Biden’s stern warning: ‘You cannot be traveling during … holidays’

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President-elect Joe Biden says he doesn’t “want to scare anybody,” but he’s pleading with Americans to not travel during the upcoming holiday season.

With no let up in the surge in the coronavirus pandemic across the nation the past month, Biden emphasized on Wednesday that people need to “understand the facts. We're likely to lose another 250,000 people. Dead. Between now and January. You hear me? Because people aren't paying attention.”

Two weeks ago Biden warned that "as many as 200,000" more people across the nation could die from COVID-19 by the time he gets inagurated on Jan. 20.

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And the president-elect, speaking during virtual roundtable with workers and small-business owners impacted by the economic crisis, stressed, “You cannot be traveling during these holidays, as much as you want to.”

President-elect Joe Biden arrives at The Queen theater, Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2020, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Biden spotlighted his own small gathering during Thanksgiving, which broke a decades-old tradition of large family gatherings, and asked Americans to heed the advice of public health experts and pass on large get-togethers later this month. “Christmas is going to be a lot harder,” he noted.

Roughly 273,000 deaths have been linked to COVID-19 since the coronavirus swept the nation in February and March, with nearly 14 million total cases.