building a better bay area moving forward finding solutions. this is abc 7 news. hi there. i'm kristen z. you're watching getting answers live on abc 7. we ask experts your questions every day at three to get answers for you in real time. the justice department now says saturday's mass shooting at a buffalo, new york. were in a predominantly black neighborhood was motivated by particular white supremacist ideology writings allegedly posted online by the 18 year old white male suspect cited the great replacement theory a professor who researches radicalization will join us to explain what that is. why has it taken hold and what we can do about it. also the young bay area coder whose desire keep her grandmother healthy let her to develop a medical reminder app

at age 7. that's right. seven. we'll meet the girl and her mother but first is the fda on the verge of approving a booster for five to 11 year olds and people who have recovered from covid are now asking how many times can you be reinfected joining us now to? these questions ucsf infectious diseases specialist, dr. peter chinhong dr. chin hong great to see you. thanks for joining us. my pleasure christian. thanks for having me on we do start with the sad news though, because today the cdc finally made it official more than one million people had died in the us due to covid that's more than the world, isn't it? yes when you look at all of the contemporary countries the united states 12 13 of them were a rank amongst we are actually dead last 400,000 deaths in the world and it really speaks to the fact that we were, you know, not having a national strategy. we weren't aligning science and politics.

leon and early on is when we see most of the debts, although they've continued even in the or macron, so you might have thought well, maybe we got our act together with a new administration, but we're still ranking last in the developed world 400,000 even in the omicron era as well as overall. you know one million is such a big number. it's almost hard to grasp. mentally, can you put that loss of life in perspective for us? yes, so we look at 9/11 as a very seminary event in this country, but if you look at the million lives lost so far on the the counter is still ticking. so this is not the end of the story yet. we can still make a happier end of the story, but it's almost like the death toll of 9/11 for almost a year. a for almost a year or another way of putting it is taking the whole death count of world war two and the civil war combined and it's similar to what we're

seeing now and again this is going to get worse than that because the deaths are still occurring. a new analysis actually out today shows how many lives how many of those lives could have been prevented by vaccines? right? what does it say? yeah, so it says that you know in a study from brown university and harvard at the brigham women's hospital just in this year alone so far, you know in the first quarter of the year more than 300,000 lives was saved by the vaccine. i think that when you look at overall in the pandemic even in the first to the pandemic a million lives and california also has similar data when look at california data, these are all underestimates of the true impact because they don't take an account people's transmission potential that stop by the vaccine. variance that we have now, of course, we all know that people. vaccines and boosters can still get it. you just don't get the same

severe cases, which is what you want to stay out of the hospital, but i want to ask you a lot of people are now asking look i've gotten infected ones and my good now or how many times can i actually get it again. do we know? yes, so, i mean it's all speculation, but i'll give you a fact so the fact right now is that in south africa where 90% of the population's immune not from vaccines mainly from natural infection. they're seeing a big surge in ba4 and ba5. we already have va four and five in this country what it means is that a ton of people are getting reinfected. we already seen unheard of colleagues who got included more than once so the estimate right now some some people believe is that unless we dave the vaccines. you'll expect it to be like the cold in terms of frequencies not going to be like influenza at one time of the year. it's going to be throughout people may get three or four infections a year, but luckily because of vaccines. we're not seeing as many deaths. we're not seeing as many people

get ill enough to go to the hospital. all right. i mean if it's true that, you know, many of us could get it several times a year. can we assume that you'd get similar symptoms and length of infection each time or could it actually? be very different. ' going to be different for different people acoeneveastgungmoes of mine. you've heard of people who get hit by dump truck like the worst flu or people who are very minimal symptoms. so it's very very different based on our own immune system. but again for the future, we don't know right now. we are just talking about flavors of omicron ba1. ba245 etc, but we don't know what a new var. will bring i think most people think it will still be mild symptoms to the people of vaccinated. but right now we have technology like pills monoclonal antibodies

