months? so, john, the study that we announced yesterday, which is a big, important milestone. remember, it s just two months from when we all heard about omicron, we are now starting this trial. it s important. so it will probably take two months to really get the data from it. so by the middle of the year with he should be in a position to go into full-blown manufacturing to supply people. . last question here. as you see the numbers starting to come down in the cities hit first and worst from omicron, where do you think the country will be by spring? will the united states be in a much better place in terms of this pandemic? i think we are inside the omicron wave. people who are unvaccinated are still at huge risk. vaccination and boosting almost obliterates that risk. 40% of this country are not fully vaccinated and not boosted. the end is in sight of omicron.
months going to bring? look at data as it relates to treatments for the different variants that exist. it is not about a one size fits all policy. and certainly florida is a great example of that. the third largest state in the country. it is very different. miami is different from palatka, orlando and tallahassee. not one size fits all. we have come to that place. but it seems to be, in this political climate we live in, much easier to say one thing over here and one thing over there. that s okay for politics. i get the times. but at the end of the day, this is the surgeon general. he cannot be driven by politics and politicking and verbal you ji ji jujitsu. he needs to make sure people well-being is being taken care of. . none of this is going to get away from his progressing.
stuff? you know, i think that it s important to be guided by science and data. so it was sort of interesting to hear the surgeon general say he s being guided by science but at the same time says mask wearing is an extreme measure. and refused to wear a mask when we had a colleague of ours who was suffering with cancer. i do think that it is a balance. and, again, the top doctor in the state of florida should be able to answer very simple questions about mitigation. this wasn t about lockdowns, politics. this was about very straight pointed questions. do vaccines help prevent the spread or actually let me say it this way. do vaccines help prevent individuals from becoming much more sick and requiring hospital stays, does mask wearing prevent the spread of covid-19? very simple questions, very simple answers. he refused to give them to us. it wasn t about the larger political conversation back seat lockdowns, where we re going and where we ve been. it s how do we go forward.
protections won t exist? no. i think we are still looking at those data. the immune system is a remarkable thing. people s bodies will continue to make antibodies and t cells and memory b cells will be there. so when people get infected with the covid virus, they will be able to respond to it. but in order to be kept out of hospital, to be protected against death, know that you need to have high levels of antibody as the first line of defense. so that s what s so important about the data. . margins matter here a little bit, though. i don t know specifically what the percentages are. one of the things we have seen in some cases, you know, you are 98% protected against hospitalization if you re fully boosted versus 92% protected if you re not fully boosted against hospitalization. is that what you re talking here? you still have a great deal of protection, but it s not perfect?
frustration boiling over at a confirmation for florida s top doctor after refusing to answer simple questions about covid vaccines. the question is a scientific one and one that is answered with data. just a yes or no, do vaccines work? . as a scientist, you know, i i i m compelled to answer the scientific question. scientifically, do vaccines, do the vaccines work? yes or no questions are not thought easy to find in science. so i will i understand i think i have better clarity about your question at this point. so what i would say is the most commonly used vaccines in the united states, which would be the pfizer product and the