and that is our broadcast for this wednesday night, with our thanks for being here with us. on behalf of all my colleagues at the networks of nbc news, good night. another frigid night for tens of millions of americans. i will tell you tonight, as i got in my pickup truck and went to leave the driveway and get onto the road, my driveway gave me an assist in pushing me out onto the road as soon as i put my truck in neutral, not even in gear, it just spat me right onto the road. in dozens of states tonight, it is frigid and there are icy and wintry conditions.

and that is to be expected in the depths of february. however, the situation is uniquely dire in the great state of texas. texas is the energy capital of america, loves to be thought of as such, and makes it all the more infuriating and maddening for those caught in the middle of it right now that that state that is famous worldwide for its energy resources tonight is heading into night four of the lights being off. the power being out across huge swaths of that state. dozens of deaths are associated with the brutal winter weather already. in texas, carbon monoxide poisoning has claimed lives already, and is an increasingly deadly risk as texans burn things that shouldn't be burned and bring heat sources into their homes that are things should only be used out of doors. there are cumulatively several hundred thousand people in other states besides texas around the country who are also without power. 61,000 in west virginia.

over 80,000 in kentucky. over 140,000 in oregon, which is the next worst off state after texas. but it's like 144,000 in oregon. they're second worst. in texas, it's millions of people without power. and now, for days on end. and nobody knows when it is going to end. here's the dallas morning news front page today. millions without power. full power recovery likely to take days. outrage over grid failure. here's the ft. worth star telegram. misery takes over. north texans in 40 degree homes fear the unknown and on coming snow. power outages possible through friday. outages foil treatment, prompt boil water advisories. boil water advisory reference there is important. one knock-on effect of these sustained power outages across texas is on the water supplies. and at the microlevel in people's homes, you have no

power and no heat in subzero conditions, pipes are freezing and bursting and that can cause floods and all kinds of increasingly dangerous conditions. at a systems level, they also, of course, need power to run water treatment plants. and to power water distribution systems. no power is one thing. no power and no heat is another thing. no power, no heat, and no water, and no water treatment, that can very quickly become a very, very, very dangerous situation. one of the situations we are monitoring in texas tonight is that the harris county jail in houston, which is a huge jail, 9,000 prisoners there, about 2,000 staff there. according to the houston chronicle right now, they have no water pressure at the harris county jail.

that means among other things that it's not possible to flush toilets at that facility. did i mention there are 11,000 people there, including 9,000 of them who are locked up? they cannot flush the toilets. they do apparently have bottled water, and they do apparently have electric power within that facility, but no water pressure means increasingly dire circumstances in that jail, with each passing minute. here's "the laredo morning times today," calling the cold and the power grid failure a nightmare situation on their front page. "the waco tribune herald," texans' anger mounts over grid failures. thousands locally brave another day without power. in temple, texas, "the daily telegram," millions suffering with power still out. local churches in temple opening warming shelters. that is, of course, if people can get to them. look at "the san antonio express news." more misery ahead. look at these photos. the top photo there is san antonio residents lined up in the cold to try to get into a local grocery store. and just below that, you see a second photo there. here's the caption on that one.

herminia rodriguez, age 85, sits in her apartment at the senior community residence shortly after electricity returned to those apartments in san antonio. she's grateful to survive -- she's grateful to have survived the past two freezing nights, deprived of heat and her oxygen tank. the power was on for several hours tuesday, but the apartments lost power again around 5:00 p.m. again, that's san antonio. here's "the galveston county daily news today", freezing fiasco. texas grid catastrophe. i mentioned "the houston chronicle" before and their reporting on the harris county jail. "houston chronicle" didn't publish a print edition yesterday because of the grid collapse and because of the dire circumstances in houston. but they're publishing, reporting, nevertheless. we have an electronic front page posted. look a that front page.

