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Dr. Fauci fears a variant worse than Delta is on the horizon because of unvaccinated Americans.
Fauci told McClatchy on Wednesday that the country could be “in
trouble” going into the fall season unless more Americans get vaccinated
for Covid.
A new variant may challenge the effectiveness of the Covid vaccine, according to Fauci.
“What we’re seeing, because of this increase in transmissibility, and
because we have about 93 million people in this country who are
eligible to get vaccinated who don’t get vaccinated — that you have a
significant pool of vulnerable people,” Fauci told McClatchy’s DC
bureau.
Coronavirus cases driven by the delta variant are rising in a “very
steep fashion” across the United States and may double in the coming
weeks to 200,000 cases a day, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday.
Despite the extraordinary contagiousness of the delta variant, it can still get worse, Fauci said.
He fears the virus is being given “ample” opportunity to morph even
further into a deadlier strain that could diminish the effectiveness of
vaccines. Continued spread provides the virus more opportunities to
mutate, he said.
“If we don’t crush the outbreak to the point of getting the
overwhelming proportion of the population vaccinated, then what will
happen is the virus will continue to smolder through the fall into the
winter, giving it ample chance to get a variant which, quite frankly,
we’re very lucky that the vaccines that we have now do very well against
the variants — particularly against severe illness,” Fauci said. “We’re
very fortunate that that’s the case. There could be a variant that’s
lingering out there that can push aside delta.
“If another one comes along that has an equally high capability of
transmitting but also is much more severe, then we could really be in
trouble,” he said. “People who are not getting vaccinated mistakenly
think it’s only about them. But it isn’t. It’s about everybody else,
also.”
A
health worker takes a nasal swab from a woman during a coronavirus test
at City Railway station in Bangalore, India, on Aug. 3. (Getty Images)
Jennifer Hassan and Lateshia Beachum
·5 min read
South
Korea's Disease Control and Prevention Agency said Tuesday that it had
recorded at least two cases of the new coronavirus delta plus variant,
which some experts believe to be more transmissible than the original
delta variant that was first detected in India and has since thwarted
plans for returning to life before the pandemic.
But what exactly
do we know about "delta plus," yet another new variant causing alarm
among governments and health officials? First identified in Europe in
March, the variant is also known as B. 1.617.2.1 or AY.1.
It has been detected in several countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States and India.
Last
month, experts in India labeled the variant one of concern and warned
that it appeared to be more transmissible than most. Citing studies, the
country's health ministry said that the variant has the ability to bind
more easily to lung cells and could be resistant to therapies used to
treat the infection.
Union science and technology minister
Jitendra Singh announced last Friday that up to 70 cases of the
delta-plus variant were detected in genome sequencing as of July 23,
Hindustan Times reported.
How India has weathered the devastation
of the delta variant and how it has named the delta-plus variant as one
of concern should place public health leaders on notice, said James
Hildreth, president and chief executive of Meharry Medical College.
"We've
got to be more willing to consider observations made in other countries
dealing with [the coronavirus]," he said, noting that the relative of
the highly contagious delta variant is concerning. "Again, we saw what
happen with delta in India and how quickly it spread . . . Why would we
think the delta-plus variant would be different?"
The Indian
SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium have since said that the delta-plus
variant is unlikely to be more transmissible than the delta variant and
trends have yet to emerge, according to Hindustan Times.
The
variant was has listed as one of concern by the international health
agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it will
continue to evaluate its independent classification.
However,
Melita Vujnovic, World Health Organization representative to Russia,
said last month that face coverings and vaccinations will be needed to
fight the latest variant.
Last month, German Chancellor Angela
Merkel warned that Europe was still "on thin ice" and expressed caution
that authorities across the continent should remain "cautiously
optimistic."
"We must remain watchful, new variants in particular,
notably the delta variant, mean we must be cautious," she said during
her last government statement.
In the United Kingdom, where more
than 72% of adults have been fully vaccinated, the delta variant has
been accounting for nearly all new infections even though coronavirus
cases overall are on the decline.
At least 39 confirmed cases of
the delta-plus variant have been found in the country along with six
probable ones, according to a July briefing from Public Health England.
