On Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, encouraged young and healthy people to get vaccinated.
Speaking with Savannah Guthrie of NBC, Fauci rebuked podcast host Joe Rogan’s comments earlier this week discouraging young people from getting the vaccine, arguing that they have no real motivation given their low risk of death from COVID-19.
“Popular podcast host Joe Rogan — you may have heard about this — made comments about young people getting vaccinated,” Guthrie began. “It’s getting a lot of buzz. He said, ‘If you’re like 21 years old and you say to me, ‘Should I get vaccinated?’ I say, ‘No.’ If you’re a healthy person, and you’re exercising all the time, and you’re young and you’re eating well, I don’t think you need to worry about this,’ saying young, healthy people shouldn’t get vaccinated.”
Fauci said that Rogan’s opinion was “incorrect,” arguing that young people can still spread the disease.
“Well, that’s incorrect, Savannah, and the reason why is that you’re talking about yourself in a vacuum then,” he said. “You’re worried about yourself getting infected and [the] likelihood that you’re not gonna get any symptoms, but you can get infected and will get infected if you put yourself at risk, and even if you don’t have any symptoms, you’re propagating the outbreak because it is likely that you — even if you have no symptoms — that you may inadvertently and innocently then infect someone else who might infect someone who really could have a problem with a severe outcome.”
“So, if you want to only worry about yourself and not society, then that’s okay, but if you’re saying to yourself, ‘Even if I get infected, I could do damage to somebody else, even if I have no symptoms at all,’ and that’s the reason why you’ve got to be careful and get vaccinated,” he added.
“You can get infected, and will get infected, if you put yourself at risk.” -Dr. Anthony Fauci responding to podcast host Joe Rogan’s suggestion that young people not get the COVID-19 vaccine pic.twitter.com/6E02GI31VV
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) April 28, 2021
During his podcast on Tuesday, Rogan received criticism on social media when he said that both his children got COVID-19 and they did fine, arguing he would not have his children take the shot.
“But if you’re like 21 years old, and you say to me, ‘Should I get vaccinated?’ I’ll go, ‘No.’ Are you healthy? Are you a healthy person? Like, look, don’t do anything stupid, but you should take care of yourself,” Rogen said. “You should — if you’re a healthy person, and you’re exercising all the time, and you’re young, and you’re eating well, like, I don’t think you need to worry about this.”
“Both my children got the virus. It was nothing. I [mean], I hate to say that if someone’s children died from this. I’m very sorry that that happened. I’m not in any way diminishing that. But I’m saying the personal experience that my children had with COVID was nothing,” Rogan added.
“But it’s amazing that that’s controversial. That even saying that I’m not going to inject my child with the vaccine is controversial. It’s crazy,” he concluded. “Because again, we are not talking about even the flu that we just found out killed 22,000 people last year. We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about something that is not statistically dangerous for children. But yet people still want you to get your child vaccinated, which is crazy to me. Like you should be vaccinated if you are vulnerable.”
did some research and found out that joe rogan is in fact not a doctor https://t.co/T5wTUg83IP
— peter (@kulipeter) April 27, 2021
According to the CDC:
CDC recommends you get vaccinated for COVID-19 as soon as you are eligible.
[…]
Over 230 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine were administered in the United States from December 14, 2020, through April 26, 2021.
COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective. COVID-19 vaccines were evaluated in tens of thousands of participants in clinical trials. The vaccines met FDA’s rigorous scientific standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality needed to support emergency use authorization (EUA).