kristen: you are watching getting answers live on abc seven's. he ask experts your questions everyday at 3:00 ticket answers for you in real time. huge news in the travel industry, jetblue offers to buy spirit airlines. what does that mean for you? this past week's massive delays and cancellations leave passengers stranded for days without compensation. it is becoming more common. a travel industry analyst will offer strategies to help you if you're planning to fly. first, covid. the fda is holding a special meeting to plan the next round of roosters. also, news that san francisco has the highest case rate of all

counties in california. joining us live to discuss these topics and answer questions you might have that you can pose on our facebook live feed is ucsf dr. monica gandhi. so, the fda's meeting at this moment, outside advisors trying to consider the next round of boosters. you have been clear, you say our national booster strategy needs to be clarified. what do you mean by that? >> what i mean by that is i think that president biden has said in speeches, he has said it around omicron that our goal is now to protect ourselves against severe disease. the cdc has done that as well by essentially linking mask met -- mask recommendations to the number of people in the hospital. 10 over 100,000 is the time to mask.

we are going over the strategy where we need to prevent severe disease. in israel, when they looked at data, 50 to 65-year-old rolled it out to older people, but also health care workers, did not get any advantage in getting a fourth shot over their third shot. in vaccine effectiveness or bringing down their viral load. we don't have data for a younger population then just assuming older people need it, which i think is fair. that is always true with boosters so probably we need to come up with an age. the uk's doing over 75, germany is doing over 70, canada is doing over 80. the u.s. is the only one that went down to 50 for a booster ended may help your anti-bodies go up for a little bit, but the third shot has done a great job

protecting against severe disease. kristen: if 50 and up, which is what they have said, is not the right benchmark for you, what do you think it should be? >> i think it should be older. we don't have evidence that there is benefit between 50 and 65-year-olds. i think 65 would have been find because it is younger than any other place, but it is what pfizer had asked for. they had a dead they wanted the fourth shot for over 65. the fda went above and beyond to the pfizer data and went down to 50 and we didn't see evidence for it. kristen: if there is no evidence it is beneficial, is there evidence it could be harmful? >> this is a question that is unprecedented because we have never really given -- we have never had a pandemic where there's four shots given in such a short period of time. usually the way we give four shots are in children because we

are preventing something else like the measles. but it's not like we are in the midst of a pandemic. i would say there are immunologists who have raised concerns about two things. one, you keep training to your -- training your immune system to the old ancestral strain. it is the wuhan h2 virus, is what they call it. so, you keep training your t cells even though we are already on omicron, to look back at the noncirculating variant. the second is, does -- is it just wrong for your immune system to get so many shots? i do not see evidence for the latter. i am more worried about the former. your t cells already know how to work with the variant, if they see a variant in the future, we have shown that the vaccines generate t cells and you develop antibodies.

there are somebody who need -- nice and high, that would be older people. 70 to 80 is the age range of other countries. kristen: i know a lot of people who are considering when is the best time to get the fourth shot, or for most people, the second booster. i think we need to take into account how long the booster lasts. i read something that shows that it starts to wane after four weeks, is that right? >> yes. that is the other thing. what is the timing? you want to do it when cases are high. you know your antibodies are going to come down, this is how your immunity protects you. if you want antibodies nice and high, you want to time it. usually when cases go up more it's during respiratory pathogen season and how long do at bodies last? some studies have said two months.

some studies have said four months. the longest i have seen is six months, but they absolutely are going to come down. my mother is 80 and does not have other health problems. i am asking her to get her fourth shot in the summer because i think it is going to be fall and winter when cases go up. kristen: something to think about. randy wants to know, are we protected from the new variant out of the u.k. that is getting attention by the existing vaccines and boosters? >> yes. but, it depends if you mean severe disease or more mild. to look at ba.1, ba.2 or xc, omicron has a bunch of subvar ba.1 was the first of variant. now ba.2 has taken over. 72% of our sequences are ba.2. xc is in a single individual ba at one end to combined and they became one virus, but they did

something called recombination. it looks like the vaccines are still protective against all of these, it's just that the antibodies don't work as well which is why people even got mild infections when they had been boosted during our omicron surge in san francisco. everyone was surprised, but that's because antibodies don't work as well against a various that has 32 mutations. but severe diseases still protected by our selves. it is possible you could get a mild infection of xc. kristen: we have another segment to chat with you. we will take a short break but if you want to join us on facebook live, we will explore the question, is there a better booster? could that

kristen: we are back with specialist doctor monica gandhi. it was reported today that san francisco has the highest case rate in the state. why is this happening? how should we interpret that? >> keep in mind that cases are still low. but, it is the highest in the state. why? part of the reason is we do a good job testing. we have mass testing sites that have not been dismantled. most of the other places in the state, those testing sites have been -- people do test here. and we have had a lot more activity and we have had conventions and cases are going up. zero people in the hospital at which i work are hospitalized with covid. five at ucf asked -- three are incidental.