houston woman at the top there trying to stay warm inside her home. look carefully at that photo. over her right shoulder on the left side of the photo there, see that? that's all the gas burners on her stove. turned up high. that is, of course, incredibly dangerous. and the woman in that photo explains that she understands that that is incredibly dangerous, but she says she does not have other options. the other front page photo there is a man bailing water out of his mother's home after her pipes froze in houston and burst. pipes froze, they burst, flooded the home, of course, in freezing conditions. headline on the front page there, at least 13 die in weather-related incidents. main headline across the top, failures of power, cold readiness, warned ten years ago, regulators again face scrutiny. and that is a real and true part of this. ten years ago, it's now february 2021, in february 2011, exactly ten years ago, there was another bitter cold snap that hit texas. and just like now, ten years ago, texas' power grid could not handle it. their ability to generate power

collapsed because of the cold, just as demand spiked for power to provide heat. and in 2011, just like now, the grid collapsed. and texas had power blackouts rolling across the state. and after that happened in 2011, for all the danger and life-threatening conditions that created, the national power regulator did a 300-plus page report on what went wrong in the cold weather event that happened in texas, february 1st through 5th, 2011. and ferc told texas in that report that the texas power grid was absolutely vulnerable to that happening again. whenever the state had unusually cold temperatures, because the texas power infrastructure was not designed to operate in the cold. ferc told them ten years ago they needed to winterize and insulate the power generating infrastructure in the state of texas or it would happen again when it got cold again.

and that wasn't exactly a rocket science-level recommendation. this has been a recurring thing. even before it happened in 2011, happened 12 years before that, 1989. cold snap in texas, power grid collapse. they had blackouts. 2011 cold snap in texas, power grid collapse, they had blackouts. ferc is like, this isn't that difficult. you need to insulate stuff. we know it's not always cold, but when it is, you can't afford to have the power go out. people will die. you have to winterize and insulate your power generating and distribution infrastructure so everything doesn't freeze solid and fall over and break when it's cold, which is when people really need to have power. well, texas shrugged that off, because they can. every other state in the country actually has to answer to ferc, the federal energy regulatory commission. every other state in the country has to answer to them in terms of federal regulations for america's power supply. texas doesn't. texas is alone in the continental united states in having its own stand-alone texas only power grid.

they have it purposely never convey any power across any state lines. so there isn't any interstate activity that could legally be regulated by the federal government, so the federal government cannot regulate anything about texas power production and distribution. and so texas power and distribution falls apart in the cold. they run it the texas way. they don't like regulations. they don't like requirements about being resilient in cold weather, despite their previous examples, their previous experience of living through exactly this sort of thing. after the fiasco in 2011 and those recommendations from ferc, texas announced some best practices for all its power producers. but that's just what they were, best practices. it didn't actually require any of them to do anything. and so texas' power producers didn't do anything. and now, texas is reliably a state where the power turns off sometimes for days on end when the state gets cold weather.

and we have seen, you know, weird politics erupt immediately around this. texas republicans, including the texas governor, going on fox news last night to try to blame renewable energy. because a small proportion of texas energy is derived from wind turbines and those are among the power production facilities in texas that haven't been weatherized to keep working in cold weather. but they could be. there's nothing inherent about wind that doesn't work in the cold. denmark and freaking greenland run on wind, not because it's always bikini weather there, but because they winterize their production facilities. so when it gets cold, the power doesn't stop. texas' biggest problem in this power grid failure has actually been the loss of facilities that pump and are powered by natural gas. it's actually been their fossil fuel plants that have been a much bigger problem. but honestly, looking at it that way is kind of the wrong way around. the problem isn't renewable

energy versus not renewable energy. it's that none of the power production facilities in the state of texas have been required to harden themselves and insulate themselves to withstand the cold. because small government texas doesn't believe in requiring anything. and that means that it's up to texas government. i mean, texas may or may not ever decide to fix this. but that is the disaster they have unregulated themselves into right now. and for now, the federal government is coming in to try to help. president biden has declared a federal emergency in texas. the white house today said that they will send generators and diesel into texas to try to get the power back on in specific places in an emergency basis. but for now, it is the families of texas who are literally trying to shiver through yet another cold night to survive this.

