As you know well, the CDC has been criticized for mixed messaging throughout the course of this pandemic, whether it's on masks or on boosters.

Why should Americans trust the CDC?

My job right now is to take all of the science and the information that we have and to deliver guidance and recommendations

to the American people that is adapted to the science at hand. This pandemic has given us a lot

of new and updated science over the last two years, and it is my job to convey that science

through those recommendations, and that is exactly what we are doing.

This morning, we have new reporting on the CDC's decision to relax COVID isolation guidelines,

just as cases now hit record numbers. Plus, we'll have the renewed question of what constitutes being fully vaccinated. Good morning. Welcome to morning, Joe. It is Thursday, December 30th. I'm

Willie Geist. Joe and Mika have the morning off with us, the host of way too early and White

House Bureau Chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire, and MSNBC political analyst, Susan Del Perseo.

Morning to both of you guys. In just a moment, we will speak with a leading health official

about those CDC guidelines

and tell you what you need to know headed in to New Year's. But first, the verdict in the trial

of Jeffrey Epstein's longtime associate, Galane Maxwell, found guilty yesterday on five sex trafficking

charges. NBC news correspondent Ron Allen has the story. After six days of deliberation, a jury found

Galane Maxwell guilty of five out of six federal charges, including sex trafficking of minors,

which is the most serious and carries up to 40 years behind bars. The road to justice has been

far too long. But today, justice has been done. Throughout the three-week

trial, prosecutors calling two dozen witnesses, the heart of their case, four women who say

they were recruited, groomed, and lured by Maxwell when they were teenagers so they could be sexually

abused by Jeffrey Epstein. The prosecution calling Maxwell, Epstein's partner in crime, saying Epstein

was able to sexually abuse young girls because Maxwell was the key to the whole operation.

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