encouraging in that they show that omicron may pose a lower risk for hospitalizations and severe illnesses, compared to delta. does that necessarily mean, though, that it will be the same here in the united states? because with south africa, for example, you're dealing with more people who were infelcted with a different variant of covid so maybe they had more immunity. >> that's definitely the case, that you can't always extrapolate something happening in one country where the average age is younger, where they've got different protection. they got hit with the beta variant which is more related to omicron than other variants that the u.s. had, like the alpha variant, for example, or delta, so that may play a role. i do think that the data coming from the united kingdom and denmark is more reassuring. that's a little bit closer to the u.s. in terms of demographic make-up but it doesn't so much matter if this is so much more transmissible and you've got swaths of unvaccinated high-risk people. there's about 60 million eligible americans that are not