Georgia, and the fight for control of the u. S. Senate live from cnbc global headquarters, the facts, the truth, the news with Shepard Smith. And good evening. As america faces whats expected to be the worst wave of covid yet, there is a groundbreaking development in the race for a vaccine. The drug maker pfizer announcing early data shows its experimental vaccine is more than 90 effective in preventing covid19 that would make it about as effective as the polio vaccine pfizers ceo telling cnbc we could have up to 50 million doses of it by the end of this year it is a great day for science. It is a great day for humanity when you realize that your vaccine has a 90 effectively. Thats overwhelming. The good news comes as the virus spreads across the country at a rate weve never before seen cases on the rise in 49 states over the past week 31 of them having their biggest spike since the pandemic began in the past eight days, weve had more than 830,000 new confirmed cases. Total hospitalizations are back up to where they were back in july, with more than 56,000 infected patients in hospitals right now. Doctors warnings of a dark winter ahead have been hammering wall street lately, but look at today. The dow had its biggest rally in five months after pfizers vaccine announcement cnbcs meg terrell talked to pfizers ceo and, meg, hes calling all of this a gamechanger. Yeah, shep. Hes not the only one calling it that dr. Anthony fauci saying today the results were, quote, absolutely striking, just extraordinary. And its incredible to put into perspective how quickly this vaccine and others have been developed. It was only new years eve 2019 that the World Health Organization was first alerted to a mysterious viral pneumonia circulating in wuhan, china. Two weeks later the genetic sequence was shared publicly and that kick started one of the great medical races the world has ever seen. Pfizer partnered with biontech and it is now 90 effective. Before this the fastest a vaccine was developed is four years and that was for mumps in 19 ske 1967 pfizer needs to complete its followup and file with the fda. We should see more details on the vaccine, does it protect against severe disease does it work as well for the elderly . Even once it reaches the market, there will be questions like how long does the protection last . And then of course supply. There wont be enough. As you said 50 million doses globally this year, enough for only 25 Million People pfizers ceo recognizing the urgency. We are also looking right now to see if there are other ways, thinking out of the box, to increase even further the manufacturing capacity now were speaking about 1,000 people dying in the u. S. Every day, right, so theres no time to be lost here. So thats also why other vaccines are still needed. We expect data from moderna on its vaccine any week now and, shep, just as an example of how fast the science is moving, just about 30 minutes ago the fda just gave emergency use authorization to an antibody drug for covid19. Thats an eli lilly drug this is the same category of course that was used to treat President Trump. Its not the same drug, that was regenerons drug, this is eli lillys, but this is moving so fast. So hope appears to be on the horizon, but distribution is a key. Only 25 million can possibly get vaccinated this year obviously not enough so who goes first . Dr. Scott gottlieb now, former fda commissioner, pfizer board member, cnbc contributor dr. Gottlieb, whos first and how does it happen well, first the Company Needs to file for an authorization with the fda which hopefully that will happen at some point maybe later this month, if the data continues to come in in a positive fashion the fda has to authorize a vaccine. It would take the fda two to four weeks to turn around a request for emergency use authorization. Theres going to be a determination made by a group thatadvises the centers for Disease Control about who should get the vaccine first. Its likely to be older individuals for whom the risk benefit makes sense, where the benefit from the vaccine can outweigh any theoretical risk that may giexist because youre not going to have longterm followup that you might want. Youll only have two or three months of followup on most of the patients at the time that the vaccine gets authorized. So you want to target the people who are going to drive more of the benefit of the vaccine and thats going to be older individuals, probably people in Nursing Homes or longterm assisted living facilities who are not just at high risk of contracting the virus but also at high risk of a bad outcome from it. Doctor, we live in a misinformation and disinformation age in a recent nbc news wall street journal poll only 20 people responded they would take a vaccine as soon as they could. How do you convince the public to trust this process . Well, look, thats right now. I think by the time that this vaccine is prbroadly available n licensed for general use, this and other vaccine, well have data on the other vaccines that are in development as well as meg said, youre looking at next year, probably the Second Quarter of next year, maybe the early Third Quarter of next year i think youll have a lot more data on the safetiness of these vaccines if this vaccine provides 90 or better protection of getting covid disease and is determined to be safe in the followup studies, i think youll see many more people comfortable with the prospect of taking it. The vaccine that achieves that level of protectiveness, 90 or greater effectiveness, that will afford you a degree of protection that you can get to a point where we can look towards getting back to some semblance of normal life, maybe later next year later next year sounds so much better than we dont know