celine gounder and dr. ashish jha, welcome to "firing line." >> thank you so much. >> great to be here. >> the delta variant, which was first detected in india, is highly transmissible and now makes up an estimated 83% of new covid cases in the united states. dr. gounder, why is the delta variant more concerning than all the previous versions? >> the delta variant is by far the most contagious, most transmissible of all of these varian. it spreads more easily from one person to another. and part of that is because the levels of virus that people get in their airways, in their nose, in their throat, are so much higher than what we've seen with previous variants up until this time. >> the former cdc director, thomas frieden, says that the u.s. could soon see as many as 200,000 new cases each day. do you, dr. jha, agree with this assessment? >> yeah, so i do agree with the assessment that we could get to 200,000 infections a day. you know, the last time we got to numbers like that, we had 3,000 to 4,000 americ

gounder? >> well, brian, they're certainly realistic in that they know that this single announcement from the fda about pfizer is not going to be some sort of green light and switch that suddenly means everybody who has been hesitant to get the vaccine will go out tomorrow and get the vaccine. that said, they're buoyed by a number of factors. both the data of the growing number of people who are getting vaccinated now. as of a few weeks ago, that number seems to be growing. and the parent effectiveness of some of the vaccine mandates that we're seeing in different concert venues or sporting venues or mask gathering sites around the country. there's been anecdotal evidence that that seems to be working, lines forming outside sporting venues and other venues of people actually getting the shot onsite in order to gain thanks for joining us gain attendance for those events. that is expected to grow with the approval for the pfizer vaccine, which is good news for the white house, which is concerned

gounder joins me now, thank you so much for being on a show. 8th this cdc and the fda issued a very public statement saying that booster shots were unnecessary. they said that in response to pfizer and moderna saying that they were necessary. now a little over a month later that is being reversed, that's is a u-turn over masking indoors, you've been on the biden team into before they've done a good job of fighting the virus overall. when it comes to messages, there been a lot of mixed messages? >> i am concerned about the messaging here, about the need for extra doses of vaccine, there is clear data that people who are immunocompromised, people who had solid organ transplants, medication, people who have aids, those are people who may need a additional dose of vaccine. as additional dose because i think when people hear boosters, they're thinking the flu shot that you get every year, we're really just talking about a third dose. there's also good data that people who are in nursing homes would benefit from extra doses and what i would call the

gounder. there's a pediatrician in houston, heather hack. dr. hack is tweeting this morning about children getting infected and she writes, we are seeing infants, children and teens with covid pouring back into the hospital more and more each day. these patients range in age from 2 weeks old to 17 years. she writes, i worry as kids go back to school with the delta circulating we'll see huge school outbreaks that we didn't see in prior waves. do you share some of her concerns? >> i am concerned. the delta variant is clearly different from earlier variants and we don't yet have full information on how it's going to behave in children. as i mentioned earlier, it is more infectious, you get to much higher levels of virus in the body and it may be more virulent, which means it may cause more severe disease, including in children. so we really do need to be careful, understanding kids under 12 still cannot get vaccinated. we really need to take some additional precautions like masking to protect those like children under 12 who are not yet protected.

gounder, i just want to go back to what senator manchin said, for a moment.had people over. a dozen, he thinks, senators and maybe a few more people. let's call it 15 people over. outdoors, he says. um, saturday night. all, vaccinated. and because there a risk? we, now, know that senator graham, probably, had covid then. he tested positive for covid on monday. it was saturday night, when he was feeling sick saturday night. what's the threat level at an event like that for vaccinated people? >> lawrence, this is, in fact, a very low-risk event if, in fact, all of this was happening outdoors, as we've been told. this was a group of all fully-vaccinated people. and the risk of a breakthrough infection -- so infection, not disease -- breakthrough infection is only 0.01%. of those who have a breakthrough infection, your risk of disease, hospitalization, and death, are much, much lower, even still. so this is, in fact, a very low-risk event for all those who attended. i would just add that, if you are at an outdoor event where people are very closely crowded togeth

gounder, because we see increased cases, we see increased testing. unfortunately with new testing, delay in getting responses is getting longer and longer. why haven't we figured this out yet? >> part of the issue, stephanie, is there have been dramatic fluctuations in how much people are getting tested. for example, if you work in a lab, staffing levels are unpredictable as a result. to scale up, scale down staffing levels, scale up, scale down your supply chains and all the things that go into getting people tested, that has made it difficult to consistently offer higher volume of testing. >> here's what i'm worried about. dr. fauci said if more people do not get vaccinated, there's a risk of vaccine hesitant variants popping up. right now, people like you and i are vaccinated. we're thinking we're in the clear if we get it, we're not going to get very sick. is that not the case? >> i want to be clear the vaccines are highly safe and effective, even for those of us that have been vaccinated, we are very well protected against the delta variant, we'

