building a better bay area moving forward finding solutions. this is abc 7 news. the you're watching getting answers live on abc 7 every day. we talk with experts about issues important to the bay area and we get answers for you in real time today democrats are celebrating retaining control of the senate and holding on to hope however small that they could possibly keep the house of representatives and it could come down to a few races in california political data consultant. and paul mitchell will be here to break down how pundits forecast about the midterms was so off but first lots of data to help you make important decisions does the moderna by vail and boost to protect you anymore than the original booster should you try hard to avoid getting covid if your first time was pretty mild

should you die in indoors right now joining us live to talk about all is ucsf department of medicine chair dr. bob walker dr. walker? nice to have you back on the show? thank you. kristen. always great to be here. all righty. well, we're kind of been a weird place right? it's like two realities. we're living like the pandemic is over, but we worry we still have a problem with covid. it's almost like cognitive dissonance. what do we do in this situation? well we get back to some version of life. that's more like 2019 than 2020 but to my mind at least i am deciding not to get back to complete 2019 life. i'm still trying to be somewhat careful in situations that i judge to be at higher risk, and i'm still paying attention to the data and the data says that covid we've had a very mild six months covid wise, but things are starting to get a little bit worse and it's worth being careful about that and on top of that.

we have a couple of additional threats including the flu and rsv, which also adds to my sense that it's a good time to be a little more cautious. right. in fact, we have your tweet that you just posted. i think this weekend you said when i said in september i was okay with indoor dining in san francisco. i said, i'd stop if the risk was upped dramatically and now walk us through you know, you say it has now and that you're now not doing into a restaurant, but you're okay with pokero we just dining? well, here's here's the thing with indoor dining indoor dining at a restaurant means you're going to be around. you know, how i think about how many people are at your table. plus your waiter plus people at adjacent tables all of whom are are in airshot of you soon. in other words, you can breathe what they're breathing and and so the decision to eat indoors in a restaurant to me really

hinges on how likely is it that someone at a nearby table or at my table has covid and it's san francisco at least that probability has gone up about two or three fold in the last month. still nowhere near as high as it was in the old days, but it's substantially higher than it was about a month ago, and that comes from those cases per 100,000 per day and then other sources of information like wastewater and the asymptomatic test positivity rate we have at ucsf. so i'm now much more confident that that my risk for meeting indoors is higher than it was. i'm still going out to restaurants. i just go outside rather than inside. and i'm still comfortable getting together with small groups of people inside, but i am doing testing now whereas i'd stopped a few weeks ago, so when i went out to poker with seven friends all vaccinated we all tested before we had we played poker when my wife and i went to dinner with a couple of friends last night.

we all tested before dinner. so the chances of us getting covid from going into dinner playing poker are not super high but to me high enough that i'm at least thoughtful about it and if we all test negative it lowers the probability of getting infected from that encounter substantially not to zero but low enough that to me it makes it safe enough to do. i really appreciate this kind of like weighing risk reward what matters to you and how you can minimize your wrist doing the things that matter to you that are important to you, but the more important thing is did you win that poker? i actually did which was the most shocking thing of all yes. okay, i made about 40 bucks, and i'm really a despicably bad poker player. so that just shows how much luck there is involved in the game. i'm sure you're not but okay, i'll give you that. i want to move on to some really sad news really and it's breaking news and this just came down in the hour before we came on pardoning. got a little tickle my throw there but the california department of public health has just reported the states first flu and rsv death this season in a child under five no further

details for privacy, but dr. walter, this is so scary for parents, you know, people always want to know is this only a big risk in immunocompromised kids. we we don't know much as you say kristen about this this case. it is obviously incredibly sad when i when a kid dies, it looks like from the report that it was a combo. it was the child had both rsv and flu and they don't traffic together. so that is probably just really terrible luck that the kid had both things wrong, but rsv can be a very serious listen children flu can be serious in children. what does it mean? you know, there's no rsv vaccine yet. there may be one in a year or so, but there are none that have been proven to be beneficial that are out yet. there is a flu vaccine in the recommendation. is that every kid over age six months gets a flu vaccine rsv is spread both by breathing but also through touching services

