December 28, 2021 - PBS NewsHour full episode

AMNA NAWAZ: Good evening.

I'm Amna Nawaz.

Judy Woodruff is away.

On the "NewsHour" tonight: new COVID guidance.

As rising Omicron cases keep many at home, we explain the new CDC guidelines for shorter isolation times.

Then: crackdown in Russia.

The government bans the most prominent human rights group, as the world marks 30 years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

And rising costs.

How the roller-coaster price of lumber might have predicted inflation and could signal where the economy goes from here.

STINSON DEAN, Founder and CEO, Deacon Lumber: No one has ever seen $700 lumber.

That was pretty astonishing.

But then it went to $800, and $900, and $1,000.

AMNA NAWAZ: All that and more on tonight's "PBS NewsHour."

(BREAK) AMNA NAWAZ: Questions about quarantines and testing are growing tonight, as the Omicron wave of COVID-19 keeps building.

In New York, the nation's largest public school system has announced beefed-up testing in a bid to keep classrooms open.

Mayor Bill de Blasio says entire classrooms won't have to stay home when a student is infected.

Instead, those who have no symptoms and test negative don't have to quarantine.

BILL DE BLASIO (D), Mayor of New York: This guarantees more consistency in their education.

It guarantees fewer disruptions, which parents have rightfully said have been a tremendous challenge for them.

AMNA NAWAZ: And late today, the CDC's director said the agency is not considering any recommendation of a vaccine mandate for domestic flights.

We will focus on the CDC's new call for shorter quarantines after the news summary.

Police in the Denver area are investigating what sparked a mass shooting last night that left five people dead, including the gunman.

The shooter killed three people in the central part of the city, then drove to nearby Lakewood, where he killed another person.

He died later, after a shoot-out with police.

Three other people were wounded, including a police officer.

The family of a 14-year-old Los Angeles girl demanded justice today after police accidentally shot and killed her last week.

Valentina Orellana-Peralta was in a clothing store when a man began attacking customers.

Police shot and killed him, but also shot and killed the girl in her dressing room.

Today, her family, originally from Chile, held a news conference.

The teen's mother described her last moments.

SOLEDAD PERALTA, Mother of Valentina Orellana-Peralta (through translator): We heard some screams.

We sat down and hugged and started praying.

When something impacted my daughter Valentina, it threw us on the floor.

She died in my arms.

And there was nothing I could do.

There was nothing I could do.

AMNA NAWAZ: Police have released an edited version of body camera and other video.

The family is demanding that more video be released.

The congressional committee investigating the January assault on the U.S. Capitol has struck a deal with the Biden White House regarding Trump era documents.

The White House Counsel's Office says lawmakers will defer a request for some of the material.

Presidential aides had warned its release could compromise national security or executive privilege.

Former President Trump is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to block release of any documents.

The Pacific Northwest shivered through another day of frigid cold, as an arctic storm grips the region.

Officials have declared emergencies in Portland and Seattle, where the low was 17 degrees on Monday, the coldest on record.

And warming centers are now open for those who could be in danger.

KEITH HUGHES, West Seattle American Legion Hall Post 160: It's going to be four or five days before we get above freezing again.

So this is not a short event.

This is going to take a while.

And the longer it goes on, the harder it's going to be on people that don't have a place to get out of this.

AMNA NAWAZ: To the south, travel remains treacherous in parts of Northern California and Nevada, where snow has broken records for December.

At least 38 people were killed in Sudan today when a gold mine collapsed.

It happened near a village that is more than 435 miles south of Khartoum, the country's capital city.

The mining company says the site was inactive, but local miners had returned to work it once security guards left the area.

In Russia, the National Supreme Court has ordered a leading human rights organization to shut down.

The court ruled today that Memorial acted as a foreign agent.

Prosecutors claimed the group falsely painted the Soviet Union as a terrorist state.

Also today, authorities detained allies of Alexei Navalny, the imprisoned opposition leader.

We will return to all of this later in the program.

Prosecutors in Hong Kong have filed a new charge against Jimmy Lai, the jailed founder of a pro-democracy newspaper.

The paper was shut down last June, and Lai was accused today of sedition.

He already faced other charges for violating a national security law imposed by mainland China.

Back in this country, the U.S. housing boom shows no sign of weakening.

Home prices in October jumped more than 18 percent from a year earlier.

That was down slightly from September's growth rate, and economists do expect price hikes to slow further next year.

And on Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average gained 95 points to close at 36398.

The Nasdaq fell 89 points and the S&P 500 slipped four points.

Still to come on the "NewsHour": new crackdowns in Russia, as the country marks 30 years since the fall of the USSR; looking at the roots and potential solutions to homelessness; an exclusive look inside an Iraqi Shia paramilitary group with ties to Iran; and much more.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now recommending a shorter isolation period for anyone testing positive for COVID-19, from 10 days down to five, if asymptomatic, followed by five days of mask-wearing around others.

Now, the new guidance comes as the U.S. is averaging more than 230,000 new cases per day.

Dr. Mati Hlatshwayo Davis is the director of health at the City of St. Louis' Department of Health.

And she joins me now.

Dr. Davis, welcome to the "NewsHour."

Thanks for making the time.

It's a big change in guidance.

We want to make sure it's clear to people.

So, they say, if you test positive and have no symptoms, isolate for five days, wear a mask for five days.

What do you do if you test positive and you have symptoms of some kind?

What should you do then?

DR. MATIFADZA HLATSHWAYO DAVIS, Director of Health, City of St. Louis: So, excellent question, Amna.

