congestion and the largest tackling of legacy pollution. it is clear from the president s accomplishments and agenda to date that climate and the climate crisis is going to continue to be front and center for him. we re absolutely going to work to get build back better done and we are not going to wait to continue to look at a range of options. about schools, prince georges county nearby is going to virtual learning through mid-january. do administrators have a view on whether local school districts should revert to virtual learning in the next few months as the omicron variant progresses? we continue to believe that local school districts will need to make the decisions that they feel are appropriate for their communities. our objective and the president s objective is to keep schools open. 99% of them are open, have been open, and we believe we have the tools to do that. one of the steps we ve talked about a little bit is test to stay, which is a proposal that s been out there by
caught off guard. so can you help just tell a little bit about what the white house s message on the front is? absolutely. let me first say the president, as you noted, will be addressing the american people tomorrow and he ll talk about what to expect as we head into the winter months and detail additional steps that we will be taking. the president has been clear that while vaccinated individuals get covid well, he will restate tomorrow, i should say, that while vaccinated individuals get covid due to the highly transmissible nature of omicron, their cases will likely be mild or asymptomatic. we continue to see, and our health experts assess, that you re 14 more times likely to die of covid if you have not been vaccinated versus vaccinated. importantly, he ll restate where prepared that vaccinated have the tools to protect themselves
they never put the kibosh on the rapid tests. it is still in process. i don t think we have gotten to the point where we have produced so many that no region will go without hurting. the distribution issue is linked to demand. places like new york city are more dense. and you are seeing a population that s more likely to take the public health advice the use testing. you are seeing shortages in those places and rather than places that might be more rural, may not see sort of the same update of the had been health advisory or the need. the last thing is the demand shot up. we are seeing these cases going up because of omicron. this is the cold and flu season. every time somebody gets the sniffels they want to test to make sure it is not covid. all of those reasons, it is a shortage in the country, we need to produce more, it is a distribution issue and the demand has gone up. you make the good point that