those people becoming ill, ill enough to see their doctor or go in the hospital, you are going to severely tax hospital systems all over the country at some point. and just very briefly, i mean, someone who s already had two vaccines and thinks getting boosted is just, like, icing on the cake. it s i mean, is that true? or this really it is necessary? i mean, i have been boosted. it s necessary, isn t it? i have been boosted, as well. well, let s just put up that graph, again. i can just show you. again, we have pulled these numbers to make the case because i think the numbers do tell the story. if you look at the effectiveness of omicron versus delta in the first several weeks, two to nine weeks. really good, right, against getting sick with covid-19. any kind of illness mild or severe. went down significantly for omicron by week 14 and even more so by week 19. but if the booster is given and within two weeks after that booster, it really does restore that protection. we don
graph that we re talking about, if you start to extrapolate that and, say, okay, omicron is so contagious that it s everyone is going to be touched by this at some point. if you re vaccinate and boosted, the likelihood you re going to have significant symptoms is much lower. but the idea that you have such a significant percentage of vulnerable people in the country still, even with milder illness. if you get 0.5% or 1% even of those people becoming ill, ill enough to see their doctor or go in the hospital, you are going to severely tax hospital systems all over the country at some point. and just very briefly, i mean, someone who s already had two vaccines and thinks getting boosted is just, like, icing on the cake. it s i mean, is that true? or this really it is necessary? i mean, i have been boosted. it s necessary, isn t it? i have been boosted, as well. well, let s just put up that graph, again. i can just show you. again, we have pulled these numbers for you, anderson,
require booster shots for some of its staff. alexandra field in new york city, thank you. joining us, former considered director dr. tom frieden. thank you for joining us. as you heard, dr. anthony fauci is now saying the omicron variant will become the dominant variant here in the united states. is that good news, omicron versus delta, or bad news just given how severe we now know delta has been and continues to be? it s bad news. any time you have a new pathogen, and this is a new variant, it s really infectious. it s remarkably infectious. if you look at delta, delta was way more infectious than the other strains, and omicron is way more infectious than delta. there is some hope that maybe it causes less severe disease. we don t know that yet. what we do know is it s better at getting around our immunity than delta was. studies are just beginning to come out now. there s a lot we don t
everyone else. what do actually know right now? i actually feel that a lot of people, including myself, are hesitant because things may change, this is a moving picture. but i want to, before we tell you what i know about omicron, when people hear those, they think, we ve been through this for two years and people are overwhelmed. whatever we find out, we re in a better place now than we were in the winter of 2020 a year ago or two years ago because we have all of these things include rapid testing and vaccines. what we know about this variant, genetically, it looks like it might potentially have properties that allow it to be more transmissible. if you re in a room with a person with omicron versus delta, the person with omicron will pass it on to you, that s what more transmissible means. we don t know that for sure. that s what the genetic code is telling us. and in other variants, they have potentially been able to reduce the effectiveness of vaccines