remdesivir vaccines to keep people away from deaths. we can actually have a target of zero deaths if we wanted to in this country, i'm speaking of treatments today. i think the fda actually gave the red light to a common ant lesson as a covid treatment right? tell us about that. ht upgrade about this antidepressant or a medicine used for obsessive compulsiverdeoral a l dot of atn particularly before pax fluid came on board because in some small studies it showed that wthasere prevention of people going to the hospital but mainly was prevention of people with short visits the emergency room. so ida didn't give the green light mainly because they went convinced of the outcomes and personally speaking. it's probably because a lor l me e parks louisville available. although the people who put forward this request the fda did talk about the fact that you

know, we still need something that's easily available to the rest of the world. this is a generic form etc. so i think they're pros and cons to this approach. all right, you know whether this or anything else do you ever advise people take it off label? like let's say you already had that for a different reason and i'll just take this for covid. no, i think if we were in this country, i would definitely take pax slew it many times over a fluvoxamine and the reason is that paxlove is an antiviral. it's made for virus fluvoxamine is not really an anti-infective. it's not an antiviral and we've never really been successful in the world of diseases when we use another drug to treat an infection apart for the class that it was designed for okay another big piece. of it's about to give. a providers booster the five to 11 year olds right? walk us through the timeline the dosage and what you think about it. yeah, so first of all only about

30% of americans have immunized they have 5 to 11 year olds despite having this shot be available for time now right now the fda is looking at data showing that for visors booster shot, which is the same dose as the original 5t 11 dose, which is about you know, 10 micrograms. it's 130 adults given five at least five months after the second increase in antibodies by about six times. so it looks good immunologically. it probably is going to be the same for omicron like the other vaccines. i think it's probably more needed for kids than adults even not only because not necessarily because kids don't do as well with covid but because the dose is lower for the first two doses so you might need this in kids more than ever to keep them away from the hospital. i see. okay. when do you think it'll actually get approved? well as early as this week, so

it's expected to go to the fda tomorrow. thursday they already set up a meeting with a cdc advisory board. so by friday, maybe dr. wilensky would give the final okay to this. look, we have a minute left to go. so i'm gonna ask you about something the warriors announced today actually to us newsrooms. they're asking journalists now to mask again when they're near players like in the interview. home like near the court and around the team, but they're not asking that a fans coming to the arena. what do you make of that? and what is it saying? i think it should be kind of a universal -- just because journalists aren't necessary different from fans per se. it should be a strong recommendation. i don't think we're going tany e but journalism on different from the general public. in fact, you can say that as a fan myself, i'd probably be more likely going to drink some beer

and shot and scream with joy or not at a game and and therefore be possible vector of transmission to others dr. peter gen con. thank you so much for coming on it was great talking with you. appreciate it. here kristen. thank you. coming up next writings by the accused mass shooter in buffalo new york repeatedly cited a white supremacist ideology the great replacement theory will learn more from a professor. who studies issues surrounding violent extremism? th

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could they end up in you, your bodies, their prey? new studies indicate possible links to mutations in dna. an evil lie with a future's worth of harm. to the world, now you know. so sound the alarm. to the world, now you know. weekend many people may not have heard of the phrase replacement theory the white supremacist ideology embraced by the accused mass shooter in buffalo who went

on a spree to kill black people, but the theory has been tied to deadly violence for years at the 17 white nationalists march in charlottesville, virginia at a pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 and at a texas walmart against mexican 2019 and now this joining us to help us understand where the ideology came from where it's going and why we should all be concerned kurt braddock assistant professor in the school of communication at american university in washington, dc professor brad. thanks for joining. look at the core. what is the great replacement theory? river placement theory has been around for quite some time, but it really came into. and the early 2010s the basic argument is that white america or when it was first originated white europe is being immigrated out of existence in the united states the idea is that immigrants are coming the united states and that whites will be the minority in in the future

either through immigration or through increasing birth rates among non-whites the he goes that this is being planned by the powers that be to make whit. united states less powerful all right. so is it still a fringe idea or is it mainstream now? well for a long time it existed on fringe of the right, but i'm to say that a lot of individuals included elected officials on the right and major media figures like the tucker carlsons of the world have mainstreamed it. it's been it's been very well normal. in recent years and whether this shooter was directly influenced by the tucker carlsons or the elected officials who espoused the theory the theory has been normalized by these individuals to the point that this individual would have encountered them in places where they wouldn't have to go before. so this particular gunman allegedly targeted blacks, but that is not the only group targeted right and the ideology itself who does a target demographically.

