hi there. i'm kristen sze. welcome to "getting answers" we're asking experts every day at 3:00 to get you answers in real time. today with covid cases on the upswing in california, we'll talk to an epidemiologist who will answer your questions about school reopening considerations and much more ch our first guest is fresh off re-election of a israeli congressman. ted lu's bytingly comments have earned him 1.4 million followers. last night in response to the lieutenant governor of texas offering $1 million.

he tweeted this. texas l.t. governor dan patrick gave me an idea. i'm offering $1 million to find big foot. i've seen enough fox national tv shows to know big foot is real. rudy guiliani said he had evidence that it exists but it got lost in the mail. good afternoon, congressman, good to see you. >> hi, kristen, happy to be here. >> the honor is all ours. i know this has sperm meaning to you as an air force veteran. >> thank you. i appreciate that. and all the veterans who served. >> your tweet toe the republican lieutenant governor basically like bd his mentioning hey, let's find voter broad like finding big foot. we're pretty sure there's no big foot but how can we be sure there was no voter fraud. >> because donald trump's case

has lost 16 court cases and won zero. at court they're saying there is no fraud. what we're seeing right now is simply unwillingness to accept the presidential election. what happened is joe biden beat donald trump by more than 150,000 vote in pennsylvania, this is not a close election. >> all right. and i know democrats have made the point that there is a difference between some error, which happens in every election, and fraud. if there's even just a tiny chance of error, however small the scale, what do you say to those who wish a different outcome who says hey, let's turn over every potential roblg. >> in arizona, joe biden is beating donald trump by over 12450 votes. the trump campaign has filed this big case challenging 200 votes. so even if they win this case,

which they won't, they're still going to lose the election. this is like if you lost a basketball game by 46 points and you're mad because on the last shot your opponent was awarded three points rather than two because it came closer to the line. that's what we're talking about, meaningless lawsuits. >> that's exactly the kind of tweet that gets you a lot of attention when you put that out there like that. i should ask you, this being veterans day. the president has focused some of his attacks on ballots that have arrived after election dand some veterans groups say that impacts those of us in the military serving our country. can you explain that to our viewers? >> it sure does. different states have different laws for when they will accept ballots. north carolina, for example, they will count ballots received after election day for over a week.

in pitch, pennsylvania supreme court said they'll go up to three days after election day and those are for military ballots and for other people who postmarked the mail in ballot but it didn't arrive because of postal delays or other delays. in pennsylvania, it's a privilege lus lawsuit. the number of ballots received after election day was about 10,000. joe biden is ahead by over 50,000. it's not going to make a shred of difference. >> if anyone were to buy that theory, as a veteran how does that make you feel? >> i believe all votes should be counted. now, if you're going to file a lawsuit, you shouldn't count those votes, the trump campaign can certainly do that and that will disenfranchise military veterans. i'm saying at the end of the day, whatever the trump campaign does in pennsylvania doesn't matter because joe biden has won. >> right now it is over 50 no

votes as the differential. you're right. democratic senator chris coons from delaware says he has gop colleagues who won't go public but they tell him in person they recognize president-elect joe biden. >> what we're seeing is all of these republicans coddling donald trump's ego. it is quite disspiriting to watch. it's embarrassing, as joe biden has said. a battle trump has to accept that the american people spoke and he lost. there's really nothing you can do to change the fact on january 20th he will be escorted out of the white house. >> well, so far, over a dozen trump campaign lawsuits have been dismissed already. new ones filed in pennsylvania where you say biden's lead is over 15,000 vote. what do you suppose is the end game, the strategy here? >> donald trump's campaign is

raising a lot of money off of these lawsuits because they keep sending e-mails to supporters. when you look at what the money is going to, over half of it is going to retire his campaign debt. part of this is a money making scheme. another his ego can't accept the fact that he lost. instead of coddling his ego we should do the transition. we need to have joe biden and kamala harris and their team to know what the trump administration has been doing. none of that is happen because donald trump refused to accept defeat. >> how much time do we have to play with? the electoral college is supposed to meet on december 14th. when you have the lawsuits, in georgia, recount now, so delays, could that jeopardize the meeting on december 14th? >> it shouldn't jeopardize anything. again, all these lawsuits are pretty much being dismissed quickly, because courts actually require evidence and the trump

campaign has still provided no evidence. when the court dismisses that case, the higher courts aren't going to do anything to help donald trump because once the judge makes a finding of fact, it's over, essentially. he can keep filing lawsuits but it's not going to change the results. >> in the bay area, we're the blewest of the blue in the bay area and biden carried most of the counties, 70 to 85% of the volt. there are people worried about faceless electors who may not vote for the person they're vowed to vote for. donald trump retweeted it. are you concerned about that? >> i am not number one, the supreme court has said that you cannot do that. but second, in this space are really upset about this, the deep red states. donald trump won those states so those electors are going to be voting for donald trump.

the blue states that won, those states will be won for joe biden. and electors are going to do what the popular vote says to do and there's no evidence we have any evidence of wrongdoing at this point. joe biden's victory is pretty convincing. he didn't just win by one states. he won by multiple states. you'd need multiple states to go off the reservation. >> i seem to remember three electors defected from hillary clinton. i'm not sure that was california, but i think it was a blue state. >> so what that would mean is that joe biden winning by 306 electoral votes but won by 303. i don't imagine there's going to be any, if any. i expect them to follow the rule.

