Fauci on Vaccine Hestitation: ‘The 70% ... Was an Aspirational Goal But It Was Never the Endgame’

EXCERPT:

FAUCI: "You know, I think we’ve got to be careful because we’ve done extremely well. So we’re going to probably by the Fourth of July by, I don’t know, 67, 68 percent. That’s really good. The 70 percent aspirational goal by the Fourth of July to get individuals with one single dose to get 70 percent of at least one dose was an aspirational goal, but it was never the end game. I mean, we want to go right through July 4th, into the summer, continuing to get people vaccinated. So the fact that we not quite at the 70 number by the fourth of July, I wouldn’t make that much about that because we still have done extremely well. We have over 50 percent of the adult population completely vaccinated, and about 65 percent of the adult population having received at least one dose. And we’re doing very well with the elderly. More than 85 percent of the elderly have been vaccinated with at least one dose. So we’ve done well. So we don’t want to fixate that we’re a couple of percentage points lower than we would have liked to have been on the fourth of July but we’re going to be really close to that."