probably more so than covid or flu are so it's a it's it's it's it's sad it means we all have to be a little bit more careful than we were being careful about hand washing and you know, the risk is is it i mean, it's one case in a very big country and so it's not like i would stop, you know having my kids go to daycare if i had infants but it is something you've got to be thoughtful about and obviously if your kid develops an upper respiratory infection and starts getting shorter breath at all. they need to see they need to get medical attention very quickly, right? okay. i want to move on to covid really big news today as well. moderna released its study comparing how of effective the new bivalent booster might be against omicron strains compared to its original vaccine. does that show? yeah, i think the big question that we have is this new vaccine whether it's the pfizer version or the moderna version. how much better? is it going to be against the

new the new variants and at least the the quick reading? i did of the modernist study showed that it developed pretty good levels of antibodies against the new variants which should mean that it protects you better against against getting infected as you recall in you know, when the vaccines first came out they were 95% effective against getting infected and we now know because the variance have gotten so much better at evading the vaccines the vaccine still are incredibly effective against you getting super sick and dying but are less effective at preventing infection this new study indicates or may indicate. we don't know yet with human data may indicate that you're protection against getting infected if you get this new vaccine is going to be little bit stronger and little bit longer than what we've gotten used to we've gotten used to is that the new vaccines sort of lowers the probability of getting infected for by 50 or 60 percent and last for a couple of months the the effect against

severe infections much better. so it may be that it turns out the modern vaccine works even better than that. we'll just have to see. okay. i want to bring in a question from our viewer abc7 instagram follower bushy has a two-part question for you. is there still a huge risk for us? catch covid and is there more to be done to fight it? well, is there a huge risk? the answer is no the risk of well, first of all, let's say it depends a little bit on your age and whether you have other risk factors for a bad outcome, but for the average person if you are fully vaccinated and boosted and by that, i mean you've gotten the new booster the risk that you're going to get very sick and die of covid has gone to almost zero, which is amazing. it just shows how much progress we've made on the other hand the risk of long covid continues to be real. it's now clear that vaccines lower that risk. it's now clear that if you take pax limited that also lowers the

risk of long covid, but the risk of long cove is probably about one in 20, even for people that are vaccinated and so the best way of preventing long covid is not to get covid in the first place the best way of not getting covid in the first place is to make sure that you're fully vaccinated and boosted and being careful in situations that are at high risk, and that's why i'm back to being a little bit more care. than i was because the risk is now higher than it was a month or two ago. all right, dr. bob walkthrough. please don't go away and viewers. please don't go away as well because dr. walked to will be back after a short break to answer more of your questions and we'll talk also a little bit more long covi

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wachter talking about all things, you know covid rsv flu things to keep you healthy. i want to start with a question. we just got in from a viewer on instagram lola bears watching and she wants to know can i get the pfizer bivalent after having all moderna vaccines previously? i'm going to guess. yes, right. yeah, you can any combo is perfectly fine. there is a little bit of evidence that mixing and matching offers a little bit broader protection. so for example, i had my first three we pfizer i got number four was a madura and i went back to pfizer for my bivalent. it's perfectly fine to do the combo and might even be slightly beneficial. all right. you so much. okay. so sorry saying i hear this a lot. i've had it it wasn't that bad for me. so i don't see the great need to try to you know, do a lot to avoid it again any thoughts on that that is are there any new studies on reinfections and the effects on our body that we need to know about? yeah, the the my main comment about it is as perfectly but

it's wrong. so the study that just came out this is from some researchers in saint louis analyzing the veterans affairs database showed that with each additional infection and they tested people who that one infection two infections and three infections each additional infection significantly raised the chance of of hospitalization and death and a number of different symptoms over the course of six months. so some of it was the effect of the acute infection like getting very sick from your infection, but some of it probably related to long covid affects and what it basically says is even though it feels i know plenty of people that get their first infection, which i have not by the way they get their first infection they say, oh darn it but at least i got that out of way. i don't have to be as careful. you may have a month or two where you don't have to be quite as careful because you have the immunity from that infection, but beyond that you're you don't want to get the second infection just as much as you didn't want want to get the first infection.

