Doctor on Biden’s vaccine mandate: ’Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures’

Dr. James Simmons, Hospitalist Nurse Practitioner in Los Angeles, CA, joins Yahoo Finance to discuss the latest on the coronavirus pandemic.

Video transcript

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- The United States has reached another grim milestone in its fight against the devastating COVID-19 pandemic. One in 500 Americans have died from coronavirus since the nation's first reported infection. It is a sobering toll that comes as hospitals in our country are struggling to keep up with the volume of patients. And also more children are grappling with the virus.

Joining me now to discuss all of this and more is Dr. James Simmons, hospitalist nurse practitioner in Los Angeles. Dr. Simmons, always good to see you. I want to start with where you are, which is Los Angeles. I know recently, the school district there, one of the largest in the country, mandated that students of age get the vaccination. What are you seeing right now on the ground in terms of new COVID cases on a daily basis?

JAMES SIMMONS: Yeah, you know, I just want to reference as well that one in 500 is a pretty-- pretty sobering number, right? And I think it's a place where none of us were hoping that we would actually ever get to. And I feel like we're sort of in a tale of-- of two or three different countries right now. Because in Southern California, which if you recall, you know, when we spoke back in January, this was one of the worst places in terms of COVID cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in the world.

Now we're one of the best places in the entire country because we went through that. Delta has not impacted at least Southern California where I am the same way as it has other places. And there are multiple different factors or reasons for that. One of them, obviously, is that we have such a high vaccination rate and things like the LAUSD putting in masking mandates for kiddos and further distancing than even what the CDC recommends and a lot of different school districts.

And so you know, we just haven't seen the spike here. I will say that we did get a little bit of a surge of Delta cases where I practice in, you know, in Los Angeles. It was nothing like we had before and certainly not like unfortunately what a lot of other parts of the country really experienced. So that surge that we had, that sort of small bump that we had here, is starting to slow down as it appears many other parts of the country are although there are other parts that are going up. So it's really dependent on where you live.

- You're right. It really is. And that's certainly encouraging what you're seeing there locally. Now, we know Gavin Newsom survived that recall election to remain governor of the state of California. You know, now that you have that recall election behind you as a state, does this mean that they're going to be able to focus a little bit more on the pressing issues at hand like COVID?

JAMES SIMMONS: Yeah, I think so. You know, there's-- there's a lot that really can be learned from this, although I agree with several individuals who have said we shouldn't overreach what this means either good or bad in terms of this recall. There were enough people who were obviously really unhappy with Gavin Newsom and particularly the pretty strict COVID precautions that Gavin instituted statewide early on.

But then you have to look at we're in a much better place than a lot of other parts of the country because of some of those stricter protocols-- the closing of businesses are a lot earlier than I think some other states did, or even other states didn't even do it at all, masking mandates, really, really, really pushing vaccines here, mandating vaccines in certain populations earlier on than in other places. And what that has led to is we have one of the lowest rates of new COVID cases even among a Delta surge. And we not coincidentally have one of the highest rates of vaccinations.

People are generally, I think, happy with how Gavin Newsom handled this situation though I feel like a lot of people were looking for perfection in handling a brand new pandemic that no one had ever handled before, no one had ever dealt with before.

There wasn't going to be perfection. We learned from the data. We learned from the science. We make the best decisions that we can to move forward. And like him or not, I think most Californians were like, well, Gavin Newsom was making the best decisions that he probably could at least insofar as we did not want him removed as governor.

- Now, you know, sticking with politics here for a minute, in a short while, I know President Biden is going to greet some CEOs of major companies like Disney and Microsoft and-- and Walgreens at the White House. And they're going to discuss his want to to have this mandate in the private sector that employees mandate that their workers get vaccinated. You know, some people are saying, look, that's overreaching. I'm just wondering from a medical standpoint, do you think that's overreaching? Or do extraordinary times call for these extraordinary measures?

JAMES SIMMONS: I do think extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. And I'm probably not going to be really popular for saying this at all, but we didn't have social media. We didn't have the 24-hour news cycle back when we had, you know, what amounted to vaccine mandates for things like smallpox and measles and polio. And the reason we don't really talk about those diseases as much is because everyone was vaccinated against them.

Now, a lot of times that happened in ways that we probably would not be acceptable today. Kids were getting shots in schools that they didn't even know about. I'm not saying that those were necessarily handled in the right way before. But ultimately, what the science has proven to us over and over and over again is that when we have a disease like this that we do not have very good therapy for, and we-- a lot of people die from these diseases, when they're viruses, and we can vaccinate against them, that is the best treatment.

And I'm all for our American freedoms and all of these different things that everyone talks about. But the end of the day, your decision to not get vaccinated really does impact other people in your community. It really does impact your coworkers and their families and an extension of that.

And so if you are in an environment particularly where you're working closely with a lot of other people, you don't have good ventilation, you're on top of each other, I think these are things that have to be discussed, I think we have to talk about. Ultimately, it may not make you happy. But what is going to keep you and your family and our entire communities and the public safe?

And that may ultimately come down to mandates because we've given people plenty of opportunity to get vaccinated. And so, you know, a certain percentage of people haven't done that. Then what's unfortunately happening is now we have these-- these massive surges of Delta and ICUs are being overrun. And it's just moving from state to state to state where we hear these dire situations of patients not even being able to be treated for other diseases because COVID has overrun their ICUs. And unfortunately, I think because of situations like that mandates may be necessary.

- You know, and one of those dire situations involved a little four-year-old girl from Galveston, Texas. My heart broke for her family. She passed away after contracting COVID. Her mother was an anti-vaxxer and has actually come out publicly since her daughter died just a day ago and said she wishes she wishes she had gotten her-- herself vaccinated so that she could help protect her daughter.

I don't know any better PSA than that. But tell us how we can keep our kids safe? Because we know those under 12 still cannot get vaccinated. So what can we do as a society as parents and adults to protect them?

JAMES SIMMONS: You know, my heart goes out to that-- that family as well and the many, many, many other families of everyone who have been so impacted by COVID, including having deaths, multiple deaths in families. You know, it's difficult. I think one of the things that I always really challenge people about is, you know, check your sources.

Check where your information is coming from, including me right now here on Yahoo Finance Live, right? Check where your information is coming from and really try to understand the nature of that information, what science, what data is behind it. Most of us have access to-- to lots of great information sources.

So you might hear or see something on Facebook. Go validate it on Google. It only takes a few seconds. You're going to start to open up your world and have maybe a different perspective about those things.

In terms of keeping kiddos safe as we go back into schools, unfortunately we're seeing the ramifications of low vaccination rates in places like Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia right now, Northern Idaho, those places where they're now they're having to shutter schools again, ICUs are overrun. As adults, the best thing we can do is keep wearing our masks. I know they're a pain in the butt. I don't like them either.

But keep wearing your mask. Get vaccinated, please. And hopefully, in the next few weeks, we're going to have authorization from the FDA for vaccinations for 5 to 11-year-olds. We're expecting that sometime in early October for the Pfizer vaccine and potentially as young as six-month-old and older just a few weeks after that.

So everybody, hold tight. We're hopefully going to have a chance to get younger kiddos vaccinated. In the meantime, adults, get vaccinated. Check your sources. Learn as much as you can about this. And make the best decision for you, your family, and your community

- Yeah, protect our kiddos. I like how you say it. Dr. James Simmons, thanks so much. Always a pleasure.