Fauci bids farewell with final plea: Get vaccinated

His message on Tuesday — Encouraging vaccination and virus vigilance 300 Americans a day —provided critics and supporters a taste of what made Fauci, a career civil servant, a household name.

His candid stories about how Americans should navigate the unprecedented health emergency have spawned product lines from oven mitts to bobblehead dolls and made him a folk hero. For his part, his push for mitigation measures such as vaccines, masks and social distancing, which means closing schools and businesses, has turned him into a villain, with wilting criticism of his role in the origins of Covid-19, the killing Faced with blackmail, conspiracy theories.

That rhetoric, trolled by former President Donald Trump, turned vaccines into a partisan issue and Biden White House officials are still fighting because only a fraction of eligible Americans have received updated Covid-19 bivalent boosters.

“As a doctor, it bothers me because I don’t want to see anyone get infected,” Fauci said. It makes no difference to me whether you’re a far-right Republican or a far-left Democrat.”

His farewell ended with reporters behind the briefing room yelling at colleagues, demanding to know what Fauci had personally done to investigate the origins of the virus, and ultimately White House press secretary Carine. I was interrupted many times when I urged Jean-Pierre to intervene.

Mr. Fauci stuck to a message he’d been repeating for months and didn’t respond. Public health officials have urged people to update their coronavirus booster shots ahead of the colder months when new infections are expected to surge.

“Immunity and protection wane over time,” he says, working to counter skepticism from those who don’t understand the need for a third, fourth, or fifth injection. We need to update the protections we know to be great protections.”

As the holidays approach, the country faces a situation many have warned may have a “triple infection”. Hospitals are grappling with an unprecedented wave of pediatric respiratory viruses, flu cases are on the rise, and a rise in Covid-19 cases bodes well. It can proliferate as new variants come into circulation.

The slow pace of vaccination against both Covid-19 and the flu in recent weeks has lamented the fact that hundreds of people are dying every day, largely due to skepticism about the renewed shots of Biden. Frustrating health officials A combination of Covid-19, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus will surge among young children this fall, raising fears that it will wreak havoc on the country’s overworked health workers. . next year.

The Biden administration announced Tuesday that it will begin a “six-week sprint” to encourage more Americans to get the latest shots before the end of the year.

Government sends $350 million in new funding to community health centers to set up pop-up and mobile vaccine sites, $125 million to reach older Americans and people with disabilities with vaccines said.

CMS is also educating nursing homes and reminding them of the need to provide vaccines to residents, and HHS is encouraging seniors to discuss seeking treatment for Covid-19 with health care providers. We plan to launch an advertising campaign to encourage

In recent weeks, Biden officials have been scouring health departments as there is little funding available to push for post-Thanksgiving vaccinations.Earlier this month, the administration demanded more fundraising Despite calls from Congress to anticipate a potential winter surge, Republicans say they are unlikely to include it in their year-end spending packages.

Officials are also trying to highlight evidence that the latest boosters offer much better protection against serious illnesses, a senior government official told POLITICO.

a study The latest mRNA booster released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows it provided “significant additional protection” against symptomatic Covid-19 in individuals who received the original mRNA vaccine.

Data is limited, but it builds on more robust studies from Pfizer and Moderna that show Americans with the latest vaccines are better protected from Covid as it winters.

Ashish Jha, the White House Covid-19 Response Coordinator, also spoke at the briefing, saying, “We can essentially prevent all Covid deaths in America.” Two and a half years later, this is an amazing fact, but it takes all of us to make it happen.”

“I have no problem testifying.”

It was likely the last time Fauci attended a White House press conference, but he could attend at least one more Covid briefing, officials said. The aide is also considering a larger “goodbye” event in December, specifically focused on Fauci’s exit from government.

Fauci made a point of moving on to another phase of his career rather than retiring. Officials say he has remained tight-lipped about his future plans, keeping his focus on the administration’s outstanding work and minimizing the risk of giving Republicans another reason to put him back in the spotlight. I am trying to do.

he may not be able to avoid it. House Republicans say making new oversight powers flexible to examine the Biden administration’s Covid-19 response will be a priority for the new Congress. pledged Claims Fauci “responsible for obscuring the truth behind Covid-19’s origins.”

Fauci told politicians In an interview this summer, he claimed that he was preparing for a possible attack on the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, but that it wasn’t part of the calculation for his retirement.

“They’ll try to go after me anyway,” he said. “I don’t think they can say anything about science. I’m telling someone it’s important to follow good basic public health practices…what are you going to investigate about that?”

He echoed that sentiment on Tuesday. “I have testified hundreds of times over the last 40 or so years, so I have no problem testifying. We can defend, explain, and support everything we say.”

Fauci looks back on his time leading the U.S. pandemic response and says early 2020 he or the country will face a “three-year story of suffering and death” that will kill far too many Americans. said he had no idea. He cites evolving variants as one of the most difficult elements he has to navigate.

At the same time, Covid-19 is “really, really very important,” but he said it was only a “fragment” of the decades he has been spending in public service.

“I leave it to others to judge the value of my achievements,” he said. “But what I want people to remember about what I’ve done is that I’ve given everything I had every day for years and left nothing on the field. So if they want to remember me, whether they judge what I did right or wrong I gave