to help us make sense of it all, tom frieden joins me, the former head of the centers for disease controlome again. pleasure to have you on. let me start by asking you about those falling numbers. so you see the number of deaths in the u.s. falling. you see the number of cases falling. r naught which is the symbol of the rate of spread of covid is also now below one. is this all happening because more and more people, at least in the united states, are getting vaccinated? or is there some other explanation? >> no, i don't think, fareed, the vaccine is having much of an impact at all on case rates. it is what we're doing right, staying apart, wearing masks, not traveling, not mixing with others indoors. basically, we're getting over a huge surge around the late year holidays, starting with thanksgiving and on to the december holidays. this essentially was an accelerator for the virus. and now cases are plummeting. they're coming down, followed by decreasing hospitalizations, followed by decreasing deaths, but they're still high. our case numbers are still higher than they were at prior pea

tom frieden.ustrated about the whole vaccination rollout, and now you see these two stories. local trusted pharmacies that say we want to be part of the solution. an organization that seemed to be part of the solution that gets shut down. when you hear stories like that, what goes through your mind? >> well, we're in a difficult time. there is not enough vaccine to go around. over the next couple of months, there's going to be much more vaccine. but we still have very high levels of spread throughout most of the united states. and even though things are getting better, they're still really bad. so there's a lot of covid out there, and there's not enough vaccine. in that time it's really important that we double down on protection protocols, wear a mask. this weekend please, if you're going to have a party, make it virtual. or just with people in your household. what we saw around thanksgiving, christmas, was a massive increase in the u.s. and we're just coming off that huge increase while we're ra

tom frieden, thank you very much.u. get the show on, get paid ♪ ♪ and all that glitters is gold ♪ applebee's $1 boneless wings with any handcrafted burger. keeping your oysters business growing has you swamped. you need to hire. i need indeed indeed you do. the moment you sponsor a job on indeed you get a shortlist of quality candidates from a resume data base claim your seventy-five-dollar credit when you post your first job at indeed.com/promo ♪ ♪ mom! mom! every day can be extraordinary with rich, creamy, delicious fage total yogurt.

tom frieden.to ask you about this new covid strain spreading across new york city, i'm worried, are you? >> well, it's concerning. stephanie, i was just looking at the data in depth last night, and thought what's happened nationally is you've had a much more rapid decline in cases than in new york city. i don't know the reason for that. one possibility is that we have a strain that's spreading more readily here. i don't know if that's the case. the data has not been published in peer-reviewed publications yet but it does look like certain strains are becoming dominant for more common here and we'll have to learn more about the clinical and epidemiologic characteristics of the strains, spreading more readily, or a problem with the vaccine? the good news all of the vaccines on are coming on the u.s. market, work really, really well. so the moment you can get vaccinated the moment it's your turn get vaccinated. >> well, the johnson & johnson vaccine is lower efficacy than pfizer or moderna. so if you

director tom frieden. how quickly could that arrive in the u.s.? >> the astrazeneca company has not provided the kind of transparent information that the other companies have. but it has some very favorable characteristics. >> reporter: meanwhile, pressure is building to reopen schools. today, san francisco filed suit against its own school board demanding in-person learning as quickly as possible. schools have been remote only since last march. in chicago, a looming showdown with the city pressuring its teachers' union to get back to the classroom now. half of all states are now giving teachers priority to get vaccinated, but the c.d.c. director saying no shot is required. >> that vaccination of teachers is not a prerequisite of opening of schools. >> reporter: there is a backlog. the u.s. distributed 56 million doses of the vaccine, less than 34 million have been administered. cvs, the latest chain to announce in-store vaccines. the u.s. is shipping one million vaccines per week to 6,500 pharmacies. that is barely 154 doses per store. 8% of ameri

tom frieden is president and ceo of resolve to save lives. but he says it only matters if people accept an approved vaccine when it's offered to them. what we are finding is that not only is there really good immunity after infection but many different approaches to vaccine development are working really well and that's very good. but we need to do much better in the us reaching historically underrepresented, underserved populations and globally ramping up vaccination in countries that don't yet have access. it's too soon to say with the new variants are going to do. trends are a little puzzling. we had weather events that can delay diagnosis and result in some changes or shifts in when patients are diagnosed. but really, we do want to vaccinate as rapidly as possible. we also have to double down on protection protocols. mask up and limit the time you spend indoors with people who are not in your household. but overall, i think the news is really quite good. we are seeing very steady declines in cases and the fundamental question that is in t

