Walensky Gets Candid
Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2022 11:11 am
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recalled watching coverage of clinical trial results that indicated the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine was 95 percent effective.
“So many of us wanted to be helpful. So many of us wanted to say, ‘Okay, this is our ticket out, right, ‘now we’re done.’ So I think we have perhaps too little caution and too much optimism for some good things that came our way. I really do. I think all of us wanted this to be done,” Walensky said.
“Nobody said ‘waning’; ‘Oh this vaccine is going to work, oh well, maybe it’ll wear off.’ Nobody said, ‘Well, what if the next variant, it’s not as [effective] against the next variant,” she added.
Walensky, who was speaking at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, was tapped to head the CDC on Dec. 8, 2020, by then-president-elect Joe B
“So many of us wanted to be helpful. So many of us wanted to say, ‘Okay, this is our ticket out, right, ‘now we’re done.’ So I think we have perhaps too little caution and too much optimism for some good things that came our way. I really do. I think all of us wanted this to be done,” Walensky said.
“Nobody said ‘waning’; ‘Oh this vaccine is going to work, oh well, maybe it’ll wear off.’ Nobody said, ‘Well, what if the next variant, it’s not as [effective] against the next variant,” she added.
Walensky, who was speaking at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, was tapped to head the CDC on Dec. 8, 2020, by then-president-elect Joe B