going to say who it is but in order not to do this in the future what i'm going to do is i'll sit on one hand so that i remind myself that i should be a one-handed economist. gdp will go down next year. >> [laughter] >> cheryl: we like decisive answers at "fox business." we want to dig down to the truth >> that's another resolution of mine is to limit my answers to questions that you present to me to no more than 12 words. >> cheryl: i like that resolution. well its been great to have you both on the show. i want to say really quick a big shout out to "mornings with maria" team, the producers in the control room, you come in the middle of the night and work so hard. this is not an easy job. overnights are tough. i love all of you and maria and dagen do to so my shout out is to the "mornings with maria" producing staff. happy new year, guys. enjoy your three day weekend for now. it's over to ashley webster. ashley: [laughter] great stuff. good morning, cheryl. happy new year to you, and good

morning, everybody. i'm ashley webster in today for the very well-rested stuary varney. southwest says flights should finally be back to normal today. this comes after a week of chaos , where as we know the airline was flying about one -third of its actual planned flights. so far this morning they have only canceled 41. i guess that's progress. staying on the airlines, the cdc is reportedly considering testing wastewater taken from international flights to track any emerging new variant, lovely dr. siegel is on the show today. he says we need to close our borders right now to china. we're going to talk about that. well, guess what? it must be nice being the president of the united states. president biden choosing to stay put on his beach vacation, and have that $1.7 trillion spending plan, the bill that is, flown to him. that's not very environmentally friendly, is it? also its got governor mike huckabee fired up.

he's going to sound off on that in just a minute. let's get to the markets. it is the last trading day for 2022, and good riddance. looking down in the pre-market, by the way, the dow is off about 8.5% this year, the s&p down more than 19% for the year, but it's the nasdaq that's led the losses down 33% this year. bring on the new year. the 10-year treasury yield is speaking. it's up nearly 6 basis points at 3.87% and that's not good for those big tech names, and meanwhile, take a look at this wild picture. no, it is not a movie. those are real homes on lake erie. isn't that weird? completely encased in ice following last weekend's blizzard. it just doesn't look real but we're going to tell you why officials are now warning tourists, stay away. it is friday, december 30, the very final "varney" & company of 2022 is about to

begin. ♪ this is our house, these are my people, so this is my town ♪ ashley: you're looking down sixth avenue midtown manhattan looking towards central park. there's folks working today, yes , they are but still pretty quiet for manhattan. now this , the white house has delivered a major blow to house republicans and the investigations they are trying to launch. good morning, lauren. what's going on? lauren: no surprise here. so ashley, good morning. the white house is refusing to hand over record requests that were made by congressman jim jordan who will be head of judiciary in january, and also james comer is going to head up oversight, so the white house says responding to their requests be constitutionally illegitimate because the new congress has not been sworn in.

here is congressman comer responding. >> well very disappointing but not surprising, joe biden promised the americans that he be the most transparent president in history and i could make a strong case he is the least transparent president in history. 100% of that pertained to taxpayer dollars, to money being spent with covid, money being spent in afghanistan with weapon s being left behind, money being spent with a different projects and different agencies within the federal government. that's what the oversight committee's role is. lauren: either way, ashley, the investigative work by the house it will be paralyzed until it picks its speaker. ashley: yes it will. lauren, thank you. now this. that massive $1.7 trillion spending bill was flown to president biden for his signature while he vacations down in st. croix, how nice, sniff-sniff. former governor of arkansas mike huckabee joins me now. you know, governor, does it

bother you that the president chose to have the bill literally flown to him instead of interrupting his vacation to come back to washington and sign it? >> well, it does, and i think us the inefficiency of it all. at least he could have loaded up the plane with uber eats and delivered to st. croix or pick-up some of those people in buffalo who are freezing to death and become human popsicles and flown them down to the beach to share the time with the warm th but this is ridiculous to scramble an air force jet to send a piece of paper down so he can sign it because he was too lazy to do it when he was still in washington and he didn't have the just good sense to wait until the paper was on his desk, sign it and then he could go, and have his vacation down in the warmth of the sunshine. it's just another outrageous way to say we care so much about climate change. you people shouldn't be flying on jets and using cars that have emissions, but if i need a piece of paper flown, i wonder, ashley

