>> announcer: building a better bay area for a safe and secure future. this is abc 7 news. i'm kristen sze. welcome to our daily program called "getting answers." asking experts your questions everyday at 3:00 to get anticipates for you in realtime. today we have the rare opportunity to have a conversation with uc berkeley he recolicthis year and what that means. and we'll talk to the founder of a new app meant to filter out harassment and trolls and social media. she previously made waves calling to depender pay pu first jnson & johnson first released preliminary findings questions, dr. phillip grant is

an assistant professor in infectious diseases at stanford and leads the johnsonen john vaccine study at stanford. thank you, dr. grant. >> good afternoon. >> there are a few different ingut ther 72,66%. 85%. break down what's what. >> right, so the overall prevention against severe disease is in the mid-80s, like you said. one other piece of information that you didn't say, so just -- in terms of what people know, it's an virus vector single dose and these are comparing the efficacy of the please bo vespers the active drug. in the individuals with the active drug it prevented 72% of

overall infections and prevented 88% of severe infections studywide. another piece of information that's important, is -- after 28 days of the vaccine there was no people that had been given the real vaccine that ended up in the hospital or died. and substantially, you know, a fair number in the place bo arm. it was effective against preventing against severe disease. but not as effective of mild disease. you also mentioned the lower percentages are efficacy in different regions. >> yeah, 57%, right against the south african. >> yeah, that was south africa. and so unfortunately we had several variants develop over the last few months, with all the virus that's circulating. and so the variant that's in south africa had a change -- has a change to the spike protein. so all the vaccines look like they won't be as effective against that variant.

>> we shouldn't think of this vaccine as not as effective as moderna or pfizer. variis that these wd t studied e tt at and there was another two-dose vaccine study came out yesterday by novavax had a higheresquesquely overall but similarly lower against the south africa variant. >> why is this vaccine the big game changer, if you will, i know it doesn't need the supercold refrigeration. that's one. >> i think, right now, i'm in my office seeing patients. and it would be nice just to give a vaccine to coronavirus like we do for other vaccines, just in the doctor's office or in your local pharmacy. but the storage issues related to the pfizer, moderna really

are required to be done in large group settings. so my mom had it done at stadium and a lot of people as similar settings in bay area. that's great that people are getting it done. but a fair number of people aren't going to be able to set aside the time to make appointments things like that. it's nice seeing a single dose without the requirements that can be just done in regular -- regular care. there is a study of johnson & johnson that's using a same vaccine for two doses. and so we'll see how the two dose compared to single dose. that won't come out until later in the year. >> got it. because it is about as effective as the other two when you talk about single dose, right. >> exactly, yeah. >> okay. and since. >> and i think all the single doevss prevent against serious disease. >> um-hum. >> and i -- vaccines do two things. prevent you from getting sick yourself as well as helping the

community avoid illness. and so i think the number of people that can get vaccinated quickly, regardless of what vaccine it is, will help the latter, in terms of public health impact of vaccines. >> so when do you the johnson & johnson one to get fda approval? they did say they were applying next week for emergency authorization use. >> i don't know the exact timing. i do believe you need two months of efficacy data before they -- i'm sorry, safety data before they'll approve your emergency use authorization. our last patient was on study december 17th. >> um-hum. >> that would mean i believe the earliest they could give the ua was february 17th. but i'm not 100% sure. yeah, they're turning in the packet and it's getting reviewed. >> so what is the soonest americans can actually get the johnson & johnson, do you think? >> i think the way it worked out with the other process is about

ten days after ua was given that people got it in their arms. >> so -- talking april. >> i expect the ua would be issued. >> okay, got it before the end of february. >> and about ten days after that -- so late february, early march is when it might start being used. >> i misheard you and that panicked people. i'm glad it's only another month. what are some the side effects you saw with this one. >> less than 10 people had a fever. that was the most common fever, other than just sore arm, which about two thirds of the people had a sore arm. so not -- nothing -- no serious side effects that came about there. i'm not aware of any anaphylactic issues reported in the study. we'll get more details as the study is published in the peer review forum. but there weren't any serious

