peter hotez is joining us. thanks so much. you just heard president-elect biden say the trump administration does not have a detailed vaccine distribution plan at least as far as he has seen. he has not seen it yet. they have been briefing him during this transition. how concerning is it to hear that while we could be only days away from an approved vaccine the federal government may not necessarily be prepared to get the vaccine into arms? what is going on? >> that is a good question, wolf. one of the exciting aspects of operation warp speed is they brought in general gus perna an expert in logistics to work out those details especially for a complicated delivery mechanism like the pfizer vaccine requires. the deep freeze technology and other aspects. we've never done this before. so this is not going to go smoothly. we're going to need detailed plans for each of the states. now, in the past the trump administration has not led a covid national response and this is one of the problems. he's had the states in the lead who neve

peter hotez, dean of tropical medicine at baylor college of medicine in houston. dr. hotez, just moments ago, we learned that one in one thousand americans have now died from covid-19. but starting with what's happening in l.a. because i think a lot of us are left scratching our heads. l.a. or california had its first lockdown. imposed some of the strin jeges restrictions around the country and then see it surge and hit 2 million as of this past week. what's going on? >> there's been a shift in the epidemic. if you remember earlier this fall, it was really in the third, minnesota, iowa and then texas hit really hard and texas is still going through a huge surge, especially in west texas and the panhandle but you see the epidemic is spreading outward to the east coast. and the numbers in southern california especially in los angeles, riverside, san bernardino look really frightening and also up in fresno as well. the whole lower half of the state is just getting hit really hard and the thing that worries me is what's going on in the intensive care units because hospita

peter hotez from the texas children's hospital. after the first batch of people getting the vaccine we presume that will be health care providers and people on the front lines, doctors, nurses, hospital staff, what happens next? >> well, i think it's going to be really important to do two things. we want to stabilize the health care system and that is a key reason to vaccinate all of the health providers as quickly as possible. those at highest risk and i think nursing home residents are a acip glooiuidelines and national academy guidelines as well. we can expect each state will fine-tune those guidelines to some of the unique needs of the state in terms of certain populations at risk. also, you know, new mexico or texas which has a very high hispanic population, we have seen about 35% of the deaths under the age of 65 in those groups. that means -- >> others in the works. pfizer vaccine needs to be stored at negative 94 degrees fahrenheit. negative 94. we are showing a hospital in delaware to hold freezers to install the vaccines.

peter hotez said this morning the cdc should already know if the new variant is here because they have a program called spheres that should be tracking these types of changes. so what is your take? is this likely something officials knew of, just didn't make public yet? >> i think the surveillance systems that are available will be able to pick up on variants and it will be important for us to make sure that we take a look at that information closely before making judgment about how to manage that from a clinical and operational perspective. i think it is super helpful to have data from the uk coming in, allows us to more efficiently look for this particular variant in the u.s. >> the uk tracks this data arguably better than anyone else in the world, people are asking why this was happening in the uk first, they've been on top of this throughout the year. let's move on to another question. as somebody that works in pediatrics, i want your thoughts on something that jumped out at me as i was reading about the new variant, that it may actually make children as or equally susceptible as a

peter hotez, from baylor college of medicine. doctor, thank you so much for joining us. how worried should we be right now about this new variant of the covid virus, the one that's in the uk, the one in south africa, particularly when it comes to children? >> yeah. both are a little different, but they have similarities, especially in the mutation that's in part of the virus that bind to our host receptor, called the receptor binding domain. there's finding in south africa, but still preliminary, that they may have higher amounts of virus and some speculation it could be better transmitted among children, but there's still a lot we don't know. remember, this is all based on geno genomic testing, and we don't have the higher loads for the south african one in particular, but there's enough to give us concern to pause and say what should the implications for the united states both for the virus and the vaccine. for the virus, one of the real disappointing aspects of this, we now realize that the amount of genomic virus surveillance being conducted is disappoi disappointing

