>> building a better bay area. moving forward. finding solutions. this is abc7 news. ♪ i'm kristen sze. you are watching "getting answers" on abc7. every day, we talk with experts about issues important to the bay area and we get answers for you in real time.

today, taylor swift fever is barely subsiding at all after two triumphant over the weekend. we will get thoughts on the show, its significance, and what is next up for the bay area. first, "the good is all good. dr. bob wachter has been on the since his bout with covid left him with a smashed head and some internal injuries. his twitter post or x post on his harrowing journey had over 4 million views. that's a lot of people worried about him and wishing him a speedy recovery. well, he is recovered, and joining is now for his very first -- us now for his very first tv interview is dr. bob wachter. great to have you on the show. >> is great to be here. when i see those pictures,

they scare me. i can only imagine. kristen: you don't want to encounter any neighborhood kids and scare them, it's not halloween yet. >> i think i've gotten to the stage where kids will not run the other way when they see me. it was pretty harrowing. kristen: you scared all of us. you look great now, by the way. >> i have a few brewing. they give me some i've been longing for my whole career. kristen: you look great. i'm glad. you are feeling well overall. but i want to ask you, this is the first time you have been on. a lot of people are wondering, we have seen your posts, let's talk about that shocking tweet on july 12, we were all stunned, because covid, your first time, avoiding it for so

long then you get it, it was not the typical experience. walk us through it from the beginning. >> yeah. i would've loved to have the typical experience. i was seeing patients in the hospital and in the afternoon, i came home, i think it was sunday three weeks ago, i came home, i had a new coffee and a little bit of a sore throat and wondered if i have covid, and overnight, it was an awful night with chills and sweats and i woke up really feeling miserable and dehydrated. and i did something that in retrospect was probably a mistake, before i drink anything, i got into the shower -- drank anything, i got into the shower. there is something in medicine where if you are dehydrated, you can have a reaction where your nervous system panel fails you and you don't have enough bug to your brain and you pass out. so what happened is i left the shower, i was in my

bathroom, and that's the last thing i remember, i woke up on the floor of my bathroom in a pool of blood. i managed to struggle to stand up and looked at the mirror and saw that i had a huge gash over my eye. i saw a trashcan next to the toilet that had a face shaped indentation in it. kristen: we have said trashcan right here. >> i'm not sure of that's the front -- the back of my head or the front, but that is a part of my head that hit that, maybe saving my life for all i know. i called my future son-in-law's physician and my program. he texted me, and asked how i was doing. i said, i think i have to go to the er to get stitches. that's all i thought. when i got to the er, they were spectacular, it showed i had a small subdural hematoma, a little blood around the brain, luckily not too much to compress to bring.

and i had a pressure of my cervical vertebrae. the kind of thing that could make you paralyzed but luckily did not. i needed about 30 stitches. covid was problem number five on my list of problems in the er, which is kind of impressive. kristen: i can only imagine you being rushed into the er and people are looking at you, what happened to the boss here, what is this, how do we treat him? you mentioned the spinal --the . >> i had a cervical spine fracture, what is called c3, the third cervical vertebra, when you have one of those, the danger is, you only have one spinal cord, and it passes right by there, so they put me in that collar and i wore it for a couple of weeks, and i just had some new x-rays a couple of days ago and they gave me a clean bill of health. that was no fun to sleep in that. kind of feels like somebody strangling you while you are sleeping. kristen: i could imagine. i had kept in touch with you the

last few weeks and i know i said, when you felt better, please come on. i knew i probably had to wait until you got the neck brace off, because that's just uncomfortable. you don't want to be on tv like that. >> obviously i tweeted it, go public with any of this. people have been following me for three years now. i've since been hearing from a fair number of colleagues who have seen other patients who have passed out and are having covid. it's good to know that it can happen. if this can instruct people a little bit and give them a little bit of awareness and some caution about that, it would be worthwhile. kristen: you are right. there's no way would be afraid of going viral or putting it out there because you had some 4 million views, including this one which i thought was not really funny but interesting, where you were on that cnn front page with a wimbledon champ.

