Scalzis new book. But first, a spare the air alert is in effect right now as smoke from Northern California and Oregon Wildfires envelops the bay area. Heres a live look at those smoky skies from three of our cameras. Left to right, you have walnut creek, mt. Sutro in San Francisco, which looks terrible. And san jose, where the air quality has reached really unhealthy levels. The bad air quality clearly visible, though, in all three. Now, this satellite image from the bay area air Quality Management district shows the smoke drifting into the region from those Massive Wildfire north of us at and this map from purple air. Com really interesting shows you where the is the worst right now. Red being the worst. Right. That indicates air in the unhealthy range. And you can see its spread across the bay area, kind of in a north to south direction. Ironicaltually, when you go inland a little better and usually its the inland communthat have the less healthy air. With that, we say, hello, istin. Thanks f watching. Getting answers. And joining us now to discuss the Health Impact from all this smoke is abc7 news special correspondent dr. Alok patel. Dr. Patel, nice to have you here. Kristin, its always a pleasure to be here. I wish we did not have to talk about this, which we do way too often in Northern California. We do. We do. Okay. But for today weve been hearing a lot of warnings to stay indoors if you can. Should we take that seriously . Is it that bad . Absolutely should take it seriously, especially if youre someone whos high risk. You know, i think people should check the air quality, whether youre going to air air quality dot gov or youre going to looking at purple air every single day, just like youre checking the weather. If you are high risk, meaning if you are pregnant, you have an underlying lung or heart condition. We should be careful with our kids or stay indoors. Make sure you have good filters and just be aware of any symptoms that may develop when you go outside. All right. So what is it that smoke does to us . So many things. So basically, the smoke that were looking at right now, what were really concerned about from wildfire smoke is the particulate matter. So everything that burns in a wildfire, its not just the trees and the plants, but also everything that could come from burning over material that all goes in the air. And its extremely small when we look at the aqi, the air quality index, one thing that were really concerned about is pm 2. 5 things in the air that are 2. 5 micrometers or smaller. To give you a sense of how small that is, thats almost 30 times smaller than a strand of hair. So you can imagine if you were to inhale that, how deep in your lungs it could go even to your bloodstream. So that can cause a lot of not only short term, but also Long Term Health effects. If youre chronically exposed to it. Okay. So the short term is what things like itchy eyes. I definitely found that driving home yesterday, just got into my car and im thinking, why are my eyes watering . And then i think the throat can feel a little uncomfortable, too. Absolutely not. Just with pm 2. 5, the smallest kind, but even with some some bigger particulate matter. Pm10 you can absolutely feel like your eyes are irritated, like allergies or cold. Even if you dont smell smoke outside, even if it looks clear, you can actually feel that. Thats why its important to check that aqi thats the short term and obviously those symptoms should get better the minute you remove yourself from that bad air. Okay. So thats just immediate. Its not long lasting. But when you talk about lung damage, long term exposure is what kind of things are we looking at impact wise . What were looking at is the worst thing of things like asthma, copd. Theres Even Research showing that people are more likely to show up to ers with non fatal heart issues when there is a prolonged wildfire season or when you know areas that arent used to this poor aqi kind of get hit with that. Right . Right. Okay. So i saw some schools in the bay area canceling their school day or some just limiting their outdoor recess time. I think they were drawing the air quality index at 150. Is there a magic number for you or not really . Is it individually based once we get past 100, we want to start paying really close attention to people who are high risk and kids and infants fall in that category, not only because their lungs are still developing, but a little physics experiment. They breathe in more volume of air per service area of their body. So theyre very susceptible to this. So parents should not be surprised if schools are either closed or if kids are asked to be kept inside , outside, whether thats recess or a pickup. Yeah. Lets just ask our director to pull back up that air quality map from purple air because we were talking about that 150 figure. But you were saying for some more sensitive folkn 100 might be too much. You can just take a look and see where you aren the bay area, your city and what number, what range youre in and try to make a determination as to what you should be doing. How long is it to too long to be outside in, lets say, 150, yw, for the average person, if you if dontany Underlying Health conditions, it caly be how you feel. I would want te amount of time youre outside whene past 150, the closer you get purple, the more like are going to be affected by it ress of your age, regardless of anything and there are some purpth of santa rosa, correct . Yeah, exactly. And you see all those . 