tonight on kqed news room, san franciscans gathered to protest covid-19 crackdowns in china well cases surge in the california. plus, his speech is on the rise on twitter and more broadly. senator scott weiner joins us to discuss hate speech targeting him and other members of thecommunity. coming to you from kqed headquarters in san francisco. hello, welcome.

i met priya david clemens. this is kqed newsroom. it might be time to start getting your mask out of storage and covering up the bottom half of your face once again. last winchester, we faced the twin pandemic of covid-19 and the flu cases at the same time. this year, doctors say there is a possible triple pandemic of illnesses from covid-19, flu and rsv. the respiratory virus overwhelming children's hospitals. joining us now to discuss the winter surge and how to handle holiday gatherings is dr. peter chen hong, ucsf professor and infectious disease specialist. thank you for being with us. what do you think, should we be getting masks out, wearing them again? >> it is time to bring back the masks. we are not only seeing an increase in cases in the community with covid-19 but past positivity is up and hospitalizations are up more

than 100% in the bay area, more than 65% in the state. masks are not only good for covid-19, they are good for our history, they are good for influenza. they are good for lots of viruses that cause the common cold. >> let's talk about the number of boosters people have gotten. boosters are available for covid-19 right now. the latest data shows only 16% of californians who can get it have gotten it. when i heard these numbers going up, i ran out and got mine. do you think more people will start to get it in the coming weeks? >> more people are going to get it. some of the early data from california suggests once the cases increase and people get sick, people run out and get it. i think that will happen. i think there was a sense of fatigue. there was a sense of i didn't know if i needed it. i wouldn't maybe do much more than the first two shots. make more, make no mistake about it, if you are over 65

and man companies, getting a booster may mean the difference between life and death, not just the convenience in getting to have a trip to europe, for example. >> really questioned >> if your immune system hasn't been reminded for a long time particularly in that age group, you know, death might occur. in fact, we are seeing more than nine out of 10 deaths right now in covid-19 due to not having a booster in those who are older than 65. >> okay, great warning there. let's talk about rsv, the respiratory virus. it seems to be overwhelming children's hospitals. orange county has declared a public emergency. i have also seen that it is impacting seniors. what is going on with our health care systems here in the bay area, how are they responding to rsv? >> right now, the occupancy rate is among the highest i've seen in pediatric hospitals. since march, 2020, this is mainly driven by rsv. 95% occupancy in the icu. tents set up not only in san

francisco but all over the country. rsv is so insidious. seems like a cold and most of the population but for the very young and very old, it can have more serious consequence. we have to take even what seems to be a mild cold seriously if you live with vulnerable folks. >> it is the holiday season right now. people are starting to gather with family and loved ones and travel again. should we be doing that? is it okay to go to large indoor gatherings? >> i think it is 100% okay. we have a lot of tools right now. we can use these tools very wisely. i think about the abcs. make sure the air is pure using a mask think about ventilation. crack the window open, use a hepa filter. bis for the boosters, get your flu shot. it can start working a few days after, it is never too late. we are expecting more and more cases to come. if you go and get it now, you

can be prepared. c is for covid-19 testing, which is making a comeback. i had a family gathering over thanksgiving. the host really wanted us to all get tested before. it is not the be all and end all but it adds two layers of protection that we have. >> i want to talk about a rally that happened in san francisco this week. several people gathered to support those in china who are protesting the very strict crackdowns against covid-19 by the chinese government. what do you think about how china has handled covid-19 compared to american policies? >> i think for much of the pandemic, china has been the poster child of covid-19 management. if you look at the number of deaths for a country that is 1.6 billion, it is only about 5000 compared to 1 million deaths in our country. as the pandemic evolved, things should change. i think seniors not very vaccinated, not as good vaccines, it is like a forest waiting to combust. that is what people are fearing apart from the impact on the economy nd personal freedom. >> are hospitals prepared, do you think we have learned the lessons of the last few years

for future outbreaks, for future contagion? >> no, i think that we are not really as prepared. if you look at how we treated edutainment two, we had all of the technology with pcr tests, diagnostics and therapeutics but there was a delay. if you have a virus not yet named, i am afraid of the speed that we have the lack of correlation, lack of unified health care system, health information system. and, the impact of misinformation. we have seen so much and heard so much about misinformation, disinformation being more untethered and more unregulated, this regulated now. that is what is frightening me. >> where do you see that? have you noticed that recently? >> yes, definitely. there has been so much more, you know, statements that are factually and scientifically incorrect. i have never seen it as much as

