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[0] President Biden promises to enlist the military and 500 million rapid COVID tests to combat Omicron, while also ratcheting up his rhetoric against the unvaccinated.
[1] How concerned should you be about Omicron if you're not fully vaccinated?
[2] You're at a high risk of getting sick.
[3] And if you get sick, you're likely to spread it to others, including friends and family.
[4] But does the data support this drastic rhetoric?
[5] We'll talk to an expert about the CDC's new guidance for schools and his opinion on why the ultra -contagious Omicron variant may usher in the end to the pandemic.
[6] I'm John Bickley with Georgia Howe.
[7] It's Wednesday, December 22nd, and this is Morning Wire.
[8] Large hospital systems across the United States are halting their vaccine mandates.
[9] What's causing this sudden shift, and what could mandate -related court challenges mean for the rest of the country?
[10] And Chinese tennis player Peng Shui is back in the news after giving her first public interview.
[11] She now denies making any claims of sexual.
[12] abuse, saying it was all a misunderstanding.
[13] Was she coerced into walking back her earlier accusations, and where has she been the past few months?
[14] Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.
[15] Stay tuned.
[16] We have the news you need to know.
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[23] New CDC guidance suggests that kids should stay in school even if they've been exposed to COVID, and some are theorizing that the ultra -contagious yet mild omercrone variant may eventually help lead us out of the pandemic by acting as nature's vaccine.
[24] Joining us to discuss is physician and pharmaceutical entrepreneur Dr. Humann Hamadi.
[25] Dr. Hamadi, stay in school is the new guidance from the CDC.
[26] The guidance advises children to stay in school rather than quarantine, even if they are exposed to COVID.
[27] So this is a really big departure from past guidance.
[28] What can you tell us about this?
[29] I think this guidance is very interesting because it acknowledges a couple of things.
[30] Number one, it acknowledges the importance of kids staying at school as much as possible.
[31] In the past, the COVID mitigation efforts have been prioritized over education, but given all the learning loss, all the depression, all the socioeconomic impact, all of the other major problems that are not medical that have been caused the kids from keeping them out of school out of this fanatical attempt to prevent the spread of COVID.
[32] All of a sudden, I think the regulators on a federal level have realized the importance of keeping kids in school.
[33] Second, I think it's an acknowledgement of the fact that the spread of COVID is largely not happening at schools, as had been worried about back in March.
[34] of 2020.
[35] And in third, I think it's also a very strong implicit acknowledgement of the fact that children, by and large, don't become extremely sick.
[36] Children don't become hospitalized in a major way.
[37] And children, by and large, again, don't die from COVID -19.
[38] Now, speaking of children, there was a study about the effect of the pandemic on kids.
[39] And one conclusion was really striking.
[40] It said that kids born during the pandemic have, quote, significantly reduced verbal, motor, and overall cognitive performance compared to children born pre -pandemic.
[41] So that's obviously really frightening for parents.
[42] How certain are those findings?
[43] Is this a very small study?
[44] And what do researchers think is going on here?
[45] So, you know, that study was one that was observational.
[46] It was a preliminary study.
[47] This is nothing that has yet been published in a major journal like the New England Journal of Medicine or JAMA, for example.
[48] And the other thing, which the author, of that study admit that they did not do is established a direct causative relationship, right, between things like masks or distancing or any other parameters taken such as school closures.
[49] It's almost common sense, but at the same time, that level of proof hasn't risen to a medical level of rigor which medical journals will publish saying that this is a causative relationship.
[50] So the suspicion is that having faces covered and maybe having reduced interaction is causing kids to have delays in some of their social learning.
[51] That's correct.
[52] So you've mentioned in a previous interview that Omicron may actually lead to the end of the pandemic or the end of the pandemic phase of coronavirus.
[53] Can you elaborate on that?
[54] Yeah.
[55] What's interesting is that when you look at the best vaccines that we have, what are they?
[56] The vaccines for MMR, the vaccines for chickenpox, these are what you call live attenuated viruses.
[57] We take the virus in the lab, we weaken it, and then we inject it into people.
[58] And it doesn't cause disease, but it does cause a really profound immune reaction.
[59] Now imagine, hypothetically, if Omer Kwan were Mother Nature's version of a live attenuated vaccine.