safety signals reported. >> oh, good, some people are asking that on fischer live right now. here is another question about is it safe for people with seasonal allergies, asthma allergies to medications? >> that -- yeah, we enrolled patients in the study that would -- a lot of patients would have those type of symptoms and get enrolled in the study. and it was safe. >> okay. how are the again etics of this particular vaccine different from the moderna and pfizer? >> right. so all vaccines expose the body to part of a virus and you get an immune response to it. the simple vaccines that we know of for flu, they just give your body the protein for flu, and you get an immune response. those take a little bit longer to develop. so for those -- these vaccine, the mrna vaccine packages mrna

in more or less fat drop lets to enter the cell. >> um-hum. >> and mrna is basically -- translated into protein. and then the body produces an immune response. the adeno virus vierkandt vaccines are engineered viruss that just are very much a shelf a virus. the outside is actually a common cold virus. but the inside as it is just encoding proteins for the outside of coronavirus. the spike protein. basically it's just a shell, it's not able to replicate. but it uses the shelf adeno virus to get your body to make the protein against spike. in that way it's similar to mrna, your body makes the protein and makes the immune response. >> dr. grant we have one minute left. two quick questions. one of our viewers wants to is it safe for teenagers? because we know the other two were techted for 16 and above

appear 18 and above. >> yeah, we are 18 and above right now. we are going to do a study probably in the next couple of weeks once our site is activated for children. it presumably is going to be. but there is going to be more testing in children. >> all right. lastly, look nobody has a choice right now but if you did have a choice would you take the other two over the johnson & johnson as an individual? not as a societal choice and what benefits society but as an individual would you say one is better than the other? >> i would get the vaccine -- if you had both available on the same day, it really depends on your personal -- if you had all the time in the world to wait in line and the wait going back twice didn't matter to you, then i would take the two-dose. if you wanted to get it done it as quickly as possible, convenience -- i think it depends on the individual. for me, personally, i probably would take the two-dose because my schedule is pretty flexible. and the injections are right here at stanford.

it's not inconvenient at all. >> dr. phillip grant as a societal standpoint just get whatever comes our way when that becomes available. thank you for your time and explanation today. really appreciate it helping us understand the johnson & johnson vaccine. take care. >> sure thing. have a great day thanks. >> thank you. coming up next with a rare interview with the uc berkeley about

hi, i'm pat and i'm 75 years old. we live in the mountains so i like to walk. i'm really busy in my life; i'm always doing something. i'm not a person that's going to sit too long.

in the morning, i wake up and the first thing i do is go to my art studio. a couple came up and handed me a brochure on prevagen. i've been taking prevagen for about four years. i fe abit br and my mind just feels sharper. i would recommend it to anyone. it absolutely works. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. the wait is on for the quarter million california high school seniors who apply to a uc school for this fall. it's an anxious time, made even more anxious for some after any heard the numbers released uc yesterday showing a huge jump in the number of applicants.

joining us is the uc berkeley vice charles and director of undergraduate admissions. you go by fi. you great toaly hisppy you released numbers, a record stunningly high number of high school students applied to uc berkeley for this fall. give us the key numbers. >> yes. so we saw a really dramatic increase in applications, about a 28% 1% increase in freshman applications and 8.5% increase in transfer applications. what we are most proud of is see the diversity in the applicant pool as well. we saw a 38.1% increase in african-american freshman applications and 29.3% increase in latino x.

