>> building a better bay area, moving forward, finding solutions. this is abc seven kristen: hi, there. we ask expert your questions every day at 3:00 to get answers from you in real time and it is presidents' day so we are doing the same. coming up in about 10 minutes we will dive into the story everyone is talking about, a massive bear on the loose in south lake tahoe bricking into homes. we will talk with a resident about her encounter with hank the tank. also later, we will look ahead to the weekend and some very exciting events honoring black history month in oakland. first there is always more news on the pandemic. today the covered booster is once again making headlines. new studies suggest if you have that third dose you may not need

a fourth one. joining us to talk about that is an infectious disease specialist. it's a holiday weekend, so extra thank you for being here. >> my pleasure. thanks for having me. kristen: i see that you may be outside enjoying this holiday in the lovely weather, which is great. but i want to get to this because even as we relax mask restrictions, even as we tiptoe into endemic mode, the question looms, how soon before people will need another shot, that second booster. there are some new studies today that may shed some light on this. talk to us about that. >> yeah. the studies first started with israeli data showing the full -- the fourth dose did not give a bang for the buck as expected in the general population. it did not really seem to protect with infection as much as the third shot did, for example. but when you look at specific

age groups, and those over 65 for example, it may have additional benefits. but ideally the three shots in most people will probably do the job. two shots even in some people will have b-cell and memory possibly for years and could address new variants as well. kristen: for the layman it is hard to understand t cells, b cells. but the idea is there is memory, that your body retains memory of these cells, and then they fight when they need to fight? explain that to us. >> think about a big house and you have a big gate around the house, and the guards are up all night. there was all the antibodies -- those are the antibodies. try and have the virus come into the house and the pit bulls will

pounce and eat the enemy and kick them out of the house. the pit bulls inside of you, those are your memory t cells and b cells. the guards at the gate falling asleep are antibodies, they wane over months. but in most people, the vaccines develop the pit bulls inside and we think they stay active for many years, as most recent studies suggest. kristen: got it. so the guards might go to sleep but the pit bulls will stay with you and do the job when they need to, and that is why part of the reason why most of us may not need a fourth shot. but are there certain groups that may still benefit from an additional booster? >> they would be at least three populations. the first two would probably be those who would use the additional shot to prevent serious disease. they may be the elderly population, although we do not

have as much guidance for that right now. maybe later on in the wintertime. the second population is immune compromised situation. they are already getting four shots. that is not to give additional reminders, that is to increase the chance they will have a vaccine response. the third group is kind of interesting and it is not necessarily to prevent serious disease because they are well protected by three shots. but in some situations a population like health-care workers may need to be preserved in terms of workforce. you may even want to prevent infection. in that case he may give a booster so the guards will come back to life at the front gate to prevent infection even though the pit bulls will always be alive. kristen: that is the best analogy i have heard in some time. thank you for that. i want to ask you about vaccine requirements being dropped. new today, i think israel said it would open its borders to

unvaccinated tourists, and locally contra costa county and others have listed vaccination requirements for indoor restaurant dining. i wonder if you think that is a requirement that should be turned on or off like the mask mandate. what you think about that? especially when they drop that as the same time as he mask mandate being dropped. dr. chin-hong: there is no easy answer. there are two ways to think about a vaccine requirement in indoor settings. the first is to encourage people to get vaccinations. for example in france when they first had the indoor dining requirement for vaccinations, like, two million french people got vaccines the day before because they could not give up their indoor dining. so that is the encouraging part, the carrot. the second reason is to make that environment very safe. one would say that as numbers go down you do not really need to make sure that environment inside is safe anymore if they got out to sea level. that is where the debate is

going. kristen: all right. you are not really going to stake your claim on one side of that debate, are you? dr. chin-hong: if you really push me to it, i would really love that we get as many people vaccinated as possible, because it really preserves our hospitals. and it just keeps morale higher in the workforce, so that is where i come down to. and it makes me feel safer when i go inside. but i understand where people are coming from by dropping the mandates in certain areas. that is kind of why i gave both sides. kristen: reasonable. i saw a new york times, they are reporting the cdc has not been publishing large portions of the covid data it collects. so they got the data on boosters, hospitalizations, and wastewater analyses, which they were not really publicizing. what is that about? dr. chin-hong: there are two reasons why the cdc sits on data without letting it loose. the first is just bureaucracy. i've worked with the cdc before

on a bunch of studies, and it has to go through so many layers of approval and this person, this group, that by the time they get it out it is not as timely. that is why sometimes states like california can be more nimble with their data because they are looking at it all the time. it is more well organized in some other places. the second reason is of course clinical. the cdc is a political arm of the government. we love that all the science coming out is a political, but unfortunately in this time and age regardless of what administration there is, there's going to be a spin in which the science that is released is inconstant with the message that is trying to be introduced at the same time. kristen: as a doctor, do you believe they should release all the data? dr. chin-hong: definitely. i think people can decide what

