welcome to dealing program, we answer your questions today. today were talking about covid- 19 in a local doctor says when it's time to get rid of the mask mandate , is that time now? will also go out of this world to discuss with happening on mars. as you probably heard nasa just successfully flew a helicopter over mars so that's pretty incredible. first, closing arguments just ended

derek chauvin is in the hands of the jury. joining us to talk about this case and what it means for all of us, paul batista. thank you paul for joining us today. what an afternoon, give us the main point of the final arguments that we just heard that each side just made to the jurors as they wrap things up and send the jury into deliberation. >> the prosecution did a great job of laying out its case over to our timeframe. even though the defendants lawyer, mr. nelson was outgunned, he was only lawyer representing derek chauvin he did a remarkably good job of summarizing his defense of the case. i think we saw some exceptional lawyering throughout this trial including during the closing arguments. >> the defense made a last- minute appeal to have the case

dismissed pushed on what a california congresswoman said. touch on that? >> apparently maxine waters elected to go on television recently and frankly, made some very incendiary comments about what the results might be in the event that derek chauvin is acquitted. so mr. nelson, the defense attorney, quite appropriately, based a motion for a mistrial on those incendiary political comments. i've been practicing for 40 years and i have covered the o.j. simpson trial and many others and i have never seen outside forces, political forces that are so obviously trying to influence the outcome of the jury decision and what is complicated here is that in a case of this magnitude and this

amount of explosive potential that this jury was not sequestered, at least until now? >> the defense made that point, i was thinking they are trying to set things up for the appeal which is likely. i wanted to ask you, which side do you think that the most convincing job? is this a slamdunk for you to decide? >> no, it's not a slamdunk for either side. let's not forget that o.j. simpson was acquitted basis what appeared to be overwhelming evidence for those of us with a little bit of a shorter regulation, george zimmerman was acquitted in connection with the killing of trey von martin so it is by no means a slamdunk and we live in a system, i'm a criminal defense lawyer. but we do live in a system where the jury is instructed that a fair amount of deference is to be given to police officers who are involved with

the process of making an arrest or doing their job. so it is by no means a slamdunk. the fact that there are 28 witnesses for the prosecution as compared to seven for the defense is not a factor. >> a lot of people look at the video it was so painful to watch. they would say that is a slamdunk but legally you have to show intent, right that he intended to hurt or kill george floyd. defense is the prosecution didn't do that do you think they didn't do that? >> the video is overwhelming as a human being and the jurors are all human beings the video is very compelling. without at the prosecution case would be incredibly weekend, this video is going to haunt the jurors in the jury room and is indeed the most compelling piece of evidence. no one's going to remember the

scientific testimony what people will remember is the video. they may well focus on the fact that derek chauvin, for whatever reasons he may have had appeared quite relaxed, frankly as he was exerting pressure on george floyd plus we have george floyd's understandably emotional screaming for sympathy and safety. it's a case that i think leans quite decisively in favor of the prosecution but there is also a fair amount of evidence that derek chauvin was simply doing the job that he understood he had to do and again, there is, the supreme court tells us this, we may not like it, a level of deference it is to be given to police officers as

they are involved in inherently fluid situations. >> did either side have a clear missed opportunity or big misstep? >> it was as i said a little earlier, remarkably well tried case from both standpoints. the police had of course the videotapes, they had some very compelling medical testimony professional testimony and the defense also did the most to possibly could do under the circumstances, would have been useful frankly for the other police officers involved in this incident to have given testimony but they have a fifth amendment privilege against self-incrimination so they couldn't be compelled to be there. >> paul, one thing the defense tried to argue as the

prosecution didn't prove that other factors didn't contribute or cause george floyd's death but do they need to? >> i think the defense needed to do that and i will be quite frank, i think the number of factors they put in, condition of george floyd's heart, his physical condition, the undoubted use of illicit drugs. they, the defense needed to get that information in front of the jury and succeeded in doing so. >> all right, since the floyd family is arctic on the $27 million settlement from minneapolis, does that suggest anything to you about the direction of the criminal case or not at all? >> not at all. that was clearly a political decision reached by the city of minneapolis to reach a resolution with the floyd family.

