The coronavirus surge is hitting critical mass at hospitals around LA County. They're so packed that health care providers are running low on equipment and now ambulance operators are being told not to bring patients to the hospital if they have virtually no chance at survival.

LA City Firefighters are being given incentives to get the COVID-19 vaccine. They can enter raffles to win prizes for themselves. Is this really necessary? And who's paying for these prizes?  

One reason for this crisis is the so-called super-spreader event. The LA County sheriff's department has been working to stop them but will it continue to do so after the holidays?

The vaccination pace here in California and the rest of the country has been slow. But it probably doesn't have to be that way. There's one hospital in northern California that was forced to use its dozens of vaccines within a matter of hours. It acted quickly and got the job done. So why can't everyone else do the same thing? 

Health care workers are the first in line for the vaccines. But many are reluctant to get the shot despite seeing the very worst impacts of COVID.

California is now letting dentists give the vaccine shots. There's hope it can speed up the vaccination process. 

Tomorrow's a big day in Washington DC. Congress gets together to count and certify the Electoral College votes. Vice president Mike Pence will preside over it all. The big question is what will he do? He's been loyal to President Trump but there's that Constitution thing he has to follow.  

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If we know one thing about President Trump -- it's that he doesn't do anything quietly.

Mr. Trump is on tape pressuring Georgia's top election official to "find" votes so the election results could be overturned in the state. But some lawmakers say it wasn't pressure -- it was a criminal act. This comes just over two weeks before President-elect Biden takes office.

Do President Trump's behavior and the lack of Republican voices speaking out against it show that the GOP is transforming into something less than democratic?

What happens when the new Congress starts on Wednesday? Will the planned challenge to the election results go anywhere?  

Georgia's two Senate seats are up for grabs and with them, control of the Senate. That's tomorrow.

Not as many people have been vaccinated for COVID-19 as had been hoped. There was a goal to have 20 million by the start of this year. We're nowhere near that. Is there a plan to speed this up?

And COVID is surging out of control across southern California. Do officials need to switch messaging at this point? Or is no one listening?

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Over the last two weeks, the warnings and calls for help coming from hospitals up and down California have grown more urgent: they were quickly running out of space and staff to properly treat critical COVID patients. Now that we're at zero ICU capacity in Southern California hospitals, how are the sickest patients being treated and is there any help coming? We will go In Depth.

The COVID vaccines being given across the country are seen as the key to ending this pandemic and getting back to normalcy, but because Pfizer and Moderna's vaccines both require two doses, it's going to take time. But.......what if only one shot would do the trick? We'll look into that.

And speaking of vaccines.........as we've predicted on this show........the rich and famous are already offering to pay or make generous donations to jump to the front of the line.

New Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon was in office a few hours when his long list of proposed reforms drew immediate criticism from the police union, former D.A.'s and even from some of his own prosecutors. Today we give Gascon a chance to answer his critics, in an exclusive interview on In Depth.

And as if we needed more bad news: there are reports from across the country of a Christmas tree shortage, so if you don't have yours yet are you out of luck?

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The city and county of Los Angeles have been back in a semi-lockdown for three weeks now -- outdoor dining banned, retail stores under capacity limits, and orders for everyone to wear a mask anytime they leave their home.

The results? An unprecedented surge in COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths, that seem to set grim new records every day. Is there another way?

Several of Southern California's most powerful unions are calling for a strict, total lockdown for LA county for the month of January. So, is that the way? We'll go In Depth on all of it.

And vaccinating the millions of residents and staffers in nursing homes and assisted living facilities across the country isn't as straight forward as you'd think. 

Then...we may have bonus doses of the Pfizer vaccines. Pharmacists have discovered that the vials...hold a little extra. So can they use it?

We're going to talk with the former mayor of Dodge City, Kansas.......who tried to implement a mask mandate and COVID restrictions, only to get death threats in return.

And will the proposal of 600-dollars in another round of direct government assistance for Americans make any difference in keeping people afloat?

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The relatively smooth rollout of the first COVID vaccine, from Pfizer, has now hit a few speed bumps--and they might turn out to be BIG bumps. After some isolated reports of allergic reactions out of the UK, we're now learning of a healthcare worker in Alaska who had to be hospitalized after having a significant reaction--so we're going in depth.

We're also going to talk with an emergency room doctor here in L.A. who's being vaccinated tonight.

Speaking of ERs: they are being overrun by COVID patients, while intensive care units at most major hospitals in California are maxed out. Have we always had a chronic hospital bed shortage, just made worse by this pandemic?

