government funding runs out, but first trying to iron out last-minute disagreements on a covid relief bill so it can be attached to that must-pass government funding legislation, this while approving a two-day stopgap to keep the government open over the weekend, one option, while they still work on covid relief. so far they have missed deadline after deadline as millions face the end of unemployment benefits the day after christmas and possible evictions the same day when waivers on rent payments expire. this morning vice president pence became the highest ranking official to get the vaccine along with surgeon general jerome adams while president trump tweeted calls for incoming senator and former college football college tommy tuberville to object to the election results when they're due to be certified january 6 from the senate floor even though mitch mcconnell has pleaded against any objections,

all this while covid continues to rage across the i didncountr promise of vaccines a cold comfort to the families of 300,000 americans we have lost to the virus. >> the goal is bittersweet. at the same time as we're moving ahead with what will ultimately be the answer and the final solution to this, we're living through very, very difficult times. joining me now, nbc's garrett haake on capitol hill and "weekend today" co-host kristen welker at the white house. garrett, first to you, what is this hangup? the last note i saw involved federal reserve lending facilities at least held up by senator toomey of pennsylvania. >> reporter: yeah, there are a couple of things going on. first, at some point aides will have to put down their pencils and go with what they've got. writing a $900 billion bill

takes time, the language is important so you don't trip over yourself at the last minute. the toomey provision is what democrats are blaming for the holdup. the idea is that a fed lending authority that was set up under the c.a.r.e.s. act and has been mostly emptied out as we get to the end of the year, it still has some money in it. toomey wants to make sure no new programs get funded before the end of the year. democrats say he's trying to hang up the incoming biden administration. it's rare that you see one member be so publicly blamed fob holding up a big bill like this but sometimes this is what it takes to squeeze out the last details on a massive piece of legislation which, as you pointed out, is due at midnight despite the fact that congress has basically blown through every other deadline in front of them to get this done.

>> it makes no sense also because he is a retiring senator, he's not running for reelection, he has nothing to lose here and nothing to gain. kristen welker at the white house, we're seeing the vice president get and promote covid vaccines. the president has been tweeting attacks against political opponents in both parties, continuing his futile attempts to overturn the election. it really is a strange distraction. he's not doing his job as president and still hasn't commented on the hacking. >> reporter: it's been a remarkable week at the white house for that very reason, andrea. to your first point about vice president mike pence getting vaccinated, a very significant event here at the white house today, and of course white house officials say, look, president trump has had covid, he has the antibodies so he's working with his doctors to determine if and when it would make sense for him to get vaccinated and he certainly is open to it. but let's just take a step back, andrea. this was the week that the vaccine started to be administered. and we haven't seen the president in front of the cameras, he hasn't spoken about

this publicly. instead, as you point out, we've really heard from him largely on twitter overnight, tweeting about the election, tweeting at officials in georgia, also tweeting about masks and retweeting tweets that question whether masks are effective this many months into this pandemic when every top health official has said that they are all while refusing to concede the election. the question becomes where is the president and what specifically is he doing. i have to tell you, we are pooled today, andrea, the small group of reporters that is charged with following the president around whenever he has an open event, we were just told to gather, that we would be let in to see the president, and then just moments later we were told essentially that whatever event it was we were going to be able to see, we were no longer going to have access to that. so we are continuing to try to determine specifically what it is and what his reaction is to all of the developments that you just mentioned. i think it is worth noting we did have a chance to ask his top

economic adviser larry kudlow a couple of questions today about the covid relief package. everything that garrett has been talking about, he made it very clear that it is an urgent priority for this white house to see that something does get passed and that they are on board with mitch mcconnell, they're going to support whatever he signs off on, andrea. >> and i also wanted to play a little bit of dr. jill biden's discussion, she and the president-elect did an interview with stephen colbert last night and colbert asked her about the controversy over the "wall street journal" op-ed by the writer who said she should not be using the term, the title of "doctor." let's watch. >> some people have recently taken it upon themselves to question that title of yours. do you have any reaction to those people? >> yeah, that was such a surprise. >> it caught me by surprise as well, i did not see that coming. >> nor did i. it was really the tone of it that i think that -- you know, he called me "kiddo."