doing, in many cases, dangerous things to try to stay warm enough to make it through the night. as temperatures continue to be low enough to mean life-threatening conditions for texans without heat, without light, without power. just a terrible and ongoing catastrophe in texas tonight. brought on by the cold, but also by a peculiarity of small government and deregulatory government that has really screwed up texas' ability to keep the lights on when they most need it. "bloomberg news" tonight calling this the greatest force blackout in u.s. history. can we put back up that front page from "the laredo morning times" for a second. this is from laredo, texas. and i put this up there, you can see the frozen fountain and that poor guy who works for the city out there trying to chip away at it. trying to clean it up, and you see icy weather has a big impact on laredo. but if you look there, it's interesting to me to see what was actually the lead, upper

right corner headline in the laredo morning times today. even for all of those crises caused by the cold weather and the collapse of texas' power system. their lead headline today is this -- hundreds of thousands of vaccine deliveries and injections delayed. you know, and that, too, is a frigid weather story. hundreds of thousands of vaccine doses that were due to be shipped to texas instead before held back in anticipation that they wouldn't be able to be administered because of the storm, which seems like a fair estimation to have made. but you also see there's a second covid headline on that same front page and that's actually some good news out of that part of texas. that their daily case numbers for covid are down. and they have been down quite a bit over the last two or three weeks. and that's a good story. a glimmer of hope in laredo, texas, today. also a good news story that can be told in most of the country right now. covid tracking project reporting tonight that daily numbers of new covid infections are falling right now in 46 out of 50

states. falling daily new case numbers in 46 states. that's good. and when you've got numbers falling in 46 states, that gives you nationwide case numbers that look like this right now. that peak there was january 11th, the numbers of new daily infections have been coming down steadily since january 11th. now, look where we are compared to where we have been. we still have more new cases each day right now, today, than we did at the worst of the peak this summer. in july, let alone the terrible peak that we saw in the spring. we're still worse than we were at those other worse times, but at least the trend is finally in the right direction, and it looks like it could conceivably, hopefully be a sustained way. now look at the number of americans currently hospitalized with covid. that has been coming down, too. look at how steep that decline is. that is very good news,

although, again, as with the case numbers, even as we see these hospitalization numbers lowering, these lowering numbers that we're celebrating right now are still today higher than the highest apex of hospitalizations in the terrible peak that we hit this summer. look at the death toll. the daily death toll is finally starting to drop now, too. although again, it is still worse than any previous peak in the epidemic. today, we lost more than 2,300 americans to covid, which is still just an unimaginable number of americans to be dying each day. silver lining is that at least we can say at last that the numbers appear to be headed down. they appear to be headed in the right direction. and may that last. and all those numbers, those positive trends in the case numbers, in the hospitalization numbers, in the death numbers, those are all coming together as the biden administration has now ramped up the number of people

getting vaccinated from less than a million a day when they took over less than a month ago to an average of 1.6, 1.7 million shots per day now. and some of that progress will undoubtedly be dented by the winter storms hitting so much of the south, as we saw in texas. hundreds of thousands of doses that were due to go to texas being held back because of fears they wouldn't be distributed because of the weather and power crisis there. but again, even though -- i mean, look at the trend line week to week. that trend line is in the right direction. hopefully we can double that number, but it's going up, and it's going up fairly quickly. the white house just announced that they will further increase the number of vaccine doses going to the states. they expect to be shipping just under 14 million doses per week. which means just under 2 million doses per day for the states to be administering. all of this coming together as a third vaccine candidate, the single dose johnson & johnson vaccine, goes up for potential approval by the fda at the end of next week. now, there are questions today as to how much of its vaccine

