The director of the National Institute of Health holds up a model of the coronaviruses as he testifies before the Senate. The director of the National Institute of Health is retiring.
Sarah Silbiger.
Dr. Francis Collins was frustrated on his last day as director of the National Institutes of Health.
Collins told Baier that he gets upset because people point to anecdotes of someone who got sick even though they had been vaccine free. That's too simplistic.
50 million vaccine-eligible Americans still haven't gotten a single dose of the omicron variant of COVID-19, even though it's set to wreak havoc on the unvaccinated. How did that happen? Collins asked. "How did we get all of this mixed up with social media, misinformation, and political insertion into the discussion?" This is the thing that I find frustrating on my last day as director of the National Institute of Health.
The unvaccinated tend to be Fox News viewers, and Collins' last day comes as the virus ravages them. An NPR investigation found that vaccination rates are lower in counties that supported Donald Trump. People in counties that went for Trump were three times more likely to die. Fox News viewers are more likely to believe COVID-19 misinformation.
Collins said that the virus was the enemy. It's not the other people in the party. The people on Facebook are not posting crazy conspiracy theories. This is the enemy. We in this country have gotten all fractured into a politicized view that should never have been mixed with public health. History will judge harshly those people who have continued to focus on conspiracy theories and things that are not true.
Collins warned that the omicron variant has the properties to be evasive of the vaccines, on CBS' Face the Nation Sunday. Collins urged the Americans who are eligible for a booster shot to take action.
One treatment is still effective against omicron.
The only treatment that seems to be effective against the omicron variant is made by Glaxosmithkline and Vir Biotechnology. Last week, the company acknowledged that the REGEN-COV has "diminished potency" against omicron.
Collins said that the treatment still sticks to the spikeProtein that omicron has. Collins said that health officials will have to save that treatment for people who are at higher risk.
Collins acknowledged that Pfizer's vaccine is not enough to protect children under 5. Pfizer is studying the effectiveness of a three-dose regimen, which is why the plans to introduce vaccinations for kids aged 2 to 4 have been delayed. Collins said that they should think about surrounding them with people who are vaccine-vaccinated.
Fauci warns about omicron's transmissibility.
Dr. Anthony Fauci said on ABC News' This Week that Omicron is concerning because of its transmissibility. He said that Omicron has a doubling time of just a few days. The time it takes for the number of coronaviruses cases to double is faster than the current strain in the U.S.
The data from South Africa shows that the omicron variant has less severe symptoms and requires less hospitalization. Fauci said that it might be due to the fact that their population has so much experience with prior infections that it might be underlying that it's less severe.
Even if omicron infections are less severe than delta, the sheer number of expected infections is likely to overcome the diminution in severity.