peter hotez, founding dean of the national school of topical school of medicine at baylor college of medicine. doctor, could you talk about what these decisions mean? are they -- do they have the authority to mandate this, are these guidelines like about school or what they say, does that go or the first vaccines will largely go to the front line health care workers and residents of nursing homes and long-term care facilities? >> well, nicolle, what not many people realize is that most of vaccine policies actually set at the state level. and that is the way it has been set up. so it is the state that makes recommendations on school age vaccines and all of the times we've had to go up against the anti-vaccine people. you have to do it times 50 because it is different in each state and it makes it complicated and this is probably along the same lines. the states as far as i could tell have the ultimate authority that the acip are recommendations, are just that, they're recommendations. most states will likely follow the recommendations and other states may want to tailor to specific st

peter hotez dean of baylor university is joining us. thank you for joining us. dr. fauci is warning despite a staggering number of new cases and new hospitalizations, we still haven't seen what he calls the full brunt of thanksgiving. how much worse will things get over the next few weeks? >> remember it's also going to merge into the christmas holidays and christmas travel as well. so we are all waiting, unfortunately, for a pretty steep acceleration both in terms of cases and hospitalizations and, tragically, deaths. we will be hitting 3,000 deaths per day probably on a regular basis. i think we will hit 300,000 deaths by probably next week so 300,000 americans will have lost their lives. the irony it will coincide with the release of the first vaccine. as people lose their lives, none have to lose their lives. if we can get them vaccinated, they could live a long and normal life. my priority is especially in the middle part of the country where people are still defy anted ian messages in texas where they think covid is a hoax or deaths are due to other causes. th

peter hotez, thank you so much for that sobering reminder. >>> when we return, remembering lives well lived. when we return lives well lived (kids laughing) (dog barking) ♪ sanctuary music it's the final days of the wish list sales event sign and drive off in a new lincoln with zero down, zero due at signing, and a complimentary first month's payment. and a complimentary (announcer) do you washed pounds? stress? do you want to flatten your stomach? do all that in just 10 minutes a day with aerotrainer, the total body fitness solution that uses its revolutionary ergonomic design to help you maintain comfortable, correct form. that means better results in less time. and there are over 20 exercises to choose from. get gym results at home. no expensive machines, no expensive memberships. go to aerotrainer.com to get yours now. she always wanted her smile to shine. now, she uses a capful of therabreath healthy smile oral rinse to give her the healthy, sparkly smile she always wanted. (crowd cheering) therabreath, it's a better mouthwash. at walmart, target and other fine stores. >>> whet

peter hotez is a vaccine developer with the baylor college of medicine and has followed the progress in detail. the pfizer vaccine touts efficacy rate of 95%. moderna's vaccine 94.1%. >> give you a sense of what that means, our very best vaccine of any vaccine is the measles vaccine and two doses gives you 97%. >> these covid vaccines are unlike a traditional vaccine where a weakened version of a virus is administered to patients. >> this does something a little bit different. it actually asks the human body to make the protein or the virus component ourselves by delivering messenger rna into part of the cell. and that manufactures the protein to induce the immune response. >> the acid or rna vaccines have been tested for years. this would be the first time in rna vaccine would be approved for mass use on humans. still concerns exist in homes and offices across the country. [crying] >> more than half of the firefighters in new york city said in an internal survey they would not take the vaccine. >> everybody that's a parent should look into the information. >> idaho mother of two nat

peter hotez, dean of the national school of tropical medicine at baylor college of medicine in houston. dr. hotez what a day yesterday. it was historic. obviously each day will be promising as we see -- put up the numbers for you what we expect in terms of the vaccine rollout and deliveries. so yesterday the vaccine arrived in all 50 states, but not much of it. okay? by december 31st, 40 million doses we expect will be available to be administeadmini. by january and february, 50 million to 80 million doses and by end of march, the hope is to have immunized 100 million people. that's why i didn't quite understand dr. fauci's math yesterday. maybe you can help us understand it, where he was saying that the timeline for healthy adult americans to be vaccinated is sooner than i thought. here's what dr. fauci said yesterday. >> i had been saying by my calculation sometime by end of march, beginning of april, that the normal, healthy man and woman in the street who ra no underlying conditions would likely get it. >> end of march? john berman and i might be able to get it? >> well, you know,