right now as early in the pandemic. for a long time, there wasn't any. then it is coming back with a vengeance right now. getting emails, people sending me a lot of materials and quotes from twitter and other social medium that are absolutely wrong. >> dr. peter chin along with ucsf, thank you for the information, advice and warnings about what we might read of their own social media. partisan division. domestic terrorism and hate speech have been on the rise. we have spoken about this frequently before, this change in tenor over how we communicate with each other in person and online. the brookings institute recently noted a significant rise in hate speech on twitter. in the 12 hours of following elon musk's takeover, the institute reports there was a 500% increase in the use of the

n-word. in the weeks that followed, there has been arise in anti- semitic , misogynistic, and trans-public language too. many of those tweets came from fake accounts but not all. they speak to the general atmosphere. our next guest was the recent target of hate speech from members of the political far right, which resulted in death threats against him. state senator scott weiner joins us in studio. senator, thank you for being with us. >> thank you for having me. >> you recently wrote an editorial. you are concerned about elon musk's takeover of twitter and you said it was, "matters tremendously." tell you about the and you have seen since he started running the platform. >> short. mr. musk has made clear that he is really not interested in moderating any kind of speech, including hate speech on twitter. he got rid of a lot of the staff at twitter who actually would deal with hate speech and harassment and threats. he has allowed back onto the

platform various purveyors of hate speech, people like kanye west and marjorie taylor greene and others. he has said he is going to basically open the gates and let a whole lot of other people back on who were banned from twitter because they engaged in this kind of horrible behavior. so, we have seen an absolute optic. i have always gotten attacked online for the work that we do, particularly around lgbtq+ issues. recently, it has been like a tidal wave. >> really? tell us about these recent threats against you and the hate speech that you encountered. >> yes, well, the most recent wave started when marjorie taylor greene attacked me and called me a "communist groomer." a groomer, of course, is their way of saying pedophile or, if i may say it, a hate term

against transit when people. she called me a communist groomer. that started a whole swarm of hateful stuff. >> because you are gay and democratic and confirms invisible. >> and jewish. the following week, this week, charlie kirk, who is a major right-wing online presence went after me, just made things up completely made things up about me and how i am a threat to people's chiren. it is almost like it is designed to trigger death threats and we have now had two death threats that i am aware of since the charlie kirk treats. i tweeted about one of those death threats. of course, the maga people went into conspiracy the remote and said i was making it up. these are like the q1 on kind of people.

it is like this whole cycle and it is very dangerous. >> when you put yourself out in the public sphere, as a public figure, you do expect some pushback. what does it feel like, though, to have these comments made now? >> i don't mind pushback. that is democracy. i have been in government a long time. here in san francisco, we are rampant is politically. a lot of people agree with what i do or don't agree with what you do a lot of local fight. i don't mind that. i been protested before, i don't mind that. i am an elected official and that is part of what we deal with. that is fine. what i do have an issue with is when people make things up, hateful things up about me. when people call me a pedophile because i am a gay man or a groomer, when there are threats, harassment. table have put my home address online, which is very dangerous.

and the death threats. so, that is what i have an issue with. >> does it ever make you want doing question hat you are >> no. if these people knew my actual personality, they would know that all it does is stiffen my resolve. all the bills that i have done to support the lgbtq+ community and people living with hiv, the bills that have triggered these attacks and death threats, i would do them all over again. this is righteous work to support my community. i didn't run for office to have an easy time . with that said, it still is not the most fun thing in the world to deal with. >> you are not alone in receiving hate speech. there are many others out there who unfortunately have been targeted. what is your advice for how to deal with this? >> one of the reasons why i am so vocal about it, some people say don't talk about it, don't talk about the threats. >> don't give it more air.