the jury has been instructed, that settlement, of which the jury is aware, should have no bearing on the conclusion that it reaches over one issue. there was really one issue for this jury, did derek chauvin deliberately and intentionally kill george floyd, not whether $27 million was paid to his family. >> on the question you just posed, any predictions on how the jury will decide? i know you're a novelist, maybe not necessarily a betting man but if you were to bet on the second-degree murder charges and second-degree manslaughter charge, which way do you think the jury is going to swing? >> i will take the same step i took during the o.j. simpson trial in another of the trials having heard all the evidence and i try to be objective, i think there is a meaningful likelihood is that as the consequences may be on

the street that derek chauvin may be acquitted. they will be my prediction. >> we will cfx comes to pass, that your prediction obviously if that were to happen there be consequences either way because this really strikes at the heart of what america is going through in terms of our policing and relationship between police and people of color. there is so much there. i do appreciate getting the conversations started. thank you so much paul paul batista. coming up next, is the time to get rid least the mandate? we'll talk about that

and we are back, masks are essential for a lot of people but when we start transitioning back to normal? joining us, infectious disease specialist, dr. monica gandhi. dr., good to see you again. today is the deadline set by the biden administration for all states open vaccine eligibility for everyone 16 and older. so my question is how important is this milestone and how well do you think we are doing? >> is such an amazing milestone i sort of feel like near tears today it's incredible to have this be the first day that everyone over 16 can get the vaccine, i'm thrilled.

>> given this, more people are being vaccinated, you have mentioned maybe it's time to situation was be clear about at, explain your thinking indoors is a very where transmission occurs without some great data recently about how low your risk of transmission is outside. there was a china based study that looked at 1000 plus cases and only one occurred outside, there is a study from the irish times to 30,000 to 30,000 ireland it look like only one in 1000 occurred outside. there is a study that shows very low transmission outside. >> i'm curious what you think is the downside to continue to wear a mask outside? people are pretty used to it by now? >> the one thing you've been

seeing a lot of political messengers messengers this over the weekend. lifting outdoor mask mandates first may get us easing back into the idea of normalcy and that is what eventually we are going to go towards, that's exactly what the vaccines are going to do for us. so if you're going to lift something, doing it in a phased approach with restrictions really makes the most sense to me that's why we are calling for saying let's do the outdoor mask mandates first. who doesn't recommend masking outdoors. >> you think it's also incentive for people to get vaccinated, right? >> always think of this phrase vaccine optimism, vaccine hesitancy. i want to the more severe second shot side effects, why does that

tend to happen after the second shot and especially women and younger people? >> it really has to do with immunogenic vaccines they stimulate your immune system like crazy which is a good thing. but they can give you side effects and this is what happened in the clinical trials. 90% of people have side effects. the reason it happens, we are in the second dose all of these t cells around your body when you get a second shot you get a massive burst of immune response, women have stronger immune responses is in man that's why they have more autoimmune diseases but we've always had more vaccine responses than men with any vaccine and younger people with their very vigorous immune systems will feel more side effects. we need to remember doesn't mean you're not protected.

>> is just going to ask you that. people are asking, if i don't get any side effects is a vaccine working on the, yes? i've a question here, when we need to get our boosters will we need to stay with the same type of shot we originally got because she got johnson & johnson, she's wondering if she needs another or get pfizer moderna. if she got pfizer moderna does that mean she needs to or just one? >> gray questions. number one were not sure were going to need boosters in the future so remember if the ceo of a company's said wait for public health officials have decided about what the pieces are in the community if we can stick with the variance and how long our community needs these vaccines. if you need the boosters snow's not likely the same, i have boosters all the time in my hiv clinic. uneven remain remember the name of the company, just send up

linking to purchase a vaccine so it's funny to think the right now it's important to give the same shop it in the future will be just whatever is available. >> what you think the timeline might be for that third shot? the booster shot? >> so much depends on so many things and when pfizer said six months maybe, the one interesting thing, they have artie given six-month data, 44,000 people april 1 and immunity still going strong at six months after many people got the vaccine. from the clinical trials people got it in the summer time and they are still not breaking through with infections at a number, half the people of clinical trials have now been 10 months and counting. and then in addition is the cases go lower we are sarsless exposed and finally, as you look at the immune response to,

the immune responses 17 years and counting after natural infection so i'm not sure were going to need boosters and everything can be determined when we look at the number of cases next year and if with surveillance we are breaking through vaccines. >> the johnson & johnson vaccine was paused here in the u.s. it was also paused elsewhere in other countries due to some cases the blood clots that develop afterwards. whether it is causal or not that remains unknown, do you have any information on that and also wonder if you think it will get on paused this week? >> dr. fauci did indicate on a news program yesterday that it is likely to be on paused on friday but with stipulations. the reason he said that what was decided, the blood clots even though they are rare,

