kgo. building a better bay area, for a safe and secure future, this is abc7news. >> gachk, everyone. welcome to "getting answers." we are asking experts your questions every day at 3:00 to get answers for you in realtime. today we will break down a complex issue on your ballot this election, prop 19. we're going to talk about what it is and what it might do for californians. we'll check in with a doctor onn breast cancer with this willing being breast cancer awareness month. we're lad to have dr. patel here to answer questions on covid-19. so post your questions on

facebook live. an update on the grass fire breaking out in south san francisco these are from sky max 7. that's the industrial city sign right next to highway 101. the flames creeping up the hillside. honesty, this video speaks for itself. the landmark sign with smoke surrounding it. you can see trying to make drops right now to get that fire under control. but the good news now fire officials say this is fully contained. it started before noon. at one point homes nearby were threatened but only a few had external damage. check out the latest right now on our website abc7news.com and also on the abc7news app. all right. we are always lucky to have him by our side as the coronavirus

continue to make headlines. to break all of this down for us and get us some answers, special correspondent dr. patel joining us right now. hi there, my friend. thank you for being here. >> thank you. >> let's start with how the bay area is doing when it comes to transmission rates. >> we're still doing ok. if you look at the mass right now of case rates, they're usually delineated with orange and red, centered toward the middle of the country. coastal areas, especially california, still great news there. we saw positivity rates below 5%. hospital percentages are being kept low as well. we're hoping to maintain that coming into the holiday season. >> what about statewide? when we look at california statewide and you see different counties and different positivity rate people need to

understand that means the civic center situation, the prison outbreak, a nursing home outbreak, things of that nature. so it's difficult to look at your specific county. in the bay area, seven of nine counties will have different hospitality rates than the other two. >> it's challenging when we look at the national numbers to keep in it perspective with what's going on in the bay area and specifically in our counties. what's going on nationwide? >> it really is. i think that's a big unfortunate milestone we hit this week is eight million case. we heard the president rounding a corner. we're unfortunately not rounding the corner. we're at eight million cases and seeing upward trebds in 32 states. this is not the direction we want to be going in right now seven months into the pandemic. even though i mentioned we had news to be optimistic about mrks the bay area, we're still in

control of that and we don't want to become a statistic later. you'll hear people from wisconsin talk ng about hospitalizations rising, runs out of space. it's a real reality here in october. jai know one of the biggest things this week that people were concerned about or were look at is president trump and his virus case. he said last night at the town all that he doesn't know whether he got tested on the debate day is he usually tested every day? what do you make of that? >> at this point, who really knows? it's coming out to be speculative, tabloid medicine for us to opine on that. i think the bottom line is there's not a clear message coming out of the white house. that is problematic for two reasons. number one, it's eroding public trust. the public is saying, hey, everything's politicized coming out of the white house right now. whoa don't know what to believe. also, its could put other people potentially at risk, which is

why the preliminary event, white house events are being called super spreader events. i saw a billboard that said trump super spreader event, with an arrow pointing twarltd. that's not the type of messaging we want to see. >> i'm looking on our facebook page and alexis said i heard on the news that trump said fwlld a vaccine by november, october, then i heard it could be by the oechbld the year. fires announce add new time line but another company paused their trial this week. what is the latest? can you break it down? >> i'll do my best. there is so much information when it comes to a vaccine. the cdc said they're optistic we say nee see a vaccine by the end of the year. pfizer announced they probably won't submit for authorization until late november at the earliest. that's because the fda was clear

saying they want two months of safety data from phase three trials before anybody submits anything and the public should rally behind that. we do not want a vaccine rushed. i want to make sure a vaccine is safe. we saw johnson & johnson stop their trial because of an ill buildings. illness. i think the bottom line is we probably won't see a vaccine with widespread distribution for a long time, probably next year at some point. people need to just realize that. our best measure right now are still washing hands, wearing a mask, social distancing. >> you have to think about the vaccine for distribution. what do you think about that? when might an average person actually be able to get it. >> early thoughts that there's

going to be a phase process of diegt. people on the front line would get the vaccine first and multiple tiers going down. the white house announced a partnership with cvs and walgreen's for distribution. i think you brought up an important point. if a vaccine comes out tomorrow or a few months from now and says this vaccine that works, that vaccine still needs to be distributed all over the country. it could be one shot or two depending on what vaccine it is. and then there's herd immunity people talk about. seven, eight or nine months before we see normalcy. >> holidays, we have to study that came out that said flying was apparently low risk when it

