bhadelia. it is from p.j. who asks, saying, assume i have received both doses of the covid vaccine as scheduled. after one month, will my plasma donation help someone who has covid? >> great question, p.j., and great thinking, because one would think that as people are developing the antibodies that it would work. the way we study convalescent plasma is just taking whole plasma from survivors, so we don't have any from vaccine recipients. what the blood bank suggests is you should still donate blood if you get the vaccine, but you won't donate convalescent plasma until we can understand that more in terms of efficacy. but i would encourage you to donate blood and plasma for those reasons. >> let's move now to the timeline, doctors, because we know the cdc is discussing who will get the vaccine next. ezekiel says, i'm 46 with underlying conditions, diabetes, hypertension and a history of asthma. when can i expect to get the vaccine? dr. clayborne, i guess in general, when can americans with underlying condition

bhadelia, i know you have already gotten your vaccine.your thoughts right now on how "operation warp speed" has been rolling out so far? some are saying the vaccinations are moving slower than they had hoped. >> yeah, you just heard that. there's a big difference between 1 million and 20 million that was projected as a pop tetentia goal. those are frontline health care workers, other folks who require that, folks in long-term care facilities who should have been getting vaccinated. you're taking such a big endeavor in rolling it out. the thing that bothers me, that covid relief act has -- bill has about $6 billion for vaccine distribution. and that could be so helpful for states to start rushing and ramping up this effort. and we really need that to get going. >> the bill that is now stalled. dr. nahid bhadelia, thank you. >>> the mayor of jackson, mississippi, on the growing covid crisis in his community. >>> first, the east coast bracing for a winter wallop. the storm system churning through the mid-atlantic and up to new england bringi

bhadelia, we're watching cdc director robert redfield as we speak.amber of commerce. he said something a few moments ago that i want to play for you and our audience. >> the reality is december and january and february are going to be the worst times. i actually believe they're going to be the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation, largely because of the stress that it's going to put on our health care system. >> to be clear, we've been covering the story for nine months. dr. redfield isn't one who has a propensity for hyperbole. how do we begin to brer for that? >> i think we need to thaek those personal actions. the thing that scares me about this moment that i want to drive home, you see those high numbers. almost 100,000 americans are hospitalized. we're seeing 2,500 deaths a day with this disease. we cannot become numb. this is not the peak. that's what's scary. this is the incline. when you look at our test positivity rate, it's doubled in the last month. we know we're doubling the number of cases. that means there's t

bhadelia, it's good to see you. so the travel over the weekend was exceptional, all things considered. a lot of americans decidetion that they wanted to get away, wanted to see family. what do you make of what that is going to mean for the spread across the country and when will we start seeing that spike? >> yeah, katy, i think all you have to do is look back one month. right? look at california as an example. california's one of the epicenters right now in our country of this pandemic. and the state put in these lockdown orders. but when you look at the cell phone mobility data, people didn't stop moving as much as they did after the first lockdown. and you only have to look at the tsa data for l.a.x. they saw their biggest day of travel during the pandemic on november 20th. 44,000 people. the second largest? december 23rd. so if what played out with the increased number of cases leading to the hospitalizations that you're seeing in december now because of the holiday travel in november we're up on a hill, a reall

nahid bhadelia. she worked with the world health organization back when we were a member nation during the ebola outbreak and is among one of our medical contributors. dr. bhadelia, it's good to see you. so the travel over the weekend was exceptional all things considered. a lot of americans deciding they wanted to get away, wanted to see family. what do you make of what that is going to mean for the spread across the country, and when will we start seeing that spike? >> yeah, katey, i think all you have to do is look back one month, right? look at california as an example. california is one of the epicenters right now in our country of this pandemic. and the state put in these lockdown orders, but when you look at the mobility data, people didn't stop moving as much as they did after the first lockdown. and you only have to look at the tsa data from lax. they saw their biggest travel during the pandemic. the second largest, december 23rd. and so if what played out with the increased number of cases

nahid bhadelia in just a few moments.want to go to politics in georgia where an audit of the state's absentee ballots has found no evidence of fraud. more than 15,000 randomly chosen absentee ballot envelopes in cobb county were reviewed for this report. there were ten ballots that were initially flagged as being unsigned or having mismatched signatures, but investigators later confirmed that they were, in fact, legitimately cast by the voters who returned them. and the audit ultimately confirmed a 99% confidence level in the presidential election results after two recounts, both by hand and by machine. still, president trump continued to rail against georgia republicans, tweeting last night, quote, i love the great state of georgia but the people who run it from the governor to the secretary of state are a complete disaster and don't have a clue or worse. nobody can be this stupid. trump then proceeded to touch on some type of conspiracy that raffensperger's brother works for china which somehow connects to what he says

