kind of politics that does apply our faith to the culture, but also understands its place. >> dan darling, thank you so much. hope you don't get fired for being on "morning joe" this time. >> i know. >> and have a very merry christmas. >> thank you. >> it's great talking to you. >> merry christmas. >> really quickly, jonathan lemire, what are you working on today? >> i'll say that's an inspirational story. i'm glad he entered the lion's den again and had the courage to do it here. it will be obviously following the president and his omicron strategy today and also listen to the white house as they try to start prodding forward again on its agenda. >> all right, that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. ♪♪ hey there, i'm stephanie ruhle live at msnbc headquarters here in new york city. it is wednesday, december 22nd, and there is a lot to get to, so sit down. let's get smarter. this morning covid cases are

growing at an alarming rate all over this country, but nose numbers only tell part of the story. on tuesday the average number of daily cases jumped to more than 150,000. that is nearly double what it was back on thanksgiving. in the state of florida, cases have tripled in a week, nearly 13,000 on monday alone. in maryland, the average number of new cases doubled in just one day, and in washington, d.c., they are seeing the highest increase in the whole country. average cases are up 400%. i'm going to say that again. 400 % in the last two weeks alone. lines there have been around the block. in fact, we have seen long lines at testing sites all across this country from manhattan to cleveland, to charlotte, north carolina, people waiting two, three, four, even five hours just to get a test, but i want you to remember this. if you are one of those people, remember, while infections are way up, symptoms from omicron for the vaccinated people are

believed to be mostly mild. on top of that, hospitalizations are up, but only 13% in the last two weeks, and deaths are pretty much flat. in fact, we have only gotten word of one single death from omicron, and that was from an unvaccinated person with underlying conditions. nevertheless, president biden is urging people to do everything they can to keep themselves and their community safe. >> i know you're tired. i really mean this, and i know you're frustrated. we all want this to be over. we're still in it, and this is a critical moment. we also have more tools than we've ever had before. we're ready. we'll get through this. >> let's dig deeper and bring in the experts. nbc's michael memoli at the white house, gary grumbach is at a testing site in downtown washington, d.c., meg terrell, dr. uche blackstock, an msnbc

contributor as well as the founder and ceo of the group advancing health equity, and eli stokols, white house reporter for the "new york times." we have got a full, the white house is saying they are doing everything they can but are they really? operation warp speed did do everything it could to bring us the vaccine. what we still don't have two plus years in is quick, reliable testing. could they not be spending an awful lot of time and money creating testing capabilities on our phones, in our homes so we can know what we're dealing with before we walk out the door? >> steph, you saw the white house and the president specifically very clearly on the defensive on this issue yesterday, but listen, what we saw was a white house that is speaking to a very specific audience. it's what they believe is the majority of americans who feel like over the past two years they've done everything that's been asked of them, they've gotten vaccinated. they've been masked up for the most part. they're avoiding large

gatherings, and yet, they're still extremely frustrated to see that this pandemic is raging on. you saw the president yesterday do three things. as you just heard him, he shared that frustration. he's frustrated as well. secondly, he said very clearly, we're taking steps to try to stem the further spread of the virus through expanded testing. yes, it's a bit late. it's coming online now through expanded vaccination, but also dealing with the surge of cases. the strain on our health care system as well. steph, you also saw him do a third thing, which is lash out at those who continue to be unvaccinated, even invoked the former president saying he got a booster shot. he praised operation warp speed for getting us to this point but slammed those who continue to spread misinformation and paranoia, frankly, about the virus. what you see today at the white house, it's interesting. it feels like as we head into the final week of the year, it's been something of a whac-a-mole presidency. every time a problem flares up they think they beat it back to see a new problem emerge.

