other security organizations in europe. the fact that vladimir putin wants to talk suggests that there is a possibility that that could be a path toward de-escalation that will not involve military conflict. john, i also want to talk to you about covid this morning. omicron is forcing the biden administration to essentially shift their pandemic strategy. it feels like the goal early on was to go all-in on vaccination, and you can understand why. but they really did it over testing, and now it s becoming less of how do we beat covid and more of how do we live with it, it seems. it seems to be constantly struggling with the messaging on this virus. reporter: well, it s struggling with the messaging because it s struggling with the virus. as the entire world is struggling with the virus. look, this is a shifting situation. we now are learning or what the science is suggesting that we have a variant of this virus that simply can t be stopped by the mitigation efforts that we