Willie R. Tubbs, FISM News

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In his much-anticipated COVID-19 update Tuesday, President Joe Biden redoubled his efforts to encourage vaccination, but neither instituted nor advocated for the strict measures currently being seen abroad.

Biden said there would be no lockdowns or restrictions, and he encouraged vaccinated Americans to celebrate Christmas as they’d originally planned. The president’s main message was that vaccinations were the key to combating the latest surge in COVID cases and that Americans should be “concerned about Omicron, but not panicked.”

“If you are vaccinated and follow the precautions that we all know well, you should feel comfortable celebrating Christmas and the holidays as you planned it,” Biden said. “You know, you’ve done the right thing.  You could enjoy the holiday season.”

Later in the speech, the president asked rhetorically if “we were going back to March 2020,” when the pandemic began the nation shut down en masse. His answer to the question that lingers each time a new variant emerges or there is a surge in cases was: “absolutely no.  No.”

President Biden cited vaccination rates, the wide availability of masks and ventilators, and an improved understanding of the nature of COVID on the part of medical professionals as the core reasons schools and businesses can remain open.

The president continued his monthslong push for every American to get vaccinated and issued more dire warnings for those who have remained unvaccinated.

“If you are not fully vaccinated, you have good reason to be concerned,” the president said. “You’re at a high risk of getting sick.  And if you get sick, you’re likely to spread it to others, including friends and family.  And the unvaccinated have a significantly higher risk of ending up in a hospital or even dying.”

A portion of this remark lacked context. According to the Centers for Disease Control, both vaccinated and unvaccinated people can spread the Omicron.

While early data suggests Omicron could be less deadly than previous COVID variants, the CDC currently states that data is insufficient to determine if this variant causes “more severe illness or death than infection with other variants.”

Biden also continued to urge Americans to get COVID boosters, which have proven less popular than the initial vaccine.

“Our doctors have made it clear: Booster shots provide the strongest of protections,” Biden said. “Unfortunately, we still have tens of millions of people who are eligible for the booster shot who have not yet gotten it.  They’ve gotten the first two shots, but they’ve not gotten the booster.”

In addition to his push for vaccinations, President Biden announced new measures he believes will aid the nation’s response to the Omicron variant. The administration will create a 1,000-person unit of military medical personnel for deployment to overwhelmed hospitals, add more vaccination sites, and send more federal vaccinators into the field.

The president also restated his goal to provide free, at-home COVID tests for Americans, although this plan remains incomplete as the administration has not indicated how many tests each American can request or how they can request them.

In her briefing Tuesday, Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the administration would not be “sending a test to every single home in the country,” but would provide a way for Americans to get a test sent to them by mail. She added that the administration had purchased 500 million kits, which would become available in January.