Tag: Caution

Categories
Health

Scott Gottlieb says vaccinated individuals cannot ‘throw warning to the wind’

U.S. may never reach 'true herd immunity,' says Dr. Scott Gottlieb

Dr. Scott Gottlieb on Friday urged fellow vaccinated Americans to be on guard about the Covid delta variant, telling CNBC its highly transmissible nature cannot be ignored even by people who have immunity protection.

“The original premise around the vaccines — that they reduce the risk of serious disease and hospitalization — is still intact,” the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner said on “Squawk Box.” “We still see in the data that the vast majority of people who are getting in trouble with Covid are people who are unvaccinated.”

However, Gottlieb, who serves on the board of Covid vaccine maker Pfizer, said the risk to vaccinated people is not zero.

“People who are vaccinated in a setting of this epidemic surge, especially if they’re in places where there’s a high prevalence of infection, need to take appropriate precautions,” he said. “You can’t just throw caution to the wind. You can still become a vehicle for spread in your community.”

The seven-day average of daily new coronavirus cases in the U.S. is 141,060, according to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins University data. That’s up 14% from a week ago. Cases are increasing by more than 5% in 42 states plus Washington, D.C.

Gottlieb’s comments Friday came in response to a question about three vaccinated U.S. senators — Roger Wicker, Angus King, and John Hickenlooper — who announced a day earlier they had tested positive for Covid.

“I think there’s now a recognition that this delta is sufficiently contagious that it can pierce the protections offered by the vaccine, particularly if you were vaccinated a while ago and have declining immunity, as these senators probably did because they were vaccinated a long time ago,” said Gottlieb, who led the FDA from 2017 to 2019.

While some scientists disagree with U.S. health officials’ recent decision to authorize Covid booster shots beginning next month, Gottlieb said he believes the delta variant’s transmissibility supports the idea of delivering third doses to Americans. Noting his role on Pfizer’s board, Gottlieb said he’s studied the data that shows declining immunity protection over time.

“It happens to be the case that we vaccinated some of our most vulnerable older individuals in our society last December and January, particularly nursing homes,” Gottlieb said. “I think the prudent thing to do would be to get additional immunity in that population, especially considering the fact we’re dealing with a much more contagious variant.”

Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and is a member of the boards of Pfizer, genetic testing start-up Tempus, health-care tech company Aetion Inc. and biotech company Illumina. He also serves as co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings’ and Royal Caribbean’s “Healthy Sail Panel.”

Categories
Politics

For Biden, Deliberation and Warning, Perhaps Overcaution, on the World Stage

For Biden, Deliberation and Caution, Maybe Overcaution, on the World Stage

However, the first signs indicate that Mr Biden is moving more slowly on the world stage than he is at home. And that’s partly based on his belief, his national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in an interview, that the United States will only regain its global influence after taming the pandemic, restoring economic growth and resetting its relations with allies.

The most telling of his decisions concerns Saudi Arabia. After banning arms sales to stop what he described as a “catastrophic” war in Yemen, Mr Biden released an intelligence report on Prince Mohammed’s role in the assassination of dissident Jamal Khashoggi and imposed new sentences on the personal king of the Crown Prince Guard, the so-called Rapid Intervention Force. But Mr Biden stopped at the next step – apart from travel or the threat of criminal prosecution of the 35-year-old Crown Prince.

The president had not told staff in advance whether he would be in favor of direct action, despite saying in the campaign that the Saudi leadership had “no redeeming social value”.

Mr. Sullivan said he and his staff went to Mr. Biden with “a broad recommendation that recalibrating the relationship rather than breaking the relationship is the right course of action.”

Mr Biden, Mr Sullivan, said, “pushed us into our assumptions as he worked through the pros and cons of all aspects of the policy,” including the staff’s conclusion that the best way to do this was to keep a channel open for the Crown Prince . solve the war in Yemen. “

But the final decision was a reminder, other aides said, that Mr. Biden emerged from his three decades in the Senate with a belief in cultivating even the toughest of alliances – and a dose of realism that the United States couldn’t prevent the Crown Prince from doing, to become the next king.

“Unfortunately, every day we deal with heads of state and government who are responsible for actions that we find either offensive or disgusting, whether it is Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping,” said Antony J. Blinken, undersecretary of state and the longest serving foreign policy advisor to Mr Biden, said on PBS NewsHour on Wednesday.