adrian brown, al jazeera, hong kong. ♪ anchor: hello again, headlines on al jazeera at this hour, u.s. president donald trump defending his administration's rollout of covid-19 vaccines, blaming states for slow distribution. it comes as a more infectious variant of the virus is identified in colorado and california. rob reynolds is in los angeles. rob: governor gavin newsom, in a conversation broadcast online with dr. anthony fauci, said officials here confirmed the first case of this new variant in southern california. now, he didn't give a lot more

information about the patient,@@ or the condition the patient may be in. dr. fauci, for his part, said that this was no surprise, that that was pretty inevitable the new strain would be popping up all around the country, as it has been around the world. anchor: u.s. senate majority leader mitch mcconnell rejected a bill to increase endemic relief checks from $600 to two thousand dollars. this week, the house of representatives voted to increase the aid payment, a demand from president trump. health regulators in the u.k. approved a vaccine developed by oxford university -- for zeneca. more than 50,000 infections were reported therefore a second day, and millions more are moving into the toughest tear of restrictions. t --ier -- tier of

restrictions. local media report saudi airstrikes in the yemen capital of sanaa, this follows a blast at the airport in aden. the united nations secretary-general asked for a new unc start monitoring team to be placed in a libyan city devastated by recent fighting in efforts to oust isil. a warlord is under threat due to ongoing attacks by troops. you are up to date with the headlines on al jazeera. we have more news coming up right after the bottom line. thanks for watching. ♪

>> now that coronavirus vaccinations are starting in the united states and places around the world, is this the pandemic -- is this the end of the pandemic, or just the beginning? let's get to the bottom line. after a year that shook humanity, forcing people to rethink social interactions and decide daily what risks they are willing to take, vaccinations are finally being deployed. what happens now? the u.s. still has the highest number of infections and deaths and the numbers keep climbing. almost 19 million americans are infected. at this moment, more than 120,000 americans are in hospitals. the death toll eclipsed every other country with more than 300,000 -- 330,000 families grieving the loss of a loved

one. scientists warn of a bigger spread of infections, and that we should brace ourselves. today, we talked with preeminent american scientist dr. anthony fauci. dr. fauci, bear with me as i tell our audience you have been the head of the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases since 1984. you have agreed to become chief medical advisor for incoming president joe biden. do you see a light at the end of the tunnel, and what is your message to americans? dr. fauci: steve, there is certainly light at the end of the tunnel, but it is interesting. it is bittersweet. because we are still in the united states in the middle of the worst possible population, a couple of hundred thousand cases per day. we have 2000 deaths per day. just yesterday, we broke again another record of hospitalizations, with 121,000

people hospitalized for covid-19. we are in a very difficult situation. we are in the middle of the christmas-new year's holiday, there has been significant travel, we have seen the pictures on tv of airports crowded, people going to end fro for the holidays -- to and fro for the holidays. and then there will be congregants settings for dinner, so we can expect things to get worse as we go into january from the standpoint of the lag you usually see of a couple of weeks between cases versus hospitalizations versus deaths. having said that, december, despite being the worst month we have had during the outbreak, is the beginning of the era of vaccines. because we have vaccines that are already being put into

people's arms, starting this month. en -- and it will accelerate in march and april, with priority groups, first health care providers, people in nursing homes, those who care for him, -- care for them, then critical people in society, people 75 and over, on and on, and by the time we get to april, i use the terminology, steve, as open season, namely that anyone who wants to get vaccinated can get vaccinated. but hopefully, we will have by contractual arrangement the hundreds of millions of doses that will be necessary to vaccinate, which as i have been saying, we want to aim at 75%-85 percent of people in the country vaccinated. again, challenging times as we speak, but encouraging times because vaccines are starting to be rolled out.

