are we seeing it in a milder form? so far, the disease appears to be the same as the rest of this omicron family. don t forget we are still in omicron. there s so many sisters and brothers and cousins, it s hard to keep up. but this is still omicron. we re talking now about two offshoots of the same family, the same lineage of omicron. so all of the symptoms are still the same. fairly mild, that being said, we have people who are immune kom p compromise ed or challenged in other ways. we see hospitalizations that have nearly tripled in the last two months across this country. still not anywhere near the peak, but we have seen that trajectory unfortunately going in the wrong direction. in august, we re almost at three times the number of hospitalizations that we had in june. so who should be wearing masks? should we be wearing masks? i am here at the european
immunocompromised. if you have cancer or hiv, there might be other reasons where it might be advisable to go ahead and get a booster now and not wait. that being said, earlier this month that the vaccines would not available until october, we now have information that these vaccines will become available by september 15th mopefully. and on september 12th, the advisory committee will meet to set some final guidelines on how these vaccines will be distributed and who will get them. so hopefully with that accelerated timeline, most people will be able to get in with this new vaccine that is specific to the lineage. and i am curious to get your take on the public sentiment. a new poll shows that covid is at the bottom of americans list for key public health threats.
it is a residual wadi in government if we suddenly start talking about restrictions again people might so compliant do you think there is residual worry. they might think they will be all right even though they will be all right even though they might still be infectious. same they might still be infectious. some eole in they might still be infectious. some people in government they might still be infectious. some people in government are they might still be infectious. fine people in government are concerned whether people would be as willing to be compliant with any further restrictions if they ve had their vaccinations and had their booster as well. another concern is also trying to drive more people who have not had anyjabs yet. we ve seen campaigns by some councils like liverpool council putting out messages about how they have icu beds are filling up with people who are unvaccinated and in london where omicron cases are very high this has been described as the epicentre
here. he was totally implying that. and he made the statement that we cannot get your financial statement. it was stunning to me that a united states senator doesn t realize that my financial statement is public knowledge. it s like, where have you been? i want to ask a final question about where we find ourselves. you talked about the omicron wave today, there s one big question, it s a worry i have. we looked at south africa, we saw the curve. we saw a pretty big divergence between cases and hospitalizations. we saw that in denmark, which was the frontline of omicron. we saw that in the uk. even in a very vaccinated place, like new york city, we have seen hospitalizations go. up we are not seeing that gap between hospitalization and
meeting, and i use that term in both ways, because it really unnecessarily tarnished the reputation of the j&j vaccine about safety. i think it could have been handled in a much better way and so not to discredit the adenovirus vector vaccines, it was tone deaf in terms of our dependence on global health. bottom line, it is a really good vaccine as a two-dose vaccine. it s unfortunate the way things worked out at least here in the united states. that s fascinating insight incident to thank you for sort of following in the footsteps with the patentless vaccine. that is an extraordinary accomplishment. i want to ask you something about more and more folks expressing concern about, long covid in the on text of omicron.