>> building a better bay area, moving forward, finding solutions. this is abc 7 news. kristen: hi there. you're watching "getting answers " live on this monday, martin luther king jr. day. we're asking experts your questions every day at 3:00 to get answers for you in real time. today we have stanford senior research scientist after amy price to talk about -- dr. amy price to talk about an experiment involving candles. i did the experiment myself. we are going to talk about this, including whether the test holds any truth. also, celebrating dart. -- we're taking a look back at how the civil-rights legend mid impact here in the bay area.

first, covid-19 cases are on the rise for teenagers and younger children across the country. joining us now is professor of pediatrics at usf. thank you for joining us today. >> thank you so much for having me. kristen: i am going to hope that our -- >> just to clarify, i am the former head. i was in the job until the end of september. kristen: got it. thank you for the work on that. the cdc recommendation that just came down for schools to cancel football, wrestling, and band, to help curb omicron. those are just a few of the activities. basically they are saying the more risky activities, especially once performed indoors. what exactly are they saying, and do you agree with it? >> so, the general

we have seen throughout the pandemic is that oinne of places of transmission that happens is school sports teams. it tends to be that a lot of what happens is the activities -- [indiscernible] it's people hanging out, watching film, and indoor spaces trying to do learning, people going out to pizza afterwards and hanging out and taking off masks. it's those kinds of activities that seem to be driving the transmission. that is why my recommendation is to do less of the sports activities in general. either because there is some transmission on the field or mostly on the indoor sports like basketball and volleyball indoors. or because there are the activities around the sports teams. kristen: so if it is more around

the activities surrounding the sports teams like talking in the locker room together or going out to get pizza, with the recommendation not be better when you weigh the mental health and wellness aspects to say you can play the volleyball game but just keep your masks on the whole time and may be less avoid the pizza party afterwards. dr. bardach: it is one of those things that is hard throughout the pandemic, the public policy being recommended is hard because it is hard for people to be nuanced and say do this but not that. so if people see that there is an association of certain types of activities, that is where the recommendations are to say let's pause. and the hope, because of what we have seen in the u.k. and south africa, the spike in omicron goes up fast and comes down fast, so the hope it would be a pause rather than an indefinite, let's not do this for a long time. kristen: this is aimed at keeping kids learning in the classrooms, right? dr. bardach: exactly.

kristen: i don't know if you have school-aged children, but if they played a sport like basketball right now, would you actually have them not do it for a month? dr. bardach: that is an interesting question. i do have school-aged children, and we don't do indoor sports, so it's something i have thought through. i've certainly said we need to be very thoughtful about the masking we are doing in the indoor setting. so it would really depend on how things were being set up in terms of doing things safely. kristen: let's talk about that. the concern is we found school-aged children, specifically 12 to 17-year-old, have the highest positivity rate right now in san francisco. why is that? and how high is it? dr. bardach: so, the -- everybody's spike is going up in all age groups.

the 12 to 17-year-olds are slightly higher than the age group five to 11-year-olds and the age group above. but the thing that is really helpful to remember is there is probably a couple different things going on for that age group, and it's not just sports and it's not that they are passing around more than certainly the older age group. that's partly because we are just testing them more. so there mighrt be some mixing. part of what we think might be going on is that age group tends to mix and hang out in groups. that's probably happening in the age group above them as well but that is not happening in a school setting where they are doing a lot of testing to keep the school safe. it looks like the numbers are higher in that age group comparatively, but it's probably just we are not catching stuff in the old age group. people are testing at home in that group, but we know the tests at home are not getting reported the way they do a full -- the way they do for the

school-based testing. kristen: is it also may be because that age group started boosting recently? dr. bardach: entirely possible. it is the 12 to 15-year-old who just got eligible for boosters about two weeks ago. so they are functionally probably the most under vaccinated of the people who are already vaccinated. it might be that there is that peace in addition helping to do that transmission. kristen: all right. certainly i know teens have a lower vaccination rate than older grown-ups, but then again, they have a higher vaccination rate in five to 11 and you said those numbers are lower, and that can be due to the lifestyle. just less mixing. dr. bardach: one thing is less mixing in that younger age group. they mix, but not the same way high schoolers and middle schoolers makes. and the second piece is we have known throughout the pandemic, younger seem to have less symptoms even if they have covid. so what testing is often triggered by the symptoms, so we

might be picking up more any 12 to 17-year-olds compared to five to 11-year-olds currently because five to 11-year-olds are less likely to be symptomatic and therefore less likely to get tested. kristen: knowing what we know about the outcomes of younger people who do get infected, especially in this current wave of omicron, how concerned are you? concerned or very concerned, that 12 to 17s have a higher positivity right now? dr. bardach: i think partly we need to think about is, is there a policy implication? do we need to do something differently about schools on sports? those policy implications, i certainly do not feel like we need to do anything about closing schools or anything like that. we just have to be thoughtful about encouraging people to get vaccinated as much as possible and making sure people are doing good masking, and upping your mask game. try to do a surgical or kf 95