>> is kind of face off -- >> it kind of pissed me off, i did not expect that. first of all, i wasn't sure if anybody was still on twitter this week. i was kind of surprised by the reaction and the amount of virality that got -- that it got. the response was by and large wonderful. i kind of ignored the noise. there was the expected, you deserve this, you haven't been careful enough. you are a covid denier. things that are idiotic. i've learned to just ignore that stuff. but by and large, people were incredibly kind and nice. i got an enormous amount of chicken soup sent to the house, both the jewish and vietnamese kind. really very sweet about it. the covid did its own thing, too. while i was recovering from the cervical spine fracture and had

the stitches and had them taken out, i also had covid and ended up taking paxlovid, ended up having a rebound, so i was in isolation for about 13 days. so i watched a lot of television. kristen: so you did have -- i'm sure some of that was [indiscernible] you had the paxlovid rebound as well. >> everybody thinks that paxlovid is what causes the rebound. that's what happened in the beginning when it first came out. what we know is about 20% of people who take paxlovid get rebound. rebound means that you felt better and know you feel worse again and your rapid test became negative and then turned positive again. both of those happened to me. it happens to about 20% of people who take it and 15% of

people who don't. rebound is a common phenomenon. it's a little bit more prevalent with palovid. even knowing that, i think for me taking it was the right call, i would take it again, because the evidence is absolutely crystal clear that it lowers the probability that you will need to go to the hospital, it lowers the probability that you will die of covid and it lowers significantly the probability you will get long covid. putting all that together, i still think it's the right call. an rebound is always mild, last several days. it is kind of a pain because you have to go back in isolation, you are capable of infecting people. but i think there is too much trepidation people have about taking paxlovid, i still think it's the right call. kristen: you mentioned some people saying you were a covid that i or saying he deserved this because you were not being careful, what do you mean by that? the last three years, you have kind of walked us through your routine and your choices and most of them were very cautious.

but balanced with also a degree of acceptable risk, when they were things that were worthwhile to you like living your life, trade-offs, we talk about that all the time. are they saying there are things you should have done differently? do you feel there are things you should have done differently? >> i feel perfectly comfortable with what my own choices and what i've been putting out there . i've tried to be balanced. i think i've erred on the side of caution. when the prevalence of covid went down and the vaccines came around, when paxlovid was available, i thought it was appropriate to begin to live life a little closer to normal depending on your own personal risk tolerance. if you are on twitter, you will get craziness. and i got people who said, look, you are being too careless now, and other people saying you are being way too careful, so given the numbers of people in those camps were about equal, i thought i was

calibrating it reasonably well. whenever you are on social media, you just have to be ready, some people are going to use the fact that you've got a lot of people following you as an opportunity for them to do their thing. for some of them, it was, here's what happens when you stop taking precautions. i still think that the prevalence of covid has gone down significantly, and if you were vaccinated, it is reasonable to certainly be less careful than we were a year or two ago. i am now comfortable eating indoors. i am now still wearing a mask on airplanes, in crowded places, but i think everybody's got to make their own choices. i think i've tried to be balanced about my own personal choices and what i recommend to others. kristen: maybe you should wear a helmet, dr. bob wachter. sorry, didn't mean to make a joke about that, only because you are doing so well. >> and i'm going to pass out again, i will try to put a helmet on. [laughter] kristen: right before you pass

out. exactly. don't go away, please, that's for dr.

well well well, what have we here? a magical place... that's lookin' to get scared! with bats...and ghouls... and cars in disguise. i've cast quite a spell now... you won't believe your eyes! [laughter] the spell is cast. halloween time is back with spook-tacular experiences in disneyland and disney california adventure parks! [laughter]

kristen: we are back with dr. bob wachter. his first tv interview after his first bout with covid earlier this month resulted in dehydration which resulted in a blackout fall which resulted in head injuries which resulted in a viral tweet that had over 4 million views. after all that, after the neck brace and everything, he's here, he's looking good, the stitches are gone, and in a little more gravitas. thanks for joining us. >> my wife says it gives me a little more character as well. kristen: it really does.

