covid-22, a third year of the pandemic rebooted with a new variant, omicron. experts say the strain has been identified in over 15 countries. it's expected to reach the u.s. it had been, for example, almost a month since the president gave formal remarks about covid, and the new variant, however, it has pushed this white house back to tackle the subject once again. today biden emphasizing he does not see, and fauci agrees with him, a need for new shutdowns. >> we should not be freaking down. >> not a cause for panic. >> it's not the time to panic. >> we're going to fight covid this winter, not with shutdowns, but with widespread vaccinations, testing, boosters and more. >> concern should spur us to do the things that we know work. >> the things that experts know work starts with vaccines, almost 60% of americans now are vaccinated. that's still, though, a figure that experts say must rise. safety measures work, but they continue to tax public patience after these two years of sacrifice. the w.h.o. says this variant is right now at a very high global risk. it's been identified in a range of countries, including south africa. the biden administration banning incoming travel from eight nations in the region as a precaution, while other countries are going farther, responding with drastic and quite costly measures. israel, morocco and japan doing full bans, barring virtually any visitor from abroad. is this another blip in the covid story, which will mostly impact the unvaccinated, or is this some kind of turning point that could send us all, including the vaccinated, way backwards? experts don't know all the details, but even if this variant is more serious, scientists think they already know enough that they could tweak current effective vaccines to address the new variant, if needed. pfizer says it could adjust its existing vaccine within 100 days. >> we will be able to have a vaccine in less than 100 days. in fact, we have already two vaccines in less than 100 days. we built one for delta that we did not use because the current vaccine is very effective against delta, and we built one for beta. so it will be used only in case we need it if we see the current one doesn't work. >> that is straight from the leader of pfizer, so it's interesting for all the reasons you can imagine. i'm joined by dr. azar, and katty kay, washington expert for us. i will start with you, doctor. what is understood about this variant? why is it being treated suddenly as so much more concerning than some of the other ones we've heard about? >> right. so ari, just to review for everybody, there's three main concerns with variants. one is, will it become more dangerous, more virulent. the second is, will it evade immune protection from either vaccination or natural immunity. and the third is whether or not it's more contagious. and, you know, just to be very blunt about it, it's not just the presence of mutations that is a concern, but rather the profile, the amount, the combination. and in this instance, this variant, omicron, does appear to be more significant than its predecessor, delta, with about double the number of mutations at that very critical spike protein, which is the target for the vaccines, and also areas of the spike that attach to the human cell, hence increasing or triggering the concern for increased transmissibility. we don't have any data yet on virulents. it's anecdotal right now out of south africa that it does not appear to be causing more severe disease, and i should just add that there's no evolutionary advantage to a virus to become more severe, because it will die off with the host it infects. so what i suspect we are going to hear in a matter of weeks is that it is more contagious, to what degree i don't know, and probably evades immune protection from vaccination, again partially. to what degree, we don't know. but i want to reiterate and remind everybody out there, if you'll indulge me for a second, the way the immune system works, if there is a blunted antibody response, if you've been vaccinated, if you come into contact with this variant, you might have a greater chance of becoming infected and that could lead to mild or moderate illness, but the other parts of your immune system, the b cells and t cells, are ready and waiting to protect you from severe disease. that hasn't changed. there's nothing about the variant that is suggesting that your immune system would not behave in a predictable manner in that regard, ari. >> appreciate all of that. that's why we started with you on the briefing. katty and i will handle the less scientific part. not everyone can be a doctor around here. and that is the policy part and the politics. here is a president who has talked a lot about science leading, but if we're being honest, he really came quickly to assure everyone there won't be severe lockdowns and measures. of course, he and no one really knows everything yet about this. it does seem to suggest that we're in a different place going into '22 than we were, say, a year ago, and what policymakers think the public would even tolerate. >> yeah, it seems that our tolerance for risk when it comes to covid has increased, along with our impatience to get this done. i'm sure you hear it, ari, all the time. i hear people saying i'm done with covid. the problem is covid isn't done with us. and i thought it was interesting, too, to hear