one of the things i'm most proud of is my doctorate. i worked so hard for it. joe came, when i defended my thesis. but, you know -- >> i got to hand her the doctorate on the stage, of the university of delaware. she had two masters degrees. she kept going to school all the time while teaching at night. i said, jill, why don't you get a doctorate to make some real money? so she got a doctorate and got a $2,000 raise. >> clearly the bidens not at all happy about it, this is the first time we heard her responding to something that was widely criticized for being very misogynistic. nobody has ever criticized dr. kissinger for using his honorific. >> reporter: really important point, andrea, and significant to hear dr. jill biden respond to that criticism. and it does give you a window into what you can expect from the future first lady. and of course we are told that

education will continue to be a priority that she plans to continue teaching, andrea. >> indeed, as she did when she was of course for eight years, when they were in the vice president's house, she went to virginia and was teaching in community college. thanks so much, garrett, come back if they get a deal. and kristen, i know you'll be watching this all day. virginia democratic senator tim kaine joins me now. senator kaine, first up, where's the deal, what's the deal? >> we're going to get a deal because most of us have said we object to going on a recess until there's a deal. i'm very confident we'll get one. there are a last few details. garrett mentioned this issue with the fed lending program. some republicans seem to want to shut down a biden administration's ability to do exactly what they allowed the trump administration the ability to do. we've still got an economy that needs significant recovery and we shouldn't be taking tools away from the incoming

administration. but i am very confident we'll get the deal so that the unemployment benefits will continue, people will get a $600 check if they need an income threshold for themselves and their dependents. there will be significant medical aid to advance vaccination and other key important priorities. eviction assistance, food aid. we're going to get a good deal for the american public. it will just take a few more days in all likelihood. >> your state has seen a 53% surge in virus cases in the last few weeks. how important is this for your constituents, just for the vaccine distribution that needs to take place? >> andrea, hugely important. it's virtually all that we talk about these days. virginia has some of the lowest rates of exposure in the country, but still we've seen this dramatic upsurge as the weather has gotten colder and people have moved back inside. and so the assistance for these businesses who are struggling and for families among the

unemployed, the vaccinations have started, there was an initial delivery of 480,000 doses of the vaccine to virginians in senior centers and front line health care workers were first in line, they're getting vaccinated. we have a doctor as a governor who has done a pretty good job of managing this so far. so we can see some light at the end of the tunnel with the vaccine. but what the relief bill is about is just getting us there, getting us the resources that we need through the end of the first quarter of 2021, but we'll obviously have to do more. that's the biden administration's intent going in, the first big bill would be an economic recovery bill so we could climb out of this deep, deep canyon that we're in. >> now, we still have not heard a word from president trump about the alleged russian hack that is far more expensive than had previously been thought, it had initially been thought. it may take months or years, if

they'll even be able to assess the damage. the president-elect has said he will make this a top priority and also responding and deterring future cyber attacks. first of all, how could we be this vulnerable, how could we not know for as long as nine months that the russians supposedly were in there? >> andrea, it's outrageous. we've invested billions of dollars to protect our critical infrastructure from cyber attacks. but the administration isn't even really briefing about it. you're not going to get a straight answer out of them. as you pointed out, not only as the president not said a word about this, just like he hasn't said a word about how we're facing new, greater death tolls every day from covid, but he's threatening the veto the defense bill on his desk, a bill that includes a significant set of bipartisan agreements on improving cybersecurity. the armed services committee's commission, a bipartisan commission called the solarium,

that dug deeply into our cyber vulnerabilities and made dozens of recommendations about how we could be stronger as a nation, and those are in the defense bill, but the president is now threatening to veto it. why he continues to want to, you know, carry the brief for russia or refuse to challenge or attack them when they have attacked our country, is a subject that i hope we'll understand one day. but i don't think we can count on this administration to try to keep us safe between now and january 21 on this issue. it's going to be on the biden administration to do it. they're putting a good national security team on the field that is competent and understands that you can't let an adversary rummage around in your critical infrastructure. >> and i also want to ask about senator tuberville who is planning to protest on january 6, despite the fact that mitch mcconnell has said that is not appropriate, that the president-elect should be certified by the electoral college on that date in

congress. >> i haven't met the senator-elect yet. but i'm just going to say, if anybody wants to link their name in infamy and stupidity with the president's bogus efforts to undermine american democracy and preach fraudulent misinformation about the election, i guess they can do it. i just don't think that's the right way for a u.s. senator to act in their first week in office. but however any senator chooses to respond to the president's misinformation, i can just guarantee this, joe biden is going to be president and kamala harris is going to be vice president come inauguration day. and rather than preach misinformation that just leads to confusion and frankly to even threats of violence, this week we saw the republican mayor of dodge city, kansas have to retire because of threats against her. we're seeing other republican officials resign from the party because of these just instances of foolishness.

