Fox News contributor downplays hundreds of daily COVID-19 deaths while claiming U.S. is at “herd immunity”
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From the July 24, 2021, edition of Fox News' The Big Saturday Show
KATIE PAVLICH (FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR): Well, look, I think it's important to point out that the reporter was not asking for specific names of White House staffers who are sick in the White House, simply just the number of breakthrough cases so that the American people can start to understand this breakthrough problem that many people are having, people who have been vaccinated who then get sick with this Delta variant that we're seeing. But this idea that we're going to now bring back masks for all people -- including vaccinated people -- quite frankly is a lot of theater by politicians who just can't get out of this power grab that they've had over the last year, year and a half.
The fact of the matter is that the United States of America has herd immunity through natural infection and the majority of the country is vaccinated with two of their doses, if not one dose of the vaccine. This idea that we're going to follow Dr. Anthony Fauci's idea that nobody is ever going to be able to get sick again, that we will have to eliminate COVID, as he said this week, before we can move on with our lives and learn how to live with the virus, is a pretty preposterous way of trying to move forward in a free society.
In a free society, including America and Europe, there is risk that comes with everything. There were 400-plus people who died from COVID yesterday. That is a terrible tragedy, but 2,300 people died from heart disease yesterday. And so I think we have to think about this in the realm of -- we deal with risks every single day, people have choices in this country, and it's not the same people that the administration is trying to argue are vaccine-hesitant. They're trying to blame it on Republicans or Trump supporters. You know, in terms of mandated vaccinations, you have the largest healthcare worker union in New York City this week with a massive protest saying we do not want a mandated vaccine, we want to be able to make choices about what we are putting in our bodies.
And I know the narrative has been from Dr. Fauci and many in the administration that every single person should get vaccinated. But there are actually doctors who tell people based on their individual health information, that maybe they should wait to get a vaccine, or maybe they don't need the vaccine because they have natural immunity. And so the standard that they've applied for everybody doesn't necessarily work. And this idea that masks are going to protect people, but the vaccines don't, is a laughable concept.