report before the end of the year, the harmful effects of keeping kids out of school and the psychological impact, but on the other hand schools have never dealt with omicron before. it is so highly transmissible and you are seeing kids get seriously ill. my suggestion has been if we can kind of switch things up a bit and delay the opening of schools another two weeks and in hopes that this omicron wave subsides and then keep them in school a little bit longer as we move into the summer months, almost treat this like a two-week snow day, i think that would have benefited the kids quite a bit. either way it was a very tough decision for educators. and obviously very difficult for parents who can t simply say they can take two weeks of a snow day from their jobs. there s one more thing i want to ask you about and this time, same doctor, dr. varon talking about where we re headed next and it speaks to the severity of omicron. watch this. it s probably the beginning of the end. so for
risk to kids. watch this. you have to remember when you were a child and you have chickenpox, your parents would take you or would bring other kids to come and get the chickenpox from you, to get that immunity that people were getting. so, you know, the idea that this is that terrible sending them to school, i think it s going to be worse if the kids stay at home because we re going to have serious, you know, educational delays as well as psychological issues if we keep kids in homes. what s your response? well, there s really no good decision to make here. first of all you have to make one. i know. so what we re seeing is a hodgepodge, right? different school districts making different decisions. to be honest it s hard to fault either way because, you know, as dr. varon and the surgeon general pointed out in his
country and it s a consequence of now opening schools in the middle of a very aggressive omicron wave, that s factor one. factor two, we have underachieved in terms of vaccinating our kids, particularly in certain parts of the country. in the south, for instance, only half of the level of adolescents 12 to 17 are vaccinated compared to those in the north, and among little kids we re really underperforming, parents just are not vaccinating their little kids 5 and up. so all of that is combining. and, of course, like the adult hospitalization side, pediatric hospitals across the country were having a lot of breakthrough infections among hospital staff. so that adds to the stress and i tried to address that a few weeks ags by recommending second boosters for health care providers and unfortunately that was ignored and i think we re paying the consequence of that as well. doctor, i want to talk about not just the number of children getting covid, but how sick are they getting? i want to
education would make a difference. i say talk to me about the microchip or where did you review this data on zombies? education, education, education. that s how we can get people to understand, no, they re not going to end up sterile if you vaccinate them. there are a lot of cultural means that we have. education, education. it s always up to the person if they re willing to learn, though. dr. varon, thank you for joining us. 642 days on the job. that s real stamina, my friend. thank you for all that you do. thank you. and, again, the president will address the nation later this hour. we re going to go to him live once he begins. also ahead, one of their own. the january 6 committee is now looking at a sitting congressman for information on the insurrection. and senate democrats will talk about the future of build back better tonight, but will joe manchin show up? n show up?
that we will be requiring boosters. and what s going to happen within the next year or two, we re going to have a vaccine that every year you ll be getting, just like you get the flu vaccine, depending on the virus that is more prevalent at this time. can this war be won throughout covid? throughout the history of mankind, we have been able to win every pest, every plague,ing over. how fast we do it depends on us. we are the determinants of what s going to happen. it s not the virus. people think it s the virus and the mutations, that s not true. it s us. it s how we approach this problem. just like you and me discussed the other day, you know, we need to have a homogenius message, it s the same among everybody. dr. varon, thank you for your