captioning sponsored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for sunday, august 1: hospitalizations rise, as the delta variant continues to spread. in our "roads to recovery" series, addressing the mental health needs of students. and, a new exhibition seeks to highlight the impact of solitary confinement. next, on pbs newshour weekend. >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: sue and edgar wachenheim iii. bernard and denise schwartz. the cheryl and philip milstein family. the anderson family fund. the estate of worthington mayo-smith. the leonard and norma klorfine

foundation. the rosalind p. walter foundation. koo and patricia yuen, committed to bridging cultur differences in our communities. barbara hope zuckerberg. we try to live in the moment, to not miss what's right in front of us. at mutual of america, we believe taking care of tomorrow can help you make the most of today. mutual of america financial group, retirement services and investments. >> for 25 years, consumer cellular has been offering no-contract wirelesslans, designed to help people do more of what they like. our u.s.-based cusmer service team can help find a plan that fits you. to learn more, visit www.consumercellular.tv. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the american people. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like

you. thank you. >> sreenivasan: good evening, and thank you for joining us. the united states continues to see a surge in new infections from the coronavirus delta variant-- but increasing hospitalizations and deaths are almost exclusively among the unvaccinated. today, the nation's top fectious disease expert said even though the virus surge may get worse before it gets better, new lockdowns are not likely. >> i don't think we're going to see lockdowns. i think we have enough of the percentage of people in the country-- not enough to crush the outbreak, but i believe enough to not allow us to get into the situation we were in last winter. >> sreenivasan: the "new york times" shows some of the worst outbreak hotspots in florida, arkansas, louisiana and missouri where vaccinatn rates are lagging behind national averages. vaccination rates increased in parts of those states over the past three weeks. the total number of cases since the pandemicegan reached more than 35 million as of yesterday. >> sreenivasan: for more on

the spread of the delta variant and the potential risks, i cently spoke with jessica malaty rivera, an infectious disease epidemiologist and research fellow at boston children's hospital. i began by asking her about how employers or leaders should be thinking about minimizing risk. >> i do think that this is a critical point in the pandemic, where risk is kind of greater for everybody. but they're not equal risks, right. we know that the vaccine is protecting even vaccinated people from having the worst of it. it's keeping them out of the hospital, it's keeping them from dying. and so, because of that, what we're trying to do is just slow the cycles of transmission in the population. and that's why even the vaccinated need to be exercising extreme caution right now, by wearing their mask in public indoor gatherings, when there are places with poor ventilation. because we need to slow the amount of virus that is in our communities, right, in order for all of us to be safe. it's kind of a balance between low transmission and high vaccination. and until we get those two

variables kind of in a good balance, we're all going to have to exercise caution, especially places where people congregate: parks, offices, large gatherings, banquet halls, conferences, et cetera. >> sreenivasan: how much more contagious is this than the one that we sort of got used to? >> it's significantly more contagious. there are estimates that people who contract the delta variant have about a thousand times more virus in their bodies. and what we know abo viral load is that the higher the viral load, the more likely it is that you could have infectious virus to shed to other people and cause them to be infected. and so because of that, it makes the person w carries the delta variant much more likely to be infectious for possibly a longer period of time to more people. unfortunately, we are seeing even higher viral loads than we anticipated among the vaccinated. but all that to say, there is a higher viral load in an infected person. >> sreenivasan: now, we've got another few weeks of summer left here, at least for school-age kids, and that's got parents very concerned about what they

should do if there is a more contious version, and they've got kids that can't be vaccinated yet. >> now that they're kind of in anticipation of vaccination for kids under 12 closer to midwinter, it does cause a lot of parents to pause and wonder, what does that look like for their kids going back to school? and i think that that's why the c.d.c. had to change their policies on masking and recommend universal masking in the context of school for all students and teachers and administrators, regardlessf vaccination status. because until then, that's really the bare minimum. that's theest thing we can do to kind of, like i mentioned earlier, keep those cycles of transmission as low as possible. >> sreenivasan: what about the-- both the mask mandates as well as the vaccine mandates? i mean, we've seen kind of fits and starts. depending on where you live, depending on where you work, your employer could say, hey, listen, we want you to have a vaccine. >> employers a absolutely within their right to mandate vaccines for coming back to work, and that's partially because, you know, we have to consider occupational hazards for both employers, employees, and the people that they serve,