how much carbon dumped into the air just to get that little piece of paper down to the virgin islands? ashley: well, you know, how do you feel about the president, governor, taking a vacation with all of the problems going on right now or is that an unfair criticism? he has to take a break at some point. it's not easy being president. >> well, let's be fair. he's president wherever he is, and the communications capacity of the white house staff is such that he can be anywhere and still be in complete control and management. my issue is not where he is. it's is he there at all. when i watch him do the ghost handshake after virtually every speech and have to be led off the stage i'm not as worried about where he is geographically i'm worried more about where he is mentally because i truly do have concerns about his capacity ashley: all right next one for you, governor. your daughter, sarah, is the

governor-elect of arkansas. she has vowed to transform education in her state. she's even poached, by the way, one of florida's top education officials to help her do that. do you want to give us some inside information on what she's exactly looking to do? >> well she wants to focus on reading. she wants to focus on preschool, making sure that by the fourth grade every child is at grade level because if they aren't quite frankly this is a historical fact, they will probably never catch up so she understands that getting a good start is really the key. i think this is a brilliant choice on her part. i give her all of the credit. i had nothing to do with it. i didn't know jacob, but he's being by both ron desantis and former governor jeb bush who is one of the nation's premier experts on education. jeb bush has spent his life pretty much focused on it and everyone who knows him and has worked with him has said he is a true blue chipper, so i think it was a brilliant choice on the part of my daughter.

you know, just like it was a brilliant choice to be my daughter in the first place and to pick me to be her dad. that was brilliant too. ashley: [laughter] brilliant all around. governor mike huckabee, great stuff as always, thank you, governor and happy new year to you. >> happy new year, ashley. ashley: thank you very much. all right, now this. some workers on capitol hill are facing the possibility of not being paid. yikes, what's the issue, lauren? lauren: well the issue is the house can't hit the ground running on january 3rd until they elect a speaker and kevin mccarthy is still rounding up the votes there, so now we have this new warning that house rules package that outlines how the chamber will run, that's due january 13th and without that, committees cannot be formed including the committee that processes payroll. aka, how congressional staff gets paid, and that has this amazing trickle down effect even on their student loan re payments, so i call this a five-car administrative pileup

at the capitol. ashley: [laughter] very good analogy. lauren, thank you very much. let's take a look at the futures a big day of gains yesterday, nice maybe a little bit of a santa rebound, but that's going out the window this morning in the pre-market, the dow, s&p, and nasdaq, nasdaq down again 1% let's bring in luke lloyd to join us now, to talk about it all. it is the final trading day of the year, luke, and as we start a new year, as we look to 2023, what are the biggest risks in your mind? >> yeah, so there's a difference between the biggest risk in 2023 and the most likely risk. i mean, the most likely risk in our eyes is a somewhat mild recession that's a little deeper than what the average consensus is right now. with 5% to 6% unemployment, and consumers finally cutting back their spending habits which impact earnings estimates and valuations in 2023, both of which in our opinion is still too high. i mean, the biggest risk of them all which isn't likely to occur, but something we do have to pay

attention to, is a credit crisis i mean, if unemployment spikes to the high single-digits there will be consumers that default on their debt. that could snowball into companies that over-leverage themselves to default on their debt too, so a lot of companies did over-leverage themselves the past decade because of low cost capital and some companies have never operated before in a recession, so here is a quick stat, ashley. the nasdaq is almost three times the debt-to-equity compared to the s&p 500. many high growth tech companies are going to have a hard time in 2023. ashley: well, that's interesting you should bring that up. i think of the 11 sectors in the s&p this year only two are on the plus side, energy and utilities and utilities barely. in this kind of doom-and-glam environment that we hear so often from analysts what as an investor should you do? do you run and hide, put your cash under the pillow? >> i think you have to be

patient until about middle of next year. there's going to be some pain next year, there's no getting around tax heck, the federal reserve is intentionally inflicting pain to cool demand on inflation, but i don't think a credit crisis is likely to happen or any kind of horrific thing because the federal reserve and the federal government seem to always be there to back-stop everything in today's world. if defaults started to rise and unemployment goes higher then what's needed to combat inflation all the federal reserve would do is lower rates and all the government would do is play the same play book they have been playing and print trillions of dollars to stimulate the economy. the government and fed saving the day might seem like a good thing at the surface level but long term we need markets and the economy to stimulate themselves through the free market and innovation but i just think right now you have to be patient. not a lot of things look attractive. you've got to wait for stocks to fall into your lap. you can't go out there and chase stocks right now. sell-off hasn't truly happened in our opinion. ashley: well patience is a virtue. it's not one of my strong suits, but i hear what you're saying.

