good morning to our viewers here in the united states and all around the world. it is thursday, december 23rd. and it s getaway day for millions of holiday travelers. expected to be one of the busiest travel days of the entire year. this despite the alarming rise of a new variant which is now everywhere. in the three weeks since omicron was first identified in the united states, the variant is now in all 50 states, washington, d.c., and puerto rico. it accounts for 90% of new coronavirus cases nationwide. president biden last night addressing criticism of his administration s fight against covid, specifically that they didn t see the omicron variant coming. how did you get it wrong? how did we get it wrong? nobody saw it coming. nobody in the whole world. who saw it coming? did the administration expect a highly transmissible variant. sure, it s possible. it s possible there could be other variants coming along. what do you plan for? you respond to it. and i think
week of major development in the fight against covid. as families, friends, and worshipers gather in the days leading up to christmas president biden used a speech from the whitehouse this afternoon to assure the nation that there is a plan to fight the surge in covid cases and quickly spreading omicron variant and that his administration is up to the task. in just a moment we will speak with one of the administration s top health officials cdc director dr. rochelle walensky specifically about the substance of that speech and what the administration is promising, including half a billion free at home testing kits and more aid to over burdened hospitals. and the guidance from the president that the vaccinated should not change their holiday plans. today the president appeared defensive over the persistent problems in testing and also told the tens of millions of unvaccinated americans that getting the life saving shots was their, quote, patriotic duty. if there was one thing h
life people pay crazy amounts of money for that make no sense. it s sort of in that category. that was my basic takeaway. okay. that s good, though, because, like, taking away the, like, ooh, it s digitalish or it has an acronym that s hard to remember, therefore it must be unique. that is a surface. that is very helpful. i found it useful. i found it useful. well done, my friend. much appreciated. thanks to you at home for being with us tonight. it is official. as of today you have made it. you have made it through the longest night of the year. it is all downhill and brightening horizons from now on. it s great to have you here. one year ago, to be precise, exactly one year and one week ago on december 14th last year, this quite nutty thing happened at the state capitol building in lansing, michigan. a group of 16 michigan republicans came to a side door of the state capitol and they tried to get in. a very polite state trooper at the door told them the capitol wa
was closed except for official business, that everyone who was due to be there for that official business was there and accounted for, and these republicans know they could not come in. now, the official business that was under way that day is that michigan was going through official process by which the s state s electors cast their votes in the electoral college. biden and harris won the state e of michigan, so that means the electors for biden and harris were b chosen to be the officia electors for the state of michigan. the electors that day had to meet officially at the state capitol at noon and cast their votes in the electoral college. it is an elaborate and performative process we go through to pick a president in this country, but that is the part of the process that was under way inside the state capitol that day. it s this crazy thing to see s that these republicans were outside banging on the door trying to get in. because they said that they were there for the of
professional sports leagues are cancelling games, major colleges are moving to remote learning and keep in mind we re still in the throes of the delta wave, the delta variant still accounts for 97% of reporting infections here in the u.s. right now, but we know omicron is more transmissible and it is spreading fast. this virus is extraordinary. it has a doubling time of anywhere from two to three days. right now in certain regions. country 50% of the ice lets are omicron which means it s going to take over. even if it has a lower risky is veracast we could be having a million cases a day if we re not really attentive to all of those mitigation strategies and, you know, a small fraction of a big number is still a real big number. here s the silver lining. the vaccines are working. cdc data shows if you run vaccinated, you are 20 times more likely to die of covid than someone who is vaccinated and boosted. that s not surprising. it s what we ve been hearing from doctors a