booster shot. that s case numbers reported in that population. their numbers are not going up at all. it s flat. flat, flat. that is boosted nursing home residents. about half of all nursing home residents in the u.s. have been boosted. imagine if they all were. that is about as blunt of a case as i can make for why people ought to get booster shots. certainly in nursing homes. but presumably, you can extrapolate to the broader population from that. we re being told by the experts now that boosters are apparently our best defense against the omicron variant about which there has been a ton of news today. joining us now is dr. david kessler. he s helped guide us on the show through questions like this many times before. as you know, he s the top science adviser to the biden administration s covid response.
be good news, but i don t know quite how to calibrate it against the bad news. dr. david kessler has been an incredibly straight shooter with us from the very beginning. he s going to be joining us tonight. i m looking forward to having that conversation with him. we re also continuing to keep an eye on new developments in congress generally, including on voting rights, which we talked about at length on last night s show, and where it appears there may be some movement along the lines we were talking about on last night s show. we ll also be talking about president biden s main economic agenda. we re also watching developments that are coming sort of fast and furious now out of the january 6th investigation. here, for example, is the lead tonight at politico.com. see the headline there, january 6th investigators mull whether trump violated obstruction law. members of the january 6th investigation are homing in on a politically explosive question. did donald trump s actions amid the
dr. kessler, it s an honor as always to have you here. thank you for making time to be here. you did a great job explaining that, rachel. let me ask if it s fair to extrapolate from that then. are booster shots as clearly helpful as that nursing home data would seem to suggest? should that guide us not just for that specific population but for all of us? absolutely. no question. let me explain how it works. so if you boost the immune system with a third dose after a pause, that produces enhanced immunity. and that s what you saw in those graphs. that was important in the nursing homes, and it s especially important as we face omicron. in terms of omicron, it seems like just like you and the other experts told us, it does seem like it s taking hold here fast. the cdc says omicron already makes up about 3% of what s known to be circulating in the country right now. do you think that is a fair estimate? do we have a good way of measuring that, and do you think that number is going
about sort of what s known and what s not known there. i think we have seen a lot of people sort of jumping to conclusions about what they re guessing the data is ultimately going to show. again, as you point out, you don t know what you don t know. that said, we re all operating from behind this sort of little bit of a veil of ignorance here. and we are seeing cases surge in lots of states across the country right now, during the holiday season. hanukkah ended last week. christmas is in ten days. new year s is the week after that. given what we know and what we don t know and what we re seeing in terms of the numbers. what we re seeing in terms of hospitalizations, tell us, dr. kessler, what should we be doing right now? should we be gathering with friends and family for the holidays? should we be canceling the gatherings like we did last year? should we be avoiding seeing our elderly relatives or people who are otherwise vulnerable? how should we calibrate our personal risk now, espe
certainly when you re out, when you don t know people you re with indoors, mask up, get vaccinated, get boosted. let s get through the next six, eight weeks. maybe this is milder, but until we ve proven it s milder, i would ask you to be just a drop more cautious than you ve been. dr. david kessler, chief science officer to the biden administration s covid response, former fda commissioner, of course. doctor kessler, as always, we re grateful for you being here whenever you can be here. thanks for taking the time to be here tonight. thanks, rachel. all right, we ll be right back. stay with us.