peter hotez, thank you. good to see you. come see me again soon. >> anytime, thank you, alex. >>> and plenty of talks about donald trump pardoning his family to leave the white house free of any bill legal worries. but is that even possible? my next guest speaks to that and spoke to a podcast last week and one important thing we learned from that, straight ahead. aigh. ♪ [ engines revving ] ♪ it's amazing to see them in the wild like th-- shhh. [ engine revs ] for those who were born to ride, there's progressive. [ engine revs ] ♪ ocean spray works with nature every day to keep you healthy >>> two official faces joining msnbc. tiffany cross and jonathan capehart. tiffany saturday, jonathan sunday. watch both shows at 10:00 a.m. eastern here on msnbc. meantime, new today, a fresh wave of legal setbacks for the president and his allies. six of election fraud lawsuits rejected within 24 hours. keeping score, on friday judges in wisconsin, arizona, georgia, michigan, minnesota and nevada all tossed out the president's clai

peter hotez. great to see you. i'm curious about your take on the split screen here. so britain, vaccinating its first patients, and this morning, today, here in the u.s. senator ron johnson is holding this hearing with a doctor who is not an infectious disease specialist, i believe she's an internist. she's a skeptic of vaccines, but believes strongly in hydroxychloroquine, which the fda, as you know, retracted their emergency use authorization, and that's what she will be touting. >> yeah. it's quite a contrast. first of all, congratulations to the british people getting their first vaccines for covid-19. that's really exciting. this is what we're going to need ultimately to get our way out of this awful epidemic and the pandemic. on the united states side, the committee will be meeting december 10th on thursday. in a couple of days. hopefully the usfda can begin releasing vaccine through emergency use authorization a day or two after that. so maybe this weekend or early next week. it comes not a moment too soon because we're looking at reaching that same milestone

peter hotez. it's always tough for you to be the bearer of bad news about where we are with this pandemic, especially the day before christmas. we have to face reality here. we're seeing icus across the country full or near capacity. what does this potential surge after the christmas holiday look like for hospitals already full and front line workers overworked? >> as i think about, you know, tomorrow being christmas, it was just 1st of this year when most of us heard about the covid-19 pandemic starting out of china. i never thought we would get to 330,000 lives lost by christmas day and still accelerating past 3,000 deaths a day. there's such a screaming level of transmission in our nation it's hard to know what's due to a surge and what's due to anything else. it's such a high baseline level. it's hard to even detect that rise. it's hard to believe it could get worse. but here we are and those dismal projectio projections, we're probably looking at 420,000 americans losing their life by inaugur

peter hotez, dean of the school of tropical medicine at baylor university. and dr. celine gounder. dr. hotez, look. i think a lot of people look up to the news that britain and boris johnson is saying, you know, that christmas can't go on the way we had planned. but how concerned should people be about this new variant? >> yeah, john. i mean, there are concerns for the uk, the u.s., and also concerns about the impact of vaccines. so, let's quickly go through it. so in the uk, what happened, starting around november/december, uk has a very sophisticated surveillance system, that actually does the complete virus sequence of the viruses they isolate in the country. and they noticed that about half of the virus isolates in south east england were this one variant, b.1.17. and it had a lot of mutations, more than they would have expected and that raised a lot of concerns. and it seemed to be that this virus is outcompeting the other, virus strains. that triggered an alarm, wondering if this virus is more transmissible than the other viruses. and that's the reason why it's out-competing

