Fauci schools Florida Guv with vital history lesson as latter claims vaccine has no impact

Dr Anthony Fauci, US’ top infectious disease expert on Tuesday hit back at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for making a controversial statement on COVID shots. Gov. Ron DeSantis’ had attracted a backlash, particularly from the Miami Herald editorial board after he made claims  that the COVID-19 vaccination is “about your health and whether you want that protection or not” and “doesn’t impact me or anyone else.”

The prominent Donald Trump apologist and the Republican governor DeSantis were accused of “dismissing the role of vaccines in reducing community spread” by Miami Herald as it wrote, “Doesn’t impact anyone else? Talk about a profile in selfishness.” Several lawmakers, meanwhile, rebuked Fla., Gov for stating “the opposite of what” the jabs actually intended to do, that is to curb the rising trajectory of coronavirus. 

The recent to deride DeSantis’ vaccine remarks was Dr Anthony Fauci who said in a televised address that Ron DeSantis’s claim that getting a COVID vaccine “doesn’t impact me or anyone else” was “completely incorrect.” US top infectious diseases expert Fauci went on to add that the COVID-19 jabs play a critical role against disease outbreaks and reduced hospitalizations. “If he feels that vaccines are not important for people, that they are just important for some people, that’s completely incorrect,” Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), said on Tuesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “New Day.”

Condemning Florida Governor’s in-factual claims, Fauci said, “Vaccination has been the solution to every major public health issue for which a vaccine was developed. I mean smallpox, polio, measles.” Furthermore, he stressed, “I’m not sure what people are talking about when they push back on vaccinations. It is historically, over decades and decades and decades, shown to be the way you control an infectious disease.”

Vaccination a debate on 'personal choice'

As the TV host jumped the wagon saying that DeSantis’ point, it’s “a personal choice about yourself” and that it “doesn’t impact anybody else,” Fauci contradicted the remark. “Well, that’s not true at all,” Fauci replied. “I mean, obviously it’s important for you as an individual for your own personal protection, safety, and health. But when you have a virus that’s circulating in the community and you are not vaccinated, you are part of the problem because you are allowing yourself to be a vehicle for the virus to be spreading to someone else.” Furthermore the US health expert asserted that COVID-19 pandemic isn’t about “as if it stops with you. If that were the case, then it would be only about you. But it doesn’t.” 

Outlining how the vaccination is important to stop the community spread, Fauci said, “You can get infected even if you get no symptoms or minimally symptomatic and then pass it on to someone who in fact might be very vulnerable ― an elderly person, a person with an underlying disease.” He continued, “So when you’re dealing with an outbreak of infectious disease, it isn’t only about you. There is a societal responsibility that we all have.” Florida governor has banned the schools from mandating the use of face masks or vaccinations.