gounder, thank you all. we're covering this every day in our nightly newsletter. >>> continuing on the point that there is no single national covid story right now, there are two different stories. i want to hear what it's like for reporters in hot spot states where lots of readers don't believe their news. we're going live to three reporters who are covering the three least vaccinated states in the union. that's next. or muscle weakness... ...can be signs of a life- threatening condition. side effects may include allergic reactions... ...neck and injection site pain... ...fatigue, and headache. don't receive botox® if there's a skin infection. tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions... ...and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. most patients may pay as little as $0 for botox®. so, text to see how you can save. botox® has been preventing headaches and migraines before they even start for 10 years. so, ask your doctor about

celine gounder, thank you as always.e on this. >>> up next, everybody, brand new reporting on who is now in charge of the congressional probe into the trump justice department. we'll be right back. l, so you only pay for what you need. hot dog or... chicken? only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ hi, i'm debra. i'm from colorado. i've been married to my high school sweetheart for 35 years. i'm a mother of four-- always busy. i was starting to feel a little foggy. just didn't feel like things were as sharp as i knew they once were. i heard about prevagen and then i started taking it about two years now. started noticing things a little sharper, a little clearer. i feel like it's kept me on my game. i'm able to remember things. i'd say give it a try. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. what do we want for dinner? burger... i want a sugar cookie... wait... i want a bucket of chicken... i want... ♪♪ it's the easiest because it's the cheesiest. kraft. for the win win. i've spent centuries evol

general populatio >> what is your response to doctor gounder?eally smart and well informed infectious disease expert, in fact i would say what is being proposed matches which she says quite well. the idea of this eight months means that starting in september people who got their first doses back in january would then be qualified to get a third dose. who are those people? they're the people in the nursing homes, there are the elderly, health care providers, all the people who we think might be most in need of this. and then we will see how it goes. but basically you're starting with the highest risk people, where the evidence is becoming more compelling, there is nothing magical about eight months, we could've set seven, we could've said nine. it is in fact for a practical purpose, by the time we are ready to start giving boosters, it will be about eight months since the first folks got their doses back in january. >> so doctor collins, what about availability? for those who are eager to get a booster, do you expect a repeat of march and april o

celine gounder who is the head of infectious diseases.lso writes an article called "epidemic." good to see you here. i think a lot of people can relate to governor murphy, right? but at this point, who is the best messenger to reach those people to convince that the vaccine is not much worse than the virus? >> this is a game we need to take from family to family, person to person, and the best players at that game, frankly, are personal doctors, family physicians and other people in the community, community health workers, nurses, pharmacists, other people that are just known to their neighbors. maybe they go to church together. that's the level at which we need to be doing this messaging. so people who know one another. >> part of the problem is, and, again, these stories get -- maybe they're the ones that get told most, but so many people are being convinced by the fact that somebody in their family is dying. how do we get to them before that? >> i wish we had a good answer to that. as somebody who, on my way to work at bellevue over a

celine gounder thank you. we're hearing reports out of louisiana and florida about more kids being sicker than last year any reason to believe that delta is impacting those kids differently? >> shepherd, i think the key take home message here is that the delta variant is different it is different from the strains we saw early in the pandemic it is more infectious so it spreads more easily from person to person and the levels of virus in people who are infected are 1,000 times higher in their nose and their throat than they would have been with the early strains of the virus so if you imagine that there's so much more virus in the body, even if a child may be early in the pandemic, wouldn't have had a severe infection, now with that much more virus we're seeing kids getting sick we're seeing kids potentially transmitting onward to others. this is different. this is delta. >> you know, businesses are busy trying to figure out when people should return to work. medically speaking were those who were thinking abou

gounder, joins us.ng up and effectiveness of vaccines is going down because of the delta variant? >> so the cdc released three studies yesterday looking at the durability of the protection you get from vaccines, and what we're seeing is that the vaccines remain highly effective in protecting against hospitalization and death. remember, we evacuate not to prevent the common cold but to really save lives. where we have seen reduction in vaccine effectiveness is with respect to breakthrough infections which are much milder, and the vast majority do not land people in the hospital. the decision to offer doses of vaccines to the general population is quite controversial. >> i reference the breakthrough infections. "new york times" is reporting arising number of breakthrough infection because of the delta variant in so many of the cases here. we all thought we were doing the right thing, got vaccinated, thought we would be okay. thought we could go back to normal lives. now that may not be the complete case.