when doctor, though, between now and then i keep looking at your projections and the numbers have followed every one of them this spike were seeing now, i dont think people realize whats coming. I really dont well, thats right. I think were in for a very hard phase of this pandemic really the most difficult phase of the pandemic right now. Were probably going to hit a record in terms of the number of hospitalizations this week right now 11,000 people are in icus across the country. The challenges that this virus is distributed everywhere across the country. Its about to explode. Were going to have a significant epidemic wave across the entire nation. Unfortunately, its going to cause a lot of death and disease before were ready to have this therapeutic counterattack. The approval of the authorization of that lily drug today is highly significant. That could be immediately available to help the people most at risk of a bad outcome from covid once they become infected they can take that drug and lower their chances of a bad outcome so thats a very meaningful approval that can provide some relief in the near term but were in for hard months before we can see around the corner towards a Better Future towards these technologies and vanquish this were in for hard months ahead we need to start taking steps right now to slow the spread. Urkt todadoctor, thank you s. The covid threat is immense, growing and its coming. Thats from president elect joe biden himself as he lays out the challenges of this dark winter thats being described and he explains what needs to happen to put the virus in the rear view. I will spare no effort to turn this pandemic around once were sworn in january 20th, to get our kids back to school safely, our businesses growing and our economy running at full speed again. To get an approved vaccine manufactured and distributed as quickly as possible to as Many Americans as possible free of charge that effort beginning today as the president elect launches his own coronavirus advisory board. Nbcs ali vitali is with the Biden Campaign in wilmington, delaware ali, this was the first big move from the Biden Transition Team whats the thinking here reporter the thinking is they are showing that this is a priority tackling the coronavirus pandemic was something we heard about daily on the road with joe biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris. Now, though, theyre showing that its going to be a priority when they govern, setting up this task force of about a dozen professionals, medical experts, Public Health experts, really leaning in on the science as they promised they would do so we can take the fivepoint plan they used to talk about on the campaign trail and put it into action on day one when inaugurated in january the other thing that will allow them to hit the ground running is staffing up the government. They have identified 4300 potential appointappointees. Theyre going to prioritize those roles that have the responsibility of tackling the coronavirus pandemic as well as those that dont have to go through senate confirmation. You know this is where peoples attention is, rightfully so. When you lay out how stark the numbers are right now, it just goes to show you that this has to be a priority when the biden team launched a transition website, they saw the most hits on the plan for tackling the coronavirus pandemic i would also say, though, shep, just before we got on the air with you, we heard that president elect joe biden is going to be speaking tomorrow on health care, another piece of this pandemic and one that hes pressed on the campaign trail repeatedly. And a good day for it well mention that in a moment ali, thanks. The white house largely silent since the election. The president with no Public Meetings scheduled hes not taken questions from reporters in a week. Today President Trump is still refusing to concede and tweeting all kinds of baseless claims about fake votes if he understands hes lost the presidency hes not saying so publicly and neither are his allies the Vice President said it aint over, even though it is. Mr. Pence hosted a White House CoronavirusTask Force Meeting of his own today for the first time in almost three weeks Hallie Jackson is at the white house for us tonight hallie, what came of mr. Pences covid meeting . Reporter frankly, shep, the biggest news out of that covid Task Force Meeting is that it happened at all here with Vice President pence and the rest of the members. That is because as you note the last one, the most recent one, was october 20th, right . The focus shifted very much to the final days of the president ial campaign for President Trump and for Vice President pence who was on the road quite a bit in the runup to election day. Keep in mind that President Trump has not himself attended any Task Force Meetings for many months it comes of course as there is appearing now to be another covid outbreak here at the white house. We have now learned, nbc news confirming today based on a couple of sources familiar with the diagnosis that david bossi, the person tapped to lead the legal push has now tested positive for coronavirus ben carson, the housing secretary in the middle of your screen, he has tested positive we knew chief of staff mark meadows on the left has tested positive this graphic doesnt include the four other officials linked to the white house or campaign who in the last several days have also tested positive for covid i should note that bossi and secretary carson were in the east room on tuesday night on election day theres video of bossie hes there without a mask. The president s lawyers are working on legal challenges to the election on the legal front, what are they trying to accomplish here reporter ostensibly, theyre