150 i felt that the 150 earlier this morning. Okay. So is it time to get those masks back out that we already have because of covid . We talked about these masks in 2018. You and i did, because this is something that especially around now in the aqi, could be really bad. People should keep one on you, especially if you have to be outside for a prolonged period of time in an event of emergency. If youre in a situation where all of a sudden the aqi is 200 to 50, you want to make sure you have a wellfitting n95 or can kn95 mask those cloth masks, bandanas, none of thats actually going to cut it when it comes to the air pollution. What about surgical masks . I remember those were second best to n95s and 90 kn95s for covid transmission. But if you have those, could that help with, you know, wildfire smoke . Still want to stick with the n95s . Because now even more so than when were trying to protect ourselves against droplets from infection, particulate matter is extremely small and it could potentially be all around you depending on where you are for comparison. Just look what firefighters are wearing when theyre up there. Okay. Now, is this kind of exposure something that could lead to an acute situation where you say, hey, i got to go get some help . And how would you know if youre in that situation . Oh, it absolutely can. You know, we dont necessarily have a lot of the data here in Northern California, but if people remember from last year, the canadian wildfires that went onto the east coast, there was actually Research Studies showing an increase in people going to the Emergency Department with an exacerbation of asthma, cardiac arrhythmias, meaning irregular heartbeats. So people out there who have any type of underlying medical issues should be paying attention to how they feel when it comes to going outside in air pollution. This especially means exercise when the air quality is bad. Skip the outdoor exercise. You dont need to go inside. Do something else, all right . Or go to the gym. Yeah. If you dont have a gym, throw some pushups down. Its okay. Okay. Okay. Hey, i want to speaking of push ups and just working out in general, i want to shift gears now because this is very important. Kids are starting to play their fall sports. Right. And i just want to ask you, theres some new thoughts with regard to doing the same sport year round or injuries. What do you know about that . Thats what youre referring to. Is sport specialized ation. So this is baseball year round, you know, or basketball year round, year round and earlier with younger kids deciding to focus in on one sport and saying, this is what im going to go all in on and what people really have to ask themselves is, is the is the risk worth the benefit . You know, data from the American Academy of pediatrics shows that only 0. 03 to 0. 5 of High School Athletes will actually go on to play at a professional level. But sports specialization can actually increase kids risk of overuse injuries. Ill give everyone a very clear example. Tommy john surgery is a surgery to use to repair an elbow ligament. That can happen when people pitch too much. 60 of those surgeries were done in kids aged 15 to 19 because kids are focusing too much on one sport, they need a break, right . Right. The young pitchers i know. What about concussions . Concussions are most likely to happen from contact sports. Anyone can guess not only football, but also soccer. We see it in basketball and volleyball. It can happen from anywhere. What people need to realize is that concussions are a type of traumatic brain injury. Kids need to rest. They need to be pulled out of practice. Whatever theyre doing, get medical clearance. We need to pay close attention to any symptoms they may have, whether its nausea, vomiting, headache, can fusion, and they should not go back to play until they have no symptoms or need no medication. And they are cleared by a health care professional. Thats right. And if your coach is not, you know, sticking to that, then you need to have a talk with your parents and call me and ill talk to the coach. Okay dr. Patel, thank you for coming in. Thank you. Im sure you came in with your n95 and well see you again at 4 00. And trying to avoid concussions. Okay, sounds good. You can check the air quality anytime using our online interactive tracker. It also shows you where fires are burning. You can find it all on abc7 news. Com. We put it on the home page to make it easy to find right now. Plus join us at four when meteorologist sandhya patel will show us when well get that break. Finally from these smoky skies. All right. Up next, reforming californias ballot measure process and an effort to keep donald trump off the ballot in california. Well dig into the subjects with Political Data expert asking if democrats will find the courage to do it. Joining us live now to discuss the ballot measure issue along with new rule changes that may benefit former president trumps bid to get back in office is paul mitchell, Vice President of Political Data inc. Hey, paul, nice to have you on again. Thanks for having me. Lets start with the opinion piece. The chronicle board says californias ballot measure process is easily by special interests with money and agenda. How so . Well, clearly the referendum portion of our ballot measure process whereby you take a law that was passed by the voters and a special interest group, whether its bail bonds or Insurance Companies or soda or vaping or tobacco companies, theyll take that ballot that new law that was just created and use a referendum process to essentially stop that law in its tracks while they wait for the next election. So essentially buys them a year and a half, two years of existing law to stall that implementation. And then it goes to the voters and when its on the ballot, it can be very confusing because voters will hear in your broadcasts and in the paper that the Tobacco Industry has put this ballot measure on the ballot and then advocates, advocates will go out there and say, vote yes because youre voting yes to extend the law that the state passed a vote no would be a vote against the Tobacco Company or Insurance Company or whomever. And so voters are very confused by this referendum process. So one law changes. Theyre going to make is instead of voting yes or no, youre going to vote yes. I want to extend this law or no, i want to repeal it in order to make it a easier thing for voters to understand. Got it more logical or more intuitive as opposed to counterintuitive in the way currently is . Okay the board also called for a fix to the system by transferring the power to write ballot measure titles and summaries from the Attorney Generals Office to the legislative Analysts Office. What