today the president's going to be highlighting the fact that despite all the concerns about our supply chain disruptions, many americans are getting christmas gifts delivered on time. we're going to see that when he meets with executives and the like. this issue of testing is one that is a new problem they're continuing to confront. a lot of questions about why more wasn't done sooner. >> doctor, what do you think about the president's plan? is it meeting the urgency of the moment? >> thank you so much for having me. i would say it's a first step, but it's not adequate. yes, there was a focus on testing, on increasing the infrastructure of testing and getting rapid tests out to americans, but 500 million tests in january, think about it. there are 330 million americans and rapid tests have to be taken often. that is not enough. so we need more aggressive strategy, and we need it to happen right now. i would have also liked to have seen some federal guidance around data driven mask policies. also, how can we get free high

quality masks out to all americans, and finally, some more guidance on air filtration and ventilation in schools and businesses. we did not hear about that at all. >> some more guidance from the federal government. we could certainly use some updated guidance on quarantine time. meg, take us to your reporting. what do you believe is needed, for example, 500 million testing kits, that's a really big number, but if everybody needs three or four r and i'm thinking when my kids go back to school in two weeks, they could use one of those tests every morning, three to four tests, that runs out really quick. >> yeah, absolutely, and that's what i'm hearing from experts in this space as well. a testing expert at arizona state university essentially echoing what dr. blackstock was just saying. this is likely necessary but insufficient. she was saying 500 million is great and it's great that they're free, but we need that to repeat itself over and over again, and you mentioned the push for vaccines through operation warp speed. she is calling for a similar

push for testing and saying really we should have been doing this the entire time. testing is one of the key solutions to getting us all back out there safely in the world and keeping our economy going. >> it is amazing to see people in the same brutal lines we were in two years ago. i want to play part of what the president said yesterday about the administration's response. >> is it a failure that you don't have an adequate amount of tests for everyone to be able to get one if they need one right now? >> no, it's not because covid is spreading so rapidly, if you notice. it just happened almost overnight. i don't think anybody anticipated that this was going to be as rapidly spreading as it did. >> is that true? because his own cdc director said they did know about omicron, and they knew it had the capacity to spread like this. >> well, they knew that at some point, steph, and obviously going back to last year

virologists were predicting variants would come up. no one knew what the nature of that would be, but there was always the potential for variants and strains of this to be more lethal, more contagious. they just didn't know. so the lack of test kits available now when we really need them, that is a problem, and it's a political problem. i think the president in putting this response together obviously is trying to project to the country competence that they have a plan, even if it's sort of a reactive plan, a plan to beef up hospitals when the crush of people come in and not to prevent this at this point because this is already out of control. i think, you know, the president obviously there's got to be some frustration. he's been pushing the preventtive aspects of this telling people to get vaccinated ever since he took office, since before he took office during the campaign, and there has to be a lot of frustration, and the president called out misinformation, you know, cable networks, other purveyors of

misinformation. he appreciates while there's no political will for lockdowns and those sorts of measures at this point, he's basically saying at this point, look, this is up to you. if you've gotten vaccinated and boosted, you're probably going to be okay. if you haven't, this could be really bad, and he's trying to warn people. there's just the frustration that you hear from folks around the president on this covid response task force that 40% of the country roughly still hasn't gotten the shot, may not get the shot. you know, we're dealing with polarization, misinformation, all those things, and this has been a really difficult thing for the president to breakthrough to people on. i think that is why you heard for the first time yesterday president biden crediting the past administration for the work they did to get the vaccine to market as quickly as it was, you know, as it was produced and approved. i think also not only crediting the president with vaccine, pointing out that president trump himself had been bragging about getting the booster shot

and urging his supporters to do that because i really think that they understand that if they're going to get through to these other -- the 40% of the country that has refused to get this vaccine at this point, they have to somehow soften that reflexive opposition and antipathy to anything coming from this white house. >> i do not believe those 40% of unvaccinated americans are the same people that are waiting for hours and hours in line this week to get tested. so gary, take us to d.c. who are those people in line? 40 degree weather for hours. why are they there? do they have symptoms? >> hey there, steph, we've seen long lines like this before. we're seeing long lines at testing centers but nothing like what we're seeing right now here in d.c. and across the country. the line stretches around the park and back again. this is a pcr testing site. so these folks won't get results for two or three days.