And what we believe is happening here is that the guidance has been made clear to differentiate between the asymptomatic, symptomatic, but you have also seen them give this guidance around vaccination status.

And for that population of people, what we believe is that second five-day period does not guarantee that your local health department will clear you from isolation, because you are still symptomatic, right?

So you are allowed to leave after day five asymptomatic with a mask.

That is not the case if you are still symptomatic.

AMNA NAWAZ: So, they have also issued some new guidelines from the CDC for anyone who's just exposed to the virus, if you come into contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19.

And I want to lay this out for people.

There's a lot to digest.

They are saying, if you are exposed, and you are unvaccinated, they recommend five days of isolation, plus five days of masking.

If you have been vaccinated earlier, which means more than six months have passed since the time you were fully vaccinated with Pfizer or Moderna or more than two months for the J&J, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, they say five days of isolation and five days of masking.

If you were vaccinated recently -- that means fewer than six months for Pfizer or Moderna, fewer than two months for J&J -- no isolation recommended, and they say 10 days of masking.

And if you have been boosted, they say no isolation and 10 days of masking.

Dr. Davis, it's a lot to keep up with.

A lot of people are very confused.

How are you making sure people in your community understand this?

And how are you implementing it?

DR. MATIFADZA HLATSHWAYO DAVIS: Well, Amna, my background before I became the director of health for the City of St. Louis is, I'm an infectious diseases physician and a public health expert.

And so one of the things you understand in my field is that infectious diseases are not static.

They're not a monolith.

They evolve over time, which means the guidance is going to change over time.

So what needs to happen is that the leadership needs to do a good job of helping people to make those transitions when they occur.

So, the confusion is warranted.

The job now is on the CDC, on the federal government, and on local health officials to make sure that people understand the science and can make that transition.

Now, what's also a challenge is that, while I completely agree with the science, as the director of health of a major city, the implementation may take time, because we need to do it in a way that is as safe and effective for our populations.

And not every county or city has the same level of support measures to make sure that this is successful as the next.

So, for example, my counterparts in New York are able to ramp up testing to support this, because part of these guidelines do make the recommendation for testing at day five for certain populations.

But if you come from a city or a county where the funds and the capabilities just aren't there for that level of testing, this may not be something that you can implement right away.

They're within lies the challenge.

AMNA NAWAZ: And so does that mean you are not following these CDC guidelines and St. Louis right now?

DR. MATIFADZA HLATSHWAYO DAVIS: Oh, for me, the CDC is always who we go to as the trusted resource.

But, for me right now, I have to have conversations with local, state and national leaders around what this looks like.

I have to take the time to responsibly look at the data that they used to support this.

And then I have to make sure that those wraparound services are available.

So we are at that stage right now.

We just got these CDC guidelines yesterday.

I'm having those conversations and making sure we have everything available to be able to implement.

AMNA NAWAZ: So, what are you -- what do you think you're missing right now?

Obviously, we have seen a lack of testing across the country.

Do you have tests that you need right now to implement this safely?

DR. MATIFADZA HLATSHWAYO DAVIS: Absolutely, Amna.

Testing has been something that all of us who advocate at the public health level have been asking for.

In order to be able to really maximize and keep our population safe, we should have tests for any American, any household that requires them.

And especially for this level of transition of guidelines, that would be the goal.

And we have heard this from our leaders.

We have heard this from Dr. Fauci.

We have heard this across the line.

In an ideal world, that's, of course, where we would be.

Unfortunately, we don't have that.

So, unfortunately, the buck stops at the local government level, where we have to make decisions about what's safest until we know we have that at a reasonable capacity.

AMNA NAWAZ: Dr. Davis, overall, Missouri vaccination rates are pretty low, right?

Across the state, I think it's only 53 percent of the population is fully vaccinated.

About 62 percent have one shot.

How concerned are you about Omicron?

Where are you seeing it show up in your community?

DR. MATIFADZA HLATSHWAYO DAVIS: Right.

So we are currently in the same position as most of the country right now, where we're in a very concerning surge.

We have seen a doubling of our case positivity rate in two weeks.

And we expect that level of increase within the next week or less.

That level of rate of increase we have not seen throughout our time in the city.

And so what we know in the City of St. Louis is that we have two very highly transmissible variants, in Omicron and Delta, in circulation at the same time.

And, as a public health official, it is important and imperative that the public understand that your best tool in your toolbox to defend against this is vaccinating, being sure to have your -- the full vaccination series available.

But, also, what we know is, the greatest way to prevent a serious illness from the Omicron variant specifically is to be boosted.

So that is my number one challenge.

But, again, it's an all-hands-on-deck approach.

So it's education around masking, social distancing, handwashing, staying home if sick, limiting social gatherings, and, if you're going to engage in them in a limited capacity testing, testing if you are engaging with people outside of your household.

That is what I am focused on in the City of St. Louis and now, in light of these new guidelines, really making sure that we get the available support from the state to ramp up testing for the City of St. Louis.

AMNA NAWAZ: Dr. Davis, I will end by putting to you something we hear often from people when there is new guidance that they don't fully understand or that is a little more confusing, requires some unpacking, which is that the guidance does continue to change.

As you mentioned, pandemics are hard.

Things evolve.

They follow the science.

And yet we are at a point now where cases are surging, and the officials are saying this is a worrying new increase, you have to take it seriously, but, at the same time, we're going to be loosening restrictions.

And that is very confusing for a lot of people.

So what would you say to folks who hear that and think those are two very different messages?

DR. MATIFADZA HLATSHWAYO DAVIS: What I would say is that, in my position of leadership, there is no such thing as loosening.