steve: how would you fix this so that when america and the world is hit by the next pandemic, we are better prepared, not just in science, but doing the things we need to do? dr. fauci a: -- dr. fauci: well, there are certain things we want to continue to do and certain things we want to improve, steve. the shining light of all this was the fruits of the science, the fact that given the brand-new platform technology for a vaccines, the ability to utilize infrastructure of clinical trial networks that were set up decades ago for hiv , you might recall we put so much investment years ago into the fundamental, basic science that made vaccines successful. so in the future, if we continue

the support of basic biomedical research, we will have the most up-to-date scientific advances on our side, and that is important. the thing we need to do much better on his public health preparedness, namely building public health at the local level infrastructure. so that when you talk about identificatgion -- identification, isolation, contact tracing, it can be done in a more effective way. the other thing to recognizes the importance of messaging, the importance of things centrally involved. one thing we did was, we left a lot of responsibility on the states. some dated much better than others. and we didn't have a consistent response through -- some did it better than others. and we didn't have a consistent response throughout the country. we need to have consistency when

we are dealing with pandemic outbreaks. even though respec -- even though we respect individual states, there has to be consistency in what you do and how you do it. steve: one thing that has come up is the mrna platforms, a key part of developing the vaccines. you know, you work on virus after virus for zeke a, ebola, -- zika, ebola, does this open a gateway to these other viruses we have been struggling with, and new gateways to things you have been wrestling with in the past? dr. fauci: the answer is yes, steve, and if you look at the externally potential of new platform vaccines, there are more than one, but let's take mrna as an example. there was a lot of skepticism when we used the mrna as one of

our top-priority vaccine candidates for covid-19. at some point, that skepticism morphed into criticism. we had faith in it, because we had been working on it for a few years and we saw its potential. we believe that other vaccines that have eluded success, avoided success and escaped success, that we will now use these new platform technologies, and hopefully we will get a greater degree of success using other vaccines, using a now-proven technology that just a year ago was well before it was proven. steve: are we ready to go forward and begin looking at what we need to prepare for the next pandemic comes in? do we have a fast-action response? and as i am thinking about it, we have seen new variants of

this virus in the u.k. and south africa. does the platform you and your team help develop, are we in a good position to combat new mutations of covid at the next coronavirus that comes? dr. fauci: yes. but let's be careful. rna viruses mutate all the time, and most of the time, a mutation is not associated with the functional change of the virus. we are going to be doing a lot of studies on this mutant virus. preliminary studies show it actually does seem to, or at least suggests, that it spreads more rapidly and is more easily transmissible. there doesn't appear to be any effect on its function as a virulent virus, namely, it doesn't seem to make people

sicker or kill them faster. and it doesn't seem to have a negative impact on the efficacy of the immune response induced by the vaccine that is all good news. but we still need to keep our eye on it. but with regard to your question, are we facile enough to be able to move and switch around if in fact it does what it hasn't yet done, namely escapes the protection of a vaccine? the answer is yes. and that is one of the beauties of the mrna technologies, that you can quickly adapt it to a change in a certain confirmation or a certain mutational change you see in the spike protein. steve: one thing i did in anticipation of our conversation today was, i went on facebook and i said, let's ask dr. fauci questions he might not get from everyone else, what is on your mind, can you provide

constructive questions? over 100 fantastic questions were listed. among those that came up a lot were those that were very unclear about how the vaccine was going to be deployed, when they would get it. and this facebook pages reaches every corner of the country, as best i can tell, and people aren't getting it. there seems to be a communication gap. dr. fauci: we have done it on a daily basis. i don't think a day goes by when i don't outreach in some way to the community, usually a community that is often disenfranchised, like the african-american and latino an latinx communities, so they understand the importance of getting vaccinated, why it is good for them in their community and their family, but also getting to the nature of how that will rollout. that is clearly something we are doing. the fact he said that there is a lot of confusion means that we have got to do better.

because if people are still asking questions, not fully understanding the difference between getting a vaccine shipped to a local community and actually getting it put into someone's arms, because you hear a lot about the scheduling of shipping vaccines, a certain amount going to a certain place at a certain time. once it gets there, what are the mechanisms whereby that vaccine is going to get equitably distributed, so that people from all walks of life will have access to the vaccine, not just those in a situation, economically or otherwise, where they have easier access? steve: president trump and others on his team talked about mask wearing as if it were a restriction on liberty, and encouraged groups to go out and liberate themselves from governors who were sending orders.

