first in uvalde, families of loved ones that killed 19 children and two teachers are mourning in that community. an investigation into what exactly went wrong. why didn t officers get into that school and confront the gunman much faster? here s how a texas lawmaker described his conversation with one little girl s father. the. reporter: their little girl had been shot in the back with one bullet through the kidney area. she likely bled out, according to the first responder. who is to know what would have happened to that little girl had officers showed up timely, had they gone in timely? we have comprehensive coverage for you this morning. nbc s morgan chesky is live in uvalde. howard litman, former attorney under president clinton, and cedric alexander is part of the national organization black law enforcement. he is now an msnbc law enforcement analyst. morgan, funerals start for the victims of this shooting soon. what else can you tell us from there on the ground? ch
spreading the virus. now individuals are getting paxlovid as well, and we re starting to see rebound with that as well. it s still a complicated situation. the bottom line is do that full isolation period and don t chance it and infect others. give us a reality check for those going on later today, whether it s a picnic in the park outdoors or whether they re going to be doing something else. what is your advice to people who are going to be in crowds over the next 24 hours or so? the risk situation is this. we have a screaming level of transmission now in many parts of the country. it s starting to level off in the northeast, but so many people are getting infected right now. you don t have to do that. so the key is to avoid big indoor gatherings, because so few people are wearing masks these days, so big indoor gatherings are the biggest red flag. if you can be outdoors, try to do it in a low-density area if
will be so many people who are being isolated who are asymptomatic for the full ten days that you could have a major negative impact on our ability to keep society running. reporter: new cases skyrocketing to numbers never seen before, but deaths and hospitalizations, key indications at this moment are not climbing as quickly. are we seeing lower hospitalization rates because omicron is or lower hospitalization rates because we do have a considerable amount of the population that is vaccinated? reporter: booster shots for younger teens may now be just weeks away says the cdc, while younger children remain the least vaccinated age group in the country. you ve got a screaming level of transmission in the northeast in new york city, in washington, d.c., trying to open schools at this point, it s hard to imagine how things will go well. reporter: despite the surge, new york city schools, the largest district in the nation,
is so much more transmissible. talking about the virus with measles transmission. when you try to do this in the throes of this screaming level of transmission testing and contract tracing become problematic, you have teachers, bus drivers with breakthrough covid infections. the question is when you have so many staff and teachers and bus drivers and everyone you need to support the school, the cafeteria workers out, can you run the school? that becomes a big issue as well and as we skuszed there are pediatric hospitalizations. i ve been saying each school district has to make its own decisions. it s really the choice between a bad decision or a bad decision. which bad decision do you want to make, keeping hids out of schools, we know the mental health effects, heard that from the surgeon general before the end of the year, it s devastating. at the same time trying to manage this level of
trans mmissibility is like e measles. if you go online, that goes again the surgeon general s message about mental health. they won t have personal contact, or even meals. with this screaming level of transmission, it s going to be really, really tough not only for the students but the teachers, staff and bus drivers, many of them will have to call out sick because of breakthrough covid. i think it will be really challenging to get through the school year. i can t fault school administrators either way, because they re not getting a lot of advice from state and local health agencies which are so depleted. what you re seeing is the schools are being asked to compensate for the lack of public health infrastructure. we re asking school nurses and teachers to create testing centers, to create triage, to create contact tracing, which is so unfair. so a lot of unknowns.