my wife has had one infection, and she's just as careful as i am who's had none because the risk to each of us is about the same. that's probably in terms of acute problems with infection and it's probably true for long covet as well. hope her long covid symptoms are all gone. now. i want to ask you quite yes about 90% better, but she she works for three or four hours in the morning. she'll need to take a 45 minute nap, which you never had to do before she had covid. oh, all right is long coviding kids and teens very different from long covid in adults a lot of parents wonder about long covid and their kids yeah, another study just came out this week looking at us. this is from germany and it turned out the symptoms of long covid and the prevalence the amount of long covid in children and adolescents was about the same as what we see in adults. and so, you know, so one and hard to know exactly what that means, but i i think you have to

assume that the reason that you don't want to get covid as an adult these days. it's not so much that you're going to get super sick and die if you're vaccinating boosted. it really is long covid and in a kid the same thing is true. there is at least some chance that you'll get long covid in a vaccinated adult who's been boosted the probability of getting long code. it's about one in 20, we think and so that's the probability. miord or f an adolescent as wel. okay. well dr. walker the holidays are almost here baby's a seven instagram follower vintage victor wants to know do you think covid-19 will get bad again since it's near the holiday. days, so you know, what do you think predictions advice? it's getting a little bit worse everywhere if you look at the curves of cases of test positivity and hospitalizations, they were very flat for six months. and unfortunately, they are all ticking upwards not skyrocketing. it's not dire, but they're going in the wrong direction and does

that mean you should cancel your thanksgiving plans? no, i think it's important we get together. does it mean that particular if they're vulnerable people there if you have much older people coming that everybody should test beforehand and that you should keep the windows open or if you can possibly do it outside you should i think that's what it means. we're having people over for thanksgiving. we're planning on doing it outside and we'll have everybody test before they get here and if we do some of it inside we'll make sure the windows and doors are open. gotcha. and would you choose to wear masks? i know we don't have mandates and people would not like to see a return of that, but would you choose to wear a mask in places where i guess it's a little crowded and maybe there's a little social value and seeing each other smiley faces. i not only would but do and i realized that these days i was at a medical conference a few weeks ago with 80 people and i was the only one wearing a mask and this was this conference with a lot of doctors. so clearly the mass have fallen out of favor. but yeah wonder if you see me at the safeway, i will be wearing a mask if you see me on an airline, i will be wearing a

mask in an uber. i'll be wearing a mask and until the case has come back down again if you see me at a restaurant, you'll see me eating outside. hopefully under a heater. okay? a mask i'll still recognize you because we've seen you so much. but yes under that heaters a good idea. thank you so much dr. bob walker always great chatting with you. thanks. alright coming up next nearly a week after election day and still waiting on results the california districts that are still undecided and could determine if the house flips we'll dive into that when getting answ

i had no idea how much i wamy case was worth. c call the barnes firm to find out what your case could be worth. we will help get you the best result possible. ♪ call one eight hundred, eight million ♪ senate and the balance of power in the house is still undecided if we had told you a week ago that this is where we'd be right now. you probably wouldn't have believed it on election day donald trump jr. tweeted bloodbath implying it was going to be a republican takeover to that the anti-trump republican group the lincoln project responded this tweet aged like milk. joining us live now with a very

latest on how the pundits data crunchers politicians all got it. so wrong not talking about you paul midterm predictions the vice president of political data inc. paul mitchell paul. thanks for joining us again. thanks for having me. yeah before we get into how the narrative was kind of off with this midterm election. let's get the latest democrats locked in control of the senate this weekend with nevada. senator catherine master cortez re-election secured. let's talk about the house. all right. we've got the abc news map here gop right now, you know has they have two 12 democrats 206. so paul they need to 18 right and there's still 17 undecided. is that right? yeah, that sounds about right and there's a handful here in california. the math has gotten a little bit hard for democrats in the last couple days, especially in a couple key districts here in california where democrats had some outside chance of maybe pick one and picking one of these republican seats off but as we get through the rest of

vote counting some things would have to change in a couple districts that are really close. like you said they were hoping for some pickups and i think one of the states where they are hoping for pickups was california, let's go back to our abc news map and look a little more closely at our state paul you walk us through which districts democrats thought they had a shot at a pickup and then maybe also walk us through what republicans we're hoping for in terms of a pickup. sure, so one of the first districts is in northern california that california district 3 is a seat that democrats have been looking at for a long time. this was a seat interestingly that alyssa milano was looking at running for it would have created a different contest. i'm sure but kevin kiley will likely win that seat going down through the central valley one of the closest races in the country right now is assembly district 13 that's in the northern central valley right below san joaquin county right below stockton merced stanislaus area. that's history.