could be influenced by the vaccine younger people, more women. what astrazeneca new rollout had to do was give it the older people he intimated, dr. fauci intimated to us this weekend that the pause will stop on friday but it will likely be that the johnson & johnson is given to older individuals. so i'm not sure but that's what they can do. >> do you think it was the right call to pause it? does it serve to inspire more confidence that they took this step or do you think it actually reduces confidence in vaccines in general that there were a few cases out of millions and millions? >> there were six cases out of 6.8 million doses given. one and onepoint million doses up of baseline rate. but on the other hand, and i've really been thinking about this a lot looking at different people's ideas on this. i was hoping it would give people more security with the

shots that anything possibly associated with safety their going to be looking out for us, pausing for a minute then deciding the safest populations and i'm hoping it will increase our confidence in the vaccine so i ended up settling on that position. >> dr. monica gandhi always great talking with you and learning with you. i know you spoke to one of my colleagues. more on that interview later today on abc7news. take care. coming up next, we talk to an astronomer about nasa's successful helicopter flight on mars, what

we are back, nasa just successfully flew a helicopter on mars. historic because this is the first ever powered control flight on another planet. what does this mean and why is this so amazing and important? joining us now,

san francisco, professor andrew fraknoi. andrew, thank you for joining us today. >> great to be with you. >> i see the big smile on your face, the project manager saw that she called it at right brothers moment. in ode to the first flight of our planet earth back in 1903. tell us about ingenuity's flight today and how it made history? >> ingenuity is a small but extremely clever drone helicopter which became the first thing we've ever built the fly on another world. it only flew for 39 seconds but it demonstrated something that many people doubted, that it was possible to fly. mars has air which is extremely thin. it's like air 100,000 feet up on earth, you would choke in error that thin so as not to

kind of left here on earth. nevertheless, with very fast spinning rotor blades they managed to fly on mars. >> i was going to say, is that the trick because with so little air and oxygen, how does that get that lift? if you study physics you thinks it's a possibility. >> right, they tried many techniques. the rotors spend more than five times as fast as earth helicopters do that gives us the lift and it also helps if mars only has 37% gravity of earth. so everything weighs less on mars which is nice. for the whole helicopter is small, very little equipment except for the camera. this is just a demonstration what's possible in the future. what we hope eventually is to be able to fly things like this around mars had to take a look with cameras and places like the giant canyons and giant volcanoes on mars where we may

not be able to drive them up on rover. >> i was going to say because the perseverance rover is doing this job but this can get up in the air and be able to see more and survey more. so that's neat, talk about how they can work in tandem and what are some of the other missions, collecting rock samples, what are they going to be doing together in the near future? >> perseverance is the most complex laboratory for scientific exploration we have ever put on another world. among the things is going to do is going to take the martian air, carbon dioxide builds the air on mars and make oxygen out of that carbon dioxide. is going to dig for samples and then put them into canister tubes so that future missions can pick these samples up and eventually bring them back to earth. it also has a very interesting laser beam which can actually

then vaporize the rocks on mars and let the perseverance rover smell what they are made of. so incredibly clever route laboratory. the gist here is that ancient mars was very different than mars today. mars today is dry as dust but ancient mars's we think had a much thicker atmosphere and had water on the surface. we have landed in what was an ancient lake on mars hoping to find perhaps evidence of ancient life on this >> are you saying environments used to be more hospitable for life and if so, can we terraform it and do things to the planet to transform it so it could be hospital hospitable to human life again? >> we might although there are moral issues about terraforming an entire planet to make it more like what we want. first we have to figure out if there's still any microscopic life, then there is a big

question about disturbing their environment. but we don't know if there's life to any affect we most likely think it's not going to be there today anymore. but billions of years ago when mars was much more like the earth, warm and wet, life might have begun with what we would've called the second genesis, a whole independent origin and that would be one of the most exciting scientific discoveries ever. >>

day'ctivsh getting answers.

today we broke down derek chauvin's murder trial, we got into why tonight, breaking news as we come on the air. it is now in the hands of the jury. deliberations now under way in the trial of former minneapolis police officer derek chauvin. the prosecution and defense and their closing arguments today. the prosecutors telling jurors, you can believe your eyes. and what the defense asked the jury to think about in addition to those 9 minutes, 29 seconds, seen by the nation and the world. alex perez tonight from minneapolis. the other news this monday night, more than half of all adults now receiving at least one dose of vaccine. %-pe of the johnson & johnson vaccine. the cdc director saying they are looking into a very small number of cases that could be related, though still unconfirmed. and dr.