>> all right. a new poll shows that 80% of americans believe biden won including 60% of republican voters. yet the administration has told federal agencies not to cooperate with the biden transition. he's not getting money for the transition. he's not getting intelligence, he's not getting office space. are democrats doing anything to try to force the issue? >> we're simply going to follow the lead of joe biden and kamala harris and their view as this is completely silly and we're not going to give it anymore oxygen than we need. trump campaign is losing every single lawsuit. at some point he'll be out of lawsuits that they can file, and then the race will be completely over because there's simply no avenue to reverse this very convincing win of joe biden. >> all right. congressman we have time for one more question. i want to ask you, it's easy to be partisan in attributing blame

but in the past three years -- 30 years, i should say, there have been two democratic presidencies that were four years each. many people say they're worse. right. i think in 2016, many people voted for an outsider because they felt that they were tired of not having economic opportunities, health care, education opportunities. kind of feeling left bmd. what are democrats going to do now with the opportunity of having a white house to change realities for those americans? >> that's a great question. and we've been running on the for the people agenda including protecting your health care, creating jobs and fighting corruption with this pandemic, we absolutely have to get virus under control or our economy will never get back to normal until we suppress the virus. we need to get legislation like

the george floyd act should be done. a biden administration will get different legislation through. >> congressman, also a veteran, thank you so very much for your time. good to talk with you. >> thank you so much. >> all right, folks. up next we're turning our attention to covid-19 as counties are being moved into more restrictive tiers and we're seeing

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professor and chair of the department of epidemiology at uscsf. thank you for joining us, doctor. >> not at all. thanks for having me. >> let's start with a big picture of where we are with covid. nation bide it's just stunning. >> yeah. it's really striking. we're in what we call the third wave and it means that across the country and we're seeing cases rise again as they have done twice before across the country. the worst hit areas of the country are the midwest. even here in california where our cases have been more muted than other places in the country we're seeing rises in cases and rises in hospitalization. >> those numbers are rising quickly even here in california. 47% up crease this week. which areas are driving the increase? and of course our hospitals in those areas stressed right now. >> yeah. so if you look across the country, what's striking people

here about wisconsin and the north dakota, north and south dakotas where you have the striking 30% positivity rates, 50% positivity rates. here in california we're nervous by about 4%. that's the rise for us. the reason we have to think about this as a national problem and a local problem is that it's pretty clear that hospitalizations -- hospitals are being stechd across can the country. nurses, doctors, respiratory therapist from other parts of the country. even if our state is not the one that's most heavily impacted, when we have so many states impacted across the country, i think 47 states have arrived. it really is a crisis of quite a large scale. we have to think about what we can do locally. that is continuing with the distancing and masking. in california we shouldn't be

freaking out but we should recognize that the winter is the time where will more risk as we move indoors. the holidays are times of more risk and we have to do that carefully. >> absolutely, which i think is partly driving san francisco's decision to cut off all indoor diepg now and cut back capacity in movie theaters, even though it's in the least restrictive tier. elizabeth wants to know how soon before having our mother-in-law coming to stay with us for eight weeks. should we all be tested? >> that's a great question. first thing to know, i think we're about two weeks from trifg. the best thing you can do right now if you don't have testing available is to make sure that now is the time to decrease your contacts with other people, to decrease your likelihood that you yourself are going to be exposed to the virus, decreasing your trips to the grocery store or other people that you don't usually have contact with. that decreases the likelihood that when you come in contact with someone who hasn't been

part of your bubble that you're not writing the infection into that bubble. in the case that you're talking about as somebody who has an older parent who's coming, the idea would be, again, to if you want to would be to take the comments and measures yourselves about limiting contact. if you want to test, testing before you come in contact with those person and ideally test twice so we get rid of the false positives and neglect tis. a test is a good idea before that person comes. allowing several days before that person then arrives. >> that's best practice. but the reality is it's not so easy to get a testing appointment right now. do you have any advice for people on where they can go and if there are also some self-tests, home tests that you would recommend that seem to be effective? >> yeah. we have more testing options available to us. i think the first thing that i would still recommend is that if you're going to do this in the health care settings to talk

