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blackstock, thank you so much for being here. i need the president to be bold and courageous and innovative this tuesday. we heard so much about a very vaccine-centric strategy, and we need a plan that will involve layered mitigation, which we talk about so much. we need him to use his bully pulpit to encourage all states to have indoor mask mandates. we need him to make rapid testing even more accessible to people so they don't have to go through their insurance companies. we need him to talk about how he's going to make the testing infrastructure more robust. we also need to hear how he's going to set ventilation and air infiltration standards for businesses and schools and how he's going to close the gap in terms of vaccination rates because we're still seeing the same inequities we saw at the beginning of the vaccine rollout. we're now seeing with boosters nevertheless racial inequities and socioeconomic inequities and how we're going to keep workplaces safe as well. i want to hear a layered strategy approach. it cannot be va

blackstock, we'll have a few questions for you in a few moments. alison, a few days before the new year despite omicron sweeping the city, you're saying a pcr test could be a subway ride away in nyc. what can you tell us about that? >> reporter: testing in new york city has been a mess in recent days. people have waited for sometimes hours out in the cold in long lines for blocks just to try and get a covid test. over the counter rapid at-home tests, those seem to fly off the shelves the minute they are restocked, and now the state is stepping in and the city to try and help alleviate some of those issues by opening pop-up testing sites inside of subways. two of them open today. one here at the subway stop in times square. another at grand central. and speaking with people who showed up early this morning to the site here at the times square subway, waiting to get tested. we talked to a couple of people who said they had been trying to get tested in other places in the city for days but had been unsuccessful. listen to more of what we've heard. >>

blackstock. dr. blackstock, this exponential rise in cases is freaking everybody out, prompting closures everywhere, people are testing positive, there are staffing issues across businesses. but at the same time we are consistently seeing less hospitalizations. will you put this all into perspective for us? >> right, thanks so much, katy, for having me. yes, exactly, we're seeing this exponential rise in cases. we're not seeing the same degree of increase in hospitalizations yet. and that could be because of something inherent in this omicron variant. it may be a less virulent form. it could be also that it has a tendency to infect people who already have partial immunity, meaning they've been infected previously or they've been vaccinated. i would also say that we know that hospitalizations lag behind cases by about two to three weeks. so the full picture has yet to be seen. but as you mentioned earlier, we are seeing hospitals in certain areas reach capacity. and those are areas that have low vacci

blackstock and i have both been talking about for quite some time. it's really important to see this. the u.s. has sent 96 million doses to africa so far. unfortunately, there's a lot of people that remain unvaccinated. other g-20 countries have to do their part. i was pleased to see the administration yesterday committing to 200 million more tests being exported. so they've got to keep going. now, it doesn't end there. because when the vaccines show up at the airport, there's still work to do. so usaid has put about a quarter of a billion dollars of investment into the actual vaccination process. that includes the same issues we have to deal with here in the u.s. some people have vaccine hesitancy questions. some people, you know, we have distribution and transportation issues to rural areas. so we've got to go all out. this is a critical thing. it's probably one of the most important things that we need to be doing right now. >> and dr. blackstock, the omicron variant has been detected in countries across europe, yet the biden administration has on

blackstock, i don't think we can focus on this enough.nd, what is the difference between the omicron and the delta variant? and why is that something that doctors are concerned about in this latest surge? >> thanks so much for having me, jason. the two main differences is that the omicron variant is two to three times more transmissible than the delta variant. so it's much more contagious. it also has a mutation that allows it to evade immunity from a previous infection or from full vaccination. so those two factors make this variant much more scary. and we're seeing the doubling rate of it, every two to three days. we're seeing cases soar exponentially. and we'll see things probably worsen after the holidays. >> so one of the things about previous variations of coronavirus is, you know, you can get tests right after you get off a flight, they say sometimes it may take one or two days to show up. how fast is omicron compared to, say, the regular coronavirus or delta, like can you walk by somebody in the grocery store, can you go jogging b