luke lloyd, thank you so much for joining us this morning. all the doom and gloom unfortunately for next year. >> happy new year. ashley: happy new year to you. coming up we're going to wrap up the year for you and let's not forget how the administration responded a number of key issues throughout 2022. roll the tape. >> we are seeing a significant challenge at the southern border as we're seeing it throughout the hemisphere. >> we're going to be shutting these plants down all across america. >> the president's words we believe were twisted and we're very clear about that. ashley: very clear about what? we'll get into all of that. meanwhile, over 15,000 canceled flights this week, southwest airlines planning to resume full operations today. we are watching the boards to see if the airline can finally get folks back to where they need to be. we'll have that story, next.

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♪ ♪ ashley: what a fun day to spend on the ski slope. that's in pennsylvania, 39 degrees, up in the northeast part of the state and folks enjoying a day on the slopes. lucky them. let's take a look at the futures right now after a nice big re bound yesterday to try and finish on a positive note, but the pre-market is showing the dow is off 148 points, s&p and nasdaq also down before the opening bell. all right, let's get to the very

latest on southwest airlines, and the nightmare of travel. after nearly a week of canceling thousands of flights, investors have to be concerned, right, lauren? lauren: absolutely. the chief commerical officer ryan green says this christmas nightmare will certainly be an impact to the fourth quarter, duh. no further details given. some analysts estimate it could shave as much as 9% off earnings because there's no precedent for something like this except for what you're looking at on this screen. this is an idea of how costly this will be. back in october of last year, southwest had a similar incident it cost them $75 million. they canceled 2,000 flights over five days in october. okay, fast forward to now. nearly 16,000 flights were canceled at a much more expensive time of the year, so i'm putting this at a cost of $600 million at a minimum. ashley: yikes. lauren: if you're a passenger and effected by this , save your receipts for your meal, rental car, uber, hotel.

submit them online. federal law does mandate pretty fast reimbursement. i'm not sure how southwest is going to be able to do that and for lost or damaged bags, the maximum liability for the airlines is $3,800, just fyi. ashley: wow what a mess, lauren, thank you. now southwest says it will, southwest says it's going to return to normal operations today. lydia hu has been following this story from the very beginning and lydia, what is the airline doing for those people who have been stranded for days? reporter: yeah, well, ashley, they are trying to win back their confidence and their trust bias you just heard providing for meals, ground transportation to hotels so really important to save the receipts and the airlines refund passengers who cancel their flights and we heard more from the ceo just this morning. watch this. >> our desire is to go above and beyond. we always take care of our customers. that's our 51-year history here at southwest airlines. we'll be looking at and taking

care of things like rental cars, hotel rooms, meals, booking customers on other airlines. there will be a lot of lessons learned in terms of what we can do to make sure that this never happens again. reporter: yeah, the department of transportation is trying to have a hand in that also making sure it doesn't happen again. they issued a formal warning to the airline yesterday promising penalties for the airline for failing to take care of passengers. secretary pete buttigieg who note is also facing criticism of his own for how he's handling this debacle wrote "no amount of financial compensation can fully makeup for passengers who missed moments with their families, that they can never get back" and continuing that's why it is so critical for southwest to begin by reimbursing passengers for those costs that can be measured in dollars and cents. now as we see flights are returning today, there are about 41 canceled flights at the moment, following days of thousands of flights canceled more than 15,000 since last thursday. coming up next for the airline,

questions for lawmakers ashley who want answers on how exactly a meltdown of this magnitude could happen. especially when the airline received more than $7 billion during the pandemic. ashley. ashley: yeah, that's a question we all have. lydia, thank you very much. now this. as mentioned transportation secretary pete buttigieg is being called out by his fellow progressives. democrat congressman row can a tweeted this out. nearly six months ago, bernie sanders and i called for the second to implement fines and penalties on airlines for canceling flights. why were these recommendations not followed? this mess with southwest could have been avoided. congressman mike waltz a republican from florida joins me now, a lot of questions, congressman. do you agree with your democrat colleague that fines and penalt ies would have avoided this problem? >> well i don't know that it would have avoided it. apparently, southwest hasn't

