a year ago, six months ago, two months ago, a month ago. i ve ordered half a billion of the pills. 500 million pills. i mean, excuse me, 500 million test kits that are going to be available to be sent to every home in america if anybody wants them. but um, the answer is yeah, i wish i had thought about ordering a half a billion pills two months ago, before covid hit here. i am joined now by two men who advised the two most recent democratic presidents, david axelrod, former senior adviser to president obama and cnn senior political commentator. and andy slavitt, a former senior adviser to president biden for covid response. andy is also the author of preventable, the inside story of how leadership failures, politics, and selfishness doomed the u.s. coronavirus response. that is about the previous administration s response to the pandemic. andy, look, you heard president biden say he doesn t think that the testing issues are a failure. that is hard to sell to people who can t find t
are fretting over the long lines for testing. so i think that s going to be a significant challenge and we can overcome that supply challenge and also the cost challenge i think will help us tremendously. reporter: some health officials think the cdc s new recommendation of a five-day isolation period for some people who test positive might help with all these challenges because it will put more people back on the job sooner. but others fear the pandemic right now is just so aggressive, short of a lot of people finally agreeing to get vaccinated, there is nothing we can do but watch the numbers rise for a while. jim? tom foreman, thanks so much. one other late note, tonight s holiday bowl between ucla and north carolina state has been cancelled, this after the bruins announced that internal covid protocols would keep the team from playing. and joining us now is andy slavitt, president biden s former senior white house adviser for covid response and author of preventable: the ins
house senior covid adviser, andy slavitt, the author of preventable, the inside story how leadership failures, politics, and selfishness doomed the u.s. coronavirus response. we are happy to have him. thank you for joining us. it is january 2022. it not january 2020. other big city school districts are successfully navigating this. kids will have missed a week of school over this disagreement, ultimately. why couldn t one of the biggest school districts in the country get it together? well, look, this is a situation without a lot of easy answers. teachers don t want to get sick. parents don t want students to get sick and everyone wants our kids to get educated in the same way. we need tests and everything else for people to feel safe and we re in the middle of a crisis we ve never seen this many cases in the history of respiratory illnesses. it is a tough time but hopefully it will pass quickly and i think there is some light at the end
house senior covid advisor the author of preventable, the inside story how leadership failures, politics and selfishness doomed the u.s. coronavirus response. we are happy to have him. thank you for joining us. it is january 2022. it not january 2020. other big city school districts are successfully navigating this. kids will have missed a week of school over this disagreement ultimately. why couldn t one of the biggest school districts in the country get it together? well, look, this is a situation without a lot of easy answers. teachers don t want to get sick. parents don t want students to get sick and everyone wants our kids to get educated in the same way. we need tests and everything else for people to feel safe and we re in the middle of a crisis we ve never seen this many cases in the history of respiratory
and author of preventable, the inside story of how leadership failures, politics, and selfishness doomed the u.s. coronavirus response. andy, thank you. glad you are joining us to dechelp us talk about this. these governors are moving ahead in their own vaccination rates are high in these states but the white house still has not put out guidelines for how states should transition out of these restrictions. is it time for the dmijds to put up put a plan out there? the facts are great. we are headed in the right direction, as he i think we hoped we would be but we still have 300,000 cases now across the country. that s the highest since that s higher than any peak prior to omicron. so, we still have a lot of cases. i think the governors are hoping that cases continue to drop over the course of february and march, and that during that time period, there is an end in sight at least for now to some restrictions. these are very responsible governors. they have got great vaccination