Consider This from NPR - How To Get Through The Holidays As Omicron Looms

Starting point is 00:00:00 Nick Russo lives in New York City, but he's planning to travel to Massachusetts for Christmas, which is why a ringing phone recently brought some very unwelcome news. Well, yeah, our roommate within the span of 20 minutes got two calls that he hung out with someone that tested positive. NPR correspondent Jasmine Garst spoke with Russo as he was in line to get a COVID test in Bushwick, Brooklyn on Monday. It's been crazy over the last week. It was calm for months now, but now it's been really acting up, I guess. Maybe you've seen photos of testing lines in New York over the past few days. I mean, some of them stretch down and around city blocks. And maybe you felt that same and very familiar anxiety.

Starting point is 00:00:44 The real moment where I was like, you know, maybe this isn't going to work, it was really seeing all the lines for the testing. Stacey Parker Lamel in Harlem has already changed her holiday plans. Along with her husband and 11-year-old, she was planning to see family in Michigan and Florida. I wanted us to all get PCR tests before we went to Michigan. Sunday morning and we'll know by Monday morning and we can just get in the car. You know, I realized it's not going to work that way. While cases are rising quickly in the Northeast and pretty much all across the country now,

Starting point is 00:01:15 fear about what the Omicron variant might mean for holiday plans seems to be spreading even faster. I don't think you have to hide under the kitchen table the way you might have in March 2020. That's Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. I think that the risk of getting it is certainly at least two times that of Delta. But if you are vaccinated and if appropriate, you are boosted and you are careful, I don't think it's inevitable that you're going to get it. Maybe not inevitable, but still possible. And Wachter told NPR that he knows that news about rising breakthrough cases can be really demoralizing and confusing.

Starting point is 00:01:54 You know, we say you really need to get vaccinated and boosted. And then we say the vaccines don't work as well as they did before. And people might hear that and just say, well, why bother? And the answer is that the vaccines with Omicron are a little less protective than they were against Delta, but still are tremendously more protective than nothing. And the more immune you are, the better off you'll be. And when it comes to holiday plans. This thing is very infectious and you have to be more careful than you might have been last week. Consider this. Look, during this holiday season, we all deserve a little peace and quiet with the people we love, but the spread of Omicron threatens to complicate things for us.

Starting point is 00:02:36 Well, we'll have some guidance to hopefully help you through the next few weeks. From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Tuesday, December 21st. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. Earlier this month, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki had this exchange with NPR correspondent Mara Liason. Why not just make them free and give them out and have them available everywhere?

Starting point is 00:03:23 Should we just send one to every American? Maybe. Then what happens if every American has one test? How much does that cost? And then what happens after that? Well, this week, the White House announced a plan pretty close to that. The federal government will purchase one half billion, that's not million, billion with a B, additional at-home rapid tests with delivery starting in January. This is President Biden speaking on Tuesday. He also announced new federal testing sites across the country, including one in New York City that will open before Christmas. With many more to come. This free testing is going to help reduce the

Starting point is 00:03:54 waiting lines, the time you have to stand there, and sometimes it's an hour or more. Biden also said that it's not unusual for people who have been vaccinated to get a mild case of COVID due to the Omicron variant. And he said that fully vaccinated Americans should feel comfortable celebrating the holidays as they've planned. You know, you've done the right thing. You can enjoy the holiday season. But a lot of us aren't feeling quite so comfortable. In the past weeks, we have seen pro sports leagues rescheduling games, theaters shutting down, universities going remote for the remaining days of their semesters, which almost feels like we are living through March 2020 again. Yeah, we're not. We're in a very, very different place. That's Dr. Ashish Jha, Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. He spoke with my co-host, Mary Louise Kelly, about how we should approach this newest phase of the pandemic. The big difference between March 2020 and where we are is we have all sorts of tools to keep people safe, to get on with our lives.

Starting point is 00:04:59 It doesn't mean the pandemic is over. We have some challenges ahead, but we know how to manage them, and we can do it. We have all kinds of tools to manage this, but we're watching Omicron case numbers on a pretty scary upward incline. Understanding there's a range of possibilities, how bad could this get? Well, if we aren't careful and if we aren't thoughtful, really, about our approach, then we can get into a lot of trouble. But remember, the main issue is in the past, infections always preceded hospitalizations, which preceded deaths. And that has been a pattern we've seen over and over again. We finally can break that cycle. So we have the ability.