bhadelia, that's a perfect setup for you.hat does need to be done differently to fix this problem? what are things that officials should be doing now that they should be cancelling their new year's holiday plans to scramble to try to figure out, so that as peter points out some of those thousands of lives we're losing every day might be saved? >> yeah, kasie, i want to underscore it, because the urgency is even higher because we're expected to move into the darkest month given the holiday travels. you're seeing an increasing number of transmissions and the new variant recently discovered in u.s. soil, that setting us up for potentially more losses of life. so there's two aspects of this. i think that we have simply not spent enough resources on the allocution and distribution of these vaccines. and maybe some of those resources will come from the relief bill that was signed on sunday but the way the bill is played out, the vaccines have been delivered to states and right now, it's medical facilities, in long-term facilities t

bhadelia, is the fda final approval basically pro forma now.hen distribution begins on that? what are the actual sort of mechanical steps after today's vote? >> so the fda will take into consideration the vote that happened today. and most likely they're going to adopt the recommendation from the independent committee. one thing that they -- what today revealed is there were remaining questions an the fda will go back and ask pfizer to continue answering that. one is how long does the protection last from the vaccine. does it work as well in all of the different subgroups so they may come back with the emergency authorization is the asks for pfizer to continue the investigations so we know a little bit more about the vaccine. >> do we know anything, wasn't a unanimous vote from this committee. do we know anything about the concerns for the people that did not vote to approve? >> there were a couple of discussions, nicolle. one was the discussion about the age group between 16 and 17, the emergency use authorization is for those over 16 years of

bhadelia, thank you for joining me this morning. i appreciate it. >> thank you stephanie. >> every time she's here, i feel safer and smarter. >>> we've got brand-new exclusive nbc reporting on the federal investigation into president trump's personal attorney, former new york city mayor rudy giuliani. why sources are saying it's, quote, very active. and we will talk to the man president-elect biden has tapped to lead this nation's economic recovery. a huge job. what he's going to do to help americans that are scraping by on day one. his first broadcast interview with brian deese since being nominated is just ahead. does scrubbing grease feel like a workout? scrub less with dawn ultra it's superior grease-cleaning formula gets to work faster, making easy work of tough messes. dawn is a go-to grease-cleaner throughout the kitchen, too. keep a bottle in the laundry room to pre-treat greasy stains. and keep dawn in the garage to lift grease off car rims. it's even gentle enough to clean wildlife affected by oil. dawn's grease cleaning p

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nahid bhadelia, thank you very much for joining us tonight.appreciate it. >> thank you, lawrence. >> thank you. >>> and the answer to the big question is next, can the president pardon himself? harvard's constitutional law professor, laurence tribe, will join us right after this break with the answer. you should be taking notes. this is a free harvard law school class right here on "the last word" next. protect it today, enjoy it for years. with walmart protection plans by allstate. protect it today, enjoy it for years. ♪ you're still the one ♪ that i love to touch ♪ still the one ♪ and i can't get enough ♪ we're still having fun, ♪ and you're still the one applebee's 2 for $20. now that's eating good in the neighborhood. but some things are too serious to be ignored. if you still have symptoms of crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis even after trying other medications, it may be a sign of damaging inflammation, which left untreated, could get much worse. please make an appointment to see your gastroenterologist right away. or connect with th

nahid bhadelia. she work would the world health organization back when we were a member nation during the ebola outbreak, among our medical contributors. and melissa murray, judge for sonia sotomayor. good evening and welcome to you all. doctor, this is an excitement dichotomy we have in front of us. we want to be excited about the arrival of the vaccines, and yet the predictions for the dark, dark winter we are in for don't get much more grim than what we just heard from the head of the cdc. as unfair as this question may be to you, can you give us a ballpark estimate by the month. when will most of the souls watching a broadcast like this one be inoculated? at least their first of two inoculations? >> i'll start by saying it depends what country you're in 2021 in the u.s. we're probably looking at if everything holds true, the manufacturing holds true, the distribution and actually getting people to take the vaccine, and if more vaccine candidates come through and are successful. because it doesn't

bhadelia and dr. clayborne. out that for others who weren't watching yesterday, her fever got pretty high, to 103.9. how should people react to that when they take this vaccine, and we're getting a lot of questions about that. >> i do expect that side effects with the coronavirus vaccine, in particular the pfizer vaccines as well as the moderna vaccines, may be more significant than you're used to having, say, than with your typical flu shot. we are seeing injection site soreness, which we often have after a vaccination, but also fever, some headaches, and i think it would be advisable to give yourself a snow day, so to speak, the day of an after-vaccination just so your body has time to mount the appropriate immune response here to adapt to this and for you to feel better before you go back to work. >> i just want to point out while talking with that nurse from california, she said, i had these symptoms for a very short period of time. certainly by later that day, if not the next day, i was feeling great again.