if they're trying to travel, they need results now. and that's where these rapid tests come in. d.c. today is launching a test yourself express at libraries across d.c. they're handing out 1,000 free rapid tests. you can go get your test, take it in 15 minutes. you'll have a result, and that's what they're trying to do, but it comes to supply. that's 8,000 tests. d.c. says they have 40,000 rapid tests on hand, but they've just this week ordered 1 million tests. however, those tests won't be here until january. >> doctor, you mentioned guidelines before. we need more of them. this week the ceo of delta urged the cdc to cut the quarantine time from ten days to five days for breakthrough cases. here's what blows my mind. the cdc has not updated its guidelines on breakthrough cases since mid-november. that pre-dates omicron. how can that happen? we're in a situation where people with very mild symptoms

are going to start saying i'm not going to get tested. i'm going to ignore this because i don't want to wait in a line, and i certainly don't want to quarantine for ten days. >> this is really one of the areas we need the cdc to step up on. they have stopped tracking breakthrough cases. >> why? >> per them it was -- it required resources and effort, basically a lot of the data we're getting are from state public health departments and that is not sort of a coordinated system. that is one of the problems. the cdc needs extensive data monitorization. a lot of funding has gone to that over the last few years, but it hasn't happened in an expedient way. the other issue is that breakthrough hospitalizations and beds were considered more significant. now that we're seeing, especially with omicron more breakthrough infections, it's even more critical now that those cases be tracked. >> if we do not have the

resources and coordination for this, there's nothing else we should be focused on. the president talked about all the new tools in our toolboxment one of those would be these covid pills if and when they get approved. what are you hearing? >> we're hearing that could be imminent possibly as soon as even today for both of these pills from pfizer and merck. we've seen that reporting from my colleague david faber at cnbc, also from bloomberg news, "the new york times." the question here is going to be the supply of these medicines and for whom they're cleared. it's likely to be limited to just high risk people at risk of severe disease for covid, and we're likely to have very limited supply at the beginning. perhaps, you know, 300 -- or 3 million courses from america and only 250,000 from pfizer. that's according to new reporting just now from bloomberg. it's going to be limited. people have to get test results in order to get these drugs within three to five days of symptoms, so bringing us back to what we've been talking about,

we need that infrastructure in place to make all this work. >> eli, communication coordination is a key problem here. andy slavitt was the covid coordinator for the white house. he stepped down in july. do they not think they need to replace him? >> that is a oid that probably would benefit from having someone in it. the president has been the one really trying to come out and beat that drum and speak to the country. there are reporters and folks like us who tune in to the covid task force and those briefings every day. the president is the one that this administration has always put out there to be the one trying to urge the country to speak to everybody, to reach people to really, you know, penetrate public opinion and shift attitudes. we just haven't seen that. whether that's a reflection of this president or just the intense partisanship and polarization we see across the

country right now, you know, that's for somebody else to assess, i think, but it's been a struggle, and you know, the president now, he's just under 50 percentage points. i talked about the fact that a lot of the country seems to be getting their information from elsewhere and tuning him out. i'm not sure that having somebody else there speaking is going to reach those people in the andy slavitt role. perhaps depoliticizing and finding scientists, other voices could reach some of those people, but given the mistrust people have for all of government, for the cdc, i'm not sure that's the biggest problem impeding the government's response at this point. >> right now we could certainly use some daily dependable updated guidance. thank you all so much. you all definitely made us smarter in the last 15 minutes. we have much more on the pandemic ahead including one new york city councilman's idea for how to address this hours' long testing lines stretching down

city streets. there is no reason we should be facing this. up next, overnight senate democrats held a meeting on the build back better bill, and guess who made an appearance, the one person whose vote really, really counts right now. joe manchin himself. we're learning about what went on during that call and whether or not this bill is dead. new ba, new all-american club™, the new italian b.m.t.®, new turkey cali fresh... and new...trevor lawrence? man, you're not a sandwich! order in the app now to save big. (vo) t-mobile for business helps small business owners prosper during their most important time of year. when you switch to t-mobile and bring your own device, we'll pay off your phone up to $1000. you can keep your phone. keep your number. and get your employees connected on the largest and fastest 5g network. plus, we give you $200 in facebook ads on us! so you can reach more customers, create more opportunities,