trying to put up enough of a legal fight to get the results of this election overturned. I will tell you that based on my reporting and the reporting of our team today we learned that aides and allies around the president really see this as very much a long shot, much more of a Public Relations strategy than an actual legal one, if you will in the words of one person close to the white house here, it feels like to this source an attempt to brand the president as more than a loser in their words, shep. So really about the sort of public messaging strategy it seems more than the legal strategy i have to tell you as we were coming on the air just in the last 20, 25 minutes or so, we had some word from the department of justice, attorney general bill barr. He is now directing federal prosecutors that if they see any evidence of voting irregularities, substantial allegations of that, they should investigate. Of course, shep, as you know, as i know, as weve noted a lot on our platforms here, there is no widespread evidence of fraud in this election. No, there isnt, hallie, and another sign he wont go quietly or true to tradition President Trump fired his defense secretary today. No lame duck president has ever done such a thing. Mark esper and President Trump have long been at odds he signalled last week that he was likely done when he penned a Resignation Letter and had it at the ready. He didnt need it because the president twitter fired him. Mark esper has been fired effect live immediately, he wrote espers problems began back in june with a clear the streets for a photo op event at Lafayette Park he disagreed with the president on using active duty military to stop the protests. Since then hes been helping members of congress to draft legislation to strip confederate leaders names from military bases and streets on them and possibly even ships at sea that work set to continue. Christopher miller is set to replace esper, the Senate Confirmed director of the National Counterterrorism center hallie, who else is likely to go here reporter well, anywhere from a couple of names to a whole lot of names, shep you have obviously the firing of defense secretary mark esper that is something that has long been rumored to be in the works. We had been reporting here on nbc news that esper has gone so far as to have prepared a letter of resignation knowing that after election day he was on the chopping block i can tell you there are questions in the president s circle about the futures of fbi director chris wray, about the future of cia director gina haspel as well but more broadly, listen, you have a lot of staffers who are here at the white house who are well aware that come january theyre going to need to find another job. But a Senior Administration official is telling nbc news tonight that a top aide is now directing departments to fire anybody who is looking for work so long as President Trump is refusing to concede this election, shep. Hallie jackson on the north lawn, thank you. Covid watch. The United States reported its 10 millionth case today with the latest million added in just the past ten days. That is a spread like weve never seen just yesterday another 105,000 cases. Johns hopkins reports its the fifth day in a row that cases topped 100,000 officially. Texas is in a world of hurt. More than 10 of all the cases in the country are there in el paso, they brought in freezer trucks to hold the dead covid victims. Six trucks so far. Four more they say are coming because the morgues cant hold all the dead in utah, the governor declared a state of emergency hes refused to mandate masks across that state, but now with the deaths at an alltime high, he finally came around masks required now says the governor for the foreseeable future the doctors say theres no stopping this in its tracks, not right now. And whats ahead is going to be historically bad cal perry is live in chicago new restrictions in illinois, cal . Reporter yeah, shep, its really, really bad here in the midwest. Take this number in the midwest. Where you are in new york, the Positivity Rate is 2 . Here in chicago its 12 in wisconsin it is 30 1 in every three tests is coming up positive. Weve been talking to doctors here all day dr. Ben singer who works in northwestern, he was here when cases peaked in may. Hes worried well see an increase and that it could come at the worst time of year. Take a listen. Weve known that there is a wave coming, the uptick of course started weeks ago and so weve had time to prepare in terms of increasing our staffing, the availability of space to care for patients with covid19 and ensure that we have a supply chain for ppe, for ventilators and Everything Else that we need to care for patients and the health care providers. Reporter Hospital Capacity is critical and it is a coming story. You look at a state like wisconsin, 85 capacity. Here at northwestern, theyre going to try to keep it from getting to capacity. Normally, shep, you would air vac people to neighboring states the whole region is bad. We expect its going to get worse. Those cases where people are testing positive, you lag 10 to 14 days and thats when youll see the increase in hospitalizations. Now to the vote, and the count, the race for the presidency is decided, period. But Key Senate Races are still up for grabs we will have small numbers of mail ballots that need to be counted. The election outcome is locked, but the count in some states continues what were learning. Fraud allegations, moneyment for struggling Small Businesses misused and misdirected to people not in need while i may be the first woman in this office, i will not be the last. Plus Kamala Harris makes history, but what impact did she have on the campaign and the election outcome the facts,