made the appropriate investments into its i.t. infrastructure to be able to handle a surge of cancellations, to be able to re allocate pilots, maintenance personnel, stewardess, what have you. the left is really making hay the fact that southwest paid out dividends and are providing bonuses to its executives. i have no problem with that. of course i want shareholders to benefit and of course i want the best talent to be running a major airline. where i do have issue is that in a lot of these routes, consumers don't really have a choice and then obviously, in an emergency, like a major weather event during a holiday, where all of the other airlines are overwhelmed they don't have choice there either so i think that's something we have to take a hard look at and the other thing is where is pete buttigieg i mean, this is a trend. this is a pattern here of him being awol in emergencies during the port crisis, i think he was an paternity leave during the railroad strike, he was

vacationing, and now, he's awol once again so that's a question of whose running the ship in the transportation department. ashley: yeah, he's always late to the show and to your point, with that looming rail strike, he was in portugal saying i'm being kept up-to-date on everything that's going on. so, you know, he's either completely absent or very late to the game. i mean, what kind of repercussions should he be accountable for? >> well, you know, look. if i were president biden, but then there's questions there of whose really running the white house, but i would certainly be holding him accountable for this kind of crisis after crisis and then we really kind of get some strongly-worded letters and some promises to take tough action and, you know, one could only imagine what the next major infrastructure transportation crisis is going to be, so from an oversight standpoint and congress, those are the questions we have

to ask. government isn't necessarily the solution. i expect their customers to have a serious say here, but when they have no choice, that's when government has an appropriate role to intervene. ashley: yeah. he does not inspire confidence, one little bit. congressman waltz, thank you so much for joining us this morning we really appreciate it. >> thank you, happy new year. ashley: thank you and same to you, sir. let's check the futures quickly pointing to a lower open and guess what? the opening bell is coming up in less than seven minutes and is next. ♪ then i got the dexcom g6. i just glance at my phone, and there's my glucose number. wow. my a1c has dropped over 2 points to 7.2.

that's a huge victory.

ashley: all right, let's take a look at these futures moving lower. that's what we expected at the opening bell. let's bring in mark mahaney. mark, good morning to you. i want to talk big tech. we've seen the value just drained away from these big names, these big high-growth companies. do you expect that to continue into the new year? >> i hope not, and i don't think so. this has been the worst year for tech stocks for nasdaq since 2008 so for a good number of viewers, that will be, they haven't seen a year as bad as

this , at least younger investors. things have changed. we've had a real derisking in multiples, real derisking in estimates and a lot of cost actions taken, what are called reduction in forces, rif across a lot of tech companies which means that when there's a cyclical recovery when revenue growth rate starts to recover, you'll do that off a lower cost base, which creates kind of an eps sling shot opportunity so we turned more tactically constructive going into 2023, we're cautiously muted in 2022 which means we weren't bearish enough but going into 2023 given those factors lower multiples, lower estimates , cost actions taken i think the setup is much more constructive but i still want to be very tactical an that leads to our top picks for this year. ashley: interesting. i want to talk about amazon. you've cut your price target. it was 170 bucks if i believe, what is it now? >> yeah, we took that down

closer to 150. this is not one of our top picks top picks be netflix, uber and even meta. amazon, i think you still need a couple more quarters. i think what we're seeing is that revenue growth rates for online retail companies are going to continue to decelerate. that's what we're seeing in the december quarter and it's going to continue into march, maybe into june. the same for online advertising for companies exposed, cloud computing, kind of across-the-board you're seeing softening demand and in that environment of revenue growth deceleration off large cost bases means revenue estimates are under pressure, earnings estimates are under pressure very hard for stocks to out perform. the way the stocks outperform in this market and we're starting to see it in the back half of 2022 is when companies have new product lines. that's netflix and they have already taken cost out. >> [opening bell ringing] >> netflix is our top pick. ashley: very good, mark mahaney thank you so much, appreciate your input this morning, lots of smiles and clapping and off we

go. the last trading day of 2022 hasn't been a great year for equities has it? what does 2023 bring, but let's take a look at the big board. the dow 30 stocks a lot of red down 172 points, verizon, johnson & johnson, and proctor and gamble, the only three stock s in the green. walt disney the big laggard on the dow 30. let's take a look at the s&p if we can. the s&p down six-tenths of a percent at 38.24 down 25 points and the nasdaq which has lost more than 30% on the year, worst performers going back to 2008 as mark mahaney pointed out down again 1% in the early going taking a look at the big tech names all in the red, meta down, well one and three-quarters percent but apple, microsoft, amazon and alphabet all down about 1% or more. let's single out tesla now. we've talked a lot about this stock.

