building a better bay area, moving forward, finding solutions, this is abc7 news. >> hi, everybody be a good afternoon, i am dion lim. welcome to our daily program called getting answers. what we are doing is asking experts your questions every day 3:00 to get answers for you in real time to today, we will talk with dr. patel. we do have a lot to cover, including questions from you on facebook , and also vaccine confidence and a couple two truths and a lie. but first, another mass shooting, eight people dead at a fedex facility in indianapolis. many are asking, when exactly will we see changes? what can be done? so joining us now to talk more about gun violencegun violencege

thomas, the executive director at giffords law center, robin, thank you for being here. i know so many are frustrated because it seems to happen time and time again, after there is a mass shooting that makes headlines, people want to know solutions, what do you think some of the solutions can be? >> well, in the situation, we actually have information coming out, i don't want to say too much about what we know and don't know, but it sounds like there was some indicators that this individual posed a threat and that family members knew that he was potentially violent and had guns. indiana, as well as california and 18 other states have these laws called extreme risk protective orders. these laws enable law enforcement to remove guns from someone, temporarily, who is in a time of crisis, and who presents a threat to themselves or others. it's exactly the kind of legislation and action that we can take to prevent the shootings. it's not always the case that we have information we need to remove guns, but in this case,

we certainly did, and in many mass shootings, there are indicators that would enable us to take steps to protect individuals and communities from these types of events. >> yeah, those preventative measures really could have stopped that particular incident. i know you gave an interview with the los angeles times about the atlanta area shootings, at the number of spas by that young man. and in that case, that case, was purchased legally, can you elaborate a little bit more on what happened in that case? >> so that was a situation where the gun was purchased within, you know, in california we have a 10 day waiting period to buy a fighter arm, firearm. research shows that whether it's people who intend to do harm to themselves, or others, very often holding off period or space between purchasing the gun and acquiring the gun can make a huge difference in preventing that from happening or maybe people get help or have second thoughts about the act they are going to make. in this case, the gun was

purchased so soon before the event of that really, there was no opportunity or that individual to get the help they needed. you know, the other thing we are finding, and the thoughts are always different in these cases, a lot of times, now we are seeing connections between extremism and hate crimes, and hate speech and some of the shootings. so there's also a need, i believe, to understand that better, to look at ways that we can keep guns out of the hands of individuals whoindividuals wl exhibiting those kinds of violent tendencies or behaviors or threats. in this case, again, what happened in indianapolis, there was a clear indication that this individual presented a risk and a threat and his family called law enforcement. i don't know the facts yet, why they didn't try to remove his guns, but it sounds like a situation where that is what should've happened. >> yeah, you know, it is so easy to say, i wish that happened. but in hindsight, you know, family dynamics, challenging as they can be, i can only imagine, whenever this discussion is brought up, there

are a lot of people who are anti-gun or pro-gun who like to make their cases as to what the solution is. how can we find some kind of median that would satisfy both groups? >> i think that's a really good question. i think it's really, really important that we not approach this through the lens of pro- gun or anti-gun. we have the commitment right, we are going to respect those rights, and that does not create any impediment to robust regulations, certainly in california, we have apprehends of gun regulations, much lower gun death rates and in many states. i think the question is not do you like guns, do not like guns? it's, how do we protect those rights while still taking steps that we know through research, are proven to make communities safer. we can do it. we can have background checks and protective orders, we can limit these really dangerous assault weapons are often using mass shootings. there's lots of things we can do that doesn't encroach all

the way. i think we need to have an educated conversation, based on research and fact on what works. i think we will see, we actually can do both. we just haven't done it yet at the federal level. >> something i hear so often times, criticism from people who say that we keep having this discussion, but there is no tangible action that is taken. do you have any insight as to what lawmakers are working on right now? >> i mean, the absolute baseline most important must pass is universal background checks. it is the floor for regulation that we need, in order to move forward and do more comprehensive reform. it has passed in congress, so congress passed in march, universal background checks. is coming up in the senate, and we need the senate to pass universal background checks. from there, we can talk about things like dangerous weapons, risk protective orders, the president recently last week made a huge announcement with really, some amazing progress, in terms of gun regulation.