i don't know why anybody would want to connect their name to this kind of misinformation that destabilizes our democracy. i hope the senator-elect might rethink that. >> all right. senator tim kaine, thank you so much. i hope you get a holiday break, but we've got to get that covid relief first. thanks very much. breaking news from the supreme court today, there has been a ruling on the trump administration's efforts to change the way we count the country's population. nbc news justice correspondent pete williams joins us now. pete, this went in the president's favor. >> yes, the court today dismissed a challenge to president trump's plan to omit undocumented immigrants from the final census count. it's a partial victory for the president though probably only a temporary one. by a 6-3 vote the court said too much is unknown about whether the administration can even carry out this plan or what effect it would have on the states. several states with large immigration populations sued to block the plan.

they said they would lose seats in congress and they would get less money under many federal programs. so as a legal matter, the president could now try to carry out this plan, but the states would undoubtedly come right back and challenge it, and based on what the justices said when this case was argued three weeks ago, the administration would probably lose. the three dissenting justices, breyer, sotomayor, and kagan, said it was clear undocumented immigrants cannot be excluded from the census because the constitution requires the census to include a count of, quote, the whole number of persons in each state, andrea. >> pete williams with all the news from the supreme court, thanks very much, pete. dr. fauci says the light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter and brighter. when can we expect deliveries of the moderna vaccine? you're watching "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc.

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the moderna vaccine is on the way for the fda to approve its emergency use as early as today after an i understandepen advisory committee gave its okay. joining me now, nbc's tom costello and shaquille brewster. tom, once this is authorized, millions of these doses could get out in the next week and coming weeks, correct?

>> reporter: that's right. 6 million doses would ship -- 5.9 million if you want to be precise, would ship on monday. that's if the fda does in fact get the green light today. we expect this in the next few hours, maybe by the end of the day, that the fda will follow the advice of the outside advisory commission and issue an emergency use authorization for the moderna vaccine. here is what the fda said in a statement, it said it has informed the sponsor, being moderna, that it will rapidly work towards finalization and issuance of an emergency use authorization. the agency has also notified the u.s. centers for disease control and prevention and operation warp speed so they can execute their plans for timely vaccine distribution. the bottom line is, the fda, as they did with pfizer, signaling this is all but a done deal. here is how this is all going to shake out. 2.9 million doses of the pfizer vaccine went this week. another 5.9 million next week of moderna vaccine. then 2 million more doses of the

pfizer vaccine. there's been some confusion today, over the last few days, because individual states, for example oregon and iowa and massachusetts, have said that they have already been told by the federal government that they are not going to get as much of the pfizer vaccine next week as they had banked on, in some cases 30% less than they had expected. at one point hhs seemed to suggest this was pfizer's problem, they didn't have enough. pfizer has said no, that's not true, we do have enough. in fact pfizer putting out a statement saying the following, no shipments containing the vaccine are on hold or delayed. we have millions more doses sitting in our warehouses but as of now, we have not received any shipment instructions, in other words from the government, for additional doses. this sounds like one hand is not talking to the other, the federal government versus the governors versus the company. here is what secretary azar said this morning. >> there was some

misunderstanding from certain of our governors. we had put into the planning tool some base scenarios just so they could do some rough work on planning. we'll work to clear up any misunderstanding they've got. but it's really just a miscommunication between the governors and us. >> reporter: i got to tell you, that kind of sounds like bureaucratic talk, miscommunication and not allocating this and that, whatever. apparently they'll work towards figuring all of this out and hopefully these doses will start moving again next week. that's the pfizer vaccine. the moderna vaccine, again, definitely rolling on monday, we expect 6 million doses, andrea. >> it was a concerning hiccup, because these were red states, blue states, there's no political issue here. and then there was a concern that maybe they were holding back the second doses, but pfizer said that's not the case. but the way you're reading azar is, he's saying it's not the government holding it back and they're going to work it out? >> reporter: i think azar is simply saying, we've got a major

