making it more critical to wear the right kind of mask than perhaps [ inaudible ] you are absolutely right about that andrea, i think that s a message you want to get out loud and clear. if you were in situation in the past where you didn t get infected, oh, i can keep doing that. no, this virus is that much more infectious. i say somewhat jokingly, yet at the same time in a serious nature, be every the delta virus came along, you could get in an elevator have a long conversation and walk to the office. today with omicron, if the elevator opens, you get a good whiff, you can get infected. that s the kind of world we are living in with this transmission. that s why you are seeing so many millions of people get infected every day in this country. i also want to ask you about a report the new york times has from the cdc. they ve research and development that children who get infected
also pressed by craig on the today show about the recent calls of a group of prominent medical expert who s have been advising the administration in the past to change the view plan in fighting the virus. at what point does the administration say you know what, this strategy isn t working? we re going to change strategies? six former administration officials wrote that open letter urging the administration to change course, to change strategy. is it time? it is time for us to do what we have been doing and that time is every day. every day it is time for us to agree that there are things and tools that are available to us to slow this thing down. i want the bring in one of the prominent health experts, director of the infectious disease resurgent policy, university of minnesota. what is your reaction? what do you think the administration needs to do in
particularly in healthcare of 20, 30%. you can t do what we used to do with that kind of a work force. but it s not going to last long. so i think one of the challenges we have right now is getting people to understand that and to realize if you can t contribute something in the next two-to-three weeks to this issue, it s going to be too late. we need it now and that s what we have to plan for. how important do you think it is given this current spike, if you will? that s what we see with omicron and the shortages, how important is it to try to persuade people to wear masks and to wear the right mask? and encourage the guidance has changed and that s understandably the science has changed. we understand that. it s becoming more critical to wear the proper kind of mask? well, i used to put this perspective, no. the science was there. we published work back as early as april of 2020 saying that, in fact this virus is transmitted by an aerosol, that kind of
terms of moving out of a pandemic phase let s say to an endemic phase? well, let me split this into swo spat pamplts as an author of that paper that s being discussed right now, let me say in general the media mischaracterized what we did. what we were talking about was not a criticism of what was going on now, but that we had to eventually get to a new normal. that we were going to have to live with this virus over the course of years to come and our job was to figure out how best to do that as opposed to bouncing from variant to variant. so i just want to clarify that that was not a criticism of what s going on now, or that they needed to change plans of such. in terms of the second issue, though, let me say we are in the middle of a crisis right now. for the next three weeks or so we are going to see omicron continue to be this viral blizzard around the country and it s not going to be business as usual. it s going to be a challenge. we re going to continue to see absentee rates a
out of concern for the coronavirus. is cancelling of large events of this type something we should be seeing more of right now with this delta virus on the move? i hope we can avoid that, and i think we can if we increase the pace of vaccination and mask up indoors. so like what new york city has planned, that you need to be vaccinated with proof of vaccination to dine indoors, that makes a lot of sense. it s good for business. it allows us to keep our economy humming. getting vaccinated and wearing a mask, these are small things to do to get our economy moving, get our jobs back, open and keep our schools open, and most importantly, wolf, save a lot of lives. they will save. just get a shot. it will save a life. the former cdc director, dr. tom frieden, thank you so much for joining us. just ahead, there is new evidence of an attempted coup. new details of how president