so we know we can do this, we just need our national leaders to lead, to ask, to begin moving in the right direction. >> i think that was the start. i remember what was said last week, so that certainly is a steppingstone. i have been covering a tremendous amount of hate toward the api community, especially during this time of colonel harris. just today, i was covering an incident, involving a woman who was held at gunpointat gunpointt perceived safe neighborhood, we are watching video of it, as you can see it right now, she is, you know, her suv, she approached very quickly by two suspects. one who gets out of the car, hold her down, ends up taking her purse, and then coming back, stealing her jewelry. i got some stats from san francisco police that show that violent crime usingcrime usingcg such as a gun, up, i believe it is around 70%, if not slightly more, from 2019, going into 2020. are you able to elaborate a

little bit more on the trends that you have seen, particularly in the bay area? >> you know, i can't speak to the bay area, but i can tell you this, gun violence, gun shootings as well as gun deaths were up significantly in both 2019 and 2020. 2020 was one of the highest gun death rates we have seen at almost 40 years. we certainly know some of that is due to coronavirus, and the stress that it's putting on communities, suicides are up. domestic violence is up. children and accidents in the home are up. we are seeing greater rates of gun violence in infected communities and communities of color. basically, gun violence is increasing across the board. so we definitely need to look at all of those things. we need to be willing to consider the steps that should be taken, to address gun violence and all of these forms. when you have more guns and you have more pressure in communities, you are going to have more gun death. you are going to have morgan crime. so we have to look at it

holistically. i will make one point about crime, which is that interestingly, crime solution rates, violence against law enforcement, and by law enforcement, these things are all connected to each other. so when communities don't trust law enforcement, when there is a breakdown in community police trust, it has a negative effect across the board on rates of violence and crime. so i do think that there is a piece of this that has to do with the way in which law enforcement is perceived in a lot of communities, and the need to rebuild, to reform the way police are trained, to rebuild trust with the community, because that is going to have an impact on things like violent crime that you see in that video. >> i couldn't agree with you more, after speaking to somebody victims over the course of this past year, almost i would say at least 5 to 10 every single week. i can definitely see where you are coming from, and the need that we need to heal, and develop that understanding, in order to move forwamove forwamoe

robyn thomas, executive director at giffords law center, thank you for being here with us. >> thank you so much for having me. coming up next, after the break, dr. alok patel joins us live. make sure to log on to facebook live, and ask your two truths and a lie. we will be engaging in that in just a coup

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okay, i like that, vaccines continue to get into people's arms, and covid- 19 continues to make headlines, so let's bring in our special correspondent, as always, dr. alok patel, so nice to have you, that afternoon. >> good afternoon, dion. >> to do satellite during our live stream yesterday received so many comments, many

negative. in light of the johnson & johnson rare blood clot news and pfizer's ceo saying, you will likely need a booster. so i believe our producer wants us to get right to it, because that'll set the tone for the rest of our segment, get to >> listen, i'm on board with that. i think we should just be jumping into it. we will set the stage and we will go from there. so, everyone knows the name of the game, tell me which one of these is not true. so, rare johnson & johnson cases, once we are talking about, involve what we have called cerebral venous sinus process with thrombocytopenia. or is it b, fewer than 1 and 13,000 vaccinated individuals have had a brea infection, after getting vaccinated. or is it c, 15 states saw an increase in covid-19 cases over the past week? which one is not true. i had to dial up the difficulty a little bit, but i trust our viewers. >> oh boy, i don't know if i trust myself and answering this

correctly. please weigh in on facebook. facebook.com/abc7news. i want to say that c is true, because undoubtedly, despite vaccines, you know, with people feeling that vax occasion spirit, or need that, it's okay to congregate, maybe that is true. rare, the way you punched the word rare for a, j&j cases involving cerebral venice sinus thrombosis, okay. thank you for pronouncing that for me. so i think i'm going to go with what the majority of people on facebook say, b is the lie. drumroll, please, dr. patel. >> drumroll, please. b is actually true. c is the lie.the lie. >> oh, my goodness. >> unfortunately, it's actually more than that. the last report showed about 21 states, cases are going up, so you are seeing headlines right now the cases are rising about

half of the united states. which is not exactly direction we want to be going in. you're exactly right with a, these are the rare cases, 6 out of 6.8 million we've been talking about all week long. we will get more into it in the next couple of segments, but the condition scientists are specifically referring to, that term means in layman terms, there is a blood clot in a specific name that drains blood from your head and it means low platelets, so those are the part of your blood that will help with clottingclottingclottg you know, when we talk about these breakthrough infections, scary headline. people are saying, oh my gosh, why are people getting covid-19 after getting vaccinated? but that rate is so low that it's actually indirectly proof the vaccines actually do work. we can get more on that later. >> you know, i want to get to the increase in all of those different states, but while we are talking about response aid, when you say rarely, how rare are we talking? because so many people online said that that is all they see, that there were these horrific side effects, and they get this

