I'm concerned as this variant becomes more dominant, those select areas of the country that have a very low level of vaccination, like 30 % or so, you're going to start seeing mini-surges that are localized to certain regions, you don't want to see two separate Americas, one that's vaccinated and protected and yet another that's unvaccinated and very much at risk.

Anthony Fauci

Under certain circumstances, where you have a high level of dynamics of infection -- be that in Los Angeles County or wherever -- the local authorities do have the discretion of going that extra mile or going the extra step Los Angeles County takes to make sure that the spread of this virus is really contained, and they do that by saying that everyone should wear a mask.

There really should be. We're talking about life and death situation, we've lost 600,000 Americans already, and we're still losing more people. There've been 4 million deaths worldwide. This is serious business.

But people need to understand that the amount of data right now that shows a high degree of effectiveness and a high degree of safety is more than we've ever seen with emergency use authorization. So these vaccines are as good as officially approved, with all the I's dotted and the Ts crossed. It hasn't been done yet because the FDA has to do certain things, but it's as good as done.

The CDC and the FDA said that based on the data that we know right now, we don't need a boost, that doesn't mean that that won't change. We might need, as a matter of fact, at some time to give boosters either across the board or to certain select groups, such as the elderly or those with underlying conditions.

They're cheering about someone saying that it's a good thing for people not to try and save their lives.

Right now, given the data and the information we have, we do not need to give people a third shot, that doesn’t mean we stop there. ... There are studies being done now ongoing as we speak about looking at the feasibility about if and when we should be boosting people.

It's horrifying. They are cheering about someone saying that it's a good thing for people not to try and save their lives.

I think that the message from the CDC is clear and I totally agree with them, we want all the children back in in-person classes in the fall term.

Certainly, they need to listen to the CDC and the FDA, the FDA being the regulatory authority that has control over this. And the CDC, in accordance with their advisory committee on immunization practices, will make the recommendation.

If you look at the number of deaths, about 99.2 % of them are unvaccinated. About 0.8 % are vaccinated. No vaccine is perfect. But when you talk about the avoidability of hospitalization and death, Chuck, it's really sad and tragic that most all of these are avoidable and preventable.

When I'm in that area where there's a considerable degree of viral circulation, I might want to go the extra mile to be cautious enough to make sure that I get the extra added level of protection -- even though the vaccines themselves are highly effective.

That is, if you were vaccinated, you have a high degree of protection. If you are not, you should wear a mask, and you should think very seriously about getting vaccinated.

But you should only be making a formal recommendation based on clinical data.

It is possible that you will see people who are infected get breakthrough infections, we haven't formally proven yet how much diminution there is in the likelihood of transmitting it to someone else -- including children -- and that's one of the reasons why you've got to be careful when you're dealing with something like The Delta variant of Covid-19.

We know as a fact, not conjecture but as a fact, that this virus spreads more efficiently from person to person. And it also leads to more severe disease, so it is not surprising that we're seeing more younger people not only getting infected but getting seriously ill.

We can not let that happen in the United States.

Clearly now its transmissibility appears to be greater than the wild type, this is a situation, the way it was in England where they had a B. 1.1.7 dominant, and then the [ B. 1. ] 617 took over. We can not let that happen in the United States.

We don't want to let happen in the United States what is happening currently in the UK, where Surgeon General Vivek Murthy have a troublesome variant essentially taking over as the dominant variant, which has made it a very difficult situation in the UK.

When goals are set, they're set to be able to stimulate us to get to that goal, if you don't meet the precise goal and you fall short by a few percent, that doesn't mean you stop in your effort to get people vaccinated, we have always held that July 4 is not the end of it. We want to reach 70% of the adult population by the Fourth of July. I believe we can, I hope we will and if we don't, we're going to continue to keep pushing.

We are now doing studies that are ongoing as we're speaking, studies that are looking at what we call age de-escalation, children from 12 to 9 and then 9 to 6 and then 6 to 2 and then 6 months to 2 years, we hope that as we approach the end of this calendar year, we'll have enough information to vaccinate children of any age.