Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, said on NPR’s Morning Edition Wednesday that Covid-19 vaccines don’t make people impervious to infection, but asking vaccinated people to again wear masks may not provide much “bang for our buck” to reduce transmission.
“I think that there’s some transmission occurring among people who are vaccinated,” Gottlieb said. “We’ve been saying that for a while, I’ve been pointing out for a while at this point, the vaccine doesn’t make you impervious to infection.”
Given how transmissible the Delta variant is, there are probably people who are becoming mildly or asymptomatically infected even when vaccinated, he said.
“I think at this point, where we are with this Delta wave, which is probably closer to the end than the beginning, and the fact that probably a very small percentage of the transmission is occurring among vaccinated people, I don’t know how prudent this and practical it is,” Gottlieb said of the new CDC guidance.
The bottom line, he said, is that people who are vaccinated shouldn’t assume that they are completely protected, so if they’re around high-risk people, they should be mindful, and potentially wear a mask, and “certainly” get tested if they think they have Covid-19 symptoms.
“I think in terms of telling everyone whose been vaccinated that they need to now start wearing a mask again, I think that’s going to be very little bang for our buck in terms of trying to reduce transmission right now in the context of this wave of infection,” he said.
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