[60] People get infected.
[61] By and large, they don't get sick or die.
[62] But at the same time, they can develop a robust immunity against the virus because now they're not just generating immunity against that one spike protein, which is what the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are directed against, but rather you're generating immunity against the entire virus.
[63] And that may potentially, again, there's no proof of this yet, but some people are hypothesizing that that may generate a very rapid, basically immunization by infection rather than by vaccination of a huge proportion of the population, whether or not they chose to become vaccinated.
[64] and that may rapidly lead to a situation where there's, again, simply no one left to infect or insufficient numbers of people left to infect for the virus to maintain its pandemic status.
[65] All right, well, we're just about out of time, but Dr. Hamadi, thank you so much for coming on.
[66] Thank you.
[67] That was Dr. Human Hamadi.
[68] Coming up, big hospital groups are reversing their vaccine mandates.
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[77] While the legal battle over the COVID -19 vaccine mandates continues, some hospital systems are starting to walk back their staff vaccine mandates.
[78] Here to tell us more is DailyWire's Charlotte Pence Bond.
[79] So Charlotte, some hospitals are changing their policies, now saying people who work there don't need to get vaccinated.
[80] What's going on here?
[81] That's right.
[82] Big hospital groups like Intermountain Health Care, HCA health care, tenant health care, and nonprofits like Advent Health and the Cleveland Clinic are pausing their mandates.
[83] However, HCA and tenant have said employees must abide by local measures if they're in states that do require vaccination.
[84] And the Cleveland Clinic said it would create precautions like testing for employees who are unvaccinated and tend to patients, but the vaccine mandate will be gone.
[85] Testing for unvaccinated employees, but not for vaccinated.
[86] That's interesting given what we know about the vaccine and viral transmission.
[87] Yeah, it is.
[88] Data shows that vaccinated individuals may carry similar amounts of the virus as the unvaccinated, although they may stay contagious for a shorter period.
[89] But as of now, the practice is to only test unvaccinated employees.
[90] So there are some legal reasons why these hospitals are shifting their policies, which we'll get to in a minute.
[91] But what about staffing?
[92] I understand there's some concerns there.
[93] Yeah, very much so.
[94] So hospital leaders, public health officials, and nursing organizations have all said that vaccine mandates have contributed to severe hospital staffing shortages.
[95] On top of that, reports also show that the price of labor is increased.
[96] And this is all while hospitals were already having a difficult timekeeping workers at all levels as hospitalizations rose with a delta variant.
[97] A study conducted with the CDC reported that as of the middle of September, 30 % of hospital staff were unvaccinated.
[98] That was at over 2 ,000 hospitals across the U .S. Once San Diego nurse left her job due to California's state vaccine mandate and spoke about it in August.
[99] I was no problem working in the health care system over the last 18 months without a vaccine, but now all of a sudden, I'm a threat to public health.
[100] What you're doing is you're creating a health care crisis.
[101] We already have a nursing shortage.
[102] In America.
[103] Alan Levine is the CEO of Ballot Health, and he said they have around 14 ,000 employees, and about 2 ,000 of them aren't vaccinated.
[104] He said firing that many people would have been, quote, devastating to their system.
[105] Yeah, I bet.
[106] Now, beyond shortages, there have also been some recent decisions in the courts that affect all this, right?
[107] Yeah, in late November, a federal judge in Louisiana blocked Biden's vaccine mandate for health care workers and put into place an injunction on the order across the country.
[108] As a side note, keep in mind the mandate for health care workers is, separate from the OSHA mandate for private companies.
[109] The health care worker mandate requires all health care workers at places that accept Medicare and Medicaid to be vaccinated.
[110] Now, last week, a federal appeals court effectively restored that health care worker mandate in several states, but not all.
[111] So what it's really looking like is that it will all come down to the Supreme Court.
[112] And in fact, the Biden administration is signaling the same as they just asked the high court to get involved.
[113] Do we have any indication of what we can expect that that actually happens?
[114] It's hard to say, but the Supreme Court, Court did recently uphold the New York vaccine mandate for health care employees despite the fact that it doesn't have a provision for religious exemption.
[115] So that's an indication in how they could vote in this case.
[116] That said, justices, Gorsuch, Alito, and Thomas disagreed.
