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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Hope you had a wonderful Christmas weekend, despite all the uncertainty in just about every family I know of, and probably you too, about how to handle getting together in the context of Omicron uncertainty. We'll talk more about that as we go and a happy second day of Kwanzaa.

Each of the seven days is built around one of the seven principles designated as ways to honor people's African heritage. The day two principle for today is Kujichagulia or self-determination, defining things, naming things, speaking for ourselves, the founders say, as it's been described an important concept, especially considering the history of the world. Speaking for ourselves, naming things for ourselves, defining things for ourselves, if you come from African heritage.

Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa. Hanukah is long past this year, a month in the rearview mirror already just about. I looked it up and Hanukah next year, overlaps with Christmas as the calendar flips around. Happy everything in this end-of-year season. Between Omicron and everything else, you deserve a little good news, a little inspiring news. I'll start with the fact that our guest about to join us Politico White House Bureau Chief and MSNBC host Jonathan Lemire.

Jonathan's latest tweet as of a half-hour before we came on was about a sixth, an 11-year-old named Davyon Johnson, saving the lives of two different people in two separate incidents on the same day. We'll talk about that a little bit with Jonathan. All year there's still all that stuff going on with Biden and Manchin and Omicron and everything else.

As we welcome Politico White House Bureau Chief and MSNBC host Jonathan Lemire, he hosts the 5:00 AM program called Way Too Early and then hangs around and causes trouble on Morning Joe. Hi, Jonathan, happy everything. Thanks for coming on with us. We really appreciate some time on this holiday week. Welcome back to WNYC.

Jonathan Lemire: It does seem that causing trouble on Morning Joe is my primary occupation right now, but happy everything to you. It is always a delight to be here. I'm glad to be with you today.

Brian Lehrer: You're a White House correspondent, why did you tweet about that 11-year-old in Oklahoma?

Jonathan Lemire: I was really touched by it. It's a really sweet story and you're right, we need a little bit of good news. He's 11 years old and in the same day he saved a fellow student's life with the Heimlich maneuver. He had taken it upon himself to learn how to do the Heimlich by watching YouTube videos, just in case a situation ever arose, and it did.

Later that same day, he saw a house fire and an elderly woman who was trying to leave that home, she was on her walker and moving very slowly. He later told authorities that he was concerned that she wasn't moving fast enough. He darted over there and guided her, helped her with that walker to safety. One of these moments would be a lifetime of heroism for the rest of us. He did two on the same day. He's 11 years old. It's wonderful stuff.

Brian Lehrer: That is so great. This idea of learning the Heimlich maneuver on YouTube when you're a kid, just in case you need it someday. Maybe it's says something about the upside of social media, which we like to deride so much and for good reason so much. I remember being a teenager and thinking, "I'd like to learn CPR in case I need it someday," because I had seen some stories somewhere, but I never did it. In order to do it, I would've had to go out and take a course. Now, Davyon Johnson, 11 years old can teach himself the Heimlich maneuver thanks to YouTube.

Jonathan Lemire: Yes. My fear though is that my two sons who are ages 10 and 7 are going to cite this story to make the case to be allowed to watch more YouTube and their videos of choice are baseball highlights or trick ping pong shots. Though fun, perhaps less helpful to their everyday lives. I'm not going to share this story with them.

Brian Lehrer: I knew you'd find the cloud in that silver lining. What was your lead on Way Too Early today? Was it more Omicron or more politics or the airlines, or the intersection of Omicron in politics?

Jonathan Lemire: It was, and I'm sure most of your viewers had set their alarms early during this holiday week to get up, to watch the show, and if not catch up with it on DVR later. No, it was indeed the Omicron. It was Omicron and the surging cases throughout the country, but recognizing that at least knock on wood here, that it appears that for those who are vaccinated and particularly those who also had gotten their booster, the illness, though prevalent, is not that severe. We got into a conversation as to whether perhaps guidelines need to change on isolation.

