And a faculty member at the institute for health metrics and evaluation at the university of washington. we have been speaking for over two years now. dr. gupta, thank you for being here. at one level, we ve not had the level of tension that we ve had in march and april and may in 2020. on the other hand, we have this new strain. and we are a little confused as to what we are supposed to do about it. ali, it s great to see you, good evening. it s true. and the fact that really worries me is that three in four adult americans that are eligible for the next booster shot number three, that next booster shot have decided that they are not going to get it. or in some cases if they are eligible for that fourth shot they are not going to get it. that is concerning in this era of a more transmissible variant. because, ali, come the
Going to get it. or in some cases if they are eligible for that fourth shot they are not going to get it. that is concerning in this era of a more transmissible variant. because, ali, come the wintertime, if we are not up to date with our vaccines, those individuals who are high-risk are going to be end up in the hospital because, while we focus so much on antibodies, blocking the virus from causing us to test positive, blocking the onset of a sore throat, the really key component here is something called t cells that harbor, pretty much, in our lungs. they help prevent severe infection from occurring but it turns out that those t cells do provide require periodic boosts. the people who most need them are not getting them. that s why we are really concerned about the winter, potentially, surging again in hospitals. so, i know they have been throwing away dosages of vaccines because of a certain shelf life and it s not just in the united states candidate, germany, a lot of places
Available to the public and we have lifted mask mandates. it makes us be in a more dangerous situation, mum like when were in 2020 when we were finding out covid-19 is. at this point we have a more transmissible variant. with each variant it seems to increase in transmissibility. we have waning vaccine effectiveness. in fact, if you look at the omicron surge, if you only had two doses of your vaccine at that point, the vaccine effectiveness was between 30% to 50%. we have to start getting real about this and think about mitigating factors. you started our conversation by saying i don t mean to be alarmist, but you just alarmed the heck out of me. i thank you for doing that. let s talk about that. the monoclonal antibodies and
People say, that s it, we re done. there s not. it s unknown. since we only have 45% of the people who received a booster the concern is you seeing the more transmissible variant will you now see an uptake in hospitalizations again. i do think it s a time of vigilance. yes, we re in a better place but it s definitely a time of vigilance where we should reach for those efforts that have made a difference, such as the masks that you talked about. and to make sure that we not let funding the most important, funding for this covid response go away. we still have not seen action from congress to make sure there s enough funding starting this summer for treatment, testing and all of other things that have helped us. right, we ve known for a couple weeks cases starting to rise. we re seeing in some states hospitalizations as well predictably, a lot of positive cases stemming from the white house correspondents dinner week in washington. you just mentioned a couple new
Because we are all vaccinated and boosted and i know that theatres have mask still. i don t think i would go if they did not require mass kings and vaccinations. it s basicallyjust a head cold so as far as i m concerned i need to live and get on with things. be it a head cold or something more serious covid has not disappeared. the latest high profile case, nancy pelosi. she is 82, fully boosted currently asymptomatic but the concern is still there. the sub variant that is going along with it, . the 8.2 sub variant is thought| to be even more transmissible than omocron before then we thought it was a far. transmissible variant. tell that to the thousands of baseball fans who came to see this chicago clubs played the milwaukee brewers. opening day in the new season. no virus could keep away the crowds.