findinsotis. this is abc7 everybody. i'm we are getting answers, asking experts your questions every day at 3:00 to get answers in real time. today we are going to be talking to republican gubernatorial candidate, assemblyman kevin kiley as we get closer to the recall vote. there is a new poll of that shows the race and recall election is tightening. more people seem to be supporting the recall electiont

mental health. a new program is creating more health experts in california. first more covid-19 news at a lot to cover with the pandemic. we will talk with an expert so make sure to ask your questions on facebook live so we can get them inserted in real time. we are going to be speaking with stanford microbiology and immunology professor dr. robert siegel. i think he will join us at any moment. as we talk i want to give updated numbers when it comes to covid-19 in the state. we got this released from the california department of health moments ago before we came on air. you can see cases are rising. the seven-day positivity rate is 5.9% and that is increase if you have been following these numbers over the past few months. a few months ago, we had gotten to a low point with the positivity rate. now it is creeping up every week. this comes the same day that it has been advised by the california department of public

health that all californians, regardless of vaccination status, wear a mask inside. so it does feel like we are getting to a point where we might start to see more of these mask mandates, potentially another lockdown. that is what we will speak to our expert about. i want to get some some information we have some you css dr. george rutherford about all of this. >> let's start with the new mask mandate, not a mandate but a suggestion from the cdc that places have either the higher spread should mask indoors whether you are vaccinated or not. we know the bay area of, all of it, falls under that recommendation from the cdc. was that the right move? >> it is the right move. there are new data that suggest that people who are vaccinated do happen to get breakthrough infections with the delta virus and have high levels, just the

same levels of virus in their noses and backs of their votes are just as likely to be transmitters. for a while we thought they were less likely to transmit but now as we get more data, it looks like they are as likely to transmit as anyone else. so it's the right move. understand, cdc cannot make mandates, only recommendations. states and local governments can make mandates so we think the state will adopt the cdc recommendations as recommendations pretty quickly. and then it will be left up to the local health departments to decide about mandates. as you know, los angeles has had amended for couple of weeks now. >> what you think about the state recommendation about wearing masks in schools? >> that has been around for a while. i think that it is prudent. there has to be a huge premium placed on getting kids back in person in the classroom and that will unfortunately be part of the cost of it but the masks

will work well. we know that from before. i think that it is the right way to go. >> that was u css dr. george rutherford. we want to bring in stanford biology and immunology dr. robert siegel. thank you for being here. >> -- >> dr. siegel, we cannot here. we are having a technical issue and we apologize. we will try to get him on. we are also awaiting senator kiley, one of the candidates in the recall election and according to the new poll that came out from the berkeley institute of governmental studies, he is in 4th place. he is in the assembly member from la, the si

and governor newsome is one of his constituents so i'm looking forward to chatting with him. hopefully we can t ryimrtant at are tracking the rising cases. so the seven-day positivity rate is five .9%. the state is also saying there have been 72,252 -- excuse me, 73 million tests conducted in california representing an increase of 116,000 during the prior 24 hour reporting period. we are seeing more people getting tested and totally there have been 63,000 deaths since the start of this pandemic. let's get back to. dr. rutherford. >> the cdc recommendation yesterday put the bay area under this recommendation. it looks at the number of cases to determine how a places widespread with covid. is that prudent, given that we have the vaccine. it is not cases but hospitalizations that affect

the community the most, is it not? >> there are two things going on here. you are right the number that we care about is hospitalizations. we want to keep the hospitals free. we don't want them clogged with patients who have unfortunately contracted covid. we want them free for everything else they need to do. that is one big thing. another thing, however, in order to decide when to invoke mask mandates -- and understand, large chunks of the mask recommendations understand that large chunks of the country in the east end upper midwest do not qualify under the cdc guidance for mask recommendations. they have to set a limit and the limit is a certain number of cases. it is also a certain test positivity rate. the bay area counties are in by virtue of the cases, not by virtue of the test positivity

rates. >> does that make sense? should the cdc change the way it does calculations? >> i think it is right. you have to draw the line somewhere. they have to service the entire country. i think it makes perfect sense. 45 of 58 counties in california would qualify under the current -- what the cdc is described. >> let's talk about businesses. do you want to see more businesses requiring employees to get vaccinated or just to be tested regularly to come to work? >> as governor newsom said yesterday, or the day before, i can't remember, is that we are ready to move on. we have to really -- we are facing this variant. we will face other variants down the pike no doubt and we have to get as many people vaccinated as possible. so he made a decision to require all state employees to be vaccinated. or if they are not vaccinated, to be tested at least once a

week and if they are in sensitive areas, say prison guards are people working in the mental health hospital system, they need to be tested twice a week. i think that is a very reasonable stance. as you know, san francisco has made that rule as well, as have a number of jurisdictions in california. so i think it is something we will start to move to the private sector. we will probably start first in the healthcare sectors. but i would suspect we will start to spread to people who are doing all sorts of other types of jobs where they may be pushed in close together. >> dr. rutherford, some experts i'm a some colleagues of yours believe that the cdc's recommendations, in the end, won't be effective. that the parts of the country that need to listen to this won't and the parts of the country that have always listened will continue doing

