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Brian: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We'll start out the week with a great pairing of guests looking at the same thing from different areas of expertise. WNYC Health and Science editor, Nsikan Akpan, and Washington Post White House reporter, Annie Linskey. Nsikan's new article on Gothamist is called, "The COVID Vaccines Could Easily Squash The Pandemic. The Hard Part Is Finding The Best Incentives." Annie's latest for The Washington Post is called, "The right decision wrongly handled: Inside the Biden administration's abrupt reversal on masks." Let's get right to it. Hi Nsikan, great to have you back on the show. Annie, welcome to WNYC.

Annie Linskey: Hi there.

Nsikan: Hey, how's it going?

Brian: Good. Nsikan, your article starts with a list of New York Times headlines from the last two weeks that you want to critique for a false impression that they might leave when taken together. Want to start right there with us?

Nsikan: Yes, sure thing. On May 3, the Times published a story about how reaching herd immunity is unlikely in the US, citing experts who say reaching the vital threshold would be difficult due to vaccine hesitancy and because there are all these variants out here that are trying to bypass our immune systems. The story went viral, obviously, because it's an issue that concerns a lot of people. As is common for media outlets, the Times ran a bunch of follow-up stories, most likely to capitalize on the moment. "Our pathetic herd immunity failure, why herd immunity is slipping away? What if we can't reach herd immunity? The world may need to learn to live with the virus."

When I spoke to scientists, they pushed back on those headlines for a couple of reasons, researchers who study health messaging said that it could create a self-fulfilling prophecy, whereby people who are hesitant think that skipping the vaccine is the norm, and virologist pushback because the latest data actually show that the COVID vaccines can still neutralize the variants and are highly effective.

Brian: To your point, let's not overlook the obvious in this conversation. As a science journalist, and those who don't know, there are not many WNYC employees who have PhDs in immunopathology, but as a science journalist, and with these vaccines now in people's arms for as much as six months, how would you describe their effectiveness based on what's been revealed?

Nsikan: Yes. I don't want to be hyperbolic, but it does seem like we hit the scientific jackpot. Relatively speaking, the COVID vaccines appear to be as strong as the gold standards in medicine. Real-world studies are showing that Pfizer and Moderna, their effectiveness is in the realm of 90% to 94%, which would put them alongside vaccines for the measles, mumps, whooping cough, HPV, vaccines that we know can establish herd immunity or community protection like based off of studies, based on what we've seen happen over the past decades. Also, you look and see cases and deaths falling pretty much everywhere, there are higher vaccination rates, and it really puts a lot of impetus on us getting vaccinated in order to squash the pandemic.

Brian: Before we bring in Annie with the White House corresponding take. Your article contains what looks like extremely good news, even better than the way you just described it, in that, as Pfizer and Moderna monitor the success of the vaccines over time, at least their vaccines, they seem to be effective at blocking even the so-called double variant from India. What can you tell us about vaccine's effectiveness against the variants?

Nsikan: Yes, that's right. The study that came out Friday, it's a preprint, so you know it's been published ahead of peer review, from researchers at New York University, it found that, if you take blood serum from people who've been vaccinated, and then you put it in a dish with these variants, namely, the variant from India, you can neutralize it, which is enormous. It's a huge win because we know-- It's looking like this variant in particular spreads very fast. It looks like it might even be more transmissible than the UK variant which is now dominant here.

Brian: Annie, your headline is, "The right decision wrongly handled: Inside the Biden administration's abrupt reversal on masks." Let's document for our listeners that abrupt reversal. Here is a clip that you cite in your article from CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky. She was testifying last Tuesday before the Senate Health Committee defending the policy of keeping Masks mandates in place for vaccinated people under certain circumstances.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky: While we continue to have community transmission, we must also maintain public health measures we know will prevent the spread of this virus; mask, hygiene, hand hygiene, and physical distancing.

Brian: But then on Thursday, the CDC announced new guidance that took people by surprise, that fully vaccinated people no longer need to wear masks indoors or out to protect themselves or others. If that was confusing, President Biden hammered at home on Friday with no ambiguity.

President Joe Biden: Let me repeat, if you are fully vaccinated, you no longer need to wear a mask.

Brian: What changed literally overnight last week to bring about this change? Walensky was asked that question yesterday on NBC's Meet the Press and said.

