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>> building a better bay area, moving forward, finding solutions. it's about issues important to the bay area and we get answers for you in real time. today, another apparent close call on the runways of sfo this past weekend highlights a growing trend of near misses. a new york times investigation reveals there are a lot more common than we know. abc news aviation analyst john nance will share his insights with us. also, amid all the problems san francisco is facing, some are calling for putting more power in the hands of mayor london breed. our media partner, the san francisco standard, will join us to discuss what kind of impact that might make. but first, it's back to school time. amid a myriad of health concerns and questions from the rsv vaccine to a covid

surge to screen time for kids. here to talk about it all, abc news special correspondent dr. alok patel. hey, dr. patel. >> kirsten, it's always an honor to be here. it's been a while. i wish we didn't have a reason to talk about these back to school concerns, but here we are. >> well, you can just come in and we can just hang out and talk about whatever. anything and everything. but you're right. today we have to talk about back to school and keeping kids healthy. >> i'm all about that. >> okay. i know you are. okay so rsv, let's begin there, because that respiratory virus that sends so many kids to the hospital last year, we don't want to get that again. and we have a lot of serious attention being paid to it right now, as we should. >> so respiratory, essential virus, we call it rsv, that is going to cause bad memories for any parent out there, especially pediatricians over several decades. kristen every year we are seeing in kids under the age of five, 2.1 million plus or minus outpatient visits for this, about 50 to 80,000 hospitalizations. and there's still a huge risk factor for people above the age of 65 as well. so the big news this fall, if we're looking at influenza, rsv, covid 19, there is

potentially going to be a vaccine for all three. for the first time ever. that is huge news. >> when so we're still waiting on some finalized versions here. >> but for children, a monoclonal antibody shot, which is called fortis, should be available at some time between september and october. that's for kids, about up to eight months to get in their first year ever experiencing rsv. kids eight months to 19 months if they're high risk. and then there is another vaccine that's already been approved for adults above the age of 65. and the fda just put their stamp on the approval for a vaccine for pregnant women. that should hopefully go through the approval process sometime this fall. >> is that to protect the mom or the baby, the unborn baby savvy question. >> this is to provide passive immunity for the unborn baby. now presumably any pregnant individual will have seen rsv multiple times throughout their lifetime, but this is to protect those young babies for especially in the first 90, 90 days of their life when they are especially high risk. okay. >> is there more than one rsv vaccine right now? >> there is a the one rsv

vaccine. so that is a traditional vaccine that we're talking about as bravo for pregnant women and people above the age of 65. the one we talked about for kids is technically a drug that is a monoclonal antibody. so, in other words, what that does is it injects a protein that kind of mimics what your immune system would make if it were to see rsv that provides immediate protection against rsv, which is why it's important for babies to get it in their first year experiencing rsv. okay >> well, i want to ask you, when you look at this fall, right, in all the things that you can be afflicted with and your kids, how would you line up an ideal vaccine schedule? >> well, this is a big one we got to fold in the flu, covid. let's fold it all in. so in young babies, people above the age of 65, pregnant women, i would would highly encourage people to talk to their physicians, talk to their health providers about getting rsv early on, sometime around the start of the flu season. call it october. okay rsv and influenza are usually going to hang out together and cause a ruckus. now, with influenza, however you want to say it, like get your shot for flu before the bu.

that's something about getting it before halloween. i heard it. i didn't make it up. but you want to try to get influenza shot before halloween in covid is a tricky one. so right now there is a big question about should we go ahead and get this booster that exists or wait for the updated booster. now, if you are not high risk, if you're otherwise healthy, the recommendation by experts right now to wait until that updated booster comes out, which should be at sometime in late september. right >> but there are some special situations, right. if you know, you've got to travel coming up or or you've got a kid going back to college dorms, kids arriving from everywhere, who knows who we're talking about may or may not have had conversations about this and juggling that. you know, sometimes i think the timing is maybe more important than the perfection, the perfect vaccine , the perfect thing to get. well that's intuitive because it's it this should be done on an individualized basis based on what you're doing, your exposures, your risk. >> and it's really hard to perfectly pinpoint when that booster comes out and if it's going to hit the strains that are circulating at that time, which is why it's important for these conversations to happen.

