US would still have polio if misinformation 'being spread now' existed decades ago: Fauci

Top US scientist Dr Anthony Fauci on July 17 said that if the health misinformation currently spreading regarding coronavirus vaccines existed during the days of polio, it would have never been eradicated. In a televised interview with CNN, Fauci blasted commentators who sound an anti-vaccination theme and informed that the vaccines are shown to be “highly effective in preventing symptomatic, clinically apparent disease”. US President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser was responding to a CNN interviewer who asked if he thought "we could have defeated the measles or eradicated polio if you had Fox News, night after night, warning people about these vaccine issues that are just bunk”. 

Fauci said, “We probably would still have polio in this country if we had the kind of false information that's being spread now”. 

He added, "If we had that back decades ago, I would be certain that we'd still have polio in this country”. 

Fauci’s statement comes as dangerous falsehoods about COVID-19 vaccines are spreading and health experts warn of the more transmissible Delta Variant’s increasing spread among unvaccinated Americans. According to CNN, nationwide vaccination rates are dropping and the rate of new COVID-19 cases in around 46 states in the past week is at least 10 per cent higher than the rates of new cases the previous week. It is worth noting that less than half of the US population - 48.5 per cent - are fully vaccinated. 

"If you look at the extraordinary success in eradicating smallpox and eliminating polio for most of the world -- and we're on the brink of eradicating polio -- if we had had the pushback for vaccines the way we're seeing on certain media, I don't think it would've been possible at all to not only eradicate smallpox, we probably would still have smallpox," said Fauci.

Social media is ‘killing people’ 

Meanwhile, the top US health expert’s statement also comes after US President Joe Biden slammed social media firms’ inability to stop the spread of misinformation around COVID-19 vaccines. Biden on July 16 blamed social media companies for spreading misinformation among people. When asked by reporters what his message to platforms like Facebook was, the US President responded by saying that “they are killing people” and added, “the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated”. 

Previously, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy also highlighted that misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines can be dangerous to public health. He claimed that this had led people to decline the vaccines. Murthy suggested that the US must confront the misinformation together as it is a threat to the nation's health.

(Image: AP)