Dr. Walensky: Really just in the last two weeks, we've had a lot of evolving science.

Brian: So then came the confusion, in places like stores were masked and unmasked people mingle. Where there have been masked mandates for everyone's protection, what's the right policy, masks are no masks? Some stores, including Target, first announced that they would keep the masking policy in place for now. Target reversed that just this morning and joined others like Walmart, which quickly removed their national masking policy. Starbucks too, and left it to local health officials to decide. As of this morning, different states, different local officials, have different rules. Confused on meet the press yesterday, Dr. Walensky sought to clarify.

Dr. Walensky: Everybody, as we are working towards opening up again, after 16 months getting out of this pandemic, we'll need to understand what they need to do locally. This was not permission to shed masks for everybody everywhere. This was really science-driven individual assessment of your risk.

Brian: Annie, what actually happened there, and where are we this morning?

Annie: Well, the President is expected to speak later today. I think he'll probably address some of this whiplash that many in the country are feeling. I think what's been very clear over the past few days is that the CDC's role and their communications strategy has not been the smoothest process.

I reported with three of my colleagues at the Washington Post last week and into the weekend, and we were really struck to learn that Walensky had made this very groundbreaking decision on Monday afternoon, Monday night that she had heard what she needed to hear, read what she needed to read in the various new studies that had come out, that she referenced in the past two weeks showing the efficacy of vaccinations and the real-world experience that vaccinated people had.

On Monday night, she had decided that she was going to change the CDC guidances. It was quite stunning that on Tuesday when she was before a Senate committee, she really dug in and doubled down on the status quo and didn't give any hint really that she had made a decision to change that guidance. I think that is part of where this confusion, at least in Washington, and from the White House laid.

Typically, when a major 180-degree turn is coming, there are some hints about it, and that gets people who are paying close attention. It gets them ready for there to be this shift. Certainly, the White House, people that we talked to were caught off guard, they were frustrated to have such an abrupt change on mask-- Wearing a mask has taken on even a bit of a cultural significance in this country.

For many people, and for many local leaders, it just undercuts this push that they've been making to keep people wearing these masks because they are quite effective in preventing spread of the virus among unvaccinated people. There's a good portion of the country, I think we're still really at about 30% of the country that's fully vaccinated. There's a good part of the country that is not fully vaccinated and this guidance does not apply to them. It's just been a very tricky week and the US federal government, country as big as ours, usually needs to happen very slowly.

This is something that the guidance that came out was just a very abrupt shift. Now, I will say, there is a big difference, if you want to keep wearing a mask, you're really not going to hurt anybody, it doesn't really seem to make a lot of sense why if you want to wear one you shouldn't just keep doing it. I think there's another social aspect of this. Whereas, in the past, people who were not wearing a mask were potentially providing quite a lot of harm.

Brian: Your report based on interviews with 15 people that when the CDC announced these new guidelines on Thursday, it took the White House by surprise. Now that much might be good in a way because it shows the CDC is acting on science not for the political needs of the White House like under a certain recent president we don't have to name, but who was surprised by what?

Annie: Well, I think that's right. When we were talking to White House officials, they were only told-- Really it was Wednesday afternoon, that this change was coming. It was a very closely held decision in the CDC. Not many people in the CDC knew about it, but then only a very small people, Jeff Zients the COVID coordinator, Ron Klain as chief of staff were told in the six o'clock hour on Wednesday before this and then the White House then made the official announcement around two o'clock on Thursday. What was also interesting is Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, did two national interviews after she had told the White House that she was going to make this change.

These two interviews, she did provide some wink that the change was coming, but just was not a lot of time. The other thing that we were certainly hearing from the White House is they were questioning the CDC and saying, asking them, "How will it affect this? How will it affect this situation? What about this situation? What about businesses? What about schools?" There were a lot of questions that the White House was asking that the CDC wasn't quite ready to answer. I think that also caused some concern among the White House aides.

One person described it to us and we put this into our story, as almost like an overcorrection from Trump that in the Trump era, there was so much interference and such little adherence and respect for scientists and the scientific process and now the White House has gone the complete opposite direction, where it's, "No, we want to be completely hands-off," and to where some of the White House spokespeople were spinning to us that like, "Well, it's almost been proven that we have had no interference and this is a result pressure because we were so caught off guard, and if we had been pushing them to do it, we would at least have known that it was coming."

