and three new studies from overseas suggest there is a lower risk of hospitalization with those infected with omicron compared to delta. we are watching these cases rise. nine members of congress testing positive in the past week, including house majority whip james clyburn. the 81-year-old said he is fully vaccinated and boosted is asymptomatic. add this to the lawmakers are just like us category. clyburn said it took 56 hours to receive his test results. joining us now is the vice provost of global initiatives at the university of pennsylvania and a former member of biden s covid-19 transition advisory board. doctor, thank you very much for being with us. i want to play more of the interview with president biden last night where he was asked directly if the current issues with testing in the united states was a failure. listen. no, i don t think it s a failure. i think it s you could argue that we should have known a year
david frum and we looked at the polling numbers last hour here. the president s under water on the economy. which is interesting given that unemployment the unemployment rate is so low right now, gdp is high. the annual growth rate will be very high right now. you have experience both in the political world and in the world of finance and the economic world. why the disconnect between what people may be feeling and what the numbers are showing? yeah. i would say it s what you just said. people maybe are not feeling great at the moment because there s still so much uncertainty especially as it relates to covid. i think we re all sick of it, quite frankly. people have been dealing with masks, tests and covid for a long time. it doesn t feel great. on the flip side, as you say, the economy, you know, under this president s leadership, he has overseen the greatest resurgence in an economy in the first year in office, greater
listen, omicron is something that everyone is dealing with at this point. how do you think omicron will effect manufacturing, supply chain issues the coming weeks and months? yeah. you know, if we said it once, we ll say it a thousand times again. get vaccinated. we know these vaccine work. if you have been vaccinated, get boosted. it really depends on whether people do what needs to be done and get vaccinated. you saw yesterday the president took action with more testing. that will help. we will get through it. you know, i don t think that omicron will have long-term disruptive significant disruption in supply chains. i think the next, you know, period of time here will be a challenge. but if folks go out, get tested, wear masks, be careful, get vaccinated, we will get through it. just like we have delta, just like we have covid. one of the issues might be
increase in the number of new covid cases, and that s causing concern among health care workers about the impact the omicron variant could have on hospitals. that s why doctors at baylor college of medicine have been handing out thousands of masks in houston. dr. cedric darke is a professor of medicine there. you had the stockpile of masks on hand that have been sent to the hospital. what made you decide that you should start handing them out to p passersby? thanks for having me on. i wanted to thank the texas college of emergency physicians for donating these masks to our department, to our staff. one of the things we wanted to do was actually distribute them out to members of our community because if we can put a mask and specifically n95 masks in peoples hands, which is the most effective type of protection they can have, we can hopefully prevent them from catching covid and prevent them from coming to the er in the first place. what s the reaction when you
movie or other public places. you know, if your state is not going to allow masking in public spaces, at least you have the choice and the option to do that for yourself because we knows w reducing the spread of this disease. it s a little thing that can have a big impact. we ve been talking so much over the last nearly two years now, so much with health experts and doctors and staff and medical facilities like yourself as we watched this journey. so i found it interesting to hear on twitter you said i never had this many colleagues who told me they re covid positive at any time like this during the pandemic. the fact that you re seeing so many more infections including among your colleagues, how are you dealing with that? i just left shift because of the fact that there are outbreaks occurring. everyone in our department is actually taking covid tests this week. i just got my swab. so we ll see whether or not i m