The coronavirus vaccine effort is progressing very well and we expect more than one candidate vaccine to be in advanced clinical testing by early summer, this is good news for the overall coronavirus vaccine effort.

Anthony Fauci

With the sheer volume of new cases that we are having and that we expect to continue with Omicron, one of the things we want to be careful of is that we don't have so many people out, if you are asymptomatic and you are infected, we want to get people back to the jobs -- particularly those with essential jobs -- to keep our society running smoothly.

It's been a very, very strong run on testing, obviously, not making any excuses for it : we should have had more tests available. But hopefully now as we get into the first couple of weeks in January, that'll get much better.

You know, testing has always been an issue, it's been a very, very strong run on testing.

There will be other years to do that, but not this year.

Even though we're pleased by the evidence from multiple countries that it looks like there is a lesser degree of severity, we've got to be careful that we don't get complacent about that because it might still lead to a lot of hospitalizations in the United States.

We're particularly worried about those who are in that unvaccinated class, that you know, tens and tens of millions of Americans who are eligible for vaccination who have not been vaccinated, those are the vulnerable ones when you have a virus that is extraordinarily effective in getting to people and effecting them the way Omicron is.

A vaccine requirement for a person getting on the plane is just another level of getting people to have a mechanism that would spur them to get vaccinated; namely, you can't get on a plane unless you're vaccinated, which is just another one of the ways of getting requirements, whatever that might be.

And that's the reason why people should, if they invite people over their home, essentially ask and maybe require that people show evidence that they are vaccinated, or give their honest and good faith word that they have been vaccinated.

If the protection is much more durable than the two-dose, non-boosted group, then we may go a significant period of time without requiring a fourth dose, so, I do think it's premature -- at least on the part of United States -- to be talking about a fourth dose.

I think it's too premature to be talking about a fourth dose.

Those are the kind of functions -- in the context of COVID and particularly in the context of omicron -- that you do not want to go to.

It has nothing to do with freedom, it has to do with protecting yourself and your family from a potentially deadly disease that has killed already over 800,000 Americans, but also relinquishing your societal responsibility to be part of the solution, instead of part of the problem.

I'm not sure exactly when that will happen, but I think people should not lose sight of the message that there's no doubt that if you want to be optimally protected, you should get your booster.

That's certainly on the table. Right now, it is a bit of semantics.

We definitely saw variants coming.

What the government has been doing now, and you’re going to be seeing the result of that, is making investments literally in billions of dollars to get anywhere between 200 million to 500 million tests available per month, which means there will be a lot of tests.

If you look at that data, the data are really quite impressive.

When you look at the early data, it does appear that there is a diminution in the severity as expressed by hospitalization, the real question is, is that an inherent diminution of virulence of the virus or is it because there are so many people in the population who have already been infected ?

It’s not clear whether that will need to be sooner. For those that are older, they’re immune suppressed. If you’ve been injected and boosted with a non-JJ vaccine in the last 60 to 90 days, you’ll be largely protected.

If you are vaccinated, and particularly if you are boosted, you're going to have to wear a mask on the plane anyway. That's a regulation. But be prudent and careful. When you go to the airport, particularly, that's an indoor congregate setting, i believe that if people follow the recommendations of the CDC about indoor masking, take the advice of getting vaccinated and getting boosted, we should be fine for the holidays, and we should enjoy it with our family and our friends.