Brian: Listeners, how are you recalculating your own personal reopening based on the CDC's announcement on Thursday? Or on some incentives, which we'll get to now being offered from free 7-Day MetroCards to get a vaccine to free Shake Shack to a $1 million newly vaccinated person lottery in the state of Ohio 646-435-7280. How are you recalculating your decision whether to get vaccinated? How are you recalculating your decisions if you are vaccinated about wearing masks in public or out indoors or out and other reopenings? 646-435-7280.

Also, store owners and store managers, if anyone like that is listening right now, in that position, how are you recalculating your policy for letting people in? 646-435-7280. For our vaccinated listeners if you are vaccinated are you now ready to burn your bucket of masks? Are you ready to trust your neighbors so that if someone is unmasked in a store with you or in the lobby of your building or wherever you're ready to assume that they are vaccinated, or that since you're vaccinated that they are no longer a risk for you anyway? 646-435-7280 and if you have still chosen to remain unvaccinated so far is the latest science on how good the vaccines really are causing you to reconsider? 646-435-7280.

That's a few different categories we put out there for you who may call in with our Health and Science editor Nsikan Akpan and Washington Post White House reporter Annie Linskey 646-435-7280. Nsikan Akpan, doctor, science editor, to one of the clips of Dr. Walensky we played there saying there was new science even in the last week to prompt that further lifting of the masking policy. Was there new science, even in the last week that it's clear what it was?

Nsikan: Yes, I would say in the past three to four weeks, there's been a lot of data that's come out to support this idea. On Friday, the CDC published a story involving a team of researchers from all over the country. It's really a collaborative effort, it was looking at 1,800 healthcare workers, and it found that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines seemed to show 94% effectiveness. I mentioned the study on the variant at the top from NYU that came out on Friday as well. There's also been a bunch of studies showing the effectiveness of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines against the variant that was first isolated in South Africa, there was one in the New England Journal of Medicine.

People are interested in seeing these studies. Just google, Science Brief Background Rationale, and Evidence for Public Health recommendations for fully vaccinated people. That's the CDC's page that has all of this information showing how the vaccines are working in public, and we even have some data on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. You have to think that it takes time to collect all of these results, so we're going to have more evidence for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines since they were authorized first. Now we have a study from the Mayo Clinic showing that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine seems to be about 76%, 77% effective out in the real world.

A little bit lower than Pfizer and Moderna, which we would expect given the clinical trial results, but still good enough to prevent the majority of infections it looks like. Obviously, all the vaccines can prevent against severe disease.

Brian: Maybe that's the most important part. That all of the vaccines can protect against severe disease. I remember when the Johnson & Johnson studies first came out, and we'd all heard 94%, 95% effective for Pfizer, and Moderna, and then what? 70% ish effective for Johnson & Johnson, that's not very good. Experts were quick to say, "But wait, in the category of ICU admissions and deaths, it was zero, just like with the others."

Nsikan: Exactly. The bottom line is we want to keep people out of the hospitals, we want to keep people from dying. The scientist in me wants also to prevent infections as well. I want the best scenario possible for the public. We do know that mild and moderate infections with the virus can lead to things like long COVID. This condition we're seeing where people have fatigue in the long-term. The bottom line is just let's stop as many infections as we can.

Brian: I hear. That's, I guess, the ultimate standard. Is there any science yet, by the way, on long haul, among people who are vaccinated and got initially mild cases?

Nsikan: There are a few. Mainly, it's just observations at this point, and following patients over time. We know that there's one study that's looked at it and said that about 50% of people suffer from fatigue long-term. There's some big studies underway at the National Institutes of Health and also at some other major health organizations overseas that are really trying to pick apart what long COVID is, how serious of a drain is it going to be on the healthcare system? Long-term, how serious of a drain is going to be on the people who have to deal with it long-term? These are all important questions, and they're going to take some time to answer just because--

Brian: It's new.

Nsikan: Yes, it's new and our healthcare system struggles with chronic disease. It really struggles to figure out how to handle chronic disease.

Brian: Back to Annie Linskey, White House correspondent for The Washington Post. Here's one more clip Annie, of CDC Director Dr. Walensky from Meet the Press, in which she basically says when it comes to masks now in mixed public places like stores, it's an honor system.