If anything, this is an all-hands-on-deck approach.

So I think what people do is grab headlines, right?

They hear five days, and that's what they run with.

Absolutely not.

This is about appropriate isolation and quarantine.

This is about masking, masking to the extent that you can.

And we have seen -- I mean, you have seen it, Amna, where you live.

I know it's happening here, that I think people have gotten complacent about that part of it.

And that's a very active part of the guidelines, right?

And it's about those other mitigation strategies.

So here, where I am leading, the message is very clear.

We are currently in a surge.

You need to be considering all of the mitigation strategies to keep yourself and our community safe.

And we are not nearly where we need to be.

Listen, our new normal is going to be difficult to get to if we do not do the best we can around vaccinations, boosting, and appropriate education and messaging around these types of transitions that we have had to overcome during this pandemic.

AMNA NAWAZ: That is Dr. Mati Hlatshwayo Davis, the director of health at the City of St. Louis' Department of Health.

Thank you so much for your time, Dr. Davis.

DR. MATIFADZA HLATSHWAYO DAVIS: Thank you for having me, Amna.

AMNA NAWAZ: As we reported, today, Russia's highest court ordered the country's most prominent human rights organization closed.

The umbrella group Memorial documents today's Russian political prisoners, but also decades of Soviet human rights atrocities.

As Nick Schifrin reports, the ruling comes almost exactly 30 years after the fall of the Soviet Union and as part of the Kremlin's battle over history.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Inside Russia's Supreme Court, the verdict was swift.

A Russian judge ordered three decades of historical and human rights work -- quote -- "liquidated."

Outside, supporters of Memorial yelled: "There is no law."

Police showed whose law runs today's Russia.

Memorial came together as the Soviet Union was falling apart.

It was the late '80s, and Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights activist Andrei Sakharov, who had been exiled by previous Soviet leaders and celebrated by American officials, teamed up with then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, the goal, document the truth about Soviet repression and collect the memories of millions of people who were marched to their death and forced to work in Soviet gulags, a history that Memorial says today's Russia is trying to erase.

ANNA DOBROVOLSKAYA, Executive Director, Memorial Human Rights Center: All the branches of Memorial were very active opposing the attempts of authorities to forget about the repressions of Soviet times.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Anna Dobrovolskaya directs the sister organization Memorial Human Rights.

It documents today's political prisoners, including main opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who has been labeled the equivalent of al-Qaida.

ANNA DOBROVOLSKAYA: Russia is not very safe place now.

We have seen the list of people like former governors or former political leaders who are being recently arrested, and these numbers are growing.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Memorial Human Rights tracks the unprecedented crackdown on Russian civil society and media, and itself expects to be shut down by the same court tomorrow.

ANNA DOBROVOLSKAYA: It sends a very clear signal to the other human rights organizations that they should be somehow more careful with what they say or what kind of campaigns they are one running.

And, of course, yes, a lot of people interpret it in a way that the memory about repressions has been targeted.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Gorbachev was willing to acknowledge the memory of those Soviet repressions.

It fit his policies of glasnost and perestroika, openness and restructuring, as he tried to reform the Soviet Union.

His effort failed 30 years ago this past weekend, when, on Christmas Day, 1991, he ended his presidency and with it the Soviet Union itself.

There had been years of pressure, pro-democracy protests across Eastern Europe, the fall of the Berlin Wall, calls for economic reform in part driven by minors all over the Soviet Union, and calls for democracy within against the Communist Party.

In 1991, Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin confronted Gorbachev.

And, in December, Yeltsin and the leaders of Belarus and Ukraine created the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Today, Russian President Vladimir Putin calls the Soviet Union's demise the century's greatest geopolitical catastrophe, and he blames the West, especially NATO, for rubbing salt in the wound.

VLADIMIR PUTIN, Russian President (through translator): Not one inch to the east is what we were told in the 1990s.

And what happened?

We were duped.

We didn't come to the borders of the U.S. or the U.K. You came to us.

Now you're telling us that Ukraine will also be in NATO.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Putin frames today's crisis on the borders of Ukraine, where the U.S. says as 100,000 Russian troops are ready to invade, as a product of historic Western wrongs.

He demands NATO reverse its own historical promises and reject Ukrainian membership.

But, in Kiev, President Volodymyr Zelensky is trying to write a new future with the West.

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY, Ukrainian President (through translator): Ukraine's membership in NATO was a matter between Ukraine and the alliance, and definitely not the choice of any other country anywhere in the world.

NICK SCHIFRIN: And joining me now from Moscow is Vladislav Zubok, professor of international history at the London School of Economics and author most recently of "Collapse: The fall of the Soviet Union."

Welcome to the "NewsHour."

Let's start with today's news.

Why do you think Memorial International and presumably tomorrow Memorial Human Rights are being targeted?

VLADISLAV ZUBOK, London School of Economics: Memorial stands for the clear language of denunciation of Stalinist past and terrorist past of the Soviet state.

President Vladimir Putin got interested in history himself, but he got interested in history in a very specific, very instrumental way.

He was particularly passionate about the story of the outbreak of the Second World War and the responsibility of the Soviet Union for that outbreak.

If you read the documents that Memorial collected, you built a sort of a line that links the terror and the rise of Stalinism to the rise of totalitarianism in Europe and the outbreak of the war.

And this is the story that the authorities don't like and Putin does not agree with.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Vladimir Putin talks about the war often, and the war is used across segments of society.

Why is that competition for the narrative over World War II so important?

