White House Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said that he can get more Americans to comply with vaccine mandates if they’re rebranded as “requirements.”
Asked by CNBC whether coronavirus vaccine mandates are “counterproductive,” and might make Americans more hesitant to take future vaccines, Fauci said on Friday that dropping the word “mandate” seems to make people more willing to get jabbed.
“Mandates – that’s a radioactive word,” he said. “‘Requirements,’ people seem to respond better to that. They work.”
"Mandates-that's a radioactive word. Requirements people seem to respond better to that. They work," says Dr. Fauci. "We are never going to get out of this outbreak if we still have 50 million people who for reasons that are very difficult to understand refuse to get vaccinated." pic.twitter.com/4378v2pzNe
— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) December 17, 2021
Fauci then praised companies like United Airlines for requiring or mandating employees to get vaccinated, and boasted that the federal government’s vaccine mandate has led to a 97% vaccination rate among employees.
In addition to rebranding mandates as the friendlier-sounding “requirements,” Fauci also suggested that the definition of “vaccinated” could be changed from meaning anyone who’s received two doses of Pfizer’s or Moderna’s vaccine, or one dose of Johnson & Johnson’s shot, to someone who has received this initial dose plus a booster shot.
“There’s no doubt if you want to be optimally protected, you should get your booster,” Fauci stated.