What do you think so far of the Biden’s administration’s response to Omicron?
There are some things that they want to do, but they can’t. They want to get the vaccination rate much, much higher. It’s sitting at 61 percent and should be 91 percent. That isn’t their fault. They’ve tried. They can’t even get mandates for health-care workers, much less other mandates, and who would have thought we would have had to resort to mandates?
Still, of the things that they can control, there have been many shortcomings. First of all, boosters were delayed. The data showing the benefit against Delta were absolutely unequivocal. If we had gotten more people boosted earlier we’d be in a better position to handle Omicron. We knew it was an issue, and we knew we could deal with it back in August, and we never had consensus. The messaging has been really muddled and mixed. We’re finally saying everybody should go get a booster because of Omicron? No, we should have had it because of Delta, and it should have been every adult. The administration says “we’re sticking to the science.” The science says four months is the waning, not six months. We’ve got all of these people sitting out there waiting to get to six months while they’re unprotected. After four months, you pretty much need a booster, and you certainly need it against Omicron.
Another thing that’s a mistake, in my view, is getting testing and masks. In Colorado, they’re mailing everyone free rapid tests. In New York City, they’re getting people KN95 masks, which governments can buy for pennies and they’re much better masks. Rapid tests should be distributed to everyone who wants them, free. None of this billing the insurance company stuff. That’s a non-starter.
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