joe fryer back with you for another hour of "msnbc reports," christmas eve edition. the last-minute scramble for christmas is complicated by the omicron variant. testing lines are long. patience is wearing thin. air travelers are dealing with lots of delays and cancellations in part due to staffing shortages from covid exposures. for the fourth straight day, the nation saw more than 200,000 new covid infections, nearly a quarter million on thursday.

in new york, the governor announced this morning another new record in her state. more than 44,000 new cases in one day. new york is adding 13 new testing sites to try to deal with the surge. in south africa and surrounding countries, covid cases are showing signs of decline. today the biden administration announced it will lift the covid travel ban from those eight african nations starting on new year's day. joining me now from times square where record cases have led to covid testing in the subway stations is nbc's kathy park. from overseas in the uk, molly hunter. and dr. paul sax from brigham and women's hospital and a harvard medical school professor. kathy, let's start with you. new york city is the place to see the ball drop. now it's a covid hotspot. the state just shattered its case record for the third day in a row. are new year's eve plans still

in place in spite of the spike in cases? what are new york city officials doing to prepare? >> reporter: yeah, hey, joe, good to see you again. covid cases are rising in new york city but according to the mayor, we'll still have a new year's eve celebration right here in times square, however it will be scaled back. typically you have about 58,000 revellers. now the number will be closer to 15,000. and those who come out will need to be fully vaccinated. you need to bring your vaccine cards, your i.d., and also have a mask on the entire time. so a lot of safety precautions that will be put in place. the mayor is saying, look, new yorkers have a lot to celebrate, a lot of milestones that we were able to cross over the past year. but we will have a celebration that will be done safely, joe. >> so kathy, a question a lot of people have. yes, we're seeing more cases, yes, we're seeing breakthrough cases. but how are hospitals in new york doing? i know in florida we checked in

with sam brock, hospitalizations there have not exploded like cases. is that true in new york too? >> reporter: yeah, i think it's very similar. what we're seeing really across the board, not here, just in new york, but in across the country, a lot of these hospitalizations are among the unvaccinated. you heard from the mayor also, the governor, they're saying that they are seeing hospitalizations go up with the infection rising. but it's nothing like what we saw in march of 2020. mayor bill de blasio saying that it is much more manageable at this point. the hospitalizations are holding steady, joe. >> let's go overseas to molly, because europe sometimes is a bit of a crystal ball for america. the uk topped 100,000 new cases in a single day for the first time ever in a single week. now infections are hitting health care workers do. molly, what can the u.s. learn about omicron by watching what's

happening in the uk? >> reporter: hey, joe, that's right, we have to look at the uk, at europe, as the forerunner. whatever we're seeing here, you will see on that side of the atlantic in just a couple of weeks. of course what's happening with omicron is it's even a few days, less than a week. we just got the new numbers today, you mentioned we topped out at 100,000 on wednesday. joe, we just had more than 122,000 new cases today. so we have not topped out yet. you mentioned health care staff. the estimates here in the uk is that one-third of health care staff could be out by new year's. so the problem is, as kathy says, look, omicron is not sending as many people to the emergency room, to the hospital, as we saw with delta. the problem is, though, half or a third of health care workers are out, it's going to take a lot fewer cases to overwhelm hospital systems here, joe. >> so even if their symptoms are mild, they're out, which is why we're starting to see some changes to the guidance here in america when health care workers

are infected. molly, prime minister boris johnson resisted lockdowns, and a headline in "the new york times" says europeans are starting to talk about learning to live with rather than defeating covid. is that what you're hearing? >> reporter: aren't we all, in some ways, let's get on with it. but definitely that headline tracks with people we're talking to across the continent in the uk and what prime minister boris johnson is trying to make his country believe. he's been very strong, look, get the booster, be very careful about who you're socializing with this weekend. he has not put in restrictions like closing bars and nightclubs, limiting social gatherings to ten people. the netherlands goes into a full lockdown on monday, but this government, this country, has been so obsessed with protecting christmas tomorrow, i wouldn't be surprised if new restrictions came down the pipeline next week, joe. >> molly, kathy, thank you to