and what the wife thinks is what's important. but just don't do it again, not too much character. we were looking at covert numbers during this time and according to the analysis of our wastewater, it seems to be that the numbers are up a little bit. those were a pretty good indicator during the pandemic, looking at the wastewater. are you concerned about that? >> a little. i think definitely our hospitalizations are up. at ucsf today, we've got 23 covid positive patients, whereas a few weeks ago, we had 10 to 15. i think it's that there is more covid around than there was. whether it has crossed the threshold of people inclined to be careful should change their behavior, that's kind of an individual choice. for me, i've had covid recently. i'm bulletproof at least for a while in terms of the immunity from both the infection and my vaccines. but i think if i hadn't had covid yet, i would probably be a

little bit more careful this week than i was two or three weeks ago. i would still be eating indoors. but in a crowded, indoor space, i would be inclined to mask. kristen: in terms of reason to try to avoid covid, you've mentioned the long covid which in fact about 20% or so of those who catch it. i guess it is too soon to tell if you may have that, do you have any lingering symptoms? i know your wife katie had it pretty badly with the brain fog. >> i think 20% is a high estimate. have been so many studies -- there have been so many studies. in the omicron era, if you were vaccinated, the probability is more in the 5% to 10% range. that is still a huge number of people that are suffering from long covid. most people who have it, i'm now three weeks out from my case, most people who have it at this point will have symptoms. the issue is the symptoms don't go away after a few months. the definition of long covid as you continue to have symptoms

after two or three months. so it is too early for me to say for sure. i'm guessing i will not have it since i'm fully vaccinated and i took paxlovid, since i am a male, the prevalence and men is a little bit lower than women for reasons that are unknown. my chances were 3% to it is likely i'm going to dodge that. kristen: we are glad. the nih announced an investment to run treatment studies for long covid. can you talk about that? >> it's taken an awful long time. we've known about long covid two years. the fact that they are initiating treatment trials now is a problem. they should have gotten these underway sooner. they really wanted to be able to characterize what was going on with long covid. one of the problems is it seems like different things are going on. for some people that's probably a persistent virus and other people it is stimulation of the immune system and they wanted to know that before starting the trials.

one trial is another course of paxlovid to see while after your initial case of covid, to see if that makes a difference. they are doing trials for people having problems with brain fog and cognitive problems, including trials of cognitive stimulation, a trial of a device that increases the brain blood flow. it'll be interesting to see. it'll be several months before we know of any of these work. at this point there really is no proven treatment for lung covid. kristen: the government is also launching operation nextgen, to develop nextgen vaccines, what does that mean? >> of the things that characterize our covid response in the early days, most of them work really -- were really quite the functional. but operation warp speed was spectacular. within eight months was remarkable. the problem is the vaccines

don't work very well and preventing cases of covid. they continued to work well and preventing severe covid -- in preventing severe covid. there's always a risk that the virus will continue to mutate and the vaccines will work less well over time. the operation investment is to try to come up with better vaccines against future variants of covid that will not only decrease the probability of getting severe covid but also decrease the probability of getting covid. the current vaccines do that a little bit, but it only lasts for a month or two. then your chance of getting covid really hasn't gone down very much. you should still get vaccinated because of the chances -- because your chances of getting really sick to go down until your next shot. kristen: having just recovered, when do you plan to get your next vaccine, if you plan to at all? >> i think once the new vaccine is out in the fall, i will get it. i would wait six months after my last vaccine and now i will wait six months after my case of covid. because i sort of

covid and a booster about the same, in terms of your immune system. late fall. kristen: you are still using your reasoning and logic to guide us through all this, dr. bob wachter. all that remains intact from the fall, except for that garbage can. >> the garbage can. humans are more resilient than garbage cans, the garbage can has not recovered at all. kristen: at least i know what to get you for christmas now, thank you so much. coming up next, we will check in with a bay area pop music critic to tell us all about taylor's takeover of swiftie clara and tell you what we thousands of women with metastatic breast cancer, are living in the moment and taking ibrance. ibrance with an aromatase inhibitor is for adults with hr+/her2- metastatic breast cancer as the first hormonal based therapy.

