control

"Where are we in the arc of this?" asked Kelly. "It's going to depend totally on how effective we are in getting people vaccinated," said Fauci. "You can't have 90 million people who are eligible to be vaccinated who are not vaccinated and expect that you can make a good prediction about where we're going to be, because when you have people unvaccinated, to the extent that they are unvaccinated, you have the possibility of the virus continuing to circulate mutating, forming more variants, and getting us back into another situation, similar to, or worse than, Delta. If all things go the way we want them to go, and we're really successful with this, and we get really the overwhelming majority of the people vaccinated. I think as we get into the fall and the winter, we could start to really get some good control over this as we get back into the fall of 2022." He corrected himself later that night on CNN: "As we get into the spring, we could start getting back to a degree of normality, namely reassuming the things that we were hoping we could do — restaurants, theaters, that kind of thing," Fauci told CNN's Anderson Cooper.
How to Stay Safe Out There

Follow Fauci's fundamentals and help end this pandemic, no matter where you live—get vaccinated ASAP; if you live in an area with low vaccination rates, wear an N95 face mask, don't travel, social distance, avoid large crowds, don't go indoors with people you're not sheltering with (especially in bars), practice good hand hygiene, and to protect your life and the lives of others, don't visit any of these 35 Places You're Most Likely to Catch COVID.
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