Certainly, though we did also hit on, and there's nothing good about this, the virus's impact on travel and how we had thousands of flights canceled and people now facing cancellations today. Some folks didn't make it for their Christmas holidays. Others are going to have real trouble getting back from it. Certainly, health experts also cautioned that because of all this travel we should expect in a week or two to have even more cases across the country.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, as we open up the phones today, one thing you might do is tell us about your airport experience. If you flew over the last few days, how did that go? Did you get through to where you were going? Are you now listening somewhere that you were hoping to travel from, but your flight was canceled and you couldn't get another one? How did the staff handle it at the airports if you were at the airports?

212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. Were people nice to each other at least if you were at the airports? That's not always the case these days. I guess it's never always the case, but it seems to be less the case in the pandemic era. 212-433-9692. Or on the political track, anything you want to say here in the last we of the year or ask of Politico White House Bureau Chief, Jonathan Lemire. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. Or if you want to critique his appearances on Morning Joe, or you can tweet @BrianLehrer.

Getting serious about Omicron and policy, there are all kinds of policy responses to this big surge we're having, national and local. You just obliquely referenced the New York one that I wonder if from where you sit as White House correspondent, you see it starting to make national news. That is Governor Hochul on Friday, and probably even a lot of our New York listeners haven't heard this yet, Governor Hochul reduced the isolation time for COVID positive healthcare workers from 10 days down to 5 days if they test negative by then. Seems to me it might be a sign of difficult decisions yet to come around the country with a potential shortage of healthcare workers because so many of them have the virus looming.

Jonathan Lemire: That's precisely it. It's not a clear-cut case. I think we should be upfront though it is certainly encouraging of what we know with Omicron so far. It seems to provoke less severe illness than other variants of COVID-19, particularly the Delta variant. We're still in the early stages of this particular phase of the pandemic. Based off of the initial evidence that it does seem a little severe for those who are vaccinated and boosted, but because it is so widespread, it's not just that the cases, numbers speak for themselves, the country setting records, states are setting records. Personally, I think most people certainly who live in the Northeast, New York, DC, et cetera, in their own lives, know dozens of people who have it right now.

The states and cities are having a hard time keeping people and particularly frontline healthcare workers in their jobs because so many are testing positive. Many of them are mildly ill or perhaps even are asymptomatic, but they are still testing positive, therefore they're not able to go to work, but with the idea that this is less-- you're less contagious perhaps once you hit a certain number of days into the illness, the governments are their hands being forced and making that reduction from 10 to 5.

The federal government has not adopted that yet. CDC has not made that recommendation yet, but I think we had Dr. Fauci on the show this morning certainly says that's something that will be a topic of conversation. Maybe it's not to five days, maybe it's to seven, but it is something that a lot of governments are looking at and frankly, a lot of private businesses are advocating for the airlines to bring it back to that. [unintelligible 00:09:24] who are saying right now, they don't have enough staff. They don't have enough crew or pilots to fly all these planes because of the 10 day isolation periods, so they're looking for reduction as well.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a few airline airport stories from our callers. Sean in Woodland Park, in New Jersey, you're on WNYC. Hi, Sean. May I be one of the first to wish you a Happy New Year?

Sean: Thank you. Happy New Year to you as well, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. I was traveling over the holidays and my flight was canceled without even being told. I was told at the airport that it was canceled. Fortunately, I was able to get another flight on another airline, but I didn't even get reimbursed for the flight that was canceled. It was really expensive.

Brian Lehrer: Were they nice about it? It does sound irresponsible. You would think if they knew in advance that they were going to have a staff shortage and that your flight was going to be one of the ones canceled, that they would have sent you a notification or given you a call, depending on how you signed up for that stuff.

Sean: Right. I was shocked that I didn't even get an email or a phone call or anything. They were not all that helpful. The airline that I did book on was much more helpful.

Brian Lehrer: What was the scene? Were people nice? Was the staff apologetic? If there were hundreds of people on your flight, I don't know how crowded your flight was and where you're going but were people climbing all over each other to get to the counter to get on that replacement flight that you got on because there probably weren't enough seats for everybody? I'm only guessing.

