across the country. for those who are fully vaccinated and boosted like i am, when should they feel comfortable going back to a restaurant, eating indoors or a bar or a movie theatre for that matter? well, i m fully vaccinated and boosted since i m over 65 and i to that now. i certainly go to restaurants and i wear a mask when i walk in and when i sit down and with people that i know are fully vaccinated, i take the mask off and i would go to a movie theatre and wear a mask. if someone behind me wasn t wearing a mask and was coughing, i would move. what do you think? i agree. one could make the case that when the surge is horrible, when the infection numbers are terrible in your community, it does pay to be a bit more careful. but infection numbers are declining i think certainly the next couple of weeks as they come down, everything dr. offet outlined seems really reasonable
executive order making masking optional in schools. are these school districts right to push back? you know, i think they are. and here s why. again, as much i m optimistic that the surge is starting to abate, it s not yet. infection numbers are still quite high across the country. so i do not think it s responsible to get rid of mask mandates at this moment. there will come a time, probably in the next you know, few weeks or depending on the case numbers, when infection numbers get much lower when mandates can be lifted safely, but i think the districts are right to push back right now. what do you think, doctor? i agree completely. only about 19% of 5 to 11-year-olds are fully vaccinate. only about 56% of 12 to 17-year-olds are fully vaccinated. so other than vaccines, what you have is a mask, so why tie both hands behind your back? people talk about waning a pan coronavirus vaccine. one that will work against all
thinking about putting away our rain coats, aka, our masks. the level of community transmission in the u.s. is still very high nearly everywhere, including colorado, a state which relaxed its mask mandate today. do you think that was a mistake? i think they should have waited a couple more weeks. infection number are plummeting across the country which is really good news. but you re right. at this moment, infection numbers are still high compared to what we ve seen in other ways of the pandemic. i think they ll be in much better shape in the next two, three weeks and i would have waited until then. you heard in nic s piece, the world health organization. for a first time in a while, deaths are plateauing in the united states, although they re still above 2,000 a day. how do we interpret that? are we closer than ever to this spike? this pandemic ending? well, i think we re closer than ever with the big surge.
thunderstorm and it is bucketing rain, i have an umbrella, but i also wear a raincoat, i wear my rain boots, but obviously if it is drizzling, i sometimes go out with like a small umbrella and not going to put on a big raincoat. that s how to think about this. when the virus is raging, we should be doing everything we can to slow that down. and protect ourselves. when virus levels get very, very low in the community, perfectly reasonable not to have mask mandates, for people who want to wear a mask, they should wear one. but mandates can get lifted in the moments when infection numbers are very low. when you re looking at mandates, universities that are starting to lift certain mandates whether it is vaccines or masks or both, is the timing right on that? yes, so, first of all, i think vaccine mandates milwaukee a make a lot of sense. you get long-term protection. that s a different thing in my mind. in terms of mask mandates, i wouldn t do it now. infection numbers are way down,
in the u.s. the daily average of new covid cases fallen below 600,000 for the first time in 3 weeks. let s discuss with medical analyst dr. wen and dr. sanford. dr. wen, dr. scott gottlieb said the u.s. needs to be will be to relax covid measures as conditions improve. should we be willing as lift restrictions as we are to put them in place? yes. we should. i m not saying that we should be throwing caution out the window. there are parts of the country in the middle of a terrible surge and hospitals are overwhelmed. we don t want to relax restrictions in those areas. there are many others where the infection numbers are coming down. hospitals are coming right and we ve talked about how public health depends on trust and