comes to getting coronavirus, but do you think we still need to be cautious about booking that ticket and saying, hey i'm good now? >> we still need to be cautious. you have to think about a lot of factors. think about where you're flying from, where you're going to. case rates might be different. think about where you're staying. is there activity up door or outdoor? you have to be wearing a mask and physical distancing. you're visiting family or if you have families visiting you, ask them are they staying at home orks sheltdering in place. it's important to get tested. it's ok to fight with your family. your uncle jack isn't take right steps, tell him he's not thankful for thanksgiving. >> the holidays are hard enough

as it is. >> no offense to any uncle jacks out there. >> also with halloween coming up. the state released halloween guidelines this week. what should we expect for trick-or-treating? >> off the bat, just because there are some guidelines surrounding halloween, anything we do to keep our kids safe, that doesn't mean we can't have a fun and special and still spooky halloween for little ones. there are a lot of things people do to celebrate. we talked about counts being different. i think the really important thing to do is look what county you're in and look what transmission rate is before you plan. have outdoor tiftsz, make sure kids are wearing a mask and the plastic masks don't count because they get holes in themselves. you can put a mask under your kid's costume.

i think people just -- patients need to understand that it's up to them to set the mood there's a lot of ways to make sure this holiday is great, even with the limitations. >> well, we have a few minutes -- or one minute left. is there anything you want people to take away from everything we've seen happen this week? >> i think at the boehm line, you know we have to remember two things. we have to remember, number one, that we are in charge when it comes to what this virus is going to do. remember that. and also i just urge everyone to trust science. three major scientific publications came out criticizing the national response. the science new england of journal, and i encourage you to read these, we're trying to be part zachblt sns isn't partisan. science is objective. look at testified, try to not let your emotions guides you and look at what science tells us

because that is going to be the guiding light. >> dr. patel, thank you as always for chatting with us. coming up, a complex issue. you see it as prop 19 but what exactly is it and what would it do for californians? before you vote our guest will he

all right, everyone. we are back on abc 7. it is one of the many crucial state proposition that are on your ballot this year, prop 19. this carries the potential of hundreds of millions of dollars for local governments and schools and you are going to be deciding on it.

but there is some very important arguments to be made on both sides of this issue. we brought you the no side of the debate. now we're able to bring you the other side. here's some background. to simt up, prop 19 would change the rules for tax assessment transfers. the proposition would allow homeowners who are 55, severely disabled, or whose homes were destroyed by wildfire or disaster to transfer their primary renz's property tax base to a residence of any value anywhere in the state. so to get you some answer we have on city -- the city of santa rosa councilman chris rogers is who is in is in is inn prop 19. thanks for being here. >> thank you for having me on. >> in your best terms, basic terms, can you describe what a yes vote for prop 19 does and

what a no vote would do? >> yeah. no. absolutely. a yes vote on prop 19 will close a long-standing loophole that is often known as the big la bowski loophole which has allowed folks who are wealthy and folks who are out of state residents to keep their property tax lower and put that money much needed as a dedicated funding stream for fire prevention services and for our local government. >> what would a no vote do, do you believe? >> a no vote would keep the situation the way they are. a vacation rental or as a usual rentsle for people even if they don't live in california. it would make it so those pay their fair share on their second and third homes if they're not living in the home and make sure that they're paying what they

need to for our local services. as i mention 79d vred, fire prevention locally. >> let's talk about the kind of support you're seeing at this point for prop 19. >> it's been a big coalition of folks who are supporting it, led by the governor as well as the california professional firefighters, the california labor federation, the california democratic party, multiple chambers of commerce have come outs in support of it as well, as well as californians for disability rights, congress of california seniors and many, many wildfire victims as well as myself and other individuals working closely with these families who are trying to pick up their lives after picking up after a disaster. >> we know this has been a long ongoing issue. historically, what has been the issue with this? >> yeah. so we've seen a number of different attempts from some of these groups that are now part of the coalition to make it

easier for particularly seniors to move throughout our community to downsize and leave their single family home for a bigger family that's coming up. but because they have the goenld handcuffs of their property taxes being held lower, sometimes not economically feasible for them to move. this allows fire victims to get out of high fire severity zones and to move into more appropriate accommodations without pricing them out. it takes folks who already have a home they're flichg and saying if they turn it into a vacation rental, that needs to be reassessed and pay its fair share of taxes. it's a double whammy which goes to addressing our housing issues as well as our firefighting issues. you said this creates tax

fairness. what do you think this ultimately might do for future property and home values? >> well. i think that first and foremost, it's going to make sure that our local community, our local services, our cities as well as our counties and our fire districts have the resources they should have to provide service in our community it's going to make our community more liveable. it will go towards road repairs and fire pretengs vengs. we need to make sure we have people living in these homes. in some areas they're starting to turn into vrbos for people who no longer live there. that's a huge detriment to our community. we want people to live in our community and if they're not, the homes will still pay for the services that their renters or others are going to use in our community. >> koungman rogers, thank you for joining us and sharing that. we really preach it.