tom, thank you. dr. frieden, if this goes as planned as tom said you will have this trifecta of vaccines available. can you talk about how big of a moment this is, what it means in this fight that we're in against the pandemic. >> we're seeing really good news. cases are down, deaths are coming down and vaccinations are ramping up, both moderna and pfizer have increased production. we anticipate that the fda will approve the j & j vaccine so there's going to be more vaccine available. at the same time we've still got a lot of covid out there so you need to double down on protection, continue wearing masks. it's just going to be a few more months and then we're going to be in a much better situation. and the frustration so many people are having not able to get a vaccine, that's going to gradually disappear in the coming weeks. >> talk about some of those numbers that we just ticked through, the johnson & johnson vaccine that has a 72% efficacy rate changed to 94%, 95% for the pfizer and moderna vaccines. what ar

tom frieden joins us now, former cdc director. doctor, very good to have you.s? >> well, there's really a lot of good news here, neil. we see cases falling, hospitalizations falling, deaths falling and vaccines steadily rolling out. there are not enough vaccines yet, but with the upcoming approval of j&j and even more the increased production from pfizer and moderna over the next two weeks and months, vaccines are going to become much more available. so there's lots of good news, but it's still not out of the woods yet. we're still not out of the woods. it's very important that people continue to mask up and watch distance because those levels, though they've come way down, are still quite high. and over the last few days, there's been a little bit of a blip. we just need to watch and see what happens with that. neil: there must be something in the dna of former cdc directors like yourself to urge caution. i think that's probably very wise. your predecessor said much the same thing, doctor, let's not get ahead of our syringes here, so to speak. keep wearing you

joining us now the former cdc director tom frieden. thanks so much, from dryden, for joining us.he cdc says as you just heard another 85,000 americans could die between now and the end of this month. and now the rise of these covid variants could further complicate the vaccination efforts under way. what do we need to do right now, dr. frieden, to ensure that we don't see another big surge? >> well, we are far from out of the woods. and right now we need to first get vaccinated when it's your turn. second, double down on protection protocols. that means wearing a mask and avoiding indoor air with people who are not in your household. it also means reducing travel. and whoever you're rooting for this weekend, root for people against the virus. and do that by staying apart from others. figure out other ways to be together virtually. >> excellent advice. some new research, as you heard, also indicates that younger adults, let's say between 20 and 49 are responsible for more than 75% of all transmission. should we prioritize vaccinating those age groups as well, or should we keep the

tom frieden, thanks so much for joining us. we appreciate it. >>> up next, bye-bye bezos andl? world's richest man leaving his company -- why the world's richest man is leaving his company and what it means for amazon. kara swisher joins me in a moment. >>> jeff bezos is stepping down as ceo of amazon leaving the helm of the company that he created. made him rich. he's handing the reins over to andy jassy. the announcement came the same day amazon reported a year of record growth with a market value around $1.7 trillion making it one of the most valuable companies in the entire world. joining me now is "new york times" contributor and co-host of "the pivot" podcast, all around one of the smartest people i've ever met. kara swisher. thanks for joining us. >> hi. >> why exactly is bezos doing this right now? >> i don't know why he's doing it right now. i think he'd been pulling away from the day-to-day of amazon for a while before the pandemic and sort of plunged back in to take more control during the pandemic and obviously amazon's done tremendously during the pandemic. a lot o

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it was tom frieden, better mind than mine, for sure. but no matter how reasonable a republican you are, you're not going with the democrats. you will never be elected, period. any suggestion that you are even close to them, you're dead, anywhere in the country. and they're not going to leave and become democrats. they are not going to do that, so that is your only home. and they are going to do exactly what mcconnell did, after the acquittal. >> okay. let me ask you, though. you're assuming that they -- that -- that they must become a democrat, in order not to be affiliated with. because we have people on this network, who are former republicans, right? they're still conservatives but they don't want to be affiliated with the republican party. they are not becoming democrats. >> they hold no office. how do you get in office, if you are not a republican, and you don't switch to being a democrat? how do you get in office? do we need five parties in this country? maybe. >> you can't do it with an independent, because then you don't qualify

tom frieden is the former director of the centers for disease provide control and prevention in the u.s. and is now c.e.o. of resolve to save lives and illness action that rises government's own health campaigns he joins us by skype from new york thanks very much indeed for being with us what you've seen what do you make of the johnson and johnson vaccine so far was very encouraging what we're seeing is a variety of vaccine approaches that all seem to work well and i think we can get bound up too much in this that 70 or 80 or 90 percent what we're seeing so far in the data is very effective control of serious illness and death now the big unknown is the variants and whether any vaccine escape variants will become common and problematic but right now i would say the moment it's your turn for a vaccine get one get the 1st one you can but at the same time we do have to address equity act with heat within countries where we're seeing much lower vaccination rates for example in black and hispanic populations in the united states and equity globally as your piece just showed and part of that