The NPR Politics Podcast - Yes, COVID-19 Cases Are Up. No, It's Not A Repeat Of Last Year.

Episode Date: November 22, 2021

COVID-19 case numbers are once again rising in the United States ahead of the holiday season, but the country is in a much different place than it was this time last year.Fifty-nine percent of the country is now fully-vaccinated, and tests are widely available. Mandates, including one that took effect today for federal workers, are expected to spur more people to get vaccinated in the months to come.This episode: White House correspondent Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and health correspondent Allison Aubrey.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Denise. My friend Becky and I are on a road trip across Idaho, and last night we stayed in a hotel shaped like a potato. You're listening to the NPR Politics Podcast, which was recorded at... Talking, I'm just going to say, for those who know, talking about potatoes during timestamps has been a treacherous thing for me, but I'm going to do it anyway. No need to say more. It's 2.10 Eastern on Monday, November 22nd. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but we'll still be checking experiences off our bucket lists. Enjoy the show. When I was a kid and we drove cross country, we got to Idaho and there's this giant sign that

said free taters for out of staters. And we totally went and got free taters because we were out of staters. Yep. I'm not got free taters because we were out of staters. Yep. I'm not going to add to that. That sounds great. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. And I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House. And we are talking about COVID today, a whole range of things, which means Alison Aubrey from NPR's health team is back again. Hey, Alison. Hey, great to be here. I thought this was a serious podcast. What's all this talk about? Taters. We're talking about COVID the rest of the podcast, so we're just getting the silliness

and taters and whatnot out of the way first. Got it. All right. You ready for that mood transition? Ready. Three, two, one. Deep breath. And Allison, I mean, we're joking, but it seems like a moment where things about to turn serious again. Before we talk about some of the Biden administration news and other stuff, I just want to ask you what you'd say the state of things are right now.

We are heading into a holiday weekend that's going to look a lot more like a normal holiday for most Americans compared to last year. But at the same time, those those graphs, the roller coaster cart is starting to go back up again. What's the way you frame things right now? Well, I mean, cases have definitely rebounded. We're up to about 93,000 cases a day. And about 85% of counties in the U.S. have either high or substantial levels of spread of the virus. So I think it's just really important to be aware of this. No one is saying don't travel.

I mean, this is not 2020 when we had no vaccines and same day testing was hard to come by. We're much more protected now. I mean, 80% of people 12 and up are vaccinated. And we know how to limit the spread of the virus with simple things like masking, which is still required and, you know, airports and buses and trains. So bottom line, you know, Thanksgiving is on, which is great, but we still need to take precautions. So Allison, on that note, I went out and bought a bunch of rapid tests and then I texted the people

that were coming over for Thanksgiving and I was like, hey guys, I've got rapid tests. And the response was sort of like, oh gosh, we didn't realize we were being invited over to the house of a crazy person. Do you really want us to come? You are not crazy. You are not crazy. You are not crazy. I mean, like, I really, I have to say I spent most of last week talking to

infectious disease experts who all say, you know what, testing, like, it wasn't possible to do this a year ago. So nobody had real time information. Now with a simple step, it's possible to know, are you positive? Are you negative at that moment? And that can just give people peace of mind, especially Thanksgiving when you're, you know, you're combining little kids who aren't vaccinated with grandparents who are at risk. It's just an easy step to give you some peace of mind. Yeah. I mean, I will never forget the hoops my family jumped through to get all together in person last Thanksgiving, just because we hadn't seen each other. And there's some immunocompromisation. That's not a word, but it is. And even the small steps we're talking about right now just feels so much nicer to have

to deal with than two weeks of quarantining last year to have a holiday with family. I mean, just it was a bad time last year. Yeah. And me shipping mulling spices all over the country for our Zoom Thanksgiving. Yeah, this is different. I mean, mulling spices can still be in the picture. I'm pro-mauling spices. I mean, we did, we wanted to talk to Allison about kind of looking ahead to Thanksgiving. But Tam, there's also some news to talk about with the Biden administration, which has

