>> building a better bay area, moving forward, finding solutions this is abc7 news. with her about issues in the bay area. today we have a fascinating segment on a new piece of technology that can change the classroom as we know it. ever wish you could get the perfect essay or biography in a matter of seconds? we will tell you about wechatgpt will do. also, stanford finds it tied in controversies, questions swirling around its president. the school has a connection to

the ftx cryptocurrency collapse. the founders parents, both professors will dive into all of these issues with the partners at the stanford -- san francisco standard. this is the most severe flu season in years. rsv is going around the children are feeling the pinch. hospitals and covid cases are rising again. joining us live is the chair of ucf f's department of medicine. happy holidays. >> nice to see you. kristen: i am doing well. i know we are getting anxious looking at the numbers. i want to pull that up for our viewers to look up at. you talk a bit about the case rate and asymptomatic rate. i will let you explain this, what are you seeing and what is the upshot? >> yeah, the case rate cannot be trusted that much anymore because these are only cases that are reported to the

counties and states. it is a massive underestimating number of the true cases because of the home testing. the trend can be trusted because the case rate was about five or six per hundred thousand per day a month ago. san francisco was also 5, 6 seven, hundreds per day notice close to 30. the number of cases is five times what it was a month ago. the asymptomatic test positivity rating is a number we are testing a fair number of our people in for a hip replacement or heart surgery, they feel fine and have no symptoms and one out of 20 of them are testing positive for covid, these are people who feel fine. that number was 1%, 1.5% a month ago. the rate of covid is about, three to four times what it was six weeks ago. things that would have been safe six weeks ago are less safe because there is a far higher chance you will be exposed to someone with covid.

kristen: given that situation what is your thought of max king -- masking up. those in the bay area are strongly recommending it. new york, los angeles want people to mask indoors. though i don't think anyone is mandating, what you think about it? >> i think people should. i still feel very strongly that i don't want to get covid. in part because i don't want to mix -- miss work and in part because of the possibility of long covid. if i don't want to get covid and there is this much covid around, that to me says in crowded, indoor spaces, i should be wearing a mask. if i can eat outside rather than inside, i should. i'm not going to indoor restaurants at this point. if i am getting together with eight or 10 people as i have done for a poker game, we all test. those are the things. it goes without saying i'm up to

date with my boost. my last booster was a couple of months ago. people should be up to do -- up-to-date with their boosters and flu shots. that's the precaution i think that is reasonable to take given the amount of covid. . some people are saying they are over it. you might be over it but there is a decent chance you will get covid if you are taking no precautions these days. kristen: are you getting a better sense, what is the perfect amount of time to wait to get your bivalent booster if you had an infection or got the last round, not this new bivalent but the old booster? at first the cdc was saying you can wait two or three months. but then there seems to be more studies saying if you wait six months it can be better for you, what do you think? >> i think my general rule is three months. if you have not had a shot in the last three months or an infection in the last three months, then your immunity has

waned significantly. you are at higher risk of getting infected. you are at higher risk of getting very sick. six month is ok too. two months is too short. somewhere in the 3, 4 month. i don't worry about the timing much. i worry about the fact that more than half of the people over age 60 or 65 have not gotten a shot for over a year. they are at high risk to get covid. but at high risk if they get very sick. we are back up to 500 deaths a day in the u.s. from covid. we were down to 250. so, that number is going up pretty fast. whether it is two or three months i would wait three months. go ahead and get the shot if you have not had it in the last several months. kristen: i also want to talk about the cdc a bit in terms of strengthening the trust and messaging now. today, florida announced they are creating their own agency to counter the cdc, citing cdc

mistakes and what they call misinformation. put that in context for us. >> i think it is dangerous. it's silly. the cdc has not gotten everything right. there is no question about it. but it is staffed by professionals trying their best to give information that changes all the time. a new variant comes out, what they said a month ago may be different than what it is now. they have not been perfect. they have to be better. there is work to be done. the idea that this gets politicized and information gets produced by a state that has come out on record and recommended against people getting boosters when the evidence is crystal clear that they should, i have no trust in that. i would rather put my trust in the cdc a we should work on strengthening the communication skillsnd. kristen: i want to talk about paxlovid. it's helped your wife, casey when she had some long covid, and symptoms. i wonder if it should be more

widely prescribed at this point. if there are benefits we should know about? >> i think -- we talk about how boosters are underused. paxlovid is underused. the evidence that paxlovid lowers the severity of your case of covid if you have covid, and now, pretty strong evidence that it lowers the chance you are going to get long covid is quite strong. in the beginning, people said it was only tested in unvaccinated people, but now we have good evidence from vaccinated populations that if you take paxlovid within the first five days of your covid infection, you have lowered the chance that you are going to get very sick, go to the hospital and die. you've also lower the chance by 25% that you will get long covid. it should be in people that are older. for a young healthy person, the risk that they will get very sick is very low. but, for anybody over 50 or 60, anyone who has medical issues