celine gounder, infectious disease specialist and a frequent guest for us.e biden administration recommending all u.s. adults who are fully vaccinated now get a booster shot. why is that? is it all about long-term efficacy? >> the cdc this week released three different studies looking at vaccine effectiveness in different populations. what we are seeing is an increased risk of breakthrough infections. the vaccines remain highly protective against severe disease, hospitalization and death. in fact, the study from new york state found that the vaccines remained 95% protective against hospitalization, which is really excellent. there are a couple populations where we do have concerns. the highly immunocompromised people, so these are people who have, for example, solid organ transplants, aids, who are on immunosuppressive medications, nursing home residents and the elderly. there is not good evidence to suggest there is a need for additional doses of vaccine for the general population, at least not yet at this time. >> on the heels of that last point, there are

. >> doctor gounder, back to you. back to our lead story of the pandemic of the unvaccinated. are we still headed numbers wise, as you survey the country, in the wrong direction and what's going to really pull us out of that pop of palpably? >> brian, i think we are still looking a a fairly challenging fall. we are still in the delta surge and about to see a lot of kids go back to school, at least some people go to the office. some will do it with masks an improvement elation, some will not. i think that will lead to a bump in transmission in cases over the course of september and we will probably see this peak i think, around october. then we will probably have a lull. a bit of a low, hopefully. before the thanksgiving, christmas, and new year's holidays where we saw a triple surge when people travel and spend time and less guarded nurse in front of family and friends. the one thing we could do you to curve that is get vaccinated and wear masks, try to improve indoor air conditioning and ventilation. it's a challenging task throughout the pandemic. >> for rocker, all this hap

celine gounder, who was on the white house covid advisory task force, disagrees. what do you say to her? >> we have several studies that have demonstrated waning effectiveness in ten million people in new york state and 80,000 people in the mayo clinic, and as well in the delta variant in health care workers. we've also been in collaboration and discussions with our international colleagues, and they are starting to see worsening of presentation of worsening infection in the context of their breakthroughs. our plan is to get ahead of that. we don't want to start to see that in this country which is why we're planning now for late september after we hear from the fda and the advisory committee on immunization practices to be able to boost. >> how soon do you think the fda's going to act on this? >> we're planning for late september, and we've been in discussions with the fda and with acip. and we think that's a very reasonable timeline and a timeline that's reasonable to protect americans who have have been protected against severe disease. >> if you've had the sho

celine gounder, infectious specialist. let's start with the big news about pfizer. the fda stressed moments ago in the briefing that the process for approval is intense, science and data will always lead the way. are you hopeful that this could be the thing that would persuade at least some of the people out there who are hesitant to get the shot to finally get the shot? >> joe, i hope and pray that today goes down in american history as a real turning point in the covid pandemic. this was an all-hands-on-deck effort at the fda to get hundreds of thousands of pages of data reviewed. they didn't do this by taking shortcuts. they took people who might be juggling multiple projects at once, told them to focus on this project, told people who were working on other drugs and vaccine approvals, had them reassigned. this was accomplished not by any shortcut or skirting the scientific process, but rather through sheer manpower assigned to this approval. >> part of this is maybe whether it convinces individuals and whether it has an impact on employers. more vaccine news in

gounder, thank you for your time and analysis tonight.still to come, the humanitarian crisis in afghanistan as the white house scrambles to provide answers about afghan refugees. the fear mongering over on fox news is in full force. high response to that, next. for. high response to that, next. come here! i've got big news! now, nurtec odt can not only stop a migraine it can prevent a migraine as well. nurtec is the first and only option proven to treat and prevent migraines with one medication. onederful. one quick dissolve tablet can start fast and last. don't take if allergic to nurtec. the most common side effects were nausea, stomach pain, and indigestion. with nurtec, i treat migraine my way. what's your way? ask your doctor about nurtec to find out! (vo) when you are shopping for a new vehicle, how do you know which brand you can trust? with subaru, you get kelley blue book's most trusted brand winner, seven years in a row. in fact, subaru has won most trusted brand for more consecutive years than any other brand. no wonder kelley