 So I think I speak for approximately 100% of the population when I say I cannot wait for the pandemic to be over. We're all anxious to see the end of COVID-19. I want to meet my niece who was born during the pandemic. I want to see my nieces and nephews. The issue is, as an individual, I can only do so much. I can only do my part in so far as I stay home as much as possible. But what really matters is what governments do at the state, at the local level. Because if they're not taking it seriously, then the pandemic is going to be extended for all of us. And that's what's happening. So after the post-holiday surge, cases started to sharply decline in February. And once a lot of state governors saw that the cases were sharply decreasing, they thought, all right, that's good enough. I'm washing my hands with this pandemic and it's over. We'll just go ahead and reduce all restrictions on indoor gathering and we'll even lift our mask mandates. Now that is for the states who ever chose to take it seriously. There are some states such as Florida and South Dakota who just pretended as if there was never a pandemic. But states like Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and West Virginia are now just declaring the pandemic is over. Even if that is obviously premature, you have states like Arizona who has a mask mandate that's set to expire at the beginning of April. And they're also lifting all restrictions on indoor gathering. But I mean, I would be remiss to not talk about how this isn't just what Republicans are doing. Even in many democratic controlled states, they're also too early lifting COVID-19 restrictions in Connecticut. They're at least keeping the mask mandate, which is the bare minimum that you can do to protect your citizens. Because they're not going to wear masks unless you mandate it. I've seen in my state how that really does make a difference. We went from like 20% of people wearing masks to 99.9% of people wearing masks in public once it became mandatory. But in Connecticut, they're not going to get rid of the mask mandate. But they're just going to get rid of all restrictions when it comes to indoor gathering. So if you want to go to the gym, if you want to go to church, that's okay. And in the state of Oregon, Governor Kate Brown has decided that all kids will be returning to school on April 19th. Doesn't necessarily matter where we're at with regard to the pandemic. Doesn't matter if we're in a fourth surge by then. I say April 19th, and it's going to be April 19th. So you can already guess what's happening. I mean, you don't have to guess. You see what's happening. You probably see the numbers. We started to see cases level off after declining sharply. And now they're starting to rise once again. And we are possibly looking at another surge, a fourth wave. And the issue is that people are thinking, well, you know what? There's this vaccine coming so it doesn't really matter. We see the light at the end of the tunnel. So who cares? The issue is as the virus spreads that increases the possibility that new mutations, new variants will pop up that are resistant to the vaccines. And if there is a new mutation that's more contagious, that is resistant to the vaccine, guess what happens? We're all fucked. The duration of the pandemic is a lot longer. So we can't just pretend as if the pandemic is over when it isn't actually over. We still have to be careful. The lawmakers are incapable of doing anything that's responsible because the responsible measure here is what isn't necessary to keep capitalism, economy, the business elites happy. But the CDC director is really trying to level with people here. And she actually went off script and she got visibly emotional trying to describe how, listen, we're so close. We just have to hang on a little bit longer. Stop being fucking dumb. She didn't say this. This is what she said though. When I first started at CDC about two months ago, I made a promise to you. I would tell you the truth even if it was not the news we wanted to hear. Now is one of those times when I have to share the truth and I have to hope and trust you will listen. I'm going to pause here. I'm going to lose the script and I'm going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom. We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are and so much reason for hope. But right now I'm scared. I know what it's like as a physician to stand in that patient room, downed, loved, masked, shielded, and to be the last person to touch someone else's loved one because their loved one couldn't be there. I know what it's like when you're the physician, when you're the healthcare provider and you're worried that you don't have the resources to take care of the patients in front of you. I know that feeling of nausea when you read the crisis standards of care and you wonder whether there are going to be enough ventilators to go around and who's going to make that choice. And I know what it's like to pull up to your hospital every day and see the extra morgue sitting outside. I didn't know at the time when it would stop, we didn't have the science to tell us. We were just scared. We have come such a long way. Three historic scientific breakthrough vaccines and we are rolling them out so very fast. So I'm speaking today not necessarily as your CDC director and not only as your CDC director, but as a wife, as a mother, as a daughter to ask you to just please hold on a little while longer. I so badly want to be done. I know you all so badly want to be done. We are just almost there, but not quite yet. So I'm asking you to just hold on a little longer to get vaccinated when you can so that all of those people that we all love will still be here when this pandemic ends. The trajectory of the pandemic in the United States looks similar to many other countries in Europe, including Germany, Italy, and France look like just a few weeks ago. Since that time, those countries have experienced a consistent and