mask, so using those safety layers the way we can. if kids are going to hang out, encourage them to hang out outdoors. and encourage testing as much as we can. kristen: i will come back to masks and a little bit but i want to ask about universities. a lot are doing remote through january. uc's, many csu's, stanford. do you think that is necessary, as in there's no relative and safe way to do those classes right now? dr. bardach: it is a little complicated. part of it is because if you think about that age group and in that setting, a residence hall is basically like a vertical food strip. you have a lot of people in very close quarters and a lot of ability to transmit things. so i think that is why a lot of campuses decided to do that, because they just did not want to have a lot of people getting

and transmitting covid and just causing large numbers. even though people seem to do very well in that age group, just try not to create the stress and anxiety of having people be positive and the small number of people who might have to get sick and get medical attention, trying to decrease those risks as well. kristen: how about public schools like k-12? here in the bay area some school districts have closed, some because they don't have enough staff to keep it going for a week or a few days. others preemptively looking at the cases are going, ooh, but it's not that they run out of staff. do you think short of running out of staff school should be moving to remote, even for a few days? dr. bardach: the way that i have been framing it is that we paid a huge prince in -- price in beginning of the pandemic by shutting down schools and

society. what i bought us, what it got us was a very effective vaccine, a milder variant right now, and also effective treatment modalities. we know how to treat covid. and so the idea of shutting down schools right now, knowing how hard it is on kids, the learning losses, the health effects, the idea of shutting down schools, that is not what we should do right now. we need to focus on the fact we have really good mitigation layers and doing that creation and environment for the students. kristen: yet it is happening, hopefully just temporarily, in january as we get past omicron. i want to get to masks. is it times, as some of your colleagues have suggested, to set offramp's for when we drop the mask mandate for schools? dr. bardach: i feel like this virus keeps on teaching as new lessons. new things happen.

so it is very difficult to say this is the playbook in the future. let's look in the crystal ball and say what the playbook is. everybody is ready to be done with the pandemic, so i know almost every public health conversation is like, ok, let's think about how we can get out of this. but can we say for sure these are exactly the metrics? i don't think we are there yet. we've seen it nationally and internationally people are beginning to say this is bec oming an endemic virus. so how can we begin to get back to what is normal? but we have to get through this omicron surge because it is taking down our workforces and the hospitals and the schools, and it's causing some real challenges still. i do not think anyone says we are ready to take off the masks. kristen: i realize it is a tough time to ask that question and i want to be clear, i am not

saying we should drop masks in schools right now. i am talking about setting up a roadmap and what we used to measure that and when that moment will come. for now though, do think cloth masks should be banned in schools with omicron right now? knowing that you cannot just ban it that you cannot give better alternative. dr. bardach: upping our masking is a really important piece of the puzzle. banning is probably not a great approach. part of the thing when people say what is the best mask for a kid right now, the best mask for a kid is one that your kid will wear. if the kid is not going to wear a mask that is a higher intensity mask, then you want them to have something on. we know that cloth masks are not as effective as a surgical mask, a kn95, and downey five. it is not as effective. but if they where it is more effective than nothing. so if they take masks off because it is on come to bow, then that is not a good --

because it's so uncomfortable, then that is not a good choice. really thankful for your time and information today. best of luck as we all t we allt make the best decisions for our kids in these challenging times. take care. coming in next, ew're -- we're going to try out an experiment making the rounds on social media.

kristen: the omicron surge has

caused the cdc to finally update its mask mandate last week, indicating a clear level of preference. it is also reopened the conversation about mask efficacy. one test that has emerged on social media is the blow out the candle test. >> ok, surgical mask. nope. kristen: joining us now to talk about what the candle test shows or does not show and how you can best protect yourself is dr. amy price, senior research scientist at stanford's anesthesia and media lab. thank you so much for joining us, dr. price. dr. price: thanks. it is an honor to be here. kristen: the test is not brand-new but is making a comeback. i put the candle test to the test. what is the scientific point of masking, to prevent the exchange of air between individuals, right? dr. price: air and moisture. so, your surgical masks will

protect moisture and mucus. it is like source control. if two people are wearing masks you are protecting each other. if one person is wearing a mask there is less protection. with the n95 nk 95 you have slightly more protection in that it's not necessarily protective, but it guards more against things that might be airborne, like a respiratory virus. kristen: so in general the less porous, the better. dr. price: well, to a certain point. because if it's too nonporo non then you don't breathe. and then what happens is the heir starts peeking out through gaps -- is the air starts peeking out through gaps in your mask, and you cannot keep it onn and your nose starts to show. in some candle videos i have seen, people are puffing so hard

that the mask comes loose here and here, but the candle stays on for this part. but we have to remember that because things are airborne, the virus could be coming in from this direction or through our noses, or underneath. so it's important to not only have good materials, but a good footing mask. kristen: fit is important. but i want to get to the candle test, because bill nine the scientist made that video, really popular. i re-created the test today. take a look. so that is the surgical mask i'm blowing. n95. n95. i think i try four time shere. st -- times here. still on. and finally, the cloth mask.