miscommunication foulup here and we need to clear that up. i don't think anybody's suggesting there's anything nefarious going on but rather, let's get our ducks in a row and figure this out fast. >> okay. i'm sure there are a lot of governors and a lot of patients waiting for that vaccine who want to see it cleared up. shaq, you're at a distribution center in memphis that will serve as a hub once moderna's vaccine gets the final approval, we expect today, then the cdc will do its magic over the weekend. how will it work where you are? >> reporter: as soon as that emergency use authorization comes from the fda, a company called mckesson will help distribute the vaccine. the company has done this before, for the h1n1 and swine influence pandemics. the number is expected to scale up to 100 million doses by

springtime. moderna promises 200 million doses out there by the summer. as soon as they get that approval from the fda, they say they will get started by shipping that vaccine. they're also responsible for shipping kits, medical supply kits, things like syringes, medical gauze, forms to help remind people to come back for their second dose after they get that first dose. you're expecting things to go fairly quickly. one thing to note about this moderna vaccine is that it's an easier supply chain once it leaves the factory because it doesn't require those ultracold freezers. it can go to pharmacies, nursing homes. it's a more industry standard vaccine, andrea. >> tom costello and shaq brewster, thank you both so much. joining us now is dr. ashish jha, dean of the brown university school of public health. dr. jha, thanks for being with

us, because everyone is waiting to see the moderna vaccine, people are waiting for pfizer, we're also waiting to see which groups are going to be approved in the second phase, after nursing homes and health care workers. but i guess this is the kind of hiccup you would expect. this is just the beginning of a very long and complicated process. >> yes, so good afternoon, andrea, thanks for having me on. it is, it is a long and complicated process. we expect a few hiccups. i have to say i was a little bit concerned about pfizer's statement yesterday saying we have millions of doses sitting around waiting for instructions. that sounds like more than just a miscommunication between the federal government and governors. we should not have doses sitting around waiting for instructions. more than 200,000 americans are getting infected every day. 3, 4,000 americans are dying every day. we've got to get these vaccines out. so i would like to see a sense of urgency from the federal government to get these out. i'm confident the fda will

authorize moderna's vaccine and next week we will see both pfizer and moderna's vaccines out in the market and that will be great. >> to your point, we've kept being told the military is involved and this would really work smoothly, operation warp speed named exactly to indicate the speed with which they were to be distributed. we were told the distribution piece from the federal government would be the thing that works and once it gets to the states, it may get more complicated. so you're right, it's concerning this happened in the first few days. >> yeah, you would think -- again, look, this is very complicated. we have to give the folks working on this a little bit of a break. but what we don't want is unnecessary delays. and i think what we want is, when they pop up, for someone to step up and address it quickly and move on. i think that would be fine. so that's what was concerning yesterday, was this thing from pfizer put out by a press release. you would think that they could

have solved it before the end of the day. we still haven't had a good explanation of what's going on on those delays. but i would like to see that resolved pretty quickly. >> dr. fauci was on the "today" show earlier today speaking about the moderna vaccine, some of the advantages that it has proved to have so far, preventing not just from the disease but also from infection. let's watch what he had to say. >> you could theoretically and in reality get infected but be protected against actually any clinical manifestations. so if you protect against clinical disease, that's very good. but if you also even prevent a person from getting actually infected, that would mean that you're preventing someone from passing the infection on to someone else. >> how significant an advantage is that, that aspect of the moderna vaccine? >> it's huge. it's actually like critical to getting to high levels of

population immunity, because the vaccine has two benefits, right? it protects me when i get vaccinated, but it should protect people around me because i should become less likely to spread the virus. until recently we didn't know if it did that second part. now we have data that shows that it does. and that's really, really important, it's part of how we're going to bring this virus under control. >> thank you very much, a very good holiday week to you, dr. ashish jha, thank you for being with us. president trump, unseen all week, and still silent on what is being called one of the biggest and most significant hacks of critical u.s. government agencies in years if not in history. how will agencies assess the damage? a big question, when we come back. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports." stay with us on msnbc. rea mitchl reports. stay with us on msnbc. and unmatched overall value. together with a dedicated advisor, you'll make a plan that can adjust as your life changes, with access to tax-smart investing strategies that help you keep more of what you earn.

