Hello, thanks for joining me. I m alex marquardt part in this weekend for fredricka whitfield, we begin with breaking news. President biden has been briefed on the raid which injured seven u. S. Troops and killed 15 members of the radical group isis. The raid happened thursday in iraq two of the seven u. S. Troops were evacuated from the area for further treatment, u. S. Central command manages operations in the middle east. They said that the operation targeted i. S. I. S. Leaders in order to disrupt the group s ability to plan further attacks from where we have cnn s chief international purity correspondent, nick paton walsh, joining us from london. Nick, what do we know about this american operation yeah, alex more details from the iraqi military he referred to the two months that was spent gathering intelligence ahead of this operation. And the four hideouts were targeted that appeared to be consumed camouflage of some description which would suggest yes a sort of camp of some desc
live to pittsburgh now. dr amesh adalja is a senior scholar at the johns hopkins university center for health security. let s begin with president biden s moved to knock these eight southern african countries off the banned list, as it were. a good move? definitely. this was a move that should never have been needed to be made, because we should not have initiated a travel ban. it was an ill advised ban that really punished countries that were aggressive at finding a variant, and letting the world. we already knew this was spreading outside of south africa and the southern african countries well before it was described, so this was not something that we should have done. many countries in the world kind of followed suit. it is a bad practice. travel bands do not work and they give people a false sense of security and have lots of negative consequences. bans.
in less than a week, and with the tsa reporting holiday air travel on wednesday surpassed pre-pandemic levels, schools and universities are increasingly preparing for a post-holiday case surge. at least 85 school districts are offering a hybrid learning option or fully remote learning options for k-12 students and a growing number of colleges and universities are making changes to their spring semesters, starting late, going online temporarily or mandating booster shots and meanwhile, we re now learning just how skosly the surge has been in both blood and treasure. 690,000 preventable deaths and cost the u.s. nearly $14 billion. poppy? what a number in terms of preventable deaths. athena, thank you for that reporting. let me bring in senior scholar at the johns hopkins university center for health security. doctor, good to have you. we have these studies from the uk, from south africa, that are
the travel ban was imposed last month when the 0micron variant was first confirmed in south africa. dr amesh adalja is a senior scholar at the johns hopkins university center for health security. he says removing the ban is the right thing to do. this was a move that should never have been needed to be made, because we should not have initiated a travel ban. it was an ill advised travel ban that really punished countries that were aggressive at finding a variant, and alerting the world. we already knew this was spreading outside of south africa and the southern african countries well before it was described, so this was not something that we should have taken. many countries in the world kind of followed suit. it is a bad practice. travel bans do not work and they give people a false sense of security and have lots of negative consequences. do you say that almost on a point of principle?
apps, some have support on twitter or use facebook messenger or what s app. so see if that s available. that may be faster than trying to get through on the phone. but if you do get on the phone, the agent will do everything she or he can, but just understand it s not like they can snap their fingers and make an airplane and crew appear out of thin air. they are working with the same limitations everybody is facing within that airline. they are doing the best they can. thank you all so much. we appreciate you joining us this morning. now let s shift gears to the complicated and confusing situation at our nation s schools. i mentioned it at the top. officials are trying to keep kids in class while keep them safe at the same time. ellison barber joins us from new york city where kids are going back to school today. also with us the senior scholar at johns hopkins university center for health security. el son, are people happy their kids are going back to school or not? it s a mix,