both of you. dr. saks, we're heading into another year of the pandemic. it will be our third year of the pandemic. going forward, what do you think life looks like with covid still around? is that headline accurate, that we need to learn to live with covid instead of defeating it? >> joe, i think there's no doubt that covid is here to stay. the question is how serious is it going to be going forward. and i want to remind people that it's still a very serious disease among three groups of people. in particular, you've already mentioned the unvaccinated, but also the people who are immunocompromised. that's about 5% of the u.s. population. they don't actually get much protection from the vaccines. they are also at risk. and then the third group are people who have multiple medical problems, usually the elderly, and they also are getting sick with covid-19. so i think that we still need to be very careful. i know that it is the holidays, but the virus really doesn't care about the holidays, and we

have to still be careful going forward. >> and it is clearly spreading very quickly right now. dr. sax, the biden administration is lifting its travel restrictions against south africa, eight other countries, next week. it's not clear what purpose the restrictions really serve at this point given that omicron is dominant in the u.s. in hindsight, what measures if any do you wish the administration would have taken a month ago to prepare for omicron? do you think the travel bans helped at all, should testing have been more of a priority? what do you wish you would have seen? >> that's a good question. many of us in the infectious disease and epidemiology field think that travel restrictions are of limited use, except at the very outset of a pandemic. and we are far from that. in addition, the fact that they discovered the omicron variant in south africa is really reflective only of the fact that they had a really good sequencing program and were able to pick it up. in hindsight, i wish we had had a much broader sequencing

program out there so we could be looking for these variants more comprehensively. also the bugaboo in the united states since early 2020 has been having adequate testing. even now, as you show in these pictures, there's still lines to get tested. there are shortages of rapid home tests. there are ways we could actually making testing much more accessible. i hope, going forward, that that does happen. >> dr. sax, you highlighted a "boston globe" op-ed on your twitter this morning from a boston doctor. it says, unvaccinated people make up less than 17% of massachusetts adults but 70% of those sick enough from covid-19 to require hospitalization. unvaccinated patients, ten times more likely to be hospitalized, 13 times as likely to die from this disease. at this point what else can we do to vaccinate the unvaccinated? when if ever do we move on? is omicron spreading so quickly, could that be the thing that gets people who are unvaccinated to say hey, i'm going to get

vaccinated? or is it too hard at this point? >> i think a good place to start is to make it at easy as possible. we've done that, pretty much, although i notice it's getting harder to get a booster because of the demand. don't make it difficult to sign up online, et cetera, just have it available. the other thing that changes people's behavior is make it necessary for them to do what they want to do. that might be go to work, go to a sporting event, go to a bar or restaurant. if you have those requirements in place, some people who are on the fence are really going to go ahead and get vaccinated for their own personal freedom. aside from the people who are staunch anti-vaxxers, i don't think we're going to make much progress with them. that actually represents a small minority of the u.s. population. having these policies in place, though, makes a huge difference. and also it tracks right down to schools. the united states historically has had one of the best school mandates for other childhood immunizations. i think it's time to move

forward to make the case for covid-19 as well. >> dr. paul sax, thank you so much for joining us on this holiday. we do appreciate it. >> thanks. there's a lot more to come on this busy christmas eve. next, the enormous impact we could see from the guilty verdict in the kim potter trial, and what it means for the push for police reform. plus it's been a rough holiday so far for the president's agenda. the fallout could impact the elections in 2022, even 2024. that's still ahead on "msnbc reports." ell clean? downy unstopables in-wash scent boosters keep your laundry smelling fresh way longer than detergent alone. if you want laundry to smell fresh for weeks, make sure you have downy unstopables in-wash scent boosters.