so. what difference does that really make and in the end, this is going to be something i'm a covid, that we will have to deal with now pretty much every season like we do with the flu and if most people are not getting very sick, why go in and out of these requirements constantly? >> because this is not the flu. people get a lot sicker and the mortality rate is a lot higher. >> vaccinated or unvaccinated? >> unvaccinated people. understand the cdc has to deal with the entire country including people who are unvaccinated in the broad swaths of certain states in the south and lower midwest that remain with low levels of vaccination. >> that was george rutherford from u css. we have figured out our technical issues and we will take a quick break on air and the conversation continues

welcome back. let's bring in stanford microbiology and immunology professor dr. robert siegel. glad you are with us, thank you. let's start with the data released by pfizer suggesting the efficacy declines about 6% every two months. was this rate expected? dues? bad news? >> thanks, liz. i think that we expect efficacy to decline over time. i don't think anybody really had a way of knowing what the rate would be. so this is basically new data based on trying to find follow people along. people who have been vaccinated have been most vaccinated for about six or eight months so this is new data. >> do we know anything about the efficacy of the of the vaccines? moderna or with j&j?

>> i would guess because of the similarity between moderna and pfizer that they would have similar efficacy. i might guess that j&j would have somewhat lower efficacy overtime because it starts out at a little lower efficacy and that is because it has a similar antigen but no booster so i think that at some point we may require or recommend a booster for the j&j vaccine. >>'s so speaking of that what is the threshold to warrant a booster shot? >> i think that booster shots should be made available and prepared for as the number of cases or rates of infection rises. we should all be prepared for if the prevalence in the population remains high because a lot of people aren't vaccinated, then almost certainly we will see more breakthrough infections and almost certainly will need a booster so the way to avoid

boosters is by getting more people vaccinated so we can bring the prevalence down. >> and that is proving to be hard. it seems like people who are not vaccinated don't want to get vaccinated so it is becoming almost inevitable that a lot of us will need boosters. let's say someone right now wants to go and get the third shot. would you say that is safe? >> well, the third shot is not really available right now. i certainly would, based on what we know about the immune system, there is every reason to believe the vaccine would be safe. there may be some side effects from some vaccines, the mrna vaccines in terms of discomfort when we get the vaccine. i would love to sign up for a clinical trial and get my booster as soon as possible. >> do you think we are going to be able to mix and match? i got pfizer and now i will get a booster from moderna. will they be able to stick with what they got quick >> from an immunological standpoint it shouldn't matter. we should be able to mix and

match but if you take a drug for blood pressure, you don't sort of take one drug one day and another drug the next day so i think that in terms of the recommendations, they will probably recommend that you follow up with a particular shot especially because the clinical trials going on now looking at boosters, pfizer is looking at boosters for pfizer, for the pfizer vaccination and so forth so the data will come in for the same vaccine basically but from an immunological standpoint it shouldn't make any difference. >> we are getting questions on facebook that i want to ask. one person says if vaccinated people are contagious what is the use of the vaccine? >> vaccinated people are not contagious. what we have discovered, again, brand-new data with the highly contagious delta variant and we should be aware that new variants may come along, that there is a possibility that the rare person who is a breakthrough infection has

enough virus to spread it. it is not that vaccinated people are can just contagious. nobody expected it to be 100% effective. if you do get infected after vaccination there is a possibility you could spread it and that is true for all vaccines. if you have a breakthrough infection after the measles, you can spread it to somebody else. >> right. so the cdc is asking everyone to wear masks in places with high transmission rates. that is the entire bay area. california health is recommending people were face masks indoors. what you think about this guideline revision? >> i think people have to realize that the delta variant is new. the information about the delta variant is no so we should expect that recommendations will change periodically as new information comes about. i personally find that wearing a mask is not a very big inconvenience and so i am delighted that i am vaccinated and i am also happy to wear a

mask. in a situation especially where i don't know the vaccination status of another person. >> do you think a full mask mandate is coming in the bay area or across the state? >> so i don't know what the politics behind putting the mandate in is. i know there will be resistance to putting in a full-blown mandate. i think there will be a strong recommendation and if the prevalence doesn't go down, that recommendation is going to get stronger and stronger so i would, we should be prepared for stronger recommendations. i don't know about a mandate. >> there are a lot of politics at play. we will talk about some of them after this. that will be a factor. we are going to talk to you about the science. why is it taking so long to give full authorization beyond emergency use for vaccines? maybe that would encourage more people to get it >> that is an excellent question and that is a question

that many of the experts have been asking as well. we have now had so much data on this. we have hundreds of millions of people who have been vaccinated. i would love to see the full authorization come pretty quickly. i believe that the full authorization should have come quite a while ago and i think that would have at least a limited one possible reason why people don't want to get vaccinated. >> we are out of time but this was so great as always, dr. robert siegel. thank you for being here. we appreciate it. >> my pleasure. >> we are going to be joined by

we are seven weeks away until the re-election recall of governor gavin newsom. we are showing the race is tightening for him. leading the pack of alternate candidates is conservative talk show host, larry elder, and coming in 4th, kevin kelly who