jeff zients, jan psaki and joe biden at the white house, all saying we're not going back into lockdowns, even shying away from saying we're going to try, to the extent that they have the legal authority to do so, to re-introduce mask mandates or vaccine mandates around the country, backing away from those kind of measures, at the same time introducing travel bans from southern africa. there's an inconsistency, you've got travel bans from southern africa, none from other european countries where they've already recorded cases of omicron. so there is an inconsistency and i think it reflects an awareness in the white house that there isn't a political appetite in the country to do so this, even though the science might suggest if you're going to have a travel ban that is inconsistent for some countries and not others, you probably scientifically would do more to protect the nation by saying everybody wears a mask indoors, which is just being re-introduced in the uk and you have to have vaccine mandates if you want to go to places where there are other people. that would be following the science. >> i think that's fair and i think that speaks to why this is difficult for almost any government. we could get narrow-minded in america thinking about recent choices, but there are many countries with many different governments across the political spectrum that have seriously struggled with this in many ways. doctor, just to put a clear point on it since folks are coming out of their holiday weekend and catching up on this, is there anything different anyone should actually do right now based o what we know? >> i think if you've been -- certainly if you've been reluctant to get vaccinated, now would be a really good time to do your primary series, and if you've been waiting to get the booster, now would be a really good time. there was some differing opinion out there. i have yet to fully dissect the piece. i'm not going to name names, but i think for the most part the consensus is that boosting is important now and that you shouldn't wait for the potential variant-specific booster, which as the ceo of pfizer or moderna said could be available in 100 days. and the reason is that if you boost now, you're going to ramp up those protective neutralizing antibodies, but you're also broadening the repertoire of those antibodies and just by sheer number, that could compensate a little bit for a potential mismatch with the variants. so, listen, coming out of the holiday weekend, now is the time, get your booster. you'll be protected, again, in two weeks, you have that extra layer of armor. and don't forget all the other behaviors, as katty was saying, masking, ventilated spaces, all of that stuff. it still applies, it still works. even if the vaccine isn't going to be quite as much of a match and not as effective, the masks are still very, very effective. >> understood. i want to thank dr. azar and katty kay for kicking us off. one other piece of all of this, we turn to other covid concerns. this is a life and death issue, but there's also the politics. "washington post" reporting on this new variant and noting any resurgence of covid worries could further drag down biden's popularity and undercut his promise to restore the country to normalcy. the clear political point is that covid is bad politics for the incumbent. that was certainly true for donald trump, whose own pollsters found covid hurt him as president and helped cost him the election. it's also true for biden as long as people think covid is worse than it should be. that's the story. some stories are simple. covid is bad politics. keep that in mind as you hear a particularly dumb new conspiracy theory on the right, which argues biden and the democrats are somehow trying to bring on the new variant because they want covid around for the elections. >> if president trump was still in office, by the way, we would already have modified vaccines to deal with the new variants. >> there's always a new variant. >> count on a variant about every october. >> yep. you're probably right. >> however, they could speed up, the variants could come more quickly. >> former white house doctor ronnie jackson tweeted, quote, here comes the mev, the midterm election variant. they need a reason to push unsolicited mail-in ballots. >> the last tweet is from trump doctor ronnie jackson. he has clearly reached the solid stage of conspiracy theories where you just say variant, mail ballots and cheat, and then hope no one even thinks about what you're actually claiming. as promised, we bring in washington bureau chief. david, pay no attention to the fact that we've released the doctor and brought you in for a very dumb story, okay, because we think highly of you. but the stupid is everywhere and we're shining a light on it to make sure folks understand that this is going to be the next big conspiracy theory. it doesn't make sense and it's playing with fire, because as dumb as it is, it's a disservice to any conservatives or republicans who aren't going to take the variant seriously because their leaders aren't. >> it goes back to the very beginning of the pandemic when donald trump and others started politicizing it and downplaying it, dismissing it, it's just the flu, and people want to believe in what that tribal leader is saying, then don't listen to the public health experts, dr. fauci, dr. azar was just on