Ursula von der Leyen
“I am following the situation in Georgia with great concern and condemn the violence on the streets of Tbilisi. The European Union has also clearly expressed its concerns regarding the law on foreign influence. The Georgian people want a European future for their country.”
20 hours ago
Oleksandr Kozachenko
“If we compare it with the beginning (of the Russian invasion), when we fired up to 100 shells a day, then now, when we fire 30 shells it's a luxury. Sometimes the number of shells fired daily is in single digits.”
20 hours ago
Abdallah al-Dardari
“The United Nations Development Programme's initial estimates for the reconstruction of … the Gaza Strip surpasses $30bn and could reach up to $40bn. The scale of the destruction is huge and unprecedented … this is a mission that the global community has not dealt with since World War II.”
20 hours ago
Ursula von der Leyen
“I am following the situation in Georgia with great concern and condemn the violence on the streets of Tbilisi. The European Union has also clearly expressed its concerns regarding the law on foreign influence. The Georgian people want a European future for their country.”
20 hours ago
Oleksandr Kozachenko
“If we compare it with the beginning (of the Russian invasion), when we fired up to 100 shells a day, then now, when we fire 30 shells it's a luxury. Sometimes the number of shells fired daily is in single digits.”
20 hours ago
Abdallah al-Dardari
“The United Nations Development Programme's initial estimates for the reconstruction of … the Gaza Strip surpasses $30bn and could reach up to $40bn. The scale of the destruction is huge and unprecedented … this is a mission that the global community has not dealt with since World War II.”
20 hours ago
“When you are talking about a New Year's Eve party, where you have 30, 40, 50 people celebrating, you do not know the status of the vaccination - I would recommend strongly, stay away from that this year. There will be other years to do that, but not this year.”
“Even though we're pleased by the evidence from multiple countries - it looks like there is a lesser degree of severity - we've got to be careful that we don't get complacent about that. There were still tens of millions of unvaccinated Americans. Those are the most vulnerable ones when you have a virus that is extraordinarily effective in getting to people and infecting them the way Omicron is.”
“There are many of these parties that have 30, 40, 50 people in which you do not know the vaccination status of individuals. Those are the kind of functions in the context of Omicron that you do not want to go to.”
“Besides the toll of suffering and death which will inevitably go up if in fact we have that convergence in the winter months of flu and omicron and delta, we could get our hospital systems overwhelmed. With omicron breathing down our back, things could get really bad, particularly for the unvaccinated. The vaccinated and those who are boosted I believe will be relatively well protected, at least against severe disease.”
“Though it's too early to really make any definitive statements about it, thus far it does not look like there's a great degree of severity to it. Thus far, the signals are a bit encouraging. But we have really got to be careful before we make any determinations that it is less severe, or it really doesn't cause any severe illness, comparable to Delta.”
“Oh, absolutely not. That's such a false narrative that someone says, 'Well now you have a drug.' Remember, the easiest way to stay out of the hospital, and not die, is don't get infected. I mean this idea about 'We have a drug, don't get vaccinated,' just doesn't make any sense.”
“I believe that mandating vaccines for children to appear in school is a good idea. We've done this for decades and decades, requiring polio, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis vaccinations.”
“We believe sooner or later you will need a booster for durability. We are evaluating this on a day-by-day, week-by-week, month-by-month basis, looking at any of a number of studies - both international and domestic studies. We are preparing for the eventuality of doing that.”
“We're going in the wrong direction. If you look at the inflection of the curve of new infections… it is among the unvaccinated and since we have 50 percent of the country is not fully vaccinated, that's a problem - particularly when you have a variant like Delta which has this extraordinary characteristic of being able to spread very efficiently and very easily from person to person. If you are vaccinated, the vaccine is highly protective against the Delta variant, particularly against severe disease leading to hospitalisation and sometimes ultimately to death. It's really an outbreak among the unvaccinated … which is the reason why we're out there practically pleading with the unvaccinated people to go out and get vaccinated.”
“Canada is doing better not because we are trying any less than they are trying. It's because in Canada you don't have that divisiveness of people not wanting to get vaccinated, in many respects, on the basis of ideology and political persuasion. I mean, political differences are totally understandable and a natural part of the process in any country. But when it comes to a public health issue, in which you're in the middle of a deadly pandemic and the common enemy is the virus, it just doesn't make any sense.... That's a public health issue. That's not political. That's not ideological. It's a public health issue.”
“You've got to shut down. I believe several of the Indian states have already done that, but you need to break the chain of transmission. And one of the ways to do that is to shut down.”
“There is light at the end of the tunnel. By the time we get into the mid to late summer, early fall, we're going to start seeing a big, big difference.”
“I believe you're going to be hearing more of the recommendations of how you can relax the stringency of some of the things, particularly when you're dealing with something like your own personal family, when people have been vaccinated.”
“I think at least we do have some precedent that you can make arrangements with companies that would allow them both to maintain a considerable amount of profit at the same time, that areas of the world that don't have resources can share in a way that would be lifesaving for literally millions of people.”
“Clearly, the mutants have a diminishing effect on the efficacy of the vaccines. We can see that we are going to be challenged. The best way to prevent further evolution of a virus is to prevent it from replicating and you do that by vaccinating people as quickly as you possibly can.”
“We will continue to see the evolution of mutants. We will have to be nimble to adjust to make versions of the vaccine that are actually specifically directed to whatever mutations are prevalent at the time.”
“Well, obviously we’re still in a very serious situation. To have over 400,000 deaths is something that is, unfortunately, historic in the very bad sense. However, when you look more recently on the seven-day average of cases. Right now, it looks like it might actually be plateauing.”
“I think we just have to assume that it's going to get worse. We're between 100,000 and 200,000 new infections each day... I hope we don't just get to that level of continually seeing over 200,000. As you know, it staggers. You get cases, you get hospitalizations and then you get deaths. It's highly predictable that once you increase in those number of cases, in a staggered way, every couple of weeks you get increase in the hospitalization. We're in a very difficult situation. We never got down to a low baseline where you can actually control community spread by identification, isolation and contact tracing. When you get to the numbers that we are in right now it really is very, very difficult to do effective identification, isolation and contact tracing. For those who have already done the travel, the thing to do now is to try not to congregate with large numbers of people in social settings, like dinners. Try to keep it restricted to the immediate family and the immediate household. Because once you get to large numbers of people at a dinner inside, poor air ventilation and circulation, that's when you get into trouble. [Not following public health advice] could make January even worse than December. I hope that doesn't happen but it certainly is possible.”