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hit a road bump this week, but this morning it looks like things are moving behind the scenes. senate democrats held a call last night to plot their next steps, and senator joe manchin of west virginia was on it after he said no to build back better over the weekend. but majority leader chuck schumer said he is still going to put the version the house passed to a vote in january. that bill is stuck in limbo. i got a closer look at how families are handling it after losing critical help from the child tax credit this week. >> good morning, girls. >> we met her as the child tax credit was increased and changed from a once a year benefit to a monthly check. >> if we're getting it every month, we can use it towards all the little things that are affecting us now. >> reporter: six months later she says it's really helped her two daughters. >> it made a difference on what we could get for our family. >> what did you spend that money on? >> back to school clothes,

haircuts, shoes. >> reporter: the change in the tax credit was part of last march's pandemic relief bill. families received $300 a month for every child under the age of 6 and $250 for those up to 17. phased out as families earn more. >> families in every single state are using this child tax credit payment for food. it is the most common use. >> reporter: the biden administration wants to extend the tax cut for another year but not all are on board. some republicans and even democratic senator joe manchin raising concerns about the cost of the tax credit putting the entire bill in jeopardy. >> i cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation. >> reporter: now president biden says he plans to continue negotiations with manchin. >> we're going to work with anybody who's interested in taking steps to lower costs for the american people, whether it's on child care or elder care or health care. >> reporter: the final checks have gone out to families. more than 61 million children have benefitted. last month alone, the tax credit

kept nearly 4 million children from poverty. >> that just to put in perspective is sort of unprecedented levels of child poverty levels we see in the u.s. in general. >> reporter: unless there's an extension, the new year will bring new challenges for families like connie's. >> i think we'll have to figure out a way to cut back in other aspects. >> let's bring in leanne caldwell on capitol hill and nbc news senior national politics reporter jonathan allen. what do we know about this meeting last night? are democrats any closer to getting manchin on board? we often say, yes, he's a democrat, but he represents the reddest of the red states, but it's a very poor red state that needs a lot of this social support. >> and that's why democrats are confident that they're going to be able to get him on board, but i'm not so sure, steph. we know that this call last night lasted an hour and 35 minutes. we know that senator manchin spoke near the top of the call

where he just reiterated his same concerns that he said over and over again. he's concerned about inflation. the impact on the budget. and he said that he wants to increase it by raising tax rates, something that is not in the bill because senator sinema doesn't support it. leader schumer said on the call he's not giving up. he's going to bring it to the floor for a vote in january. it's in line with what president biden said yesterday. let's listen. >> some people think maybe i'm not irish because i don't hold a grudge. look, i want to get things done. i still think there's a possibility of getting build back better done. senator manchin and i are going to get something done. >> on the call last night senator schumer tried to respond to manchin's concerns saying this would be good for the economy, that's what economists say. they have a lot of work to do to get him on board. >> it's not that manchin is against the child tax credit. it's that as it stands in build

back better, the expanded child tax credit will only last one more year, and it costs a lot of money, and let's be honest, come a year from now when millions and millions of families are then a year and a half in dependent on that money, they're not going to want to let it go, and manchin is making the argument this thing is going to last for much more like ten years, let's budget for it now. is that what this is about, actually reconfiguring how we pay for it? >> part of it. the way that democrats got from 3.5 trillion which is what they originally wanted, down to $1.7 trillion is they made these programs last for less time, and this is a strategy. they know that it is hard to not extend these programs. no one who is running for office wants to take money away from people, and senator manchin is saying let's just be honest about the reality here. and this is a message that senate republicans including lindsey graham have been in senator manchin's ear telling him over and over again.