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we're learning that the fact believed to be from russian intelligence targeting federal agencies and some fortune 500 companies is much more extensive than originally thought. experts say it will take at least months to assess the damage, maybe years, and maybe in fact they'll never learn the full scope of this. homeland security is warning of grave risk to the nation's infrastructure. president-elect joe biden promising to make cybersecurity a top priority and that he would impose substantial cost on those responsible for the attacks. but president trump has said nothing but the hack, but the russians, about anybody, which is shocking to even members of

his own party. >> what i find most astonishing is that a cyber hack of this nature is really the modern equivalent of almost russian bombers reportedly flying undetected over the entire country. not to have the white house aggressively speaking out and protesting and taking punitive action is really pretty quite extraordinary. >> joining me now is jeremy bash, former chief of staff at the cia and the pentagon, and peter baker, achieve white house correspondent for "the new york times" who has written extensively about vladimir putin in his book "kremlin rising" during peter's years in moscow as a bureau chief. jeremy, we're learning there may have been multiple tools getting in, not just solar wind, targeting treasury, commerce, state, engiergy, including the agency that maintains nuclear

weapons, we're told not into classified areas, but that agency, possibly the pentagon. how could the government not have known about this for nine months until it was alerted by a private security firm, fireeye, recently? >> andrea, this is an epic national security crisis. we have not had a cybersecurity breach like in this in, as you said, a long time, maybe even ever in our history. 72 hours after initial reports, it is way too early to tell exactly how far, how wide this breach is. the u.s. government is going to have to conduct a far-reaching damage assessment. and damage assessments don't take hours or days, they take weeks and months. this will be, andrea, a monumental task for the incoming biden administration, because not only are they going to have to figure out what the russians now know, but when did they begin to know it. then trying to kick them out of our networks will be exceedingly

difficult. think about it, andrea, the russian hackers, the kgb successor organization, the intel service that did this, they'll be reading the emails of the i.t. and security professionals who are responsible for kicking the russians out. on top of that we have to reestablish deterrence with russia. i believe russia believes they have a free hand under trump. all the way back to, "russia, if you're listening." it goes from that all the way to solar wind. >> peter, this gets back to helsinki when vladimir putin denies he was involved in the 2016 hacking that russia was involved and president trump says, well, that was a strong denial so i have to believe him, he would have no reason to mislead us, right? you know vladimir putin, you've covered him extensively. >> look, this is part of what takes us back to one of the

fundamental questions of this pretty presidency, one we've never fully explained, the nature of president trump's position toward putin. this country has taken actions against russia in the past, it's expelled diplomats, imposed sanctions, and sending javelins to ukraine. what it's not done is have the president at the top actually give voice to these kinds of actions. he does not criticize russia. he does not criticize putin in any kind of fulsome way, in a public way. he has repeatedly avoided every opportunity to discuss that kind of russian behavior. he did it with these alleged bounties that the intelligence reports talked about that were being offered to troops in afghanistan or to target american troops in afghanistan. he's done it repeatedly over the years on the election interference question. and it's always raised the question of why. robert mueller did a long report

about this, he did not find anything, he said, that would prove a criminal conspiracy or anything like that. but what you have is a president who has admired president putin's strong leadership and has seen him in the most favorable light even though most people in washington, republicans and democrats alike, view president putin as an extraordinary adversary of america and this latest hack demonstrates why. >> and jeremy, officials are telling us that it's russia, but i assume that they have to have the kind of intelligence assessment in order to give a recommendation to the president for some sort of response. what steps could that involve? it's clearly not going to happen under president trump as far as we can tell. so this is something that joe biden has said he's going to do. but how can he act when we don't even know the damage? we have to have some sort of evidence that it's russia or an assessment that's russia. how do you escalate without it getting out of control?

>> i suspect we do know, andrea. fireeye's report said this activity was clearly linked or i should say had the fingerprints of what's called apt29 which is a set of attacks that have been linked to the russian svr which is essentially their cia, their foreign intelligence service, one of the successors of the kgb. so i suspect we have the evidence. your point, andrea, is we don't yet fully know the extent of the damage. we don't know whether this is russia lying in wait to destroy our infrastructure in the event of some conflict with us. the key challenge for the biden team will be, how do we reestablish deterrence with russia? obviously we don't want a full scale military disruption with russia, we have areas we have to cooperate with them, like climate change. we have to reestablish

deterrence, we have to rejoin our atlantic allies, we have to show russia there will be real, significant costs for their attacks. i think trump requested cyber hacking from russia, he welcomed it, he benefitted from it, and i think he's rewarded it. >> and this as the white house, the nsc, homeland, and the pentagon are hollowed out, purged of cyber experts and other policymakers who could have been the kind of veterans who could help in this transition. jeremy bash, peter baker, it's really an enormous crisis, thank you both for addressing it. what's at risk for americans if congress fails to reach an agreement on covid relief before midnight tonight or over the weekend? you're watching "andrea mitchell reports." stay with us. mitchell reports. stay with us even fast delivery on the perfect last minute gift from your walmart store. really fast. really perfect. let's end the year nailing it. ♪