i just want to know how you felt about that, and whether you think that there is a way to talk to those people who did at that framing, that they felt their liberties were being restricted. how do we bring the country back together so that they look at the virus and they see the same thing? dr. fauci: the first thing, steve, is that you can't criticize them for not thinking or feeling like you do, but trying to reach out in a modest and humble way to explain to them that this is a public health issue. this is not a political issue. this is not an individual rights issue. this is a public health issue, and we are in one of the worst catastrophes we have had in the last 102 years. and ask them to just look at the numbers. look at the 330,000 deaths and couple thousand new infections

each day. have them look at the numbers and see that we are dealing with a real problem. and the problem is not a problem of personal liberties or a problem of politics. it is a problem of public health. we have got to transcend any differences. you can except people have differences politically. that is part of life and part of the way we live in this country. the political differences should not interfere with what is the well-established and clearly proven response to a pandemic outbreak. that is the message we have got to get across, not that we feel that because you are different politically than someone else, that that makes a difference when it comes to public health. it doesn't make any difference at all. steve: our kids get to be vaccinated -- are kids going to be vaccinated? are measures going to be

deployed to get schools reopen, or are we going to hibernate is the best strategy for a while, until we achieve equilibrium on vaccines and i don't want to say heard immunity, but it is out there -- herd immunity, but it is out there, when do we get equilibrium on our overall public health? dr. fauci: let me answer your questions separately. ultimately, children will be vaccinated whenever you rollout a vaccine program. because children are vulnerable, you don't want to give it to them at the exactly the same time as you test it in adults. we have to show the vaccine is safe and effective in adults. then, you have to get the vaccine out, implemented for a while, and so that in the big victory of the implementation of a vaccine program, it is safe and effective in adults. then you do phase i or phase ii

trials in children, which start in january. we start doing testing in children to show that it is safe. that means that, probably a couple months thereafter, vaccine will be available for children. that will be terrific, because if you vaccinate children, it will alleviate by a lot the issue that we face with regard to schooling. now, when children are vaccinated, you will feel much more comfortable with them being in school. but even prior to the full vaccination of children, you still want to have as your default position getting the children to school, or keeping them in school at the same time as trying to put up a system where you can safeguard them by mitigating any risk that they have of getting infected. but first choice would be to get them back to school. steve: about a year before covid

broke out, you and i had a conversation. i asked you to tell me your worst nightmare as you look forward and you described the respiratory kind of virus that covid was. it was just one of the chilling moments, when i look back at interviews i have done. now i would ask you, as you sit here today, what is your next-worst nightmare as you look forward? dr. fauci: my next-worst nightmare is not getting out of this nightmare without having a lot more suffering and death. and i think we need to really, really put every effort possible to getting the entire country to adhere to public health measures, and put aside this very difficult situation of politicizing it and not wanting to adhere to look health measures. also, to get the vaccine distributed in an efficient way

so that very quickly, we get as many people vaccinated as possible. having said that, we will end this outbreak. there is no doubt it will end. we have been through a terrible experience, but it will and. -- end. when it does end, we have to remember outbreaks have happened before, they have happened throughout history, we have seen it with multiple outbreaks, hiv, ebola, zika, we have to make sure we prepare and use the lessons learned from this experience, and make sure we do better next time. steve: one of the questions i have about the situation we are in right now is whether science itself has been badly impacted or whether it has prevailed. i tell people, clearly, science

is delivering in this pandemic in some ways. but if galileo was alive today, i am not sure he wouldn't be found guilty again. this seems to be a struggle over rationality and empiricism in science. how do you feel about that struggle? and you have been identified as the most respected person in the world when it comes to science. does that burden burden you? and had you feel about the prospects of science itself, looking forward? dr. fauci: it is a complicated issue. no, i don't feel it has burdened me. this is the life i have chosen at this is what i do. so it is not a burden because it is my life. and i have chosen it unhappily chosen it. the issue is that science has been very successful in doing something that was unheard of or unimaginable years ago, to go from the identification of a new pathogen, in this case, this mysterious virus that thrust

