(WASHINGTON) — Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn, said she had an “unproductive” call with Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., on Monday over her anti-Muslim remarks and claimed the Colorado Republican refused to publicly apologize for suggesting she was a terrorist.
Instead, Omar claimed in a new statement that Boebert “doubled down on her hurtful and dangerous comments,” which led Omar to “end the unproductive call.”
In a video posted to Twitter last week, Boebert referred to Omar as a member of the “Jihad Squad” and claimed that a Capitol Police officer thought she was a terrorist in an encounter in an elevator on Capitol Hill.
She was condemned by Democrats and some Republicans for the remarks and apologized on Twitter Friday “to anyone in the Muslim community I offended,” adding that she had reached out to Omar’s office to speak with her directly.
Apparently, that call did not go well.
Omar hung up on Boebert after the Colorado Republican refused to make a public apology to her, according to a statement from Omar and Boebert’s account of the call.
“I believe in engaging with those we disagree with respectfully, but not when that disagreement is rooted in outright bigotry and hate,” Omar said, adding that Boebert “doubled down” on her comments.
In an Instagram video recapping their conversation, Boebert said she refused to make a public apology directly to Omar and instead demanded the Minnesota Democrat apologize for her “Anti-American” rhetoric.
“Rejecting an apology and hanging up on someone is part of cancel culture 101, and a pillar of the Democrat Party. Make no mistake, I will continue to put America first, never sympathizing with terrorists,” Boebert said in her video. “Unfortunately, Ilhan can’t say the same thing, and our country is worse off for it.”
Omar and Democratic leaders, issuing a rare joint statement last week, have called on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other Republicans to hold Republicans accountable for the anti-Muslim rhetoric, but the California Republican has said nothing publicly about the exchange.
In her statement on Monday, Omar demanded McCarthy “actually hold his party accountable” for “repeated instances of anti-Muslim hate and harassment.” Her office also said she is routinely subjected to harassment and death threats.
Omar added in a tweet on Friday that “normalizing this bigotry not only endangers my life but the lives of all Muslims.”
ABC News’ Oren Oppenheim contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Dr. Barbara Sampson, the first woman to lead the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in its 100-year history, announced her departure Monday for a job in the private sector.
Sampson has been with the agency 23 years, nine as chief, and steered it through the grueling onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We were so overwhelmed with the number of fatalities here in the city that we needed every OCME employee to be part of our COVID response,” Sampson recalled in an interview with ABC News.
Prior to the pandemic, Sampson oversaw the autopsies of Eric Garner, Joan Rivers and Jeffrey Epstein, each of which generated a degree of public controversy
“Keep with the truth and what is based in science and in medicine you can’t go too far astray,” she said of her guiding philosophy.
Sampson has championed new technology for DNA analysis and for opioids detection so autopsies can more quickly inform public health officials and law enforcement about what drugs are on the street.
She has maintained the office’s commitment, started under her predecessor Dr. Charles Hirsch, to keep examining human remains recovered from the 9/11 attacks. There were new identifications on the 20 year anniversary.
Sampson told ABC News she didn’t think much at the time of her appointment about being the first woman chief medical examiner in the city, but reflected on it now she is leaving her post for a position in the Mount Sinai Health System.
“I was clearly a role model for so many women who are interested in careers in medicine in science and in government. I found that now looking back extremely rewarding,” Sampson said.
(WASHINGTON) — Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, who served under former President Donald Trump until his firing in the wake of the 2020 election, has sued the Department of Defense over redactions they made to his upcoming book.
Esper’s memoir, set to be released in May of 2022, is expected to chronicle his time in the Trump administration, in which he served first as Secretary of the Army and then as Secretary of Defense until Trump tweeted about his firing on Nov. 9, 2020, following weeks of contention.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington on Sunday, said that Esper engaged in “extensive coordination” with the Department’s Office of Pre-publication and Security Review.
Esper alleges the review “dragged on” for six months and when he finally heard back on Oct. 7 after reaching out in May, there was no explanation given for some redactions.
“No written explanation was offered to justify the deletions,” Esper wrote in an e-mail to current Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. “My follow-on conversations with the DOPSR official handling my case confirmed my assessment. He similarly has been unable to assert that the redacted items contain classified information or compromise national security.”
