♪ announcer: building a better bay area, moving forward, finding solutions, this is abc7 news. kristen: hi. you are watching getting answers. we talk with experts about issues important to the bay area and get answers in real-time. as the uc academic worker strike enters its fourth week, what the alternative plans being made. a professor would join us with the latest. also, the collapse of ftx deep reverberations on campus, where founders and o

first, flu, rsv, covid, a shortage of hospital beds and children's education. -- medication. joining us live is dr. patel. dr. patel is in the house. thank you for coming on. >> that is how we roll. kristen: parents are running to the drugstore and finding empty shelves for tylenol and motrin, why? >> i wish there was a simple reason. it shows how dependent we but there may have been panic buying of the cold and flu medications, alongside the fact that a lot of people are sick, so always check with your health

provider for options new you. the same goes for amoxicillin and antibiotics. find a pharmacy that can fill it. kristen: what can parents safely give us an alternative in the meantime if they cannot get their hands on children's tylenol or motrin? dr. patel: reducing a fever, the most important thing for parents to do is realize fevers are a normal immune response against foreign invaders, so just because your child has a temperature, does not mean there is a cause for alarm. if your child is behaving like they normally do, you may not need tylenol or ibuprofen to reduce the fever, but in some cases it is beneficial to try ibuprofen, using a cold cloth, but if the fever is excessive,

103, 104, five to seven days, reach out to your health provider to make sure you're not missing something. kristen: let's say you look at that dosage for the adult version and the children's version and you see the adult version is one third and you break it into thirds, is that ok? dr. patel: i caution people against this practice is because it is not as easy and clean to give it to an exact dosage, versus a set dose, 500, 6 50 mg of tylenol, but children, babies, how they clear medication is different, so we dose it per kilogram of body weight. so a lot of kids can't swallow tablets, so you need that liquid. pharmacist can give specific help with dosing tylenol. kristen: if they have a fever,

it is ok. i don't know if i bugged you about this, i had 105. can i get to the er? do i need the er? dr. patel: 105 is a high fever. the vast majority of things causing coughing, sneezing, sore throats are caused by viruses. if we see symptoms prolonged a your child or anyone is not can better comment you want to make sure it's not something bacterial that needs an antibiotic or something else that's causing a prolonged fever. there is an option to chat with the doctor to see if your child has a true fever to see if this is cool? can i stay at home. der should be for emergencies, because -- the er should be for emergencies, because parents are going and waiting for something that could be taken care of at home.

many are waiting 12 hours to 30 hours depending on which er they are at. kristen: can we talk about why it's so bad and why the hospital beds are filled? what are they coming in for? dr. patel: hospitalizations for rsv and influences are skyrocketing. influenza if it has not already is going to pass covid-19 in terms of hospitalizations for the first time. there is a tremendous amount of virus, but on top of that in the booming underlying reality is we have a critical health care shortage. there is no solution in 2023 for that, so kids/adults the hospital for something not related to influenza or rsv are still having to wait, surgical procedures that need to happen, heart attacks, strokes, car accidents, there is still a

shortage and we will have more conversations about it in the next year. kristen: are we seeing cancellations of elective surgery? dr. patel: it depends on the clinic, but i personally saw some canceled surgeries or surgeries being moved to later date if they can safely do that. kristen: yesh. i want to ask you if you're seeing lots of misinformation and flu. we know we about covid. dr. patel: we are getting bad again with rsv and influenza. anyone can go online and type in rsv cure and you will see a host of videos from people saying this is how i cured my child that rsv. there is no cure for rsv, off the bat, and normally pap peoply hey, what is the big deal? there are simply some things that don't work and you could inadvertently have false hope in thinking that your child will be ok when your child needs medical

care. i've read about putting garlic cloves in the ears, which can cause severe problems. kristen: oh my goodness. dr. patel: [indiscernible] immune boosting smooth please -- smoothies. whatever you want to try, run it by health care professional to make sure it is safe and works. if it is too good to be true, it is probably bogus. kristen: i will remember that. sarah cody and rochelle walensky are recommending people to mask up and doors. that is the recommendation, not a mandate. sounds like they are wording it strongly. would you give that advice to mask up indoors in public places? dr. patel: i would give that advice for anyone out there, especially high risk. in certain settings with people crowded together and know in relation, masking will still protect you -- no masking was still protect you.

