representatives, that leadership and these institutions. tomorrow is new year s eve, otherwise known as day 655 of 15 days to slow the spread. and it s safe to say at this point that nearly the whole formal apparatus of american civic life has written for itself a record of failure in response to covid-19. the pandemic, which is, make no mistake serious, deserving of public attention has advanced and receded according to its own logic and imperatives, nearly impervious to any public policy decreed by our hapless leadership. travel bans haven t worked. mask mandates haven t worked. social distancing hasn t worked. entirety of incompetent public health and epidemiological apparatus has not worked. the whole tool kit of ham foisted government has not worked. about the only thing that has worked reasonably well is the american pharmaceutical sector. if you are comfortable getting vaccinated moderna designed
variants and vaccinate your if they are eligible. a few questions i have in the few minutes we have left. is it time for airlines to mandate vaccines for air travel? i think it makes a let of sense. it makes more sense than travel bans which we know haven t been effective. travel bans haven t been effective since the beginning of this pam when we were wringing our hans happened about travel bans to china. then the virus came in from southern europe to ignite the horrible epidemic in new york city in the spring of 2020. absolutely, vaccine mandates are a far more effective way to combat this virus. then when it comes to young charn age 2s-5 or 6 months and up young children 2-5 or 6 months and up, when will testing
coron coronavirus. and now, speaking of how this travels, we re seeing these travel bans around the world. we heard from african experts and politicians pushing back strongly, saying that travel bans haven t worked in the past. why go back to this failed measure. it may be good politics, but bad science. but we heard dr. fauci saying basically that it s not going to stop the virus, but it buys us time. is that why you support travel restrictions? it is. at this stage, everything we re doing is precautionary. we still know so little about this variant and we just need to keep control, really, by slowing and limiting the spread of this variant. that means travel restrictions are one way of preventing the virus spreading, whilst we gain time to understand more about this variant, whether it s more infectious, and indeed whether it s more vaccine resistant. that s one of the big worries, it will evade the
that tell you anything about this virus or confirm, i guess, what you already knew about how quickly coronavirus spreads? yeah. i mean, this comes as no surprise. we know that once the variant is identified, particularly one that is likely to be more infectious, it would have spread beyond the few original cases in the original countries. so this comes as no surprise. it s a product of the way that the international travel works and the infectiousness of coronavirus. and now, speaking of how this travels, i mean, we re seeing these travel bans, you know, around the world. we heard from african experts and politicians saying that travel bans haven t worked in the past, why go back to this failed measure? it may be good politics, but bad science. but we heard dr. fauci saying, basically, that it s not going to stop the virus, but it bias buys us time. is that why you support travel restrictions? it is.
like the u.s. move to restrict travel from some countries in africa starting monday is a way to buy critical time. the issue of blocking travel from a given countries is to just give us time to assess it better. that s the reason for doing that. we want to give us time to really fill in the blanks from what we don t know right now. reporter: some experts say it s not surprising that the omnicron variant first occurred in africa, with only 7.4% of the country s population fully vaccinated. this time last year, we were all sitting here hoping for a vaccine and science did what it does. it comes up with solutions that are available. and now the world has billions of vaccines this short time later. the problem that we haven t solved is to equally distribute them. we ve still got most people in africa have never been offered their first shot yet. they re dangerously unprotected. a problem that is increasingly becoming a global one, as more countries confirm