so we'll see how they deal with it. we know that senator manchin isn't a huge fan of the child tax credit anyway, there's other parts of the bill he doesn't like including some of the climate changes. it's going to be a very busy january. schumer says he's going to put the bill on the floor, daring manchin to block it. >> let's put child tax credit to the side. is there some truth to that. is it disingenuous to say let's just put these programs in a place for a year or two when it's massively expensive to do that, and you're not going to take it away in a year. >> well, certainly, stephanie, and i've been talking to folks close to manchin, his view is that the fight that he's having right now is one that will be repeated year after year after year where fellow democrats are saying joe manchin's standing in the way of doing the child tax credit. we'll see the stories about how families are benefitting from it. i think that's something that's baked into his thinking at this point. >> john, heidi heitkamp told me

yesterday joe manchin is probably shielding critics from other senators who also want a smaller spending bill. there's a lot of other democratic lawmakers saying yeah, we agree with man chin, but let's let him take the hit. >> there are a lot of details that still haven't been worked out, including whether there's going to be a raised exemption for state and local taxes. you're talked about that on your show before, whether the child tax credit, if it's in there, if it goes to the level that the white house wants to or whether benefits kick in at a different point, there are a whole host of issues that have not been resolved to a place where they can actually come to the senate floor. i think senator heitkamp is right to some extent manchin is defending some of those other senators from having to come out there with their objections. >> what a beautiful vista, jonathan allen, leanne caldwell.

>> where are you? >> chesapeake bay, maryland. >> damn, maryland, you're looking good today. leanne caldwell, jonathan allen, thank you both so much. the chesapeake, america's finest. next, tell me if you did not see this one coming because i'm going to tell you, i absolutely did. we talked about it day after day. secret service saying criminals have stolen close to 100 billion with a b, billion dollars worth of pandemic relief funds. how did this happen? no oversight. and can it be recovered. ♪ superpowers from a spider bite? i could use some help showing the world how liberty mutual customizes their car insurance so they only pay for what they need. (gasps) ♪ did it work? only pay for what you need ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

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now to a stunning story that is hugely disappointing because it was 100% foreseeable. it was something we talked about on this show day after day. i'm talking about thieves getting their hands on government money that was supposed to help people who were hurt by the pandemic. and ultimately getting away with nearly $100 billion. that is according to the secret service. i want to bring in cnbc's senior washington correspondent eamon javers. how on earth did this happen? when they put together the c.a.r.e.s. act and they failed to get the oversight committee together day after day, when we

looked at billions of dollars in ppp, the paycheck protection loans going out that were going to be forgivable, you and i said, man, they're going to have to track this because there are going to be fraudsters in the mix. and alas, there are to the tune of 100 billion bucks? >> yeah, that's what the secret service is saying, and in fact, there are so many cases out there right now, they've got more than 900 open investigations right now the secret service does, so they say they're going to appoint a new official, roy dotson to oversee all of those investigations and coordinate all of the anti-pandemic fraud stuff they're doing. but the question is why did this happen. and the answer is you got trillions of dollars moving fast and low, whenever the government turns on a gusher of money like this, there's a huge possibility for fraud. everybody knew it at the outset. that's what we're seeing on the back end. the secret service and other law enforcement agencies are now going to try to clean up this mess, and they're going case by case to try to see how much of this they can claw back. they say they've clawed back a

lot of that money so far. the question is will they be able to claw back all of us, or will they even be able to discover how much was actually stolen. that nearly $100 billion number is just an estimate. >> if everybody knew this at the outset, why are they only appointing someone now? >> well, the secret service is doing that now because they've got this sprawling number of cases and they need to have somebody in charge of coordinating all of those. the question is why doesn't government sort of learn this lesson in general. there's always this tension between speed and security, right? if you want to secure this money and put all the restrictions in place about who can get it, you're not going to be able to move it fast enough into the economy or as fast as you want to move it into the economy. so there's this tension here. and sometimes policymakers say you know what, we'd rather get this money out fast and hope that it goes basically where we want it to go in an emergency situatio we had this problem in iraq and afghanistan when we