uchÉ blackstock. she's an msnbc contributor.doctor, the pandemic has killed over 800,000 people. the new variant omicron has reached the u.s. we should caution it's still early, but some research suggests it's much more transmissible as delta but perhaps not quite as deadly. give us the latest you've seen on that variant and also the long-term game plan for combatting the virus. >> good morning, jonathan. obviously, that number, 800,000, is incredibly staggering. 400,000 of those deaths have been since the vaccine rolled out. so obviously, you know, the strategy we've been using since january is not working. i think it's due to a couple of factors. obviously there are gop leadership and a number of states that are pushing back on vaccines and vaccine mandates. there's tremendous information out there, and the administration needs to be more aggressive in using mitigation measures other than vaccination. we're at another inflection point where we have this new variant and we're seeing signs it's more transmissible and may be able

blackstock, founder and ceo of advancing health equity.s spreading really fast in london. tell me about what steps are being taken and what health official are saying out there. >> reporter: we're hearing about 20% of cases in the uk are now omicron -- or excuse me, in england are now omicron. within 48 hours we heard from the health secretary, it will become the dominant strain where i am right now in london. what are they doing? what they're not doing is imposing new restrictions. that's because boris johnson is facing an insurrection from within his own conservative tory party of lawmakers who say they will not take any more restrictions. but he is making some ambitious steps, he's saying he's going to get that booster, the third shot, in everyone adult's arms by the end of this month, moving it up from the end of january to just the end of the year. that's super ambitious, because that's going to take, it's estimated, about a million doses every single day for the rest of the month. so far, the highest they've ever done here in britain

uchÉ blackstock. she's the founder and ceo of advancing health equity and an msnbc contributor.t. can you explain what she means when she says the booster helps boost the efficacy against omicron? >> right. thanks so much for having me on this evening, zerlina. we don't have tons of data. this is all based on preliminary data, and most of it is based on lab studies. and essentially what we see is when you mix essentially the blood of people who are vaccinated versus people who are unvaccinated, omicron decreases the effectiveness of those vaccines, and so it's really important for people to understand we're seeing with these lab stories is that people who are vaccinated and previously infected or fully vaccinated and boosted actually do really well up against omicron, but this is just the lab data. what we're waiting for is real-life data, and we won't have that for several weeks. >> that's such a good point, and i think the distinction between how it works in the real world and how it works in a petri dish -- i don't know if that's what it's in technically. >> right. >> if you

blackstock, i'm hoping you can weigh in on this.t this new variant is producing milder illness than delta or its predecessors? >> i would say it looks promising. it's still too early. we're seeing a range of 40% to 65% decrease in hospitalization with omicron compared to the delta variant. there could be several different factors that account for that. in south africa, there's 75% of immunity. that would produce a milder course. in the uk and denmark, they have high rates of vac nachlgts that would also produce a mierld course. we'll see have to see how omicron works in the u.s. we're seeing a decoupling of cases and hospitalizations which is promising. >> perhaps milder, omicron very transmissible and still a real concern. we don't want to say otherwise. a real concern here in the united states. >> absolutely. >> the president outlined his new plan to tackle the variants. i pressed jen psaki on the show yesterday, why vaccination is not being required for domestic transportation. do you think that should be part of the biden plan a

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blackstock.nge because it's christmas eve eve, and this is my black santa with the booster shot. he is gearing the booster shot for everybody. tell me about this. people are really confused. everyone i know is really scared of omicron, or as i'm supposed to call omarian. they're scared of it. it does seem like it's spreading so fast. i've known multiple people who have unfortunately contracted covid just in the past couple weeks. omicron deadlier or just more spreadable? or should we cancel our plans? >> right. so thank you so much for having me. you know, i will say that the data that we have so far is preliminary. but what we see from the uk, south africa and denmark is omicron may be a bit milder than delta. so we're seeing a decreased risk of hospitalization among people who do get omicron. but to put that in context, both south africa and these european countries have a higher degree of partial immunity. south africa, 70% of people have been infected previously with covid. and the european c

