As new strains of coronavirus appear in various parts of the world and cases within the U.S. continue to peak, officials are stressing the importance of getting vaccinated.
"Right now the science suggests that the vaccines are still effective against the strains that have been identified but we're in a race," U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams told Cheddar.
Adams said the existence of new virus strains is not uncommon, and COVID-19 has mutated nearly 30 times since it was first discovered. However, he noted that mutations do not necessarily mean the virus will become more deadly or contagious.
While the vaccines appear to be holding up against new variants, there is still pressure, according to Adams, to reach "community immunity" before those doses become ineffective. As a result, the Surgeon General said that more has to be done to increase the volume of vaccinations and to speed up the process.
"We need businesses to be advocates for vaccines and to help us spread information about how people can stay healthy, including by getting vaccinated, so we can open up schools, open up restaurants, get back to worship again, get back to doing the things that we were doing in 2019 before we ever heard of this thing called COVID-19," Adams said.
In a report released today by the Office of the Surgeon General, a lack of prevention investments has impacted the overall health of the country and when it comes to COVID-19, in particular, Adams said he thinks businesses can be a line of defense against the virus if they are willing to be more vocal about people maintaining their health.
He said he was aware of the hesitancy many Americans have when it comes to taking the vaccine, partly because of the speed in which it was developed but wants the public to understand that "there were no safety corners cut whatsoever." Adams expressed a fear that misinformation could cause many people to avoid the vaccine altogether.
Vaccine Timeline
Officials planned for 20 million Americans to get vaccinated by the end of 2020, but the straggling rollout only yielded about 2.8 million people who had received a dose by year's end, partly because some hospitals didn't receive enough doses, while others received a surplus. The surgeon general said that in addition to using pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens, the focus should be shifted to all possible avenues to quickly get as many people vaccinated as possible.
"We need to use churches and other sites where people are so that we can quickly get vaccinations into arms," he noted. "And we also need to address vaccine confidence because a vaccine does nothing if a person is unwilling to take it."
For Adams, it's an all-hands-on-deck approach to stomping out COVID-19 and as the Biden administration gears up to take over the White House, he said he hopes to work with the administration, particularly Surgeon General nominee Vivek Murthy, to continue the effort.
"Dr. Murthy and I have worked together for the past three and half years. It's a small group of surgeons general," Adams said.
"I want us to be successful, and I'm committed to helping the Biden administration and our country — because I am the nation's doctor — really recover from this pandemic. And that's why I put this report out today," he added.
As the U.S. comes up on the first anniversary of the January 6 insurrection.,A.C. Thompson, investigative reporter at ProPublica, joined Cheddar's Baker Machado to discuss updates to American Insurrection by FRONTLINE, ProPublica and Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program. The documentary investigates the attack on the Capitol touched off by the lie that the presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump but with new information gleaned since the event including interviews with lawmakers and law enforcement and the evolution of groups like the Boogaloo Boys and the Proud Boys behind the attack. "In some ways those groups that were kind of the vanguard of January 6 are maybe no longer relevant because their message is everywhere," he said.
A new report from ProPublica and the Washington Post found that Facebook Groups played a major role in the spread of misinformation linked to the January 6 insurrection with more than 650,000 posts claiming that Joe Biden's election victory was illegitimate.
Millions of Americans with young children have relied on the child tax credit since the federal government began issuing checks in July 2021. The last round of payments was sent out just before the Christmas holiday — at the same time as the omicron variant surged. Leah Hamilton, associate professor of social work at Appalachian State University, joined Cheddar to discuss what the end to the tax credit means as the U.S. sees the end of many relief programs and its highest number of COVID cases since the start of the pandemic. "It'll become harder for families to meet their basic needs, increasing national childhood poverty rates and the proportion of families who have difficulty putting food on the table, maintaining stable housing, and paying their bills," Hamilton said. She also pointed to research that the credit as a long-term investment in children offsets claims that it contributes to macroeconomic impacts like inflation.
U.S. President Joe Biden spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over the week-end, just days after he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The call comes as Washington prepares to meet with Moscow on January 10, as tensions mount over Russia's military build up near its border with Ukraine. Cheddar News speaks with Mustafa Tameez, a former advisor to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, about the issue.
Several Silicon Valley insiders are being accused of contorting a 1990s-era tax break to avoid taxes on millions of dollars of investment profits. The tax break is known as the qualified small business stock exemption, and it allows early investors in certain companies to avoid half of the taxes on up to $10 million in capital gains. A piece recently published in the New York Times says venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz replicated the tax exemption by giving shares of companies to friends and family, who would otherwise face a 23.8% capital gains bill. The CEO of Roblox is also accused of replicating the tax break for his family members at least 12 times. Although the loophole known as 'stacking' is considered to be legal, the Times piece implies that the exemption has been manipulated for the ultra-wealthy to become more wealthy. Greycroft co-founder and Chairman Emeritus Alan Patricof joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Chris Sommerfeldt, City Hall reporter for the New York Daily News, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he discusses both the wins and losses of Bill de Blasio's eight years as New York City Mayor.
The push to regulate the gig worker economy is gaining steam as the share of workers who participate in freelancing through businesses like Uber and Lyft have also exponentially grown during the pandemic. Employment attorney Mark Kluger, founding partner at Kluger Healey, LLC, joined Cheddar to break down how the battle to reclassify gig workers will continue in the new year, and why the issue continues to generate conflict. "More and more workers are using gig work as their primary source of income and as a result of that they are not like employees in the sense that they don't have benefits like health insurance," Kluger noted.
