disciplinary action and with the companies that have a testing opt out it s not entirely certain how that is going to work because they re going to have to manage that, decides who pays for it and also seeing if it is checked. somebody could come in saying i tested negative versus showing proof of that. all is that is still to be worked out detail wise. chuck. i do expect the administration to. this is, i lost track of the number of times that president biden has promised more testing, more funding for testing, easier testing, at home, you name it. where is it? well, yesterday the president said is finally a more tangible step towards all of that because big companies like walmart, kroger and amazon are going to pitch in to at least have these be reduced and discount of about 35%. so they ll be sold at cost. starting this week, that is what they claim at least because, yes, just anecdotally those of us looking for the rapid at-home tests because you re getting back from a trip or c
president biden s big speech today laying out his plan for defeating covid-19 once and for all. some cities are taking matter news their own hands. getting out, the first flight carrying americans leaves afghanistan for the first time since the u.s. withdrawal. as the taliban tightens they re grip on the the country. and taking tennis by storm. two teenagers shining bright. venus williams joins us to talk about that and why she wants more americans to focus on their mental health. thanks for being here. we begin this hour with president biden s big announcement. today the president will deliver what the white house is calling a major speech on his strategy to tackle the pandemic. dlu including an announcement that biden will require all federal workers to be vaccinated with no testing opt out option. that is one part of what sources tell cnn is the six-point plan
doing so. there are some interesting questions here. i wonder if the mayor will answer that. doctor, a couple of things that come to me for me. first of all, you have to be having proof of vaccine card in your wall let at all times to flash it there is enforcement. what if you are immunocompromised and cannot have the vaccine. do you have to have a doctor s note? i didn t hear de blasio talking about a testing opt out that testing would be okay instead of a vaccination. first of all, hallie, i don t believe that testing is anything close to a reasonable substitute for getting vaccinated. in terms of exemptions, there s been two types of exemptions that have been talked about, in terms of mandates. one is a medical exemption. there are people for a variety of reasons may not be able to get vaccinated safely. those people have to have some sort of probably on their phones some sort of indication that they are medically exempt and
second because, no, we could go around there s lot of things that contest whether that. link in what direction the causation of that link flows, right, but so here s the question to you, miss ravitch. i had someone who works in education who i respect compare testing opt out to people opting out of immunization because basically it was like, look, yeah, your kid is probably not going to get measles and if you think there s a downside, you can opt out, but you re a free rider because as the policy as a whole is a necessary means of figuring out where people are, assessing, right? you need this data. if you start allowing people to opt out, you ve just destroyed the entire data what are they going to do to judge anything year over year when one year they have data and the next they don t? it s totally inappropriate to compare that to immunization. the tests they take today have nothing to do with the tests we took as kids.
high quality education, they simply cannot move along at a continuum. there s a whole let s sort of bracket for a question the sociology of poverty for a second because, no, we could go around there s lot of things that contest whether that. link in what direction the causation of that link flows, right, but so here s the question to you, miss ravitch. i had someone who works in education who i respect compare testing opt out to people opting out of immunization because basically it was like, look, yeah, your kid is probably not going to get measles and if you think there s a downside, you can opt out, but you re a free rider because as the policy as a whole is a necessary means of figuring out where people are, assessing, right? you need this data. if you start allowing people to opt out, you ve just destroyed the entire data what are they going to do to judge anything year over year when one year they have data and the next they don t? it s totally inappropriate to compar