[117] In his dissent, Gorsuch wrote, quote, the test of this court's substance lies in its willingness to defend more than the shadow of freedom in the trying times, not just the easy ones.
[118] Well, this whole situation sounds like a real mess and it impacts millions of health care workers.
[119] Yeah, it does.
[120] We'll see if the Supreme Court clears this up.
[121] Charlotte, thanks for the reporting.
[122] Thanks for having me. That's DailyWire's Charlotte Pence Bond.
[123] Women's tennis player Peng Shui is once again in the news, this time giving her first public statement since accusing a senior Chinese Communist Party official of sexual assault in early November.
[124] Here with an update is Daily Wire Sports reporter Joe Morgan.
[125] So, Joe, what's the latest on Pung?
[126] Yeah, thanks for having me on, Georgia.
[127] So on Sunday, Pung spoke to a Singapore -based Chinese language newspaper.
[128] In the interview, Pung denied ever making the sexual assault allegations, calling it a, quote, misunderstanding.
[129] This actually was caught on video, by the way, so we were able to see her and she appeared safe.
[130] Pung said that she had, quote, never spoken or written about anyone sexually assaulting her.
[131] She also told the paper that she has been living at her home in Beijing and has, quote, always been free.
[132] Wow, so kind of a 180 from her initial claims.
[133] Yeah, absolutely.
[134] But this all needs to be taken with a grain of assault, considering the control that the Chinese government has on its citizens.
[135] On November 2nd, Pung posted a lengthy statement to the Chinese social media platform, Weibo, detailing the sexual assault from a senior Chinese official.
[136] Her post was deleted about 30 minutes after publication, and Pung's account on Webo was blocked from searches on the platform.
[137] Pung was then not seen or heard from publicly until November 17th, at which point a statement attributed to Pong was shared on Twitter by CGTN, which is a Chinese state -affiliated media company.
[138] In that post, which was somewhat suspicious given the circumstances, Pung denied her claim that she was sexually assaulted.
[139] And there's been quite a response from the sports world, particularly women's tennis.
[140] Yeah, that's correct.
[141] The Women's Tennis Association suspended all WTA tournaments in China, and that includes Hong Kong at the beginning of December until a, quote, full and transparent investigation without censorship into Pung Shui's sexual assault accusations is completed.
[142] Following Pung's initial denial of the sexual assault claims, the WTA reiterated that, quote, these appearances do not alleviate or address the WTA's significant concerns about her well -being and ability to communicate without censorship or coercion.
[143] Even the International Olympic Committee, which has held two calls with Pung over the past month, has walked back their statements that Pung appears to be, quote, safe and well, saying they can't, quote, provide you with absolute certainty on anything.
[144] With the Beijing Winter Olympics right around the corner, Pung's situation has become worldwide news.
[145] It's not just making its round in the sports world.
[146] both the United Nations and the White House have called on proof of Pung's whereabouts and well -being.
[147] The calls came before the announcement that the U .S. will be diplomatically boycotting the Winter Olympics given the PRC's quote, ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity.
[148] Well, hopefully we'll get a real investigation into this.
[149] Yeah, I don't know, Georgia.
[150] It is China.
[151] Right.
[152] Joe, thanks for reporting.
[153] Thanks, Georgia.
[154] That's Daily Wire sports reporter, Joe Morgan.
[155] Other stories we're tracking this week, A special prosecutor in Chicago found that state's attorney Kim Fox misled the public in the Jesse Smollett investigation.
[156] The full report, released Monday, says there were possible ethics violations and several false and misleading public statements by Fox and her office.
[157] The report also found that Fox continued to text with Smollett's sister after she publicly claimed to have cut off communication.
[158] And Brandon Brown, the NASCAR driver behind the Let's Go Brandon sensation, broke his silence in a recent op -ed.
[159] In the piece, Brown said that while he has no interest in leading some political fight, he also understands why people have embraced the chant, saying, quote, I understand that millions of people are struggling right now and are frustrated, struggling to get by and struggling to build a solid life for themselves and their families, and wondering why their government only seems to make it worse.
[160] If you like this episode and are interested in hearing more, subscribe to Morning Wire on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening, and give us a five -star review.
[161] that's all the time we've got this morning.
[162] Thanks for waking up with us.
[163] We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know.
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