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welcome back. now to minnesota, where a former police officer faces up to 15 years in prison after she was convicted if a shooting death of a young black man during a traffic stop. a jury found kim potter guilty of first and second degree manslaughter. potter said she intended to tase him but ended up pulling her

gun. she's the third minnesota police officer to be held accountable in recent years after derek chauvin, who was convicted of killing george floyd in 2020, and mohammed noor, convicted of shooting an unarmed woman in 2015. nbc correspondent shaquille brewster is in minneapolis. harry litman is a legal affairs columnist for "the los angeles times." shaq, it's been roughly 24 hours since the jury announced its verdict. how are people there feeling about the results? >> joe, there's still a lot of surprise, people digesting those results. initially there were fears that if the verdict went the other way, then we would be talking about protests and the reaction to that. but that is not what happened. you heard celebrations instead in front of the courthouse, celebrations and, again, a lot of surprise, especially because of how long this jury took to

deliver their verdict. 27 hours where they were tucked away, sequestered for their deliberations over the course of four days. so many people have brought up this point about accountability versus justice, how this is not full justice because daunte wright is still dead, he will not be brought back. but how this is accountability for the action and in the words of the jury, the crime that kim potter took when she shot and killed him. so you have a lot of people still digesting it and there's still a lot of surprise that there are those two counts of guilty for those two counts of manslaughter. >> harry, looking ahead to february, kim potter faces up to 15 years in prison. is that what's going to happen, 15 years? what all is going to go into determining how long she's actually going to spend behind bars? >> so the default, joe, will be seven years, probably. now, the judge can in fact

increase that, up to 100%, up to 14 years, no more than that. and the prosecution is going to ask for it based on so-called aggravating factors. she will then in turn serve two-thirds of that under minnesota law and the rest, the balance, in supervised release. had she been convicted only of the second degree charge which the jury quickly came to unanimity on, it would have been starting at about four years. so the big question will be whether the judge increases from the default of seven years. but in any event, especially that extra charge of first degree, which as we've just said, took them an extra 14 hours to come to, that means, real time, almost double. >> shaq, kim potter is the third minnesota police officer in recent years to be accountable for their conduct on the job, as we've said. there is a lot of scrutiny

facing officers right now. what's the impact this is having on police recruitment? >> that's really going to be the question, especially when you look at a city like minneapolis where they're struggling to fill some of the 300 vacancies that this department has right now. kim potter was a brooklyn center police officer. but you're still dealing with those difficulties in drawing more officers in. we did hear from the attorney general addressing this point yesterday, seemingly addressing this point yesterday, when he had a message specifically directed towards police officers. listen to what he said. >> we don't want you to be discouraged. your community respects and appreciates you. we want you to uphold the highest ideals of our society and ideals of safety. and when a member of your profession is held accountable, it does not diminish you. in fact, it shows. it shows the whole world that those of you who enforce the law are also willing to live by it.

>> at another point he told police officers, we hold you in high regard but we also hold you to high standards. you're really getting the sense that at least he's not trying to paint this as an anti-police prosecution, but instead holding one officer accountable for one action. >> harry, as shaq mentioned, this is not seen as justice, but accountability is the word. in your mind, how important is this verdict as a step toward accountability for police officers? >> first, as shaq says, i think it's really important to separate out individual trials from any kinds of social justice movements or legislative campaigns. it does strike me, joe, that this verdict would have been very improbable several years ago. obviously potter wasn't trying to shoot him, but also under minnesota law, if you parse it carefully, as the jury did, you

get to the first degree manslaughter. you don't want jurors in there acting out of either fear or zeal. on the other hand, i think you do have in hennepin county, maybe elsewhere, a more sensitized jury pool that understands better the lines of fair and foul in individual encounters between police officers and citizens. and in that sense, it's a step forward. but again, putting that kind of pressure on individual trials to be bellwethers of social movements is precarious, and you need to be fair to individual defendants. >> all right, shaq brewster in minnesota, harry litman in a place with palm trees behind him, contrasts for where you're spending the holiday weekend. thank you. we've seen a lot of movement in the house's investigation

into the january 6th attack. those developments, next. with downy infusions, let the scent set the mood. feel the difference with downy.

