It's Monday February 22nd. I'm Achilles Hughes.

And I'm Gideon Resseck and this is what a day reminding Joe Biden that it's not too late to be cool about student loan debt.

Yeah, it's like I always say you can forgive me and then you can forgive everybody else and then you'll feel better. That's what's staying.

Yeah, that's yeah, it's an old adage people might not know, but you should know it.

Let's take a show and update on the situation in Texas and what's causing some people to see spiking power bills, then some headlines.

But first the latest you and the president have suggested that will approach normality toward the end of the year.

What does normal mean? Do you think Americans will still be wearing masks for example in 2022?

You know, I think it is possible that that's the case. And again, it really depends on what you mean by normality.

Right. That's what I wanted to find out. Exactly the way.

That was Dr. Fauci on CNN yesterday saying that it's possible that Americans will still have to wear masks in some settings next year.

He went on to say that combining high amounts of vaccinations with low cases could change recommendations of universal masking.

And on that note, things are moving in the right direction in the US still, but we are quickly approaching a devastating 500,000 deaths from COVID or have already hit that according to some estimates.

Now roughly one year into the pandemic. That's more than the US lost in World War one, World War two and Vietnam combined.

Yeah, it's really hard to even put into words or understand. And the crazy thing is I was reading that in late March of last year, Fauci and Dr. Deborah Burke said in a briefing that even with strict stay at home orders, the virus could kill 240,000 Americans, which at the time sounded sort of alarmist to people and now here we are.

But as you said, we're luckily in a moment where the trend lines are continuing to move in the right direction.

We're about 71,000 cases reported Saturday, for instance, which is down for more than twice that a month ago, the averages have been good.

Then on vaccines, the CDC is reporting that over 63 million doses have been administered so far.

But the awful winter weather, much of the country experiences past week slowed that down quite a bit.

Yeah. And what if public health officials been saying about that?

So as of last Friday, the White House said that the weather had delayed distribution of about six million doses overall. So now what this week is going to be about is trying to play catch up quickly.

Andy Slavitt, the White House senior advisor on the government's pandemic response said that the administration is going to be asking states to extend hours and reschedule appointments that were canceled because of the weather.

That's according to the Washington Post. And then even in places throughout the country that aren't experiencing the weather directly, there have been reported delays as part of this.

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