Esper said he was asked not to quote his conversations with Trump or other foreign officials, although much of the material “was already in the public domain,” according to Esper.
His attorneys argue in the lawsuit that the Defense Department “has unlawfully imposed a prior restraint upon Mr. Esper by delaying, obstructing and infringing on his constitutional right to publish his unclassified manuscript entitled ‘A Sacred Oath.'”
The former defense secretary also said he had already met with Austin’s chief of staff and the Defense Department’s Director of Administration and Management, Mike Donley.
“I should not be required to change my views, opinions, or descriptions of events simply because they may be too candid at times for normal diplomatic protocol. After all, the DOPSR process is about protecting classified information and not harming national security — two important standards to which I am fully committed. Moreover, my Constitutional rights should not be abridged because my story or choice of words may prompt uncomfortable discussions in foreign policy circles,” he said in the suit.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby responded in a statement on Monday.
“We are aware of Mr. Esper’s concerns regarding the pre-publication of his memoir. As with all such reviews, the Department takes seriously its obligation to balance national security with an author’s narrative desire. Given that this matter is now under litigation, we will refrain from commenting further,” Kirby said.
In a memo reported first by ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl in his new book Betrayal, the Presidential Personnel Office under the direction of John McEntee, a favorite aide of Trump, made a case for firing Esper three weeks before Esper was terminated.
Reasons outlined for his firing in the memo included that Esper “barred the Confederate flag” on military bases, “opposed the President’s direction to utilize American forces to put down riots,” “focused the Department on Russia,” and was “actively pushing for ‘diversity and inclusion.'”
(WASHINGTON) — With the COVID-19 omicron variant sending shockwaves around the world, President Joe Biden is set to address the nation surrounding the new variant following a morning briefing from his White House COVID-19 Response Team.
The president announced Friday that starting this week, the U.S. will restrict travelers from South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique and Malawi. Experts predict it’s only a matter of time before the variant first detected in southern Africa is circulating in the U.S.
The omicron variant was first detected last week in Botswana and cases have since been confirmed in several countries including South Africa, Germany, Belgium, Japan and Canada. The World Health Organization (WHO) classified the variant as one of concern on Friday.
In an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America on Monday, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, argued omicron gives Americans more reason to get their COVID-19 booster shots — or for getting the jab if they haven’t been vaccinated already.
“We just need to make sure that we know we have tools against the virus in general,” Fauci said.
Fauci told Biden in a meeting on Sunday that it would likely take two weeks for a better picture of omicron’s transmissibility and severity, according to a White House readout of the meeting. Fauci said on ABC’s “This Week” that it will also take time to determine if the current COVID-19 vaccine is effective against the new variant.
“The pharmaceutical companies are preparing to make a specific booster for this, but we may not need that,” Fauci said on Good Morning America.
Biden will address the public twice Monday. Following a meeting with CEOs from different business sectors, Biden will also deliver remarks about the supply chain and inflation concerns.
The president continues to face low polling numbers and mounting political pressure heading into the holiday season with several crises converging, from the ongoing pandemic to supply chain woes and rising consumer prices.
ABC News’ Bill Hutchinson contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Jack Dorsey is resigning from his role as CEO of Twitter, the social media platform he co-founded in 2006, he announced in a tweet on Monday.
“There’s a lot of talk about the importance of a company being ‘founder-led,'” Dorsey wrote. “Ultimately I believe that’s severely limiting and a single point of failure. I’ve worked hard to ensure this company can break away from its founding and founders.”
Dorsey has been in his most recent role as CEO since September 2015. He said that Twitter’s chief technology officer, Parag Agrawal, will replace him as CEO.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Amy Klobuchar said she’s confident President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan will be passed by Christmas, but Republicans, including Sen. Bill Cassidy, are still firmly opposed.
Klobuchar, D-Minn., told “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos on Sunday that the Build Back Better Act would help create jobs, which she said is crucial right now because of labor shortages in certain fields.
“We’ve got workforce issues, and that’s why this Build Back Better Act is so important,” Klobuchar said. “We need people, we need kids to go into jobs that we have shortages. We don’t have a shortage of sports marketing degrees. We have a shortage of health care workers. We have a shortage of plumbers, electricians, construction workers. This bill puts us on the right path.”
