away from what biden said. the behavior of a neanderthal, just to be clear, the behavior of. i think the president, what everybody saw yesterday was a reflection of his frustration and exasperation, which i think many american people have. the red state leaders at the center of biden s rath are hitting back, too. he kind of did it on the worst day he could have. the same day he said that, in texas, the biden administration was releasing illegal immigrants into our community who had covid. that is neanderthal type approach to dealing with the covid situation. 15 other states don t have a mask mandate. we just joined that group. harris, look, we re looking at this very carefully. we re not telling people not to wear masks. we re just removing a mandate. today i feel the same way i did the day hillary clinton called all of us in middle america the deplorables. new back and forth between the white house and texas. the press secretary claims it s not true, the administ
global risk is, quote, very high. today marks the start of a new travel restrictions to the u.s. from south african countries in the region where omicron was first detected. although it s been confirmed in a number of places from hong kong to ontario, israel and japan have responded by closing their borders completely to foreign travelers. and new york declared a state of emergency before a single case of omicron was confirmed in the state. the governor says it s coming. meanwhile the message from administration officials is one of caution. and that the best defense against this or any other covid variant remains to get vaccinated. just a short time ago president biden gave an update on the omicron variant saying it was a cause for concern but not panic. he said new lockdowns were off the table. and he also spoke about the new travel restrictions from countries in southern africa. take a listen. while we had that travel restrictions can slow the speed of omicron, it canno
there are no confirmed cases, but obviously we re on high alert. it s inevitable that sooner or later it s going to spread widely because it has at least the molecular characteristics of being highly transmissible even though there are a lot of things about it that we do not know. but that will be able to be ascertained in a week or two. the key questions in my mind are how protective will the vaccine be. at least three doses, a fully boosted patient will have fairly good protection against this variant. the other question is how protective is prior infection with delta. if we re seeing that prior infection with delta isn t conferring any meaningful protection here, that s going to be concerning. and that s going to tip more in favor of the fact that this could potentially start to spread here in the united states. meanwhile, vaccine makers like pfizer and moderna say they are preparing to reformulate their shots for this variant in if necessary. pfizer s ceo says they
ben rhodes with a soccer reference. msnbc coverage continues with aaron gilchrist. good afternoon, everyone. u.s. officials are warning the omicron variant is probably already here. rather than panic, this is far more productive to plan for the inevitable. in the last few hours new york city instituted what it s calling a mask advisory meaning everyone is encouraged to wear a mask indoors even if you ve been vaccinated. now, take a look at the map here. you can see it s just a matter of time. spain today becoming the latest country to confirm the omicron variant is there. and as we cover what is obviously a significant development here, it s important to note there is a lot more that we don t know about omicron than we do. that s not surprising. we know it takes time for the science to catch up to a new discovery like this.