It may all of a sudden have a safety signal, if it doesn't work, it doesn't protect people. I've been involved in vaccine work for decades. Not every vaccine we went after worked.

Anthony Fauci

The issue with hospitalization is a little bit more puzzling, because although the hospitalizations are going up, it is very clear their use of ICU beds has not increased, so are the numbers of hospitalizations a real reflection of Covid cases, or is there a difficulty deciphering between people coming into the hospital with Covid or because of Covid ?

Without a doubt, opening up society and having people mingle indoors is clearly something that is a contributor, as well as overall waning immunity, which means we've really got to stay heads-up and keep our eye on the pattern here, so United States's the reason why we're watching this very carefully.

So the way you protect them is to surround the children, to the extent possible, with people who are vaccinated and boosted so that you have somewhat a veil of protection around them.

It’s understandable why people want to take masks off the kids. But, right now, given the level of activity that we have, it is risky.

It will depend on who you are, but if you are a normal, healthy 30-year-old person with no underlying conditions, you might need a booster only every four or five years.

As we get out of the full-blown pandemic phase, which we are certainly heading out of, these decisions will increasingly be made on a local level rather than centrally decided or mandated, there will also be more people making their own decisions on how they want to deal with the virus.

This should not be confused with the fact that for many immunocompromised people, already a second booster shot, namely a fourth dose of an mRNA, is recommended because of what we know about their poor response to the initial regimen.

We have to be totally honest that we don't know, we believe that we are now going in the right direction.

Not as often as you might think -- well, I don't know how often people think you talk to the President or vice president, but they're pretty busy, you want to jump anyhow, and they're just giving you a direction on how high.

The FDA is looking at the data very carefully, and in their typical fashion, they will be very careful in scrutinizing the data and making a recommendation of the decision based on that data.

It is one of the most humbling of all the recognition that I’ve gotten, i’ve lived in Washington the last 50 years and the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery is an iconic place in my mind. It makes me feel humbled and almost embarrassed to be in the same building with the people whose portraits are there.

Certainly, you're going to see the antibody levels go down – that's natural, but there's an element of the immune response — B cell memory and T cell responses — where, even though you do see a diminution of antibody levels, it is quite conceivable, and I hope it's true, that the third shot boost will give a much greater durability of protection.

But before we make that decision about yet again another boost, we want to determine clearly what the durability of protection is of that regular boost, that third shot that we're talking about.

We do not know that and I think we have to be openly honest about that, when I talk about the pandemic I put it into five phases. The truly pandemic phase where the whole world is really very negatively impacted – as we are right now. Then there's the deceleration of the pandemic. Then there's control. There's elimination and eradication.

It is very difficult to predict what a new normal is going to be until we get ourselves out of this pandemic phase that we're in.

The sheer volume of infections because of its profound transmissibility will mean that many more children will get infected.

I don’t know why you’re asking me that question, my financial disclosure is public knowledge and has been for the last 37 years or so, 35 years that I’ve been director.

I have threats upon my life, harassment of my family, and my children, with obscene phone calls because people are lying about me.

So, if we’re going to look ahead at what happens when this peaks and it ultimately goes down — as I’ve said on previous pressers here from the White House: that we’re not going to eradicate this; we’ve only done that with smallpox.

Don't take this as a signal that we can pull back from the recommendations that you just heard from Dr. [Rochelle] Walensky – about the need for vaccination, for boostering, for wearing masks and all the other CDC recommendations.