itself upon us, and then we identified it in january of this year, and in less than a year, 11 months, it actually now was going into a lot of people's arms, it is proven to be highly efficacious and safe. that is a very successful coup de force in science. my fear is that there is a lingering anti-science feeling in this country, sort of mixed in with an anti-vaccine feeling that we have got to overcome by being transparent about we have done and what we want to do with science. so there is good news and bad news. the good news is, science has really triumphed in this outbreak. the sobering news is, that there is still lingering pushback against science in this country. steve: my question to you as you look at the legacy of fighting these viruses that have come down the pike, do you have larry

kramer, do we have the very kramer out there today that we need to get this right? dr. fauci: it is a different situation now, when you have an outbreak that is involving virtually everybody in the world. i don't think there is anybody that can sit back and say, realistically, this outbreak has no impact on me at all. even people who call it fake news, their life has been changed i this outbreak. namely, we can't do many of the things we have done under normal circumstances. steve: brad pitt played you on saturday night live, there were night before christmas tributes to u.n. there is even a hamilton parody out there. is it more fun, or is it hard to be the tony founauci that has become a big shot in pop culture today, or is this outside your

world? dr. fauci: the latter mostly, steve. this has been nice in some respects, it has been amusing, but i can't pay attention to it. because it will be a distraction. just as i don't pay attention to threats on my life, the harassment of my family, which goes on continually on a daily basis, i don't pay attention to those other things because they can be distracting. i have met some of the people that are doing it. it is nice. it is charming. it is amusing to see it, but if i focused on it and took my eye off the ball, which is ending this outbreak, then i wouldn't be doing a job. it is happening on one extreme or the other, but i focus on a laser -- focus like a laser on what i should be doing, which is ending this outbreak. steve: after people are vaccinated, do they need to continue to wear masks? dr. fauci: the answer is yes, for a couple of reasons. because just because you are vaccinated, it doesn't mean that

there is not a lot of virus outside in the community, until you get the level of virus so low that it is virtually not an issue. you should wear a mask. also coming even though you are vaccinated against getting clinical disease, you can still have virus in your nasal pharynx. masks are to prevent other people from infecting you and to prevent you from infecting others, so until we completely crushed the virus, we should be implementing classic public health measures, including wearing a mask. steve: about 20%, maybe 30% of americans, are resistant on the notion of taking a vaccine. cannot be ignored -- can that be ignored? can the rest of america be vaccinated and can we achieve an overall equilibrium of health with regard to those who don't want to vaccinate? dr. fauci: well, it is sad many

people don't want to do it. i have been saying, and my colleagues agree, that in order to achieve herd immunity, you need between 75%-80% of the population to be vaccinated. so i would like to see a very small proportion of people not vaccinated. i would like to see everybody vaccinated, but to be realistic, i don't want to see a large proportion because that would hinder our attainment of herd immunity. steve: finally, when we reach the next holiday season of christmas and tonic, our family -- christmas and hanukkah, our families going to be able to get back together again? only go to see some semblance of normality with people we love? dr. fauci: the answer to that in my mind is yes, but there is an if there. and the if is, if we bring the

number of people vaccinated so that the threat is so low. i believe we can have what in reality will be a normal christmas, normal thanksgiving, normal new year's, a year from now. steve: the overwhelming message from people on my facebook page was to thank you for your service, things you have done to save so many people so dr. anthony fauci, thank you for joining us here today. " luck on your mission. dr. fauci: thank you very much, steve. steve: what is the bottom line? all i could think about in this conversation is how the national conversation on coronavirus is finally going to shift. the folks who believed it was a hoax and shouted out liberty not to wear a mask and demanded that schools and everything reopen as if nothing is going on and want to fire scientists and experts like dr. fauci, they are still

out there. but they can't do the same damage as before. things are going to get worse before getting better, and americans are going to have to hunker down for a lot longer than they thought. science itself has been on trial this last year, but as has happened over and over in world history, science is delivering. and that is one thing to be thankful for as we go into a new year. by the way, happy new year. and that is "the bottom line." ♪awc