Anthony Fauci on vaccine mandates

Andrea Mitchell: I also want to ask you about the president's mandate which is being litigated right now...  There's so much opposition now in Congress and across the states, even in Democratic states...  This is becoming just a political test and the outlook is not at all a sure thing in the court system.  Is there any thought of backing off of that and trying to avoid all the outcry against it?

Anthony Fauci: We really have to get people vaccinated.  I understand and we all understand how people do not like to be told what to do.  They want to make their own choice and their own free will.  I get that and I respect that, but these are unusual times and you can't think only of yourself and your own personal opinion, but you've got to think about your communal responsibility to get yourself and your family and, indirectly then, the community protected.  So I would prefer - and we all would prefer - that people would be voluntarily getting vaccinated, but if they're not going to do that, sometimes you've got to do things that are unpopular, but that clearly supersede individual choices and are directed predominately at the communal good, and that's what we're talking about when we're talking about requirements.

Mitchell: It's such an important warning.  Thank you very much.  Maybe there would be a better word than mandate, but I don't know what it is.  

~ Dr. Anthony Fauci, Anthony Fauci interview with Andrea Mitchell, MSNBC, 8:35 mark, December 8, 2021