The House passed the $1.7 trillion Build Back Better Act on Nov. 19 along party lines, 220-213, with one Democrat voting “no.” The legislation includes $555 billion for climate initiatives, $109 billion for universal pre-K, $150 billion for affordable housing and $167 billion for Medicare expansion.
Cassidy, R-La., told Stephanopoulos the Build Back Better plan is “a bad, bad, bad bill.”
“There’s corporate welfare. It’s going to raise the price of gasoline at least about 20 cents a gallon. And it begins to have federal dictates as to how your child’s preschool is handled, the curriculum even,” he said.
President Joe Biden applauded the House for passing the Build Back Better Act and said in a statement it would help improve the economy if enacted.
“The United States House of Representatives passed the Build Back Better Act to take another giant step forward in carrying out my economic plan to create jobs, reduce costs, make our country more competitive, and give working people and the middle class a fighting chance,” he said.
The bill now heads to the Senate, but Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Sen. Joe Manchin D-W.Va. — key players in ensuring that the bill passes in the Senate — have not agreed to support the latest version of the bill yet.
“Sen. Manchin is still at the negotiating table, talking to us every day, talking to us about voting rights, getting that bill done, restoring the Senate,” Klobuchar said. “He’s talking to us about this bill.”
Cassidy argued that the social spending bill will fuel inflation, which is currently at a 30-year high, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Stephanopoulos pointed out that the Biden administration has brought forward 17 Nobel Prize-winning economists who said the bill won’t increase inflation, but Cassidy argued that, according to the Washington Post’s Fact Checker, those economists “said that was the bill they had then, not the bill they have now.”
“They point out that if you are going to avoid inflation, then you’ve got to be able to pay for it,” Cassidy said.
The Washington Post spoke to six of the 17 economists who signed the letter in support of the bill when the package totaled $3.5 trillion. The Post found that while “some indicated that the proposed changes [to the bill] have lessened the potential impact on inflationary pressures,” none of them backed away from their signing of the letter.
Inflation has been a mounting concern among Americans. Democrats are concerned, too, as Biden’s polling numbers drop, with 55% of Americans disapproving of his handling of the economy and 50% blaming Biden directly for inflation, according to a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll.
On Tuesday, Biden announced that he would authorize a release of 50 million barrels from the U.S. strategic oil reserve, hoping to lower surging gas prices.
“I look at it this way — we’ve got an increased demand, shortage of supply. The petroleum reserve was a temporary measure,” Klobuchar said.
Cassidy has blamed the Biden administration for the high gas prices and in a tweet referred to Biden tapping into the strategic oil reserve as a “Band-Aid fix.”
Lawmakers are also facing another challenge. In October, Congress voted to temporarily raise the debt ceiling by $480 billion and put off the risk of the United States defaulting on its debt — which the treasury secretary said would be “catastrophic” — until mid-December.
Now, the time has come for negotiations to ramp up, but Republicans and Democrats are still butting heads.
“You know, if the Republicans want to scrooge out on us, and increase people’s interest rates and make it hard to make car payments — go ahead, make that case,” Klobuchar said. “We’re going to stop them from doing that.”
With only a couple weeks left until the U.S. reaches the debt limit, Stephanopoulos pressed Cassidy on why he’s against raising the debt ceiling.
“You mentioned the tax cuts. Republicans passed a huge tax cut under President Trump — that’s one of the things that extending the debt limit has to pay for,” Stephanopoulos said. “So why are you against extending the debt limit?”
“The debt limit in the past has been the result of bipartisan negotiations, bipartisan both about the spending, bipartisan both about the debt limit,” Cassidy said. “If you haven’t noticed, Republicans have not been invited in at all to discuss this.”
(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.2 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 776,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
Just 59.1% of the population in the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Nov 29, 4:44 am
WHO says overall global risk of omicron variant is ‘very high’
The World Health Organization has assessed the overall global risk related to a newly discovered variant of the novel coronavirus as “very high.”
In a technical brief published Sunday, the WHO explained that omicron, or B.1.1.529, “is a highly divergent variant with a high number of mutations,” some of which it said “are concerning and may be associated with immune escape potential and higher transmissibility.”
