hi there. i'm christkri kristen sze. we're asking experts your questions every day. today we'll explore the presidential election and chat with best-selling sci-fi writer on why the biden landslide didn't happen. pardon me. i'm going to turn off the audience here because that's my laptop and it's making a little noise. the battle against covid-19, front and center today as president-elect biden. joining us to talk about a

vaccine and other covid headlines is infectious disease doctor. thanks for joining us, doctor. >> thanks for having me on, again. >> yes. it's extra exciting for you because three of your colleagues were name to the just advisory board from the biden home run harris team. first congratulations to the entire uscf. tell us about the three distinguished doctors and why you think they were chosen. >> so they were all chosen for really i think broad overview and understanding and deep understanding of the public health system and they can see what it takes to have a national strategy, so to speak. so david kessler was head of the fda for many years before becoming the dean of medicine,

has been a strong advocate of -- he's a pediatrician, health in general for americans of all walks of life. he has an a understanding of rules and regulations, as well as public health and medical health care, so to speak. eric guzby, who can say much more beautiful words than -- and words of praise for somebody as wonderful as him. he's been one of president obama's architects and president bush before obama in terms of our support of hiv work across orders, so particularly in other countries and africa, and is well liked by both sides of government, bipartisan, so robert rodriguez, emergency room

physician. a lot of his work has been in access to care. i think the nomination of him to the committee comes with a lot of emotional and i think broad value in terms of trying to reach all members of society with regardless of where you come from. >> their selections represent what biden had said all along, that the pandemic will be priority number one for his administration. i know you must have watched the announcement this morning. what did you think was most notable about his strategy that he laid out? >> i think what was most notable to me was really something that we've all been looking for so many years, which sounds very simple. i think if you -- that's probably my biggest point, whether or not you talk about code or you talk about climate

change or so many process that affects all of us. he's going to bring people who know what they're talking about into the conversation. we're looking forward to that. there were a lot of -- i was part of a lot of chats this morning, people celebrating that simple facts. >> he certainly emphasized mask wearing by all, saying it's not political, which is the same message you doctors have been echoing. do you think there should be a national mandate or simply a suggestion. and is a suggestion going to be effective? >> i think it is important to have a mask mandate. it's whether or not you can enforce the mask mandate. it will have a lot of symbolism, too, and i think it will be up to the different jurisdictions how they enforce it but it is important, and essential strategy. if you look at all the countries who have done well, they haven't

gotten by without having a mask mandated, something very cheap. whether or not you come -- whatever political affiliation you come from. so i think it's important aspect to state publicly. it's part of a national strategy. we haven't had a national strategy. if you talk about a virus, it doesn't care what political party you belong to, it doesn't matter what state you're in, to give control to the states seems nonsensical. the virus doesn't care and respect state boundaries. >> already president-elect biden is reaching out to the governors so he wants to work with the states and see if they can all come up with a uniform strategy. everybody very excited, including the stock market tact good news on the vaccine front. fiez erz announcing data suggesting their vaccine may be 90% effective. is that right? is that better than expected?

>> much better than expected. remember, the bar was pretty low, which was 50%. so it's like you didn't study for the test and you got a 90, that's crazy. that's beyond your wildest imagination. of course they studied. it's going from a c which was possible, to like an a, a plus, even. so i think it went beyond people's pmss. >> how did they come up with 90%? what is the methodedology? >> this is an interim analysis. it's not going to be publishable yet. they did an early look and the reason they're able to be this fast is kind of a little bit morbid because that's because there's so much covid in our country, it was easy to get enough cases to see a difference this soon after getting the vaccine. >> but how did that work?

did they give some people placebos and others the vaccine and they went along with their lives. is that how it worked? >> pfizer is a little more bullish than other countries, they look one week after you get your second dose. most of the other companies, two weeks after. but enough cases there was a difference after one week. >> i have more questions about the vaccine. i want to bring in some viewer questions for you. debra lewis jones wants to know does this new vaccine contain shark in it. are there mercury parts or formaldehyde? what do we know about what's in that vaccine? >> those are good questions. i don't know. i'll review that for now, but it is important. i mean, i think safety is an important aspect of the vaccines

for everyone, for all of us, i think that's what many americans are worried about. so they have new safety barriers, do want people to follow for at least two months out, so that's why the vaccine cooperate be approved right now tomorrow for emergency use authorization. but the exact components of this particular vaccine, i need to go back and look at. >> all right. we have many more things

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all right. hope you were with us when we were on facebook live talking during the break because good helpful information was coming out. in fact, i'm going to ask it again.