lauren, its been a brutal year for the company. how are they doing on this final trading day of the year, down again. lauren: they won't makeup a 65% loss this year, but hey, they can try. i do want to tell you that tesla is the most profitable short trade of the year, as three partners finds that tesla short tellers are poised to reap $17 billion betting that shares went down. those bets are likely going to continue until they are convinc ed a bottom is in. that could come early next year. fourth quarter delivery numbers come out in january. about 3% of tesla is held short, ashley. ashley: wow. let's talk about microstrategy. those are the software people. its hit its lowest level in more than two years. lauren: they are also the biggest corporate holder and buyer of bitcoin, 132000 bitcoin worth $4 billion, so if you average that out, $30,000 of bitcoin, they are under water,

right? bitcoin is at 16,000, so why are shares down so much? several reasons. so microstrategy bought another 2,300 bitcoins, spent another $42 million but then sold some for a loss for end of the year tax purposes, so been thinking about this among two minds. first is rich people take advantage of tax loopholes, right? maybe betting too much on bitcoin's future, not a big deal , they have the money, but at the same time, maybe there's new life for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies by those bull ish bets? ashley: big maybe. all right let's move on to cigna what do we have on them today? what's the stock doing today? it's down about one-third of a percent. lauren: they are up 44% this year and i think that says a lot when the bond market is down about 20%, and they're planning to spend the next couple of weeks meeting with investors and analysts and they do, after they do that, plan to affirm previous guidance for

2022 earnings of 23.10 a share. ashley: very interesting. let's take a look at draftkings, the sports betting people. more and more people are betting online. they are now launching an online sports book in another new state which one? lauren: ohio, january 1. so, this is great for cavaliers, bengals, buckeyes fans just for signing up you get 200 bucks in bet credits but this isn't in time for the peach bowl. so the ohio state buckeyes play the georgia bulldogs tomorrow. the winner then moves on to the national championship and i'm not sure this will happen in time that you can bet in ohio on draftkings. ashley: no. all right, let's talk about bitcoin. we talked about it earlier. certainly been a rough year for cryptos. take us through bitcoin's performance, it's interesting. lauren: let's start with the peak of just about $48,000 in 2021. do you remember all those predictions? i counted six, six people saying bitcoins going to hit $100,000

this year. one person said 500,000. that was julian linegar a bitcoin investment app. okay, 500,000, we're stuck in the 16 to 17,000 range for a drop of 65% this year. the fact that bitcoin is not really moving out of that range and it hasn't for a few months now, makes you wonder that is there another shoe to drop, or are we kind of just waiting for the ftx collapse and everything to be over. regulation to come in and then maybe it can go higher. ashley: yeah, there are some people who say it's actually kind of hung in there pretty well given what's happened with ftx and concerns about the whole crypto world in general, but interesting stuff. lauren, great run-down for us, thank you. let's check the big board. the dow now off more than 100 points down about 110 points there you go, only down one- third of a percent but let's take a look at what winners there are on the dow. let's take a look and survey

says here we go. verizon, chevron, jpmorgan chase , verizon up nearly 1% merck also up very very slightly what's going on on the s&p 500 winners there? carnival, verizon, charles schwab, northrop gruman and now for the nasdaq winners baidu, crowdstrike, kraft heinz, tesla, net tease up a third of a percent and let's take a look at the 10-year yield the treasury yield. it kind of goes up and down. it was going up earlier and it still is up nearly 6 basis points, 3.87%. as that yield goes up it really hits those high growth stocks the big tech names and that's what we're seeing again on the nasdaq. it's a familiar theme. let's take a look at gold. gold up just a couple of bucks at $1,828 per troy ounce.