that will put you at higher risk, paxlovid works well. the benefits outweigh the risk -- risks. kristen: we are talking about the triple deming -- demic. which one is the big bad? rsv, the flu, covid? >> if you are a baby, it is rsv. the children's hospitals are being overwhelmed. it looks like the epidemic is speaking. let's hope. flu is bad. covid is the worst in part because on top of the risk of getting very sick and going to the hospital and small risk of death, it has the risk of long covid. there is a thing of long flu, but not nearly as common to have long lingering effects from flu as it is from covid. in terms of the risk of dying from either one, there've been about 7000 or 8000 flu deaths in the u.s. it looks to be about the worst flu season in 10 years. both are bad. one of the nice parts of a masking indoors, it will protect

you against both flu and covid, and rsv. kristen: the same type of mask? >> you should get a vaccine for both. the strategies are the same. kristen: would you recommend the same type of mask to guard against those? >> sure. i wear the only mask is the kn95. it's very comfortable and works better to filter out any kind of particles, whether it is the flu virus or the covid virus. the surgical masks work under the nothing, but not that well. the cloth masks are nearly worthless. i don't think about it. i will wear my kn95 when i will be in a indoor space. that is contacting me against the flu and covid. we have not seen a flu epidemic in the last three years because people were masking and now we are seeing it back because people are taking the mask off. their bodies are not as good at fighting the flu than the used to be there forgot how to do it. kristen: great talking with you.

great insight. take good care. next, how would you like to knockout an essay in 30 seconds. get ready to be blown away as we dive into the power of ai with a local teacher.

kristen: this next segment may blow your mind with the power of ai, we will talk about chatgpt. if you ask it to write to something and give it your parameters, it with ruth -- with remarkable intelligence. our producer played with it today. he instructed it to write a three paragraph essay on the theory of relativity. with humor.

in 30 seconds or so this is what it spit out. it explained the theory perfectly. three paragraphs. and even ended it on a humo -- humorous note. this degree of thinking and writing ability may have a serious downside for humanity. joining us to share his concerns which he wrote about in the atlantic, david hermon, an author and high school teacher at berkeley. thanks for being at the show -- on the show. >> is daniel. kristen: my apologies. i would not have made the same mistake. shame on the human. you have been teaching for over 12 years. your article is entitled the end of high school english, really? is it really that different from cliff notes? >> yeah. i don't know. it's another order of magnitude that people will have to find a way -- how to grapple with. one thing that is fascinating

for me is there are two pools. on one side, what you just showed in your example, that is outright plagiarism. we can all agree that that is bad. then there are ways that can be pretty in oculus. if for example i am a person who often will have a word on the tip of my tongue, and i am like, what is that word? usually i will ask my wife and she will help me think of what it is. i can ask the chat bot. and the bot can tell me what it is. between those pools, there is a gray area. it's going to take a lot of work to see where this all lance. -- lands. kristen: my highschooler was saying to me, does this mean we will never have to learn to write and structure and essay? you actually put that to the test. he wanted to see his capability. you gave the assignments you give to your kids. give us some examples. >>, again i have to say,

are real wide ranging implications of what this means. on the far side, let's say you can put in -- one of the first things i did when i, discovered this last weekend was i put in a question from last year's ap literature exam. the chat bought -- bot crushed it. kristen: it wrote better than your students can? >> for sure. with all caveats about writing being an expressive medium, that is not what a lot of high school students are asked to do, especially, i teach at a small independent school in the east bay, my experience is not the average one in america. your average, public school english teacher has five classes a day and 40 students, and they are teaching to the test. and there are all sorts of

systems and standards that students have to just learn how to replicate this certain standard of "good writing" it is very possible that this technology can allow all of that stuff to go away. there's a vision of what writing becomes that is freed from those expectations, cover letters are a perfect example. if you can give this bot, the instruction to write you a good cover letter, now you don't have to go through the tedium of teaching students have to -- how to do that. you can use writing for generating ideas. it's such a powerful, beautiful technology, writing. students never get to explore that because their learning how to write things like paragraph essays. it's possible that things like that will die. for a lot of my students and

even me, that is good. kristen: i'm just going to throw up another thing we asked it to write. a biography on steph curry. it produced a good one. it was unable to handle a citation requirement, that we try to put in or current events. it has some shortcomings now. i don't know if that is going to change. let let -- let me ask you something philosophical. if we do have this type of technology, is it ok if one, or society never learns to write an analytical essay? >> i clear position. but that's an excellent question. i think it's interesting for me to think, when people say, students are never going to learn to write or we are writing all the time. teenagers are texting each other. we all are writing. but there are many things and grammatical rules are a good example.

so, much of the work of high school english teachers is the tedium of helping students undersand -- understand grammar and grammatical rules what a, splices in a dangling modifier is. if someone can write something at put it in the chat bought -- bot and say give them perfect grammar. then maybe that saves us the work of having to learn those grammatical rules in same way that before the dictionary was invented, there were different ways you can spell words and people would figure it out. but then spelling became standardized and now you have to have perfect spelling in order to be taken seriously. maybe this is a moment where that sifts -- shifts. kristen: there are a lot of questions. what do u.s. a teacher adapt to, what do you spend your time on -- you as a teacher adapt to and what do you spend your time on? so much to discuss. daniel hermon you gave us a lot to think about.

really appreciate that. coming up next, we will have a look at the issues facing stanford university with some help from our media partners, the san francisco standard. before we take a break, take a look at this. we asked chatgpt to write questions for the segment. we used many of them. (grandma) [in navajo] where are they? it is cold outside. (vo) wells fargo has donated $50 million dollars in support of indigenous peoples... including funding solar furnaces that convert sunlight... (grandma) come into the warm house (girl) hi grandma!