>> absolutely. you take care. >> we're going to talk with dr. laura esterman on her wisdom study and the much-needed

welcome back torque back t c so often it seems like the tools to fight breast cancer fall short but some people in the bay area are leading the charge to find a cure and one of them is dr. laura. i'm excited she's here joining us live. thank you for being with us. we appreciate it. >> it is my pressure. thank you so much for having me. >> we talked a little on facebook live. i want to start for people just joining us here what is the work you and your team do? >> i think there are two major areas we're working on. it all comes from the idea of trying to move to a more

precisioned approach to the clinic, treatment and prevention of breast cancer. breast cancer, we're trying to work hard to find the right treatment, how much treatment you need, whether the treatment is work, and so we have a big program to really bring a more precision approach to patient care and trying to do for for the people who are at risk and less forecaster people who are having a great response or more for the people who actually have higher risk, so that's in our -- at the breast care center and our trials are about precision treatment. but we've learned so much about that that we started to ask ourselves, if breast cancer isn't the same disease and everyone doesn't have the same risk factors, maybe we should be taking a precision approach to breast cancer screening and prevention. maybe one size fits all, doesn't

really work. women informed to screen depending on measures of risk and everyone, the majority of women don't get breast cancer, even though it's a common disease, but it also means that everyone age 40 to 74 are being told they need to be screened. we've got 30,000 women already enrolled in this study nationwide and we want to get to a hundred thousand. we want to double our enroll j. you can go and be part of a program that you can join by your phone, home, and your computer. go to wisdomindict.org. what we're asking women to do is to participate in a study where we're comparing the one size fits all approach to a more personalized approach, based on a lot of factors.

we'll tell you what age to start, how often to screen, with what modality and if you're high risk, what we can do to really drive down the risk. >> some people may say what's the big deal if i get tested at 40? i'd rather be safe than sorry. why is it better to have a more precise approach? >> that's such a good question. because -- and we acknowledge that it may turn out to be the right answer but it may not. if you screen for ten years, there's a 50% chance you're going to get a false alarm. you'll be called back. you might have to go through a biopsy, which is so frightening for people. maybe if your rusk is really low, you don't need to go in so often and your chance of having that would be lower. maybe you'll be diagnosed with a precancerous form that would never come to attention, and so we -- there is some risk that you can overdo it and that actually is a problem.

on the other hand, we may miss the chance that you actually are at very high risk. the majority of congresswomen aren't, but if you are, there's an opportunity to do something to reduce your risk. we should be doing more for you and finding better ways to prevent it. if they have a history of heart disease and stroke and their cholesterol's high, people don't think twice about going on a statin or some other medication. 40,000 women a year still die of their breast cancers despite everything we're doing. so you can't say we don't have to do better. we do have to do better. the only way to do better is to know better, as maia anglo anglo

we're trying to find the way forward for people who might be at risk for the highist at risk cancers that they would get those cancers or have an advanced case. standard mammography doesn't always find every cancer. there may be situations where you need a different type of test. that's what it's all about. it's doing more for the people that need it and less for the people that don't. >> are you still looking for women to participate in the wisdom study? how can people get involved? >> we are. go to wisdomstudwi we would love another 20,000 women to join this year. we want every race and everynd y ethnic background, black, brown, white, la tina, everyone could want to join, because they

should want the information that we gather to apply to them. we can't do that if you don't join and you don't help us. when you say this is a study for women about women and the only way for it to succeed is for all of you to join in us this incredibly important effort to make the future better. >> thank you so much for the work you're doing for us and for taking time to talk with us about it. we really appreciate it. hopefully we'll

world news tonight is next, but we thank you for joining us here and being a part of this

conversation with us, as always. we really enjoyed taking your tonight, several developing stories as we come on the air. 18 days now until the election. tonight president trump and joe biden in a race to the finish. president trump knowing he needs seniors, with another appeal to them in florida. what he promised today. and with hospitalizations for coronavirus increasing in 39 states now, the president saying we are rounding the turn on the virus. joe biden, meanwhile, in michigan saying the reality is much different, the situation is getting worse, as scientists warn heading into fall. and the dueling town halls overnight and the reaction. the fight against coronavirus tonight. the u.s. hitting that new milestone today, 8 million confirmed cases now in this country. tonight after coming down with the virus, former new jersey governhr