- Go ahead. - Thanks, Jen.
I want to ask you about some recent vaccine misinformation
that's been out there and ask you to clarify.
There seems to be a difference of opinion
between Nicki Minaj and the White House
about what she was invited to do.
Did the White House extend an invitation
to Nicki Minaj to come here?
- Well, first, we don't see this
as a point of tension or disagreement.
I want you all to know that we engage all the time
with people who have big public platforms or profiles.
Some of them, we talk about; some of them are here;
some of them, you don't even know about,
because they're just looking for questions to be answered.
We offered a call with Nicki Minaj
and one of our doctors to answer questions
she had about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine.
This is pretty standard and something we do all the time.
It was a very early-stage call
at a staff level, staff to staff,
and we weren't even at the point of discussing --
we're not even at the point of discussing, I should say --
at this point, the mechanisms or the formats
or anything along those lines.
It was simply an offer to have a conversation
and an early-stage call.
- And do you think that's going to happen?
- We'll, see.
I don't have anything to predict for you.
- What kind of responsibility do you think
someone like Nicki Minaj has,
someone with a really big platform,
when it comes to talking about the vaccine.
- Well, our hope is that anyone who has a big platform
is going to project accurate information
about the effectiveness of the vaccine,
the safety of the vaccine,
and the availability of the vaccine.
At the same time, and both can be true,
we also recognize that people have questions out there.
They have questions they want to have answered by their doctors;
we have doctors who can answer questions;
and this is something, again, in our outreach to celebrities,
it follows a pretty standard process.
Officials who are working on these issues and engage
in regular conversations offer to answer questions;
offer to do that privately sometimes;
sometimes it's done publicly.
And I would say that if we believed
that everybody who had skepticism about the vaccine
wasn't someone we should engage with or talk to,
we wouldn't have made the progress we've made.
I mean, remember, back in December,
only 33% of the American people were open to getting vaccinated.
Now more than 75% have had at least one shot.
So part of our strategy and our objective from the beginning
has been engaging with people who have questions,
to help answer their questions.