worrying spike in cases. We are not powerless. We can change this trajectory of the pandemic, but it will take all of us recommitting to following the public health prevention strategies consistently while we work to get the American public vaccinated. I'm calling on our elected officials, our faith based communities, our civic leaders and our other influencers in communities across the nation. And I'm calling on every single one of you to sound the alarm to carry these messages into your community and your spheres of influence. We do not have the luxury of inaction for the health of our country. We must work together now to prevent a fourth surge. I mean, I don't know what else she can possibly do. She's literally warning us of impending doom. We see what's happening in Europe. We can take the precautions now to not see another surge. But people in America have just decided that they're over it. States have decided it's over and regardless, we're just not going to take it seriously. Our own stupidity is going to be our demise. And I'm speaking more broadly, not necessarily just with regard to COVID-19. I see the way that the United States and the world has mishandled COVID-19. And I think if we can't even handle this a pandemic, how are we going to ever be capable of dealing with something like climate change? An issue that is more complex by several magnitudes. If we can't deal with this, how do we handle that? And it just kind of leaves me feeling hopeless and depressed because we're just, we're not ready. We're not ready. Maybe it's because human beings are stupid. I don't know. Maybe it's because our economic system renders us incapable of doing anything. I don't know. There's a number of things that's leading to our inability to actually capable deal with the pandemic, but it's just deeply frustrating because as someone who has tried to take it as seriously as possible, stay at home, get my groceries via curbside, all of that. I mean, there's only so much that we can do at the individual level. At the end of the day, government has to take the right actions and governments around the world. They've been failing. Now, when it comes to Joe Biden, he has done a lot better job in comparison with Donald Trump, his predecessor. And he's doing a lot to get the vaccines out. He actually did meet his goal of 100 million vaccinations within his first 100 days. And I think that he realizes that he was elected specifically because he's obviously more competent and capable than Donald Trump. So now he's trying to make sure that, you know, governors around the country don't undermine the progress that we've made and he's even reassuring them, you know, the recommendation that you not be too stupid. Let's not have a fourth surge when we just have a couple of months left until everyone could get access to the vaccine. So as Brett Samuels of the Hill explains, President Biden on Monday urged state and local officials to reconsider lifting their coronavirus restrictions and to reinstate mask mandates that have lapsed as the U.S. faces an increase in cases. Quote, I'm reiterating my call for every governor, mayor and local leader to maintain and reinstate the mask mandate Biden said at an event intended to highlight the rapid increase in vaccine eligibility. Please, this is not politics, reinstate the mandate if you let it down. Asked later if some state should pause reopening efforts, Biden said yes. And I agree with him. The fact that this even has to be said is deeply frustrating to me. We've been dealing with this pandemic as a species now for more than a year. I think we understand the way that it works. We have some basic knowledge about it, right? We now know about the potential for new variants. We know that not everyone is vaccinated yet. We know that the reason why we had the surge in the first place is because people weren't taking it seriously. And now we're just we're just going to become comfortable with hundreds of thousands of new cases as the norm. Finally, when it was starting to decrease, it just it feels like the pandemic is going to go on forever. And that's really frustrating. It's really frustrating back in 2020 at the beginning of 2020. I read a report about how some epidemiologists were predicting that social distancing may be necessary until 2022. And that was like the worst case scenario that they were envisioning. And now that seems pretty obvious. We're just incapable of getting our act together. And because of that, people are going to suffer. More people are going to die when if we all just stopped if from the beginning we paid people to stay home. So they wouldn't have to risk spreading the virus and, you know, getting it themselves. That would have been the answer. But because we live in a late stage capitalist dystopian society, that is impossible. Profits are more important than people's lives. So that was never even on the table. But the least that we can do is keep these mask mandates in place. They don't cost anything. They're mildly inconvenient. And it stops the spread. I mean, any governor who's doing this already lifting mask mandates, they're just they're stupid. They are stupid. They're trying to basically score political points because they know that their populations are tired of the pandemic. So they're just basically saying, you know what, it's over. You guys did your part. It's over. But that's not the way that it works. We are adults and we should act like adults. And if we actually want the pandemic to ever be over sometime in the century, hopefully, let's just stop being dumb for an extended period of time until the number of new cases decreases until people are vaccinated. And then it's it. We never have to talk about it again. I mean, we can study it from a historical perspective, but we can move on. I'm anxious to move on. I know you're anxious to move on. So let's hope that our lawmakers stop being idiots and allow this to happen. Nobody can move on if we don't take it seriously.