The
virus hasn't appeared to have gained intense traction on British soil,
said Colin Angus, a public health policy modeler and analyst in England.
The
"plus" of the variant's name refers to its K417N spike protein
mutation, which was also found in some substrains of the alpha variant -
the dominant strain in the country before the delta variant - but the
substrains never got a foothold, he explained.
"To date, there is
no clear evidence that it conveys enough of a benefit to the virus to
allow it to dominate the original delta variant," he said. "So although
it is clearly here, there is no obvious sign that it has gained a
foothold over existing variants of the virus."
Angus also noted
that delta-plus cases have primarily been in younger people but that
preliminary data has shown that antibodies from vaccinated people are
still effective against the variant.
"This was in a very small
sample," he said of the data. "We need more evidence to get a clear
picture about any possible advantage against vaccines that delta plus
may have, but the fact that we haven't seen it clearly outcompete delta
despite having been found in several countries with high vaccination
rates, suggests that any advantage can only be very small."
Richard
Novak, Head of the Division of Infectious Diseases at University of
Illinois Health, said it's too soon to say how the delta-plus variant
could evade vaccines or whether it's more infectious than the original.
He
noted that the variant is alarming, as it's related to the more
contagious delta variant and coming at a time when breakthrough cases
are popping up among the vaccinated.
"This is just a process of
natural selection and selecting viruses that are more contagious. All
viruses want to do is reproduce themselves. The ones that do become the
dominant virus," he said. "We're going to see other variants. It's on a
continuum. The variants are likely to get more efficient as time goes
on."
The variant and the others that the Centers for Disease
Control is monitoring, greatly underscores the need for ramped-up
vaccination efforts, Hildreth said, pointing out the large swaths of the
population who are still unvaccinated and minority communities with
underlying health conditions that make them more susceptible to
variants.
"The virus is not going to wait around for us to get our
act together," he said. "We're in danger of something that's going to
set us back."
Biden blames Texas, Fla. for COVID ‘surge’ after flooding U.S. with over 100k untested, unquarantined illegal aliens
Joe
Biden in the East Room of the White House where he addressed the
importance of people getting a COVID-19 vaccination in Washington, D.C.
(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 8:00 PM PT – Tuesday, August 3, 2021
The White House has targeted Republican officials for the rise in
coronavirus cases. Speaking from the White House on Tuesday, Joe Biden
specifically blamed Texas and Florida.
He went on to say, “just two states, Florida and Texas, account for one third of all new COVID-19 cases in the entire country.”
Biden went on to denounce the “bad” policy of governors who have made
mask wearing and vaccinations optional. He ordered them to “get out of
the way.”
“I say to these governors, please help,” he stated. “If you’re not
going to help at least get out of the way of people who are trying to do
the right thing.”
Critics were quick to refute Biden’s claims by calling them ill
informed and politically motivated. Many have cited the fact that more
than 100,000 illegal aliens arrived in Texas last month alone. Many of
whom tested positive for COVID or were experiencing viral symptoms.
On Tuesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who may have earned a
target on his back amid rumors of his potential 2024 presidential bid,
warned Biden mandate interventions have “failed time and time again
throughout this pandemic.”
DeSantis went on to correct the record by pointing out hospital
admissions in his state were slowing down and COVID mortality has
continued to decline.
Alex Berenson had his book censored by Twitter but then after
individuals like Elon Musk complained Amazon went ahead and published
it.
Alex Berenson is a former New York Times reporter, science writer,
and the author of the book titled, “Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and
Lockdowns.” According to hundreds of his tweets, Berenson is also an
advocate for vaccines. However, Berenson also claimed that the role of
facts, reporting, journalistic integrity, and public trust throughout
the pandemic is slowly eroding away.
At first Berenson’s efforts to publish his book were stopped by Amazon. This led Elon Musk to respond in a tweet:
Now more recently Berenson released another tweet about the results of
tests of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine. This tweet was at first
censored but then surprisingly was uncensored by Twitter:
Berenson’s tweet held these two attachments. The Pfizer vaccine
“does nothing to stop the overall risk of death” and 15 patients who
received the vaccine died while 14 who received the placebo died.