[indiscernible] i still mask on airplanes. i have a wet mask in case i am in a place it is crowded. if you look at influenza-like illness across the country with 48 states reporting high activity, the map is dark red, purple, the worst has been in years. i don't want to get sick during the holidays. take precautions. kristen: how ourselves over the holidays? one thing we talked about is maybe if you're traveling, check out the hospital situation where you are going. dr. patel: that is a good point. we should celebrate and normalize people staying home if they are sick. those people deserve around of applause because it is tough to do that, but staying home when you're sick is one way to make sure you are not bringing the flu to holiday dinners. you mentioned people are

traveling, should people pay attention to the health care scene? you should come especially if you're traveling with someone high risk or a young infant. you don't want to go to a beautiful, snowy cabin for winter her bait -- holiday and realize there is nothing nearby in case you need it. make a plan, just in case. kristen: we don't have the time to talk about blazek by surgery and safety -- blazek i surgery and it's safety, right? dr. patel: 500,000 americans get it done every year, so stay tune and we will talk about it at 4:00. kristen: thank you. the uc strike is in its fourth week and it looks like final exams and grades could be affected and that could be harmful to some students. (vo) it's a fact! two out of three americans who qualify for medicare do not receive all the benefits they deserve. you could be missing out!

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kristen: the strike by university of california academic workers has dragged into its fourth week. now faculty across the campus system are struggling to make plans as the semester or quarter comes to an end. many uc professors are siding with the academic workers in their demand for higher pay. joining us live to talk about where things stand, spanish and film professor and chair of the center for latin american studies at uc berkeley, thank you for your time. >> thank you for inviting me. kristen: absolutely. a lot to talk about. first, a quick update. the uc system has reached deals with postdoctoral and academic researchers, but not teaching

assistants and student researchers, but they all remain on the pickup lines out of solidarity. explain what not having them means to you. >> um, well, not having them means the heart of undergraduate education at uc berkeley is not being met, because graduate students are really the core of the undergraduate mission. they do not teach all classes, but all classes rely heavily or many classes rely heavily on graduate student work. kristen: how do you rely on your teaching assistants? grading? working in small groups with students? how do you use them? >> the graduate students work with large classes many times, like lecture classes where they bleed smaller discussion sections so in the class with

400 students, they are able to have closer knit sessions for discussion. graduate students also do the vast majority of the grading. graduate students the classes taught on campuses, the composition writing on campuses for mandatory for all graduate students, so, you know. kristen: ok, so let's take that apart. first, the grading, because that is coming up at the end of the semester at uc berkeley. what are you doing? withholding grades? some professors are doing that out of solidarity with the strikers? >> yes, i am withholding grades, yes. i also want to say two things, if i can, or to set up this question of grading, and it is, at the university of california, faculty, we all want to be able to deliver high-quality

education for the people of california, and we cannot do it when the university does not pay those affair wage. the undergraduates are shortchanged, yes, because the system under pays the graduates as i just described, right, and these graduate students are workers, and also students, right, but we can't deliver this mission of the universities with 20% of graduate student workers, these essential workers to the undergraduate mission are food insecure, 5% to 10% expense homelessness, a large percentage cannot cover basic needs, so the graduate student workers of the heart of the undergraduate education, but their pay should reflect that. kristen: i wonder which you think about the fact about not giving upgrades to some students, it is not a big deal to get those later, but for others who may need to apply for financial aid, scholarships,

other programs, how could that her them? >> well, i mean come all of us, who have are choosing to withhold grades, and the graduate students who are engaged in the strike, we acknowledge and understand very profoundly that this is affecting graduate students, especially in the way you are describing, right, so they need access to scholarships or financial aid or applied to graduate schools but there is a fact and that is this is a historic moment and that undergraduates also understand they are learning through this historic event, right, what is happening across campuses, right , and their learning about the costs and consequences of high inflation, the actions needed that everyone needs to take to earn a living wage, but also understanding very deeply, very deeply what solidarity is, and that might be one of the most

important lessons any human being learns, and earlier in life is better. so i do think most undergraduates, even though they know it is affecting them, especially at the university of california, right, especially the university of california berkeley where i teach, 25% of the students have to be hispanic, latino, and that means they come from a particular class and that, those undergraduates understand because those undergraduates many times work at starbucks, brite, where they have also been organizing or work as undergraduate workers, right, they organize for living wage, so i feel that one has to measure this question of, you know, how is this hurting students? it is hurting them, but educating them, educating the public of california and this entire country because what is happening right now here is going to affect the entire

nation. kristen: professor -- >> [indiscernible] this country is broken. kristen: not all professors are withholding grades. maybe they are shortening exams or simplifying them or making them remote, lots of things going on, and none are ideal options, but i want to ask you how have you tried to make up for the education part of it? you were talking about how a lot of the students come from backgrounds where the families that struggled to put them at a university california school. are they getting their money's worth now? >> i do think that they are getting their money's worth in some way, in the way that i described in terms of this being an educational moment, but i think, yes, they are not getting their money's worth but that's not our responsibility. that is the responsibility of the university of california. the nurse of california sitting on an $18 billion endowment, and