bhadelia, how is this rollout going?it the end of the week here, it started with the historic pictures of nurses being injected in new york city and new jersey and across the country. is it going as planned? will they make tweaks for the things that need to change to make sure this gets quickly to the people who need it? >> yeah. so for the most part, it's been smooth. you know, of course the winter storm here in the northeast and that as far as i know hasn't caused any delays but that definitely sort of tells you the number of types of variables that could be out of our control that could affect the future, particularly with the winter coming around. i'm getting my vaccine actually, the pfizer pfizer biontech vaccine this morning at 9:00. in our own hospitals it is going quite smoothly and pfizer has the doses in the warehouse and looking for guidance on how to get them delivered. that's one things that will happen with the upcoming doses in next couple of weeks because the hospitals have been told by their state they'r

nahid bhadelia, thank you very much for joining us tonight. appreciate it. >> thank you, lawrence. >> thank you. >>> and the answer to the big question is next, can the president pardon himself? harvard's constitutional law professor, laurence tribe, will join us right after this break with the answer. you should be taking notes. this is a free harvard law school class right here on "the last word" next. that's siiir patrick. oooooow. sir. my husband would have been on the sidelines. but not anymore! an alternative to pills voltaren is the first full prescription strength non-steroidal anti-inflammatory gel to target pain directly at the source for powerful arthritis pain relief. voltaren. the joy of movement. yit's more than just a house. [music playing throughout] it's a kitchen that's been passed down, along with the recipes. three generations on the wall... with room to grow. the rhythm of home... the smells, the sounds, the flow... the feeling of owning a home is not black or white. citi is working across our business to make home ownersh

nahid bhadelia joining us now, medical director of special pathogens at boston medical center doctor, it sounds like you're a very busy woman these days i've got to ask you, we know this mutated strain is in other countries for sure experts say it's probably here in the united states why don't we know that for sure? >> yeah, contessa, great question, and i think you can say the same thing about other countries that haven't yet detected that strain which is to find that strain, what we need to do is to take a percentage of the samples that are diagnosed and do deep genetic analysis, and the u.s., our capacity hasn't been spectacular. the cdc released a report that said they had only analyzed 51,000 cases of the then 17 million cases we had had which means that if the strain is here, we might just be missing it because the holes in our net are too wide, but the point here, though, to the travel testing is this is why it's important for us to continue all the public health measures if this strain is more transmissible, a sure way to stop it is to continue the public health measures. >> i

bhadelia, thank you so much for being here. i'm sure we will be talking to you really soon. we appreciate your time and your exp experti expertise. >>> ayman and ali joining us this entire hour. we're expecting more vaccines to arrive in more places and more front line workers to get vaccinated throughout this hour. we'll be covering all of it. >>> despite the president's efforts to overturn the election and despite the violence in some places, electors across the country are voting today. once joe biden passes the 270 mark, he will officially be the president-ele president-elect. that allowed mef aggressively and save without breaking my back or breaking the bank. ♪ my job is to help new homeowners who have turned into their parents. i'm having a big lunch and then just a snack for dinner. so we're using a speakerphone in the store. is that a good idea? one of the ways i do that is to get them out of the home. you're looking for a grout brush, this is -- garth, did he ask for your help? -no, no. -no. we all see it. we all see it. he has blue hair. -okay. -blue. progressive

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gnaw henahid bhadelia and medic director of the special pathogens unit at boston medical senator andmedicine. the question i've been asking my team and my family all day, is how could this virus become more contagious? it is already the most distinguishing thing that is it could take down a whole wedding or a restaurant. what does more contagious look like? >> nicolle, great question. and i think it is sort of important to note in general that every time a virus or bacteria goes from one host to another, it evolves ever so slightly. that is why when we do disease vee investigations, we look at what has happened. and they're noting multiple mutations in the spike protein of the virus that is uses to enter the human cell and the concern as you said is that this strain is more transmissible. this means it could transmit with greater ease between people and part of what they're basing that on is two things. one they're noticing that it is becoming the predominant straight in a lot of new infections and they're seeing the number of infections that they have go up. however, that latter par

bhadelia said we're on the upswing, we're not close to the peak, we haven't factored in thanksgivinget. we haven't had the holiday season take hold where people will be visiting each other against the wishes and the guidance of the cdc. so these numbers are bad. they're setting new records for deaths, hospitalizations every day. but the doctors have been telling us we can expect them to get worse from here. let's turn to one of them, former acting director of the cdc, president and ceo of the robert wood johnson foundation, dr. richard besser. good to see you today. we have had some hopeful news on the vaccine front that hopefully, you know, the fda will approve this and will start to get it into people who need it the most, as soon as by the end of the year. but let's stop and talk about where we are right now. did i overstate anything i said in terms of how this is climbing? >> i don't think so. i think this is clearly the most dangerous period we have had in the pandemic. and it's dangerous for a number of reasons. it's dangerous because we don't have a national approach in terms