Starting point is 00:05:42 I don't think we have the ability to completely suppress infections unless we go into a massive lockdown, which we're not going to do. But we have the ability to prevent those infections turning into hospitalizations and deaths. And that's what we should be focused on. We have an ability to prevent those infections from disrupting our lives, shutting our schools. That's what we should be focused on. And I really think we can. Really? I mean, I'm curious what gives you

Starting point is 00:06:05 confidence and what you see January and February looking like, given these tools have been around for a while and a lot of people aren't using them. Yeah. So first of all, I think we should all be clear, we are going to see a very large wave of infections that will really get going probably by the end of this month, and January will be a month where we will see maybe more infections than we've seen in any month throughout the whole pandemic. But the difference is that those infections will largely happen. I mean, some of it will happen in unvaccinated people, and that worries me a lot. But a lot of it will also happen in people who are partially vaccinated,

Starting point is 00:06:39 people who have gotten two shots. Those people largely should do okay. Most of them will not end up getting particularly sick. We've got to get boosters into high-risk individuals. Actually, personally, I think we should got to get boosters into everybody. That'll make an enormous difference in keeping people from what will feel like a really bad cold to turning into something more dangerous. And then we have tools like rapid tests, which we can use to get together safely.

Starting point is 00:07:05 So I do think... If we can get them, that's another issue, but go on. No, it is a challenge, but they're getting better. That too is getting better. And again, I don't want to be too overly optimistic. Look, the challenges of the next six weeks are real and they are going to be difficult. But the tests are becoming more available.

Starting point is 00:07:22 We're starting to see them show up more. They're getting a little bit cheaper. I think we can use these tests, get people boosted, avoid some really risky things like large indoor gatherings where people are eating and drinking and not fast up. If we can avoid some of those, we can have a pretty good holiday season and we can get through January and February without too much disruption to our lives. Okay. Well, let's get into the holiday season and what it's going to look like. You may have just answered this, but holiday parties? Yes, no. Can we go? Not large parties. No. We had one at our school of public health and we actually canceled it because we just didn't feel like having 200 people inside eating, drinking together made a lot of sense. Travel plans.

Starting point is 00:08:05 If we have plans to travel over the holidays, should we keep them? Yeah, I think so, especially if you're vaccinated and boosted and people around you are. Obviously, on the planes, you won't know people's vaccine status, but planes are not particularly dangerous. So I think, and let me move one more caveat, which is domestic. International travel is more complicated because of travel restrictions and quarantine issues. But domestic travel, I think over the holiday season for vaccinated, boosted people, I think is pretty reasonable to do. Any hope, any solace to offer to parents of kids too young to be vaccinated? Can they see people?

Starting point is 00:08:42 Can they travel over the holidays? Yeah, absolutely. So what we know about kids is kids' risk of being infected is really driven by the adults around them. So if you're in a community that's highly vaccinated or certainly for the rest of the family is vaccinated, I think it's pretty reasonable. If you want to add an extra layer of protection, you can add testing, get one of those rapid tests for the child maybe before they see grandma or grandpa. I think that helps. I would, in fact, encourage that. But I don't think kids under five have to be isolated just because they're not vaccinated yet. A quick question related to schools. The CDC is saying the test-to-stay policies for schools work. This is where many school districts are keeping kids on site, in school, even if they are not vaccinated and even if they have been

Starting point is 00:09:31 in close contact with someone who tests positive, so long as they test negative. What are your thoughts on that? I think this is about time. The evidence on this has been very clear for several months. I'm really happy to see CDC encourage this. We do not need to be doing mass quarantining right now. We have kids across America at home waiting out a 14-day quarantine, totally unnecessary. The evidence is clear. If those kids are getting tested on a regular basis, they can come back to school safely. It does not cause big outbreaks or big spread. So I realize part of your job is not to sow panic, but you don't sound panicked here.

Starting point is 00:10:09 You don't sound as though these case numbers are absolutely just scaring the bejesus out of you. No, they're not. And the reason is because I really do think we're going to break this link between cases and hospitalizations and deaths. Look, I'm plenty worried. There are a lot of elderly people who are not vaccinated. There are plenty of elderly

Starting point is 00:10:30 people who are not boosted. I'm worried about what's going to happen with them and what the impact is going to be on our healthcare system. I'm worried about the fact that there's still so much misinformation out there that some people are going to take no precautions at all. I'm not saying we can just ignore the pandemic. I'm saying we're in a different place than where we were two years ago. And we have to remember that. And we have to use those tools to get through the next couple of months. That's Dr. Ashish Jha, Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. You're listening to Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang.

Consider This from NPR - How To Get Through The Holidays As Omicron Looms

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