Sean: No, because the staff at the counter were really nice but yes, it was a really active scene. The flight that I actually got on was like ten hours later. I felt like Tom Hanks in that movie he's living at an airport for 10 hours.

Brian Lehrer: Sean, I'm glad you got through. Thank you very much. Rena in New Rochelle, you're on WNYC. Hi, Rena.

Rena: Hi. I traveled over the holiday weekend and I was appalled at how many people were not wearing their masks in the airport, including one person who had a mask around his neck that said, "This mask is as useless as Joe Biden" which did not give me the feeling that this was a vaccinated person. The airline staff did not do anything. I had to be the enforcer and keep going up to people, going up to the staff at the gate. People on the flight had their masks down. Also, some people, they're just eating the entire flight. I'm just wondering why they don't require vaccines to travel just like you need a vaccine to travel to certain countries and within certain countries. It's a rhetorical question. I'm sure the answer is money but it certainly didn't feel safe.

Brian Lehrer: Rena, thank you, unfortunately for that story. Jonathan, let me turn back to you on this because there are some policy issues in her story. Am I wrong that there is a vaccine requirement now for flying domestically?

Jonathan Lemire: You are wrong. There is not one yet. In fact, that is another topic of discussion. There is one for international travelers, those coming in the United States, but there has been some debate within the President's COVID-19 response team as to what to do about domestic flights. To this point, there's no vaccination required. There's still a mask requirement both for airport facilities as well as the planes themselves.

In fact, again, Dr. Fauci was with us on Morning Joe this morning and I asked him this exact question. I said, "Well, you can see over the weekend, signal some support for that saying, look, it would be a tool in the arsenal to keep infections down, but also more than that, to incentivize getting the vaccine that you suddenly say to someone, "Hey, you can get on this plane once you're vaccinated." That might be if I push them over the edge and say, "Fine, I'll get shot."

In his response to me, again, suggested that it was he believed it was a good idea but he stopped short of saying whether he had forcefully advocated that to the president. What we do know is at least at this point, President Biden, and he reiterated this in remarks just the other day, has said he does not feel like that's a necessary step. At least not yet, but they've never taken it off the table.

The president is heading to Delaware later this afternoon for a bit of the holiday break. He'll be there through New Year's like so many of us who want to spend New Year's in Wilmington, Delaware, but we are going to hear from him this afternoon. He's going to speak on COVID. He's going to be part of a governor's call and their response. It's possible that we'll hear some sort of update on his thinking then.

Brian Lehrer: Don't they have a big ball that drops in Downtown Wilmington and all the networks cover-- I think I may be confusing that with another city.

Jonathan Lemire: That's one of the other great East Coast cities has that. Wilmington, though, is well known as the Paris of that particular part of Delaware.

Brian Lehrer: I guess so. This does bring up inconsistencies in policies that have been enacted. As you were just saying, there's a different requirement to fly into the United States from another country than to fly domestically in the United States, despite the fact that we are now one of the Omicron centers in the world. Explain that in a little more detail.

Jonathan Lemire: Well, this is something that has been of hotly debate since the very beginning of this pandemic, when then-President Trump enforced travel bans from a few countries, China to start and then others. Just a few weeks ago, as Omicron emerged onto the radar, you'll recall that the Biden administration put forth the travel ban from South Africa, which at that point was the hot spot, as well as a few of the neighboring countries in Africa.

Immediately there were cries just saying, "This is discriminatory. Why are you punishing South Africa for just simply the scientist being A, competent enough to find the new variant, and then B transparent enough to talk about it," when surely at that moment Omicron was prevalent elsewhere in the world as well. The Biden administration just yesterday, I believe, or certainly over the weekend suggests that they would be lifting that ban in the coming days. In terms of vaccination--

Brian Lehrer: I thought that I read that that Ban gets lifted as of today. Again, am I wrong on that detail? I'm juggling a lot of facts in my brain here, alleged facts.