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write down phone numbers for your parents, siblings and neighbors. pick a place to meet your family if you are not together and can't go home. remind your parents to pack an emergency supply kit. making a plan might feel like homework, but it will help you and your family stay safe during an emergency. now to the latest developments on the investigation into the january 6th insurrection at the u.s.

capitol. nbc news has obtained a letter from former new york city police commissioner bernard kerik's lawyer which says kerik is prepared to release documents he believes are not privileged early next week, the attorney says, because he does not trust the panel with the material. this comes as committee chair bennie thompson told "the washington post" he's particularly interested in why it took more than three hours for former president donald trump to call on his supporters to stand down. the delay in time could be a factor in whether the committee decides to make a criminal referral. joining us now, nbc news reporter julie tsirkin on capitol hill. >> reporter: joe, i reached out

to the committee about the letter but haven't heard back. this false narrative that the committee is somehow altering or not presenting the texts and documents they receive from witnesses accurately is sort of spreading here in the last week. we saw this from others the committee wanted to hear from, like jim jordan, for example, who accused the committee of altering the text that mark meadows presented to the committee. kerik's lawyer is saying his client will cooperate in terms of delivering those documents and turning those over to the committee and also providing testimony to the committee in mid-january. so this is a win for the committee no matter how you dice it. they get to hear from another witness that they subpoenaed, bringing themselves one step closer. of course we know that kerik was involved in rudy giuliani's efforts to say that the 2020 election results were false and make those claims as well. >> jeremy peters, the former president, donald trump, has asked the u.s. supreme to block, to overturn lower court rulings allowing the national archives to hand over white house records

from that day. do we have an idea what these records will likely tell us? and what's the likelihood that this effort by the former president will succeed? >> i think if you look at it in the big picture here, you've seen stonewalling, not just from the president, but from just about everybody who is connected with his presidential campaign and who is allied with him in congress. you've seen the highly unusual step here of the commission going after, seeking information from members, sitting members of congress including jim jordan, one of president trump's closest allies and somebody who remains in contact with him. mark meadows, steve bannon, they've all said they will not cooperate. so it's hard to see anybody who is close to the president actually participating in this effort. and what they've done is try to

cast this as entirely illegitimate, as they rewrite the history of what happened on january 6th into some type of not just -- they're not just looking at the events of that day. they've made the people who participated in this assault on the seat of american democracy into heroes and martyrs, saying they are victims of a heavy-handed government overreach and prosecution. so, you know, i just don't really see a point at which any of these folks were aligned with president trump willingly cooperate with the commission. >> julie, let's talk more about a couple of the names jeremy brought up. we know the committee wants to hear from two republican lawmakers, jim jordan and scott perry. perry said he won't committee. jordan hasn't said what he's

going to do yet. what will the committee do if they say they won't cooperate? >> reporter: it's rare for members of the house to not cooperate with internal investigations. to back up jeremy's point here, gym jordan and scott perry never thought the committee was legitimate, perry even called the committee illegitimate when they asked to interview him. chairman bennie thompson of the committee, when he wrote these letters to jordan, to perry, he said, look, we'll come to your districts, we'll have a really casual sort of conversation here. they're not subpoenaed just yet. and when you look at the next steps that the committee could take, presuming that perry and jordan won't cooperate, a subpoena is unprecedented. holding members of congress in contempt of congress is also unprecedented. but you had members on the panel, including adam kinzinger, a republican, saying they will go after them and won't stop until they get the information they're looking for. we'll see how it plays out in the next couple of weeks, joe. >> jeremy, jordan and perry

aren't the only republican lawmakers the committee is interested in. do we know who else is potentially on the committee's radar? >> at this point, no, i think that kind of remains to be seen, joe. i think one of the things you have to look at going ahead here is exactly -- is what happens in the courts, right? steve bannon has been held in contempt, he's fighting this. there is also this michael flynn lawsuit. he had a setback the other day in this lawsuit he filed on tuesday. but he has the opportunity to go back and re-file. and so you have more that's going on here, outside of the halls of congress and in the courts. i think that's where you're going to see potentially some of the most decisive activity. we'll find out from there exactly what we may -- what