doctor, when do you think this pfizer vaccine could conceivably get the approval and be rolled out? >> i think it will be after thanksgiving, the end of the month is what's projected. maybe i'll be able to get it in my arm for a christmas presents. >> talk to santa about that. robert has a question about this pfizer vaccine. whether it had anything to do with the white house. do you know if this was privately funded or did it result from some sort of trump administration partnership with pfizer? >> i thought it was really interesting strategy not to affiliate with any politics. so pfizer is probably the only company i know in the running that did all of their development by themselves and didn't -- wasn't actually part of operation warp speed and so quote the pfizer ceo when he made the statement, he found it very important to distance himself from politics so that

there will be no strings attached. >> all right. sasha says this vaccine is free for everyone. president-elect biden said the vaccine would be free to everyone. so we know, what is the true cost, if you can put a price on it, of a vaccine such as this? >> the costs to produce it will probably be in the billions of -- billion range and if you had to pay for it, you'd talking about a cost of one to $200 per course per person. >> wow. all right. so that is going to be quite spen expense for the government. do you have any information from contact tracing that they released or anything to learn of

the origin, how they all came down with it? >> i think, kristin, we're seeing the genesis of a super spreading event number two and these are probably not going to be the only cases that we find. there's all the hullabaloo around the election time but one specific event people looking at right now is the election watch party that happened at the white house. >> all right. well, parties, thanksgiving is coming up, of course. what is your advice to people who are considering getting together with family, traveling? what would you say? >> i would say be modest, but of course in your goals. have it by your own -- with your own part or be modest in who you invite. have it outdoors if you can, not indoors. if you're having it indoors, be few people as possible. crack the window open. buy a help earlier.

don't get together and sing "for he's a solly good fellow." >> or any other song, for that matter. the u.s. much more dire situation with 10 million cases now. more than 800,000 since november 1st and over a hundred thousand knew cases now for the last five or six days. give us the big pick of what this is telling you? >> what this tells us is that california is being encroached by the fire that's happening in the rest of the country and it's only a marry of time before we see an increase like they're seeing right now in southern california. so i think it's really incumbent upon us to really bite the bullet and try to do all these great things that we're doing in terms of keeping ourselves and our communities safe all this time. wear that mask. wash your hands, watch your distance and watch the wind. think about ventilation.

>> sure. all right. i want to go back to the conversation about the vaccine. that seems to be where viewer interest is. alex wants to know what are the side effects of this or other vaccines? >> right now, the pfizer product haenlts had a big safety signal yet like some of the other companies. so i think, you know, right now it sounds like soreness at the site of the arm, maybe some low grade temperatures for some, but again may not be linked to the advantage seem. again, when you talk about a trial that's 40 -- more than 40,000 people, people are going to get sick independent of the vaccine or the practice scene seeno. right now, interesting that they haven't had to pause this trial as opposed to two other companies. things are ok that are not ascribed to the vaccine. >> ok. alicia wants to know why make a vaccine but not one for

hiv-aids. there's a lot to unpack but we have good therapeutics for hiv-aids. >> it's much more challenging to do an hiv advantage seerngs because it's -- it changes all the time. and it's harder to really -- for a variety of reasons that we can't get into now. versus the covid virus itself, even though it causes so much destruction is relatively simple virus to get hold of from a vaccine manufacturing perspecti perspective. >> how long is this vaccine effective? are people able to get it the second time. >> that's a good question. right now the feeling is it's probably going to be a periodic vaccine, you'll need a booster. the question is how long immunity would last. 40,000 people and more will get

the vaccine who are in these trials before the rest of the population. they had a head start of a few months. those people will be followed periodically or over time. the antibodies will be checked. once they see waning that would be the time to recommend that we all should get a booster at this p point. >> debra wants to know when will the list of the vaccine ingredients be known? when do you think people will know? >> as part of the fda labeling process, all of that should be publicly available, because it would be all open by the time it gets to fda skrult any. >> we have about a minute and a half left. i want to talk about the affordable care act lawsuit that will be argued in front of the u.s. supreme court tomorrow. first of all, it's called texas versus california. how did it become that if it has to do with a national law.