The U.S. senator from Maine, Angus King, wrote a letter to the execs of Netflix, Disney, Apple and Amazon, asking if they would consider offering their services for free for a few weeks during the holidays --- you know....so you'll keep yourself on the couch....and we're talking with him Senator King.

Also: turns out this has been an extremely profitable pandemic for the biggest companies in America, all while they've been slashing jobs.

And at the same time: demand on food banks ..... at all time high.

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And then there were two: as Pfizer's COVID vaccine is being administered at various hospitals across the country, Moderna's vaccine is coming close behind -- and the initial reports on its effectiveness are very promising, so we'll go In Depth.

We've had lots of conversations here about the challenge of picking the priority list for vaccinations, but this decision is especially tricky: should prison inmates be among the first to be inoculated? Several commissions say they should, and we'll wade into the debate.

And what could prove to be a breakthrough in COVID testing: the first at-home, rapid result test kit gets FDA approval.

Does your specific DNA make you more susceptible to getting a severe case of COVID-19? We'll talk with a researcher in Scotland.

The Russian hack into various U.S. government agencies is turning out to be far worse than originally thought.

And with the electoral college certifying Joe Biden's win, are we finally ready to put this most unusual, and potentially damaging, election period behind us?

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The cold storage is humming, the doses are ready and the needles are out: the first Pfizer COVID vaccines have been administered in his country, kicking off the largest national vaccination effort in our history. Since past is prologue, we'll look back at campaigns against diseases like Polio to see what's in store for us.

Also: how exactly do these different vaccines work inside the human body?

And what's to prevent the wealthy, celebrities, the politically connected, professional athletes from jumping the vaccine lines?

We'll go In Depth on all of it.

We will also head north to see how Canadians are handling their vaccine roll out.

You probably saw the alerts on your phone, prodding you to sign up for California's COVID exposure alerts.........but what good is contact tracing if no one participates?

In some non pandemic news: suspected Russian hackers break into computer networks at the Treasury and Commerce Departments, this might have gone undetected for months.

And the electoral college is voting, something that in past elections was an obscure footnote but in 2020, is being watched closely.

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The FDA is very likely on the verge of granting the first emergency use authorization for a coronavirus vaccine, and then we're off to the races to inoculate the population of the United States. But when we say race, don't think of a sprint...it's a marathon.

We're talking with California's chief public health officer who admits they're still working on plans for how to best distribute vaccines.

We're talking with a former associate FDA commissioner on why the agency has moved so deliberately to sign off on the vaccines.

And we're talking about industries lobbying and jockeying to get priority positions on the list.

We'll be going in depth on all of it.

We obsessively clean everything these days. Then we clean it again. For good measure. But, we're talking with a scientist about how much of that is really necessary.

Small businesses by the hundreds of thousands are barely hanging on in this economy; we'll hear from one business owner who would like Congress to get its act together.

And we're going to spend our last half hour talking with some Republicans about the GOP helping President Trump keep up this fantasy that he won the election ... that he lost.

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We are a big step closer to the first vaccination for COVID-19 being approved for emergency use here in the United States -- a key committee of the FDA has been meeting all day, with an eye toward approving Pfizer's vaccine candidate.

But.....and there's always a but........we still have a long way to go until a return to normalcy. Plus, what will scientists be looking for when it comes to possible reactions, side effects and complications? We will go In Depth on all of it.

Plus, as the coronavirus moves into rural America, it's not just making a lot of people sick and overwhelming small hospitals -- it's exacerbating tensions over mask mandates and lockdowns.

If you are a parent and you've given up on battling your kids over excessive screen time -- compounded by hours of remote learning -- you're not alone. 

Your employer has more control over what you do, where you go and who you see over these pandemic-colored holidays........we'll explain.

And a primer on the tax investigation aimed at Hunter Biden.

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They've only been administering COVID vaccinations in the UK for a day, and already they've run into some problems: a possible allergic reaction among some people. How worrisome is that? We'll go in depth.

Outdoor playgrounds were among the places closed down in the latest round of COVID restrictions, but after a backlash, the state reversed course: so....is playing on a playground risky?

And President-elect Joe Biden has a slate of pandemic management goals he's trying to pull off within his first 100 days: is he being too ambitious, or too modest?

Then....the fight over outdoor dining in California: we're going to talk with a coffee shop owner in Eagle Rock who has declared her dining space as a "protest zone." And lawyer--and restaurant owner--Mark Geragos is on In Depth to talk about his legal victory over LA County - symbolic - at least for now.

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