blackstock, there is a lot of also confusion.ine because they heard it was less effective. and other people said, no get it. it's one shot and done there has been a lot of questions. now the cdc is saying that they actually do think pfizer and moderna are better. at this point, what do you recommend that people do? are you still in the camp of get whatever vaccine you can get and get it fast? or should we be pushing people to go and get pfizer and moderna, particularly if they're willing, given the surge to at least try to get vaccinated? >> right. so joy, in the beginning there was a scarcity of vaccines. >> yeah. >> that's why we were encouraging people to get whatever vaccine they could get. but now with this emerging data showing that the clotting issues with the johnson & johnson vaccine, especially among younger women, there is this issue that people maybe probably should take the mrna vaccine, and that is what is being recommended now. they do have higher efficacy, and that's been shown all along. so definitely based on th

blackstock was just saying. this is likely necessary but insufficient. 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 om

blackstock i believe you are with us on that. ask you a medical question before we pivot to the bigger question of what we want to hear from president biden tomorrow. moderna says its booster gives significant protection against omicron. can you tell us more? >> just the context for this is, this is a press release from moderna essentially what we know is from lab data showing that a booster with their 50 micro gram dose which is the dose people typically get with the moderna booster increases antibodies by about 37 times. a double booster. so giving that twice increases antibodies by about 80 times. and so the question is, you know, whether or not, which dose is sufficient. one. but also, two, we saw with the larger dose people had adverse effects with that. the other question is how does this translate into clinical outcomes? severe disease, hospitalations, and deaths sf we don't know whether this booster has any impact yet. all we know is lab data showing increase in antibodies. we know the immune system is complicated. there

uche blackstock. she's been seeing the lines, too, and she said, it's so frustrating, because it's like we don't learn from surge to surge. we know that the city is going to be distributing about 500,000 rapid at-home tests, as well as masks to community organizations, but dr. blackstock said we should have learned what was going on in europe that we knew it would come here, stephanie. >> all right, doctor, give us a reality check. break it down. what does it mean for people who are vaccinated and boostered, people who are just vaccinated, and for those who got nothing. >> well, if you look at the issue with delta, which is right now still causing the majority of the serious illnesses we're seeing, particularly in new york. actually being fully vaccinated and boosted, you actually have very, very high levels of protection against getting even infected and in particular, serious illness. however, what we're all concerned about is omicron, which is coming now. and that is also now in new york and it's i

blackstock, this pfizer vaccine news, how far back does this potentially set the effort to get the 2 through 4-year-old kids vaccinated. >> as you mentioned at the top of the hour, this is disappointing news, but i think the transparency is incredibly important. i think parents need to see how the science works. what pfizer is going to do. they're going to go back and see if a third doane of three micrograms is effective. we know the 6 to 2-year-old group was effective, but it remains to be seen if three doses will be. it seems like the primary series will be three doses. my hope is this dose will provide an adequate response in this age group. it would push the deadline out to mid 2022, unfortunately, with pfizer submitting an eua probably in early 2022. >> it will be enormously frustrate fog parents, i have to think. we just got news that the nfl is postpones some games this weekend because of the covid surge working its way through the league. this is all moving incredibly fast. can you give us the big picture about where we are and where we're not with the latest wave? >> the big

blackstock, an msnbc medical contributor great to have you on this morning.our read on the latest data from the weekend that suggests this variant is less severe but more transmissible. >> thanks for having me on this morning. the data we have so far is based really on a limited number of people infected with micron. so yes, we're seeing that in a certain population that study that the illness may be milder please keep in mind that these are among younger people, they are less high risk, meaning they don't have underlying medical problems we need to see how this variant behaves in the older population and people who are high risk medical conditions like obesity, asthma and high blood pressure we're seeing that we don't know yet about the severity of the disease and that will take a few more weeks to really understand because death is a lagging indicator. >> dr. anthony fauci saying this variant in this data is encouraging. saying there's not a great degree of sweer severity to it. do you think the travel restrictions are necessary >> i think the travel restri

blackstock and the founder and ceo of advancing health equality.ave so many questions for you and i want your thoughts on the updated cdc guidance for quarantine, i know you tweeted about it suggesting that you thought the guidance perhaps was premature given that everybody doesn't even have access to high quality masks. say more about that. >> thank you for having me. i was surprised at the updated guidelines. the request of the cdc last week and within days they updated guidelines. the optics of that sending the message profits over people, there is still so much we don't know about omicron. we don't know how long people stay contagious meaning how long they have the ability to infect others and so if we're saying you have five days you're infected and then just put on a mask, there is a possibility we could be sending people back to work still sick, still have the ability to infect other people and then this idea of telling people to wear a mask for five days, we still are not ensuring that every american has access to a high quality mask. that'