represents the six california around rockland. assembly member kylie is joining us now. thank you for being here. >> thanks very much. >> first and foremost, why do you think governor newsome should be recalled and removed from office? >> he abuse the public trust, took extraordinary powers and use them for political gain to reward the powerful special interests that put him in office first among him the teachers unions who gave him another $2.2 million the last couple days after he implemented the longest school shutdown of any state in the country. we have been 50th out of 50. >> given that, how would you have done things differently if you had been governor at the start of this pandemic? are you saying you would go against the teachers union quick >> absolutely i would. i would have governed in the public interest and serve the people of california, followed signs, public health officials, guidance of public health and child welfare advocates. on the day we adjourned for the

year as a legislature for covid on march 17, i gave a speech on the assembly floor saying we needed to put partisanship aside and said every legislator and every californian needed to work with governor newsome and trust in his leadership but only a couple of weeks later governor newsome immediately made it clear that the trust was not well-placed and as a result, california has suffered the worst outcomes of the covid era school closure, the highest in employment rate and the fifth or sixth highest excess mortality rate so some of the worst public health outcomes, too. >> if you do and when you become governor and take over this fall when we will likely see a rise of the delta variant, under what circumstances would you support a statewide lockdown? i would not under any circumstances support a lockdown with respect to covid- 19. we are very familiar with the way this virus works. individual citizens are more aware of how to protect themselves and any disease we have ever seen. i would put

trust in the hands of individual citizens to decide what is right for them and other states that have taken that approach have fared much better than us. they have kept kids in school, kept businesses open and have done better in saving lives in public health. >> mother geordie of scientists say -- >> i think that is a matter of personal freedom and individuals should be presented with every opportunity as well as the information as to what the risks associated with covid are and as to what the information that is associated with the vaccine is and we should leave it to individuals to make the decision that is right for them. >> so i'm curious. are you vaccinated? >> i am. >> how do you encourage people in your own party who are hesitant? how do you encourage them to get vaccinated quick >> it is certainly not an issue of partisanship. this is an issue of personal

choice and people have different views about that decision regardless of their party. as someone who is a member of the legislature, i have been providing all information to members of the public as to how to get vaccinated. i have been very critical of the governor's botched rollout of the vaccinate. we were 50th of 50th when the vaccine became available. and that is the time when case rates were the highest and i was also critical of the governor when he cast doubt on the safety of the vaccine when he said we are not going to take the fda's word and set up his own separate approval process that even the chair of the united states senate health committee was saying was going to cost lives because the governor was casting doubt on the vaccine. so governor newsome's track record has been far from perfect but my point of view is as an elected member of the legislature i provided the information and opportunity to constituents and trusted them to make decisions

themselves and their family. >> on the show we have people on facebook putting in questions. one question is where do you draw the line between individual liberty and the collective good? >> that is an important question and that goes to the heart of political theory and representative government. one of the great american innovations is that we sort of error on the side of liberty and more than that we air on the side of, when the thought is of the collective good, we construct that as one people, all of us with a voice, all of us bringing to bear our own perspective as to what constitutes the common good and we have veered so far from that over the last 16 months. it is frightening as we have been under the thumb of one man rule for much of the time which is why i took the governor to court. i think we need to get back to a thought process of what is the collective good where we

all have our say but a key facet of that is allowing individuals the liberty to make decisions in their own lives. >> let's talk about the recall itself. in order for you to win more than 50% of people need to vote yes on the recall and you need to be get the most votes of all the alternate candidates. more than 40 candidates in the race, 24 republicans on the ballot. why should people vote for you? why kevin kiley? >> first of all the first first question is the most important one because this is a citizens movement where the people of california are looking to reclaim control of our government and it is nonpartisan. we have hundreds of thousands of democrats and republicans and i only go got involved in a supportive role but ordinary the citizens are making this happen so i am not waking up ng saying i want to be governor but i have decided to enter it as a candidate to carry the torch of that movement after meeting with encouragement from thousands who are out there and built this movement from the ground up. i have been in the legislature five years. i know how broken our state government is. i see how everyone experiences the highest gas taxes and drive over the deepest potholes and

sacrifice the most in california. i have seen from my five years in the legislature that the reason is our state government is broken and the thing that has broken it is political corruption so i'm running in order to root out the corruption that exists at the state level and get to work immediately in order to get california moving in the right direction. >> i think you have 20 seconds and i need to wrap up. i know you are also one of five kevins in the rate. in the race. have you met your fellow kevin

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joining us on this interactive show, getting answers. today we covered masks, variant 's, vaccines and th tonight, the delta variant sweeping across the u.s. new covid cases soaring 400% in the u.s. in just five weeks. president biden set to announce mandatory vaccinations or face weekly testing for nearly 2 million federal employees. new york now requiring all state employees to be vaccinated or tested. and tonight, new york city now paying people $100 to get their first shot. all of this comes amid that new evidence that fully vaccinated people with breakthrough infections can potentially spread the delta variant. this was not seen before. dr. fauci tonight and how much of the virus a vaccinated person carries if they're a breakthrough case. parts of the u.s. pushing back against the cdc's revised mask