I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Friday, November 19th.

Here we are with less than a week to go before Thanksgiving, and it's understandable if you're

confused about what kinds of

family gatherings are COVID-safe for what kinds of family members, and specifically the role of

COVID testing before joining other people who you don't live with. We mentioned this briefly on

yesterday's show, and we'll expand on it for today's and especially to clarify.

Here's Mayor Bill de Blasio speaking yesterday morning.

Get tested before you attend major gatherings or family gatherings.

Get tested because you'll know you're safe.

Mayor de Blasio yesterday.

Dr. Fauci was also on TV yesterday and didn't mention anything about testing. But this also raises anew the issue of the role of testing generally in combination

with vaccines in the pursuit to get back to a pre-pandemic normal level of safety and activity

and whether public policy has

maybe de-emphasized testing too much as they rightly try to get everyone vaccinated first.

There's also the breaking news this morning. If you haven't heard it yet, it's just an hour

or so old that the FDA has just recommended approval of the Pfizer and Moderna booster shots for all adults

and some mixed messages that I've seen about whether a last-minute booster just before the

holiday helps protect yourself or others right away.

So we'll try to clear that up too.

So back with us now.

I'm very happy to have Dr. Daniel Griffin, MD, Ph.D., infectious disease clinician and researcher at Columbia University,

Chief of Infectious Disease for the Pro Health Health System, and president of the group, Parasites Without Borders,

...