the booster available right now targets the original covid strain, plus the original omicron strain, which neither one of those are circulating right now. what we're worried about is the air is strain e.g. five and this other upcoming strain that the w.h.o. is monitoring, the ba2 86 strain, but presumed early. >> what we've got now or even what's coming out in a month will still protect you against all that. >> that is what the current evidence shows right now, given that these are off of the omicron family tree. but again, this is something that has to be looked at when the fda makes that final decision in september. >> we are seeing kind of a surge right now. right. because i think this is why a lot of people are thinking about it after not getting any boosters for a year or more. it's like, who? why is everybody getting it? >> so many people are like, wait a minute, i have covid. and you're like, oh, you do? yeah, well, here's the thing. we need to be realistic. we are seeing an uptick in hospitalizations in cases, but not in comparison to last year. we're in a better place than we previously were. but right now, cases are coming back. there's a lot more travel, there's a lot more complacency, a lot more. there are people out

there who may have cold and flu symptoms, who may not be running out to get tested. right. and so there is the potential to be because the thinking is it's becoming like just a cold in terms of how serious it is on you. >> right. so for a lot of people, it's not becoming it's already there. >> yeah, it's already there. and i think we need to view this as we view influenza where every single year there is potentially a resurgence of a new variant and the potential for hospitalizations or worse. >> wow, that's a tricky one because then you think my kid has the sniffles. should i give them a test? should they just go to school? they don't seem that sick. they don't have a fever, nor do the school even want to know. i mean, it's just a whole bunch of things to think about right now. >> well, pediatrician hat on, if your kid does have cold and flu symptoms, i would advise keeping them away from other kids because whether it is influenza, a, covid 19 rsv, what may seem like a minor cold in one individual, all could be very serious in another. >> right? right. okay. so what about the issue of do people ask you should we test for covid anymore? i bet you get that question, right? >> i do. all the time. >> what are the struggles here? >> the struggles is, is that if

someone had a minor cold and they tested for covid 19, now they're worried about, well, do i have to miss ten days of work, which is a terrible situation for someone to be in because the right thing to do if you're concerned, is to test, especially if you're going to be potentially around other individuals, if you're going to be around high risk people as well. the test we have right now should test positive for the current circulating strains. the concern are false negatives. you may want to do repeat tests. you can still get a pcr. and guess what? when in doubt, wear a mask. okay, good advice. >> the government just i think or allocated 1.5 billion a lot of money to further covid research on vaccines and treatments. >> right. this is this is a good step forward in what we potentially could be seeing with the future of vaccine development and looking out for new strains. this is about $1.4 billion. department of health and human services announced this of this money, a large chunk, about $1 billion, is going towards clinical trials. the rest of it would go to development of monoclonal antibodies. and looking specifically at new vaccines and therapeutics. bottom line, this is the government and scientists trying to keep up with what could be happening with future variants. that's good. >> look forward. looking at the future is good. instead of just

reacting to the past, we want to be proactive, not reactive. yeah. hey before we let you go, i just want to ask you about a new study because, you know, kids are back in school. some of them got their ipads. and there's the question of how much they should be on their devices. and even the youngest kids, the toddlers, the babies, you got a little one. what do you think? >> i do, my little one loves her ipad and asks for it. daddy, the ipad says this is what the study says right here, is that in kids at the age of one, with about an hour or two, more than four hours of screen time a day, that could cause some delays in communication, social skills, motor skills at age two, and persisting to age four could be issues with communication and problem solving skills. now, christian, the researchers were very clear to say, hey, it's not that the screen is directly causing the problems. it's that while your child is on a screen when you're talking to them. exactly that's how kids learn about the world. >> so if they're watching baby einstein while you're cooking, but then you go back and talk with them and read to them and all that, then it's okay. >> well, the study did not differentiate between programs for entertainment and programs for education. that's the next

step. yeah and hey, pediatrician and parent hat on. i would never fault a parent for giving their kid a little bit of screens every now and then. >> i did that so i can cook and do other things that we have to do. do it right. >> i just i want a lawyer to watch retro sesame street and high quality programing. oh, yeah. just saying. >> i know, i know. nothing wrong with that. dr. patel, thank you for coming in. thank you. let's make this more of a frequent thing. >> you know where to find me. yeah. >> all right. thank you. all right. coming up close calls and near misses at us. airports they seem to be happening with greater frequency. up next, a look at safety in the skies and what's causing the problem. 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 positive her2 negative metastatic breast cancer for as the first hormonal based therapy ibrance plus letrozole significantly delayed disease progression versus letrozole.

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. >> listen to this audio from air traffic control at sfo of what sounds like a near miss from the united 1722 looked like a near miss to us. >> i think he encroached on our side. you might want to review that. >> well, a woman who says she was on the plane or one of the planes alerted to the abc seven newsroom about what happened. there was another incident in may at sfo, and that's not all. in january, a close call between delta and american airlines jets at jfk in new york and abc news reports said it could have been one of the worst aviation disasters in us history. >> the delta plane accelerating to 115mph down the runway forced to abruptly abort takeoff. the two planes missing each other by just 1000ft. according to the faa. >> all right. and who who is right? >> and just yesterday, the new york times reported that only a fraction of near-misses and midair scares have been publicly disclosed. they based that