shovelled billions of dollars in aid out to iraq and afghanistan. lots and lots of that money was stolen over the years, and the reason was because they decided there also let's just shovel the money out. it's an emergency. let's get it on the ground and see what we can do, and that's when the fraudsters, the gangsters move in and steal some. >> to everyone who did steal that money, the government might not get you, but karma will. you stole money at the worst moment in our country when people were dying, when businesses were shutting. good on you. good luck with that money. eamon javers, we're going to keep reporting on this, please come back soon. coming up, covid testing in new york city has been a hot mess, not just now, for the last two years. now one lawmaker is proposing a solution. make the javits center a mass testing site again. how did it work last time? we'll find out. he joins me next.

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new fears that we could be going backwards, back to the time when covid brought the normal life we were living to a screeching halt. but to get an idea of where we are going, it helps to remember where we have been. >> reporter: this morning a grim new national record, more than 4,000 covid deaths reported in a single day. hospitals are facing a crisis of epic proportions. >> 100 million shots in our first 100 days in office. we're on day one. >> full fda approval, johnson's vaccine will become the third to go into americans' arms. the third vaccine of the pandemic arsenal. >> get vaccinated. the vaccine that's available to you, get that vaccine. >> all adult americans will be eligible to get a vaccine no later than may 1. >> in new york city where people getting vaccinated are now able to enjoy some live music in the same space that served as a field hospital just a few short months ago. >> the tragic milestone in the battle against the coronavirus,

actually, this is globally the death toll has now topped a staggering 3 million people. more than 570,000 americans have lost their lives to the coronavirus. that's nearly 20% of the worldwide total. >> with less than a third of the country fully vaccinated, right now some states are starting to turn down government shipments due to lack of demand. new cdc data shows 8% of people have missed their second shot of the moderna or pfizer vaccines. >> our goal by july 4th is to have 70% of adult americans with at least one shot. >> reporter: pfizer's emergency use authorization now clears the way for 17 million children to immediately get vaccinated. kids 12 to 15 years old, mostly middle and high school students, now qualify. >> if you get the shot, you basically can ditch the mask. nearly everywhere the cdc says. >> america is already on the pandemic rebound, new covid cases at their lowest level

since last june. >> last year we lost a summer because of covid. so this year it's going to be a big summer. >> the delta variant first discovered in india could soon become the dominant covid strain in the u.s. so far only about 53% of the country is partially vaccinated but some states are barely hitting a third of their population. 67% of u.s. adults have received at least one dose. that's short of the president's goal of 70%. >> give you the best chance possible. >> a year ago the covid icu at lexington medical center was pushed to the brink. this week doctors say it's feeling like deja vu. >> tonight the alarming delta variant surge, the u.s. now seeing more daily covid cases than last summer's peak. >> the plan is for every adult to get a booster shot eight months after you've got your second shot. >> a moving new memorial that provides a vivid reminder of the devastation of the coronavirus pandemic. more than 670,000 white flags are planted along the national

mall, each one symbolizing an american life lost to the coronavirus. >> authorized by the fda late today, booster shots for adults fully vaccinated with moderna and johnson & johnson could be days away. >> they all reached the same conclusion about vaccine mandates. >> i didn't have much of a choice in the matter, that i was being forced to do something, to put something into my body. >> i felt that what they were doing, what they have done is they've basically held for ransom your health insurance, your benefits, your livelihood, your career in some cases. >> some promising news, of course, this afternoon authorizing pfizer vaccine for 5 to 11-year-olds. this is a huge step forward. >> the fda signed off on pfizer and moderna's vaccine booster for all adults 18 and older. >> president biden is set to speak to the nation next hour about the omicron variant as questions remain about the seriousness of the threat.

