and every clear thinking person knows that it is. but wait, you say, i ve been watching television news, so i know that the vaccine was never designed to stop infection or transmission or even hospitalization and death, none of which is a factual matter, it does stop. no, the point of the vaccines was always to make your symptoms a little better. that s a reassuring metric that s usually difficult to measure, though strangely no one seems reassured by it. but from day one that was the advertised benefit of these vaccines. that s what many people appear to believe. but it s not true, and since so many people seem to have forgotten what the authorities were saying just a few months ago, we have saved those tapes. here they are. nationwide, just 37% of americans are fully vaccinated, even as health experts continue to tout the benefits. you become a dead end to the virus and when there are a lot of dead ends around, the virus is not going to go anywhere. our data from the cdc today
natural immunity or vaccine-induced immunity. if i take my blood and try to neutralize the delta virus and the omicron virus, my blood is 40-50 times less able to newt rammize neutralize the omicron than the delta. so that just tells us we re going to need a higher level of immunity to protect ourselves, and that s why you re seeing breakthroughs in people. remember, the omicron variant, it s got a transmission advantage in a very unique population. the population are the previously infected and the previously immunized individuals. and it has that advantage over delta because it can escape the vaccine-induced or the natural immunity that s induced by infection to a much higher degree than delta. neil: dr. redfield, thank you very much. calming presence, sir, we appreciate that. we ll have a lot more after this thanks, neil.
of the emergency departments throughout washington, d.c. our hospitals themselves the inpatient wards seem to be maintaining. the emergency departments are being flooded with mostly mildly symptomatic patients who are coming in to get tested. and it s part of that shortfall of national testing that s occurring. and it s all falling on the emergency department. and all of our problems are compounded by the fact that while, um, many of us were able to to stay safe from getting the delta virus and the previous variants that have come our way, omicron is affecting the staff at our hospitals in an unprecedented way. we are, um we re really struggling to maintain our workforce, particularly of nurses right now. and that makes wait times even longer in the waiting rooms and it s very demoralizing for both the patients and our staff. wow. secretary sebelius, as the former health and human services secretary, when you listen to what dr. phillips just laid out there, what do you make o
trump administration s handling of the pandemic. mishandling of the pandemic. how do you think the biden administration is handling the pandemic so far? jake, thanks for having me back on. it s really hard to get in front of a pandemic. it s moving really quickly and this virus is moving faster and continually changing its game. it s really important for us to make sure that the biden administration does everything possible to stay in front of this virus. i ve seen a lot of efforts made by the biden administration and frankly, a lot more effort probably than we saw with the trump administration. but there are so many opportunities that i believe that biden administration can take on and do more and do it faster and clarify the language that i think would do and be much more effective at stopping this pandemic. we need to be clearer with our messaging, jake. in addition to messaging which i agree, it s been confusing at times.
and boosted, but maybe in like more red states, they are kind of just living their lives. right. and the problem is that the virus is living its life also. and the virus doesn t really care what you think. this particular variant is extraordinarily contagious. and if you are in a crowd now, and certainly if you re unvaccinated, you are at great risk of contracting this virus. so what i would say is, first of all, indoor new year s eve celebrations should be out. if you re going to tand a small gathering maybe at a friend s house, then do what everybody should have done this past christmas weekend which is to test everyone before they go. and you can still do that. if you want to get together with some friends and pop a bottle of champagne, that s great but make sure everyone is negative on their way to your house and you re negative if you host them. as for big firework displays or,