>> you are just limiting it. i am privileged, i have a platform because i am a public figure, i do have reach. for every person like me who is receiving these threats and harassment, there are thousands of people who no one knows their name. just regular people that do not have the platform that i have. i have a responsibility to talk about what is happening online. a lot of people who may not be as online may not see it i feel like i have that responsibility to speak for all of these people whose lives are being upended because of this harassment. i think it is hard to give advice to people. whenelon musk decides twitter is no longer going to moderate anything or do anything about it there is not a lot that you can do. >> we talked a lot about elon musk and about twitter. why that particular platform so heavily? there are other social media platforms out there. >> they all have their

challenges and i have experienced all of them. but, they all, including twitter, they all try. twitter has stopped trying. úth though it is a smaller platform than facebook or instagram or tiktok, it is very, very powerful because it is like an influencer platform for politics and medium, science. that is where it is the most efficient way of spreading information or misinformation, much more efficient in some ways than other platforms. starts on twitter doesn't stay there. it breaks out into other forms of media and into the general consciousness. so, it is a really important platform. >> are we stuck? is this what we all have to live with now? do you see any path forward for our public discourse to change, for civility, for respect to be restored? >> i think there are things we can do about social media that

do need to be stronger legal standards so that social media platforms have a responsibility to deal with it speech and intimidation and threats. government should be doing that and we haven't done enough of that at the federal level or at the state level. in terms of the general tone of our politics the answer is i don't know. i would love to get to a place where we could have just more, you know, respectful, strong but respectful debates. we are in an area of a lot of division. social media, which does a lot of amazing things coming out of social media, a lot of good in social media. one of the downsides is it creates an incentive for people to be very strident. it creates a lot of antagonism and division and fighting going beyond just a simple debate. so, social media has poured lighter fluid on all of these divisions. >> just this past sunday, you gathered with unders to commemorate the 44th year anniversary of the

assassination of harvey milk and also to commemorate the victims of the club q massacre. tell us about that event. >> this was an eventful week we commemorated the 44th anniversary of the assassination of harvey milk, the club q victims, as well as world aids day, all the people who have died of hiv. it was a reminder of the challenges that we continue to face as a lgbtq+ community. the violence against our community, the hate . harvey milk was murdered because of who he was as a gay man. the folks at club q were massacred because of who they are as lgbtq+ people . we continue to see threats of violence against our community. so, what happened 44 years ago is happening today. we need to always, always remember that it hasn't

changed, unfortunately. >> so, you are a former lawyer and you are now a legislator, you are in a position of power, are you going to be bringing any bills forward to try to make those restrictions stronger? >> we have passed a few pieces of legislation in recent years in california to put better standards in social media companies, including a few this year around children getting addicted to social media, around transparency of social media platforms policies about how they deal with these things. we have taken me steps. i think there is more work to do . i wish congress would do it. we can do work at the state level but it would be great to have a strong national standard. >> speaking of the national side of things this week there was a step that seemed the community, right? democrats and republicans coming together to pass the respect for marriage act. there are still some steps for this to go through. you spent some time at a wedding at city hall and spoke

about this particular bill. plus about that. >> it was great to be with senator alex padilla and a couple that was reaffirming their vows. this is an important step. what congress did was pass able or it hasn't been enacted yet or send it but it will be. what will be a long, it makes sure that if anyone gets married in one state, same-sex couple, interracial couple, that that marriage must be respected and honored in all 50 states. so, that is important. it repeals a horrible law that was passed in the 90s that specifically said states don't have to recognize same-sex marriages from other states. marriagehat is great. tates. it was about a quarter of the republicans in both houses of congress voted for it.

but, we do have a problem here in california where proposition eight, which means marriage equality in california, is still in the constitution. we need to remove it because we are worried the supreme court is going to overturn marriage equality as a national right. >> let's turn to transit. you spoke out this week on behalf of removing what remains of the old central freeway. the remains of it bisect the mission and bay view district. tell us about why you want that to be removed. >> sure. so, we need to step back and remember that we didn't always have freeways going through the middle of neighborhoods in cities. that is a relatively recent thing. when you look at the history of freeways in san francisco, they went and bulldozed entire neighborhoods to put the freeways in. there was a plan to go further, to have freeways going to the panhandle and golden gate park and glen canyon.

fortunately that was stopped. that would have been a disaster for our city. we have removed two freeways so far due to earthquakes. there was a freeway going up the embarcadero, blocking the ferry building from downtown. dana central freeway went all the way up octavia through hayes valley. once we removed those, look at what has happened at the market arrow. it is one of the gems of san francisco. people loved it. that only happened because we removed the freeway and it opened that area up. te same with the northern part of the central freeway. we now have octavia boulevard, which is a beautiful all that housing that has been built there and the parks and public space. and, hayes valley, the reason that hayes valley has blossomed so much is because it doesn't have a freeway running through it anymore. if we were to remove the other piece, the one-mile piece of the central freeway going from the 80 up to market street, imagine what we could do. new housing, new retail and commercial areas, new parks.

