southwestern missouri. it is currently the epicenter of the state s massive covid outbreak. one of the major hospitals there has acquired as many patients in the last five weeks as it did in five months last year, a testament to how quickly the delta variant can spread among non-vaccinated people. the vast majority of people who are coming fallen sick with covid in springfield are unvaccinated, and unlike last year a lot of them are younger. they re in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and people who these doctors and nurses are seeing in their 30s this year in their icus seem to be much sicker than that same age group last year. we should note that it is a little unclear right now in terms of our understanding the evidence of delta, we know quite certainly it is more transmissible. it is unclear whether it gets people sicker, but what you are reporting indicates just from the sort of anecdotal experience of the people working in this
still has not traveled that much, doing events like this. this is what administration officials say now is the beginning of a new phase of his presidency, that s going to start after labor day as well, about campaigning traveling across the country to push the agenda. tax reform, of course, is front and center on wednesday in springfield. but there s some skepticism. i have some as well as administration officials who say they don t know how much he will actually travel. i was talking to a senior administration official who say they have tried to put events like this not these big rallies but agenda-focused event on his schedule only to have it fall off because the president simply wants to do large rallies, not more presidential, smaller things. they say that the this is going to be one of the new themes of the president s travel, trying to do more target events. we ll see if it actually happens. that s wednesday in springfield. we ll see if it s a trend.
long before harvey. so far so good. another presidential tweet, closely monitoring hurricane harvey from camp david, we re leaving nothing to chance, city, state, federal government working great together. it is almost imperative that the president show up at some point in the aftermath of this disaster struck area. in fact, president trump promised he ll do that, the time is unspecified sometime next week, that s the time the president promised a series of visits, the first in springfield, missouri to tout his tax reform proposal. make no mistake, natural disaster appearances are pretty much for optic appearances only. the president arriving at the disaster scene does nothing to actually expedite recovery. here is former fema director michael brown, shall we say, has some experience in dealing with such matters. it s a balancing fact because the president travels with a huge bubble and that bubble shuts down everything. it shuts down air space, it
so i have a personal interest in helping prevent smoking. i m tom steyer, the co-chair of the yes on 56 campaign. every year, nearly 17,000 california kids start smoking. a third of them will die from their addiction. tobacco taxes reduce youth smoking. please. vote yes on prop 56. if we can save even a few lives, it s worth it. standing w ining by, take a live pictures from springfield, ohio now. donald trump scheduled to take the stage any minute now. it s the first three rallies in the battleground state of ohio today. we ll have live coverage of his remarks. joining us, carol lee, the white house reporter for the wall street journal. david gregory, cnn s political
reaching those levels. and self-days of high water are ahead. we have hattie thompson with the illinois emergency management in springfield. patty, thank you for joining us. thank you. what are you expecting at this point? well, as we just said, we are still experiencing rising waters in several places. so we ve been concentrating our efforts along some of the areas of mississippi, the illinois and some of the other rivers in illinois. we ve got a lot of hot spots around illinois right now. have you ever seen anything like this. how unusual is this for december? and how do you prepare for something this massive? well, i think part of what s unusual about this, besides it being in december, is that it happened see quickly. we had those very heavy rains