- All right, our medical reporter,

Lori Johnson is with us now.

Lori, welcome.

Now, should this approvalconvince some skeptics

that the vaccine is safe,

and should we expectapproval for the Moderna,

and Johnson and Johnson vaccine?

- Well, when you talkabout people's attitudes

towards getting the vaccines,

we now know that 80 million Americans

still have not gotten their vaccines.

And recently, the KaiserFamily Foundation did a survey,

and found that 1/3 of all the people

who have chosen not toget vaccinated so far,

1/3 of them say that when oneof the vaccines does receive

that full approval,

then they would be morelikely to take the vaccine.

So it does appear that thevaccine numbers will now go up,

because of the Pfizer full approval.

Now Moderna and Johnson and Johnson,

you asked about those,

they have not gotten full approval yet,

and it's going to be some time.

Moderna just now filed theirapplication with the FDA,

and it takes several months

from when the application isfiled to when it's approved,

and Johnson and Johnson

has not even made their application yet.

You know, the application process,

they just go through all of thedata with a fine tooth comb.

They go out to wherethese vaccines are made,

the manufacturing facilities,

and inspect them to makesure that they're clean,

and they also have to determinethat the vaccine shelf life,

because, of course, they haveto put the expiration date

on the packages.

So, this is why it takes so long.

So, it looks like the Pfizer vaccine

is gonna be the only onethat has full approval

for some time now.

- Lori, deaths are rising again,

back up to 1000 a day.

We're also seeing rising cases for kids.

How effective are the vaccines

against the Delta variant in kids?

- Well, that's a great question,

and your first point isjust so horrible because,

we saw deaths nationwide,

dip down below 100 for the whole country

at the very beginning of June.

Cases dipped below the 10,000 mark

at the very beginning of June,

way back at the beginning of the pandemic

Dr. Anthony Fauci was asked the question,

"How do we know when the pandemic is over?

Are we going to try to get to zero cases?"

And he said, "No,

anything below 10,000 is a victory."

And Mark, we got thereat the beginning of June,

and now here we are at150,000 cases a day.

Deaths went from less than 100

to now over 1,000 deaths per day.

But to answer your question,

most of the hospitalizations,

and most of the deaths are, by far,

among unvaccinated people.

So we do know that the vaccines work.

They offer some protection.

But sadly, not nearly as muchprotection as they once did

before the Delta variant,

and we also have reason to believe

that after about six or eight months,

that the strength of thevaccine sort of wane.

So, for two reasons,

we're not seeing the vaccines as effective

as they once were,

but still, very effective

at preventing hospitalization and death,

but you are seeing a lot of people

who are fully vaccinated getting sick.

We saw Max Lucado,

we saw Senator Lindsey Graham,

Governor Greg Abbott of Texas,

a lot of these people are saying,

"Yes, I got COVID,

yes, I was fully vaccinated,

but I'm glad I got vaccinated,

because now I know that my sickness

really won't be that bad."

And sure enough,

a lot of these people who do get sick,

they're only sick for a few days.

- Do you think we're gonna see vaccine,

and mask mandates across the country Lori?

- Absolutely, we're already seeing them.

We've already seen thembefore the Pfizer vaccine

got the full FDA approval,

but a lot of people were hanging back,

and waiting to institutethe vaccine mandates

until one of these vaccineshad the full approval,

like the US Military.

We know that now theyare going to implement

their vaccine mandate,

and mandate that alltroops have a vaccination,

probably by September 20th.

- And we're almost out of time,

but what's on your Healthy Living program.

- Well today, we'retalking about depression.

And sadly, and probablynot a surprise to you,

or our viewers, depressionrates have gone up

during the pandemic.

And so, I'm speaking to an expert

about how to recognizewhether you're depressed,

and how to get help,

and some other ways toalleviate depression

that have been shown to work.

Believe it or not,

things like diet and exercise.

It may sound strange,

but the foods that we often reach for,

the comfort foods when we're feeling down,

actually can make ourdepression worse sometimes.

- [Mark] All right, our medical reporter,

Lori Johnson, thank you, as always,

for your insights.- My pleasure.

- Of course, you can watch Healthy Living.

It comes on Tuesdays on theCBN News Channel, also online,

and it hits at 8:30 PM Eastern,

again on the CBN News Channel,

or the CBN News Channel app.