types of information we may get from these people. >> jeremy peters, julie tsirkin, thank you very much for joining us this christmas eve. we appreciate it. while the january 6th investigation moves ahead, the president's agenda remains in a holding pattern as we head into the new year. earlier today, after stopping to see a christmas tree in downtown dc, the president did briefly speak with reporters. >> reporter: what's your message to americans celebrating christmas? >> keep the faith. >> for the president and democrats, it has been a challenge to keep the faith after his top agenda priority was derailed last weekend when senator joe manchin announced he was against the president's build back better agenda. nbc's josh lederman is at the white house. so josh, what's the white house plan when it comes to getting

some parts of that agenda across the line? >> reporter: hi, joe. the democrats know they have a limited window before the midterm elections and it becomes impossible to get anything done in washington. the to-do list for president biden remains the unfinished business from 2021. it's the build back better agenda and voting rights. now, on build back better, they essentially have to go back to the drawing board, try to figure out what joe manchin might be willing to support that would at least meet some of what these democratic priorities have long been on childcare, on pre-k, on climate change funding. but whether or not they're going to be able to get anywhere near the amount of funding that the biden administration has said is critical to be able to meet any of those goals is really an open question. and on voting rights, there's even less of a clear pathway forward. they can't use reconciliation,

meaning they need either 60 votes or they need some way around the filibuster, which is something that president biden has opened the door in the last couple of days to supporting a workaround for the filibuster, specifically for voting rights. but the fact of the matter is that's going to be an uphill battle as well because kyrsten sinema, the senator from arizona, is opposed to that. joe manchin is uncertain on that as well. in the meantime, working on what they can do through executive authority on climate change, through regulation and some of these other issues where they hope to make progress even if it's more incremental than what they might be able to get through congress. >> josh, we continue to see the president's poll numbers struggling, i believe around 42% was the approval rating in the latest poll. what's the white house saying about that? >> reporter: the white house of course doesn't want to put too much stock in polls that aren't

good for the president. so they're downplaying what that's going to mean in terms of his agenda. at the end of the day, the people he needs to pass this legislation are people who are already elected to congress. it's not voters around the country. where the white house is really concerned about those poll numbers is the midterm elections and what biden's declining popularity is going to mean for the prospects for democrats heading into that election where there is a very good chance that democrats are going to lose the house, the senate, possibly both, and if democrats lose a lot of ground, it would make it all but impossible for president biden to really accomplish much of anything substantially in the last two years of his administration. >> josh lederman at the white house, josh, thanks so much. coming up, we've seen this year the devastating impact disinformation can have. we're going to take a look at what's next in that fight. that's ahead in this hour of "msnbc reports." snbc reports."

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it has been nearly one year since january 6th, the day violent insurrectionists attacked the nation's capitol in the hopes of overturning the election. since then 700 people have been charged for their involvement and at least 20 sentenced to jail time. the forces that compelled rioters to break into the capitol, mainly the disinformation and misinformation around the election, they haven't gone away. in some cases they may have gotten stronger and more widespread. joining me now is a former director from the state department's counterterrorism bureau. he's now a professor at the middlebury institute of international studies. also joining us is nbc news senior reporter brandy zodrozny.

jason, you write that we're ill-equipped to fight disinformation and misinformation. what role do you see disinformation and misinformation playing? >> you had an eclectic mix of individuals that convened in washington, dc first, white supremacists, antigovernment individuals associated with groups like the oath keepers and three percenters. then you had movements like qanon. what brought them together was a lie, a lie that was disseminated over the marketplace of misinformation like facebook. in my view, that challenge remains. social media, the larger ecosystem of the internet, allows for the grievances these individuals felt, that they were being affected by, that their grievances weren't being heard, that brought them to the capitol. that continues to trickle throughout the social media