just a boulevard instead of a freeway. it could be transformational. >> so, housing is one of your other main topics that you really work on. you have long been an advocate for more dense housin tell us about the state of california right now, where do we stand, what needs to be done? >> for 50 years, california has adopted anti-housing policies to make it hard or impossible to build enough housing. we used to build hundreds of thousands of new homes every year. now we are lucky if we have 100,000, even though we are a much bigger state. we are short millions of homes. that is why housing is so extensive. when you have got enough of something, it is going to be extensive. new housing is expensive. 50 or 100-year-old housing is extensive. it is expensive to buy, it is expensive to rent. it doesn't have to be that way. we are trying to reverse what we have done in the last 50

years and acknowledge that housing needs to be a top, not a low priority that we need to make it easier and faster to build housing. in san francisco, it takes three years to get a permit to hold any kind of housing. we want to accelerate that. we are working locally and at the state level to make sure that we are zoning and planning for enough new housing and that for enough ne are making it eas it should take a matter of months, not years to get new homes approved. >> course, the lack of housing has also exacerbated our issues with people who are unhoused, the homeless, right? governor gavin newsom recently made headlines when he denied funding to cities homelessness funding. he said look, the plans need to be more effective. there was going to be, and the headlines, 2% increase in the amount of housing and reduction of people who are living on the streets. he said that is not

enough. he has asked city leaders to come up with new plans in order for him to release that funding. what do you think about his decision to do that? >> i am glad the governor's holdings it is countable to have strong plans, that need to move past thera of having plans that try to stop the bleeding and make things that get worse. we need to make things better. i'm glad that the governor is focusing on that, holding cities accountable. we do need to get that money out. the cities and counties need that money for basic homelessness services, for shelters, for mental health support and so forth. it is getting worked out and it will be worked out. we need to remember that the fundamental soluon to homelessness is housing. we need more homes, more homes that are affordable to our lowest income residents. so many of our homeless are working. these are people who are renting, low income renters who lost their homes and have nowhere else to go. we need to fix the housing problem. but, in the short-term, we do need triage, lick shelters, we need more shelter beds. we need more mental health

beds, more until health and addiction support for people because having people living on the streets, living in tents on the streets and of course others who are using drugs in the streets, that is not acceptable. that is harmful for them, before the surrounding community and we have a responsibility to create a safety net to get people off the streets. >> it looks like it is going to be even worse going into 2023. there are a lot of signs that a recession is coming and it seems like that will just throw more fuel on the fire of these problems. what are you and other state leaders doing to prepare for those economic realities? >> when you have an iconic downturn, more people lose their homes because ey are not working. then also we are not creating as many new homes because the construction industry slows down. now is the time to aggressively invst public money in creating new housing for low income people and providing housing subsidies to the low income renters and investing in solutions to homelessness. that

needs to be a parody. we might have a budget deficit in california, which makes things hard, but that always needs to be one of our highest priorities. >> all right. state senator scott weiner. thank you for your time today. appreciate it. >> thank you. let's go to a journey to visit a 654 acre destination of vibrant beauty. nestled on the slopes of california's coastal range. there is a massive georgian style mansion plus many, many acres of manicured english renaissance plantings. originally constructed in 1917, this week's something beautiful is the lonely essays d gardens currently decorated for the holidays.

>> spectacular. here is a fun fact for you. do you remember that show from the 80s dynasty? the open for the show was shot

right there at the filoli estates. even though the fictional show was set in denver, colorado. that is the end of our show for tonight. coming up next week , we will be talking with san francisco mayor london breed. send us your questions for them. i do that by emailing us at knr@kqed.org. i find this online, on twitter or on the pbs news app. have a great weekend.

♪ yamiche: taking power -- agenda. >> we as a team and caucus represent the diversity and strength of the american people. yamiche: house democrats celebrate the election of a new historic leadership team. >> kevin has worked harder than any other majority speaker that i've seen. yamiche: republicans disagree over who should lead them as they come into power in congress. some in the gop denounced hate speech as former president trump faces blowback for dining. >> really kind of a coup attempt. yamiche: the january 6 committee prepares its final report and weighs whether to make criminal referrals to the justice department, next. ♪ >>hi