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.
neil: all right. just when we re ready to take the masks off, a new variant is taking off. we don t know how dangerous it is. we know it s led to a dramatic spike in cases in china, europe and particularly italy and now here, even in the big apple. it s called ba 2. dr. anthony fauci, the white house chief medical adviser here now to explain it if this is a big deal and if we have to worry. doctor, good to see you again. glad to see you back in full action again. neil: thank you for that. let me ask you, doctor, about this ba 2. should we worry about it? well, look at its characteristics. we can make that determination. it s got a transmission advantage over ba 1, which is the classic original omicron. not a multifold advantage, but a