Jonathan Lemire: You're forgiven and we're all coming off the holidays here. I will look it up as well. It's in the coming days, whether it's today or the next couple of days, it is certainly by the 31st it will be lifted.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, that's what it was. It was New Year's.

Jonathan Lemire: Yes. I can say that confidently. In terms of the vaccination rule, though, it doesn't all line-up. Dr. Fauci said today, that look, they don't want to add more cases to the country. Therefore, they don't want someone who's sick to come in here. That makes sense. Sure, but of course, the virus is spreading rapidly across the United States. I guess the argument would be, you're not adding to the overall case number in the US because, people are already here but inherently, there is inconsistency. Certainly, that's true.

I will say public health experts have been pretty unanimous in the last couple of weeks, especially with the rise of this new variant, saying that there should be a requirement of vaccination for domestic travel as well. Not just to hopefully slow, wouldn't stop, but slow the spread of this new variant across the country, but indeed, might push people to finally get the vaccination to who, at this point, have resisted.

Brian Lehrer: As the Omicron variant begins to wane actually in South Africa, they would be within their rights to say, return is fair play, turnabout is fair play, and ban travelers from the United States like we ban travelers from there, that soon to be lifted because it's waning there and surging here.

Jonathan Lemire: Agreed. That was something that was the case for previous variants as well. The US has, unfortunately, been one of, if not the hotspot for COVID, for quite some time now. Certainly, we saw travel restrictions back and forth to Europe for a while but Canadian and Mexican borders closed, but certainly, South Africa would be well within their right to do so. Certainly, their government howled and protests when the US put forth their travel ban and the presidents defended it. Saying, "Look, we wanted to try to slow to spread give our scientists, our doctors more time to prepare."

They recognize that it wouldn't stop Omicron, one truism of this pandemic, that anything happens overseas, gets here soon enough, whether that's from China itself to start this, or certainly, the Delta wave which seem to originate, perhaps in India, but certainly exploded in Europe first before coming to United States. It would just be a matter of time before this one did as well, travel ban or not.

Brian Lehrer: Around this time, last year, we were talking about how the United States has about 4% of the world's population, but almost 20% of the world's COVID deaths. It may be headed for that, again, whether we're talking about cases, or hospitalization, or death, but a very disproportionate share of the world's COVID in the United States that was the case last winter. We'll see if that's where we wind up again through policy choices or otherwise. Last year, people could blame Trump. This year, not so much. Presumably, the government is doing everything that it thinks it can and should.

212-433-WNYC.212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer. If you want to talk to or tweet @JonathanLemire this morning, and it can still be about your airport experiences over the last few days with staff shortages and cancellations of a lot of flights or it can be what you want in COVID policy. Is the Biden administration, even though it's not the Trump administration by any means, doing enough? Do you want that vax mandate to fly? Maybe testing mandate, at least in addition to the mask mandate, which is in effect, even though as we heard from one of our callers a lot of people use the when you're eating exception to eat their way from New York to Los Angeles, 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Jonathan someone who already tweeted, "I'm with Rena our last call, vax for US travelers now." Somebody else tweeted about the wonderful story of the 11-year-old who learned the Heimlich maneuver from YouTube and then wound up saving somebody's life with it. I had mentioned that I thought of learning CPR years ago but never actually took the course to do it and didn't have YouTube back in those days when I was a kid.

Someone tweets, "As someone who had to learn CPR to become a lifeguard, I can share that you do not want to receive CPR from someone who has simply watched a lot of videos. They could actually kill you. I'm all for using YouTube to learn things, but learning CPR is not among them." I thought Jonathan that that's worth sharing.

President Biden gave his Omicron speech last Tuesday and it included an announcement of 500 million at-home tests, the rapid at-home tests to be sent to Americans who ask for them. To my eye, that's getting met with shrugs and criticism in a lot of places because that's less than two tests per American when rapid testing seems to require periodic repeating depending on your exposures and your plans with family or at work. How did they come up with that number and how are the reactions in general?