VLADISLAV ZUBOK: Putin, when he became the president, he gradually, but very purposefully began to resurrect the symbols of heroic past, particularly zeroing on the victory in the Second World War, which he always calls the great patriotic war, somewhat omitting that unpleasant episode from 1939 to 1941, when the Soviet Union was an ally of Nazi Germany.

And many millions of Russians somehow are ambivalent between realization, thanks to Memorial, that it was a very costly war and the regime was enormously repressive and millions lost their relatives, and the fact that, somehow, it was instrumentalized and justified by the complete victory of 1945.

And I think they know the leadership realizes this is sort of the last and the most important peg on which you can hang the new identity, post-Soviet identity, linking it to the old one, and, at the same time, not completely returning to it.

NICK SCHIFRIN: What do you believe the lessons are that Putin has taken from the collapse of the Soviet Union and implemented through his policies today?

VLADISLAV ZUBOK: Well, first lesson that he learned was a fiscal and financial lesson.

Always have the money, because you always need the money when some kind of economic or political crisis or just instability sets in.

The second lesson, I think he learned from Gorbachev and Yeltsin, never -- never project the image of indecisiveness and the inability to use power.

And this is the image that Gorbachev left, remarkably, among the Russians, because he had all the power.

He just didn't use this power and didn't know what to do with it.

And, of course, never allow the opposition to speculate on the past of Stalinist crimes and so on so forth, or on the existing problems.

And, above all, never allow the opposition to find allies in the West, because this is exactly what happened in 1989, '91.

You find amazing coalitions between the Russian democrats and Yeltsin at the time, and, for instance, American Republican right in the United States or some kind of Baltic nationalists, Ukrainian nationalists.

So, those transnational coalitions were used to devastating effectiveness to unseat Gorbachev.

And Putin is aware of this lesson.

NICK SCHIFRIN: How does that inform or how does that connect to the kind of crackdown that we have seen even today against Memorial?

VLADISLAV ZUBOK: So, for him, it's a geostrategic problem.

It's a struggle for European security border.

And, in this struggle, the past is a very important weapon.

If you accept Memorial's version, the Soviet Union and Russia, as a successor to the Soviet Union, must adopt the same kind of policy as Germany adopted, always repenting, always asking for forgiveness to everyone who they call invaded, repressed, and so on so forth, and, in the same time, sort of accepting a marginal and repentant opposition in the new European order.

And this is what incenses him, I believe.

And I -- he finds the history of Stalinism as a weapon in the arms of his enemies.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Where does that leave the West today?

What should the West understand about the lessons that Putin has taken from the end of the Cold War?

VLADISLAV ZUBOK: If you move NATO or that - - and declare that this NATO would be enlarged forever, you have a conflict.

The only kind of tool he sees is moving troops along the Russian border and trying to send this powerful signal to the West.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Ukrainian officials, today's U.S. government, Western European and NATO officials would say that it is today's Russia, that it is more aggressive by massing those troops on Ukraine's border, and that it is Putin's misinterpretation of history and, frankly, of NATO's intentions today that has increased tensions.

VLADISLAV ZUBOK: Yes.

And this is why Putin became so interested in history.

He tries to interpret history in his own way.

So, we are in the battle of -- over the past.

But I would say, as historians, let's continue to fight over the past, rather than to fight on the ground.

It's what Churchill or somebody would famously say, jaw, jaw, jaw, not war, war, war.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Vladislav Zubok, thank you very much.

VLADISLAV ZUBOK: Great pleasure.

Thank you.

AMNA NAWAZ: Home prices and rents have gone up this year, and that is in part because of the increase in the cost of lumber.

Could the wild swings in the price of wood over the past two years be a sign of inflation continuing to go up?

Economics correspondent Paul Solman takes us for a ride.

PAUL SOLMAN: A roller coaster we featured in a story back in 1989.

Why use it in a story about lumber prices decades later?

Well, hang tight for a few minutes.

But, first, what has been happening to lumber?

STEPHEN BECKERLE, Co-Owner, Beckerle Lumber: Volatility, it's the main word, volatility.

PAUL SOLMAN: Stephen Beckerle's family owns a small chain of lumber yards in Rockland County, New York.

Brother Larry is the jokester.

What's your best lumber joke?

LARRY BECKERLE, Co-Owner, Beckerle Lumber: If I told you, you would get board.

(LAUGHTER) PAUL SOLMAN: Oh, board.

I finally got the pun.

But the Beckerle are dead serious about the business.

They buy railroad cars full of lumber shipped from the Pacific Northwest.

STEPHEN BECKERLE: So, a carload of lumber in March of 2020 cost me, on average, let's say, $50,000.

PAUL SOLMAN: That was the usual price, $300 to $400 per 1,000 board feet.

Then, suddenly, COVID, and an economy on the brink of paralysis.

STINSON DEAN, Founder and CEO, Deacon Lumber: And, for one month, new home sales and new home starts, everything just plummeted.

PAUL SOLMAN: Lumber trader Stinson Dean.

STINSON DEAN: So, producers just shut it down.

They got rid of any inventory they owned, and they stopped producing anymore.

PAUL SOLMAN: Retailer Beckerle's thinking at the time was typical.

STEPHEN BECKERLE: We're going to minimize what we're stocking.

PAUL SOLMAN: But business didn't collapse completely, and with too little supply to meet even weak demand, by summer 2020, lumber prices doubled.

STINSON DEAN: No one has ever seen $700 lumber.

That was pretty astonishing.

But then it went to $800, and $900, and $1,000.

PAUL SOLMAN: And retail prices took off accordingly, says contractor Kevin O'Dell.

