1/20/2021
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`Anthony Fauci offers a timeline for ending COVID-19 pandemic – Harvard Gazette
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`H E A LT H & M E D I C I N E
`
`Fauci says herd immunity
`possible by fall, ‘normality’ by
`end of 2021
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`If 75 percent to 80 percent of Americans are vaccinated, then by the end of 2021, we can reach a degree of normality, said Anthony Fauci, director of the
`National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Rose Lincoln/Harvard Staff Photographer
`
`Experts detail vaccine unknowns, need to continue
`masking, distancing
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`Colibri Heart Valve LLC, Exhibit 2015, Page 1 of 4
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`1/20/2021
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`Anthony Fauci offers a timeline for ending COVID-19 pandemic – Harvard Gazette
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`Alvin Powell
`Harvard Staff Writer
`December 10, 2020
`
`The nation’s top infectious disease doctor offered a timeline for ending the COVID-19 pandemic this week,
`saying that if the coming vaccination campaign goes well, we could approach herd immunity by summer’s
`end and “normality that is close to where we were before” by the end of 2021.
`
`Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Wednesday
`that that estimate is dependent on significant numbers of Americans being willing to be inoculated with
`one of several vaccines in various stages of development. If 75 percent to 80 percent of Americans are
`vaccinated in broad-based campaigns likely to start in the second quarter of next year, then the U.S. should
`reach the herd immunity threshold months later. If vaccination levels are significantly lower, 40 percent to
`50 percent, Fauci said, it could take a very long time to reach that level of protection.
`
`“Let’s say we get 75 percent, 80 percent of the population vaccinated,” Fauci said. “If we do that, if we do it
`efficiently enough over the second quarter of 2021, by the time we get to the end of the summer, i.e., the
`third quarter, we may actually have enough herd immunity protecting our society that as we get to the end
`of 2021, we can approach very much some degree of normality that is close to where we were before.”
`
`Fauci spoke at an online “When Public Health Means Business” event sponsored by the Harvard T.H. Chan
`School of Public Health and the New England Journal of Medicine. He addressed an array of topics from
`how he handles frustration over people who refuse basic, life-saving, public health measures, to why masks
`will continue to be needed even after vaccination starts (the vaccines haven’t yet been shown to stop
`transmission).
`
`“As a public health official … it would be unconscionable to walk away from this or to throw up your hands
`in frustration,” Fauci said. “It’s not about me and how I feel; it’s about what the problem is. And the problem
`is enormous. … You just have to suck it up and keep going.”
`
`Fauci was introduced by Chan School Dean Michelle Williams, who said the level of noncompliance with
`basic and straightforward public health measures makes her think the nation has become numb to COVID-
`related illness and death. That could be a dangerous thing, she said, if it translates into an unwillingness to
`take a vaccine. Recent Pew surveys, she said, indicate that Americans who say they would take the vaccine
`rose to 60 percent in November from 51 percent in September, a figure that’s nonetheless dangerously low
`if the goal is to reach levels high enough to virtually stop the transmission and end the pandemic.
`
`“Saving lives is now a race against the clock. Let each of us … do the right thing,” Williams said, “because we
`simply cannot afford to go numb.”
`
`The afternoon event was the second at Harvard on Wednesday focused on COVID vaccines. The first,
`hosted by the Harvard Medical School-led Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogen Readiness, or MassCPR,
`featured several experts on various aspects of the pandemic discussing vaccine trials and distribution
`efforts, as well as health disparities and ways to reach minority communities and encourage vaccine
`acceptance.
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`Colibri Heart Valve LLC, Exhibit 2015, Page 2 of 4
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`1/20/2021
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`Anthony Fauci offers a timeline for ending COVID-19 pandemic – Harvard Gazette
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`“As a public health ofcial … it would be
`unconscionable to walk away from this or to
`throw up your hands in frustration. … You just have
`to suck it up and keep going.”
`
`— Anthony Fauci
`
`HMS Dean George Daley, who hosted the MassCPR event, said that successful development and
`deployment of COVID-19 vaccines show “science, medicine, and public health at its best” but warned that
`overconfidence about a preventative treatment can be as dangerous as mistrust.
`
`“Vaccine mistrust is dangerous, but so is overconfidence,” Daley said. “We need to be wary of the dangers of
`magical thinking, of seeing vaccines as a silver bullet. Vaccines will not offer an overnight solution. We have
`to temper our optimism with a dose of reality and brace ourselves for many more months of infection
`prevention and distancing measures as the vaccines are rolled out.”
`
`Experts discussed the news of adverse reactions to the Pfizer vaccine that had been thought to be
`overwhelmingly safe. British authorities on Wednesday recommended that people prone to severe allergic
`reactions avoid the treatment, which this week became the first approved for distribution after the
`conclusion of clinical trials in a Western nation. Two British health care workers who were inoculated early
`developed severe allergic reactions. Also on Wednesday, Canada approved the vaccine for distribution,
`while on Thursday, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel endorsed the Pfizer vaccine for U.S.
`distribution, with final approval expected soon.
`
`Both Fauci and experts at the MassCPR event said that rare, serious side effects like the allergic reactions
`sometimes occur once a vaccine is widely distributed because it reaches many more people than a clinical
`trial, including some with health issues or genetic profiles that make them susceptible to severe reactions.
`That’s why vaccines are monitored even after they go out to the general population. That’s also partly why
`the U.S. is backing multiple vaccine efforts, in hopes that rare side effects observed with one vaccine will be
`absent with another, Fauci said.
`
`“These are the kinds of things that happen when you implement large vaccine programs,” Fauci said.
`“You’re talking about millions of individuals getting vaccinated, so you may start seeing effects in some that
`might not have been picked up when you were dealing with thousands.”
`
`The allergic reactions did not prompt a recommendation to halt vaccinations, but rather to heighten
`vigilance so that people prone to severe allergic reactions not take the vaccine or take it only with medical
`help nearby in case a severe reaction occurs.
`
`Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, who appeared at the MassCPR
`event, said a key ethical question emerging as the U.S. moves toward vaccine approval will be whether to
`offer the vaccine to those enrolled in the clinical trials’ placebo group. On one hand, she said, early trial
`results have shown the vaccine to be more effective than hoped for and vaccination — particularly of those
`at high risk — might be desired. But on the other hand, important questions about the duration of the
`vaccine’s protection and about late-emerging side effects might be answered if the trial runs its planned
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`Colibri Heart Valve LLC, Exhibit 2015, Page 3 of 4
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`Anthony Fauci offers a timeline for ending COVID-19 pandemic – Harvard Gazette
`1/20/2021
`two years. Inoculating those in the placebo arm of the trial would eliminate an unvaccinated population
`against which to compare the vaccinated participants’ results.
`
`Another unanswered question is whether the vaccines, whose trials have shown that they prevent people
`from getting seriously ill and dying of COVID-19, also prevent people from becoming infected in the first
`place and, importantly, from passing the virus on to others. It could be the case, Fauci said, that even if the
`vaccines don’t prevent infection, they keep virus levels so low that they do prevent transmission. Those
`outstanding questions, however, are why masking, distancing, and other public health measures will be
`needed even by people who have been vaccinated until we know the answers.
`
`“We’re going to find out from follow-up studies,” Fauci said. “We should not say that vaccines are a
`substitution for public health measures; [they’re] a complement to public health measures.”
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`Colibri Heart Valve LLC, Exhibit 2015, Page 4 of 4
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