well, generally speaking just non-whites. there's also a large element of anti-semitism included in the theory as well because in the original version of the theory -- were often behind the the plans to breed and emigrate whites out. citizens in europe and the united states, but we see individuals on all blocks of the far right talking about whites being replaced by all kinds of min. so although this individual targeted black americans it isn't limited to black. so in fact a new poll shows nearly one-third of americans actually worry about being replaced. what is driving that fear that fear of immigrants? who are the folks who are kind of impacted by that and then learn to embrace it. once i said, unfortunately, this has been very well normalized. i far right media and even more mainstream right-wing media and the elected officials. so although this theory

circulates pretty heavily in certain spaces online where it can be difficult to find in some of these spaces not terribly difficult, but more difficult than in the mainstream this kind of theory is being a spouse nightly on cable news networks from the right and when it's spouse to that kind of an audience. it's no surprise to see that that big segment of the audience is afraid of these kinds of things despite them not being true. right, so the idea currently has a pretty big platform on the sort of political front legislative front and also on media and social media. so then how would you stop its, you know perpetuation then how would you stop it spread? well, there are a few ways you can go about engaging what i call count. against this conspiracy theory another kinds of conspiracy theories and and area of research research that i've looked into is something called attitudinal inoculation for individuals who haven't gone down that rabbit hole yet. you essentially warned them that their beliefs and attitudes are a risk of changing toward this this theory and give them

counter-arguments. they need to push back against it and the research that i've done to american university both in the school communication and the polarization. extremism research and innovation lab shows that this can be an effective way of preventing persuasion by this conspiracy theory. that's an interesting idea because i think a lot of people like fearing that you would introduce that idea to that person. push them towards it, but you're saying that's actually not the case. you should bring it up. especially in places like the united states where we all very much value our autonomy and our ability to make our own decisions if you tell people that listen we know you're not violent. we know you're not an extremist, but they're these individuals out there who want to use you to achieve their political goals. they're gonna try to persuade you and worse people like you have been persuaded by these ideas before it's not so much you're raising the idea, but you're raising the perspective of the specter of threat to them them the idea that their beliefs and attitudes as safe as they think they are when we do that

not only do we help them defend against the idea itself. it shows that we're on their side. we want to help them build resilience against these kinds of ideas in terms of preventing this kind of idea from taking hold through social look, you know, this person live streamed it for a couple of minutes. should there be more ways to prevent that and i asked that question knowing full. well, there are headwinds right? there are those for example elon musk who's looking at buying twitter who say there should be less moderation. us clamping down of things on social. so how do you kind of deal with that? well, let me start by saying the idea of less moderation. we've seen that only leads to problems. that's not to say that all content should be moderated immediately taken down, but every time we see time and time again on these social media platforms when people are left to their own devices like the wild west and there's no moderation. it devolves into hate mongering and meme sharing often very racist sexist and extremist content something the platforms have gotten better at in recent

years. is what we call takedowns when this content appears on the platforms. they have dedicated elements of the platforms to take the content down and keep an eye on it. so it doesn't come. think that's a useful element of preventing this from gaining any traction, but it can't be the only element. we also need to engage with the ideology as well. professor braddock look you know these individual episodes horrible tragic but on a broader level. what is the danger if this idea is left unfettered to grow. my big fear what keeps me up at night is the normalization of these ideas because i think without much pushback earlier any kind of evidence to the contrary that words have power to influence violence to motivate violence and without trying to engage with this ideology without pushing back against it. it'll continue to be normalized which i fear will lead to more violence violence and more shootings like this one.