KEVIN O'DELL, Home Improvement Contractor: Plywood and 2x4 lumber and stuff three or four times higher than it was.

PAUL SOLMAN: And then, in the spring of this year?

STINSON DEAN: Eleven hundred, $1,300.

$1,700 by May.

STEPHEN BECKERLE: A carload of lumber in May cost me over $200,000.

PETE BECKERLE, Chairman, Beckerle Lumber: I didn't believe it.

PAUL SOLMAN: Pete Beckerle, the family patriarch, has a motto.

PETE BECKERLE: Like we're sitting on a staple, 2x4x8s.

Don't run out of 2x4x8s.

It's like the butcher running out of hamburger.

But we didn't always make it.

PAUL SOLMAN: Because demand kept growing.

LARRY BECKERLE: People didn't take vacations.

They didn't travel.

So people are investing back in their homes.

They can work remotely, so they can live anywhere.

So, people are moving out of the cities.

They're moving to suburbs, like right here in Rockland County, New York.

PAUL SOLMAN: Dominique Ward's family, for instance, which moved from Queens.

So you bought lumber during COVID?

DOMINIQUE WARD, New York Resident: Yes, I did.

(LAUGHTER) DOMINIQUE WARD: I built garden beds.

I built a deck.

I also built a fireplace.

I built an ice skating rink for my kids in the winter last year.

It was 20-feet-by-20-feet ice skating rink in the middle of the yard.

PAUL SOLMAN: And you were not price-sensitive?

DOMINIQUE WARD: I was not price-sensitive.

I wish I was.

But I wasn't.

(LAUGHTER) DOMINIQUE WARD: I wasn't.

PAUL SOLMAN: It turns out even our cameraman, David Zapatka, his job displaced by Zoom, turned to home improvement.

DAVID ZAPATKA, Director of Photography: I was bored.

We had just done a major project on our house, in the kitchen.

And I looked out and looked at the deck.

And I said, man, that deck is just a mess.

So, I bought $1,000 worth of tools and I went to town.

PAUL SOLMAN: Demand was back convincingly.

STINSON DEAN: So, now how long does it take for the industry to believe that we're back?

That took about six or seven months.

PAUL SOLMAN: Then, given labor shortages and ongoing supply problems due to climate calamities, it took more time to ramp up.

But, once it did, price responded rapidly.

STINSON DEAN: As quickly as it went up, it went down twice as fast.

It was about a six-month ride up to $1,700.

And, in three months, it was it was back down to really close to pre-COVID levels.

PAUL SOLMAN: And yet, today, the price is back above $1,000 per 1,000 board feet.

That's mainly a function of sustained new homebuilding, says housing economist Ali Wolf.

ALI WOLF, Chief Economist, Zonda: In the case of new construction, we see that, year to date, activity is up 15 percent compared to 2019 levels.

PAUL SOLMAN: And with higher lumber prices?

ALI WOLF: Home prices are rising, as are rents.

PAUL SOLMAN: All of which is fueling inflation.

So, you have probably figured out by now the roller-coaster metaphor we began with, which came courtesy of MIT Professor John Sterman, who put capitalist market cycles in context here on the "NewsHour" back when Soviet socialism was collapsing.

JOHN STERMAN, MIT Professor: So, what we have done is created the simulated beer company which you will manage over the next hour-and-a-half.

PAUL SOLMAN: A role playing game in which each team represents a link in the beer supply chain.

JOHN STERMAN: So, it's a balancing act.

You want to have inventories as low as possible, but you don't want to run out.

MAN: We don't have anything coming in, and we're going to get into demand in a hurry, and we're going to stock out.

PAUL SOLMAN: Oh, my God.

We are going to -- we have nothing coming.

MAN: We have zero coming in.

JOHN STERMAN: Stock-outs lead to panic orders, and customers who can't get what they want start ordering more than what they really need, and they start hoarding inventory.

And that, of course, makes everything worse, in a kind of vicious cycle, self-reinforcing process.

PAUL SOLMAN: Sterman has actually come up with a new prop for today's supply chain disturbances.

JOHN STERMAN: A Slinky.

So, I actually have a Slinky here.

Think of my hand here at the top as consumer demand and think of the bottom as production.

And in the real world, demand is always fluctuating a little bit at random.

PAUL SOLMAN: And those rings in the Slinky, those are the different elements of the supply chain.

Is that it?

JOHN STERMAN: Yes, the different links in the chain, the time delays in the chain, how long it takes to build new capacity and so forth.

And it creates these cycles that we have seen forever.

But, occasionally, a really big disturbance can hit, you know, pandemic!

And well, now the system, it's going to really go nuts, and it will take quite a while for it to settle back down.

PAUL SOLMAN: But what we all care about these days, of course, is inflation.

So, I asked housing analyst Wolf, is lumber a good proxy for inflation or just a quirky one?

ALI WOLF: I think lumber is a great proxy for inflation.

We have seen how choppy lumber prices have been.

I think that's what we expect to see in a lot of different items across the economy as we go through next year and try to sort through the supply chain challenges and the labor shortage.

PAUL SOLMAN: So that suggests a shorter-term, rather than a longer-term phenomenon, right?

ALI WOLF: Our belief is that costs will stay high, but throughout 2022, we will see the rate of growth start to come down.

PAUL SOLMAN: John Sterman agrees about lumber, given today's high price.

JOHN STERMAN: Mill owners and the forestry industry are saying profits are fantastic.

Let's build new mills and grow the capacity of existing mills.

And so those new mills will keep coming onstream, and now there will be excess capacity.

