WATCH: Dr. Anthony Fauci Agrees with Mika About Risk of a ‘Monster Variant’ as Pandemic Rages On
Chief White House infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci agreed that there’s a risk a “monster variant” will arise as the coronavirus pandemic rages on due to significant numbers of unvaccinated people.
On Tuesday morning’s edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, co-host Mika Brzezinski repeatedly expressed concern over the potential of a variant that could be more deadly than the Delta variant, and more resistant to vaccines.
Brzezinski broached that concern in the opening minutes of her show’s interview with Fauci, telling him that “I’m hearing anecdotally,, through people I know, about breakthrough cases that are really serious, that end up with people being on ventilators. These are people who are vaccinated but still got covid.”
“What is the potential that this spirals beyond Delta to monster variant?” Brzezinski asked.
“Well, there’s always a risk of, as you get more circulation of virus in the community, that you’ll get enough accumulation of new mutations to get a variant substantially different than the ones we’re seeing now,” Fauci said.
One of the reasons why we want to make sure we get as many people vaccinated as we possibly can is that viruses will not mutate if they don’t have the opportunity to spread and replicate. So the more dynamics of viral activity you have in the community, the greater opportunity you give to the virus to mutate.
So it’s one of those things that you’re vaccinating now to prevent the next mutant coming, the next variant from coming. And again, that’s yet again another reason besides protecting the health of the people who are getting vaccinated, protecting the community, you don’t want to see more variants come in, because then it would in many respects negate some of the very positive protection that you get from the vaccines.
Fauci has repeatedly warned of the potential for a more dangerous variant to arise the longer the pandemic is allowed to rage out of control.
Watch above via MSNBC.