we've talked about bitcoin checking the price there. its been in that same range as lauren said between 16 and $17,000. it's actually down right now 122 bucks at 16, 483, or thereabout s. what about the price of oil? let's take a look at oil. it is up ever so slightly, $0.61 still under 80 bucks at $79 but up about three-quarters of a percent today. natural gas we always like to look at this especially in the throws of winter. it's down the cost is down $3.20 nat gas at $4.41. as for the average price for a gallon of regular ink across country, that's coming in at $ 3.17 but take a look at diesel which always has remained stubbornly high and adds to transportation costs. diesel right now is the national average ink across country, $ 4.68. ouch. still pretty expensive. all right coming up, a new

survey shows that most americans just cannot afford to own their own home in today's market. housing guy mitch roschelle will be here to take that on and where is housing going? the new york times is finally coming around to admitting that there's already a border crisis. wow. national border patrol council president brandon judd will react to that and we're looking ahead to this weekend's weather of course as we ring in the new year. fox weather will bring us the very latest report as we look at an earth cam shot of times square. do we have that? it's pretty quiet there now but you know what? not for long. we'll be right back. ♪ ♪

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ashley: just about 12 minutes into the final trading day of the year, and well, sad trombone dow off 186 points the s&p down three-quarter of a percent, the nasdaq down 1% giving back some of those gains we made yesterday. all right, now this. everyone is gearing up of course for the new year's eve weekend. jane men and joins us from the fox weather studio now. okay, jane, what the are we looking at as we ring in the new year? >> well, ashley, i can tell you both coasts are in for a bit of a mess, and it isn't going to be the brightest new year's eve, perhaps, because we are anticipating two storm systems to have quite an impact, but generally speaking ink across country, temperatures are warmer and it's going to be very comfortable but let's take a look at what's happening in times square. now if it were me i would like to stay indoors with all of this rain coming in but i know it's not going to stop the thousands of people heading to times square. if you have dinner plans, in the

evening, it's going to be very wet, but our fox forecast model is giving us the indication that we will be seeing some of these showers taper just in time for the ball drop. here is midnight in times square scattered showers around but generally dryer than what we'll see , so improvement there, 51 degrees which is rather mild going into the new year and see ing scattered showers continuing to stick around through the overnight. just keep that in mind ponchos will be needed if you are in new york celebrating in times square ink across southeast earn region the rain moves out just in time all part of the same system bringing rain to new york and up that 95 corridor, but we will see clear skies from jackson to memphis to atlanta, temperatures again in the 50s maybe a few scattered showers down through florida but perhaps nashville is where you're celebrating the new year. fox's all-american new year's eve celebration will be taking place that night and we are anticipating really beautiful weather, clear skies, temperatures in the 40s and 50s so just kind of bundle up a bit

but we'll ring in the new year with a lot of smiles plenty of fireworks and lots to do on broadway and out to the southeast we go because remember it's both coasts that have weather concerns. we are tracking a storm system continuing to keep rain, especially in california. los angeles indoor plans will be the name of the game 46 degrees we'll see snow up through the mountains into the great basin and rockies maybe going to a ski resort to ring in the new year definitely will be pretty with the snow coming down beings make sure you travel up into the passes there all of this gets going throughout the day but for tomorrow night scattered showers continue but we will see snow steadily up through the mountain passes. up into seattle ink across pacific northwest a lot of system impacting the west stays further to the south so we'll see mostly dry conditions, temperatures in the 40s as we bring in the new year, 43 degrees with cloudy conditions, chicago will also see pretty much the same forecast so overall i think the middle part of the country will go away without any weather

issues and good news is ashley for new years day on january 1, many of us will see the rain go away as sunshine does break out. ashley: 51 degrees in times square on new years eve. not bad compared to last week. we'll take it, jane, thank you very much. absolutely. ashley: of course for the very latest forecast, you can download the fox weather app or stream fox weather on your favorite connected tv device. great stuff. all right, staying on the weather by the way, the bomb cyclone last week left some homes completely encased in ice. these pictures are remarkable, lauren. lauren: these are lakefront homes in ontario and they look like igloos. they are completely encased at least the front is, in this thick spikey ice because lake erie came crashing in and literally flash froze on the houses. that ice is heavy, making it very dangerous because of the weight and the flooding from the water. it's going to melt today, right? the temps there are in the 50s today but if you go to the west of ontario in new york, buffalo,

death toll is 37. ashley: wow. they just don't look real do they? remarkable. lauren, thank you. coming up the governments ink across world are debating how to react after china lifted its zero covid policies and now covid cases in china are soaring to 9,000 per day, so is now the time to get a booster? i'm going to ask dr. marc siegel and then there's this. elon musk went on the attack against dr. anthony fauci, oh, yeah we'll bring you the details on that, next. ♪ a must in your medicine cabinet! less sick days! cold coming on? zicam is the number one cold shortening brand! highly recommend it! zifans love zicam's unique zinc formula. it shortens colds!

