Dr. Hotez: ‘It Makes No Sense to Lift [School] Mask Mandates at This Point’

EXCERPT:

HOTEZ: “Well, look, this is the most highly transmissible variant we’ve seen. We’ve got something on the order of measles and therefore, if you start lifting mask mandates now, you’re basically condemning all the kids to get infected with Omicron and -- and having to live with those consequences, which means some kids have to be hospitalized or possibly worse. So it makes no sense to lift mask mandates at this point. It makes every bit of sense to maximize vaccinations because we know that’s having a huge impact, especially the boosters on reducing hospitalizations, reducing emergency room visits by quite a bit. So if you’ve only gotten two doses of the vaccine, you need that third dose to stay out of the hospital and the emergency room, point one, and we need to max out vaccinating our kids and we’re just not doing that nationally and therefore, we invite Omicron to continue to -- to linger. And so, you know, we should talk about this like it’s out of our hands. It’s every bit in our hands to get rid of Omicron, you know, out -- out of  the -- out of the country right now.”