Jonathan Lemire: You're not wrong in that this was met with some skepticism and a sense of, "Well, this would've been more helpful a few weeks ago." The Biden administration has moved here to mobilize tests and certainly 500 million is a big number no matter how you caught it, but you're right. In terms of if you think of a number of tests per Americans, it doesn't work out to that many, and more than that it's about timing.

It does not take Nostradamus to predict that there will be a surge of travel this holiday season particularly because so many Americans didn't travel last year because high of the pandemic that was pre-vaccine and then people wanted to get out and see loved ones this time around--

Brian Lehrer: Things were getting better even with the Delta variant, as serious it was for many people who got it, things were better than just before Thanksgiving let's say, in 2020 and so there was reason to believe that if we acted in safe ways around the ongoing Delta variant that a lot of us could travel safely, but then boom it was on Thanksgiving weekend that Omicron got named.

Jonathan Lemire: Yes, bad holiday house guest there. You're right that there was a sense that though there were certainly still pockets of the country that were having real issues with the Delta variant, largely unvaccinated populations, red states, Republican governors. That's not the case obviously for New York and much of the Northeast so there was a sense, I'm sure many of your listeners did feel like, "Hey, this is the year I can get out there and travel."

The testing should have been part of, and health experts had said this all along, that even once the vaccine came to be, the testing shouldn't be forgotten. It's still an essential part of how the country will eventually move through this pandemic for people to be able to travel safely to stop the spread because there were the occasional, even with Delta, the occasional breakthrough cases, and so on.

Now, with Omicron which certainly emerged here in the last few weeks has become now the dominant strain of the virus it is extraordinarily transmissible more so than Delta. Even among vaccinated people, even among boosted people, granted those people tend to not get that sick but they could still spread it. There are of course people who just luck of the draw get far more ill because of it even if they're vaccinated, and obviously, there are all those people with underlying health conditions or people who are older, they're still at risk here so that we shouldn't trivialize the threat that Omicron poses.

There was a sense that the White House just simply dropped the ball here a little bit. They should have prioritized testing sooner. They should never have stopped prioritizing testing and this is something the White House had been pushed on in recent days. They admit privately that they were caught off guard by the surge of Delta, even though perhaps as we discussed earlier they shouldn't have been because it was percolating overseas and whatever happens over there comes over here.

Europe was already starting to get on fire from the Delta variant when the president on July 4th said it was time to declare our independence from the virus. That's a move that many White House officials deeply regret. This wasn't quite as blatant in terms of a miscalculation but Omicron was moving and the White House, there's some sense that they were a little slow to ramp up their response even as the new variant was becoming apparent overseas.

Brian Lehrer: I see we have a flight attendant calling in. Jonathan in Newark don't go away we're going to take your call right after we have to take a one-minute break as we continue with Jonathan Lemire, Politico White House Bureau Chief and MSNBC host and your calls and tweets stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC with Jonathan Lemire from Politico and MSNBC. Jonathan in Newark you're on WNYC. Jonathan, thank you so much for calling in, hi there?

Jonathan: Hello. Good morning everyone. I appreciate the guest you have on today. I enjoy his contributions and long-time listener but I am a flight attendant based here in New York, New Jersey metropolitan area. I fly internationally and domestically both. Came from Dublin yesterday, go to Boston tonight. My perspective on this issue is first of all I will say that I enjoy working international flights versus domestic flights even prior to this, however, especially now because I will say domestically is more combative drama.

There's more also domestically [inaudible 00:26:38] a plane so there's no filter from a passport to a COVID test to a vaccination requirement. It's much more challenging and difficult to work a two-hour flight to Florida than a eight or nine-hour flight to Zurich, for instance. I think that from the onset of this, the mass requirement, which I fully support the problem was when you had an I'll be full disclosure I was not a Trump supporter.

When you had the president of the United States at that time Donald Trump say, make fun of reporters who are wearing masks and Mitch McConnell's wife, the Department of Transportation head at the time wouldn't implement a mask mandate on the planes, it created a division in this country. That division still exists substantially within the populace and it's a very, very challenging time.

