Surgeon General Urges To Follow Public Health; Dr. Slaoui Affirms Vaccines Likely Work on Mutations

Dec. 21, 2020 (EIRNS)—Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams, appearing on Sunday’s “Face the Nation” Dec. 20, urged all Americans to follow basic public health measures, including getting vaccinated, to beat the COVID pandemic. He and other officials said not enough is known about the new mutation, or variant, of the COVID virus to change any plans or public health requirements. “The most relevant point is that it doesn’t change anything we’ve been telling you,” Dr. Adams said. “It just further reinforces the fact that we need to wash our hands, wear a mask, watch our distances, keep our household gathering small, because if this is a mutation that is more contagious, then that just means that we need to be that much more vigilant while we wait to get vaccinated.”

At another point in the interview, Dr. Adams, who as Surgeon General holds the military rank of Vice Admiral, amplified on the mutation:

“Very important for people to know that viruses mutate all the time, and that does not mean that this virus is any more dangerous. We don’t even know if it’s really more contagious yet or not, or if it just happened to be a strain that was involved in a super spreader event. Right now, we have no indications that it is going to hurt our ability to continue vaccinating people or that it is any more dangerous or deadly than the strains that are currently out there and that we know about.”

The chief science adviser of the “Operation Warp Speed,” Dr. Moncef Slaoui, also said today, in a CNBC interview, that there was “an extremely low chance that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines would not work” against this mutation.

CBS host Margaret Brennan asked Vice Admiral Adams about a Kaiser Foundation study that found that 35% of Black adults have said they probably or definitely would not get themselves vaccinated, despite the fact that COVID death rates among Black Americans is twice that among Whites. Dr. Adams responded:

“Well, I’m the United States surgeon general, but make no mistake about it, I’m an African-American, I grew up poor, Black, rural. I know that long before COVID there were many diseases: hypertension, cancer, diabetes that were plaguing communities of color. And COVID just unveiled those disparities that have been around for a long time.... We need to understand that that distrust comes from a real place. It actually comes from my office. Several surgeons general oversaw for 40 years the Tuskegee studies, where a treatment was denied to Black men. And I walk past their pictures every single day when I go into my office. So believe you me, this legacy is important to me and helping restore that trust is important.... I got vaccinated on Friday. I actually feel great.... And I hope people will get the vaccine based on information that they get from trusted resources, because it’s okay to have questions.”