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o sullivan and r.k. russell and s.e. cupp and comedian helen hong. come on in. it is a grand reopening for all of the best, all of the worst 2021. i m tom foreman, welcome and congratulations. we all survived a tough 12 months packed with upheavaled and conflicts and difficulties and victories and hope and happiness. that is saying something given we are were up against a raging pandemic and the deepest social divide the united states has seen in decades. so how did we make it through. let s sort that out by starting with the biggest news. that sounds like gunshots. worse story of the year. the violent invasion of the u.s. capitol by people angry over joe biden winning the last presidential election. the idea that 2021 was going to be better, i think probably lasted for about exactly six days. the january 6 insurrection was straight up crazy. the losing candidate then president trump stoked the fury with the big lie that he had won. they rigged an electi ....
and comedian helen hong. come on in. we put chlorine in the pool. it s the grand reopening for all the best, all the worst, 2021. i m tom foreman. welcome, and congratulations. we all survived a tough 12 months packed with upheavals, conflicts, difficulties, and yet also victories, hope, and happiness. that s saying something considering we were up against a raging pandemic and the deepest social divides the united states has seen in decades. so how did we make it through? let s sort that out by starting with the biggest news. that sounded like gunshots. run, run! worst story of the year, the violent invasion of the u.s. capitol by people angry over joe biden winning the last presidential election. the idea that 2021 was going to be better, i think, probably lasted for about exactly six days. the january 6th insurrection was straight up crazy. the losing candidate, then president donald trump stoked the fury with the big lie that he had won. they rig ....
tensions over ukraine, no doubt, on top of that agenda. and mourners pay their respects to antiapartheid hero archbishop desmond tutu. we ll go live to africa. announcer: live from london, this is cnn newsroom with max foster. it s thursday, december 30th, with just two days left in 2021. we are now seeing the coronavirus pandemic explode right around the globe. according to johns hopkins university, the world is averaging an all-time high of more than a million new infections a day. experts warn things will only get worse. this virus will continue to evolve and threaten our health system if we don t improve the collective response. concerned omicron will be more transmissible, circulating at the same time as delta is leading to a tsunami of cases. infections are also rising quickly in the u.s.. the country is averaging more than 300,000 new cases a day in the past week, and that s another record. johns hopkins reports close to 490,000 cases on wednesday. an ....
variant. we ll dig into that in moments. also in a few hours, president biden is scheduled to have that high stakes phone call with vladimir putin. at the center of it all, the tens of thousands of russian troops gathering for weeks on the ukrainian border. plus breaking on the economy. new weekly jobless claims are in and are lower than expected. 198,000 people filing for first-time unemployment benefits last week. and we ll start this hour with jake ward in san francisco. gary grumbeck in washington d.c. and a physician and fellow at the brookings institution. we also have dr. ere win redlener. sam, we re going to start with you in florida. that state shattered the one-day covid record with nearly 50,000 new cases. what are you seeing there at that testing site? reporter: these testing lines have been through the roof. really for about two weeks now. there was a brief highuate us. it let up a little bit. no longer the case. this is one crush of cars over my should ....
more are expected as pilots and flight attendants get sidelined by covid. jetblue tells nbc news it is proactively canceling more than 1,200 flights through january, heading off the wave of sickouts, all fueled by another record in new cases. the u.s. is now averaging nearly 300,000 new infections a day. but with home testing kits still in short supply and hours-long waits to get a pcr test, there is a consensus that that 300,000 number is well short of the true number of daily cases. yes, cases are spiking, at a dizzying rate. but, and this is a big but, the caseload is not matching an equally dizzying hospitalization rate. new cases up 60% in the past week. new hospitalizations up 14%. and covid-related deaths are actually down, that s right, down, by 7%. we are not in the same place as we were in march 2020. there are vaccines and boosters along with promising data about that much-maligned j&j shot. there are antivirus. and we have masks, high quality ones. so let ....