reporting on a review of internal faa safety documents and a nasa database. joining us live now is abc news and good morning america aviation correspondent john nance. john, thanks for your time. >> my pleasure to be here. so only a fraction is what we hear about. >> tell me about those numbers as well. >> that's that's really a reference to the very successful aviation safety reporting system , which is an anonymous reporting system that does not go into immediate spotlight. but when the new york times was working on this and it's a very comprehensive article, they were looking at the things that don't normally spill into the public mind or even, for that matter, into the faa's bailiwick. and it's showing an uptick. and this is a worry now, one of the things, if you don't mind me going on about this for just a second, one of the things it's important for people to understand is that we've got to define our terms when we call a near miss, a near miss, we're really talking about a loss of separation. and some of these are big bubbles of legal separation and having them intersect a little bit is not really a hazard. so it's not

like the airplanes are literally close to falling out of the sky and colliding everywhere. but we have had an uptick and this has got to be addressed. >> all right. so can you define near miss for us right in however you think it should be defined based on what is actually dangerous to people. so how many are being reported on average and how many are there actually tsay since we're talking about only a fraction is what's making the headlines. >> yeah, the formal ones, the ones that exceed the limits legally are automatically reported by air traffic control, by pilots, etcetera. it's the ones where it could have, if a, b and c had fallen together in the right way, it could have ended up a very grave disaster. and we have seen some as that report indicated, the one in new york, for instance, that had a great potential for a massive disaster. i think the overall thing is tell people that basically our system is working . that's why the backups have been there, whether it's pilots doing a go around or the air traffic controllers stopping something in progress. but we

mustn't depend on that. we really got to strengthen this system and we need more air traffic controllers. we need more training and we need much more focus on this exact question. so is that who it boils down to? >> air traffic controllers. these are not airline issues, right? >> yes, right. they're not. they're air traffic controllers and pilots working as a team and using very sophisticated technology, which has saved thousands and probably tens of thousands of lives. things like tcas, which is traffic collision avoidance system. but the thing is, unless it's 100% perfect, 100% of the time and humans can't be, we have to have those backup systems and methodologies . so this is a cautionary tale. the times did a good job on it. i think it's a little bit overblown in some respects, but it has to be taken with great, serious miss. >> all right. but, you know, they do point out that we have a severe shortage, right? 20 of 26 critical air traffic control facilities were staffed below the minimum threshold of 85. and then you've got controllers

working mandatory overtime time and six day work weeks to cover the shortages. let's talk about how this could be addressed. right. >> well, for one thing, you've got to have a you've got to have a unified determination between congress and the government that they're going to do what's necessary to put the manning in place. and that comes back down to a congress that's too busy fighting itself to get much done. we have to have appropriations for this. we have to have a major emphasis because you can't just coin an air traffic controller overnight. this takes a long time to put somebody on the scopes. and they also are subject to everything that pilots are subject to in terms of fatigue and in terms of distraction. and we're dealing with human beings who are dependent upon to be 100% perfect, but can't be. that's where the rub is here, whether it's talking about a near collision on the runway or an incursion in the air, is the shortage the worst we've ever seen? >> i don't think it's the worst we've ever seen.

>> i mean, you have to go back to the days of the air traffic controllers strike and the rebuild of the system. by the same token, it's not adequate right now. and i think any controller or any responsible person in that agency will tell you that this is worrisome. >> the transportation department held a summit back in march to discuss some of these issues, close calls and nothing concrete come out of that. >> yes. and i think a lot of it was study and delving more into these issues. i can't tell you chapter and verse of what's going on right now, but certainly the faa and the dot are acutely aware of these things. and you know, as is always the case with good journalism, that article is going to help prod everybody along the way to get these things done. that is very true. >> right. but right now, if you were flying, if you were a member of the public, would you be nervous about taking to the skies because of these potential close calls or other issues that don't fall quite into that category? but still not quite within the box that they should

be in? >> not really, kirsten. >> and i'll tell you why. i think this is the most incredible achievement of mankind. and technologically, we can put 93,000 commercial flights in the air over the world every year, every day, literally. and 32,000, approximately over the us. and nothing goes wrong as a rule. i mean it's 99.999% perfect. and we haven't had a major accident in a very long time. knock on wood. the reason for this is because we've built an incredible system that understands human failure. and that's what we've got to understand with respect to these last little citadels of air traffic control and the problems of expecting too much out of people. the same thing in medicine. we can't expect 100% performance 100% of the time. so we have to build back up system. that's what we have to pay attention to. >> so that is very true. but still, when people look at it and go, i think it was in july that there were 46 near-misses and i know how many flights we have. you know, maybe it's a

tiny percentage, but that still is not that reassuring, is it? >> i think it is. when you stop and consider that you are many, many, many more times in danger driving to and from the airport than you are flying in a commercial airliner. you know, if you want to be, as many people have said, absolutely risk free, you just have to have a concrete airliner that didn't move. in other words, we would not have any transportation, but our level of risk is so infinite decimal that it just boggles the mind. and i've watched this and been a part of it for 35 years. so it's really quite incredible . no, i wouldn't i wouldn't in any way say that people should be nervous. i fly all the time commercially. and while i do pick my carriers, by the same token, i think the system is working brilliantly. >> all right. abc news and good morning america aviation correspondent john nance. thank you so much for your time. >> my pleasure. >> up next, finding solutions to san francisco's problems. a report by our media partners at the sf standard looks at giving

