but i think peter houston gave a very good case as to why he believed the culture and performance ofat the time was extremely good compared with whitehall departments. the permanent secretary makes the case on a number of occasions, she thinks things have dramatically improved since the trade unions issued a document quite recently saying that that wasn't the case. it is a matter of which, no doubt, this committee might want to reflect on and put in the recommendations. my point earlier on, though, is that i believe that fairness at work was a good, sound, robust policy. the fact it is still in play for the civil service is an indication that that is a view of the civil service unions as well. and any changes to that policy, and my estimation, should have been built on that policy. that would've been a good thing to do as opposed to casting it aside for other purposes. that thing to do as opposed to casting it aside for other purposes.— aside for other purposes. that is very helpful. _ aside for other purposes. that is very helpful, but _ aside for other purposes. that is very helpfu

peter hotez from baylor college of medicine in houston. good to have you. i watch closely the figures on side of the screen, not just deaths but number of vaccinations and we're up above 41 million in the country in terms of vaccinations, that is at least one dose, not everybody has gotten a second dose. are we seeing a pick up in the vaccination rate in this country after a slow start and should people take some confidence from that? >> yeah, absolutely. that is good news that we're now getting geared up to vaccinate the american people. the concern is whether or not we're going to have adequate supply over the next few months. we know there is a big tranche of vaccine coming over the summer from johnson & johnson and novavax and from the two mrna vaccines, but the issue is adequate supply to get us through the next few months. and that is issue number one. problem number two is the fact that now the variants are accelerating, the u.k. variant has a doubling time according to recent study out of scripts in san diego, they'll double every ten days. so that

peter: is here. i have in-laws -- easier. i have in-laws in houston and my heart goes out to them.ws is that you need a variety of capacity and dimension. alix: thanks a lot. a bluebird opinion contribute to, thank you very much. -- bloomberg opinion contributor , thank you very much. this is bloomberg. ♪ bloomberg. ♪ alix: live from new york, i am alix steel, this is bloomberg markets. coming up in the next hour we will be talking about gamestop. hearings coming up at 12:00, here are the topics we are going to look at. shortselling, it is also how you settle treatment it takes one or two days to settle the trade. that left risk on the balance sheet. how do they assess that out -- suss that out? guy: it is there for a reason, you're reduce or change it, that will have impact. it is interesting how you balance those things. we joke about getting the popcorn ready. there is fun to be have. you have people refusing to sell, you have people selling, to the moon, the belief that the stock will gain significantly. and yolo. it'll will be interesting to see emily times these phrases are u

miles o'brien, peter goals, pete muntean, thank you so much gentlemen. >> thank you. >>> and as water systems in houston and austin come back online, millions still face food and water crisis following deadly storms right now as we speak. and you'll hear next from new york congresswoman aoc who so far has raised over $4 million for disaster relief. still fresh... unstopables in-wash scent booster. downy unstopables. my husband and i have never eaten healthier. shingles doesn't care. i logged 10,000 steps today. shingles doesn't care. i get as much fresh air as possible. good for you, but shingles doesn't care. because 1 in 3 people will get shingles, you need protection. but no matter how healthy you feel your immune system declines as you age, increasing your risk for getting shingles. so what can protect you? shingrix protects. for the first time ever, you can protect yourself from shingles with a vaccine proven to be over 90% effective. shingrix is a vaccine used to prevent shingles in adults 50 years and older. shingrix does not protect everyone and is not for those with severe allergic reactions to

peter hotez from the baylor college of medicine and development of vaccine at the children's house in houstonit wasn't easy for you this week. tell us what you've been going through this week. have you suffered from the power failure and loss of water? >> just like the other stories you've heard, we've been without power and water for three days. we finally got it back on this afternoon. it's been a struggle. i can't say we're the worst off by any stretch. we do have a special needs adult daughter that adds to the challenges and that's been tough. but the power is back on now and a little bit of water so hopefully we will have turned the corner on this. >> one more thing about texas before we get to the vaccine more generally and hospitals that have lost their water supply have had tremendous challenges in dealing with patients and what kind of chaos has that created in the medical system? >> well, it's the perfect storm of things. we've had our emergency room filled with patients. we had to bring in individuals who ordinarily would get dialysis at dialysis centers or dialysis at home. we've

peter hotez, i really hope you get your power, the medical center gets its power. we're thinking of everybody in houston and throughout texas. thanks for being with us. >>> moments ago we heard about that massive storm from bill karins ripping through the south and the northeast. kentucky is getting hit with a third wave of winter weather as state leaders try to get residents vaccinated with their current supply. joining us now lucky to have kentucky governor andy bashir. thanks for taking time out. you're right in the middle of this and have been for several days. what's the situation now? you've had more than 100,000 kentucky residents we heard about without power. where are you now? >> you're right. we have now been hit with two out of the three storms that we're going to face, the third starting tonight. at the height, we had about 156,000 kentuckians who had lost power. we've got that down to about 9,400 now. we got hit with snow, freezing rain, and an eastern kentucky, in appalachia, a very tough ice storm that has knocked out power there. it's got power lines and substations down. we are working