And that's going to then push prices down.

PAUL SOLMAN: So are you suggesting that this inflation that we're experiencing in lumber and pretty much everything else is really a temporary phenomenon?

JOHN STERMAN: Well, some of it is, but there's other forces driving inflation now, and might get much worse.

PAUL SOLMAN: Sterman is invoking the classic definition of inflation, too much money, or liquidity, chasing too little to buy, driving up prices, which drive up wages, and so on, the so-called wage-price spiral.

JOHN STERMAN: There's a big debate going on among economists, some people arguing it's transitory, because it's just the supply chain, and other people arguing, no, it's now going to be baked into this wage-price spiral, enabled by excess liquidity in the system.

And the reality is, it's both, and nobody knows how that's going to play out.

PAUL SOLMAN: Nobody knows, which will surprise nobody familiar with economics.

For the "PBS NewsHour," and still in the game, Paul Solman.

AMNA NAWAZ: Homelessness is not a new issue, but it is one that often doesn't receive a lot of attention.

The number of Americans living without homes, in shelters, or on the streets continues to rise at an alarming rate.

Judy Woodruff has this report on why that is and what more can be done to prevent it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Homelessness often gets extra attention during the holiday season, of course, but the problem has grown year-round, particularly in many cities.

Estimates show that as many as half-a-million people are homeless in the U.S. on any given night.

Nan Roman is the CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

And she joins me now.

Nan Roman, thank you for joining us,.

And, full disclosure, I serve on the board of the Alliance.

But, first, let me ask you, how serious is the homelessness problem in this country compared to a few years ago?

NAN ROMAN, CEO, National Alliance to End Homelessness: Well, the problem of homelessness has been getting worse in this country compared to a few years ago.

From 2007 to 2016, it had been going down pretty steadily every year.

Starting in 2016, it has been creeping up every year, including this year, as far as we know.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And do you understand why that is?

NAN ROMAN: I think it is largely due to the lack of affordable housing and housing getting more expensive, and also what people earn purchasing less housing.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And is that due to federal policies, state policy?

What would you ascribe it to?

NAN ROMAN: It's due to the market, to some degree.

I mean, we really don't have an adequate supply of housing in the U.S. anymore.

We're about five million units short of having an adequate supply of housing overall.

And in the affordable housing category, it's even worse.

We are about seven million units short of enough affordable housing for all of the low-income households that need it.

And that really is the driver around homelessness.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And do you have a sense -- we were just talking about this -- of how COVID has affected people's ability to be in a home?

NAN ROMAN: It's sort of a mixed bag.

I think that, on the one hand, a lot of the benefits that have been coming to people, in terms of the child tax credit, the income tax credits, the boost in unemployment insurance and so forth, have given people resources.

And the eviction moratorium, I should also mention.

They have given people resources or protected them, so that they didn't become homeless.

Our data isn't so good because some of the counts over the past two years have been stopped because of COVID.

But we also see in some populations that it looks like there's an increase.

There appears to be an increase in unsheltered homelessness, for example, whereas family homelessness is down, we think.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And I saw that -- I believe you were saying that more than a third of those who are homeless are completely unsheltered.

They don't have any place or don't go anywhere, don't have a place to go.

NAN ROMAN: That's right.

So, the homelessness system is not -- is basically just not large enough for the problem to help people who are homeless.

And 39 percent of people who are homeless don't even have a shelter bed, so they're living on the streets, in encampments, vehicles, places not meant for human habitation.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Nan Roman, you were also telling me that there was a good amount of money that was allocated to address housing, the homeless in the legislation that was passed because of COVID, the American Rescue Plan, the CARES Act.

And you were saying not all that money has been spent.

Why not?

Can you give us a sense of what's happening there?

NAN ROMAN: I think there are a couple reasons.

There was about $14 billion between the CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan Act specifically targeted to people who are homeless.

Some of the issues around it being slow have to do with just the ability of the sector to absorb it.

Staffs being low, the hiring, the same sorts of things you hear about businesses, that's also happening in government and nonprofit sectors.

And so many resources flowing into communities have made it a little bit difficult for them to get the money out.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Is that an argument that more federal money right now, that many of these communities are just not equipped to handle it?

NAN ROMAN: I think the communities are equipped to handle it, but not probably quite as fast as we might hope they could handle it.

Still, these resources are so critical.

And, as I said, they really are -- this is a once-in-a-lifetime injection of funds into solving this problem.

We estimate that the resources of Build Back Better, should that prevail, could house 80,000 households.

So, that's quite a big dent.

JUDY WOODRUFF: I want to come back, finally, to why people, so many people are homeless in this country.

I know I hear many people saying, well, they think -- they will say it's because of mental illness, or they think it's because of substance abuse.

But, as you suggested earlier, it is more complicated than that.

NAN ROMAN: It really is about affordable housing and wages.

I will age myself, but I will say, when I first started working in the late '70s, there really was -- on housing issues, there was not homelessness.

Very, very few people were homeless.

And what's changed since then is that then there was an adequate supply of affordable housing.

And now we're seven million units short.

And that's the driver.

If housing is affordable, people will be housed.

They won't be living on the street.

It's really that housing is not affordable that they're homeless.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And so, at this holiday season, what would you want Americans to know about homelessness in this country?

NAN ROMAN: Well, I would want them not to blame homeless people for their homelessness, to understand that the solution is really not that complicated, and to have compassion for people.

It seems to me that, in a country as wealthy as ours and as wonderful as ours, we really should not have hundreds of thousands of people living on the street.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Nan Roman, who is the CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, thank you very much.