difference would that make . Well, the claim in the article is that the Attorney Generals Office being an elected or sometimes appointed office, would be subject to political pressure in order to give ballot designations that are more favorable to causes they support and potentially, you know, putting a few bad words in a in a title or summary for a measure they oppose. Now those can go to the courts and the courts can rewrite those ballot summaries and titles if they are deemed to be, you know, not correct. Their argument, though, is to send it to the legislative Analysts Office. And my concern with that would be that, you know, the people who are kind of the worst at creating language, that is easily understandable by voters are those bureaucrats or people that work within the legislature or the legislative Analysts Office that tend to write things in over complicated manner. So as an example, i was presenting today about the states same day registration process. Well, the state actually calls it conditional voter registration. Nobody knows what that is. They know same day registration, plain language. And so sometimes the state and the legislative Analysts Office isnt exactly who you would want to go to for easily understandable clear language. All right, paul, thanks so much for explaining those things. Very important. But now i want to move on to the president ial race and California Us Senate races. So the gop made a rule change that apparently will help trump win the republican primary in california. How well, the republican primary is going to be on super tuesday. So its going to be an early primary. And california has, you know, over 150 delegates. I think its 169 delegates now in the past and in the last election, in 2020 and 2016, you had congressional candidates fighting to try to get delegates at each Congressional District level. And equal numbers of delegates were appointed by each Congressional District. So three delegates for Nancy Pelosis district, three for barbara lees and three for kevin mccarthys. The fact is, is that candidates could come, say, to the bay area, where theres very few republicans and with direct mail and grassroots organizing and maybe just getting some publicity in the bay area, maybe try to chip away at trumps advantage, the Republican Party changed the rules and said winner take all in california. So thats going to reduce any incentive for candidates on the republican side to actually campaign in the state. So theyll come here for fundraising, but theyre very unlikely to come here for actual delegates because they cant chip away at his lead like they could under the old rules. I see. So bay area Republican Voters will get less love, less courted. But in the meantime, California Democrats are using a postcivil war rule to try to keep trump from being on the ballot. Explain that. Well, this is not just in california, but it is around the country. And assemblyman evan low and a handful of other legislators recently requested did the attorney general to weigh in on this essentially denying trump access to the ballot because of his participation in an insurrection, which essentially is a postcivil war language that would have banned people from, you know, generals and others who had fought against the union army to hold office. So it seems like a long shot to me. Also in california, the state has been very liberal in terms of making sure people have access to the ballot. But it it is definitely something that is getting a lot of attention in here in the state and nationally and is one constitutional scholar stated theres a nontrivial chance that that could actually succeed and so there are some people who are taking that and running with it. All right. Hey the Us Senate Race to replace the retired Dianne Feinstein as we know, three democrats, pretty well known in the race. We got adam schiff, we got katie porter, we got barbara lee. And we kind of all assumed that two democrats would be the ones to come out as the top two from the primary. And be on the general ballot. But were hearing possibly there could be a twist. I mean, youre are hearing about the name arnold schwarzenegger. I think we know who that is. Yeah to you characterized, you know, schiff and porter and lee as pretty well known. And they might be pretty well known to highly educated voters, very engaged voters, but to normal, everyday californians, these are still people who dont have 100 name recognition, like an andre schwarzenegger. Or for those of us who grew up in la or san diego, steve garvey, the former dodger former padre, might be running as a republican, and that would definitely shake up the race because not only does it throw a couple other big names into the contest, it could mean that a republican would make the runoff in november. Where the last two times there was a Us Senate Race. Those races were contested among two democrats, having made the top two. All right. Well, the plot thickens. Well see what happens. Paul mitchell, politico , all data. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Just ahead, well talk with the author whose new book digs into tech billionaires as the worlds biggest supervillains sound fam characters for sure in a new book written by bestselling author john scalzi. Starter villain was released this week. Entertainment weekly says if youre tired of the same old villain arc in comic books, thrillers and action movies, scalzis unique, hilarious and oddly relatable story is the perfect fall. Read his previous works, including old mans war redshirts a kju preservation society, have earnedim many accolades, including the hugo award, which is basically the oscars of Science Fiction. And hes here in San Francisco tonight as part of his book tour. Joining us live here in the studio is john scalzi. Hey, john. Hello. Oh, my gosh. Its so good to see you. Its so good to see you. Good to see you, too. Okay. I should probably explain. We are old friends. Yes like really old. Yes. Yes. 30 years ago. 30 years ago. You want to tell how we got to know each other 30 years ago . We were both in beautiful fresno, california. I was