platforms. there's a lot that can be done, ranging from adopting new laws, holding social media companies accountable for not following their trust and safety guidelines, amongst other things. >> jason, the pentagon updated its policy this week to try to stop extremist activity from within its own ranks. let me read you what's the changing. the new policy lays out in detail the banned activities which range from advocating terrorism or supporting the overthrow of the government to fundraising or rallying on behalf of an extremist group or liking or reposting extremist views on social media. what's your reaction to the pentagon's new policy? it might be hard to believe they need a policy for something like this. do you think it goes far enough, sends a strong enough message? >> i think it's quite late. this has been an enduring challenge within the u.s. military for a number of years now. and it's a good thing these policies have been adopted, but now it comes to the hard issue of implementation. what are the human and financial resources the pentagon is going

to put towards actually implementing these policies and regulations? the issue of ensuring that personnel that are brought on board, obviously that needs to be expanded in terms of their resources to do some things mentioned by the pentagon that need to be done. if you go back to 2017, the unite the right rally, you had active members of the military involved, and now three years later we're implementing regulations. that's good, but it has to come down to financial and human resources. it does mean taking away from buying the next aircraft carrier and devoting it to personnel who can check the fact that we're not putting military people with white supremacist views in an area in which they can do harm. >> brandy, i want to bring you in here.

you spend a lot of time reporting on the deep dark web. when you look back on 2021, the changes that were made to try to prevent the next january 6th, where are our shortcomings right now? do you think disinformation is flowing as easily on social media and online as it was last january at the beginning of the year? >> our shortcomings are many. and hi, joe, mary christmas, by the way. the government is taking the threat more seriously, a lot of arrests. the select committee, joe biden has a strategy for addressing the domestic violent extremism threat, and all of that is great. social media is doing what it always does, which is react. so whether it will have good programs in place when we get to, let's say, the midterms, to actually stop the next threat, that's just -- we have to sort of wait and see. you brought up an important point which is that hatred and

extremism doesn't come from nowhere. it's literally fueled by disinformation. you have to give people a reason to be afraid of someone else. for all the people who were at the capitol, it's because they felt like something was being stolen from them. the election, their neighborhoods, perhaps. and so to feel that lie, you need disinformation. and unfortunately that disinformation is still very, very present. you know, we may not see it on facebook as much because we don't have an election right now. but we're still seeing them on smaller platforms, because political polarization and internet use and covid stress, et cetera, et cetera, is still present. so yes, it is just as bad as ever but it doesn't have an outlet at this moment. >> brandy, the january 6th rioters were convinced of the big lie, as you mentioned, that the election was stolen from president trump. let's look forward. in the 2022 midterms and beyond, we're probably going to see similar rhetoric from politicians. but are social media platforms

and tech companies better prepared now to handle it? has anything changed? >> a lot of things have changed. there have been baby steps and bigger ones by huge platforms like facebook and youtube and smaller ones. but, you know, this is really hard. it's hard to stop hatred from flowing. and so, you know, the big platforms might be better equipped, but trump is banned, right, a lot of people behind stop the steal are banned, but the problem is that threats evolve. and it always feels like platforms are reacting. it still feels to me like they're reacting. and so we have yet to see how this threat will evolve, what new players will come on the stage, and if it will take, you know, a full four years for platforms to ban them. it's going to be hard. we have to wait and see. >> brandy zadrozny, merry christmas, jason, thanks for joining us on this holiday. hope you both have a safe, healthy holiday weekend.

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welcome back. there's a lot of uncertainty for students as they head into winter breaks, with the surge in the omicron variant. schools districts around the country are going to remote learning or maybe they're considering it after the holidays. our next next guest says that'sd idea. in a "new york times" op-ed, he said we learned our lesson last year, do not close schools. i'm joined by joseph allen, director of a healthy buildings program at harvard public school of health. you say it would be a tragic mistake. tell us why that is. >> thanks. there's not things that can pull me away from my family on christmas eve, but the prospects of millions of kids being out of school is one of them. we're getting very casual about closing down schools. we learned that students have learn loss in reading and math. millions of kids were simply