“Given mutations that may confer immune escape potential and possibly transmissibility advantage, the likelihood of potential further spread of Omicron at the global level is high,” the WHO concluded in a risk assessment. “Depending on these characteristics, there could be future surges of COVID-19, which could have severe consequences, depending on a number of factors including where surges may take place.”
The variant was first identified in southern Africa last week and has quickly spread to several countries across the globe, sparking new travel restrictions and shaking financial markets. On Friday, the WHO officially named the variant omicron and designated it as a “variant of concern.” Both the WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that variants of concern have shown to spread more easily than others and cause more severe disease.
While omicron has not yet been detected in the United States, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious diseases expert, told ABC News on Sunday that the variant will “inevitably” arrive.
“The question is,” he added, “will we be prepared for it?”
(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.2 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 776,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
Just 59.1% of the population in the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Nov 29, 10:17 am
Omicron completely evading vaccines is ‘extremely unlikely’: Dr. Ashish Jha
Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University School of Public Health, told TODAY he assumes omicron is already in the U.S. and predicts it’ll be identified in the next few days.
But Jha said he believes it’s “extremely unlikely” that omicron would completely evade vaccines.
“I think that our vaccines will hold up — the question is … is it a little bit less effective? A lot less effective? We will have that data — both laboratory data and clinical data — in the next week or two at the most,” he said.
“I wouldn’t make any major changes to plans” for the holidays yet, he continued. “I would just wait and make sure you’re vaccinated and everybody around you is vaccinated.”
“If you’re fully vaccinated — and especially if you’re boosted — you’re going to have more protection against this variant,” Jha said.
-ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett
Nov 29, 9:42 am
Portugal finds 13 cases of omicron variant among Lisbon soccer club
Portuguese health authorities on Monday confirmed 13 cases of the omicron variant among professional soccer players.
The Ricardo Jorge National Health Institute said the players who tested positive are all members of the Lisbon-based Belenenses SAD soccer club and that one of them had recently traveled to southern Africa, where the omicron variant was first identified last week.
The institute is investigating whether this is one of the first reported instances of local transmission of the new coronavirus variant outside of southern Africa, where most of the cases have been recorded so far.
All 13 players have been placed in quarantine and those who have been in contact with them were ordered to isolate, regardless of their vaccination status or their exposure to possible contagion. The players and their close contacts will be regularly tested for COVID-19, the institute said.
-ABC News’ Aicha El Hammar Castano
Nov 29, 9:05 am
Moderna’s chief medical officer talks omicron variant
Moderna’s chief medical officer, Dr. Paul Burton, said the omicron variant probably emerged around mid-October in southern Africa.
“How transmissible is it? We think it’s probably quite transmissible. But how severe is the disease it causes? We don’t know the answer to that question yet,” Burton told ABC News’ Amy Robach in an interview Monday on Good Morning America.
“While we think that vaccine effectiveness may come down based on the mutations seen in this virus … we should be able to get antibodies up” with the booster shot, Burton said.
“We’ll know from tests in the next couple of weeks how effective the vaccines are against this variant,” he added.
Nov 29, 8:15 am
Omicron variant will ‘spread widely,’ Fauci warns
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious diseases expert, is urging Americans who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 and are eligible to get a booster shot to do so now, in anticipation of the omicron variant spreading “widely.”
So far, there are no known confirmed cases of the new variant in the United States, according to Fauci, who is the chief medical adviser to U.S. President Joe Biden.
“But obviously, we’re on high alert,” Fauci told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in an interview Monday on Good Morning America.
“It’s inevitable that, sooner or later, it’s going to spread widely because it has at least the molecular characteristics of being highly transmissible,” he added, “even though there are a lot of things about it that we do not know but will be able to ascertain in the next week or two.”
Fauci, who is also the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said omicron clearly has a “transmissibility advantage,” based on what scientists have seen in southern Africa, where the variant was first identified last week.
“But the extent of that, again, still needs to be worked out,” he noted. “We’ll know soon.”
Fauci said the severity of illness that the omicron variant can inflict remains unclear, despite early reports that some patients had mild symptoms.
Although there is still so much unknown about the new variant, Fauci said it’s clear that vaccinated individuals, particularly those who have received booster doses, fare better against COVID-19 than their unvaccinated counterparts.