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received her covid-19 vaccination. the speaker is third in line to the presidential succession. vice president mike pence was vaccinated earlier this morning. and congress is still playing beat the clock on two fronts, a covid relief package and money to fund the government before the deadline. joining me is chris lu who is now advising the biden transition. chris, millions of americans are set to lose unemployment benefits. we had 1.3 million people applying as of yesterday for new benefits. that's -- i think you've cited that's the 39th straight week where we have unemployment numbers as high as the great recession. >> yeah, look, overall 20 million people are on unemployment right now. those numbers are not getting better, they're actually getting worse. and that's not surprising, because as we see covid cases and hospitalizations and deaths go up, we see the economy starting to slow down again.

and so it's critical that congress, both houses, and the white house come together on a package, because about 12 million people are scheduled to lose their unemployment benefits in about eight days. millions of others are facing evictions. this is critical, that this relief package gets done. now, make no mistake, this is not a perfect bill by any stretch of the imagination. but it does give much-needed money to workers and employers and schools. and it also helps states better distribute and store the vaccine. so it's not great, but it's desperately needed by people especially during this holiday season. >> now, one of the sticking points, apparently, in the last couple days, hanging it up today, is this federal reserve lending program that senator toomey now says should be shut down. there's some additional money in it that was supposed to be transferred over to covid relief. elizabeth warren and others are

really upset. can you help us explain the importance of this? >> look, it's another tool at the disposal of not only the current administration but the next administration that allows the federal reserve to use its lending powers to try to help pump more money into the economy. it wasn't used that widely over the last year, but it's a tool. and what's notable is that this tool was available to the trump administration. the republicans had no problem with that. but now, as a new administration is coming into office, they're trying to take that away. and the important lesson that we should take from the great recession is that if you don't continue to use every tool at your disposal to provide economic relief, it just causes the broader pain of the recession to last longer. it hurts more people needlessly. another thing that i would flag is the continuing importance of providing money to state and local governments which is yet another thing that senate republicans are balking at. already 1.3 million state and local government employees have lost their jobs. that's teachers, that's police,

that's firefighters. and that's, again, a higher number than we had during the great recession. so unless that money is provided, we're going to have additional problems. this is being seen as a red versus blue state issue. it's not. you have just as many red states that are suffering problems that are going to be laying off workers and cutting services unless that money is provided. >> chris lu, thank you very much. let's hope they get a deal. nine months into the grip of covid in the u.s., ideas it takes so long to get a test, why does it take so long to get test results if you can find a test? we'll talk to a scientist who has solutions. has solutions. goes beyond just soothing sensitive skin? exactly jen! calm + restore oat gel is formulated with prebiotic oat. and strengthens skin's moisture barrier. uh! i love it! aveeno® healthy. it's our nature.™

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because at dell technologies, we stop...at nothing. ♪ athe moderna vaccine is expected to get fda emergency use authorization today. nbc's maura barrett got an inside look at a phase iii moderna trial at penn medicine in philly. the trial has recruited 30,000 volunteers from across the country. maura joins me now. tell me more about the volunteers you've talked to. how are they feeling? >> reporter: there's this immense feeling of hope, andrea, because the trial participants i spoke to got involved in this study because otherwise, they say, they felt helpless. and now they say they feel an immense sense of confidence about this vaccine. they say the doctors and the researchers have done their side of the work. and now it's up to us to take

this vaccine. one of the participants, yuna brewer, she's a pediatrician and has a very interesting situation. the scope of her practice has completely changed during the pandemic. and i asked her, what's the emotion among her and her colleagues with the approval of pfizer and now the impending approval of moderna. here's what she said. >> i tell you, myself and my entire office, when we found out, there was a palpable weight that was lifted. it felt like a kid on christmas morning, that we were actually doing to -- i'll probably get emotional. that we were actually going to start, start up -- you know, start of good health. so everybody in my office is just feeling this sigh of relief. >> reporter: so what's interesting about yuna here is that she wasn't a part of this trial, but actually asked to be unblinded because her office does have access to the pfizer vaccine and that's coming today. moderna let her be unblinded. she found out she's a placebo. and i just got off the phone