is good data and what is not. at least having the data available broadly, may be in a database that some people can easily access and then you interpret the data. science and data is always power and the more you release it, i think the more trust people have. kristen: the omicron surge is declining quickly thank fully, but some are worried about ba2, saying it spreads 30% more easily. has it led to another wave in other countries post-omicron? and i wonder if you think it is going to happen here. dr. chin-hong: it may happen here. i would not be surprised as travel opens up. but it would not lead to another surge. it would probably just lead to another slower dissent -- desc the train has already left the station. if you look at denmark and the u.k., the curve is crazy because it is still very high but their hospitalization is very low. if we think about that coming to

the u.s., that might happen as well. kristen: now that masking is for the most part a question of should i rather than must die, -- must i, how should we approach it? is there a sensible threshold for you in terms of transmission or something else? dr. chin-hong: right now we are moving from a sledgehammer, everybody doing the same thing approach, to one that is very individual and personal and depends on you and who you live with. their feud -- there are a few groups of people who should definitely keep their mask going. those who are over 65. the second group is immune compromised. the third group is people who live with any of these particular populations. and the fourth is if you are planning a trip or a big event, flying across the country, you definitely do not want to get even a mild breakthrough infection because you will have

to isolate for five days. that is the way i think about it. i am not as worried about going into a store and not everyone wearing a mask anymore because we have gotten better information about the type of mask. i'm not going to wear cloth mask. even if i wear a good mask in a crowded indoor setting, it's much better than in the old days when i really needed everyone masked. but now i am kind of able to protect myself. kristen: i would just mention i was recently on a flight and next to me was the mother of a two-year-old, so she was all done up the way nathan chen was before his competition with an n95 and a cloth, and a fascial. -- face shield. but that is not what nathan chen did after he won the gold medal. he switched to the surgical. i guess you just have to look at what is happening in your life. dr. chin-hong: exactly.

a big trip, don't risk it. protect yourself. kristen: you don't throw away years of preparations for the olympics. and you don't throw away the rest of your weekend. thank you so much for spending time with us on this holiday. dr. peter chin-hong, talk to you again soon. coming up next, tracking hank the tank, a lake tahoe resident will be joining us to share a close encounter with the

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kristen: it is a story grabbing a lot of attention on social media. a 500 pound bear has ransacked dozens of homes in lake tahoe. his nickname is hank the tank. fish and wildlife officials are

trying to track him down, but what are they going to do with him? that is the subject of much debate. hank has been blamed for 40 break-ins since july. joining us now is one of the homeowners who has had too close for comfort encounters with hank. thank you for joining us on this holiday. you are a former bay a resident now living in lake tahoe and you have had several encounters with hank. we are going to share some video that you shared with us while you talk about this. how far back does this go? wendy: so, i don't know exactly how old hank is, but we have n ar now two years in particular neighborhood where hank is terrorizing everybody. he lives around. he does not hibernate. he breaks into people's homes for food. yeah. broke right into the front door. we are really careful about our trash.

we do not keep any trash inside of our house or our garage. i love the wanted poster. we take our trash to the dumpster bin that is bear-proof. but he just knows front doors is where it is that. he broke through our front door at 2:00 in the morning, and that was shocking. but bears do not like dogs, so our dog and my screaming got him to go away. but after the doorframe was reinforced with steel because he smashed the entire door down, he came back and tried to do it again what he did not make it through that time. kristen: yeah, i think in the latest break in authorities say hank rogan through a window. so he is really smart. wendy: he knows doors and windows and garages. lots of bears in the break into homes. they can punch through the garage frame and then just lift it up and a lot of times there are refrigerators in there and they can snack on things in

there. kristen: he is looking for food in those bins? wendy:n e l , ot gethe often on sunday they. people will throw their trash and often they will put -- that black one is shut. it's sealed shut. often times they have them just open and there are bears all over. they need to manage their trash better. kristen: i was just going to ask you, who do you blame? i don't know if it is a homeowners association, is it their fault for not hanging enough lockboxes? is it residents to say whatever, i will just put it on the street? what needs to happen? wendy: there are -- their policies is to put trash cans on the corner. that is the number one problem. trash day, he loves. they come out in the morning and there is trash everywhere. they need bear boxes so people

can secure their trash outside. because it is not just hank, there are so many bears all throughout. because they know that this trash is not secured properly. kristen: ok. have you seen him get aggressive with people? wendy: no. they really do not like people. we would have bears coming to our yard once a week, once every other week. mama bears, big bears, hank. we would always haze them away. we would use air horns and pots and pans, and they don't like dogs. so we put a dog barking machine. i really recommend this, it is called rex. anyone who has homes up there, you should have it always on when you are not home facing towards the door. it has infrared that goes through the door. if hank comes to the door or any other bear, it will hear the barking and they will not go in. or at least you have a better chance of saving a property. kristen: real quickly i want to

put up part of a statement from the department of fish and wildlife that they shared with us. by the way, they say they are looking for sanctuary to take hank to. we are looking for a sanctuary that may be willing to take it. we are considering relocation and certainly euthanasia is always a measure of last resort, but we are exploring all options with this particular bear. to me, all of those are bad options, aren't they? wendy: he is so big, i don't see how he could be contained in a zoo or something like that. what i'm wondering is what about desolation wilderness, ancil adams wilderness. he could be taken several hundred miles away, 300 miles away, and maybe that would help and he could teach himself again how to forage, because clearly he does not know how to forage or hunt. maybe that is a better idea. it is not his fault. kristen: he never learned how to be a bear, so to speak. wendy: he grew up having a snack bar. it is not his fault.