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ashley: paxlovid was hailed as a miracle pill in the fight against covid but now it's almost impossible to get your hands-on. steve harrigan has the story this morning and steve, what's the problem? >> ashley, one year ago, there was a real shortage. paxlovid is the antiviral pill you take as soon as you get covid that can reduce the risk of hospitalization by 90% so hailed by many as a

miracle drug. there be concerns they would run out. now the problem is very different. there is not a shortage of it. production is ramped up and there's plenty of it and doctors are not prescribing it enough. one medical official explains why not. >> it takes time to educate physicians and pharmacists about brand new medicines and how they should be used, and the federal government really didn't know how to do this , so doctors weren't educated very well about it. >> studies show that right now just 11% of people who have covid are taking the paxlovid pill. while it's not for everyone especially those with severe kidney problems, administration health officials say it could be saving a lot more lives and that many people over 50 or at serious risk from covid should be taking paxlovid now. >> when people test at home if they test positive, the first stop every single american should have is am i eligible for

treatment? >> paxlovid needs to be taken early on in covid within the first five to seven days after symptoms begin. ashley back to you. ashley: all right, steve, thank you very much. interesting. now this. dr. anthony fauci's time in the government, well, it's coming to an end, and lauren? take us through some of his biggest hits. lauren: oh, fun, okay. ash, he's been the public face of science, right, for decades, advising seven presidents. i think he's most uncomfortable relationship be that with president trump and that did not go unnoticed. watch. >> they get up and really aim their bullets at tony fauci. well people could recognize there's a person there so it's easy to criticize but they are really criticizing science, because i represent science. i'm the bad guy to an entire sub set of people, because i represent something that is uncomfortable for them. it's called the truth. it's very dangerous because a

lot of what you're seeing as attacks on me quite frankly are attacks on science. lauren: he's out, but not over, ashley. he told the new york times he's going to be lecturing, getting involved in advisory issues and encouraging young people to not only go into science but also public service, and the new york times in this article did the interview and he's sitting in his office surrounded by pictures of him on the wall, and i just started to laugh, because yes, people's offices are pictures of them and the great people they have met and awards, et cetera, i just said oh, that's kind of fitting. ashley: yes, it's all about me. staying on the good doctor, lauren, elon musk is sharing his thoughts on dr. fauci. what did he say? lauren: pull up the tweet this is one of the tweets from elon musk. anyone who says that questioning them is questioning science itself cannot be regarded as a scientist. ashley: [laughter]

lauren: look elon has gone after dr. fauci in the past and is now allowing on twitter because he is the head of it a reasoned questioning of science, and not adhere to it as the one and only truth, right? and then you know, say everything else is false. you can't consider another point of view because what i say is science. the word of god. ashley: right. you know what? he made a lot of missteps, fauci , and he was adimate that the original virus did not, could no way have come from the wuhan lab in china and then he backtracked and of course it was revealed that some of the funding for that lab came from the united states. then he was caught wearing a mask after being fully vaccinated and they said aren't you just doing that for theatre? he said absolutely not but then backtracked later and said well yeah, i kind of was. the chances of me catching the virus indoors after being fully vaccinated was basically nothing so he has a lot of detract or s. lauren: keep going, ashley. ashley: he has a lot of detract

or s but there's reasons why he was questioned so much. lauren: i couldn't agree more, because he helped shape the policy that everybody abided by and he had social media help him shape that policy and tell people what to do by squashing and not allowing other points of view to be shared online, to be amplified. ashley: that's a good thing. you question him because then you're questioning science itself. lauren: i remember the whole mask controversy at that time when we were told to wear two masks and i just sat there saying, well, i can wear two masks but try putting two masks on a child? i mean it just, it felt like it was going nowhere in real life. ashley: absolutely. well, absolute disaster and look how we ended up handling it and look at china and their zero covid was a nightmare. anyway we'll leave it right there that's our segment on dr. fauci. still ahead in the show, florida

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