really mightily struggled with this ongoing COVID and in a whole lot of different ways. But today was a big deadline for the administration. It was the deadline for many federal workers to be vaccinated. What do we know about how that went? So the day is still on, but they're expecting about 90% of federal workers will have gotten at least their first dose of a COVID vaccine. And they're saying the vast majority are fully vaccinated. This exceeds their expectations. And certainly, let's say all of those 90% of federal workers ultimately do get vaccinated. The White House also thinks ultimately more will as well. That's well ahead of the national vaccination rate for adults in the United States.

So they are spinning this as vaccine mandates work. And certainly the numbers are strong. Vaccine mandates do work. They also kick up a lot of controversy. Yeah, I mean, at the same time, we have seen increased political organizing around opposition to these mandates. And I think the elections that we saw a few weeks ago in Virginia and other places made a lot of Republicans feel like this is a politically winning argument. I mean, Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who's probably thinking about running for president, signed a whole sweeping series of state laws that really take these federal vaccine mandates head on. This is clearly going to be something that sticks in our politics

for a while going forward, even if, as you say, Tam, the numbers show they work. Certainly. And the way the White House is approaching this is they are hoping, and we will see, but they're saying, you know, if we can do this, if the federal government with 3.5 million employees can do this, then, you know, maybe private businesses will just go ahead and try it and see how many more people they can get vaccinated as a lot of backs and forths as different requirements and eligibility have snaked their way through the FDA and CDC. What is the state of things right now? And what do we know about how many adults have gotten these shots? So bottom line is, as of now, everybody 18 and up is eligible for a booster. Now, the timing of that is you're supposed to wait six months after your second

dose, but none of this like, oh, 65 and older, or only if you have special conditions, basically, everyone 18 and up. I think, you know, part of the holdup was that this authorization process kind of relies on data. It's an evidence-based process. And in this pandemic, it's been hard to wait around too long for the data. I mean, as Dr. Fauci and a lot of other of Biden's advisors have said, you know, we don't want to wait for the protection to trail off. We need to anticipate it and act now before it's too late. So, you know, that's what we're seeing right now. I mean, there is real world data to show that boosters do help.

Data from the UK, they started boosting back in early September. It shows boosters boosted protection back up to about 94%. And that was at a time when protection really had fallen down into the mid 60s. So this is why you're hearing Dr. Fauci and others make the case to go get boosted now. And there are millions of people eligible now. So Tam, the situation, I mean, it is worth taking a step back and pointing this out. The situation Allison just described is what Joe Biden was talking about at the very beginning of things. And of course, that's not what initially happened. There was a lot of confusion. There was a lot of back and forth. And for the administration that was all about,

we are going to let science guide the process and not inject politics into this at all. At times, it kind of felt like they were injecting a little bit of politics into the process and saying, this is the outcome that we want. Yeah. So way back in August, the White House said, we're ready. We've got the boosters. Let's roll. And then, as Allison said, the FDA and CDC were like, well, we don't really have the data to back it up yet. So let's just do it for the most at risk people. So it seems as though it took a few months, but now the policy is where Biden and his advisors wanted it to be months ago. They followed the science. It does create something of a messaging muddle, though now, all these months later, the message is pretty clear. Go get a booster if you're an adult, full stop.

Yeah. All right, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we will talk more about the state of COVID around the world. And we'll talk a little bit more about how you can approach Thanksgiving as safe as possible. And we are back. Allison, it is worth flagging. COVID is going up all over the place. I mean, Europe especially is seeing really sharp increases in cases. Yeah, I mean, if you just listen to what leaders at the World Health Organization are saying, they're saying they're very worried about the spread of COVID right now. They're warning there could be another half million deaths between now and March unless more precautions are taken. I mean, the surge is really somewhat seasonal with more people gathering indoors.