peter hotez is joining us from tropical medicine at the baylor college of medicine. thank you for joining us. you're in houston where vaccine appointments have been canceled, shipments are delayed as a result of extreme weather crisis. these vaccines are time sensitive as you know better than i do. how problematic are these delays? >> yeah, i'm pretty worried, wolf. because originally we heard it was just on monday. we heard it is just a day or two. and then the shipments will come on wednesday and now the shipments have been delayed. so we've really lost a whole week. and the reason i'm concerned about losing a week is because weave this new race ahead of the b-117 variant coming from the united kingdom and starting to take off now in florida, it is going to be pretty much nationwide we think about late in march and into april. so we're in this horrible race because the u.k. variant or the b-117 variant seems to be much more transmissible, more highly contagious than what we've seen in the past. and the u.k. government just put up information not peer reviewed but it is looking ominous that it is more severe

peter hotez. doctor, so good to have you on. again, the middle of a pandemic. the freezing weather's having a huge effect on these vaccinations including in houston where you are. vaccination sites shut down there. how far behind is this going to put texas and the country, as a matter of fact? >> yeah, don, the original hope was it was just going to be a day or so and that's what we originally thought. but this is going on and on as days go on without power. and that's a real concern. you know, the urgency of course is that we're trying to race ahead of the new united kingdom variant, the b-117 variant. that's going to start to accelerate in march and april. and so we're trying to get as many americans vaccinated and texans vaccinated ahead of that variant because we know it's much more transmissible and the mortality rate's going to start going up. we're in a race against time. this is a terrible time to have this kind of delay. >> these power outages impacting the actual vaccines themselves since they are so temperature sensitive and they need to be kept in deep freezes, is that correct? >> yeah, and also delays in shipments as well because people -- you know

peter hotez, we spoke to in the first hour said it might be as much as a weeks-allong delay, b i spoke to the head of the houstonpitals and he said they're already getting up to speed here. what are you hearing? how quickly can you make up for these delays? >> yeah, we're hearing yub, about a week as well. i've talked to a few people who have sort of been responsible for administering or actually getting the vaccines to some of these states. it's interesting, in some of these places, there's all sorts of different steps in the delay, if you are going to be sending these vaccines to a place that doesn't have power and you require the ultracold chain storage, that could be a problem. in other places that you heard earlier in the week, there were places that had the vaccine, worried about losing doses, because of lack of power. and they were administering quickly. but overall, about a week, which probably, you know, just looking at the vaccine schedule, should not have that much of a negative impact, thankfully, on overall immunity, to people who are getting shots. >> sanjay, we're just being told in our ears that

peter hotez, the co-director for texas children's hospital for vaccine development and the dean of national school of tropical medicine at baylor college of medicine in houstonis study out of mount sinai in new york that you have enough antibodies if you already covered from covid and might need one vaccine therefore freeing up more vaccine supply? >> yeah, alisyn, it gets back to the original findings from the phase 1, phase 2 studies last year for all of these vaccines that if you get two doses of the vaccine, you can give everybody high levels of virus neutralizing antibody in order to stop the virus. the problem with the single dose there was a lot of variability. some got it, some didn't and that's why we give the second dose. everybody wanted to make a single-dose vaccine but most required two to bring everybody up to those high levels of virus producing antibodies. in lieu of getting the vaccine f you also got the virus through a natural infection the boosting with the single dose of the vaccine would do the probably the equivalent. the problem there is how do you operationalize that because it's already very complicated to vaccinate large numbers of

houston right now delivering remarks at this hour of coronavirus vaccination facility run by the federal emergency management agency's. you will see him there. we are monitoring these remarks and we will finish later. petercy on the white house domestic trip when one of the questions he is facing is about foreign policy, surrendering air strike in syria that we first told you about at the end of "special report" last night. good evening, peter. >> good evening, bret. on his way to those remarks president biden said that the air strike was to send a message to iran. "you can't act with impunity, be careful." today after iranian forces, he has they are trying to heal texas. >> saving people's lives and as my mother would say, doing god's work. >> on the way to texas, the white house explains the rationale behind the first air strikes biden ordered as commander in chief. american interests in iraq. speak of the president sending an unambiguous message that he is going to act to protect americans and when threats are posed, he has the right to take the action at the time and in the manner of his choosing. >> in every peaceful response what must have been exhausted already according to foreign policy rules, b