Apparently, a CNBC host just got finished confronting Dr. Anthony Fauci regarding the frequency of the so-called “breakthrough” cases of COVID-19 in people who are fully vaccinated.

The Background

There are plenty of public health officials who have been continually touting the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines for nearly a year now. However, even though there is some evidence that the vaccines are indeed more effective than they first believed, there is an increasing amount of breakthrough cases where a fully vaccinated person contracts COVID-19 anyway. This begs the question: is it appropriate to force people to get vaccinated if there are going to be breakthrough cases anyway?

Incredibly, the exact number of breakthrough cases is now not even known. This is because the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention ceased tracking that data in May. However, the agency continues to track hospitalization and deaths among those that are fully vaccinated. On September 27th, the CDC reported that there were “22,115 patients with COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough infection who were hospitalized or died.”

During an interview with CNBC’s “Closing Bell” on Friday, host Sara Eisen confronted Fauci about the prevalence of these breakthrough cases, asking him if he thought that the government was being “too casual about the limitations of the vaccine.”

Eisen asked this question of Fauci because she herself had contracted COVID-19 despite being fully vaccinated, and it recently spread through her “entire family.”

In response, Fauci had cited data that said that unvaccinated people continue to remain the most vulnerable to hospitalization or death from COVID, and it prevents them from having a severe outcome. Fauci attempted to tell Eisen that she should not “confuse” the overwhelming benefits of the protection of vaccines” with a surge in breakthrough cases.

In a nutshell, Fauci simply dodged the question, just pointing Eisen to what he believed were the importance of booster shots.

Moreover, the CDC is still claiming that even fully vaccinated individuals can spread the COVID-19 virus. That also means that the viral load for the newer Delta variant is the same for both vaccinated and unvaccinated people. However, the agency does say that people are contagious for much less time if they are vaccinated.

“For people infected with the Delta variant, similar amounts of viral genetic material have been found among both unvaccinated and fully vaccinated people. However, like prior variants, the amount of viral genetic material may go down faster in fully vaccinated people when compared to unvaccinated people,” the CDC explains. “This means fully vaccinated people will likely spread the virus for less time than unvaccinated people.”