NAN ROMAN: Thank you, Judy.

AMNA NAWAZ: The Iraqi Supreme Court ratified yesterday the results of the parliamentary elections which took place last October.

One of the groups that disputed the election results is Kataib Hezbollah, a paramilitary organization which, alongside other Iran-backed groups, wants all U.S. military forces out of Iraq by the end of the year.

Kataib Hezbollah is believed to be responsible for previous rocket and drone attacks on American forces, and is threatening to once again step up those operations should their demands for full withdrawal not be met.

"NewsHour" special correspondent Simona Foltyn gained exclusive access to Kataib Hezbollah's bases near Iraq's border with Syria.

SIMONA FOLTYN: This is the United States' principal adversary in Iraq, Brigade 46 of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces.

But it's better known as Kataib Hezbollah, a powerful, secretive armed group with close ties to Iran.

The "NewsHour" gained exclusive access to areas it controls near Iraq's border with Syria, just eighty miles from the Ayn Al Asad military base, which houses American troops still operating here to help the Iraqi government defeat ISIS remnants.

But these fighters consider American forces here illegal and want them gone.

HASSAN ALI, Soldier, Kataib Hezbollah (through translator): The 31st of December will be the last day for American troops in Iraq.

If they don't leave voluntarily, they will leave by force.

They will face the resistance factions and we will return to the year 2003.

SIMONA FOLTYN: The resistance he's referring to is a secretive network of Iran-backed insurgent groups that mobilized to fight the United States following its 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Kataib Hezbollah is part of the resistance, and, in 2009, the U.S. designated it a terror organization for targeting American forces and its Iraqi opponents.

But, after the war with ISIS broke out in 2014, Kataib Hezbollah was folded into the Popular Mobilization Forces, or PMF, an amalgamation of mostly Shia paramilitaries formed to fight ISIS.

That means Kataib Hezbollah is now officially part of the Iraqi state.

Still, these fighters see the United States as their enemy.

HASSAN ALI (through translator): The Popular Mobilization Forces are against ISIS and against America at the same time.

America is an occupier in Iraq, and we don't want occupation in our country.

SIMONA FOLTYN: Until recently, the PMF fought alongside the U.S. and other Iraqi security forces in the grueling four-year war against ISIS.

This is where some of the final battles took place, near the Iraqi border town of al-Qaim and in Baghuz, just across the border in Syria.

The border between Iraq and Syria remains closed for civilians, but al-Qaim has become a strategic waypoint along a corridor that connects Iran with its allies in Iraq and in Syria.

That has also made it a flash point in the geopolitical conflict between the U.S. and Iran.

The U.S. has accused Kataib Hezbollah stands of targeting U.S. forces with rockets, and more recently, weaponized drones.

In response, the U.S. has repeatedly struck its bases.

This facility was hit by an American airstrike in December 2019, killing 26 fighters and a brigade commander.

Hassan Ali, one of three soldiers we were allowed to interview on camera during our two-day visit, witnessed the attack.

HASSAN ALI (through translator): They targeted the headquarters, administration, medical unit and the rocket support unit.

SIMONA FOLTYN: That December 2019 strike was part of a series of tit-for-tat attacks that culminated in the U.S. assassination of the powerful Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, as well as his close Iraqi associate Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

He founded Kataib Hezbollah and was second in charge of the PMF.

The killings were labeled unlawful by a U.N. inquiry and sparked calls for revenge and a political backlash.

Chanting "Baghdad is free, out with America," Iraq's Parliament voted in January 2020 to oust all foreign troops.

That led to bilateral talks to renegotiate the American military presence in Iraq.

Earlier this year, the two sides agreed to withdraw all American combat forces.

Matthew Tueller, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, says that transition has been completed.

MATTHEW TUELLER, U.S.

Ambassador to Iraq: What that really means is that we have now transferred to the Iraqi forces the main role in conducting combat operations against ISIS and its remnants.

What the U.S. and the coalition forces will do is provide an enabling mission, they will provide advice, they will provide intelligence, but they will be sitting alongside Iraqis in the operation centers.

SIMONA FOLTYN: Twenty-five hundred U.S. soldiers will remain in Iraq for that purpose, but their continued presence remains contested by groups like Kataib Hezbollah.

Is the Biden administration prepared to strike these so-called resistance factions should there be a reaction from their side, for example, rocket or drone attacks against U.S. personnel and facilities?

MATTHEW TUELLER: We are not here in order to fight against the so-called resistance factions or the armed militias.

Our presence here is a mission to prevent ISIS from being able to resurge.

So we look to the Iraqi government primarily as having the task to defend those forces that it has invited to be here on its territory.

But, absolutely, this administration, as any administration, would say that it reserves the right to respond to or defend itself if it's facing attack.

SIMONA FOLTYN: Twice this year, the Biden administration targeted Kataib Hezbollah and its affiliates.

This base was hit in June.

The U.S. military said the strike against this base was a matter of self-defense, arguing it was used to launch drone strikes against U.S. personnel and facilities in Iraq.

But Iraqi officials have condemned the attack as a violation of Iraq's sovereignty.

And it's operations like these that have fueled growing resentment against U.S. military presence in Iraq.

For the men at this training camp, the reclassification to a non-combat mission is not enough.

They say they want every American soldier to leave by end of year, including advisers, and they're ready to use force.

The recent airstrikes have hardened their stance against the U.S. and given them more reason to fight.

ABU AL FADHIL, Soldier, Kataib Hezbollah (through translator): We consider each American attack as a victory for us, and each drop of blood spilled by our martyrs is a jihadi march for us.

