Fauci Says Smallpox Wouldn’t Have Been Eradicated If ‘False Information’ Spread Like It Has Today

Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Saturday that if the vaccine misinformation of today was around years ago, smallpox would not have been eradicated.

Jim Acosta spoke with Fauci about the serious misinformation about the covid-19 vaccines, including President Joe Biden saying platforms like Facebook are “killing people.”

Acosta said it’s not just social media and brought up Fox News in particular to ask if the U.S. “could have eradicated polio or defeated the measles” if this same kind of vaccine misinformation spread around back then.

Fauci said that was a good point:

If you look at the extraordinary, historic success in eradicating smallpox and eliminating polio from most of the world — and we’re on the brink of eradicating polio — if we had the pushback for vaccines the way we’re seeing on certain media, I don’t think it would have been possible at all to not only eradicate smallpox, we probably would still have smallpox and we probably would still have polio in this country if we had the kind of false information that’s being spread now.

“If we had that back decades ago, I would be certain that we’d still have polio in this country,” he added.

You can watch above, via CNN.