ICYMI: Robert Redfield: "Herd immunity is not operational for this virus."

LEESBURG, Va., Dec. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- AM LLC's Chief Medical Advisor, Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the former Director of the Centers for Disease Control, appeared on Fox Business' Cavuto: Coast to Coast Tuesday. During the interview, he offered the following points about the status of the pandemic and provided the following insights:

On vaccination durability:

• "We thought that vaccines would have some impact. The reality is that with this virus, when you get naturally infected, you don't develop long-term immunity. And once that was figured out, one could anticipate when to get vaccinated, but you're not going to develop long-term immunity."
• "So the challenge that we have is that once we got to some threshold of immunity and they called it herd immunity, that we could get this behind us. The reality is that herd immunity is not operational for this virus and that we're going to continue to have a group of individuals that are susceptible."
• "[People] get infected, they get vaccinated. The vaccine then wears off. It wanes. They either need to get revaccinated or they become susceptible or if they're naturally infected, that immunity wears off and they either need to get vaccinated or they become susceptible. So this is going to be a real challenge for the next several years. … The strength of that protection is going to [depend on] recurrent vaccination."

On the key characteristics of Omicron:

• "[Omicron] definitely does appear to be less pathogenic. And I think that's the way these viruses evolve. They evolve to become more transmissible, less pathogenic. That's what a virus wants to do. But when I say it's less pathogenic, if it's infecting three or four times more people, even though it may be 30 percent less likely to put you in the hospital. The potential burden in our healthcare system is going to be substantial. So I think it would be a mistake for us to think this virus can't put you in the hospital. It'd be a mistake to think the American variant can actually cause you premature death."

On mitigation and the path forward for policymakers:

• "[Omicron] will be the dominant variant in the United States in the next 12 to 24 weeks. Our goal as a nation should be, how do we keep our schools open? How do we keep our economy open and how do we keep moving forward in the face of the fact that we now have to deal with an even more infectious variant in the United States?"
• "I do think masks play a role, and I do think each individual needs to make that evaluation if they're fully vaccinated … We have to have trust in individual citizens to make the right judgment for themselves and to wear masks when they're in situations where they potentially could put other individuals at risk. We probably should stay away from these broad government-induced mandates."

Watch the full interview here.

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