peter hotez, the dean of the national school of tropical medicine at baylor college of medicine. dr. hotez, thank you so much for joining us. let me get your reaction. based on the recommendation we just got from this fda-advisory committee, when do you expect the first shots to actually go into millions and millions of americans' arms? what sort of logistical challenges will the states face, as we see this unfold? >> yeah, wolf, i'm hoping that, by next week, we could start seeing some of the first people injected with this vaccine. i think the fda, now, will listen to the comments of verpac. and hopefully, we'll approve this emergency-use authorization, very soon. it's -- it's a very exciting time. you know -- you know, wolf, i'm -- was listening to the earlier commentaries from the review committee that did such a great job. and, you know, my first thought was, you know, that when america is facing some of its darkest times, it always referred -- it goes -- america always refers to the scientists to help them through some of our most difficult problems. so, it was science that

peter hotez at texas children's hospital. mark thompson host of the make it plain pod cast. welcome to you both, guys. that was really shocking to follow something like that hearing from congresswoman omar about the loss of her father. so incredibly sad. that is what so many americans are dealing with right now dr. hotez as you well know and you and i have have spoken about developments made in the vac se -- vaccine and the long road ahead and the loss of life, the extreme loss of life. 3600 people, 3600 americans that died in one day. you're scratching your head thinking why this doesn't have to happen. what does it mean now that we have seen dr. hotez this latest approval from moderna? >> thanks, yazman. to follow on with the congresswoman's comments, you know, we lost 300,000 americans this year, and the majority we did not have -- the majority did not have to lose their lives. there was, you know, an opportunity to do something of great substance starting in the summ summer. i understands the difficulties of march and april and the most agreegregious is we could have imp

peter hotez, the dean of the national school of tropical medicine at bay hardware colle baylor college of medicine in houston. so dr. hotez, everybody is waiting to see what happens today and when americans can get vaccinated. and dr. fauci had said that if this all goes apace, you know, that things could return to normal as early as this summer or early fall. what do you think of that timeline? >> yeah, i think it's certainly possible, alisyn. first of all, it's good news today that the eua may be issued today, or even if it's not, early next week, that's just fabulous news. start rolling out the vaccine. and that will be the beginning of a long road to recovery. i think the timeline of summer/fall feeling like we're back to normal, yes, i think it's possible. a lot of stars will have to align. you know, we estimate with a group in new york that about 60 to 80% of the u.s. population would have to be vaccinated in order to halt transmission of the virus. that's a pretty high bar. it means we'll probably have to vaccinate adolescents and some pediatric -- younger pediatric population a

peter hotez is a vaccine developer with baylor college of medicine and has followed the progress in detail. the pfizer by intact vaccine touts an efficacy a rate of 95%, moderna's 94.1%. >> to give a sense of what that means, our very best maxine of any vaccine, two doses gives you 97%. >> these covid vaccines are unlike a traditional vaccine, a weakened version of a virus is administered to patients. >> this does something a little bit different. actually asks the human body to make the protein or the virus component ourselves by delivering messenger rna into part of the cell, and that manufactures the protein to induce the response. >> ribonucleic or rna vaccines have been tested for years, but this would be the first time and rna vaccine would be approved for mass use on humans. still, concerns exist in homes and offices across the country. more than half of the firefighters in new york city said in an internal survey they would not take the vaccine. >> everybody that is a parent should look into the information. >> idaho mother of two natasha anderson tells fox news she is worried abou

peter hotez is here. a vaccine scientist and dean of tropical medicine at baylor college of medicine. thank you, sir. good to see you. >> good to see you, don. >> so, moderna's reporting great results from their trials and the director of vaccine distribution for operation warp speed said today that 100% of the americans who want the vaccine, will have had it by the end of june. are you as confident as -- as he is? >> yeah. that's going to be tough. remember, we have two vaccines we think that will be released by the fda through emergency-use authorization. both, mrna vaccines, the pfizer and moderna. but also, there is two others waiting in the wings. there's the two adenovirus vaccines from astrazeneca and oxford and j&j. and i think if we have four in hand, then we have a good chance to really move pretty quickly in vaccinating the u.s. population. with two, right now, i think we have enough doses for about 20 million americans by the end of the year. so it's -- i -- i don't think we would get there, j

