president can take. i am interested in the economy. and everyone knows the best way to get the economy moving is to get people vaccinated and to minimize the threat of covid. and that is a message that i think can be unifying. dr. shah, i want to talk about surveilling for omicron. washington state is always going to be known as the first place at least at the beginning of this where we found the virus the first time. how would you say your surveillance system is? i know you guys feel like you have a pretty good one, but how comfortable are you with the country s ability to surveil for omicron these days? well, let me first say that we are very confident in our surveillance system in the state of washington. about a year back our state epidemiologist made it very clear that, hey, look, we ve got to look at the future of what mutations are going to mean for a state like ours and so we
moderna s ceo shared this morning? you know, the ceos of the companies for the last two years, when they make these statements, we always have to remember they are not meant for you, they re not meant for me, they re meant for their shareholders to jack up the stock prices. that s their job, and unfortunately they do it. without the context of how this will resonate. chuck, i don t know the answer, but here s how i think there s one possible scenario this could play out if i could have a minute. the first part is when you look at the sequence of the omicron variant, in terms of its transmissibility it looks an awful lot like the alpha variant that the delta variant first displaced. so alpha came out of england at the end of last year and that was the first big wave across the u.s. in the beginning before it was outcompeted by delta. so it has a lot of features that look like the alpha variant. and that means that i think delta is still going to be around in the u.s. i don t see omicr
welcome back. experts have been saying it s going to take a few weeks and maybe even more than that until we know exactly how well our current covid vaccines will hold up against this new omicron variant. as we said at the top of the show, moderna s ceo certainly didn t calm anyone s nerves telling the financial times, quote, there is no world, i think, where the vaccine effectively is the same level. i think it s going to be a material drop. i just don t know how much because we need to wait for the data. but all the scientists i ve talked to are like this is not going to be good. let s get right to our go-to guy when it comes to vaccines, dr. peter hotez, the director of the center for vaccine department at texas children s hospital and one of the foremost experts on vaccine effectiveness. dr. hotez, do you have the same sort of grim outlook that
country now supports a vaccine mandate, according to our most recent nbc news poll. mike memoli is in minnesota ahead of president biden s visit to talk infrastructure. also with us is washington state secretary of state dr. amir shaw and also with me is dr. zeke emmanuel from the university of pennsylvania and he s also advised president biden on covid both during the campaign and since in office. mike, i want to start in minnesota with you. what s interesting is there is a choice the white house could make. essentially all of their current problems that they re trying to deal with in this country, inflation, it s about covid. covid itself, it s obvious. the supply chain. we can go on and on. it is all through the prism of covid. are we going to see more of that front-facing messaging out of the white house now considering with omicron on the horizon?
is. i think it may not be so terrible. i think we ll see a drop in protection, but i m more optimistic than the moderna ceo, at least in his statement, that we may not need that specific designed booster for the omicron. but the bottom line is i see both omicron and delta circulating in the u.s. by next year with those who have been infected but not vaccinated getting potentially reinfected with omicron. so it sounds like what you re saying is that we could have sort of two viruses running rampant simultaneously and there s just two different populations that become vulnerable. exactly, exactly. that s one scenario that i could envision. i haven t discussed it in depth with colleagues and everyone should know this is nothing more than peter hotez opinion and nothing beyond that but i think that s one possible scenario. what gives you the confidence it sounds like you have some confidence that this the vaccines are going to be pretty helpful here.