I'm so proud of the company that I work for, I will not disclose who they are but we require all frontline employees that they have a vaccine. We were the first to do that and we've received our 99% compliance. These other companies it's an absolute mess what they've created by being wishy-washy about the issue. We are crossing international borders. We are running an operation that's interacting with all these people, it's totally irresponsible for them not to have a vaccine mandate for their frontline employees.

Brian Lehrer: What's your impression of the safety of flying in the Omicron era? We're going to ask a virologist later on in the show but for you as a flight attendant, what's the buzz among your peers? I don't expect you to be a scientist here but maybe you at least have a sense of how people are perceiving it and whether it's different with Omicron because of the additional contagiousness despite the good ventilation and everything else on the planes.

Jonathan: I do believe that it is a safe indoor environment overall. I think though I actually told some friends this last week and concerns of the environment on the airplane I said, this week in my personal opinion without any scientific knowledge I think this is the big spread week because everybody has gone to the dinners, everybody's gone to the events or whatever now they're transiting home. I think as long as people wear masks largely on the airplane and follow the procedures then it's largely a safe environment. I'm not saying it's 100% but I think it's fairly safe.

Many of my colleagues have been calling out sick and such, et cetera, and that I believe is due to the increased transmissibility of the Omicron variant. I think maybe some of how we viewed this in the past, maybe it's not as safe as what it was. Maybe that's the case. I think there is a risk to travel. However, I think the large level of transmission is actually occurring when people let their guard down and see the loved ones and hug and kiss and go to the events and these types of things. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: That's where people are getting it. Your sense of your colleagues in the flight attendant world who are now calling in sick with COVID, it sounds like there's not a lot of buzz among your colleagues saying, "You know, I got this at work. I didn't get this at work earlier in the year, but now I got this on a plane," as opposed to, "I probably got this in my personal life."

Jonathan: In my opinion, I think it's a lot of people got-- There's six that they can't go to work, so current requirements I believe it's 10 days, you have to stay out. With this wave especially hitting the Northeast and we're the largest carrier into the Northeast, we've been hit by it substantially. Also, people that in the past may have been asymptomatic if they're testing because they're going to visit family or they're just more concerned about it, then, of course, you're going to have more positive tests coming about which meeting people will isolate which is good overall. I believe that as far as-- I don't think my colleagues are afraid of a plane I don't get that vibe from them at all.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Oh, really, really interesting. Jonathan, thank you. Thank you for your work and thank you for your call I really appreciate it. We're going to go now next to John, a volunteer ambulance worker in Westchester. John, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling in.

John: Thank you very much.

Brian Lehrer: What would you like to tell us?

John: Thank you. The emergency room turnaround time because it's so crowded is impacting our service and I would really suggest that in order to visit a hospital as a patient that the person be vaccinated beginning January 15th and then showing that they are vaccinated on schedule and boosted in order to enter a hospital clear out a lot of--

Brian Lehrer: You're talking about people coming-- You're not talking about patients in a hospital. You couldn't mandate that. You're talking about visitors?

John: No, I am talking about patients. The patients who are unvaccinated are risking the police officer who responds. Our whole volunteer ambulance corps is fully vaccinated and boosted. That's a mandate and the hospitals are just overwhelmed and we are sitting in next to 45 minutes to an hour because the staff cannot admit our patient from the ambulance for whatever. The hospitals are overcrowded.

Brian Lehrer: I hear the frustration in voice and I get the desperation in some of the situations where there is hospital overcrowding, but there is a moral question here, right? You can't leave somebody to die because they're not vaccinated if they really need an ambulance.

John: We will be there, but fortunately in our area the incidence is moderate and the vaccination rate is 90 plus percent. We do check on vaccination status, but there's still COVID-19 for us to deal with and people could cooperate very nicely, we would appreciate it.

Brian Lehrer: John, thank you very, very much for your call and your service. Wow Jonathan Lemire, this is an example of how-- and you probably know, like I know people who are saying, "I've just had it with the unvaccinated. I have no patients. I have no sympathy. Just get your damn vaccine and stop complaining about it." When we hear it from an ambulance worker who doesn't even think people should be admitted to the hospital, even though I don't think hospitals could commit that ethical decision or that decision ethically, I think it represents something when we get a call like that.