depending on the industry. so i think we are probably going to see more of that. i think you'll probably increase once the vaccines are fully approved by the f.d.a., which could happen any time between august and january. >> sreenivasan: if there are still pockets of the world-- and right now the majority of the world does not have access to vaccines, has not beat this 100%-- there's still the likelihoodhat the possibility mathematically that this thing keeps going. >> viruses evolve. right, they mutate as they replicate and they replicate inside people's bodies. we could outsmart these variants. we could outsmart sars-cov-2 by giving the virus less opportunities to infect bodies and less opportunities to change and create new variants. we have a huge advantage, at least here in the united states, of having tons of vaccine available. and we can outsmart these variants and kind ofet to a point of pushing it down and preventing new variants from emerging by having less susceptible bodies around. we have a huge opportunity here to kind of interrupt the

evolution of this virus. >> sreenivasan: how do we brace ourselves for different variants, whether it's this coronavirus or something else? >> i do think that we should be prepared for sars-cov-2, the virus, becoming endemic. that is a possibility. and endemic doesn't necessarily mean disruptive, right? h1n1 became a endemic flu virus that circulates now quite often with the flu seasons. and so i think that it's something that we can have an advantage over. if we get to that right balance of a mostly-vaccinated, protected population, so that there are less opportunities for the virus to kind of infect and disrupt and then overwhelm our health care systems. >> sreenivasan: there are people that hear the news about how contagious this delta variant is, and they say, "aw, you know what, that's pretty bad, but it's really just going to hit the unvaccinated people." but there is still a threat to these folkand the folks around them that are vaccinated. >> there are people who are still succumbing to the disease, getting very sick, even if

they're vaccinated. and we have to remember, too, that we don't just get vaccinated to protect ourselves. we get vaccinated to protect other people. and we also wear masks for those same reasons, too. so it's imperative that people who are vaccinated continue to exercise caution because people around them are relying on it. so i think it's much, much bigger than the individual's choice when they think about it that way. >> sreenivasan: jessica malaty rivera, infectious disease epidemiologist and research fellow at boston children's hospital. thanks so much for joining us. >> thanks for having me. >> sreenivasan: the senate was in session again today, working onegislation that could authorize more than one trillion dollars in spending on roads, bridges, airports, public transit and other projects that are referred to as "traditional" infrastructure. a bipartisan group of senators worked on the specific languag of what is reportedly a more than 2,500-page bill. senate majority leader chuck schumer said throughout the unusual weekend session that he expects a vote on this bill in the coming weeks. the senate is also expected to take up a second bill which the biden administration is backing. it includes $3.5 trillion for a

wide range of programs including health care and tax breaks. the senate is scheduled to begin a summer recess on august 9. at the tokyo olympic games, it was a day of unexpected and record-setting performances today. in a surprise win in the track and field competition, italy's lamont marcell jacobs sprinted to first place in the men's 100-meter dash, securing the gold medal. in the women's triple jump finals, venezuela's yulimar rojas broke the olympic record in her first jump. but, she wasn't finished. in her final attempt, she smashed the world record with a mark of 15.67 meters-- more than 51 feet. she is the first venezuelan woman to ever win a gold medal. in swimming, the u.s. team broke a world record in the men's 4x100 medley relay, and continued its winning streak. the u.s. has never lost the event since it became an olympic sport. >> sreenivasan: for more national and international news,

visit www.pbs.org/newshour. >> sreenivasan: educators and counselors are preparing for the start of a school year unlike any other. after more than a year of pandemic restrictions, counselors are focusing on ways to assess and address the long-term social and emotional health of children when they return to the classroom. wshour weekend's christopher booker reports from fairfield county, connecticut, in the latest installment of our ongoing series, “roads recovery.” >> reporter: of the many ways counselor curtis darragh works to connect with his students, the most simple tactic is also one of the most important. he learns the name of each and every student he is responsible for. all 375 of them. not surprisingly, this past school year at westside middle school academy in danbury, connecticut was a bit different. the students only started coming to in-person classes in january. aneven then, it was part-time. and darragh, like every other

educator in america, had to change the way he did things. social distance measures meant no lunch bunch meetings with the sixth graders, no drop-in visits to his office from the seventh graders, and the annual eighth grade trip was cancelled. for a counselor who was recently named "connecticut school counselor of the year," such restrictions were minor compared to other challenges. >> it was really hard as a counselor to read emotions through a mask. u know, it would have to kind of like see the kids, his eyes and like, "are you crying? are you happy?" "oh no, i'm glad." >> reporter: how much of a change did youee in the students between before the pandemic and now, wherever we are? i think there is a lot of fear. it's a lot of fear in some of the kids' eyes and, like, school's meant to be a safe place, a safe haven for them to feel comfortable and for them to feel connected to teachers and-- and her students and, you know, maybe they had their first

crush and stuflike that. and we didn't see any of that this year. >> reporter: missing such hallmarks of middle school were part of a larger deficiency through this past year. durragh says that fundentally, the pandemic has put enormous stress on a central aspect of middle school development, known as s.e.l. >> so s.e.l., or social emotional learning, has a lot to do with kids being connected. so here at westside and danbury public schools and in education nowadays are trying to really connect students to, you know, know what a good friend is or how to approach people with nners or kindness and knowing who what your strengths are on the inside and how you can bring that out and right now a lot of kids, especially in the pandemic, are not connected. they're disconnected. >> reporter: sitting down wi a group of seventh and eighth graders, you hear the same thing. did you feel like you were connecd or did you feel like you were disconnected? >> disconnected.

