omicron. or people exposed, right. steve: the omicron is sweeping the nation. the numbers in new york are through the roof. but ax you look at the number of people getting omicron in south africa where we first heard about it. it sounds like they are on the back end of the mountain, and the good news if, you know, it s still relative, 80% of them, less likely to be hospitalized with omicron, 30% develop severe illnesses if hospitalized. that s great it s still a problem is that a preview of what we can expect here? you know, they have only been really riding the wave for a couple of weeks and now it looks like it could be heading for the exit. i m very optimistic about this, steve. i talked to it dr. gentleman jae
the new england journal of nba volunteers so he if you are boosted, your risk of spreading, this it goes on for only about six days. so i m in favor of cutting that 10-day quarantine rule down to five days. that s right. five days. after exposure, if you have a mild case, get a rapid test. your rapid test is negative. that s pretty accurate you are not going to spread it. i think hysteria is the problem here. by the way, it s all over the place, omicron. we need to shift to a new paradigm for omicron. do you know what s happening? we are still using the delta paradigm. that s a mistake. and by the way, if you give incentive to someone have you been boosted. can you come back to work. can you go back to school, that will get more people vaccinated rather than mandates. steve: you and i both have been double vaccinated and boosted and it s the most we can do for ourselves and our families as well. dr. siegel, thank you very much. merry christmas and happy
says it s a combination of more people getting vaccinated and boosted and people that have had prior covid or different strains that got different variants that got exposed. and that it s a milder virus. it s clearly a milder virus the problem is it spreads so rapidly that puts more people at risk. the path forward to becoming an endemic here, in my opinion and again i think we are going to follow south africa i think in january you will see less cases as, again, it saturates more people and more people get boosted. the goal is to cut through the hysteria, steve. the hysteria and incompetent government where everything is slow. where the pill comes out but we don t have it where this rapid testing for 500,000 for 500 million people but we don t have it. and then people go frightened to the pharmacy and they line up as you said right before came on. you line up at the pharmacy, guess what you are doing? you are spreading omicron. i think the hysteria and incompetent government has mad
carley: that s right. car. steve: he does indeed. if you are interested norad santa.org. can you look at it on a desktop, a laptop, they also have a couple of different apps so you can follow santa throughout the day on your phone. also, on your phone, you have got apps to show if you are traveling today and millions of americans will be, there is a real good possibility that your flight has been canceled because of covid. yesterday flights into and out of the united states. brian: unbelievable. steve: almost 300 flights were canceled. today even more. it looks like 165 were canceled by united airlines for today because of staffing issues. and if you have been canceled you will get email message from united it says that your flight has been canceled because coronavirus cases are limiting the crew availability.
you need someone leaning forward. if we wasted some money buying tests. i got it if you want to bring that up during a debate or during the midterms, takes the slings and arrows. we already took a huge bet on the vaccine. why we didn t take a bet on the rapid test, getting into people s houses, i cannot get my head around that. steve. steve: well, it s all because they put all of the they put all of their eggs in one basket. the basket was about the vaccine. and, you know, we have been talking over the last week or two about how why didn t they stockpile monoclonal antibodies? we don t have any of those? why didn t they stockpile all this stuff? how many of the people who are out at the airport standing in line trying to talk to an agent about rebooking stood in line to get a test in a tent or an urgent care place over the last couple of days where the line was out the door and around the corner because they couldn t get any at home tests.