This makes us stand.

When America hits us, we consider them as an enemy, because they are targeting an Iraqi force.

SIMONA FOLTYN: But are they really an Iraqi state force, or are they a resistance militia fighting the U.S.?

The answer appears vital to understanding and addressing this conflict.

But Kataib Hezbollah is taking advantage of the vagueness of its status, which allows it to be both a state and a non-state actor.

On the one hand, the fighters here claimed to report to Iraq's prime minister.

ABU AL FADHIL (through translator): Our responsibility is to control the Iraqi territories and the Iraqi borders, as assigned by the Iraqi government, because we are operating under the Iraqi flag.

SIMONA FOLTYN: But there were scarce signs this was an official state force.

The cars didn't carry license plates, and none of the bases we visited were visibly marked as official PMF facilities.

Many fighters, including the commander, didn't want to show their faces on camera, for fear of being targeted, and only few wore insignia.

U.S. officials say Kataib Hezbollah merely uses the PMF for legal cover and to access state resources, while acting outside of the chain command to attack American forces and to subvert the Iraqi state.

MATTHEW TUELLER: So, this is a post-conflict state.

And it's not unusual in a post-conflict state to see armed groups that exist within the state.

And, ultimately after a conflict, you try to go through a process of demobilizing armed groups, bringing them under the authority of the state, reintegrating them into society.

What's been problematic for Iraq is they have a neighbor, Iran, that actually seeks to foster, to enable, to strengthen those type of groups.

SIMONA FOLTYN: U.S. military commanders frequently refer to Kataib Hezbollah as an Iranian proxy.

But the group also enjoys some political and popular backing inside Iraq and is acting more and more independently of Iran to pursue its goals.

The soldiers we met denied that Kataib Hezbollah is loyal to Iran.

NOOR AHMED, Soldier, Kataib Hezbollah (through translator): This is an Iraqi mobilization force, not an Iranian one.

Nobody denies that, as a friendly neighbor, Iran offered us support at a time when other countries didn't.

SIMONA FOLTYN: In addition to his job as a soldier, Noor Ahmed (ph) is studying economics in Baghdad.

He says he became a fighter to earn a stable salary, but mainly to protect his country from what he sees as external threats.

NOOR AHMED (through translator): Because of the American occupation, the security situation in the region deteriorated.

They are not willing to let Iraq destabilize.

SIMONA FOLTYN: Iraqi officials say that the best approach to rein in these groups is through gradual integration into the state, something that might only be possible following a prolonged period of stability and noninterference.

But with the end-of-year deadline to withdraw U.S. troops approaching, there's fear that Iraq could be cast into a fresh cycle of attacks.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Simona Foltyn on Iraq's borders with Syria.

AMNA NAWAZ: As 2021 comes to a close, we want to take a look back at a year of immense challenge and loss, but also a year of hope.

In recent days, we have reconnected with a number of you, viewers and guests we have interviewed over the past year.

We wanted to hear how you have handled the last 12 months, and your wishes for 2022.

Tonight, we get a view from a doctor in Texas.

DR. JOSEPH CHANG, Chief Medical Officer, Parkland Health and Hospital System: This is Joe Chang.

I am the chief medical officer here at Parkland Health and Hospital System here in Dallas.

The last time I spoke to you was August of 2021.

It's taken a sharp turn for the worse really over the last few days.

Even at the end of last week, we went from about 60 to about 100 cases in total at the hospital.

So, it's definitely not going in the in the right direction, and Omicron is doing what we thought it would.

I am a little bit surprised that we are still here talking about yet another variant.

Back in January of 2021, the vaccine had just come out.

There was so much hope surrounding what that might bring to us.

What surprised me was that such a large part of our population chose not to avail themselves of that preventative treatment.

Well over 90 percent of our admissions are still unvaccinated.

Folks are able to be as, sort of brash as they want about vaccination before they feel the effects of the disease itself.

And then, once the disease takes hold, everyone pretty much backs up on that belief and really wishes that they got vaccinated before this happened.

But, again, as I have said to everybody, it is too late at that point.

We cannot go back in time and get you vaccinated.

Once you have been infected, vaccination does nothing.

And we have so much compassion for the individuals who come in and they get sick enough and get ready to be intubated and put on ventilators.

The amount of regret and sorrow in their voices is something that's almost unbearable for us.

Watching my front-line workers and the support staff day after day bring themselves back into the hospital to fight this disease that seems like it's never going away, this year, in particular, obviously, my family and I, my colleagues and I, friends and I have spent a lot of time talking about what has occurred.

I mean, it's affected every aspect of our lives, right?

I still go back to feeling that heroes emerge, people running towards danger, as opposed to away from it.

The other thing that we reflect on a lot is loss.

I myself have lost friends and family.

If we're able to come together as a community, then I think we will see this sort of fade into the background, as flu has, as a lot of other diseases that used to claim millions of lives.

As long as we come together as a society and control the situation, COVID, just like other diseases, will sort of fade into sort of the backdrop of community health.

At some point, we will all decide that this is something we have to do together, regardless of the politics around it, the rhetoric around it, the emotions around it, that we will come together and get that done.

AMNA NAWAZ: Thank you to Dr. Chang for reconnecting with us after a tough year.

Updating our earlier story on the Colorado shootings, a fifth victim has now died, bringing the total number of dead to six, including the gunman.

Two people remain wounded.

And that is the "NewsHour" for tonight.

I'm Amna Nawaz.

For all of us here at the "PBS NewsHour," thank you for joining us, please stay safe, and we'll see you soon.