lost from the system. we've seen hundreds of thousands of cases of abuse and neglect that were missed, because we no longer had the ability to detect them. millions of missed meals whether schools are closed. the harms to kids, the severe outcomes are very rare. one in 100,000 is the hospitalization rate risk. that has been consistent through the alpha wave, delta wave and early signals from the omicron waves. the deaths for kids is down to 1 to 2 per million, mercifully. it is clear we can't make the same mistakes and close schools again. >> you mentioned some of the data shows kids at very low risk of being hospitalized. i think some have the fear that they could spread the covid to more vulnerable populations. how big of a concern should that be for school officials when they decide if they could keep schools open? >> absolutely. we've been very concerned, especially from the first year.

i was the first to write a playbook in how to keep adults and kids safe in school. thankfully adults have had the option to get vaccinated for at least eight months. the school districts that have done vaccine mandates have pushed the vaccinations up to 9 a% for all the people in school, new york city and l.a. everyone who wants a vaccine should have the opportunity. so on top of the low risks to kids, they ked get a vaccine, they should. my three kids are vaccinated. anyone who wants to continue to wear a mask should continue to do that. people are making the choices at this point to get vaccinated or not. it is a mistake to not be vaccinated at this point. your risk is still high. if you're separation nated, you're protected against severe disease, hospitalization and death. >> the cdc is recommending a test, so the students test positive, close contacts can continue coming to classes, as

long as the tests keep coming back negative. do you think all schools should consider this. >> i wrote a people on june 1st with my colleague talking about this strategy, and we don't just quarantine people, the whole classroom. that's a blunt instrument. that's a 2020 move. we have rammed tests to tell us who is infected or not. the goal should be to keep kids in school as much as possible rather than the 2020 goal, which was to close schools. we saw the devastating costs. this country is getting so casual. we're not paying attention to the risk differences. when the risk is low, we have the tools to protect adults with a safe and effective vaccine. the harms are accumulating very quickly. joseph allen, thank you so much for taking time out of your

christmas eve to spend time with you. that does it for me. we're going to leave you with a special look at the white house decoration with kellie o'donnell. >> things look different around this holiday season. the president and first lady did not host the kind of mix-and-mingle holidays parties of years gone by, but there were a limited number of open-house tours where guests could see the beautiful decorations. we wanted you to see them, too. dusting off long-ago christmas memories, a national family album of presidents past, who made a white house christmas tree their own. for any first family, there is only one first white house christmas. >> that's just beautiful. >> first lady jill biden welcomed this 18-foot frazier

fir from north carolina, including youngest grandson, little beau. inside the white house, a magical transformation, more than 100 volunteer decorators brought to life the theme selected by dr. biden -- gifts from the heart. >> we are united by what really matters, like points on a star, we come together at the heart. >> reporter: shimmering scenes, with nearly 79,000 lights aglow. more than 10,000 ornaments adorn 41 trees. 11 different gifts celebrated room by room, butterflies crafted from the pages of books note the gift of learning. the visual arts in the vermeil rooms, with -- while sugary eisen is the star in the state

dining room 120 pounds cover this gingerbread replica of the mansion. this also brings close landmarks of community. a tribute to many different frontline workers. >> that's what i saw across this country. that's what gave me my inspiration for gifts from the heart. >> family is among the gifts from the heart. stockings for the biden grandchildren line the mantel under president lincoln. >> they had, nana, can we spend our first year at the white house? i said, of course. >> making the glittering white house a home for christmas. th t. for strong protection, that's always discreet. question your protection. try always discreet. ♪ limu emu... & doug ♪ ♪

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♪♪ welcome to msnbc reports, everybody, i'm aaron gilchrist. on this christmas eve, families are gathering, covid cases are exploding. holidays are bracing for a avalanche, even though omicron cases appear to be on the whole milder, it's so contagious just a sheer number of cases will lead to a surge in hospital admission. it's leading to such a shortage of essentially workers, new york city shortened the isolation time to just five days. they must also have been vaccinated and must wear