yeah, last time i looked it was 84 votes. it is one that it looks like democrats might be able to eat this out simply because they're leading in the largest counties, but it's going to be incredibly close. one that republicans will likely eke out that's very close is congressional district 41 in riverside. that's a race. that's very interesting because congressional district 41 is currently held by ken calvert who is one of the architects and main proponents of prop 8 to ban gay marriage, but then the redistricting commission put a little trick on him and put the community of palm springs a very heavily lgbt community in his new district. he immediately reacted he actually voted for a bill in congress last year to codify the supreme court decision that legalized gay marriage so he has been working hard to try to hold this district as it has changed, but right now it's within a

couple percentage points calvert in the last couple updates that we got has gained a few points. so that's one that is leaning towards republicans right now, but the 13th likely to shift into the democratic lane and 41st likely for republicans to hold on. those are probably going to come down to the wire so in the end do you think california will be a net gain for either party? well in the end, i think that california the democratic seats are going to stay democratic and the republican states are going to stay republican california did lose a seat in the redistricting and that redistricting that reapportionment was felt in la county with the loss of a democratic seat, but in all the districts where there were incumbents or existing members, they all stayed with their own parties. all right. look, why do you think the narrative about the red wave was so off where some factors neglected or waited too much or too little it's an important

question and the fact is this is really shocking. the polling was right? if you look at the polls that were done by nonpartisan pollsters in the week leading up to the election it showed two things. it showed that democratic enthusiasm had matched republican enthusiasm for the first time in a while and it showed a lot of these races were tightening up and close where it was wrong was when you started to look at analysis and incorporate it expert opinions looked at what's called the fundamentals which largely is looking back at similar elections and the amount of of seats that were won by the party not in power in midterms when you look at those election fundamentals when you listen to the experts you would get pushed towards thinking there was gonna be a deeper red wave, but in fact the polling right at the end really, especially that pulling from non-partisan sources seem to suggest this was going to be extremely close now republicans will likely take control of congress that is consequential today kevin

mccarthy the presumptive next speaker said it doesn't matter what majority is the gavels the same size either way, and that's true a consequential and important win for republicans, but not as big as a lot of people were expecting right? definitely not and look there's a lot of blame to go around on the republican side, right? and i wonder if this is leading to dissent in the ranks in terms of the senate side because today florida senator marco rubio who won his election reelection easily in florida tweeted. we should not have have a senate gop leadership vote. until we have a clear explanation for why our 2022 campaign efforts failed and until we have a clear understanding of the political and political direction for the gop senate moving forward. is that rebellion against senate party leader mitch mcconnell? well, there's gonna be a lot that's gonna look like rebellion or at least fighting within the republican caucus for a couple reasons one is there's an open question is to who's going to be the frontrunner who's going to be running for president and

that's creating a lot of infighting then also you're going to have a houseboat in and kevin mccarthy is the presumed next speaker, but with a majority that might only be three seats. that means that the most extreme within his caucus will have an inordinate amount of power. and so that's absolutely not a given and the senate you're gonna have a very close senate probably 50 51 seats for democrats. so there's a lot that is going on right now on the republican side. these kind of fights might end up popping up on the democratic side as well in the coming months, especially if joe biden were to not seek re-election and announce that then you would start to see some of this democratic and fighting the right now democrats are feeling better about how this election happened compared to how they were expecting. happen a week or so ago and president biden is right now suggesting that he will be running for re-election that helps to discourage a lot of that in fighting, right? that is going to be a family

decision. so we shall see paul. we got 10 seconds, which two issues. do you expect to be the biggest ones going into 2024? well, i think abortion showed itself as being a very important issue both for motivate motivating voters to turn out and also giving democrats some turf to run on where they can really have a better message. be more in line with the majority of americans. it was on the ballot in five states and the pro-choice side one and all five instances and i think in california, michigan in particular, you can draw a direct line from that ballot manager to election results for democrats. thank you so much. paul mitchell great talking with you. i know you also spoke with my colleague david 7 news anchor liz quite so her report will be coming up later today as well. take care. take care.

thanks for joining us today world news tonight with tonight, the abc news exclusive. my interview with former vice president mike pence. for the first time, pence on his role on january 6th, on his duty that day, and pence on former president donald trump. mike pence saying former president trump's words and his actions were reckless and endangered me and my family and everyone at the capitol building. the president tweets mike pence didn't have the courage. tonight, for the first time, mike pence on that tweet. and on the pressure put on him by the president. the phone call from former president trump on the morning of january 6th. and tonight, with former president trump set to announce as early as tomorrow that he's running for president again -- do you believe that donald trump should ever be president again? tonight, our interview with mike

pe