a semblance of your oldself we have to get behind you because buttigieg and warren were unelectable as well. meanwhile the biggest story is the same old story. carley: let s talk about the coronavirus. omicron is a major topic of conversation this morning, of course. but, nih director francis collins outgoing nih director because his last day on the job was yesterday. he was on with bret baier yesterday. and they talked about the origins of the coronavirus. remember the important topic where this virus came from. listen to what he had to say here. brian: it s outrageous. i m really sorry that the lab leak has become such a distraction for so many people because frankly we still don t know. there is no evidence really to say most of the scientific community. myself included think that is a possibility but far more likely this was a natural way in which a virus left a bat, maybe traveled through some other species and got to humans. and there was no lab leak involved. we won t know unl
Transcripts for CNN CNN Newsroom Live 20211220 09:51:15 archive.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from archive.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
make sure everybody is vaccinated. and if you re going to do testing, test them as you go into the door. as you walk into the event is the right time to get tested. a day or two ahead is not close enough to prevent somebody infected to coming into the event. perhaps such a test at the door may have prevented the employee who was just in south africa who had the omicron variant from coming inside that party. lastly, you mentioned the statistics. i want to mention it again to stress the importance of boosters. in a blog post from the nih director, he shared a study showing that booster shots greatly increase vaccine effectiveness against omicron. from 40% if you had two shots to 80 % with a booster. why not then change the definition of fully vaccinated? i know dr. fauci is saying it s more semantics. but is it really if it s going to make a difference in the way that you are protected from at least this variant? well, you know, i think with
duties as a public servant in remarkable ways. it s heart breaking that people decided to demonize him for political purposes when he doesn t deserve that and his family is under constant attack and requires 24 hour security. what is happening here? why is it that we find it necessary to blame something that is just trying to tell you the truth? neil: is that part of the reason why this is your last week day on the job? no. i ve been on the job now, neil, for 12 years, which is about twice the length of any previous nih director. it s a long time. organizations like nih need new scientific leadership on a regular basis to keep it energized. i felt some time ago that it was probably time for me to step away. seems like this is the moment. nih is in great shape. we re doing our job as far as the science of covid. i can step away with absolute
the slate is clean in january, that s when the fed talk will get more aggressive and that s when the market will hit turbulence. then you re going to add in the they shut down the big cities and mandating people to stay home and locking people down. it s only going to feed itself for sure. i m not really sure i m getting the whole omicron thing. while i understand it s transmissable, we have therapeutics now. we have vaccines. the booster. we re in a much better position. people this is not covid 2020 where we had nothing. this is a new variant, which we get, that doesn t seem to be as deadly as the first round. people that are vaccinated have some protection. neil: we shall see. kenny, great talking to you again. if we don t, have a merry christmas. we ll be talking to the retiring nih director, dr. francis collins what he makes of this surge after this.