some days i just had my friends on facetime during class, just not really to talk to them, just so that i had like compa. so, i wasn't just sitting in my room alone in a meeting. >> exactly >> doing your work at home is way different. like, you have to always be there for your teacher, to have your camera on. i have a sister, so you could hear her. and every time i unmuted, you could hear my sister in the background. so it was pretty tough. >> reporter: did you find you had good days and bad days? some days you'd say, oh, this feels okay, and other days maybe didn't feel okay? >> yeah. >> yeah. >> it definitely got, like, lonelier, because you don't always have someone to turn to and talk to you, because when you're in your room alone or like, in a meeting, you can't just turn and talk. >> reporter: and the story is the same with teachers as well. >> the best word to describe it is overwhelmed. there's a lot of stress, there's a lot of anxiety, definitely a lot of exhaustion. and one of the things that came

out most this past year was that. feeling of being disconnected >> reporter: jan hochadel is the president of the aft connecticut, the state's teachers union. >> unless you were in the school building or in tho classes with those students, noby can fully understand what these educators went through. >> reporter: and this, says hochadel, is changing the way connecticut is thinking about the upcoming school year. again, returning to the concept of social emotional learning-- but not for the students. for educators. >> if the educators are in touch with their feelings, their emotions, and then they have the empathy to then understand their students better. i know it's an overused analog but when you're flying on an airplane, you have to put your safety mask on first, then you can help others. >> when we think about the tl that the pandemic has taken on students' well-being, i immediately say we need to start by also thinking about the--

going to show up differently in student behaviors and teacher behaviors as we move through next school year and arguably beyond, right. we have little precedents to understand what this will look like. but when we look to, you know, previous traumatic events, again, not the same thing, but looking at what was happening in new york city and surrounding areas after 9/11, what was happening after hurricane katrina, we know that the ripples of impact lasted for years. >> reporter: ripple effects that counselor curtis darragh will be looking out for. what do you think the students will be like in september? >> i think kids are going to be coming in here hopefully with, like, smiles on their face and like, you know, after a nice, enjoyable summer. unfortunately, there's a lot of kids who didn't do well academically, so those are the kids i'm going to have to really touch base with and talk to and make sure they have a plan and set in place for their current-- current-- current grade year, so that we can get them back on track. >> reporter: it's a tall order for darragh, who splits 750 middle-schoolers with just one other counselor. >> we're going to need a lot of work going forward in the fall of-- of making sure we can connect those kids on a social

and emotional scale. you know, they haven't seen friends in a very long time. they haven't been with each other in a long time. i think we are we're ready. we're prepared. as you know, i never know what's going to come through the door, but we're going to be definitely ready, come fall. i know it is going to be a lot of work, but i don't think i was born to do anything else. i love-- i love kids, and i love seeing their growth from sixth to eighth grade. >> sreenivasan: in june, new york city's board of corrections announced it will end the practice of solitary confinement beginning this fall. the announcement was made just days after the 6th anniversary of kief browder's death. the new york city teen spent three years inside rikers, two

of those in solitary confinement, without being convicted of a crime. browder subsequently struggled with his mental health, and eventually took his own life. a new exhibition in brooklyn, new york seeks to shed light on browder's story. newshour weekend's ivette feliciano spoke with artist coby kennedy about his exhibit. >> reporter: in his piece,“ kalief bwder: the box," at brooklyn new york's pioneer works, artist coby kennedy created an 8x10x6-feetculpture that replicates the exact dimensions of a solitary confinement cell on new york city's rikers island. the glass surfaces are etched with line renderings of the bed, barred window, and toilet, along with text. >> sandblasted on the side of the piece here is "kalief browr was kidnapped off the street by police, taken away from his mother, family, friends, held for over 1,000 days on rikers island for a crime he did not commit, and was

