and healthy new years eve. we are continuing to follow the breaking news out of the vatican. pope benedict the 16th has died at the age of 95. the vatican says the retired pope passed away early this morning. his funeral will be held on january 5th in st. peters square. presided over by pope francis. that is the man who became leader of the catholic church after benedict resigned from the role in 2013. msnbc looks back on his life and legacy. it was a resignation that shocked the catholic church. pope benedict, less than eight years after his election, he became the first pope and seven centuries to voluntarily retire. he said that he lacked the strength of mind and body to do the job. he felt like he was being prevented from being the pope in a way that he felt the pope should be present for the people of god. he was born joseph rat singer in wartime germany. in the deeply catholic weijia bavaria. he and his brother george people became priests. both eventually landed
only 15% have got the omicron booster vaccine, according to the cbc. joining me now is doctor patel, nbc medical contributor and former policy director in the obama white house. let s start with this new xbb covid variant. it has become the dominant form threading in the northeast, making up more than half of the covid cases in new england. health experts are saying it s more contagious. they say it can evade immunity from vaccines and infections. what do we know about this, doctor and, what are your concerns? when, see on top of being more infectious and potentially evading immunity, we are trying to see if our current booster held up. we know it holds up better than the original vaccine strain, which is good. on top of that, we also know this is something that if at a time where people are traveling not just around the world, but we ve got incredible cases spiking up in the northeast area and we will only see those surges increase across the rest of the united states. that means mo