with your doctor. they oftentimes have recommendations for how you yourself can get tested teen they're not available at that particular facility. sometimes that means you will have to pay for testing. our departments of public health are still testing and have expanded the access not just for people with symptoms. i know as we look to the holidays, both within clinical settings and within the departments of public health, i think you're going to see an expansion of testing for those who want to increase testing before and after the holidays. as you mentioned, it's not as available as we'd like it to be, but we have more testing options available and so you'll start to see more. by i usually say start first where you know the sites are testing because they can tell you where the alternative options are that might be available for you. >> one of our regular viewers wants to know how soon will the vaccine be available nationwide? >> yeah. that's the $6 million question,

isn't it? we should all be thrilled to hear the news reports of the pfizer vaccine that it's effective, and that will likely be the first to get approval. you should also know that there's several other vaccines that are being tested anded that we expect those results to become available very soon as well. i think the order in which these vaccines will be rolled around out and prioritized will go first to health care workers and then people with chronic conditions, other types of conditions that put them at risk for spear outcomes. then it will likely go to other types of high priority, teachers have been put on that list to other people who live in congregate settings like nursing homes. there's going to be a stamd

rollout, most likely. the reality is for people who don't in all the higher priority categories, is probably won't be until the middle of the year next year at the earliest. i don't want anybody to think we're throwing our masks away then. most likely people will be vaccinated and still be masking until we say there's enough immunity in the population that either people are vaccinated, have had infections that we can throw away the mask. >> we're going to take a short break. when we return, school reopening prospects and holiday travel best how about poor fred wilson? what a shame. so soon after retiring. i hear his wife needed help with the funeral expenses. that's ridiculous! -he had social security. -when my brother died, his wife received a check from social security, all right-- for $255!

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are discussing how to bring kids back for next semester. so with some of our counties moving into a more serious tier, do you think ice feasible for larger schools, middle schools, high schools to actually bring students back next semester? >> to be fair, i -- this is one of the most important questions both for our kids and for our economy. powerful get the schools open again. i think we -- our most important thing we can do now is make sure we get through the holidays with cases as low as we can keep them. then we need to try, particularly with our k-8 grades to go to school where we can allow for in-person learning. there will be more tests available. i think we need to see how we can incorporate testing into strategies to get kids back to school. in of the private schools are

already doing this. we have to try more testing and evaluation to see what's working. it is such a high priority. this is going to take resources and it's going to take keeping our teachers safe. those are the two things that usually get caught up in lots of the policy discussions, who's going to bay for this and how do we keep our teachers safe. i think we have to try these things while the cases are at a reasonable level unlike other parts of the country so we can try to reopen our schools safely. >> i have two teens and a mental toll it takes on them to be separated from their school communities for so long. thanksgiving is just two weeks away. what are some of the best practices you should give to our viewers seeing family or travel? >> my first advice is don't do it. that is to stay within your bubble and to stay with the people that you have -- that you've been with before. i like this rule of the three families together.

but remember that it's our family gatherings that we oftentimes don't think of as risky gatherings, so the people who i usually gather with is the people who i will be with over thanksgiving and i think the time is not now to risk expanding out that group. if one were going to do that, i think again, this is the time two weeks before thanksgiving to try to minimize your contact with other people so that you yourself are not the one carrying infection into another type of family gathering. the family gathering should be small. they should be ideally outdoors. they should, if you can, keep more distance in the gathering. i think traveling itself poses a risk of infection and you have to worry about the airports or the other types of environments how you're going to be traveling. to the extent you can minimize those types of activities for

long distance traveling. airplanes themselves are not as dangerous as people thought because of the filtering and the air but the airports themselves. i wane to highlight that, especially if you're traveling into other parts of the country where the transmission is higher or you have relatives coming from those parts of the country. the combination of warmts higher transmissions, even if you've been safe while at home, you can be at risk of infection while traveling. >> i want to ask lydia, what's the recovery time after your lungs have been damaged? >> yeah. that's a really great question. the challenge with covid is that we're learning there's such a large spectrum of disease. the thing we're learns about is the covid long haulers. those people who have prolonged symptoms that last over the generally four weeks that we think about a period of symptoms for a typical infection. we're learning recently that one

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and thank you so much for joining us today on this interactive show "getting answers" we talk to dead lu about claims of voter fraught r fraud. he said joe biden's margin of victory is so large it won't make a difference if states flip. every state in the country is recording an increase in cases.

we'll be here every weekda tonight, the coronavirus exploding in record numbers across america and new fears, new action tonight in new york city. more than 152,000 new cases reported in just the last 24 hours in the u.s. new york's governor taking swift action tonight, seeing alarming numbers in the state. new orders for bars, restaurants and gyms, calling them the main spreaders of covid-19. and across the country, texas thousand with more than 1 million infections. the images from idaho, oklahoma, utah, the dakotas. the cdc now with new guidance for wearing masks. and news coming in on a second vaccine, after that news from pfizer. the new warning tonight about thanksgiving. what the cdc is now recommending for americans celebrating the holiday. and concern over students returning home. more than 540 students forced to quarantine at