Pfizer Board Member: ‘Relax’ COVID Mandates ‘Very Soon’

Former FDA director says “The only way to get compliance from people and get accommodation [is] if we demonstrate the ability to withdraw these [mandates] in the same manner in which we put them in.”

QUICK FACTS:
  • Former director of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and current board member at Pfizer Dr. Scott Gottlieb said that declining Covid-19 cases should signal to policymakers that it is time to lift more pandemic-related restrictions, The Epoch Times reports.
  • When asked about whether mask mandates should be dropped, he told “The Squawk Box” in a Monday interview, “I think certainly on the east coast where you see cases declining dramatically we need to be willing to lean in and do that very soon I think as conditions improve we have to be willing to relax some of these measures with the same speed that we put them in place.”
  • The former FDA commissioner said that “a lot of the acrimony” in the United States stems from a lack of “clear goalposts” about when some of the measures will end, Epoch Times noted.
  • Citing Connecticut’s recent decision to abolish vaccine mandates for state workers as a policy that other policymakers should adopt in the near future as COVID-19 cases decline nationwide, Gottlieb stated, “The only way to get compliance from people and get accommodation [is] if we demonstrate the ability to withdraw these [mandates] in the same manner in which we put them in.”
WATCH GOTTLIEB ON CNBS:
BACKGROUND:
  • Johnson & Johnson said on Tuesday it expects its vaccine sales to jump as much as 46% in 2022, generating as much as $3.5 billion this year compared to $2.39 billion in 2021, Reuters notes.
  • In December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) accepted advice from a panel of experts to recommend the public not using the J&J shot, following growing concerns about rare blood clots, according to NPR.

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