Dr. Walensky: We are asking people to be honest with themselves if they are vaccinated and they are not wearing a mask they are safe. If they are not vaccinated and they are not wearing a mask, they are not safe.

Brian: Annie, another Washington Post article this weekend, by your colleague Marisa Lati, has the headline, "The new mask guideline relies on an honor system, do we trust each other to make it work?" What would Dr. Walensky or anyone say to listeners right now who may be thinking, "What" Are you kidding me all those Trump supporters out there who have vaccine refusers and rebelled against mask mandates for a year in the first place are going to follow an honor system when they go into Walmart?" What's the rationale for why an honor system might work?

Annie: Well, first of all, I would say there's an overlap, I think, between people who are not going to get vaccinated and are not going to wear a mask regardless of what the public guidance is. Look, the CDC is putting itself in a role of "We are here to give guidance on the science, and this is what the science says. It also may be true that humans when social pressure to do something has been removed are going to act in a different way. That many humans or just human nature does not have people who are partially vaccinated or unvaccinated are going to see this as a moment to say that the pandemic is over.

I think that this will be a very interesting test of our culture and what this year has done, and whether people are willing to just go for the last few weeks that they shouldn't be wearing a mask or not. I think there is evidence of that living in this mixed society will be difficult for many people. I think the tension here is the CDC didn't and doesn't necessarily see that as their job to sort out as much as to provide the White House with clear guidance that this is something that you no longer have to do if you're fully vaccinated. The other thing that it brings up is this very tricky political concept that we've struggled with in this country of a vaccine passport or vaccine credentialing.

Other countries are doing that to where there is some sort of document that's somewhat secure and is nationally, I don't want to say universally, but within various countries accepted as a proof of vaccination. That's something that the Biden administration has been very-- They've tried to stay very far away from that concept. That is no doubt because it pulls very, very badly particularly among the independence that the Biden administration looks to when it's trying to figure out how to walk these delicate spots. I think what it may mean and what my sources are saying that it may mean is that COVID testing is going to be with us for a very long time.

Brian: We've got some really interesting-looking callers lined up. Bill in Wantagh, stay there. Amanda in the East Village stay there, we're going g to get to you two first, right after our break. Brian on WNYC.

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Brian Lehre on WNYC as we continue with what I think is a great pairing of guests looking at the same thing from different areas of expertise WNYC Health and Science editors, Nsikan Akpan and Washington Post White House reporter Annie Linskey. Nsikan's new article on Gothamist is called, "The COVID Vaccines Could Easily Squash The Pandemic. The Hard Part Is Finding The Best Incentives." Annie's latest for The Washington Post is called, "The right decision wrongly handled': Inside the Biden administration's abrupt reversal on masks." Let's take a phone call Bill in Wantagh, you're on WNYC. Hi, Bill. Thanks for calling in.

Bill: Yes, hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. The Chinese teach their kids in school the weakness of capitalism that it assumes an educated voter. The CDC has clearly chosen an honor system to determine who's wearing a mask and who's not. If I've learned anything in the last four years is that there's 38% of our population that has no honor at all. They would simply game that system. I'm wearing the mask until this stuff goes away just because I don't want to give anybody cover to not wear the mask and spread any more of this garbage around.

Brian: Yes, that interesting. For you, as I presume a vaccinated person, what about the science we talked about at the beginning of the segment, if you heard it. If the vaccines are that good, then do you feel like you're not at risk anyway, from the unmasked unvaccinated people who you may be encountering?

Bill: Well, there's a bit of selfism in the science of the whole thing because it's assuming that the vaccine is what's killing the virus and that's not true. Our bodies are killing the virus, the vaccine is teaching us how to kill the virus. If we simply locked down the whole world for 21 days, this place would have no place to spread and it would be over and done with in one month.

Brian: Bill, thank you so much for your call. Fact check, Mr. Science editor.

Nsikan: Yes, I like to think that it's the tag team of the vaccine and our immune systems working together to fight the virus. Yes, it's tricky. It's a really tricky situation to get the messaging just right in order to convince people to wear masks as we've seen over the past year with people burning masks in barrels and other people threatening the lives of health officials. Yes, where we go from here, we really are at an inflection point, cases aren't quite low enough to fully reopen in my opinion.