help us understand what's at stake there. >> yeah. actually, don't know that answer of texas versus california. maybe you might help me, kristen, but i know about the implications -- >> i think it's texas versus the federal government and the department of justice decided not to defend it anymore, so california and other states decided to pick it up. talk to us about what this means for californians. >> what it means is that millions of people -- you know, if passed and a lot of people think that despite the composition of the supreme court now that it wouldn't pass for a variety of reasons. even insurance companies are hoping that it pass -- are cautioning against passing -- or dismantling the affordable care act act because of the chaos that will ensue during a raging

pandemic with up to 20 million people losing health insurance. that's a 70% increase in uninsured. >> from a doctor's perspective, why do you think it's so important for everybody to have health insurance? >> i mean, for so many reasons. you know, day to day when i seasick patients, many of the patients who i see who are the sickest of the sick couldn't go to get preventive health care or couldn't go in early stages of their disease or couldn't go because they were afraid of being sad we would a huge bill. so i think access does have a huge part to play, and i think the covid pandemic really unearth some of these fractures that we have in our health care system. and it is the best case scenario, right. while we have the aca in effect. think about it in the nonaca,

covid isn't going anywhere soon. particularly in the pandemic situation, individual health regardless of your ability to pay affects all of us. you can't kill this virus without making sure everybody is healthy. >> all right. doctor, thank you so much for your time. i'll talk to you soon. >> thank you. >> all right, folks. we're going to take a short break. when we come back, john schoolsy and

welcome back. our next guest is an award winning novelist. it's sci-fi literature. john skalzi's book was on "the new york times" best-selling list for fiction. he writes a blog called "whatever." joining us now from ohio, the

battle ground state that turned out not to be is author john skalzi. hello, hello. >> hello, hello. >> we have known each other for about 25 years, john, when you were a movie critic for the newspaper. you've gone on to literary greatness? isn't that right? >> i would characterize it a hundred percent correct, thank you so much for noticing. yeah. no it's been an interesting journey from where we are to where we are now. >> incredible and i'm very proud. your books often explore the theme of the destruction of humidity. you find a way to do it in a humorous way. how do you jump from that to t politics? >> because i had a column at the fresno b in edition to being a

movie critic, i had a gem interest column, i had been writing about politics off and on even before i became a science fiction author. i've be following it and writing professionally about it for a number of years. so every time we come around to presidential election, it's like getting on the bicycle again. >> on the bicycle, your latest blog entry is causing quite a stir on social media. it's called the sound of a landslide not happening. meaning of course the biden landslide that so many polls ree predicted. >> it's so hard to get people to respond and when they do respond they don't necessarily respond the way that they used to. so in one way we're flying more blind than we were before. i think there was a division

between where people wanted the presidency to go and their satisfaction with their senators and their representatives and so on and so forth. so i think that fundamentally, people are like, ok, change needs to happen. but it needs to happen at the top. and then we'll see what happens closer to home. >> but you also in this blog put a lot of the responsibility on white people, who you say people failed for moral itself. you write about white americans, they'll let it burn, meaning america, because they'd rather be on top of a pile of ashes than a part of anything else with people they don't see as being like them. that is controversial? don't you think that's a generalization, first of all, but also kind of dismissive of the white voters who voted for president trump looking at their economic realities? >> yes, this is a generalization. it's a column and we speak in

generalities. i think the think that we have to look at is even if you are thinking to yourself, this is about economics or it's about something else. fundamentally when it comes right down to it, you see who trump is, and you see what he's been offering. four years ago when i was trying to explain to the people that i live with. i live in a county that went this year 81% for trump. why so many people were upset of the vote. i call it the theory of racism. you are forced by your cable provider to get cinemax, so are you a cinemax subscriber even though you just wanted hbo? the answer is yes. with trump, there might be economic things. there might be other reasons, but fundamentally baked into that was inhesht racism, inherent bigotry and inherent

graft and corruption. everybody knew it was there. you cooperate separate it out. whether you voted for trump, certainly four years ago and absolutely in 2020 where we had four years of experience with him, you couldn't separate the two. you voted for racism and you knew that's what you were doing. >> top, that's all the time we have right now. we'll continue this conversation on facebook lye. i know that's a controversial view and you probably have lots of argtsd about it with your neighbors in ohio. i know you b ...this one's for you. you inspired us to make your humira experience even better... with humira citrate-free. it has the same effectiveness you know and trust, but we removed the citrate buffers,

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and we are back. thank you so much for joining us today on this interactive show "getting answers."

question covered all the coronavirus headlines. we'll be here every tonight, is it the ants? pfizer and what it now says about its vaccine for coronavirus. the head of pfizer saying he learned just 24 hours ago of the results, that human trials show its vaccine candidate for coronavirus is 90% effective at fighting the virus. late today, dr. anthony fauci calling the test results extraordinary. the drugmaker did not take u.s. federal money to keep their vaccine from being politicized and will next turn to the fda for emergency use authorization. so, tonight, what does this mean for americans? how many million doses by the end of the year and for whom? and when will the rest of the country have access to a vaccine? and all of it tonight as this country sees several days in a row now of well more than 100,000 new cases a day. tonight, the virus on the rise in 49 states. and this evening, the nt