yet those central to the undergraduate education of the campuses are going hungry, living on the streets, cannot make ins meet, so what does that mean? where are they putting those $18 billion, and for some reason the $18 billion cannot be freed up, then they use the administrators and go to sacramento and get that money from, you know, the state government. kristen: i am wondering, the postdoctorals, getting a pay raise over 20%, and let's say the teaching assistants got that as well, even those who are sympathetic and think they should be paid more for their labor living in an expensive area that this could mean if the state is going into a deficit situation next year that 20 $5 billion that education funding can be affected and that may be that there will be a tuition hike and something that her students? -- hurts students? >> it is a complex question,

what you bring up, and the fact is, as i was saying before, the system, the entire educational system in this country is broken , because it relies across the country on cheap labor, right? , and particularly the public education system relies on extremely underpaid labor, right? but, what are our priorities? that is the question the strike is asking. what are the priorities at the university level ?how can that money not be freed up in order to generate, set it up where everyone can thrive, where graduate students can thrive and therefore undergraduates can thrive, and if students drive, faculty thrive, and others thrive, but the priorities are elsewhere now, right, so we are asking where are the priorities? kristen: the strike has made that question front and center for a lot of people. professor, thank you so much for

your time. >> thank you. kristen: coming up next, the fallout from the collapse of cryptocurrency giant ftx now being felt on the stanford campus.

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kristen: the collapse of cryptocurrency giant ftx was swift and stunning. lots of bay area ties, and in fact, the parents of sam bankman-fried are professors at stanford law school. joining us alive is a data journalist with our media partner at the san francisco standard. liz, nice to have you on. liz: thank you for having me. kristen: ftx is being compared to theranos. explain it all. liz: yeah, sam bankman-fried, more commonly known as spf,

founded this trading arm alameda research that traded cryptocurrency, then one successful, founded a currency, and the empire had roughly $16 in customer deposits across one million customers, and even though it was once known as the darling of the crypto world, behind the scenes, sam bankman-fried was basically propping up alameda research with the cryptocurrency trading firm, and essentially mismanaging customer deposits and transferred $8 billion to take billion dollars -- $10 billion to the research arm, and once ftx went under, all the customers lesser money, so it has been dry the greatest scandal since there are nose and there will be lots of legal fallout. kristen: indeed. many people say sam bankman-fried should have known better, especially given his parents being teachers

at stanford law school. liz: sam bankman-fried was raised on the stanford campus right next to the stanford president's home, and both his parents are law professors, tax law experts, and he was afforded some of the best education at those schools, so there has been a lot of conversation about how he was this crypto, silicon valley darling took a big tumble from his heights with investor money. kristen: dad, joe joseph bank was due, know what has happened to their status. liz: yeah, he was supposed to teach this year, according two stanford law, but by bid november, the ftx debacle happened in that class is canceled and it is reported he is in the bahamas providing

assistance to his fun. his mother, she has no further teaching obligations for the rest of the year and is said to be in the bahamas with her son. kristen: there is somebody else with stanford law in his camp and helping sam now, right? liz: another lawyer, david w mills, from stanford law, best known in california as one of the big reformers of the three-strikes law in the 2010's, but he's known as a very eccentric and kooky professor that has a lot of ties to the white-collar criminal law world, apparently with ties to elizabeth holmes at one point, but is now going to be advising sam bankman-fried with any of his legal troubles going forward. kristen: all right, so what is next for sam? the hearing will be next week by the house? would he be testifying? liz: unclear. i'm not sure. kristen: what about his parents?

they have property in the bahamas. will they be implicated in this? liz: that is unclear, but i think they said the property was not owned and would be the property of the company, either ftx or alameda research. kristen: super intriguing. a lot more to come. thank you for joining me. liz: thank you for having me. kristen: you can check out the other regional porting on the san francisco standard online and we will bring you more segments featuring the city-focused journalism twice a week right here on getting answers at 3:00.

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us for "getting answers." we will be here every weekday at 3:00 answering questions. world news tonight is next. i will see you tomorrow. tonight, several breaking stories as we come on the air. authorities in idaho in the murders of those four college students and what they've just revealed. also, the plot to overthrow the german government. at least 25 arrests tonight, and what we've learned. and in georgia, the democrat wins. senator raphael warnock returns to washington, d.c. today, elected to a full six-year term. defeating herschel walker by nearly 100,000 votes. president biden becoming the first democratic president in nearly 90 years to not lose a single seat in the senate in a midterm. the first since fdr. rachel scott is live. there is breaking news involving former president trump tonight. sources confirming to abc news more classified documents were,

in fact, discovered after a federal judge told his lawyers to essentially look