johnson & johnson will have ready to go if and when they get the fda's green light at the end of next week, but whatever they can ship, as we understand it, will be on top of the 600 million doses of the other two vaccines. enough to vaccinate 300 million americans, which the administration says they have secured for delivery within the next six months. when president biden said last night that by the end of july there will be enough vaccine to vaccinate every eligible american, that's what he meant. we'll have 600 million doses of those two-dose vaccines that have already been approved by the end of july, within six months. tonight, to talk about why these things are happening, where this is all heading, we asked dr. david kessler to come back to the show. he's a former head of the fda, now the chief science officer for the covid-19 response under president biden, which means he's the person president biden has put in charge of the development and manufacturing

and distribution of vaccines and treatments for covid-19. i want to talk about vaccines and treatments with him tonight. dr. kessler, i'm so grateful that you're able to make the time to be here. thank you so much. >> thank you for having me, rachel. >> so i have a lot of things that i want to ask you about. i feel like i bottle up questions for you in between the times we're able to talk. but first, i just wanted to ask if you could tell me and tell our viewers why you think the numbers are looking better now over these past few weeks, in new case numbers, new hospitalizations, and indeed in the death numbers, as bad as those numbers still are, the trend lines are in the right direction. is it possible that part of those positive trend lines are because tens of millions of americans have been vaccinated already, or is there any way to tell? >> i don't want to get ahead of the science. we had always predicted, the president said it, that the

holidays, christmas, new year's, that gathering, that travel would result in a peak. and it certainly did. it peaked, as you said, on january 11th and is coming down. i think it's too early to say that this decrease is due to a vaccine effect. we are seeing a decrease in the number of cases in long-term care facilities, and some of my colleagues are suggesting, i underline the word suggesting, that that may be a vaccine effect and that may be good news, but it's still too early, rachel. >> and that would be because long-term care facilities, congregant facilities for elderly people, have been responsible for such a disproportionate share of the hospitalizations and deaths that if vaccination efforts have been able to concentrate on those areas first, a targeted effort for that population will have a

disproportionate effect on reducing hospitalizations and deaths. >> it's where the vaccination effort also started. but again, let me be cautious. i'll be the first one to come on and tell you when i see that vaccine effect, and we can be sure. i'm just saying it suggests it. >> in terms of that johnson & johnson vaccine, again, i know that you also don't want to get out ahead of the fda advisory committee. they will decide whether or not to recommend an emergency use authorization. the fda will then make a decision whether to accept that recommendation. but we do have that on the horizon. it is exciting to think about a third vaccine product being available, specifically because it is a one-dose vaccine, and that has such important logistical implications. but i'm worried today about the reporting that i have seen that their production is behind. part of the reason i was excited for the johnson & johnson vaccine, we talked about this last time, is because it seemed like their production capacity was really robust, they'd be able to make a ton of this.

are those numbers coming in in a way that is disappointingly low? >> we are working very hard on that. on january 20th, the president instructed us to procure 200 million extra doses. that was pfizer and moderna, and as you said, that adds up to 600 million doses by july 31st. and i can tell you, the president instructed us to do everything possible to accelerate the delivery of johnson & johnson vaccines. and that's what i'm working on day and night. >> they have said, and the administration has explained, that the johnson & johnson contract with the u.s. government is to supply 100 million doses by the end of june. is that target still realistic? >> i think that target is still realistic. i think the issue is the first couple of months will be slower than certainly what i would like.

