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And now you just wrote in an op-ed something that's popping a lot of eyes but it was a point you had to make, doc. this is going nowhere. covid will be with us six months, 12 months, 18 months. yes? >> yeah. i mean it's becoming endemic. that's the word that people use. i also put in there five strategies about how to sort of dance or coexist with this virus. we've been talking about them for some time. vaccinations. first of all, i got my vaccine card here. i think we need to have some way of actually proving that people are vaccinated. these cards, it's a little bit ridiculous that you have ...

Hospitalized nationally. currently here at children's hospital new orleans we currently have 16 children in the hospital with a diagnosis of covid-19. 6 of those are in the pediatric intensive care unit. so this virus is not only more transmissable, more contagious than earlier variants of the virus, but we also seem to be seeing more severe disease in children. >> and are the symptoms that you're seeing in kids similar to what you've seen in adults? is there a difference? >> the symptoms are similar. what ordinarily lands a child in the hospital is respiratory symptoms, sort of a pneumonia-ty...

Variant is more dangerous in terms of how ill you become. what we do know about it is it is more transmissable. and kids together will get the illness. mostly -- kids will do okay, far better than the older population, but they're a vector. and until all of us that can be vaccinated are, we have to stay safe and that means, yes, back to school because kids have suffered greatly from not being in school. but we can't surround them -- we can surround them by, every person who works in a school should be required to be vaccinated, and everybody should wear a mask. those are the two things. there'...

Concerned about that i've not really considered but after hearing your concern or reading about it, i'm now concerned about it too. it's not so much about the spread of the virus and the variants that exist. it's that when you bring thousands of people together from hundreds of countries, more than 200 countries represented, there could be now the birth of new variants. explain that. what would happen here? >> that's a very real risk. we have seen it with the other variants. they are smart. when they get together, they can reproduce and mutate. they select from each other that confer the advan...

Again this fall, unfortunately. the virus loves the dry, cold weather. we're already seeing surges across the country, especially in areas of low vaccination rates. the delta variant is more transmissable. i don't think we'll necessarily see a lockdown, but i do think we need to maybe tie mask mandates to hospitalizations, cases or vaccination rates in areas. i think we'll see probably more of what's happening in l.a. county across the country this fall. >> all right. we'll leave it there. thank you, peter hotez and dr. uche blackstock. still ahead, a bombshell packed new book on the disastr...