Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a new interview he is worried that a White House-backed effort to develop a coronavirus vaccine is sending the wrong message because of its name.
Speaking with The Washington Post, Fauci said "Operation Warp Speed" makes it seem like the government is putting speed over safety.
"People don't understand that, because when they hear 'Operation Warp Speed,' they think, 'Oh, my God, they're jumping over all these steps and they're going to put us at risk,'" Fauci said.
Fauci, a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, added that health officials will work in a more efficient way as they develop a vaccine — but no steps in the process will be skipped.
"You're doing things in a totally unprecedented way, and you're going really fast but not compromising safety because you haven't cut out any of the steps you would have done had you done it the traditional way," Fauci said.
The race for a vaccine to combat the virus, which has killed more than 330,000 people worldwide, including around 95,000 Americans, and infected 5.1 million, of which about 1.6 million are American, includes more than 100 trials across the world. The problem, however, is that the speed at which the effort is moving is fueling the anti-vaccine movement — and that could pose a problem for getting the virus under control, according to the journal Nature.
The Post reported that several online group discussions are rife with messages indicating that people would refuse to get inoculated for COVID-19. Many of the commenters have made the vaccine a political issue, with one saying Trump is "pandering to the left" by rushing the vaccine development.
The anti-vaccine sentiment is also reflected in polls, including a Yahoo News/YouGov survey that found 19% of Americans would refuse to get vaccinated for the virus.
The anti-vaccine movement claims that vaccines can make people more sick and can have side effects such as autism. Others who oppose them take a page from the pro-abortion movement and use "my body, my choice" arguments.
Health officials say vaccines are safe and are necessary for keeping deadly diseases at bay.
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