a 55% in rural students applying to uc berkeley. we are really excited about the great representation across the state that we are seeing in our applicant pool. >> those are huge increases. i know it's never one factor. but what do you attribute them to? >> you know, this -- working through the pandemic environment it was an opportunity for us to really lean into the virtual space in our ability to get to places that perhaps would have been much more difficult to get to on a map. and so we really did a lot of great work in a huge shoutout to the income taxes office and the team. we had virtual openhouse program with 22 hours of live workships and content. about 6,000 students and families participated in that. we also had our berkeley -- discover berkeley series, a series offerial d,camic and student support and student panels and the rest. we made sure our conviction was greater than challenges. and made sure we engaged the

counseling community as well. we had about 700 high school counselors and community-based organizations participated in some of our counselor case studies worldwide. and so we really leaned in, pportunity to connect with folks, hold some bigger and larger events in our outreach practices. and i think a lot of that hard work has really paid off in what we see in the applicant pool. >> not considering s.a.t. scores or standardized test scores this year, was that a factor too. >> i have to say it is. i certainly believe that that played a role. but i do think that it's important to know that many institutions across the nation, you know, held back on requiring s.a.t.s and other standardized testing and did not necessarily see the same applications bump that we did. while i absolutely believe that that played a factor, i really do attribute a lot of that growth to the hard work of the

admissions team. >> okay. is there a change in the way your readers look at the students and what they look for to identify talent, achievement potential without the s.a.t. scores? >> and so it's interesting, because often times people will wonder, how are you going to ee evaluate students without testing? there is a lot of information that we've been able to gain and gather to better help us understand exactly where students are coming from, the context of their high school environment. and we've always participated in what we call holistic review, which looks at not just what a student achieved but who that student is. by leaning into that it allows a innovator of version willings of excellence to emerge in the competitive pool. in that same nature it's important to know that we stand committed to the academic excellence that berkeley always sought after. and so we are really excited to know that there is so many other ways that you can measure and really evaluate a student beyond

just a standardized test. i also believe it's critically important to lean into these pieces because while the s.a.t. is a standard test. we recognize the educational experience in the united states is not standard. it's important to have local and specific knowledge of that educational environments in which our students started coming from. opinion. and we have tasked our admissions officers to be local experts of the high schools and communities that they read. by doing that it allows a variety again of different types of students to be able to emerge in our incredibly selective process. >> to do that work probably takes more time. are you hiring justs teams of extra readers this year? because the deadline for alerts students of the decision is the same, right, end of march? >> that's correct. and we have been working incredibly hard around the clock reviewing applications. we also make sure that we bring in folks that -- professionals to help us with some anti-bias training and some diversionty and equity training to ensure that our lenses are not -- are

not by as the to our own experiences. and we absolutely have worked with external readers to help us really lift this incredible load to get us to be able to release decision attention in the time in which everyone expects. >> we have time for one last question. >> yes. >> if you get more applicants then does that mean you know, increase the class size next year? >> and so we are not expecting to increase the class side next year. and so to your point, you're absolutely right. we are seeing more applications but if the class size remains the same then we should anticipate a drop in our acceptance rate a little bit. and we'll need to see what that looks like. but, again, the covid environment really calls into question some things around wheels. so students making decisions to truly come to the institutions that they're applying for. so we have to see and wait that out. but i know we have strong efforts to ensure that students find in place berkeley to be a home for them. >> well, femi, there is so much

to talk about, so little time. sdent and also a u back and conversation with kids who are freshman, sophomores and juniors right now to put them on their path. whether they end up ate other pt for them. i really appreciate your time. >> absolutely. thank you so much for having me again. >> thank you. all right, folks, coming up next the founder of an app meant to be used as an anti-harassment actual on social media. and that's just the beginning of her mission. we take a short b

with so much harassment and vitriol on social media these days what if you had a tool to filter out trolling and attacks. bay area tech entrepreneur known a activist knows about being harassed and she built a new app to fight back against trolls. joining us today is tracy zhou, founder of the block party app. tracy a stanford grad who had

been of an engineer at pinterest and korah before launching the non-profit include. good to have you. >> thanks for having me on the show. >> of course. congrala o t party app. public. what's the premise? and how does it work? >> yeah, the premise of it is that we want to give control back to users so they can choose what they see or don't see. the way that it works -- so our beta service, our current service is you can sign up for block party, link your twitter account, set filters anything that doesn't pass the filters goes into a separate folder, think of it like a quarantine. you can use twitter without having to deal with the harassment. it's still in a folder you can review later, in case there is good stuff that got overfiltered or bad enough you need to be aware of. a lot of this coming out of my

