vaccination rate here in the u.s. is also fallen behind some of our allies because of vaccine resistance in so many parts of our country. here with their special expertise on all of these issues dr. vanessa kerry the ceo of seed global health and kathleen hall jameson at the university of pennsylvania who has some great new data on vaccine resistance here in the u.s. dr. kerry, first to you. the president is promising $750 million for global vaccine distribution. where is that money most critically needed? it s a terrific question. i think the reality is that we have to get very real about what that means to donate vaccines is one thing, it s incredibly powerful, there is a vaccine scarcity, but for every dollar donated to vaccine it s going to cost $5 to deliver that vaccine and half that money excuse me. that s okay. half of that money is going to be perils from working from home in a pandemic.
that rapid test will be given to everyone, including nursing home staff and workers in pre schools. michael mina is a professor at harvard school of public health. he has been begging this drum for a month. he wrote, a goal of rapid testing is to keep nine out of ten infectious people from walking into a train station and infecting others. this is an engineering problem, not medicine. he joins me now. michael mina, let s start on the accuracy of these tests, because i think back last year they got a bad rap. people generally felt like, oh, they are not reliable, they get false positives. my understanding is that they have gotten better and they are now being used quite well. what is your general feeling about their accuracy? it s a terrific question.
used quite well. what s your feeling about their general level of accuracy? it s a terrific question. the rapid tests are very accurate if your goal is to ask the question, am i infectious right now? and for that question, they re extremely accurate. we continue to compare them to medical diagnostics which are not designed to give you an immediate result, and instead you get greater sensitivity, but they can be sensitive for a very long time, continuing to tell people if they re positive even after they re infectious. so these rapid tests don t do that. they tell you, am infectious right now, and if so, that means you should be isolating because you don t want to spread to other people. i think that s a great way to frame the question, and that s where it does seem so crucial in transmission. i have to say i ve used them a bit first of all, for folks who haven t used them, they re like pregnancy tests, you do a
biden and so on. mitch mcconnell, lindsey graham, his allies have impressed upon him and his top aides, that s just too dangerous a road to go down. it sounds as though tonight the president is listening. the question is whether or not he s preparing to leave joint base andrews outside of washington in a few moments to head down to mar-a-lago. the question is what happens when he gets down there. he will be meeting with friends, long time outside advisers and so on. the donald trump that emerges from that period of time may be different from the one right now. it sounds as though he s listening to the words of caution right now. people don t want mick mulvaney or john bolton there. who knows what they will testify to. the president can get himself worked up into a lather down there. is the public posture what s being said outside the same as what s been said behind closed
reverse position, reminding the governor s staff in another e-mail, the epa s lack of cooperation contradicts everything they were promised last week by the president. the very next day, epa trump appointees reversed course, told its top staff in seattle the withdrawal of protections is a now a done deal, one official told cnn, we were told to get out of the way and just make it happen. a month later the epa made that secret decision official, giving the mining company the win it needed. in response alaska s governor, john, didn t answer a single question, only giving us a statement saying he supports mining but the ceo of pebble mine, tom collier, met with us personally to stress two things. first, that he and his company had no advanced knowledge of any decisions made by the epa and, second, that in his view it is