your show telling people they need to get boosted, they need to get vaccines. people are listening to ronnie jackson, who is an elected member of congress, and thus a leader of this nation, dismissing this variant as just a political hoax. well, if you believe that, you're not going to listen to the doctor and get boosted or vaccinated. so the politics are stupid, but stupid kills. and if you listen to him and you listen to other republicans and other people on fox, mainly on fox, pooh-poohing this, your chances go up of contracting the disease and having a severe case and perhaps even perishing. and worse for us, people can say people make choices, it's their life. the more the virus can travel and get to other bodies, can get the disease and pass it on, it obviously puts a strain on our health care system. but the more chances of mutations beyond the mutations we've seen, more variants, until finally there may be one we have to truly worry about. we don't know about omicron at this point in time. it seems like some people are optimistic and pfizer seems to be. but, again, the more the virus can live within us and pass and spread, and we don't smother it with masking and social distancing and vaccinations, then we are all at greater risk. so it is stupid, but it is really important to call out the ignorance and the -- it's not even ignorance, i guess it's purposeful. >> very purposeful. >> he's a doctor. >> let me ask you this, because you've studied how this stuff works. there are other types of deceptions that have an internal logic, but they come up short. here we're entering this absurd level where you have to really not be paying attention to believe a conspiracy theory that says a politician wants more covid to help get re-elected. >> yeah, i mean, if you look at the polls, that's not going to help. i think what they're saying is, they can use it then to be repressive, to lock things down and use mail-in ballots, which they claim are a source of tremendous fraud. remember, it was july 2020 when ted cruz came out and said, i guarantee you that a week after the election no one will talk about covid. again, this is a guy who went to some prestigious colleges, he's not an idiot. he went to law school. he is one of 100 leaders in the senate and he's out there saying the dumbest things imaginable, and yet there are people who will listen and believe this and basically make decisions based on this, right? >> now, david -- >> it puts joe biden in a tough position because he can't ignore the politics and he's fighting a big headwind from 34% of the population. >> now everyone is wondering, david, what curse word you came close to using on tv, but please don't tell us. it's the afternoon on the west coast. >> i get upset when there's such stupidity. we could have been dealing with this so much better over the last year and a half. there were 400,000 preventable deaths. people are going to die from this, but 400,000 preventable deaths because we didn't use testing, masking and social distancing. so a large part of the population still are willing to listen to the denialists, because that's what they are, it's quite -- it's a challenge for all of us and it's a challenge for biden. you're right, people want this to be over and they're going to blame him if it's not over, even if one reason it's not over is because 30% of the public refuses to get vaccinated and do the smart thing. >> well, and that's where the politics come back to the behavioral data that we have, that there's things people can do, the experts have told us that. david, thank you for breaking that one down with us here. i have a lot more coming up on tonight's show. steve bannon, we have that, and later biden has, he says, a plan to win by the end of the year. all that and our accountability check on something important that relates to charlottesville and civil rights. stay with us. with us y goodness. ! you get hungry for more and then you're just like, “wow, i'm learning about my family.” yeah, yep. which one, what'd you find? 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>> i think we will probably make a decision this week. we are moving with anyone who obstructs the committee and that was certainly the case with mr. bannon and it will be the case with mr. meadows, mr. clark for any others. >> schiff's reference there shows that he means business, because the committee has exercised its powers to a degree that has upended bannon's life. the justice department accuses bannon of making frivolous claims now. we're going to talk about neil katyal when we're back in 60 seconds. . try this robitussin honey. the real honey you love... plus the powerful cough relief you need. mind if i root through your trash? now get powerful relief with robitussin elderberry. feel stuck with student loan debt? move to sofi and feel what it's like to get your money right. (phone chimes) ♪ ♪ ♪ i jump up on the stage ♪ ♪ and do my money dance ♪ ♪ i throw some money up ♪ ♪ and watch the money land ♪ ♪ i do my, i do my i do my money dance ♪ move your student loan debt to sofi - you could save with low rates and no fees. earn a $500 bonus when you refi... and get your money right. ♪ i do my money dance ♪ we have to be able to repair the enamel on a daily basis. with pronamel repair toothpaste, we can help actively repair enamel in its weakened state. it's innovative. my go to toothpaste