is down here in the south where, you know, you look at a state like louisiana where only 17% of the adolescents are vaccinated, maybe 30 to 40% of the young adults, and now schools are going to open down here in a couple of weeks in some of the louisiana parishs. this isn t going to go well. this virus, as bad as things are right now, it s about to get much worse when schools open in the south, and i think that s what we re dealing with. right, so but just in terms of d.c., right, does a mask mandate make more sense than a vaccine mandate? i mean, if the problem is so many people are unvaccinated, would it not make more sense and look, i don t proposal polz, but i m just reacting to mayor bowser s announcement, she s saying we all have to wear masks indoors if we re vaccinated. would a vaccine mandate make more sense than that? ie deally you do both. i agree, vaccine mandates would
we re expecting president biden to speak at the white house any second. he s expected to announce a new vaccine requirement for all federal employees. sources tell cnn that the president feels the u.s. has hit a brick wall when it comes to trying to convince the unvaccinated. frequently he asks his top aides, quote, what s the problem? so now as cnn s jeff zeleny reports the white house is hoping that these new requirements will serve as a model for private companies and state and local governments to enact similar rules for their employees. so please, please, please, please, if you re not vacc vaccinated. reporter: president biden is no longer simply asking americans to get vaccinated, he s requiring them to or at least those who work for the federal government. we still have a lot of people not vaccinated. the pandemic we have now is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. reporter: the president is calling on local governments to provide an incentive payment of $100 for every newly
to make an adult do something that they just simply do not want to do. one thing that has seemed to help is when the cases have gone up. yeah. here s president biden, let s listen in. good afternoon. today i want to talk to you about covid-19. maybe the best way to start is a significant part of the country wouldn t have to take one of these off if you don t have to put one on like in my home state of delaware in new castle county where i was yesterday in pennsylvania because people got vaccinated. they got vaccinated. they don t need a mask when the majority of the the vast majority of the people got vaccinated. look, i want to talk about what s really hang, what it means, what it doesn t mean, and what we need to do this week and the months ahead. for from the moment i was elected, i said i d always give to you straight from the shoulder, and we need some straight talk right now because
be the most effective way to do this, but masks still provide an important backstop, especially with the performance feature against the delta variant that you re still seeing some asymptomatic transmission going on. so ideally, the more you could do the better. those are our two best defenses against this virus are vaccines and masks. so i don t know what the politics are in washington, d.c., around vaccine mandates. across the country, vaccine policies usually sit at the state level. we have a lot of issues here in some of our southern states for doing that. it would be great to implement both if possible. i don t think any state has implemented a vaccine mandate. we are seeing a deluge of private companies now telling their employees if you want to return to work, if you want to continue to work, you have to get vaccinated. you tweeted some skepticism that this is going to work. why? i think, you know, the