i would prefer if he is not killed, but he is not going to stop because he knows the drill now. front door, window, garage. and he is not hibernating. none of them hibernate because they get food all year round. kristen: some say maybe we should not build homes in their habitat. but we are. what do you say to that? wendy: sure. like, in more remote areas. but the tahoe keys has been there since the 1960's. theoretically i agree with that, but really we need to have more evolving, intelligent environmental production policies around wildlife and land-use for land that is already there. the first thing that would help is simple bear boxes. they cannot get in. super simple. he will be frustrated. then rehab at ua dem to not coming in the homes. electrifying your windows, putting the barking dog thing at your door, that helps. electrified bear mats, that helps. kristen: you have given us a lot

to think about. thank you share much -- so much for sharing your story. and we will have more on hank the tank's story at 7:00. an expert from the department of fish and wildlife will be joining us live and you can watch the entire show on demand by downloading the abc 7 bay area app. next,

kristen: this black history month we are honoring the people in organizations making an impact in the black community in the bay area. oaklands black roots run deep and the town is inviting everyone to join the fifth annual latin joy parade. it is a large -- annual black joy for aid. -- black joy parade. joining us is peter gomez, the president and ceo of visit oakland. thank you so much for joining us today.

this is very exciting. coming up this sunday the fifth annual black joy parade. tell us about it. peter: it is going to be amazing. it is actually one of my favorite events here that takes place in oakland. first of all it is free, it is a family-friendly parade and festival that celebrates the whole black experience, past, present and future here in oakland. what else i love about it is besides the parade, there's also at the end a great area where you can meet with vendors and celebrate everything local here going on in oakland. kristen: that is amazing. harris, do you? peter: i wish. but there is so much else to celebrate. here in oakland is where the black panther party began. the deep-rooted town in black history. this whole month we are celebrating so many other

activities besides the black joy parade. the iconic smokey robinson is coming to the paramount and will be live on february 26 here. and we have west coast legends of hip hop coming to the paramount, lauren g, too short, dj quick on february 25. kristen: wow. there's a whole lot to celebrate all this month. are there also restaurants involved? peter: that is one of my favorite topics, is to eat. of course. oakland's culinary scene is as diverse as the town culture itself. we have more than 40 black-owned food and drink businesses in oakland, from home of chicken and waffles down here, to horn barbecue, and my favorite for cocktails. we have from food trucks to michelin star cuisine and vegan bites. oakland has that all. kristen: you mentioned about the

black panther party and the social movement that began in oakland. for those who are too young to remember, give us a brief summary of that history. peter: we are actually offering this month a black liberation walking tour which was named as one of the best black history tours in the united states. and black plantar party unum nine legacy oakland tour is hosted by original black panther alumni's. kristen: wow. was this parade held last year during the pandemic? peter: no. so this is coming back. we are anticipating up to 25,000 people in downtown oakland. kristen: any suggestions for folks who are coming in terms of just how to safely have a good time? peter: i know i am going to start off with brunch, and there's a great brunch place on the black joy website. i'm a big fan of public transportation, so get on ferry,

bart, and over to oakland. kristen: how do you recommend people get there? peter: bart, ferry, or you can drive. there's several parking areas within the downtown area. kristen: fantastic. i wonder, any more greatgrea performances or arts events you have not yet mentioned? we have about one minute left, so i do not want to leave out any great stuff. peter: i don't want to leave out the oakland museum of california, showcasing mother ship voyage into afrofuturism. you can experience jazz musicians, filmmakers, and see many fun interactive exhibits. that will be on display throughout the end of february. kristen: by the way, for folks who are attending the parade sunday,r if you can give he starting point for the best vantage point. peter: the best vantage point

will be on broadway street. so, broadway and 10th, and moving up within an eight block radius. kristen: are there any mask or vaccination requirements? peter: no there is not. it is going to be outdoors. kristen: safest place to be, outdoors. don't go away. we can continue to chat on facebook live. for folks who want to see more stories, go to our abc 7 bay area streaming a

kristen: thank you so much for joining us on this interactive show getting answers. we will be here every weekday at 3:00 on air and on livestream answering your questions. world news tonight is coming up next and i will see you back here at 4:00.

tonight, breaking news as we come on the air. vladimir putin declaring two areas of eastern ukraine as independent. ordering russian forces into those areas. tonight, the white house already issuing initial sanctions but bracing for what putin could do next. the kremlin saying putin has ordered those russian forces in. the order following putin's address to the russian people. saying it's ukraine that's threatening russia, calling ukraine a puppet regime for the west. tonight, the u.s. urging ukraine's president to leave kyiv. and zelenskyy to speak to the people of ukraine. ian pannell in ukraine tonight. what they're preparing for this evening and tomorrow. james longman in moscow. cecilia vega at the