is going to be pronamel repair. now joined by former obama acting assistant general neil katyal. we've been tracking some of these developments, including how the bannon case affects other potential witnesses who may face potential contempt. your thoughts on all of the above? >> yeah, so the justice department today, the prosecutors called steve bannon's filing frivolous, so bannon claimed that he wanted to make certain documents public and the justice department wasn't letting him, and the justice department's response today was to call it frivolous and basically say, oh, no, you didn't. they point out that bannon never even asked the justice department to try and make these documents public, and so this dispute is not going to go well for bannon. judges don't like it when parties can't work out stuff among themselves and they run into course, and that's particularly true here, given bannon's specific claim. he's basically saying -- he's complaining that he can't publicly discuss the contents of certain documents, and i have a very easy suggestion for him if he's worried about that, testify. this guy is afraid to go and tell the truth about what happened under oath, and that's what all of these legal skirmishes are about. that's the part that's frivolous. so i think he's going to lose these claims and it's going to bolden the house investigators. >> legally the only question for bannon is whether he has any right to defy. he hasn't provided any great legal argument there. when you get to the logic of it, you point out another big hole here, which is this isn't exactly the justice hiding out in a cabin because he doesn't like press. he's boasting his own media channel every day, which is his first amendment right, but then not participating with a lawful probe. when you look at the other doj official i mentioned who may have played a significant role, but is not the same household name as bannon, does that case also matter and what do you make of his claim, the veteran of the same department you worked in, that what he was doing within doj might have afforded him privilege. >> most americans don't know the name of jeffrey clark but i think they soon will. it looks like the evidence suggests that mr. clark used his justice department position to try and launch a coup. and he angled to even replace the acting attorney general. clark was a relatively low-level person but he tried to angle with trump to replace and run the justice department, and indeed so much so that it said that the entire senior leadership of the justice department voted for him to resign because of clark and what he was trying to do and steal the election. so when you look at madison and the federalist paper, about how men aren't angels, there's a picture of jeff clark. i mean, this is someone who has really got to go and tell the truth about what happened because his role looks really, really serious and it's certainly not something protected by executive privilege. >> and then there's the structural questions. do you see anything coming out from all of this that suggests there should be some more concrete reform so that the doj is not as contactable, persuadable from a tyrant who wants to use it? >> there is a structural set of rules and one of my first jobs at the justice department was to draft those rules, and they require basically only the deputy attorney general or the attorney general to communicate with the white house on any serious matter, and obviously that was blown apart by the trump administration. but as i understand it, merrick garland has resumed that policy. so i think that's necessary. but more generally, ari, you look at investigation after investigation, they've taken so long. we're almost a year after january 6th. we've also got the new york investigations going on into trump and his inflation of assets, you've got georgia and so on. i feel like i need a spreadsheet just to keep track of which office is doing what investigation over donald trump's misconduct. it's getting harder to keep up with and pete davidson dating rumors at this point, but i think that, you know, taken together, you see law enforcement trying to have a response, but it wasn't really geared for someone like trump who would just stymy it at every turn, say no, refuse to tell the truth and order his hench people to refuse to tell the truth as well. >> if we had more time, we would look at a spreadsheet that also tracks pete davidson's life, baut neil katyal keeps track of all these things. we'll save that for next time. you can always go to msnbc.com/opening arguments. we post these updates and primers. some of them definitely worth taking in again if you're interested. later tonight i have an important story about the world of culture and fashion. i'm going to tell you all about that. coming up, we have a political breakthrough that democrats say will change everything. president biden thinks he can get the other spending victory by christmas. but, first, anti-semitism, racism, the civil rights movement, these stories are in the news all the time. we have two special guests to talk about what accountability actually looks like. that's next. it kind of a shock after i started cosentyx. four years clear. real people with psoriasis look and feel better with cosentyx. don't use if you're allergic to cosentyx. before starting, get checked for tuberculosis. an increased