There's also some insufficient vaccination rates in some places and also just the dominance of Delta, which people are now aware that it's just much more transmissible. We've learned that here in this country. The WHO says an increase or return to masking could help immediately. So it's sort of back to basics. You know, we know so much more about how this virus spreads. Masking helps. They're saying keep doing it. Tam, it's pretty clear Biden is struggling with his approval ratings right now that has effects on a lot of different things in the world. And a lot of people in the administration thought, well, once things clear up with COVID, I think that opens up a lot of things and things get

better. But that's pretty clear. It's not going to happen anytime soon. So what does that mean for Biden over the next few months? Right. And as you say, his approval rating is somewhere in the low 40s, which is nowhere a president wants to be. He's the guy who was supposed to fix COVID. And it turns out that this is not going to be a thing where you flip a switch and you're like, oh, COVID's over. For some people, COVID is maybe already over or they've moved on. But for a lot of people, including a lot of people who support this president, they are still very focused on getting people vaccinated. They're first, you know, getting them initially vaccinated, getting boosters, getting kids vaccinated. And then beyond that, also antiviral pills and medications and treatments that might be able to sort of change the prognosis for even difficult COVID cases.

But it is this struggle and you have the very unfortunate fact, and there's a lot of mitigating factors, but more people in the United States have died in 2021, at least according to the official numbers, than died in 2020 of COVID. Now, a big bunch of those 2021 deaths happened in January and February when that seasonal surge was happening, and many people didn't have access to vaccines yet. But then there's been the rest of this year, and just this sense that this thing that we kind of hoped maybe would be behind us because of vaccines is not behind us because of vaccines, and that's a political challenge for the president. Yeah. I mean, one thing I will say is that if you look at what's happening right now, hospitalizations and deaths, they lag behind the increase in cases. But so far, we're not seeing deaths rise. We're actually continuing to see them fall. Right now, they're flat at about 1,000 deaths a day. And really, that is due to the fact that we have improved treatments,

such as monoclonal antibodies, and probably is reflecting that a lot of these cases are breakthrough infections that are less, you know, that are more mild. So Allison, let's end with this and it's relevant, so I'm going to say it. Let's talk turkey for a minute. All right, you got it. We mentioned at the beginning that rapid tests are a great tool to use. What are other strategies you would suggest for people who do and are planning on getting their family together for Thanksgiving? You know, I think the way to think about this is that you should take precautions based on the risks of the people that you're gathering with, such as the age and the health of your older relatives.

In many cases, this is going to be grandparents. You know, if grandma is spry and 70 and fully vaxxed and boosted, there's a lot less to worry about. But if you're gathering with people who have chronic conditions or are 80 and up, they are still vulnerable to serious illness from COVID, even if they're vaccinated. So, you know, if that's the case, you might want to mask up, limit the time or the amount of time you spend in the house with these high risk folks, especially if you have unvaccinated kids in tow.

And I'll just end where we started. I mean, one step that's relatively simple is take a rapid test on the day of the event. I mean, they're pretty reliable. They give you some peace of mind, especially if you have, as I do, a mix of grandparents, college kids, unvaccinated little ones,

all planning to be together in the same house. Yeah. And to my friends and family who are attending Thanksgiving, I did not put Allison up to this. This was not part of the plan. All right. Allison, thank you, as always, for joining us. Thanks for having me. All right.

I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. And I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House. Thank you for listening to the InPair Politics Podcast. You want to hear how I cook my turkey? No, no. You did remind me, Tam, this is time for you and my annual plug to forget the haters and

brine your turkey. Absolutely. Brine your turkey. Yeah. Tamara Keith, Scott Detrow, both brine our separate turkeys. You should do it too. By the way, I don't brine. Then I don't know if we can have you on this podcast again. Don't come back. That's it. Okay. It was nice knowing you guys.