own experience dealing with harassment and knowing the psychological impact of having to see all this negativity. and you know in some ways i analogize it to being cat called on the street or harasse is not thabaorin ang. wh think about the scale of abuse that can happen online when there are massive attacks of trolls, just thinking like the thousands of people that can be attacking you, it can be quite traumatizing. pretending it doesn't exist is also unsafe. that's why we mute these potential abusers. but still collect everything that has been filtered out into a folder for you to review later in case there are things that you need to deal with later. i've also had deal with things like physical threats and stalking. and still being aware of that is important. the key is being able to control when i go see that stuff or you know when our users want to

engage with that content. and even having that control of when to look at it is pretty key. and then one of the other things that is pretty important is just thinking, kind of like, from the community perspective, right now all this burden is put on the peoplerit, i was to askingo asking about the twitter function, mute, lock, report. it's on you and traumatic to have to deal with it and look at it. >> yeah, and this -- i think it's just a fundamental design flaw where a lot of popular groups punt this over to the users to say if it's bothering then let us know. i had this experience over the summer when i did a q & a session on the site reddit which is what well-known for trolls. i had thousands -- like 4,000 trolls attack me. and reddit's official response was tell me you can report anything that's harassing. and i just looked at this -- their official apply. there is no way i'm going

through 4,000 comments to report all of the harassment. but the burden is fully on the person dealing with it. and even though there are reporting functions that other people in theory could access, it turns out that usually timothy ignore third party reports. only if you're the person being harassed will they look at it. although in many cases they ignore it. one of the things that block party does, is because we isolated everything that's potentially a problem into a separate folder, you can delegate access to other people trusted friends, individuals, staff members even, to take a look at the folder of content and help you review it, take action on your behalf, like blocngor if there is more concerning, flagging it to you to take a look at it. or if there are good things overfiltered they can fish them out so spread out that burden. >> is it only compatible with twitter. >> right now we're twitter only. although we plan to be cross platform. again taking the user perspective of understanding, what is it like for somebody

dealing with harassment is it is cross platform. the people wanting to attack you will spill over to any platform. we did intend on bg for otherinstagram, youtube, et cetera. and also being a place where you can start to gather that evidence in case you need to actually, like, escalate, file a report for example, it's a good place to assemble that evidence. >> that is a great feature. is it free? or is it a paid subscription base. >> currently it's free. we are planning to build out premium offerings so there are power tools for people with extra needs around harassment. >> we intend to have a free tier so everyone can access some level of this filtering and protective function, acknowledging that many times the people who are getting attacked are people from more unrepresented -- marginalized backgrounds, already, women, minorities. and we want to make our service

available to some of the people needing it most but also may not be able to pay a high fee. at the same time, if we do want to have the more premium features available for a subscription. >> all right. tracy zhou, founder of the block party app available now. don't go away because i want to continue theith you over on facebook live. and ask you

>> thank you so much. thank you. >> take care. thank you so much for joining us for this interactive show "getting answers." ovsee egghe jnsnciri atollege a at uc berkeley and explored a new app from a local developer meant to filter out trolls olo .

block party app.com is the webt if you want to look at it. we'll be here every weekday at 3:00. tonight, several developing stories as we come on the air. news on what very well could be the third covid vaccine soon available for americans. tonight, how does it compare to the pfizer and moderna vaccines? how effect it is it? johnson & johnson releasing its results today. this is a single shot vaccine. faster to produce, easier to store. they say it is 66% effective at afor phaser and moderna. still, authorities calling this a powerful new weapon and johnson & johnson saying it is 100% effective against hospitalizations and deaths. so dr. jha is standing by to break this all down. also news on the mutations,

the coronavirus variants in this