hospital stays are staying low and that speaks to how good immunity we have in our population. keep your eye on severe disease and the fact that it is staying low p that is reassuring. kristen: that brings me back to where we started in terms of whether we should guide future actions based on cases or hospitalizations and deaths. one question that comes to my mind is, how about brain shrinkage? or other long covid potential symptoms? if that is actually a thing, doesn't that speak to, we still want to keep cases low even if people are not getting hospitalized? >> excellent question. two things i will say about long covid. one is that we may have talked about this before but this is the largest study from israel that looks at good control groups. you cannot do a study on long covid unless you are comparing it to people who have not been

infected. getting brain fog and feeling depressed is very common right now in the context of a pandemic. so, you have to compare it to people who have not had covid. in the largest study out of israel, mild breakthrough infections after vaccinations did not lead to anymore covid symptoms than people who had never had covid. that really speaks to the power of control groups in your studies. second, particular studies that showed brain shrinkage, importantly, was only in the area called the olfactory center that is responsible for smell. when you lose your smell having mild covid infection, you have less feedback to that area of the brain and you may have shrinkage in that area. when your smell comes back up of area comes back. there is no evidence that covid infects what are called neurons, or the cells in the brain.

kristen: i saw today stanford university has 200 cases. this is the week after spring break. they saw a bump. those students have to isolate. if we have decided, and i don't know who the we are, that the case counts matter less than the severity, should those students even have to isolate? >> great christian. we have not decided on our strategy in the u.s. these students would have to isolate. the u.k. has decided, their students would not. the u.k. has gone to what they call endemic management. they mean, even if you are sick with covid, if you have symptoms, stay home. but, there is no standard time of isolation. you don't even have to tell some buddy you got covid. it is an important distinction and we are not there yet. the u.k. has gone full on endemic, but we are not there.

in this case right now, we are saying stay home. kristen: to be clear, i'm not advocating one thing or another but i need to point out things that seem less clear or consistent than they should be. >> the world is still in transition. some are totally endemic, some have to shut down, shanghai, 23 million people and most of the cases are -- we are completely all over the map about how we deal with covid. kristen: we still require, the u.s. government via the cdc and tsa, that incoming travelers have to show a negative test. before coming into the u.s.. if they are coming from somewhere very similar to the u.s. where there are not different variants, i am wondering how long they would keep that up given we have pretty much dropped all restrictions here in terms of the way we live. >> that is a restriction that should be considered to be

stopped. we all know that your test can be positive at 10:00 a.m. and negative at 8:00 p.m. there is no evidence that has actually limited transmission is pretesting travelers. it has gotten travelers stuck places, so the wealthy get the travel and others don't. this is a big equity problem. at some point it needs to be dropped and there active discussions about it. kristen: it is a whole spectrum of how restrictive people think we need to be, but we need conversations and definition when it comes to our goal and our strategy. dr. gandhi, always great talking to you. >> thank you. kristen: up next, the wild world

kristen: you may have followed the news this past week of massive flight delays and

cancellations across the country on several airlines. about 3500 flights were canceled this past weekend alone, many complaining of being stranded for days with no compensation. this seems to be happening more frequently. what is happening in the industry? what are the considerations if you plan to fly this summer? joining us to discuss, founder of the atmosphere research group henry hart availed. thank you for joining us. >> thanks for including me. kristen: what a weekend. delays and cancellations widespread, different regions and different airlines and they all gave the different explanations. it was somewhat of a perfect storm. >> it really was a travel mess this past weekend. first, we had problems with -- airlines where there was a pilot work action against the airline that forced alaska to cancel a lot of flights. that was compounded with very

bad weather in florida, during a peak spring travel weekend. 20% or so of flights on large airlines like jetblue, delta and others were canceled. on top of that, southwest airlines had an i.t. problem during the weekend which forced them to cancel more flights across their network. so, it was not a good weekend to get from a to b. >> i saw a lot of comments saying where i am, the weather is fine. can you explain to folks the cascading effect why even if there points a and b are fine weather-wise that it could still be messed up due to something happening in florida? >> absolutely. the thing about airplanes is they fly. the weather may be good where you are and the weather may be good where you are going, but it may not be good where your plane is coming in from.

that is where airlines will try to cite weather. there is a good reason airlines do that. if they cite weather, they don't have to give you compensation. some areas do try to go above and beyond in taking care of customers. if you are nice to the agent, the agent may be nice to you. remember something, they've got policies. the agent can induce -- can only do so much. they are not the ceo of the company. kristen: speaking of customer service, i think jetblue had it the worst this weekend, if you go by twitter. people really harped on the poor communication, rebooking people for flights three days later automatically. when people say that doesn't work, they can't get to an agent at the airport or on the phone. what is driving that? there seems to be a dearth of service. >> jetblue, like other airlines,

is scrambling to rebuild its reservation workgroup. even if they have brought back a lot of workers who were laid off , took furlough or were on leave , they don't have all of those workers back. they are working to hire new workers. travel is growing. summer looks good too. but, jetblue got caught. so, they didn't have reservation agents and they didn't have the best -- sorry, but it's true. they are a smaller airline compared to southwest or american. jetblue doesn't have that many options and that maybe white people looked several days in advance because all the other flights are full because of spring break. but, you don't care about that if you are trying to get home and you are being told her to say nine hour wait to talk to somebody.