blackstock, i feel like the great mixed bag. omicron is spreading rapidly, and it is not as severe.s be considered good news in this respect? that it will, will this consume the delta variant in short order? >> well, chuck, thanks for having me. that's the million dollar question. i will say i think it is still too early to tell, but as dr. walensky said, we have the tools to combat not only delta but omicron and also i feel like delta is the variant we really should be concerned about, because that's partly the dominant variant, but, know, we have those tools. the vaccines are still what we see from even the early data with omicron are still effective against the worst outcomes of covid-19 hospitalizations as well as deaths, but we also have to think about using those non-pharmaceutical interventions, really haven't been using. only about eight states have indoor mask mandates. rapid testing definitely made more available but we still have to go through insurance carriers. another barrier. still addressing ventilation and filtration. a layered strategy. vaccines are great but also

uche blackstock.t out from under this until we look at this as a global challenge. >> exactly. until we seriously and aggressively global vaccine inequity this pandemic will go on forever, essentially. you know, rich countries or rather high income countries have essentially hoarded the majority of the vaccine. they've made agreements with vaccine manufacturers that are essentially preventing the prespies and technologies for these vaccines to be able to be shared with low and middle income countries. and that's why we're seeing the emergence of variants like omicron because as the virus spreads, as it infects individuals it replicates every time. and we have widespread transmission around the global south and the rest of the world that doesn't have vaccines. and that's why we're seeing the emergence. and we'll continue to see emergence of these variants until we seriously address global vaccine inequity. >> i they say not to dishearten people and disengage, but we wonder why we're still here. there i

blackstock, founder and ceo of advancing health equity and msnbc medical contributor. doctor, it's great seeing you. andy slavitt tweeted that omicron is doubling every two to four days. 400,000 by new years. is it as miguel almaguer was saying maybe the future is going to look like the past in this pandemic? >> good morning, jose. thank you so much for having me on. i would say we are in a crisis within a crisis. we are already in a delta surge and now we have omicron which is only more transmissible, it replicates faster and it can reinfect people who already have been infected or are fully vaccinated, and so those numbers are incredibly alarming, and also more alarming is that we only have seven or eight states that have indoor mask mandates. we don't have the testing capabilities that we need to meet this crisis. rapid tests still are not likely available. so i think that is going to compound the situation. >> it really does seem as though there is so much we don't know. we do know, doctor, that omicron is not as lethal, right? >> well, we don't even have all of th

blackstock, founder and ceo of advancing health equity. dr. bl.en in the future, the idea of rationing care. but i imagine doctors are making decisions every moment of every day. you have a crisis, an accident, someone needing surgery. and the beds you have are the beds you have, the doctors you have are the doctors you have. tell me what is happening right now. >> we're seeing the domino effect of what happens when hospitals are at and over capacity. i think people don't recognize that even people who are vaccinated are impacted by this. we have a fixed number of health care providers, a fixed amount of oxygen, of ventilators. when those are used up, and other critical patients come in, they will not be able to get or receive competent care. i wrote a piece in "the washington post" earlier this year, about my own child who was in the pediatric icu a few years ago, and what would have happened if they were not able to receive the care they deserve because the hospital was at capacity. this domino effect impacts numerous patients, whether covid or

baroness casey of blackstock has been appointed to lead an independent review into our standards andrrespondent helena wilkinson is outside barking town hall. that police statement making it clear that the coroner was pretty categorical that the jury could not find, because there was no evidence, suggestions of institutionalised homophobia within the met police. yes, that's right. thejury were not asked to consider that in their conclusions when they were asked questions during this inquest but families and friends as you just heard then that press conference from the bereaved family members that they are sure themselves that they think there was bias towards these four young men who were in their early 20s, all gay men. there was bias towards them, there was prejudice. it's probably worthjust repeating some of those statements made on behalf of the family members through their solicitor that we had just a moment ago. the family said that they were incensed by the police's successful attempt to prevent the jury from examining whether it's played any part in the police actions. they a