Berenson notes that the Twitter warning that was originally placed on his tweet (below) had been removed.
Big Tech and Big Pharma are doing all they can to prevent
the truth from reaching the public. However, the truth cannot be
broken.
Reports have circulated since the July 4 weekend of a case cluster in
Provincetown, at the tip of the Cape Cod peninsula in Massachusetts; no
deaths, a handful of hospitalizations
Fans wearing “Vaccinated” jerseys at Fenway Park in Boston.
Getty Images
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A federal investigation into a COVID-19 outbreak earlier this
month in a Massachusetts county that’s home to Cape Cod found that 74%
of the 469 infections were among vaccinated people, a finding that
raises questions about the prevalence of breakthrough infections.
The research,
published Friday afternoon by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, is the latest sign that people who are fully vaccinated may
need to return to mask wearing, social distancing and other mitigation
measures as the more infectious delta variant tears through the U.S.
Earlier this week, the CDC shifted its stance and began calling for people, even those who are vaccinated, to again wear masks in public indoor settings in areas of the country with “high” or “substantial” levels of community transmission.
The
public health agency also recommended that all K-12 students and
educators wear masks indoors. At the time, little data was provided to
the public to back up its position.
However, it seems that the
CDC is increasingly worried about the virus’s ability to move with
travelers and throughout crowded gatherings, even in lower-risk areas of
the U.S.
“Findings from this investigation suggest that even
jurisdictions without substantial or high COVID-19 transmission might
consider expanding prevention strategies, including masking in indoor
public settings regardless of vaccination status, given the potential
risk of infection during attendance at large public gatherings that
include travelers from many areas with differing levels of
transmission,” the authors wrote.
The CDC described several large public
gatherings that brought people from around the U.S. to Barnstable County
in Massachusetts from July 3 to 17. People began testing positive for
COVID-19 around July 6, and many cited attendance at crowded indoor and
outdoor bars, restaurants and homes, notably in Provincetown, at the
farthest reach of the Cape Cod peninsula.
Here’s what we know about the breakthrough infections:
• 274, or 79%, of the fully vaccinated people who tested positive for the virus were symptomatic.
•
Out of the 133 specimens that were sequenced in this outbreak, 119, or
89%, were from the delta variant, and one sample had the delta AY.3
sublineage.
• Four of the five people who were hospitalized in this outbreak were vaccinated. No one died.
• 301, or 87%, of the people who had been vaccinated and tested positive were men; their median age was 42.
• Of the people who reported breakthrough infections, 159, or 46%, had gotten the BioNTech SE
BNTX,
+5.04%
–Pfizer Inc.
PFE,
+0.05%
vaccine; 131, or 38%, had received the Moderna Inc.
MRNA,
+2.30%
shot; and 56, or 16%, had been administered the Johnson & Johnson
JNJ,
+0.01%
vaccine.
Earlier this week, the CDC director, Dr.
Rochelle Walensky, also said that new data had revealed that people who
are vaccinated and test positive for the virus can carry the same viral
load as people who are unvaccinated and test positive for the virus.
This research found that cycle threshold (Ct) values in samples from 127
fully vaccinated people and 84 unvaccinated people were similar.
“High
viral loads suggest an increased risk of transmission and raised
concern that, unlike with other variants, vaccinated people infected
with Delta can transmit the virus,” Walensky said in a separate
statement on Friday. “This finding is concerning and was a pivotal
discovery leading to CDC’s updated mask recommendation.”
There is little available data so far about breakthrough infections, which are still considered to be rare among the 49.5% Americans who have been fully vaccinated. In instances when they do occur, hospitalization or death is even more rare.
Back in May, the CDC said that there had been fewer than 10,000 breakthrough cases among the 95 million or so Americans who were fully vaccinated at that time.
However,
there is data emerging that points to higher rates of breakthrough
infections than previously thought, although these types of cases are
still considered rare.
Los Angeles County has found that in June one-fifth of all new cases
were breakthrough infections among the vaccinated, and a study
published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine discovered a
breakthrough infection rate of 2.6% among about 11,000 vaccinated health care workers at Sheba Medical Center, which is located near Tel Aviv.