>> what is it about this variant that worries you? >> what we've seen is this kind of very rapid rise in infections, and we've seen that in a part of the country in a population where we thought that people had a lot of immunity. and the fact that this virus is now spreading so rapidly and so easily, it seems, it's a highly transmissible variant. but also that it may well be able to better get around some of the levels of our immune protection. >> the cdc says the first confirmed case in the u.s. of the omicron variant has appeared now in san francisco. >> hitting this other terrible milestone in the u.s., you see it here, 800,000 deaths in this country. >> 800,000 deaths, and that was before omicron was causing three out of every four new cases in the u.s. as i mentioned before, right now there is only one reported death caused by omicron down in texas. new york where i am is at the

leading edge of this new surge of cases doubling in the past two weeks, and the positivity rate climbing over 10%. but here's the good news, 80% of new yorkers have had at least one shot. on tuesday, mayor elect eric adams announced he would delay his inauguration ceremony out of an abundance of caution. mark levine is the incoming manhattan borough president, people are freezing in the cold lining up for these tests and most of those people do not have symptoms or they're mild. they've just been exposed. what is the incentive for them to keep going and getting tested when they're vaccinated and it is such a hassle? >> for people around the country who are wondering what this variant is like, it's unlike anything you've dealt with before. it spreads so fast, it's so contagious. people go out to dinner together, ten folks, five of

them test positive the next day. this is in part people who are hearing about friends testing positive and are experiencing symptoms. it's not only about taking precautions. and it's just outrageous that this late in the pandemic still, it takes hours to wait in line to get a test. it takes days to get the results back. it's really unacceptable, and we do need federal intervention to solve this problem in new york city and beyond. >> so what is that going to look like? here in new york, we learned that 13 privately run testing sites are shutting down because of staffing issues, and these free tests we're going to get from the federal government don't arrive for maybe weeks. >> every system that we have for dealing with cases with testing referring people to care is overwhelmed right now. we're getting 12,000 cases a day, and every single point of entry for people is understaffed. we need the federal government to come in now and do what they did at the peak of the pandemic. open up a facility and javits center and similar facilities around the five boroughs where

they can offer testing, vaccination, boosters, referral to care, new york city is the canary in the coal mine, and we want to prove that the federal government can have an impact here before this goes national. we need help now. >> but why are we here? why is this an emergency? has the federal government not been working with cities and states for months to solve testing, or was it, hey, we've got a vaccine, don't worry about anything else. because right now that's what it feels like. >> there's no doubt that the idea that all we have to do was vaccinate was never correct. we need vaccination plus testing, masking, other precautions, and we're behind on testing relative to the rest of the world where for a dollar or two you can get a test anywhere. sometimes for free, we still have a desperate shortage of self-tests here. you have to run from drugstore to drugstore and hope you get lucky and find a kit that you can buy for $25. this is not working. so yes, we need the federal government to provide us with adequate testing.

we need them to solve the bottleneck in the lab facility so it doesn't take three to four days to get results back, and while hospitalizations are not moving as fast as cases are, thank goodness now, that's also ticking up in new york city, and we have resource channels there as well. the monoclonal antibodies that we've been using for delta don't work with omicron, and the new formulations that are going to work going forward are in short supply. basically hospitals in new york city have stopped offering monoclonal antibodies because we don't have the right formulation. >> hold on a minute, why don't we have the right formulation? monoclonals work. they don't work on omicron? could they not have come up with a new formulation? it seems crazy there's none left. >> there is a new formulation that works, but it's in desperately short supply. very little in new york hospitals and nationally. >> why? >> well, it's a new -- it's a new drug.

it's called sotriplov. we need shipments sent to new york city urgently. this is the epicenter of omicron. at this point hospitals have stopped using it because treatments we've had in stock right now are completely ineffective against omicron. >> all right, mark, thank you so much. you're going to have a very busy holiday and your work cut out for you starting january 1st. coming up next, the echoes of january 6th reverberating through art. how stephen sondheim's musical "assassins" is even more relevant today three decades since it first premiered. when our daughter and her kids moved in with us... our bargain detergent couldn't keep up. turns out it's mostly water. so, we switched back to tide. one wash, stains are gone.