(vo) into household heat. (grandma) [in navajo] are you kids hungry? (vo) doing gets it done. wells fargo, the bank of doing.

kristen: a quick note about the last segment, or produces and tended to go with all the questions that the chatgpt made but we decided human to beats chatgpt. students and noah presidential probe all of these recent headlines have at their centered at stanford university. the san francisco standard connected the dots and published an article explaining how what happens at stanford affects the entire silicon valley. join us live as the standards

data journalist, liz. thanks for joining us. >> thanks for having me. >> all universities are hit by scandal and controversy. kristen: your article points out many controversy are hitting stanford at once right now. give us a glimpse of what is happening. >> starting in january of this year, it started with a first lawsuit against stanford's death of a soccer student. all of controversy has been piling up. another lawsuit relating to a students death. two squatters on imposters have been found on campus. the school has been accused of ansi -- of discrimination and the president is going under investigation for academic dishonesty in his research. not to mention the ftx fallout has been centered on stanford's campus given the founders ties to the campus by their parents. kristen: we talked about katie

meier and the imposters. i want to drill down on sam bankman-fried's parents and the stanford presidents scientific inquiry. though stores have not been covered as much. in terms of sam bankman-fried's parents, their law school professors but i was surprised to hear in their hearing one of lawmakers asking the current ceo of ftx about his parents involvement. he kind of confirmed they are being investigated. tell us about that. what are the allegations? >> sure. those allegations mostly involved joseph big men, his father -- bankman. he ahas been serving as a advisor for sam bankman-fried when he founded the research. once ftx's scandal started to come out in november, he was actually a payroll employee with ftx for about 11 months.

that tied to the companies being investigated, mostly because people are concerned that joseph or his wife had further involvement with the mismanagement or accusations of customer funds involved with ftx. kristen: please. >> his mother is not being implicated as much, mostly because she has kept more of a distance from ftx as a company. she was in charge of a political action firm with ties to silicon valley donors. that is being investigated. kristen: the other one, the president of stanford. this, the student newspaper has been covering a bit, he has some inaccuracies in papers he co-authored. explain that. >> the stanford daily, they have been doing some incredible coverage. i'm biased because i am an alum of the paper and university but the president of the university,

for years now, there have been taught within the science community that he had replicated images in some of his studies forging the results in some of his most famous neurobiology papers that were cited in popular magazines like science. the president is now in an investigation -- under investigation and peers are calling for his resignation. kristen: crises will happen but the response by which leaders and institution are judged, what has been stanford's response? what has been the community's response to their response? >> i will say that from conversations with reporters at the daily and students at stanford, there's been a lot of surprised, particularly surrounding the president, who for a long time has been a rock in the community, especially during covid. a lot of people are understandably frustrated with the university, particularly in

the aftermath of the two student deaths and the lawsuits that came out of that, surrounding katie meier. people are saying stanford's handling of the situation was reflective of its alleged more cow lead -- kalus response to mental health crisis -- kalus response to the mental health response. kristen: what is this matter, how does this matter -- to people outside of the stanford bubble, why does it matter beyond the campus? >> i think, a lot of people see stanford as a reflection of silicon valley or trading grounds for silicon valley. it's a campus that spawned household names like google and nike. a lot of times, when people are talking about stanford they extrapolate and think it is a bigger conversation about what is happening in the tech world. when, these conversations are happening about the presidents academic dishonesty or sam bankman-fried and his relationship to all truism, that

becomes a commentary about the places and institutions that trained them. which in this case is stanford. kristen: did you reach out to stanford for comment? >> we did, and they did not respond. according to the daily report, that is very common. kristen: liz with used to be with the stanford daily now with the san francisco standard. you can check out more of the standards other original reporting on their website. abc 7 will continue to bring you more segments featuring the standards city focused journalism. look for that twice a week right here on getting answers at 3:00. we will take a short break and be back.

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kristen: thank you so much for joining us on getting answers. we will be here everyday at 3:00 answering questions from experts around the bay area. i will see y tonight, breaking news. the major storm. blizzard conditions across several states and the tornado watches and warnings right now. reports of a tornado on the ground a short time ago. and the scare at the dallas-fort worth airport. confirmed tornadoes touching down in texas. the alarms at the airport. passengers in the terminal told to shelter in place. a confirmed ef-2 tornado hitting oklahoma. 120 miles per hour. tornado watches and warnings across several states at this hour. and the blizzard warnings from colorado to minnesota. parts of i-70 closed near denver. i-90 shut down for more than 250 miles. the system moving toward the northeast. rob marciano timing this all

out. also breaking, federal prosecutors unsealing the indictment against the former ceo of