peter hotez. he is the dean of the national school of tropical medicine at baylor college of medicine and co-director at the center for vaccine development. dr. hotez, thanks for being with us. what does the cdc need to be doing now to prepare or to make arrangements for dealing with this new-ish variant of coronavirus? >> well, thanks, john. good morning. it's an important question. you know, the way the uk scientists found out about this. they have a surveillance project, where they are identifying and isolating virus strains all over the country. and actually, doing sequencing. so, it's a genomic-surveillance project and that's how they picked it up and showed that about 50% of the variants in southeastern england are new this b.1.17. u.s. put in a similar program, in july. it's called spheres. it's an acronym. it's pretty complicated acronym. i think it's sars covi 2 public health emergency response and epidemiologic surveillance program. so, we should know this. we should know, by now, in the

peter hotez, a co-director of the center for vaccine development at texas children's hospital. and christopher uhl, professor of infectious diseases at wake forest baptist health center in winston-sal winston-salem, north carolina. >> dr. hotez, we know you have been a big proponent of getting the covid vaccine asap. you've encouraged people, don't choose between moderna and pfizer, don't worry about that, just get whatever's available to you. you got your vaccine a few days ago. what was that experience like? >> well, in terms of actually getting the vaccine, it was absolutely fine. obviously, the injection went okay. that evening, i had some -- a little bit of low-grade fever, some arm soreness, body aches. woke up that morning with some body aches, and by mid-morning, it was gone. so really mild symptoms. some people say the second injection may be a little bit more, but really, nothing worse than i've gotten with the shingrix vaccine or some of the flu vaccines. this is not a big deal for the vast majority of americans. we've had a few allergic reactions and trying to sort

peter hotez, the co-director for development at texas children's hospital. the vaccine is so important but it's still a ways away for the majority of the public. are we putting too much attention on the vaccine and not what we should be doing right now as this virus rages on. >> first of all, stephanie, welcome back. it's great to see you. look, i think it's important to have that vaccine out there to make people understand that they are not going to have to practice aggressive social distancing in perpetuity. this is time limited because vaccines are on the other side. and the problem is, people are being incredibly reckless still, that people still think that it's a hoax or that the deaths from covid-19 are due to other causes. so we have to send a clear message to the american people, look, don't lose your life over the next few weeks. i mean, the numbers are just horrible. we're looking at potentially, 400,000, 500,000 americans who will lose their life a week or so after the inauguration when all we need to do is get them to the other side, get them vac

peter hotez, thank you very much for being with us this morning. >>> well, a month after joe biden's election win, there's a staggering number of republicans who still are not ready to acknowledge that. the "washington post" reporting nearly 90% of all republicans serving in congress refuse to say who they believe won the election. we've got our partisan guest standing by to discuss that. also, the crucial runoff elections in georgia when we come back. stay close. amily-sials fast. and because it's a ninja foodi, it can do things no other oven can, like flip away. the ninja foodi air fry oven, the oven that crisps and flips away. when why are we alwaysiful hair, shown the same thing? where's my bounce? my glamour? my fire? all hair is beautiful. these dove shampoo and conditioners are custom formulated for different hair types. find the right dove care for your hair. your happy place. find your breaking point. then break it. every emergen-c gives you a potent blend of nutrients so you can emerge your best with emergen-c. you can do better, steve! get a freshly made footlong, from sub