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this morning, the house committee investigating january 6th insurrection says it is full steam ahead to get to the bottom of what happened nearly one year ago, with so many americans asking why. it is even being explored in a new production of steven sottenheim's musical, "assassins," already sold out. it's about assassins and would-be assassins throughout

american history. but here's the thing. it doesn't glory what these people did, it examines why in the world they did it. i spoke with the show's director, john doyle, and one of the actors, bianca horn, and asked how they saw the connection to this fragile moment in this country in this extraordinary piece of art. >> there is an image of january the 6th in the production. i don't want to spoil it for too many people, but there is. and even if there were not an actual image, i think it would -- the modern audience, the connection, it's pretty clear. it's pretty easy to make, and so what i'm asking as the director is, if you feel for these people, who did these terrible things, what do you feel for those people, who were planning to do terrible things. who were crying out to assassinate. and i think it's also interesting that when the piece was first written, there's a song in the piece called "something just broke, which is about, where were you when president kennedy died.

where were you in that moment in time. a lot of our audience wasn't on this earth when president kennedy was assassinated. and for them, the thing that broke is like what happened on january the 6th, when democracy cracked. and i think that connection is very potent in the piece. >> then, bianca, is this show a warning of what should be to come? i mean, while you've been in production, january 6th happened. >> yeah, i -- i don't know if it's a warning. it feels more like a mirror. to see what can happen when people unheard, when people feel like they aren't connected to

their country, to their community. it feels like these characters are a mirror of what we can be, if we aren't connected and present in our own lives. >> then how scary is it, right? the show is a warning, it's a mirror, it's a reflection on society. but it's a mirror based on these people doing heinous things, because they think it's the right thing to do. how scary is that? >> how scary is it to not talk about it, to act like it's not happening, to let another january 6th take place. i would rather come on stage every night and give voice to this, and these people who have done these heinous things and saying, what are you doing about it? how are you interpreting ways happening right now. >> the show has a lot of meaning for a lot of people. its creator, steven sondheim

passed away just a couple of weeks ago. why do you think he created this work? what do you think he wanted people to see. >> i spoke to him on the phone a couple of days before he die. he was a personal friend of mine as well as this amazing person who changed the face of the american musical theater. and we were talking about the piece, and he said, i wanted to scare people. ♪ i am unworthy of your love ♪ . what steve had the extraordinary ability to do is get to the humanity in the idea. and, you know, his music and his lyrics -- his lyrics are extraordinary, but in the worst character, in somebody like john wilkes booth, who is singing the most appalling words about

culture, he writes the most beautiful tune. ♪ don't be scared, you won't be there ♪ ♪ everybody screams ♪ >> so he's constantly mixing beauty and awfulness together. because every human being is a mix of those two things. >> because you're making the show, you've studied this history, these assassins. and now you're living, watching the repercussions of january 6th, do you think things are different now or it's more of the same? an ugly scene. >> as a foreign person who loves this country, who was educated in this country for some time, who owes a lot to this country, i would say something major has to happen. and somehow or another, we've got to turn our -- maybe the theater can be some small part of helping this, but turn our

thinking into, how do we work together? ow do we help each other, as opposed to how do we get angry with each other. >> we have got to keep asking what turns people to do these things and how we can come together. please note, we did that interview a couple of weeks ago before the indoor mask mandate was put in place here in new york city. moving forward, bad luck for you, i am picking up coverage for a second hour right after a quick break. don't go anywhere. we've got a lot more to cover. . we've got a lot more to cover. s. everything felt like a 'no'. everything. but then ray went from no to know. with freestyle libre 2, now he knows his glucose levels when he needs to. and... when he wants to. so ray... can be ray. take the mystery out of your glucose levels, and lower your a1c. now you know. try it for free. visit freestylelibre.us as a professional bull-rider

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