“So we don’t know exactly what’s going on with this new variant,” he said, “but I would assume — and I think it’s a reasonable assumption — that when you get vaccinated and boosted and your [antibody] level goes way up, you’re going to have some degree of protection, at least against severe disease.”
Both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna booster shots have been authorized for all adults in the United States. Anyone over the age of 18 can get a booster dose at least six months after they received their second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines, or at least two months after they got their single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
“I would strongly suggest you get boosted now and not wait for the next iteration of [the vaccine], which we may not even need,” Fauci said. “The pharmaceutical companies are preparing to make a specific booster for [omicron], but we may not need that.”
Nov 29, 4:44 am
WHO says overall global risk of omicron variant is ‘very high’
The World Health Organization has assessed the overall global risk related to a newly discovered variant of the novel coronavirus as “very high.”
In a technical brief published Sunday, the WHO explained that omicron, or B.1.1.529, “is a highly divergent variant with a high number of mutations,” some of which it said “are concerning and may be associated with immune escape potential and higher transmissibility.”
“Given mutations that may confer immune escape potential and possibly transmissibility advantage, the likelihood of potential further spread of Omicron at the global level is high,” the WHO concluded in a risk assessment. “Depending on these characteristics, there could be future surges of COVID-19, which could have severe consequences, depending on a number of factors including where surges may take place.”
The variant was first identified in southern Africa last week and has quickly spread to several countries across the globe, sparking new travel restrictions and shaking financial markets. On Friday, the WHO officially named the variant omicron and designated it as a “variant of concern.” Both the WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that variants of concern have shown to spread more easily than others and cause more severe disease.
While omicron has not yet been detected in the United States, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious diseases expert, told ABC News on Sunday that the variant will “inevitably” arrive.
“The question is,” he added, “will we be prepared for it?”
(PHILADELPHIA) — A “thriving” Temple University student months away from graduating has been gunned down near the school’s Philadelphia campus.
Samuel Collington, a 21-year-old senior, was shot Sunday afternoon, the university said, becoming one of more than 500 people killed in Philadelphia this year.
He was taken to Temple University Hospital where he was pronounced dead less than 30 minutes later from gunshot wounds to the chest and back, Philadelphia police said. No arrests have been made, police said.
Charlie Leone, the university’s executive director of Public Safety, called Collington “a bright and thriving political science student” who “already was succeeding in his field, interning as a Democracy Fellow with the city.”
He was set to graduate this spring.
“This is a true tragedy in every sense of the word,” Leone said in a statement Sunday, adding that Collington’s slaying “further highlights the senseless gun violence that continues to grip the city of Philadelphia.”
Last week Philadelphia reached 500 homicides for the year, tying the record set in 1990 for the sixth-largest city in the country.
Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said in a statement, “We will continue to work with our local, state, and federal partners and other stakeholders to get ahead of the violent crime that is plaguing our beautiful communities. We remain committed to proactively patrolling neighborhoods and encourage community members to continue to work alongside the police.”
Outlaw told ABC News chief justice correspondent Pierre Thomas earlier this month that Philadelphia has a gun culture problem.
“We’re on pace to get 6,000 illegal crime guns off the street this year; we’ve made a record number of arrests for carrying guns illegally,” she said. “We’re dealing with a culture here, there’s a culture of violence that we are trying to break through.”
Leone said Temple senior officials spoke with Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney’s office on Sunday. He said the university is “intensifying our work with the city, community groups and the Philadelphia Police Department to further enhance safety in and around the Temple community.”
(NEW YORK) — While the new omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus has not yet been detected in the United States, it will “inevitably” arrive, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday.
“We all know when you have a virus that has already gone to multiple countries, inevitably it will be here,” Fauci told ABC’s This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos. “The question is, will we be prepared for it?”
The omicron variant, named after the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet, was first detected last week in Botswana, officials said. Since then, cases of the new variant have been found in South Africa, Germany, Belgium and Hong Kong.
Pressed by Stephanopoulos on whether the omicron variant is as or more transmissible than the delta variant and other mutations that have swept the globe, Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the White House chief medical adviser, said, “It appears to be.”
