Fauci hopes Trump will get involved with vaccine encouragement effort
COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy is falling overall in the United States, but NBC's Chuck Todd on Sunday highlighted polling that shows 47 percent of people who voted for former President Donald Trump last year do not plan on getting their shots. Todd's guest on Meet the Press, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, said he hopes Trump gets involved with encouraging any holdouts to change their minds because the numbers "are so disturbing." But Fauci did add that he'd like to see Americans "dissociate" from politics when making public health-related decisions, arguing the consistent success of vaccines throughout history and positive trial data of the FDA-approved COVID-19 shots should be persuasive enough to stand on their own.
Trump has often boasted about the role he played in expediting vaccine development in the U.S., and he reportedly completed the vaccination process while still in office in January. But he didn't publicize it, and, subsequently, he was the only living president who wasn't shown getting vaccinated in a public service service announcement last week.
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