risk of infections —some serious— and the lowered ability to fight them may occur. tell your doctor about an infection or symptoms, or if you've had a vaccine or plan to. tell your doctor if your crohn's disease symptoms develop or worsen. serious allergic reactions may occur. learn more at cosentyx.com. what the world needs now... is people. people who see flight a little bit differently. so it takes less fuel to bring people together... ...and make faraway places feel a little closer... ...with engines that power planes more efficiently. because seeing a better-connected world isn't far in the future. we're building it... now. ge. building a world that works. ow bizarre by omc ♪ no annual fee on any discover card. as a dj, i know all about customization. that's why i love liberty mutual. they customize my car insurance, so i only pay for what i need. how about a throwback? 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[coins clinking in jar] ♪ you can get it if you really want it, by jimmy cliff ♪ ♪ [suitcase closing] [gusts of wind] [gusts of wind] [ding] turning to our accountability report, those white supremacists behind the deadly 2017 charlottesville rally did not originate much of the hate they espouse. even their chant is imported from some european hate movements. [ crowd chanting ] >> scholars have tracked how european anti-semitism and racism have been mixed and exported to a range of supremacist movements around the world, including here in america. one scholar has explained that racism and anti-semitism come together in the concept of white replacement where the jews' accomplices are seen as an array of people of color, end quote. the scholar studies anti-semitism and its roots and resurgence around the world. you may wonder, what's the point of only tracking or studying this stuff, especially if we feel we know about it? well, beyond the pursuit of knowledge itself, i'm getting into this with you tonight because some of her work has been applied in a real world fight for justice and accountability against violent white supremacists in america, including the people chanting in charlottesville. lawyers took those hate groups to court in an effort to fine or bankrupt them over their actions, and they even called the scholar i just mentioned to you to the stand. she testified about the history of this type of hate, how it made it all the way to charlottesville, and in a report that was also used in this trial of those individuals, she wrote about the chant, an explicit in vocation of the white replacement theory, which posits that jews have a culture. then they talk about exceptionalism, importing a european set of ideas, albeit hateful, into the u.s. "new york times" reports this is permeating more far right circles, and some point to tucker carlson who has claimed that the left has a goal of, quote, changing the racial mix of the country, a framework that echoes this replacement theory. none of this is a drill or intellectual observation, we're talking about what has been learned and gleaned by the experts on this type of european hate, and terrible historical lessons in europe who warn us this stuff is here and spreading in america. there are also ways to lawfully fight back. i mentioned the case against the hate groups in charlottesville. well, it just ended with them losing. those groups now have to literally pay millions, not only for what they did, but for what they believed, why they did it. the white supremacist groups may have been proudly and publicly racist, but when it came to court, that made them all the more obviously guilty. now that that trial is over, and we mentioned that context, i want to bring in for special discussion, a legal analyst for us and former civil prosecutor and history professor at the university of chicago, the author of a field guide to white supremacy. welcome to both of you. professor, i want to start with you, given your specific work, and i mentioned some of your fellow scholars of this kind of stuff, which is tough and often tragic history, but history we might learn from. what does it mean that this scholarship and some of this deeper understanding of the links of anti-semitism and racism was used to effect in this trial? >> so understanding the anti-semitic roots of the great replacement theory and its connections to genocide and the holocaust is incredibly important, but it is equally important to know that this is an american movement, this is american hate. and in fact, the american white power movement is exporting to a lot of these other places now. so i think that although we certainly can look to european roots for some of the idealogical currents, it's very important to know that this is a movement that has been organizing incredibly effectively in the united states at least since the late 1970s. we are decades, if not generations, into this as an american movement. and i'm talking about the militant white power movement that has brought together neo-nazis, clans men and others. it operates in make-facing ways, and in a militarized underground that is interested in direct attacks on civilians and on our institutions. we don't usually see that underground unfolding in real time but we can see it in a historical archive. this is where the history of this movement can help us to understand the threat we're confronting. >> mya? >> i think that's such an