unfortunately, we say this is a few and far between type thing, but i think we're seeing again and again, el paso. buffalo pittsburgh a couple of years ago this is happening again and again and we can no longer look at as a series of isolated incidents. this is all connected to a wider far right ideology that's motivating these kinds of it takes hold i fear will see more. hi kurt, braddock assistant professor in the school of communication at american university. thank you so much. appreciate it. thanks very much. we are going to shift gears. i think this will put a smile on your face a medical app created by a seven-year-old here in the bay area. we'll talk to her about the inspiration when we come back.

two one there are lots of brilliant coders in the bay area but many who can say there's seven years old a san ramon girl has developed a life-saving app all to help her grandmother joining us now to share her app with us. advamula and her proud mom rupa

vamula. hello ladies hi christine, so good to see you, abby. you are really seven. really. but almost it's great. yeah, okay. well then then of course you'd be coding apps now. i'm just getting rupa jumping when you want this an incredible p?nofoullr te u asmy app name is mad reminded reminder. and what does it do? it helps. um my grandma my grandma and people who are like her. um, get reminders from for their medicine and their doctor appointments. wow. okay, what made you want to create this app? how did you get the idea? i wanted to create this app especially for my grandmother because she has she's been suffering from her heart condition and when she is

facetiming on me, um, i i noticed that she always misses taking her medicine. because she's busy neither. is she. can keep track of it. got it rupa. do you remember the day when she came to you and said i'm making this i'm doing it. i actually she was like thinking of i mean it was during pandemic when it was an early like, you know in 2020 when the pandemic hit and she was so bored like she was boarding at home like not going out now because she is to be in so many activities like swimming and gymnastics and all of a sudden all cut off and then she was like something this is not going to work with. me so she started like, you know getting into doing some animations and all that stuff and then she thought okay, i will use my all my coding knowledge and utilize my app

knowledge and create something for her. grandma. that's what she thought. wow. amazing. okay, so abby walk us through we're looking at pictures of the app. tell us about some of the features that you really like on it. i especially like how i designed it because there's so many colors to it. it makes it pop out very well. seriously, this is good. ux ui there. i think it does make it very clear and as user friendly, did you grandmother use it now? no, i'm keeping it as a surprise until the what until your visit her in june. yeah. oh nice. nice rupes this where can i find this? is it on the app store or anything yet? not yet. we are we are going to release it soon now everything we are tested we tested it and then it's all good and she worked everything on tankable and then it gonna be really soon so like on you know samson on iphone

like it's gonna yes exactly. that's a right. yes. okay. so happy what do you like about coding? um what i like coloring because it's just like when we create these apps, it's very it's very real time. so for example one time my coding teacher she we had it in our class we had to create a chat. and when we we can just keep chatting with our friends and now i'm using it like i don't even want to delete that app. oh rupa. what do you think? abby will be or do professionally when she grows up and she's already doing this now. you you want to say i'd be what you want to be. i'm gonna be a computer teacher who teaches students coding and i help them create amazing apps like how i created measurement. wow, that is fantastic. it's like spread the wealth pass

it on right share the knowledge rupa. you must be so proud. i think right. i mean just amazing. yeah. it's like yeah, she's seven and she gonna be age soon and she has so much like, you know put real and then she loves being you know on the screen and working on her activities and i mean after every class she always, you know gets make sure she completes her projects after each class and then submit to her teacher every day, and this is very punctual and then you know, she she loves it. yeah. well actually congratulations and rupa congratulations to you. don't go away. we'll continue to chat on facebook live. take a short break

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thank you so much for joining us on this interactive show getting answers will be here every weekday at on air and on live stream. see you tomorrow. tonight, a special edition of "world news tonight." chilling new details about the deadly mass shooting here at this grocery store in buffalo. authorities now believe this was just one part of the plan. and investigators now say the suspect visited this store as early as march. tonight, abc news obtaining video showing the final moments of the attack here at the tops market. the alleged gunman being taken into custody. ten people killed in what authorities call a raucially motivated hate crime. all of the victims were black. racist slurs and the names of other mass shooters written on the suspect's ar-15. and tonight, abc news obtaining a document suggesting the attack was in the works for at least two months. the suspect, they say, planning this down to the super market aisles. tonight, we hear from a