Fauci tells unvaccinated Americans to ‘put aside’ concerns about ‘personal liberties’ to fight pandemic

In an appearance on CBS's "Face The Nation," Fauci said that despite many Americans now being vaccinated against COVID-19, mitigation actions must still be enacted.

"You have to get the overwhelming proportion of people vaccinated, but you also have to do mitigation, and that gets to the controversial issue of mask wearing, and the mandating of things. Mandating vaccines, for example, for teachers and ... personnel in the school," said Fauci, according to The Hill.

Fauci goes on to address that while breakthrough cases have been recorded, it is unvaccinated Americans that are getting seriously ill and dying from the virus.

"It's the unvaccinated that are doing that, so we have a lot of tasks. We've got to do mitigation. Put aside all of these issues of concern about liberties and personal liberties and realize we have a common enemy and that common enemy is the virus," Fauci said. "And we really have to go together to get on top of this. Otherwise, we're going to continue to suffer as we're seeing right now."

Host Nancy Cordes goes on to ask Fauci whether eligible individuals should get the Moderna third booster shot regardless of their initial doses, citing recent research that proved Moderna is more effective than Pfizer at protecting against the delta variant, to which Fauci disagreed with the suggestion.

"First of all, it's a preprint study, It hasn't been fully peer-reviewed and I don't doubt what they're seeing, but there are a lot of confounding variables," he said.

The sentiment expressed by Fauci mirrors a similar one made last week in an interview with MSNBC, in which he urged for local governments and schools to mandate vaccines for teachers.

"I'm sorry, I mean, I know people must like to have their individual freedom and not be told to do something, but I think we're in such a serious situation now, that under certain circumstances, mandates should be done," he said.