Page 7 - Infrastructure Side News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Engineering at louisiana state university. comes to me now from baton rouge, louisiana. have to do it on the phone because of the storm. professor, five named storms in fact struck louisiana in 2020. what is the toll that these back-to-back storms have taken not just on the residents of the region but the infrastructure? >> on the infrastructure side we have had severe damage because of these hurricanes, especially the power infrastructure. we had parts of -- they lost power for several weeks. now in new orleans the transmission lines are down. so we expect the power to be out for a lot of tim...

We'll get there and it takes back and forth and that's congress and we'll end up passing the two bills. >> is there any scenario in which -- because you were out with transportation secretary buttigieg and any scenario in which that should be passed and we don't get from the democrats that reconciliation bill? >> we're going to work on both of these. doesn't have to be an either/or. they work together as i said. so i think this is a scenario where the bipartisan bill, the senate pass on the hard infrastructure side is something that i'm incredibly supportive of. i think that president biden an...

The prevalence of co-morbid health conditions here in louisiana that may be a little more pronounced than elsewhere. but it is true, though, that if you are fully vaccinated, you're eight times less likely to get covid. you're 25 times less likely to end up in the hospital or dead from covid. so the vaccinations work. a lot of people are confusing the fact that we are having breakthrough cases with whether the vaccines are efficacious. if you will remember, back when moderna and pfizer and so forth came out with the vaccines and they were talking about efficacy, it was protecting people agains...

A general election. they are also the ones that can't win with just the votes of their own party. so it is two different animals that are trying to come together and find that elusive common ground. i think that they will find it on the infrastructure because a bunch of those republicans are for it because they know it is popular in their state and they need some of those independent votes. and i think it will happen on the other package, but probably not as big a number as joe biden and some of the very, very blue district democrats want. >> and john your new piece dive there is to this two t...

What's happening on the west coast, i mean, these have skating, record breaking weather events are only going to accelerate. the point is we've got to do our part in our country to get on clean energy so that we don't continue to exacerbate climate change. it is an existential issue. yes, that has to be addressed, and yes, that will be addressed in the second piece, but i'm confident that the democrats are very determined to get both pieces through. and at least the republicans that we negotiated with on the infrastructure side are determined to get the first part through, so let's do this. >>...