MSNBC health analysts Dr. Irwin Redlener said Thursday on “Deadline” that President Joe Biden should ban the unvaccinated from flying both on domestic and international flights to address the growing cases of the COVID-19 omicron variant in America.
Redlener said, “We don’t know a lot about the behavior of Omicron. Will it be more contagious? It might well be. Will it be more deadly? We don’t know yet. Will it be resistant to the vaccines that are out there? They might be. We will know some the next ten days or so when the laboratory tests are concluded. Unfortunately, you know, those who are wishing, myself included, for a soon ending to this catastrophic pandemic, I am afraid we are just going to have to be waiting a while.”
He continued, “I don’t see that this is going to go away in the next two to three years. We’re going to have to just prepare ourselves for the long haul. And there’s more stuff that could be done. I was impressed with what the President announced today, and I’m impressed with how the President speaks to the American people. We needed that honesty and transparency. But what the President cannot totally control is, of course, the biology, the behavior of a very wily and dangerous virus. But there’s a couple of more tools in our quiver here which include, for example, and which is something I have been advocating for, which is, I don’t think anyone should be allowed on an airplane, domestic or international, or a train, without being able to prove they have been vaccinated. To me, that’s really the only way, in addition to testing, that we’re going to get better control over the situation we currently have.”
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