important point and i think as someone who is black and raised in a civil rights household with activist parents, the notion of this relationship between the jewish community and the black community is real and deep in the civil rights movement as well, because of the shared experience of hate, racism, segregation. we forget that in this country black folks in the south often said if you were semitic, if you were italian, if you were irish, you were also excluded because they weren't considered white, weren't white anglo-saxon protestant. and you pointed out for showing how important it was for showing how it operates and how it's been allowed to come into the light of day and be explicit, and the -- basically care and protection that, unfortunately, so many, including trumpism and the protection of the gop now, that i think is quite explicit in the form that we're starting to see in the january 6th committee in terms of who has been subpoenaed. it's very explicitly now going to the white supremacist neo-nazi roots, and some of donald trump's closest advisers who have been subpoenaed, like an alex jones, like a steve bannon, like these folks, roger stone, as we remember, was photographed with the proud boys in 2018 at an oregon republican club, flashing a white supremacist symbol and was kicked off of facebook because he was connected to so many fake accounts with the proud boys, who are also now being subpoenaed by the january 6th committee. so i think we have to see these things together, both the unite the right rally in charlottesville, but also the way trumpism has created mainstream what really is deeply troubling hate that, unfortunately, excludes far too many of us from democracy. >> yeah, and, maya, to build on your point, this is where some of this type of hateful ideology involves a projection, because they only see, for example, judaism or american blackness as anti other things. it's designed to replace or take over christianity or the white power structure as they see it. and, maya, the truth is exactly the opposite. you're talking about groups in europe in terms of the scholarship that was cited in the trial or in the american experience, groups that in a real way have mostly been trying to survive and avoid fate and other efforts to wipe them out, and yet that gets turned around. to you and then the professor, how is that important with this sort of white grievance culture that we're seeing in some right wing politics? >> well, it's extremely important because, first of all, we have to recognize, you know, we have to become a pluralistic democracy to be successful. we all do better when we ban together and work on solving shared problems, whether it's child care, affordable housing, the environment, these are shared problems. but what this kind of becomes, and one of the scariest things for me coming out of the violence of charlottesville, was a poll that was conducted afterwards, where 31% of those polled said that they believed that white european culture and identity needed to be protected and preserved. 31%. while that is not a majority, it is far too many people. and a lot of that becomes the ability to pit people against each other as who is to blame for our problems, why are we in trouble, rather than to say, you know, there's actually a way for us to fix this together, we're certainly not going to fix it apart. >> professor? >> that's absolutely right. and i think one way to think about this through the tools we have from learning about our own shared history, is that we have this set of radical promises about life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. that was never meant for all of us. that was not meant for the people on this panel right now. that was meant for free, white, property-owning men and through work and solidarity and joining together and advocating, that promise has been expanded and expanded over time to include more and more people, people of color, women, immigrants, on and on we go. but that is work that is still very much under construction. we need to look no further than to the tax on voting rights and access to the polls, which show us this is an incomplete project. but the real contest is about the speed of whether we can outpace the expansion of those promises, whether those promises can outpace the work to undermine our democratic process. we're talking about a society now where 28 elected officials have ties or affiliations with the oath keepers, which is a private army, a private malitia group. we're talking about eight people being elected from the january 6th crowd into republican office. we're talking about a lot of terrifying numbers in relation to how many people say that they would support the use of force to return trump to the white house. this is no longer a fringe position and we don't have to look only at what someone is saying on fox news to know that. this is all through our measures, this is all through our politics. and the question is really about, can democracy handle this threat. >> right. and part of that, of course, is shining a light on it so people understand what we're dealing with in a thorough manner. i want to thank maya and kathleen for joining us. important subject. we're going to stay on it. when we come back, i've got a story about why democrats say why president biden is going to beat mitch mcconnell one more time before christmas. when a cough tries to steal dad's punchlines, he takes robitussin naturals powered by 100% drug-free ingredients. are you gonna leaf me hanging? soothe your cough naturally. hi, my name is cherrie. i'm 76 and i live on the oregon coast. my husband, sam, we've been married 53 years. we love to walk on the beach. i have two daughters and then two granddaughters. i noticed that memories were not there like they were when i was much younger. since taking prevagen, my memory has gotten better and it's like the puzzle pieces have all been [click] put together. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. bogeys on your six, limu. they need customized car insurance from liberty mutual so they only pay for what they need. woooooooooooooo... we are not getting you a helicopter. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ ♪ ♪ just two pills for all day pain relief. aleve it, and see what's possible. and also try alevex topical pain relief. we have to be able to repair the enamel on a daily basis. with pronamel repair toothpaste, we can help actively repair enamel in its weakened state. it's innovative. my go to toothpaste is going to be pronamel repair. ♪ it wasn't me by shaggy ♪ you're never responsible m for unauthorizede purchases on your discover card. the xfinity black friday sales event is happening now on xfinity mobile. now new and existing customers can get our best wireless deal of the year - up to $1,000 in savings - for a limited time only. on the most reliable network nationwide, plus nationwide 5g. act now and save up to $1,000 with xfinity mobile. so you can go all out on gifts for the family - during our best wireless deal of the year... the xfinity black friday sales event. click, call or visit a store today. now we turn to a story in the world of culture about a young, iconic designer who has been upending fashion, virgil abloh. >> i did not ever think that i could be a designer with a capital d, because no one looked like me. >> the music, you can think of a look, and so as i started thinking about clothing, i was always, like, drawn to what my initial interest was, and that was t-shirts. what i would challenge you in your work, no matter what, is go back, go back to your earliest memories or the way that you thought to organize something. to me, the 17-year-old version of myself didn't think this was possible, so every day that i'm able to sort of like make an idea and see it come out, that's enough that voice you hear is herolded as the voice of an entire generation. he created off-white and rose to the top of a close fashion world as artistic director for louis vouitton. breaking barriers and broving the interest and demand for street wear and fashion including expanding the definition of luxury. the news is virgil abloh died after a two year battle of cancer at the age of 41. he was an endless fashion designer that inspired andy warhall. the designer's death came as a shock to many. he didn't disclose his cancer diagnosis publicly. his representatives explained he chose to endure the battle privately undergoing numerous challenging treatments all while helming several significant institutions that spanned fashion, art and culture. they added his curiosity and optimism never waivered. tributes have been pouring in since the news broke. it's a testament to how many whirls he touched ranging from vecshe. he's survived by his wife, two children, sister and parents. four years ago before the diagnosis and before this whole pandemic we've been living through, abloah spoke to design students at harvard about the industry they were entering, about tapping one's creativity and the world they stood to inherent. his ideas flourish because in his voice you can sense that spark of creation and embracing whatever moment you happen to be in when you're alive, which is a very human feeling. art comes from that place and can help us return there. so as we mark his life, it is a sentiment worth pausing to take in and taking it in from someone who clearly intensely appreciated living life while he had it every step of the way. >> you guys are born at a very awesome, distinct time. like, i think this is the renaissance. don't get sort of trapped into this evening sucks, the world is like coming to an end. you can like wake up every day and come up with excuses but it's exactly the opposite. you're intrigued enough to come here this rambling of a bunch of random project but i know you guys, if you're interested in this, you guys are interested in tackling something that isn't seen yet so with that, i'm done. 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"the reidout" with joy is up next. how are you doing? >> how are you doing. you have to promise to introduce me to dr. ruth one day. can you make that happen? >> she's the livest 93-year-old ever. i'll do it. >> when they get to 90, they don't care. that's what i love about a 90-year-old. my favorite age group. have a wonderful evening. >> peace. we begin "the reidout" with the new coronavirus variant omicron. it poses a high global risk but we don't know a lot about it. there might be an increased risk of infection or reinfection with the virus but we don't know how transmissible it is or causes more severe infections. there are increased cases and hospitalizations in south africa where the variant was discovered but too early to attribute those to the variant.