Jonathan Lemire: You are right and I think that's certainly Hippocratic oath would differ from what that caller outlined. Certainly, the frustration is understandable and I think that's something truthfully we've heard from some of our top public officials including the president in recent weeks where the messaging from the White House has changed. Whether or not it's a good idea politically or not remains to be seen. For a while there it was more of a sense of trying to coach and try to talk up the unvaccinated and say, "Hey, you should do this. You should do this."

I think lately the president is more channeling the anger and frustration of the vaccinated who are saying, "Look, you've had time to do this. You are putting yourself in jeopardy, your loved ones in jeopardy, but more than that all the rest of us." You're not just endangering the economic recovery, the possibility of businesses or schools shutting down again because of the spread of the virus, largely among unvaccinated people, but someone's health, someone who's done the right things. Who's masked, who is vaccinated, who has even gotten a booster, might just have the bad luck of getting a breakthrough case that takes a turn for the worst and that's because of people who are not vaccinated.

I think it's right. We're coming up, we've done this for two years now. This is our second Christmas that's been colored by COVID and certainly, public health experts, though Omicron is asserting so rapidly there's a sense that maybe it'll peak quickly as well, and maybe even by February 1st, we may be on the other end of this spike. That doesn't mean there wouldn't be another variant down the road either and the chances of that only increase the more unvaccinated people that are out there that give the chance for more mutations to come about.

Brian Lehrer: As the latest indication of how quickly it's increasing right now at least in terms of cases. Again, listeners, we'll talk about this next hour in terms of hospitalizations and deaths and how much the virologist who's coming on, Dr. Angela Rasmussen can tell us that this really is a milder variant and that that matters even in the case of the tremendous spike in the number of cases. We'll see what she says about those ratios.

A week ago on the show, Jonathan, we were having our eyes pop out of our heads because the daily case numbers in New York State were 22,000, 23,000 a day for the first time in the whole pandemic. Well, a listener just tweeted the new number from the New York Times for yesterday, 54,000 cases in one day. It's significantly more than doubled in terms of cases per day, that's 54,000 just yesterday. We'll see where this ends. Let me ask you one more question from a listener on Twitter. Listener asks, "For you as a White House correspondent, how do we get Biden's free rapid tests? Very vague." This person writes.

Jonathan Lemire: You broke up there Brian. Give that to me one more time.

Brian Lehrer: The question was, how do we get Biden's free rapid tests that he's offering Americans that they can ask for?

Jonathan Lemire: Logistics are still being sorted out right now truthfully. It could be, some will be offered at deposit sites, some could be indeed mailed. This is something that's going to be worked the next few weeks. Some of the details of this are still being sorted out. Unfortunately, as we discussed earlier, they did not get here in time for the holidays and it's not clear exactly how many will even show up in January. The end goal is 500 million. That doesn't mean they're all coming next month. I think that expectations should be modest in terms of when people get this and how.

The hope also though is between now and then before this federal government surge of tests that there just simply be more would return to the shelves. It has been, as you know Brian, it's such a challenge to find a test particularly around North to Northeast. In New York City, it's been near impossible, lines hours long at COVID testing sites.

When you get to the front you're told there's no rapid available and PCR is certainly good, but that might take a couple of days to get a result. Unfortunately, another thing I think that we've been hinted at, the federal government's going to look at is that we have price gouging, that the cost of tests have skyrocketed in the last week or two. That's something that the peak regulators are going to take a look at as well.

Brian Lehrer: After getting up way too early for his show on MSNBC called Way Too Early at five o'clock thanks for staying up late. This counts as staying up late, I guess, for you Jonathan. Jonathan Lemire, who's also the White House Bureau Chief for Politico we really appreciate it. Happy New Year.

Jonathan Lemire: Happy New Year to you. There's a 0% chance I'll see midnight, but I hope to see you again soon into the new year.

 

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