i spoke to peter hotez about this, and he said, you know, people are dismimistaken in thi this vaccine took eight, nine months to develop, because people have been working on a variation of coronavirus for 40 years. we're actually okay with -- we have the capacity and ability to adapt these vaccines to mutations. >> that's right. and it's not just that. this particular -- the vaccines that have been developed by moderna and pfizer elicit a response by the immune system that's not just one antibody. it is a host of antibodies and t-cell responses. so what that means is, any one mutation or even a handful of mutations is not going to be what allows the virus to evade the immune system's response to the vaccine. this is simply just what we expect to have happen. but the vaccines that are coming out now should remain protective against this variant. >> there's been some criticism of members of congress, high-profile people, getting in line and getting these vaccines ahead of other people. i have to say, i'm -- i'm troubled by the criticism because the rate of -- the percentage apprehensive

peter hotez says he does worry we're not going to have enough vaccines overall if something like this keeps happening. >> yeah, i mean, i think that that's a big concern. obviously, you see the numbers there in terms of where they had some confidence. stren astrazeneca, obviously, a big one and johnson & johnson. if you start to do the math there and everything goes well, by summer, you might get into the numbers. i spoke to moncef slougy about that. johnson & johnson and astrazeneca, we'll be hearing more about them as we go into the new year. these are both two-dose vaccine regimens. and you see there's 300 million doses of the oxford az vaccine that they have pre-purchased. maybe we get into the numbers. one thing i'm looking forward yesterday, as well, which got less attention during the vaccine meeting was just the manufacturing abilities. they came out pretty early and they said, for example, with the pfizer vaccine, that, yes there was evidence, good evidence that this company, they were making tens of thousands of doses for clinical trials, but yes, they could manufacture this

peter hotez, dean of the national school of tropical medical at baylor and it's great to have you back on the show. this is hopeful, but maybe from what i just -- the news i just delivered maybe a three-month window here to get the vaccine to all of these first line of defense folks? >> yeah. look, it's a pretty big undertaking. but you know we have done it before. we roll out 85 million doses of influenza vaccine every year and now this is a bit more complicated because of the freezer requirements but the hope is we can move quickly with the moderna vaccine which does not require that minus 100 degree freezer temperature. it could be stored at refrigerator temperature for a month and if not at minus 20 degrees which is a typical household freezer. there's some optimism we can do that. we learned from the diagnostic testing that our health system can't handle a lot of complexity so i worry about making these guidelines overly fussy or overly stringent when we can't operationalize. >> so trying to kind of bring together the different headlines this morning. we have a ban of travel in th

peter hotez, thank you for being on. the show thi morning. >>> up thnext, while bill barr broke with the president over his false claims of election fraud, he is also taking steps to shore up an investigation the president has pushed into the origins of the russia investigation. former ada to robert mueller, chuck rosenberg, joins us. j "morning joe" is coming right back.oi - [announcer] meet the ninja foodi air fry oven. make family-sized meals fast. and because it's a ninja foodi, it can do things no other oven can, like flip away. the ninja foodi air fry oven, the oven that crisps and flips away. keeping your oysters growing while keeping your 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 so you can start hiring right away. claim your seventy-five-dollar credit when you post your first job at indeed.com/promo (chime) they were able to give me a personal loan so i could pay o

peter hotez is dean of the national school of tropical medicine at baylor and co-director of texas children's hospital. always good to talk to you. thank you for being here. what are we supposed the make of that headline when we saw it? how could there possibly have been a vaccine for this that already existed? >> what happened in 2003 the first sars emerged. the other name for covid-19 is sars 2. the first sars emerged out of southern china in 2003 and spread to toronto and stood up a big u.s. program under the bush administration and through n.i.h. to support vaccines for coronavirus. we started making vaccines against the spike protein and that was really important. it showed that the spike protein is the weak link in this virus and how all the current covid-19 vaccines operate. so the important point here when many people think that this was a rushed program, it was not. it is actually a program 17 years in the making starting back in 2003. >> sandra: that's really good information to have, right? in massachusetts the "new york magazine" reports the moderna vaccine design took all of one