physically and mentally tortured by being locked in a solitary box for over 700 of those days, 23 hours a day." >> reporter: when kennedy firs learned about browder's story through news reports, he says he felt incapacitated for days. >> it hit me so hard because i feel a real person connection to it, because what he made it through and what he endured has been one of my worst nightmares ever since i was a child. to be held in that way, you know, you're kidnapped. >> reporter: in addition to his time in solitary, browder was physically and mentally abused by prison guards and other incarcerated people. you talk about this chronic fear of having a situation like that from the time you were, you know, a child. where does that stem from? >> for me, i've experienced, whether was growing up in d.c. as a kid or living my life in new york-- honestly, every country i've been to, you know, i've experienced these moments

where i've come very, very close to having that freedom taken away. a lot of tes just for being who i am. i knew going into this that the piece itself, being a recreation of a solitary confinement cell, could be triggering for people. but then on the flip side, there are vast, vast amounts of communities and people that need to see this and need to experience this. >> reporter: to that end, the installation is presented in conjunction with a four-part town hall series led by the civic engagement organization for freedoms. it introduces participants to the damaging impacts of mass incarceration. discussions center the voices of legal scholars, activists and formerly incarcerated people at the forefront of the movement to end solitary confinement. >> i'm standing in front of you as somebody telling you, i suffered the inhumanity, the indignity, the trauma, and the torture of solitary confinement. nobody should be treated like that. not any single human being. >> reporter: sam giarratani of negative space, a social justice

consulting companyfacilitated the collaboration between kennedy, pioneer works, and for freedoms. >> because it's a show around mass incarceration, there's sort of like a small sect of people that will continue to come and see shows like this. but because this is happening at pioneer works, i'm hoping that we just reh a little bit more of a broader audience. even if it's not completely changing a mindset, it's at least educating people on, you know, the halt solitary movement and what they're doing to change policies. >> reporter: what is it that you feel like the other side, or people from this subjective reality that's so different from yours, what are they missing about kelief's story? >> they don't realize that they

would offer him plea bargains all the time while he was locked up, and he wouldn't he wouldn't take them. he was out for two years after-- after he was released, fighting for his case against the city. not just that, butighting against the realities of the institutions that were still coming down on him, still trying to paint him as a criminal. >> reporter: browder's trauma caused lasting depression that resulted in his suicide in 2015, about two years after his release. but it's browder's strength in solitary confinement and his perseverance that kennedy wants the public to remember him for. >> it's the ory of a boy finding so much fortitude and so much strength within himself that, no matter whatame at him, he always fought back against it in defense of his own humanity and his own truth.

and the most important part of this piece is the quote, that's sandblasted here: "the way i looked at it, if i got to stay here just to prove that i'm innocent, so be it." it's by kalif himself. >> reporter: browder's family settled a civil lawsuit with the city of new york in 2019, yet no one was held accountable for having incarcerated the 16-year- old for three years with neither trial nor proof. kennedy hopes the sculpture will illuminate the “halt solitary” movement, and browder's overwhelming endurance inside the box. >> a lot of people miss that in the whole story. it's kalief's strength, you know, his fortitude, just nonstop, even all the way up to the last part of his life. >> sreenivasan: if you or someone you know is in crisis, immediate support is available 24 hours a day through the national suicide prevention lifeline, at 1-800-273-8255.

>> sreenivasan: that's all for this edition of pbs newshour weekend. for the latest news updates, visit wwpbs.org/newshour. i'm hari sreenivasan. thanks for watching. stay healthy, and have a good night. captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: sue and edgar wachenheim iii. bernard and denise schwartz. the cheryl and philip milstein family. the anderson family fund. the estate of worthington mayo-smith. the leonard and norma klorfine foundation. the rosalind p. walter foundation. koo and patricia yuen, committed to bridging cultural

differences in our communities. barbara hope zuckerberg. we try to live in the moment, to not miss what's right in front of us. at mual of america, we believe taking care of tomorrow can help you make the most of today. mutual of america financial group, retirement services and investments. additional support has been provided by: consumer cellular. and by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the american people. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. you're watching pbs.

ramin setoodeh: have you ever wondered what goes into an award-worthy performance? gillian anderson: if i'm imagining playing a character, there's almost like a scanning that happens. it's like, "dzoo, dzoo, dzoo." ramin: variety studio invites you to listen in as today's biggest actors talk to each other about their craft. billy porter: it's intentional. i asked the universe exactly for what you're seeing me do. ramin: with gillian anderson and elisabeth moss, and uzo aduba and billy porter. ♪♪ cc by aberdeen captioning 1-800-688-6621 www.abercap.com ramin: welcome to "variety studio: actors on actors." i'm ramin setoodeh. as you can see, we're still not back in our studio, but we know you'll enjoy these revealing conversations with some of the best tv performers of the year from locations around the world. ramin: gillian anderson and elisabeth moss are both tv veterans, thanks to their starring roles in "the x-files,"