but we're trying to accelerate that. we're working literally, that's what i spent today on, rachel. >> when last we spoke, dr. kessler, which was about two and a half weeks ago, i think, it feels like about a decade, the way the news moves now. you have said something that night that has stuck with me that i have talked about with my staff almost every day since, that i have done a lot of reading about since you said this on the show. it was something that you said about treatment, what appears to be effective treatment for covid that is going unused in our country, even though we have that treatment available. and i just want to play for our viewers and play for you what you said just because it is something that has been ringing in my ears ever since. here's what you said. >> right now, if you have positive results of the virus on pcr, any other kind of testing and you are at high risk for

progressing to severe covid disease, you're not in the hospital, but you're at high risk, you really should ask your doctor about starting monoclonal antibodies. in fact, tonight, we have more than we're using, and that's why i'm mentioning it. again, these are in limited supply. i can't guarantee it's available for everybody, but if you are at high risk for progressing to severe disease, and you have a positive covid test, at least talk to your doctor. let's use up what we have. >> so, monoclonal antibodies got a big public boost in terms of public awareness of them when president trump was treated with one of those treatments that's been allowed for use under emergency use authorization by the fda. as i understand it, there are three different antibody treatments that are approved for that kind of use. one that's -- there's sort of two combination drugs and one that's a single drug. but i was very surprised to hear

you say that we have got effectively quite a lot of that available as a supply to keep people who are at high risk of progressing to severe disease, who could be treated with this treatment, and clinical trials show it has a lot of promise, but people generally aren't asking for the treatment, and physicians aren't generally prescribing it. can you just talk more about that? help me understand, help or viewers understand what that means. >> so, you are exactly right. let's just make sure everyone understands. the most important thing today is to mask, socially distance, and get the vaccine if you are eligible. the reality is that even with life-saving vaccines, some people are going to -- thousands of people every day are getting covid. and if you test positive and you are at high risk, and what do i mean by high risk?

over 65, obesity, diabetes, on cancer chemotherapy, immunosuppressed. if you test positive and you're at high risk, it's very important to ask your provider about getting monoclonal antibodies. but this is key, rachel. timing is everything. you need to be treated early, within ten days of symptoms, before hospitalization. i looked at the data last night. and what it shows, that for every 52 doses administered of monoclonal antibodies, for somebody who has tested positive and high risk, for every 52 doses administered, we can save one life. it decreases hospitalizations by 70% in high-risk patients. and it does save lives. so, if you have symptoms, please, please get tested early.

especially if you're at high risk. because you can do something about it. we have therapies that work. and only 32% of what we have shipped has been used. there's hundreds of thousands of doses available. and that's why i'm very happy to be here tonight, so we can talk about this. because we want to make sure the administration, the president wants to make sure that americans know that this is available to them. >> so to be clear, dr. kessler, nearly 70% of what has been shipped, what is available to be used as treatment in the context that you're describing, is going unused, is sitting on the shelf. >> right. and if i can make a plug, if you'll let me -- >> yeah, please. >> just again, if you or a family member tests positive and are at high risk, just

go to combatcovid.hhs.gov, and you can look up where there are sites that administer this, and please talk to your provider. we should -- we have to use up this very important therapy. we can save lives here. >> 70% reduction in hospitalizations in clinical trials. and we've got -- even with the reduced numbers, tens of thousands of americans are getting covid every day. this, as a treatment option, is something that needs more attention. you are helping us provide that. and coming up, dr. kessler, we're going to speak with a doctor in a very hard-hit part of southern california who has had a lot of success using these treatments in his practice. so we're going to talk about how this is working on the ground. dr. david kessler, former fda commissioner, now the chief science officer for the covid-19 response under president biden. thank you for helping us understand this, sir, and i'm glad we came back around to talk to you about it, because this is

a really important thing. >> thank you, rachel. all right, we'll be right back. again, i'll tell you that website that dr. kessler mentioned, combatcovid.hhs.gov about monoclonal antibody treatment. we'll be right back. when our daughter and her kids moved in with us... kids, bedtime! ...she was worried we wouldn't be able to keep up. course we can. what couldn't keep up was our bargain detergent. turns out it's mostly water, and that doesn't work as well on stains. so, we switched back to tide. one wash, stains are gone. kind of like our quiet time. [daughter: slurping] what are you doing? don't pay for water. tide is concentrated with three times the active cleaning ingredients. if it's got to be clean, it's got to be tide. ♪ ♪ (quiet piano music) (loud music & noises) ♪ ♪

