Fauci, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser rejected trying to sell vax door-to-door in awkward video
Dr. Anthony Fauci and DC Mayor Muriel Bowser got roundly rejected when they went door to door pitching the COVID-19 vaccine at the height of the pandemic, newly unearthed video shows.
A clip from the upcoming episode of PBS’ “American Masters” series shows Fauci, 82, and the Democratic mayor making the rounds in the Anacostia neighborhood in June 2021, Fox News reported.
At the time, he was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“They’re sort of the disenfranchised group that we’ve got to reach out to,” Fauci says to the camera, referring to the residents of the historically black neighborhood where vaccination rates were low.
One man greeted the duo with a heavy dose of skepticism.
“So, I’m not going to be lining up taking a shot on a vaccination for something that wasn’t clear in the first place,” he tells the top doc and Bowser.
“Nine months is definitely not enough for nobody to be taking no vaccination that you all came up with,” he says when Fauci tells him how long it took to develop the jab.
Bowser tries to allay his concerns.
“The only reason I’m talking to you right now, as close as we are, is that I’ve been vaccinated,” she says. “If thousands of people like you don’t get vaccinated, you’re going to let this virus continue to percolate in this country and in this world.”
He interjects: “Something like the common flu, then, right?”
Fauci explains that the technology to develop the vaccine had been in the works for two decades, adding that some 30,000 people died from the flu in 2020 compared to the roughly 600,000 deaths from COVID-19 as of the time of the video.
But the man brushes him off, saying: “Again, that’s you all’s number.”
He remains unconvinced and expresses misgivings about various incentives that were offered at the time to people who agreed to be vaccinated.
“When you start talking about paying people to get vaccinated, when you start talking about incentivizing things to get people vaccinated, it’s something else going on with that,” he says.
“Your campaign is about fear. It’s about inciting fear in people. You all attack people with fear. That’s what this pandemic is — it’s a fear, it’s fear, this pandemic. That’s all it is,” the man adds before Fauci and Bowser walk away.
Later, a woman tells them: “I heard that [the vaccine] doesn’t cure it, and it doesn’t stop you from getting it.”
Fauci tries to correct her.
“No, on the very, very, very rare chance that you do get it even if you’re vaccinated, it’s a very — you don’t even feel sick. It’s like you don’t even know you got infected. It’s very, very good at protecting you,” he says.
At least 60,000 DC residents contracted COVID-19 despite getting the shot, according to the city’s website.
When Bowser asks Fauci about states that had not mandated the vaccine, he says those states would simply allow the outbreak to go unchecked.
“What are we going to do about those other states?” she says.
“Oh my God, they’re going to keep the outbreak smoldering in the country,” Fauci replies.
“It’s so crazy. I mean, they’re not doing it because they say they don’t want to do it. They’re Republicans. They don’t like to be told what to do. And we got to break that, unpack that,” he adds.
Not everyone had the same reaction to the pair that day.
One woman becomes emotional when she saw the doctor.
“Oh my God, Dr. Fauci!” she exclaims.
Another woman says she has already been vaccinated “because I felt I need to be a solution and not part of the problem.”
The teaser clip went viral on social media and elicited a wide range of responses.
“Fauci got destroyed. I can’t believe they actually let this footage see the light of day,” one user said on Twitter.
“Oh my gosh this video. Fauci and Mayor Bowser go to Anacostia to track down the unvaccinated,” another user wrote.
A third said: “Watch as Anthony Fauci and DC Mayor Muriel Bowser get condemned by a regular American for fearmongering about COVID.”
Fauci, who also was the White House chief medical adviser, retired in December.
Despite the US Energy Department’s recent conclusion that COVID-19 likely leaked from a Chinese lab, Fauci, who has long denied the lab leak theory, has maintained “we may never know” the origin of the disease.
In the months after the pandemic began, Fauci had discounted the theory that the virus had emanated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The 82-year-old now said he was still keeping a “completely open mind” on the origin of the virus, while explaining how a lab leak still could be considered a “natural occurrence.”
“A lab leak could be that someone was out in the wild, maybe looking for different types of viruses in bats, got infected, went into a lab and was being studied in the lab and then came out of the lab,” Fauci told CNN.
Fauci pointed out that intelligence agencies aren’t aligned on the lab leak theory and have not arrived at a definitive answer on what caused the pandemic.
The PBS series episode, titled “Dr. Fauci visits D.C. to Battle Vaccine Hesitancy,” premieres at 8 p.m. Tuesday.