working at the newspaper there as the film critic and you were working at the at the news station tv station there . Yeah, the tv station there. And so we hung out because we were basically the same age and news gathering people. And everybody else was older than us. So it was like, i know. Yeah. So were the old people. Yeah. Now we are the old people. And now youre an amazing, successful sci fi author and its great that youre here because youre in town with a book event tonight as part of your book tour, right . That is correct. Sold out. So were not going to tell you where can we talk . You can tell them where it is. They can be at the window going, can we come in . Right. No, its at the american bookbinders museum, which is us. Im very excited about it because ive always wanted an excuse to go there. So now i know i can see it up front. Fantastic. Okay, so starter villain is the new book. What is the exciting plot . Well, its basically the sad sack guy. He is a substitute teacher. Hes divorced. He used to be a journalist and kind of out on like you, like down on his luck finds out that his mysterious uncle has passed away and he is inherited all of his Business Empire. It turns out his Business Empire is being a james bond super villain. So. And thats basically the story. And he has to figure out everything thats going on. Hes been thrown into the deep end and while hes trying to figure it out, people are trying to kill him because of course, hes a james bond villain. And all the other james bond villains want him out of the room. I see. But whats up with this cat in a suit on the cover . So the cat in the suit is. Well, cats play a very important part in the book and part of that is because one of the things i really like to do as a writer is play with the tropes that people think that they know, like kaiju preservation in society. I was doing riffs off of godzilla sized monsters with red shirts. The idea that crew members in Science Fiction tv shows were doomed. And with this one, Everybody Knows that supervillains have the cats like mr. Bond. Oh, you would die, you know. And so didnt the dr. Evil guy in austin powers have a cat . Yes, he did very much the same sort of way. And so the thing is, is if youre going to play with the tropes, youve got to youve got to have the cats in there. And as it turns out, the cats in my book are more than they seem are right. But what about the tech billionaires . A certain owner of a social media platform comes to mind . Yes. Well, the thing about it is who are the closest things that we have . These days to like super villains . And part of it is part of it is billionaires are i dont want to say that every billionaire is evil, but certainly when you get to that level, there is such a separation in your daily Life Experience and the daily Life Experience of everybody else that you can be like, you know what . Now people dont actually matter. And so one of the things that we do is we kind of poke holes at the billionaire culture, the tech bro culture, all of these sorts of things. Its not it is not me trying to come down on, you know, Silicon Valley or San Francisco in particular, although so many of them are in the area. But more of an aspect of these are things that can be used and exploited by those who dont mean well for others. Yeah. In such an easy way that it lends itself to super villainy. Right right off the bat. And there are some text excesses that are absolutely true. Like, you know, whether its trying to chase the fountain of youth or live forever, this is the whole thing is, is like when you think about, you know, the super villains in like tv and movies and theyre like always doing extreme things. And then all of a sudden you hear that theres a tech billionaire whos going, well, yes, i do use the blood of the young to rejuvenate myself. And youre like, is this for real . And the answer is, yes, it is. Its like its such an easy leap from that to just abject mask off. Supervillainy i think this is why you have so many fans here in the bay area because some people find it very relatable. Yeah. Okay. So speaking of that platform now called x, you used to tweet a lot. In fact, we used to tweet each other all the time. All the time. I dont tweet as much anymore because of what the environment has become. How about you . I have basically i basically use the former twitter now for career updates, letting people know when, when and where im going to be on tour and stuff like that. But for a lot of the socializing that i did, a lot of the fun that i used to have, im in other places now. I use blue sky a lot, which is an up and coming social media outlet. Basically all the people who did all the fun things on the former twitter are now there and its been just a blast to be able to sort of rewind and be on a site where you can just talk to people and have fun and have that sort of related. Im also on threads. Im also on mastodon. Were all, i think, all waiting to see how it all settles out. But what we do know is the fun place that we used to be, the former twitter is just kind of not there anymore. Shoot im so mad. We only have 20s left. Oh, no. Oh, darn it. I dont even know how to take best advantage of that 20s. But i do want to know whats your advice for Young Authors and journalists . Put your butt in chair and write. The more you write, the easier it is to write, the better you will write. Its that simple. Thats why you write every da right . Check out the blog. Whatever right . Indeed. All right. 25 year annivsa. Congratulations to you, by the way. Thank you, john. Have a great event tonight. Thank you. All right. By the way, you dont shy away from. Okay. Well take a short but do they really . Do they see all that you are . At Kaiser Permanente all of us Work Together to care for all that is you. Good evening and its great to have you with us here on this wednesday night. That urgent manhunt right now for a murder suspect who walked free after just 48 hours in custody. They say it was a claire call error. But first tonight, the contentious hearing on capitol hill
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