Yes, what happens next, whether or not people adhere to this new CDC guidance will be really interesting. From our reporting on the ground, Caroline Lewis, we know again some other reporters that that work here at WNYC, they've gone around and ask people what they plan to do, and a lot of them are saying, "Yes, we're going to keep our mask on until this is over."

Brian: Let me hone in on the follow-up question that I asked the caller. If the vaccines really do protect vaccinated people so much that they can safely be around unmasked people who might even be carrying the double variant, then the risk in a mixed store is only to the unvaccinated people. If that's really true then vaccinated people shouldn't worry about the unvaxxed who go unmasked anyway. The unvaxxed would only be a threat to themselves, or am I overstating it?

Nsikan: No, I don't I don't think you're overstating it. We do know that the vaccines aren't 100%. When we say Pfizer and Moderna are 94% effective, there's still 6% efficacy there that's open. To really translate into what that means for people out in the world, you have to factor in something called the attack rate. When you do that math, essentially, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, there's only a one in 2,000 chance that you'll experience an infection after you're vaccinated with them.

What we call a breakthrough infection. For Johnson and Johnson in its 77% effectiveness, that's one in 350, those are really good odds. The CDC is tracking these breakthrough infections and so far it's recorded about 1,300 breakthrough infections out of 115 million Americans who were vaccinated. That's about one breakthrough infection for every 100,000 people. Now take that and factor it against the death rate for COVID, which has an infection fatality rate in the ballpark of 1%. One in 100 people dying from COVID versus one in about 100,000 people catching COVID after getting the vaccines. You don't have to be I guess a fan of going to Vegas.

Brian: To like those odds. All right, let's go to another caller. Amanda in the East Village, you're on WNYC. Hi, Amanda.

Amanda: Hi, Brian, it's nice to talk to you again. Thank you for covering this topic.

Brian: Sure.

Amanda: I just wanted to say I feel like this latest ruling from the CDC, I hear people and see people on social media on both sides of the issue just laughing at it because, on one hand, you have the people that haven't abided by the scientific advice in wearing a mask and taking precautions and everything at all this entire time. I have a lot of family members that fall into that category and some of whom believe a lot of the conspiracy theories out there. All of them are just-- I feel like it's given them more ammunition to say, "Look, the CDC is just politically motivated.

What they're doing now is they're just trying to bribe us by saying we can go back to normal life if we get the vaccine. We've been living our normal lives this whole time, so why should we-- This is just another reason not to listen to the CDC because they continue to flip flop and tell us that they're certain when really they aren't.

Then you have people like myself who-- I'm vaccinated, I've been trying to abide by the science and paper cautions and do all of this. I hear people in that camp just becoming so frustrated with the CDC because, throughout this whole time, I wish they had just said at the very [sound cut] thing, we're not complete, you can't be completely certain because it's evolving, because this disease we've really only known it for a little over a year, and we're learning while you guys are-- We just have better tools, so help us along the way. I don't feel like it has moved us forward in any way. I feel like it's taken us backwards, and it's causing more divisions in a lot of areas.

Brian: Annie Linskey, White House Correspondent for The Washington Post who's written about this, can you comment on Amanda's call?

Annie: Yes. public officials are struggling with this and certainly the White House's. There's like this sense of whiplash and having to understand that the things that you hear at the beginning might not be consistent, their messaging might not be consistent, and just leaving a little bit of room and grace for public officials who are working on this.

I think, unfortunately, in the last few years, a lot of that grace has been used up. You're coming into a situation where there has been a lot less trust understandably in some cases of government officials, and now we're in this position where we really-- Few words, it's kind of a life and death thing to do.

I think one of the things that Biden said in his last set of remarks was that people who want to keep wearing masks should just keep doing that. You saw him over the weekend, he was in Delaware, he was in church, Delaware still has a mask rule, and the President, he was following the local rules and did it.

I just think there's going to be a little bit of a period here where there's a little bit of a mixture, but I do think if the last 15 months taught us anything, it's just understanding that things are going to change and figuring out where your own comfort levels are, and then maybe we can all learn to just be a little bit less judgmental of our fellow Americans and how they're doing and what they're deciding to do.

Brian: One more call on this. Nick in Astoria, you're on WNYC. Hi, Nick.

