to save people s lives. dr. blackstock you talked about we weren t ready for the pandemic because there is an attitude e problem. don t tell me what to do. i don t want to wear a mask. i don t want to get vaccinated. i don t care if lots of people die or my family. i don t care. we re 58th in the world in terms of the percentage of our population has vaccines. we re a first world country and we re 58th. there is why omicron is spreading. your thoughts? right, if all high income countries we re dead last in terms of our vaccination rate. right? and that s a problem and that has to do with the politicalization of the pandemic in the beginning. it was masks and vaccines and a variant and then we also have the vaccine global inequity issue that is huge and that is we still have wide spread transmission leading to emerging variants and we re not taking care of each other so we have
sunation numbers, we re going to be in it a variation of this current situation for the next few years. that is clear here in the u.s. and also addressing vaccine global inequity. we need to make sure that we re vaccinated especially the global south because that is where the next variant is going to arise from. the messaging changes a little bit throughout this. d.c. is one of the latest cities to return to masking requirements. people in d.c. need to wear masks in all undoor settings. and to my point earlier, a lot of americans are confused and frustrated about the return to masks. also d.c. does not have high breakthrough cases. it does not by some assessmentes have that high transmissible cases. does the cdc guidance on masking leave too much open for interpretation to local authorities to say wear masks when they mao not need to wear masks and undermun the