waning of that protection. we are seeing now more indications of breakthroughs, people who do get infected even though they re vaccinated. the vast, vast majority of them do not get very sick, they have some symptoms perhaps but don t ending up in the hospital. when you look at the data over the last three or four weeks and delta has really taken hold and look at other places like israel, you can begin to see that we are on a path where maybe in another month or two we ll see the potential of people getting more sick than they have been so far. so maybe you can say we re a little ahead of the cousin, but maybe if we waited we d be behind the curve. it s a little bit of a goldilocks moment. where do you want to put down your bets? we think since lives of at stake, i d rather be in that space than a little late. by september 20th if fda and cdc look at all the data and agree,
better stay ahead of it than chasing after it. but about a third of eligible americans can t even be bothered to get one shot. so how do we convince them to get three? for more on this latest development i m joined by one of the nation s top public health officials, dr. francis collins, director of the national institutes of health. dr. collins, thanks for coming back on this show. to the person at home who is watching right now who might be fully vaccinated, had their double shot of pfizer or moderna who s been told day after day the last few months that they were fully protected, 80%, 90% efficacy, why do they need another shot so soon? explain that to them. i d be glad to try. yes, they are fully protected against severe disease or hospitalization because the vaccines are working well so far in that situation, even against this really nasty delta variant. but if you watch the data very closely, and many of us involved in this have been studying this daily, you can begin to see s
looking at all the breakthroughs, you can get a pretty good snapshot, and what you see is that basically, the protection against mild illness is starting to go down a bit. that kind of predicts it overtime, the protection against more severe illness might also start to weigh, and that s what we are trying to do here is get ahead of that. think of this as you are running a race, we ve been doing that with this virus, chasing after it, the vaccines came along, we had a chance to get well ahead, but then the delta variant came along in the virus started catching up, so now we need another sort of supercharged boost here to get as well ahead, of what otherwise might happen. we re always tried to be a little bit ahead of this virus so that people don t run into a really serious illness, that s what we re trying to do. so doctor collins, why eight months, how is that number chosen, is it a hard and fast rule? i spoke to doctor celine gounder on the show and she didn t seem to understand wh
homes, one a broader survey and a paper from mayo clinic last week that is looking at all the breakthroughs so you can get a pretty good snapshot. what you see is basically the protection against mild illness is starting to go down a bit. that kind of predicts that over time the protection against more severe illness might also start to wane. that s what we re trying to do here is get ahead of that. think of this as you re running a race. we ve been doing that with this virus chasing after us. the vaccines came along, we had a chance to get well ahead. but then the delta variant came along and the virus started catching up. now we need a super charged boost here to get us well ahead of what otherwise might happen. we re always trying to stay a little ahead of this virus so that people don t run into really serious illness. that s what we re trying to do. so, dr. collins, why eight months? how was that number chosen? and is it a hard and fast rule? i spoke to dr. celine gounder
eligible americans can t even be bothered to get one shot, so how do we convince them to get three? for more on this latest development i m joined by the top public official doctor francis collins he s thank you so much for coming back on the show. do the person at home who is watching right now, who might be fully vaccinated, have their double shudder pfizer or moderna, we ve been told day after day for the last few months that they are fully protected. 80%, 90% efficacy. why do they need another shot so soon, explain that to them. i d be glad to try. yes, they are fully protected against severe disease, or hospitalizations because the vaccines are working well so far, and that situation even against this really nasty delta variant, but if you watch the data very closely, and many of us involved in this have been studying this daily, you can begin to see some waning of that protection, we are seeing