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is sort of easy to spot on the map. you can see it down there at the south end of your screen. next to san diego, just above the border with mexico. imperial county, california, about 85% of its residents are hispanic. imperial county is also poor. 22% of residents live in poverty. a lot of households are multimember households, meaning more so than on average, you have a lot of people living under one roof. and all those things taken together, we know, can be factors that can make a sort of perfect storm in terms of covid. and indeed, imperial county has been hit incredibly hard. thus far, one out of every seven residents of imperial county, california, has tested positive for covid.

one out of every seven people in the county. that's more than double the rate of say, new york city. at the beginning of the summer, imperial county has the dubious distinction of having the highest single rate of infection in california, which was really saying something at the time, because at the time, california was very much the eye of the storm for the whole country. it was the worst place in the worst place. and imperial county, you might remember our coverage of the medical center, which was so overwhelmed by hospitalizations due to covid that new patients were being transferred to hospitals hundreds of miles away, all the way up to northern california or other states. the director of the emergency department there likening it to a scene out of "apocalypse now" with helicopters airlifting patients out of there every few minutes quote, like it's vietnam, she said. that was june. eight months later, imperial county has new problems. vaccines, for one, mainly they don't have enough vaccines to meet demand. so we have seen scenes of senior citizens in imperial county standing in very long lines.

many of them ultimately being turned away. but even with all the challenges, the difficulty in getting enough vaccines to a place like this, the incredible numbers of infections and hospitalizations and deaths and all of that suffering and all of the strain on the health care providers who have coped with all of it, even with all of that and all they have been through, this is important. imperial county, california, is also emerging as a national leader, as a success story of a kind, because in imperial county, they are proving that if you can get people high quality advanced treatment early on in the progression of the disease, you can keep people out of the hospital in substantial numbers. we're talking about the kind of treatment that dr. david kessler, the chief science officer for the covid-19 response nationally under president biden, these treatments that he was just talking about being severely underused, treatments that can reduce hospitalization rates by 50%, 60%, 70%, that have been

shown to be very effective when they're given to people in the first ten days in which they're symptomatic. not people who are very, very sick and already in the hospital, already needing to be put on a ventilator, or some sort of serious treatment like that, but people who have mild or moderate symptoms, first ten days that they're feeling ill after being diagnosed with covid, people treated with monoclonal antibodies at that point in their disease progression can, in very large numbers, be prevented from ever being hospitalized and ultimately from dying. we don't have a cure for covid. but these monoclonal antibody treatments which get administered to people through infusions, these monoclonal antibody treatments, three of which have been approved for emergency use by the fda, there are hundreds of thousands of doses of them available around the country. more than almost 70% of them have thus far gone unused. but in imperial county,

california, in this place that has had such challenges, where the population has been so effected by covid, where people are largely from underserved communities, where there are language barriers, where there are multigenerational households, where there are very high rates of poverty, where there are so many other health care challenges, these treatments that have largely been seen as sort of just the province of the rich and famous and well connected, have actually been very effective for even this poor, underserved population. the largest hospital in imperial county, el centro regional health care center, has started using monoclonal antibodies in people who are at high risk in developing severe covid disease. they give these early in the course of infection before anyone has to go to the hospital, and according to the ceo of the hospital, over 500 of their patients have received monoclonal antibody treatment. half of those patients have avoided hospitalization. which is a significant decrease from the rates they were otherwise seeing.

and so we looked to these places in the country that are hardest hit, that have the most factors cutting against them in terms of how badly they have been affected by covid, and you see there emerge among them and emerge from those places leadership, showing some of the best off places in the country how much better they can do at keeping people with mild covid from getting sick and ultimately dying. imperial county, california, one of the hardest hit places on the entire map in our country is showing that these treatments work, if you can get them to people and if you can get them to people in time. joining us now is dr. adolph edward, the chief executive officer for el centro regional medical center in imperial, california. thank you for being here. >> thank you, rachel. great to be with you. look forward to the conversation. >> so we have talked a little bit about imperial county, and indeed about el centro over the past few months as we watched the course of the pandemic, and we know you and your colleagues have been taking care of so many people, it's been so hard hit.