with the doctor who developed the tech for the vaccines here at penn, and he said, it's unconscionable for anyone who's involved in the trial who's a placebo to not get the vaccine. i know there's a lot of buzz about that, but that everybody should be getting the vaccine, no matter the results of the trial. andrea? >> well, thank you very much. that is, of course, great news for the volunteers. all of those volunteers who are ready to find out, did they get the real thing or the placebo and now can they get the vaccine if they didn't get it before. meantime, long lines, slow results, confusing guidance on testing has many americans confused about when and how to get tested. one state seems to have figured testing out. massachusetts has performed more tests per capita than all but three states, johns hopkins data showing, and dr. stacy gabriel helped make this possible, transforming the genetic sequencing informs into mass covid operation, now rung more than 100,000 tests a day. this effort has become a

centerpiece of new england's testing infrastructure. joining me is dr. stacy gabriel, the senior director of the genomics platform at m.i.t. and harvard. dr. gabriel, thank you very much. your operation has also been used by many of the universities and the other schools, the academic institutions there. so try to prevent further spread by college students who are going back and forth from home. you've had a lot of testing. how did you do it? >> thanks, andrea. it's really fnice to be here today. thanks for reaching out. we do it by a lot of hard work and a process we put together that is extremely scaleable. we started off early in the pandemic, adapting the cdc test, putting to work our sort of approach of automation and buying things that were off the shelf that we could get in clinical supply. and we were able to scale this and learn how to offer tests and learn how to have people order tests. and this is what's now been

applied, as you said to -- we're working with over 100 colleges and universities, nursing homes, hospitals, employers, and so on. >> we've seen those long lines before thanksgiving weekend and now right before christmas. so people are going to want to -- they're ignoring all medical advice, they'll want to travel. they want to go home, see parents, grandparents and know whether they're safe and not at risk of infecting family members. so testing becomes more and more important. and around the country, the lines are incredible. what can you recommend other states do to mirror what you've done. >> what we've done can be done again. there's no magic to it. it takes some hard work and solving some problems. i think our approach has what you consider a playbook that, you know, we are happy to share, very consistent with our nonprofit mission. and it's really about connecting

the testing capacity to where the testing need is. and so we've learned an awful lot along the way about how tests can get ordered, for example. and those early examples, i think, when the commonwealth of massachusetts came to us and said, can you help us do all of these nursing homes, and we had to learn just how that process would work from collecting the specimen to getting it to our labs to overturning our results. and those things are transferable. and those are things that we work with surveillance companies, even the national guard to collect samples. and i think those things can be replicated if the will and the receptors are there. >> well, thank you so much for all you're doing. it just seems to me that you've made it possible for a lot of people in massachusetts, certainly a lot of college students to be safer and to be able to visit relatives as well. stacy gabriel, thank you. and that does it for this edition of "andrea mitchell

reports." follow us online at mitchell reports and a wonderful safe holiday weekend, whatever you're doing, wearing a mask, keep your social distance. chuck todd is up next with "mtp daily," only on msnbc. next wit daily," only on msnbc. at fidelity, you'll work with an advisor to help you build a flexible wealth plan. you'll have access to tax-smart investing strategies, and with brokerage accounts online trades are commission free. personalized advice. unmatched value. at fidelity, you can have both.

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help the world believe in holiday magic.thing and this year was harder than ever. and yet, somehow, you all found a way to pull it off. it's not about the toys or the ornaments

but about coming together. santa, santa, you're on mute! just wanted to say thanks. thanks for believing. if it's friday, the suspected russian hack far worse than we realized.

experts warn hackers now may have the ability to control the systems that power many part of our government, our economy, and of course, that means national security. we're going to speak both with a top cyber expert who advised the obama white house and pahruresi trump's former national security adviser, john bolton. plus, vice president pence and speaker pelosi get the pfizer vaccine. the fda is about to authorize emergency use of moderna's vaccine. but the virus is running rampant and states say they're not getting the number of vaccine doses they've been promised by the government. and where's the relief? speaker pelosi is scheduled to hold her weekly press conference an hour from now amid reports that president trump nearly derailed talks on capitol hill, as lawmakers continue to scramble to finish a $900 billion relief deal. welco