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event. >> get 10% below msrp on the 2023 ram 1500 laramie longhorn and limited models as. >> all right. welcome back. as san francisco struggles to solve a myriad of problems from empty downtowns to break ins to homelessness and drug overdoses , there now calls for the city to revamp its government structures and elections. our media partner, the san fransc standard, has a n aicle out today. the headline on does san francisco's mayor need more power? this group ys yes. joining us live now to talk about who that group is and why their solution includes more mayoral power. the standard senior reporter, josh cain. hey, josh. >> hey, kristin. how are you? >> good, good. thanks. so tell us about this study. who commissioned it, who did it, and what's their conclusion? >> yeah, absolutely. so what happened is, together as a local political group here in san francisco, co commissioned a study with claire claremont mckenna college in southern california. and the idea was to look at several different issues

in san francisco that are called crises legitimately, and they are the housing issues, the crime issues, homeless illness and the state of downtown. and what they did was they looked at the history of these issues in san francisco and said, okay, well, if these are issues, how can we address these with possible reforms? and some of them are some pretty huge changes to the structure of government here in the city. >> okay. like what? what are they suggesting? >> well, as you note, the headline about giving the mayor not specifically london breed, but any mayor of san francisco, more powers to oversee who gets appoint aided by commissions and takes over departments. right now, mayor london breed has conceded distantly complained about the way that she doesn't have the independence to really lead the city in the way she wants to. san francisco does have a strong mayor system, however, where through reforms over the last couple of decades, they've been kind of chipped away. so that's one issue. i think the more con traversal

one, even though that one will absolutely get pushback, is the idea of restructuring the board of supervisors powers who have an incredibly low approval rating in the city. this study says maybe we should actually take the board of supervisors and instead of just having 11 district supervisors who represent small pockets of neighborhoods, maybe we should actually have supervisors who also represent the entire city. and by doing that, we can get people who are not just looking out for provincial concerns, but actually taking all of san francisco into mind when they make their votes. >> i know in your article you did have a graph and i'm not sure if we had that at the ready, but i think the point you're making is that the city has had supervisor positions that were filled by citywide elections in the past. right? it hasn't always been district by district. >> yeah, absolutely. going back over the 173 year history of having supervisors in san francisco, it started with districts and moved to at large and it's kind of oscillated over

the decades. we've had district supervisors in place since 2000, and right now, basically you could say that because of the local concerns within districts , people aren't thinking about the greater good. and so they're effectively shutting down, specifically housing policies because residents have their little quibbles about new developments. and when supervisor a's start feeling the pressure of their constituents on a very small level, they start pushing back on multi-level family housing that could actually it needs to actually be built here in the city because right now we have got a massive housing shortage and there's really been little progress made. all right. >> well, regardless of whether you think the mayor should have more power to appoint and remove people from commissions or whether the supervisor seat should be filled, district by district or maybe have some super, super citywide seats.

what is the part that you mean in the article about how the study shows that san francisco operates outside the norm of most major cities and some of the structures? like which part of that isn't normal or mainstream? >> yeah. so i think a while back you and i spoke about how many commissions and advisory bodies there are in the city. san francisco has 130 commissions. and this study found that the average big city in the us has about half of that other major cities have around 33. i believe. so we're talking about an absurd level of bureaucracy in san francisco that really slows down the process in getting decisions made. there's also issues around the mayor. it's not just about giving the mayor more powers when it comes to appointments and commissions , but it actually says that san francisco is kind of an outlier where the mayor can actually use laterally, put something on the ballot. this study recommends that there is a higher threshold for voters to put things on the ballot through the signature

process, but also recommends removing the mayor's ability to just throw anything on the ballot that she wants. and so there is a little give and take. >> well, josh, this is fascinating. and if folks go and read your article, they'll see that there are more details about how they plan to go about to make this happen. so really appreciate it. thanks for dropping by. >> thanks, kristin. >> you can check out josh's article and other san francisco standard original reporting on their website sf standard.com. also though, we should mention that the city the mayor put out a press release today about some of the good things happening economically in downtown and the city right now which our phil matier will join us at four to break it all down. we'll take a short break. sale owls big sale get 80 to $180 in rebate savings on for select and stock tires during the big deal event plus zero interest and paid in full within 12 or 6 months. >> big old tires last year in california, there were 200,000 car crashes when a car crash

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