check it out. oh, there we go. i did not get a stronger set of lungs, i blew it out in one shot. tell us what that means. dr. price: what that means is, is a virus is less than 1/70th of the size of a piece of hair. so it's very small. so you don't want something that you can actually see through. on the multiple layer is in surgical masks, especially in the n95, they provide like an obstacle course for the virus, so it has to get through several layers to actually get to you. and so, that makes it quite a bit safer. they are also electrostatically charged, and that charge stays as long as you don't wash the

mask with water. and it stays there and it protects you in another way, because it repels the virus from coming in. so, another part of that obstacle course. if you have a home mask even, you can make it safer by putting a couple layer's of clean or paper towels, but kleenex is better inside. because again, that provides an extra layer, it makes it possible to breathe, and you can charge it yourself just by rubbing it with a piece of a bag or a glove. kristen: a latex glove? dr. price: a latex glove is perfect, yeah. kristen: and that works on just polyester, right? dr. price: it works on anything. it will work on cotton as well. we've tested the charge, and it

will hold for several hours. those are the kind of masks that you can wash, so you can still redo the charge before you head out the door. and another thing to remember is exposure. a lot of people think if i am wearing a mask i can just go wherever the virus is all day. but actually the more that you guard against long exposures, go in and out for shopping, see people for brief periods of time, make sure there is a lot of ventilation and make sure to physically distance, even though we all hate it. because those things are keeping us safe. and of course vaccinate. kristen: and i want to just circle back to end our conversation on the candle test. i mean, that is not foolproof. is it even good as a quick gauge of anything? dr. price: sure. it's good as a quick gauge. members of the public deserve better. we deserve better.

we deserve treatment where we can tell the quality of the mask, so we know how protected we are. and that's something that really needs to be developed. there needs to be standards set not just for this pandemic, but for pandemics to come. because it is a mayor -- it is important that members of the public, we all have evidence too. kristen: dr. amy price, thank you so very much for your time and insight today. that was most fascinating. take good care. dr. price: thank you. i love your mask test. it was great. kristen: very unscientific. it was interesting to try to. coming up next, honoring dr. martin luther king jr.

bay, and of course west of the golden gate bridge, we begin our coastline. today on this mlk day, we're honoring dr. martin luther king jr. by taking a dive into our archives. we take a look back at the

minute of it -- at the many visits he paid to the bay area. >> we can end poverty in the united states. >> i think when most people have dr. martin luther king jr. come to mind, you visualize the south, maybe the east coast. not necessarily the san francisco bay area. >> how many people would you say have to show up? >> it seems like he was here a lot. >> yes, we was. he liked the bay area. i think a special affinity for both martin and greta to come to california. when you think about the areas of the country where it seemed more open for black people to be treated. >> dr. carson is the martin luther king jr. professor emeritus at stanford and was handpicked by caretta scott king to document her late husband's life. he now leads the world house project at stanford which builds on all the previous work and makes it accessible to the public. >> i don't know when was the

first visit, probably 1956 in j une. that was when he delivered a major speech about the month gum or a bus boycott. >> that historic san francisco speech was not in our archives. with film this old, sometimes it goes missing. but we did uncover these moments from old stories. 1964, san francisco. the republican party platform committee hearing just days ahead of the republican national convention in daly city. >> they occur every four years and every now and then san francisco gets one. this is a city that claims it doesn't have racial problems. however, they do exist. >> it would be a tragic setback not merely for the cause of the negro, but for democracy and for the cause of justice is this fair housing bill is repealed. >> dr. king was in town fighting attempts to repeal the fair housing act and drumming up

support for the civil rights movement. he spoke at the republican convention days later. by 1965, many civil rights act had been passed. dr. kim begin browed -- dr. king began broadening his focus. >> international issues, poverty, and racism. what he calls the three issue -- three evils of the world. >> stanford university. >> my image has been terribly tarnished as a result of this war in vietnam and i think the people who are protesting it will in the long run proved to be the best friends and the most patriotic citizens of this country. >> january 14, 1968, he visited pleasanton months before his assassination. >> you know, when you go to jail for a righteous cause, you can accept the inconveniences of jail. >> 4000 people, white and

tonight, tracking that deadly winter storm moving up the east coast. snow, ice, freezing rain, and severe storms from georgia to maine. white outconditions. more than two feet of snow in some areas. hundreds of car accidents on the highways. tornadoes touching down in florida. including a confirmed ef-2. strong winds gusting up to 40 miles an hour. and a new cold blast on the way. wind chills down to 40 below zero. ginger zee tracking it all. america's major airlines sounding the alarm over stronger 5g service set to begin on wednesday. airlines and cargo carriers warning the new wireless system could cause catastrophic disruption to passenger flights and the supply chain. the omicron surge grip. ing hospitals across the country. the u.s. now reporting more than

1,800 deaths every 24