Nick: Hi, thank you so much. Good morning to all. Yes, I'm fully vaccinated since early April. I was happy to get it, eager to get it, but I really don't like masks, they restrict my breathing, I find them to be gross. When I see masks on people, sometimes they look very dirty, and I think it's unhygienic. I'm very eager to drop the masks, but what I worry about is that we have this clear set of science that came out, the vaccine is effective against the virus, it's effective against the variants, and it's effective against transmission to others.

To me, that feels like an end of story. If governors continue to impose mask mandates after that science, my feeling is it's only going to fuel the conspiracy theorists who want to believe that vaccines are ineffective, this is some kind of draconian, authoritarian state that they're trying to put on and so on, and I think it will fuel them. I think that now alluding to what was just mentioned earlier about giving our fellow Americans some room to-- Or being a little less judgmental to our fellow Americans, I think that would do a lot to move us forward past this epidemic.

Brian: Thank you so much, Nick. Thank you. Nsikan, that brings us back to your article in your report that as new vaccination rates are declining in recent weeks, that is additional people choosing to get vaccinated now, officials are rolling out an array of incentives. Certainly, we've been reporting here in New York about the MTA giving out free 7-Day MetroCards for subway stops in the last few days where they've set up vaccination stations. What else are people giving out?

Nsikan: Yes. Shake Shack is giving out burgers and fries here in New York City. I believe White Castle is giving out dessert on a stick. Six Flags in Illinois is giving out 50,000 tickets to its parks. I've heard I think in DC, and we reported on this a couple weeks ago in New York, that people were giving out marijuana, now that it's legal to do so, to exchange for shots. My favorite, my personal favorite, given I am a child of the South, is crawfish. New Orleans is giving out a pound of crawfish for every shot.

Brian: That will do it for me, now I'm getting vaccinated. No, I was already vaccinated but still. As you report, social scientists, despite all those yummy sounding incentives, and raising the question how many White Castle burgers does it actually take to equal one Shake Shack burger, but the social sciences are beginning to measure effectiveness. I'm wondering whether there might actually be a backlash effect where the incentives turn out to be disincentivizing? How could giving people free Shake Shack cause a backlash?

Nsikan: Yes. We've seen the research in the past that trying to motivate people by just giving them cash can have this effect where they don't want to engage with a health benefit. It makes sense. The vaccines are good on their own, and I think this is what your caller was getting at, the last caller was getting at. The vaccines are good on their own, then why do government leaders need to pay us to take them? What's interesting about these food incentives is that they haven't really been studied, but if they work, yes, it could be very exciting from a health research perspective, it could break some new ground.

One researcher that I spoke to who studies health messaging, she said, "What's interesting about them is that it really ties getting vaccinated to the community, this idea that we're working together towards this goal." By giving out crawfish in New Orleans, you're resonating with that community in a way that's very specific to them, and showing them how we're all like working on this together.

Another thing to touch on with the last call is no one's really talking about vaccine passports, which I think could play a pretty significant role here. I imagine this is also why Governor Cuomo hasn't necessarily put out new guidance around the CDC guidelines yet.

Brian: Meaning mandating the people show their vaccination status when they go into public places?

Nsikan: Exactly. That's the issue that I feel we're talking around because unvaccinated people still pose a risk to each other. If you just blanketly get rid of mask mandates, there's the odds that the virus can just spread among those populations.

Brian: Yes, and then you're in another crisis of demand on hospitals and all of that.

Nsikan: Exactly. The federal government has said that they're not going to do a vaccine passport, which I find interesting given that they can track our driver's licenses across state lines, but they're not--

Brian: Let me get a last, and we're just about out of time for the segment. Annie, let me get a last word from you on that in just 30 seconds if you can do it on why not vaccine passports at the federal level?

Annie: The Biden administration has just felt very concerned that a vaccine passport is going to feel a little too much like federal control, and they're just very eager to stay away from any notion that the federal government is tracking your health, is mandating you to do something, and is going to then punish you for not doing it. That's a role that the Biden administration has been very reluctant to take on and I think that's why.

Brian: They'll just encourage states and work with states. All right, WNYC and Gothamist Health and Science editor, Nsikan Akpan, and Annie Linskey, White House reporter for The Washington Post. Thank you both so much.

Annie: Thank you.

Nsikan: Thanks.

 

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