Dr. Fauci says what this NYT journo says is happening in India with vaccines should not be happening in India

There’s a new “heart-stopping” dispatch out this morning on the COVID-19 situation in India by New York Times South Asia bureau chief Jeffrey Gettleman that’s going viral right now:

NYT Pulitzer winner @gettleman⁩ has reported in war zones, he’s been jailed and been kidnapped in Iraq.

But the COVID crisis in India is a new kind of emergency. This dispatch is heart-stopping https://t.co/UF1qp2POV9

— Ryan McCarthy (@mccarthyryanj) April 28, 2021

Gettleman writes:

“I’m sitting in my apartment waiting to catch the disease…It is out there, I am in here, and I feel like it’s only a matter of time before I, too, get sick.” ⁦@gettleman⁩ on what it feels like to live in the crucible of India’s #covid pandemic. https://t.co/MdBx50WaSv

— Sudarsan Raghavan (@raghavanWaPo) April 28, 2021

And:

"As a foreign correspondent for nearly 20 years, I’ve covered combat zones, been kidnapped in Iraq and been thrown in jail in more than a few places. This is unsettling in a different way", NYT's @gettleman on India's deadly second wave. https://t.co/DuHzabgBEx

— Rupa Subramanya (@rupasubramanya) April 27, 2021

But there’s one paragraph in there that needs to be challenged.

Gettleman, writing on the “double-mutant” variant that’s spreading in India right now, quotes “some we have spoken to” saying “they had been vaccinated twice and still got seriously ill”:

"I don't think there's any evidence that it's an escape mutation [which would mean] it fundamentally can't be stopped by the vaccines," Dr Jeff Barrett, director of the Covid-19 Genomics Initiative at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, told BBC News.https://t.co/MtMCp0G28x

— Steve Tyler (@styler_cr) April 28, 2021

So, if what the NYT says is happening is really happening, that’s contrary to all the media reporting on it:

Other good news: Recent lab studies indicate vaccine's ability to neutralize B.1.617, as expected from its structure https://t.co/1GhFhp3Tad /4

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) April 24, 2021

It’s also contrary to what Dr. Anthony Fauci just said about vaccines and variants, and that includes the Indian vaccine COVAXIN:

Quoting the ICMR study, White House’s chief medical adviser dr Anthony Fauci says Indian vaccine COVAXIN can neutralize the B.1.617 variant of the corona virus (Double mutant variant in India). Calls Vaccination an important antidote. pic.twitter.com/i1KKlvi0XM

— Sidhant Sibal (@sidhant) April 28, 2021

More info here: