CNN anchor Jake Tapper said Monday on his show “The Lead” that it was “a little bit frustrating” people were demanding schools be open without making sure all the kids, teachers, faculty, and staff are vaccinated.
CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner said, “Right now, there are 500,000 cases per day in the United States. And we’re seeing more cases now than we did last winter, which was our largest spike to date. So there’s still a lot of COVID in the United States. While we all want to look ahead, we need to have — we need to be realistic to say it will take a while to get there.”
Tapper said, “One of the things that — look, this show has been talking about the need to open schools since the summer of 2020. So I’m not against that, and we’ve been talking — because we’ve been following the science, and that’s what the science has been saying. One of the things that’s a little bit frustrating is people demanding schools be open, people demanding that the students don’t have to wear masks without acknowledging that most kids are still not vaccinated. If you want — it seems to me, you want to open the schools as safely as possible, you know, all the kids and teachers and faculty and staff need to be vaccinated. That’s the safest thing to do, right?”
Reiner said, “Right. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t not vaccinate your kids and also want your kids to go to school completely unencumbered. Right now, if you look at children in the United States, less than half of children who are eligible for vaccines are vaccinated.”
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