It is very important that this now must go through the usual process of careful examination of the data by the Food and Drug Administration both for effectiveness, but also for safety, because whenever you introduce a new compound, safety is very important.

Anthony Fauci

I have to laugh at that. I should be prosecuted? What happened on January 6, senator?

If they get up and criticize science, nobody is going to know what they’re talking about. But if they get up and really aim their bullets at Tony Fauci, well, people could recognize there is a person there.

They have a number of patients that they're following in the medical facilities, and they assured us that they would know probably in a matter of a week, a week and a half, as to whether or not we're dealing with something that, for the most part is more severe, equally as severe or less severe. It could be either of them, right now, it does not look like there's a big signal of a high degree of severity, but it's too early to tell.

You know, it's unfortunate that South Africa has been sort of the epicenter, or at least a recognition of South Africa, but the good news is they are as good as it gets when it comes to South African scientists and public health people, so South African scientists'll be able to give us some very important information, hopefully within the next week or two.

This is a clarion call as far as I'm concerned of saying let's put aside all of these differences that we have, and say, if you're not vaccinated, get vaccinated. If you're fully vaccinated, get boosted.

If it looks like even at a high titer of antibody it doesn't, then what Anthony Fauci've got to do is Anthony Fauci've got to change and modify what the vaccine is going to be, which Anthony Fauci can do pretty easily.

We have not detected it yet, but when you have a virus that is showing this degree of transmissibility ... it almost invariably is ultimately going to go essentially all over.

Meet the Press. it clearly is giving indication that it has the capability of transmitting rapidly. That’s the thing that’s causing us now to be concerned.

Anybody who’s looking at this carefully, realizes that there’s a distinct anti-science flavor to this, so if they get up and criticize science, nobody’s going to know what they’re talking about, but if they get up and really aim their bullets at Tony Fauci, well people can recognize that there’s a person there, so it’s easy to criticize, but they’re really criticizing science because I represent science.

Right now, we're getting the material together with our South African colleagues to get a situation where you could actually directly test it. So, right now you're talking about sort of like a red flag that this might be an issue -- but we don't know, you want to find out if in fact it does evade the vaccines that we're doing.

We don't know that for sure right now, this is really something that's in motion and we just arranged right now a discussion between our scientists and the South African scientists, a little bit later in the morning to really get the facts – because you're hearing a lot of things back and forth.

We want to find out, scientists to scientists, exactly what is going on, but it's something that has emerged in South Africa and seems to be spreading at a reasonably rapid rate, in the sense of when they do test positivity they're seeing it's a bit more widespread in South Africa than was originally felt a couple of days ago. So it's in a fluid motion. We're finding more about it and, literally, it's something that – in real time – we're learning more and more about.

Well, I mean, obviously as soon as we find out more information we'll make a decision as quickly as we possibly can.

And if you're not [vaccinated], please be careful, get tested ... when you're getting together.

We have a lot of virus circulating around.

If you're vaccinated, and hopefully you'll be boosted too, and your family is, you can enjoy a typical Thanksgiving meal, Thanksgiving holiday with your family. There's no reason not to do that.

What we’re starting to see now is an uptick in hospitalizations among people who’ve been vaccinated but not boosted, it’s a significant proportion, but not the majority by any means.

We've got to start right now getting anybody who's eligible … to get them boosted, and, we've got realize that when you're in a situation where you're having 80-plus-thousand new cases a day, when you're in an indoor setting in which you don't know the vaccine status of the people in a congregate setting [indoors], you should wear a mask.

I have stood for always making science data and evidence, be what we guide ourselves by.

No doubt masks make a difference, vaccinations are going to really make a big, big difference. I think a combination of these things, hopefully sometime in the future, we can not only get the kids back to school, but we can get rid of the masking situation. We have got to do it in a step-by-step fashion.