Fauci calls Covid vaccines ‘extraordinary’ and insists they have not been rushed

‘We are not calling for a national lockdown,’ outgoing VP says after Joe Biden said the same

Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease official, called two potential coronavirus vaccines “extraordinary” as both show promise during testing.

He went to great lengths to try convincing the American public that development of the inoculation was not rushed, something Democrats have warned about for months even though one developed by Pfizer was not part of a Trump administration programme known as “Warp Speed.”

“I really want to settle the concern," he said, adding the speed of vaccine work “did not at all compromise safety."

“We need to put to rest any concept that this was rushed in any inappropriate way,” Mr Fauci said. "Two of the vaccines, one by Moderna and one by the company Pfizer, have completed trials and the vaccine efficacy point is extraordinary.”

But the widely respected Mr Fauci, who often appears on cable news programmes and on magazine covers even as more and more Americans get sick and die, urged his countrymen to take steps to help slow the spread of the disease.

“Help is on the way. … We need to actually double-down on the public health measures as we're waiting for that help to come, which will be soon,” he said. "We're not talking about shutting down the country. … If we do that, we'll be able to hold things off until the vaccine comes."

But it appears many US citizens are not willing to “hold things off."

Tens of thousands are attending college and professional football games each week. People are traveling and going to bars, restaurants and gyms. Polls show half the country opposes covering their faces to keep their potentially-infected spittle to themselves.  

Notably, moments earlier, Vice President Mike Pence said Donald Trump, the outgoing president, does "not support another nationwide lockdown." That comment put Mr Trump in lockstep with President-elect Joe Biden, who said minutes earlier he has no intention to lock down the entire country.

“We are not calling for a national lockdown,” Mr Pence said. “And we’re not going to. … We do not need to close our schools.”

Mr Biden and Mr Pence vowed their opposition to a second lockdown even as cases are soaring in most of the country.

After saying Mr Trump instructed the White House’s coronavirus task force to hold a briefing, Mr Pence appeared to take a shot at New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, with whom the president has clashed over the virus. Mr Cuomo shut down schools effective Thursday morning.

“But beyond that, there have been some actions taken in jurisdictions around the country with regard to closing schools,” Mr Pence said.

The Trump administration has been slammed for most of the year by Democrats as not taking the virus seriously enough – though some of those same Democrats in recent days have been photographed not practising the mitigation measures they have preached to their constituents.

But Mr Pence showed some defiance even though the US death toll is now at 251,000.

'We slowed the spread. We flattened the curve. We saved lives," the outgoing Vice President said in a statement that is only partially true.

The federal effort to slow and flatten the disease’s spread has twice failed, resulting in dramatic spikes in every state in the union. 

Dr Deborah Birx, a member of the task force, claimed the administration has a lot of information about the virus and its spread.

“We can see the virus down to the zip code,” she said.

But it was not immediately clear how the government is using the granular data she showed on a chart to slow the massive uptick in cases.