kristen: on the heels of that, jetblue saying they made a bid for spirit airlines. a lot of people are scratching their heads. what does jetblue want? based on what you told me, it sounds like they just want to buy their human resources. >> i was one of those head scratchers. i will tell you, they are buying spirit for their airplanes and for their employees. spirit has a lot of airplanes and a lot of airplanes on order. more than jetblue could get on its own. by acquiring spirit, if successful, jet blue will almost double in size and then redeploy those airplanes to more places. jetblue claims more -- pay attention to its pricing so they believe they will be a catalyst not only to more low fares for their own flights, but from competing airlines as well. and with spirit come not only the airplanes but the pilots,

reservation agents, airport agents, flight attendants and more. we could see if this goes through, jetblue could become the fifth largest airline in the u.s. kristen: are you saying prices may drop if this merger goes through? usually when we think of less competition, that leads to higher prices. alaska bought virgin and whatever and usually you want more. >> right, well, the u.s. agency is one that has been shrinking because of -- jetblue tried to buy virgin america. they lost. they have been looking now, ever since, for another partner. the airline industry, one size and scope, airlines need to be large to give us all of the flights did jetblue claims they will bring lower fares.

we will have to see if it happens. usually when airlines merge, obviously less competition leads to fewer low fares out there. kristen: we will see if it gets approved and if spirit takes this. spirit does fly out of oakland, so we are keeping an eye on it. given the situation we discussed, would you maybe choose a bigger airline like united, american or delta if you had to fly right now versus the smaller ones for the flexibility and perhaps the lower chances that something like this weekend would happen again? >> it depends. very few airlines are islands into themselves. i would look at which area i am traveling from and what is my destination and which airline has the most flights to that destination, which is not always the largest airline at the airport.

for example, if you're going somewhere where smaller airline actually has more flights, you are better off booking that smaller airline because of something goes wrong, they may have a better ability to protect you on another flight. another thing to look at, does your airline have a partnership? alaska airlines and jetblue both partner with american. if something goes wrong with them, maybe they can rebook you on american. united has relations with delta, american and other airlines. delta airlines also has relationships with other airlines. you are better off on some of those airlines than an airline that does not have any relationships with other carriers. that's southwest, they are a completely standalone airline right now. kristen: when they are in trouble they do not have anyone to help. we are getting to the heart of it. a lot of people are planning some -- summer travel. airfare is so high right now because of pent-up demand,

increased fuel costs, do you see prices coming down soon? and i guess depending on that answer, i'm trying to figure out if people should be buying now, or wait. >> the answer is no. i do not see prices coming down now unless the economy goes off the skids. in that case, we are probably not going to travel anyway. i tell folks if you are considering taking a trip for summer vacation or for the spring, find flights that work for you, hotels, whatever it is, book them now. with most u.s. airlines, though not all, you can usually get a full travel credit if you decide not to take your trip as long as you are not on the most deeply discounted fares called basic economy. generally, those are completely not refundable. but if you are booked on just a

regular discounted coach fare on many airlines and you can't take the trip or don't want to, or if you see a lower fare that does come along, you can cancel that reservation and your full ticket price is applied as a travel credit you will be able to use for at least another year. kristen: wow, that is a good tip. great information henry, thank you so much. don't go away, we have a couple more minutes to chat on facebook.

care coalition, where are we on alaska airlines? we found that people are raving about their customer care. i mean, take a look at this! wow! [dog barks] says here they have the most flights from the west coast. they fly to chicago, hawaii, cancun! wow! do they fly to my magical faraway kingdom of care-a-lot, way up in the clouds where anything is possible? they have direct flights to vegas. close enough! ♪ ♪

kristen: that is going to do it. thank you for joining us on this interactive show. today, we broke down covid-19 headlines including san francisco having the highest

case rate of all counties in the state. plus air travel delays and cancellations. we will be here e tonight, the devastating new images. our team now reaching a city further north of kyiv and what they found. and here at home tonight, the deadly storms sweeping across several states. tornado watches and warnings as we come on the air tonight. first, those new horrors reveal as ukrainian forces reach another city left behind by the russians. the ukrainian government tonight releasing new drone video. apartment buildings bombed, barely left standing. james longman and our team on the ground there. the area littered with russian mines. president biden tonight addressing the atrocities now seen by the world, calling them major war crimes. tonight, the u.s. and european allies imposing new sanctions. who and what they're now targeting, including vladimir putin's adult daughters. james