let me just ask if the way i just explained it, if i said any of that wrong or if i put the emphasis in any of the wrong place? >> no, absolutely, you said it very well. our community really has been devastated by the covid pandemic. and we're using every tool in the toolbox that we have to be able to get through the day and make sure that our community is served. >> these monoclonal antibody treatments, their public profile i think is small because monoclonal antibody treatment is hard to say, let alone the drug names for any of these drugs which are absolutely unpronounceable, to the extent that they've got any public profile at all, it's a sense they're a drug just for rich and well-connected people. president trump was able to get some. there's been some reporting about the white house having some doses and jared kushner hooking up people with getting it. it seemed like the sort of inaccessible treatment that you had to really be somebody in

order to get. you've absolutely proved that wrong with the sort of, what sounds like considerable success you've had administering these to a lot of people, to hundreds of patients at your facility. >> we're very thankful for the support that we're really received from the hhs and the team, dr. michael anderson and others, gina smith. by bringing the team down here. we were already starting to use some of these medications to treat our covid positive, but to add those teams to our existing clinical teams, who are brilliant and worked really hard to take care of this community, we were able to bring what i used to call bringing in the president's actual treatment down here to us. the local common community that's hit hardest. so we're very thankful to have had the support that we got from the state, as well as from the federal government to be able to bring this treatment. and it's really not a good deal

to have 70% of that treatment sitting unused, but using it for our own population has become a god send. >> has it been resource intensive to do it? is there cost to patients? i know that you have to administer these drugs as an infusion, which means it's not just like getting a shot. you have to sit there for an hour or so and have the -- be very patient while the drug is infused to you. has it been an expensive thing for your hospital to take on at the scale that you have been doing it? >> not at all. and i actually encouraged my fellow ceos across the country to actually open up their minds and their infusion centers quickly to care for their own communities. i think today we have got to use every tool that we have, because vaccines have been hard to come by down here in imperial county. having the monoclonal antibody has helped. what we have done is we have used our vaccine drives,

vaccination drives, to pass the word out to patients, and believe it or not, we're getting referrals from people that would take that information, pass it out to their family members, we have one person who brought in six members of their own community after celebrating new year's. all covid positive, all received the treatment. all now have a life to look forward to. so it has made a huge impact in our community. >> dr. edward, chief executive officer for el centro regional medical center in imperial county, california. this is a really undercovered, underappreciated bright light, a real possibility in the covid darkness. thanks for your leadership. thanks for helping us understand. >> thank you so much, rachel. >> all right. much more ahead here tonight. stay with us. with less asthma.

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he brought with him to the capitol on january 6th a lacrosse stick, and a confederate flag, and a roll of tape. he allegedly taped the confederate flag to the top of the lacrosse stick, waved it in the air, and used it to slam a police officer in the chest. he has now been charged with a list of federal crimes, including assaulting a federal officer, physical violence on restricted grounds, prosecutors say when this man entered the u.s. capitol on january 6th, he immediately began physically fighting with police. he allegedly grabbed one female officer by the arm and refused to let her go. when another officer tried to subdue him, he and that officer ended up on the ground, the officer injuring his shoulder and needing medical assistance. still, after all that, that man walked away. he was not arrested on january 6th, but he's now facing his own litany of federal criminal charges. this man took a selfie at the capitol on january 6th wearing a cowboy hat. he and his hat were captured on

one police officer's body cam here wielding a stick in the melee. according to federal charges just unsealed against cowboy hat guy, he used that stick to try to hit police officers in the neck, specifically swinging at officers between the bottom of their helmets and the top of their body armor, trying to hit them in the neck with that stick. today, former president trump called in to the fox news channel to do an interview, and in that interview, he once again claimed that he actually won the presidential election. he said that's why all those people at the capitol were so mad that day. he then went on to pose a sort of trumpian thought experiment about what he thinks would have happened if the election had actually been stolen from the democrats instead of stolen from him, which is what he still maintains. listen to what he said here. >> you would have had riots going all over the place if that happened to a democrat. we don't have the same support at certain levels of the republican system.

