again, happy new year. but there s also some good news here. i m going to get to that in a moment. first let me tell you the caseload as we begin our week. the u.s. now has more cases than ever before. you can see the peak. you can see how much higher it is than any other point. we re averaging 40,000 daily cases. covid spread continues to rattle public safety, daily life in the economy. just today over 2,000 flights canceled, most of them covid related and some weather. the persistence and exposure of covid is now as prevalent as ever. in most parts of the united states this is not a time for moving on or forgetting the virus and safety precautions we ve been living through for so long. i also want to tell you tonight, as we begin another night together thank you for being here. while covid don t care about our calendar and covid don t care about new year s. one thing covid does still care about is vaccines. the vaccines continue to work against covid and delta and the lat