White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci conceded that COVID-19 vaccines do not protect “overly well” against infection Tuesday on “Your World.”
DR. FAUCI: One of the things that’s clear from the data [is] that even though vaccines – because of the high degree of transmissibility of this virus – don’t protect overly well, as it were, against infection, they protect quite well against severe disease leading to hospitalization and death. And I believe that’s the reason, Neil, why at my age, being vaccinated and boosted, even though it didn’t protect me against infection, I feel confident that it made a major role in protecting me from progressing to severe disease. And that’s very likely why I had a relatively mild course. So my message to people who seem confused because people who are vaccinated get infected – the answer is if you weren’t vaccinated, the likelihood [is] you would have had [a] more severe course than you did have when you were vaccinated.