tunnel vision, and totally ignore that rare part. rare par >> you know, i'm going to be honest. i don't blame people for the anxiety, and for the fear that they felt over this past week. when they see those headlines, you know, when people come up to me and said, i don't know about the johnson & johnson vaccine anymore, i'm scared, i can't fault them. these are actually reports. so with the reporting on showed was about 6 cases of this specific type of blood clot with the low platelets, out of 6.8 million shots. so if you look at that, that is less than 1 million. it's important to understand, this is a specific demographic, women ages 18 to to right now, the cdc is looking at data, trying to understand, is there a possible link? we don't know that for certain. is there a possible link? what executives mean for the future of vaccine? there needs to be a warning later label, et cetera. there's been no defined causation yet. is totally possible these individuals had something else about their medical condition,

the rising, maybe they had lopez to begin with due diligence is to take a pause and make sure everything is safe. people need to understand the overwhelming majority of cases did not have these issues. you know, studies actually estimate you have about 10 times higher chance of getting a blood clot from covid-19 itself, from the actual vaccine. so you can pick and choose the risk benefit, but it's definitely safer to get the vaccine in the long run. >> thank you for putting that into perspective. it's that risk reward thing, that people really need to weigh. by the way, tessa said she got the answer right and she is getting really good at this two truths and a lie game. >> tessa got it right i believe past week too. week too. >> kudos to you. definitely. we have got a lot of critical comments, and i want to share some of them with you. ivan wrote in to say, here we go again, big pharma making money out of misery. what is your response? i mean, talk about, you know, the cost

>> ivan is not wrong in thinking that pharmaceutical companies are going to make a lot of money. off of the vaccines, i'm not going to lie and deny that, right? vaccines have been in research for more than 15 years. there are salaries to be paid, there are lab supplies, there's an actual cost to getting something to market. this is why the white house put so much money into operation warp speed, because all of this takes money. you know, i will be honest, there is no actual service related to innovation and human progress towards any natural disaster, tragedy, epidemic, what have you, that's done for free. so, you know, it's one thing to say, oh my gosh, they are doing this and making money. they believe they are actually doing this to profit. and the one, this is not directed toward ivan, but one thing i want to address the people, there are people online who say, physicians are making money off this pandemic. i promise you, from the bottom of my heart, i don't make a single dollar from people going out and getting the vaccine.

on top of that, we would actually save billions of healthcare dollars, if we kept people out of the hospital. according to the icu, getting hospitalized, taking those medications actually cost us in the long run way more money than actually preventing all of it, i promise you that. that is healthcare economics 101. >> wow, i also want to point out, given the hours dedicated from medical professionals, such as yourself, i feel like you are almost losing money, because you are working double the time, in order to tackle so much that's going on so in that regard, i see where you are coming from. >> thank you. i appreciate that. it's either time or sleep, we are losing one of them. >> it's all currency, you know, to human beings. denise wants to say, don't take the vaccine. you all know nothing, using us as lab rats. these vaccines are fully vetted, and they were, again, pushed out in an expedited manner, so i don't know if you think there is, you know, any merit to what denise wrote in to say.

>> i wouldn't say that there is any merit to the feeling that people are being used as lab rats right now. but there is merit to the notion that these vaccines were rushed out. i think the reason people feel that is, think about all the outward messaging that we heard last year. i mention the word operation warp speed. dr. malone gave people the perception that we were just rushing these vaccines. then there's all the celebration, this is the fastest vaccine ever developed. what people need to understand is, the technology behind astrazeneca and johnson & johnson vaccine, the viral vector has been around for decades. the actual mrna technology behind pfizer and moderna like i mentioned earlier, has been studied for more than 15 years. it was plug-and-play. the actual experiment process was done in three phases, last year. we are at the stage now where we are not lab rats. on top of that, rats are not even involved in actually the phase 1, two or three. we are not even lab higher- order mammals in this case, we

artie know the vaccine is safe and it works. that is why it was approved by advisory committees, the fda, the cdc and other health officials nationwide. >> let it be known, no rats used. the term lab rat, not very accura

patel. >> who is wearing a bow on his lapel pin. we are back with our special correspondent, dr. alok patel. let's get to some more facebook questions, in regards to the efficacy of these vaccines. dr. patel, we spoke about this on the brakes, how there have been, there is new data now, they've been out in the real world, you know, scenarios, and the efficacy has increased in a lot of cases. >> yeah, and there is data not only in the united states, but in israel and europe, showing the vaccines are actually working and actually preventing,

