jennifer nuzzo. the lead epidemiologist for the johns hopkins covid-19 testing insights initiative. dr. nuzzo, great to have you back on the "newshour". the biden administration seems very optimistic that they're going to get this authorization, but, between here and there, there's still a lot of scrutiny over these vaccines for kids. what kind of things are the f.d.a. and c.d.c. looking at? >> sure, and i think it's important to stress that there still is a regulatory process that has to happen, and there are going to be independent panels of experts both convened by the c.d. and the f.d.a. to review the data. they're going to be looking at how children fared after receiving the vaccine from a safety perspective and looking at certain levels of protection in the children's immune systems that would suggest that they are maybe protected if they are exposed to the virus. we don't have the same kind of monitoring for severe illness in children, like we did for adults because children are less likely to

jonathan: jennifer needs out -- jennifer nuzzo with johns hopkins.kets shaping up as follows. we are -19, down 4/10 of 1%. adding to the losses of september and september was pretty rough, down the most since march 2020, down almost 5%. yields unchanged on tens, 1.4892. euro-dollar unchanged. news out of merck, they are developing a covid-19 antiviral pill that reduces the risk of hospitalization or death by 50% in an interim analysis of a late stage trial. some decent news. tom: i'm lost. let's go to an adult. andrew pekosz joins us. let me cut to the chase. when i see a scientific statistic that is 50/50 i'm not going to die from a pill, i'm not sure that's science. what is the efficacious nature of any form of medicine where i get a 50% outcome? andrew: it can be incredibly important, particularly thinking about populations that are vulnerable and may have a high likelihood of having disease. that's where antivirals really start. they are another tool in the arsenal to fight back severe covid-19. taking it early -- and this is the critical thing -