“It has a bunch of mutations,” Fauci said, including “a disturbingly large number of mutations in the spike protein, which is the business end of the virus.”
“Inevitably, it will be here. The question is will we be prepared for it?”
Fauci’s comments came one day before the United States plans to impose a travel ban on most travelers from eight southern African countries.
When asked by Stephanopoulos whether the travel ban will make a difference, Fauci said, “It will slow things down.”
“Travel bans, when you have a highly transmissible virus, never completely … prevent it from coming into the country. No way that’s going to happen,” Fauci said. “But what you can do is you can delay it enough to get us better prepared. And that’s the thing that people need to understand.”
He cautioned that traveling during the pandemic is “always risky,” but if Americans have to travel, he recommended they be vaccinated and to wear a mask on flights and in airports, which he described as “one of the most congregate settings you can imagine.”
The chief medical adviser said early signs “strongly suggest” that the variant may be more transmissible and might evade protections from monoclonal antibodies and “perhaps even antibodies that are induced by vaccine.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci tells @GStephanopoulos that the omicron variant of COVID-19 “appears” to be more transmissible than other variants, “might evade some of the protection of monoclonal antibodies and…perhaps even antibodies that are induced by vaccine.” https://t.co/ETIov84eDopic.twitter.com/gzkaQEHZj6
In South Africa, cases of new COVID-19 infections have been heavily weighted toward the omicron variant, Fauci said, so, “you have to presume that it has a good degree of transmissibility advantage.”
However, Fauci noted that a relatively small proportion of the population of South Africa is vaccinated. According to Johns Hopkins University, just over 24% of people in South Africa is fully vaccinated, compared to 60% of the U.S. population.
“So, you’ve got to take that into the equation when you’re trying to figure out where this virus is really going and what its impact is going to be,” Fauci said.
Asked by Stephanopoulos if omicron causes more severe disease, Fauci said that currently remains a mystery.
He said U.S. scientists spoke to their counterparts in South Africa on Friday and plan to meet with them again later Sunday “to try and find out if the cases they have identified that clearly are caused by this variant, what is the level of severity in that.”
“Hopefully, it will be light,” Fauci said.
Pressed by @GStephanopoulos on whether vaccines can fight omicron variant, Dr. Fauci says “I don’t think there’s any possibility that this could completely evade any protection by vaccine. It may diminish it a bit, but that’s the reason why you boost.” https://t.co/RB4JDN9jsrpic.twitter.com/rE9IxqwtL3
Stephanopoulos also pressed Fauci on how susceptible vaccinated people are to the new variant, asking what is known about how resistant omicron is to the currently available vaccines.
Fauci said studies and experiments are already underway to figure out how strong the vaccines are against omicron and estimated it will take about two weeks before scientists get the answers.
“The way you find that out is you get the virus and you put it either as a whole virus or as what we call a pseudovirus, and you take antibodies or serum from people who have been vaccinated, and you determine if those antibodies can neutralize the virus,” Fauci said.
The chief medical adviser said the best way for Americans to prepare for the omicron variant is to be vaccinated, to get a booster shot as soon as they are eligible, and to keep adhering to other protective recommendations such as wearing masks and practicing social distancing.
“We are on the lookout for this. The CDC has a good surveillance system,” Fauci said. “So, if and when — and it is going to be when — it comes here, hopefully, we will be ready for it by enhancing our capabilities via the vaccine, masking, all the things that we do and should be doing.”
Asked for guidance about traveling outside of the country right now, Dr. Anthony Fauci tells @GStephanopoulos that travelers should get vaccinated and “be prudent” about wearing masks in indoor settings like airports. https://t.co/Z7XtvfKbzNpic.twitter.com/QY6dTqclTC
When Stephanopoulos broached the possibility of returning to the lockdowns due to the new variant, Fauci said it’s “really too early to say.”
“We just really need to, as I’ve said so often, prepare for the worst,” Fauci said. “It may not be that we’re going to have to go the route that people are saying. We don’t know a lot about this virus. So, we want to prepare as best we can, but it may turn out that this preparation, although important, may not necessarily push us to the next level.”
He added, “Let’s see what the information that we’re getting in real-time tells us, and we’ll make decisions based on the science and the evidence, the way we always do.”
(@jack) 