systematic cases. hospitalizations, and deaths. they are actually performing in the real world about 90%. moderna and pfizer, we knew in the trial they were performing about 94.5, 95% , that is incredible news. you, you remember last summer, we were going to celebrate any vaccine that had greater than 70% efficacy. so seeing this is pretty remarkable. i want to go back something we touch on earlier, we talked about breakthrough cases. yes, there were 5800 breakthrough cases of covid-19 among vaccinated individuals. you may look at that and say, wow, that's a lot. think of this fact, there were 77 million individuals vaccinated that they looked at. 5800 out of 77 million, that is where we came up with that 1 and 13,000. that is a much lower rate than what we were seeing previously in unvaccinated individuals. even if you do get a breakthrough infection, and you received a vaccine, the data is showing that you likely have, not likely, you do have a heightened level of protection, and you are less likely to get severely ill, lined up in the icu, or worse. >> i want to ask you about my

camera person from today. i was shooting a story and he shared with me that, you know, he has vulnerable individuals in his home, but he has had reactions in the past, very severe ones, to other vaccines. but he was convinced to take it. you got i believe the j&j vaccine, and had a very terrible response. i mean, to the point where hours later, stomach issues, gastrointestinal issues. you know, for people who have had reactions to vaccines in the past, would you still recommend this? >> for the very rare cases, where someone has anaphylaxis, meaning they have had a life- threatening allergic reaction to a taxi, requiring hospitalization or medical care, i would talk to your healthcare professional about the vaccine. you are still recommended to get the shot, but you may have to make sure you are doing in a safe setting, and waiting for 30 minutes. everyone else out there who's had a really bad reaction and have heard stories such as, your cameraman, or i will be honest with our audience right now, i had a really bad reaction after my second pfizer

shot. what people need to understand is, this is reacted in the city. this is your immune system building up antibodies. think about every single time you have a fever, you have a sore throat, you kind of feel muscle aches, anytime you get a seasonal cold, at the exact same kind of process, if you will. it's almost a good thing. you get the vaccine, you kind of feel a little crummy. that is proof your immune system is actually working. so it's really important for people to understand what immune system reactive, what the expected side effect is, versus an adverse side effect, something you shouldn't expect to feel. those are two very different things. it's important to understand what's normal versus what you might want to say like hey, let me check in with a health professional. okay, only a couple minutes left. >> kudos to your cameraman, by the way. >> it was funny, he was shooting a story at a vaccination site, where the person who was running at all, had some extra doses and really convinced him. he wasn't going to take it, so he's actually quite relieved, i think. now he can feel that weight has

been lifted off his shoulders, which was awesome. >> of course. >> speaking of that, of writes in to say, i'm fully vaccinated, what can i do now? does this mean you can rip off the mask and lala law outside and start hugging people? >> not yet. you know, i wish that were the case. there's two things i will say to that, it's really important we kind of follow the cdc guidelines right now about vaccinated, say things to do while you are vaccinated. one of the most important things to do is understand the people around you, is everyone around you vaccinated as well? also, remember that, we don't yet have definitive proof that the vaccines are going to completely prevent transmission from one person to another, and where that's important is if someone around you is unvaccinated and they are high risk. so if you are planning a small dessert dinner gathering or netflix night or something, you have to make sure all your activity, risk-taking activity is really riven by anyone who may be unvaccinated or higher risk.

don't rip off the masks, don't start hugging random strangers just yet. >> my cameraman case, because he is surrounded by people who are high risk, i think it was probably worth that one or two days of, well, as you can imagine, what can happen when you have gastrointestinal issues, and massive headaches. so for him, that makes sense. i get it. >> and i would just like to add the fact, what i'm gathering from what you are saying, the fact that it was short-lived, one or two days, is still expected what people are seeing with the vaccine reacted in the city, the term i use. my symptoms were awful and it only lasted for about 16 to 18

stay more active after that news. >> i've seen your instagram stories, you are active. >> always, thanks.always, thanks

much for joining us on this interactive show, getting answers. we will be here every weekday at 3:00 on air and tonight, the deadly shooting rampage, both inside and outside that fedex facility in indianapolis. at least eight people kill in the a massacre that lasted just one to two minutes. the suspect, a former employee there armed with a rifle. authorities say he drove to the warehouse and immediately began shooting, then shooting and kills himself. what we're learning about the suspect and his mother's call to police last year. there is also new reporting tonight in the deadly police shooting of a 13-year-old boy in chicago. the video now showing the boy with a 21-year-old in the minutes before their confronted by police. the officer yelling to see his hands. authorities say a still frame shows what appears to be a gun in his right