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kristen: taylor swift took over santa clara with two huge shows friday and saturday. joining us is a pop music critic to talk about swift's mega shows and what we have

to be excited for next. can you hear me ok? >> can hear you perfectly. glad to be here. kristen: usually after a concert your ears are ringing for a while. >> absolutely. i was glad i had earplugs. not so much because of the level of volume coming from the stage but all the screaming around and singing along was really intense. kristen: i want to ask you about that. you were there. there of screaming and joyous exultation in that 3.5 hours that, what did you think of the whole scene? what impressed you about it? >> well, when it comes to taylor, she is definitely such a versatile artist. just great songwriter, definitely good singer, definitely commanding presence on stage. but the thing that she does best better than basically anybody is she able to connect with the crowd. she does that with lyrics,

she does that with her voice, she can just do it with a wink. to see her command 50,000 people with a wink or with a smile or with a flip of her hair, i don't have any hair to imitate that, but it's just amazing, the connection that she has with fans on a large scale. 58,000 people just absolutely enraptured over a flip of the hair. kristen: i know. when you think back on the last 50 years, is there another individual artist who was able to do that? we've seen that with bands, like with the beatles, creating that kind of mania, but an individual? >> it's hard to say. i-- the conversation about has gone from, is she one of the greatest of today which i think everyone would agree with, to is she one of the greatest of all time? i think that the record and

the stats show that she is right up there alongside the rolling stones and prince and madonna. now the conversation really moves to, is she the greatest of all time? and she is certainly in the conversation at this point. kristen: and not all performers who are singers are great at the vocals and the singing are that great as a showmen on stage like that, i want to show you a clip, because i think this conversation kind of shows the bond that is created between swiftie fans when they attend the concert. >> we use to not have this community. it was really in the last few years during the pandemic one it all actually came together. people just kind of gravitated towards her and the music while we were in a point of isolation. so it just became something much more than just us jamming out to silly little tunes. kristen: that sounds like bringing humanity together. >> absolutely. and it's really impressive to see it being done in 2023. when i was growing up, and doing

prince, george michael -- enjoying prince, george michael, we had this unifying culture which was mtv telling us what to watch, these big pop radio stations telling us what to listen to, and now, we are in a generation where people can listen to different things on the internet, or get music from tiktok, from a zillion difference but as i -- different spotify playlists. so to say something like this, like taylor pulling so many people together, is i think more impressive than ever in 2023. kristen: so, what's next? i know we have? queen bee coming up, do you expect that to be another cultural event? >> absolutely. i think that beyonce's at end of august is going to be huge at levi. and sharon is coming through as well -- ed sheeran is coming through as well.

i don't think anything is on the level of taylor. i think that's not just me saying that. you can just go onto stubhub and look at the differences as far as what people are going to but certainly a lot of excitement about beyonce, her last record was absolutely outstanding and should have won album of the year. we got outside lands coming in, taking over golden gate park for three days august 11 through august 13. great lineup this year. kendrick lamar, foo fighters, with dave grohl. just a lot of good lana delray and all that. is been a strong year for hip-hop. so many people are getting behind the 50th anniversary of hip hop. there are so many good shows coming into the bay area, like 50 cent,.org coming into shoreline. number one i'd say is

force live. kristen: it's definitely an exciting time for music and the bay area. thank you so much. we will take a s

kristen: thanks for joining us for "getting answers" today. tonight, the stunning moment in court. the mother convicted of killing her own children. what she said to a packed courtroom and the judge. how the judge responded tonight. also, news coming in, a potential mass shooting averted. a man outside a school popie op fire. and the american nurse