>> we don't have the same support. there had been riots, but what the former president is doing there is essentially expressing his dissatisfaction that there weren't more riots. in response to the results of the election. there weren't more angry people with lacrosse sticks, with confederate flags taped to them, hitting police officers with those weapons. the election had been stolen from the democrats instead of stolen from him, well, their riots would have been way bigger. but we're not that together. and who knows, maybe we'll end up finding out more about the president's state of mind surrounding the attack in the capitol that was launched in his name, as more and more people face federal criminal charges for what they did and the question of the president's accountability looms ever larger. speaker of the house nancy pelosi and the white house, biden white house, have now both announced support for a 9/11-style commission to study

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>> very interesting. a moment of geek. started last summer when there was like a traffic jam on the road to mars. a whole bunch of rocket launches to mars all started in very short order. this one launching from japan was a mission to mars from the united arab emirates. this one was china's mission to mars. this one, the last to launch last summer, was ours from the united states. the reason they all want last summer, they all went at roughly the same time, has to do with the optimal alignment between earth and mars, if you are

trying to launch something from earth to mars. these launch windows happen rafly every couple of years. so, if any of those three missions failed to launch last summer, they wouldn't get another good chance for another couple of years. they all made it you and they all made it up. because they all launched successfully, now they are all getting to mars at the same time, so, we are having another traffic jam this week. the uae's rocket started sending pictures back to earth this week. china's orbiter has entered mars orbit and will start looking for water. the sokd second part of the chinese mission will happen next month, where they will send down a lander to the surface of mars and from the lander they will try to send out a rover. as for us, what we're doing on mars is happening tomorrow. it is nervous making and exciting. back in 2012, we first attempted to drop the curiosity rover,

which is like a car-sized vehicle weighing about a ton out of a u.s. orbiter. but the thin atmosphere meant that a parachute wouldn't be enough to slow down something that weighed a ton. so, nasa's jet propulsion lab designed a sky crane, a rocket-powered platform to slow the descent of the lover until it, dangling underneath on long cables, was able to touchdown ever so gently. at which point, the rover would cut the cables loose and the rocket-powered platform would fly off to crash land at a safe distance. that was so crazy in 2012. the operation started seven agonizing minutes of waiting. later, we found out it worked, which was nuts. that was nine years ago now. and curiosity is still roving. but tomorrow, the jet propulsion lab is going to try this crazy thing again. our rover this time is called

perseverance and it's going out to look for signs of fossilized microbial life. you know, aliens. it is also carrying a drone helicopter called ingenuity which will test and launch aerial surveillance missions in mars' thin atmosphere. first, though, perseverance and the little drone have to get there. so we will have that sort of seven minutes of terror part two tomorrow while we wait to see if the landing works and everything is safely delivered. i mean, congratulations to the uae and to china for both getting to mars at the same time that we're getting there. here's hoping the u.s. gets some good news with the landing tomorrow. it is kind of nice to know that we're all looking up into the sky right now with the same kind of hope. but it's going to be really exciting tomorrow. i'm going to be watching. so are you. moved in with us... kids, bedtime! ...she was worried we wouldn't be able to keep up. course we can. what couldn't keep up was our bargain detergent.

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thanks for being with us tonight. i will see you again this bat time, this bat place tomorrow night. now it's time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." good evening, lawrence. >> thank you so much for covering the treatments for covid. the story has so moved on to vaccine that the treatment story is being left behind. and i have friends and loved ones who have recently gotten infected, been dealt with, gotten in and out of a hospital.

and thtr