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Stocks Plunge despite Stimulus; Schools Turn into Virtual Learning; Talking to Children about Coronavirus; Biden Sweeps Primaries. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired March 18, 2020 - 09:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[09:34:07]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: All right, the market just opened. Take a look. Oh, we're off almost a thousand points and the Dow just a hair away from off 5 percent. The S&P is also off just over 4 percent. fears are growing about a global recession. In fact, listen to this, from Deutsche Bank. They say that the collapse of the global economy could be the biggest since World War II. That's in their note this morning. That is stunning.

Our chief business correspondent Christine Romans is with me now.

Unbelievable predictions and so fast.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I mean we're pressing the pause button on the global economy. We're managing the global economy into a recession to prevent an even bigger public health crisis. And there's no playbook for it. And that's why you're seeing these virus fears honestly menace the market because even these economists, they admit we're guessing at some of this because it is so bad and it's happened so quickly, we don't know how it's going to bounce back.

How -- Deutsche Bank says it will bounce back later this year.

[09:35:01]

And other economists this morning are telling me they have faith that the economy will bounce back, in part because of what Washington --

HARLOW: Yes.

ROMANS: Is finally getting around to doing, which is stimulus.

HARLOW: But -- but to your point, I mean we have a $20 trillion economy, biggest economy in the world --

ROMANS: Yes.

HARLOW: And the market knows that Washington is likely going to pass this trillion dollar stimulus package. Maybe people will get those checks of a thousand dollars each. And the market is down more than 1,100 points because they think it's not enough?

ROMANS: The math is really important here. A $20 trillion economy. If you completely sideline it for let's say three months, is $1 trillion enough? That is the conversation that's happening this morning. And I'm sure that's what people are telling Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. He's got to get -- he's got to get both houses -- he's got to get both parties behind him to spend money and --

HARLOW: But --

ROMANS: Go ahead.

HARLOW: Sorry to interrupt. I'm just -- I keep coming back to the question of, yes, you want to give people enough to feed their families --

ROMANS: Right.

HARLOW: Of course and get gas in their car, but what is enough when something this time is so different than before, meaning, you can't go spend it like 2001, 2008 at the movie theater.

ROMANS: Right.

HARLOW: You can't go spend it in the shops.

ROMANS: And that's why it is so difficult to forecast how bad the hit will be on the economy and how hard it will be to restart the economy and bring it back. So you're bringing up exactly the question that is menacing investors right now --

HARLOW: Sure.

ROMANS: Because they can't answer that question.

HARLOW: JetBlue just announced a few minutes ago that that airline will cut 40 percent service and call this stunning after United said this is the worst financial impact than 9/11 on the industry.

ROMANS: Yes.

HARLOW: This is an industry that's going to need help and quickly. And that's why they're talking about up to $50 billion for the airlines.

ROMANS: You know, there's a little bit of pushback because the airlines have had some of their best years in profit. They've paid their CEOs very well. And they have brought back shares when times were good to give back to shareholders. So should taxpayers be on the hook? Well, you have to have a healthy air travel system in America. And that means airports too. So I think you'll be seeing more details on a kind of bailout for the airlines.

They're -- one very, very well regarded think tank said that the airlines will be bankrupt by May.

HARLOW: By May. ROMANS: By May, without help.

HARLOW: Without help. All the west carriers.

ROMANS: Well, there's -- the planes are empty. I mean the planes are -- people aren't going -- you know?

HARLOW: I know. Unbelievable.

Thank you, Christine Romans, we appreciate all those updates.

ROMANS: You're welcome.

HARLOW: We appreciate all those updates. We'll keep a very close eye on the market.

For close to a billion students around the world, the kitchen table is the new classroom. And this is probably what you're going through for many of you at home. It's not just online homework, it actually face- to-face instruction.

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[09:41:51]

HARLOW: Well, practically overnight, the coronavirus has forced millions of homes to turn into essentially virtual learning centers. But how effective is it?

Our Evan McMorris-Santoro is with me with more.

Hi, sir.

I wish my -- my kids, two and four, virtual learning doesn't really work for them, but for so many kids it does when they're a little bit older.

EVAN MCMORRIS-SANTORO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, the problem with this crisis is that no one really knows how long it will last. So what they have -- so what schools are trying to do is maintain some kind of education, even while their buildings are shut down.

HARLOW: Yes.

MCMORRIS-SANTORO: It's kind of a novelty right now. It's the first couple weeks of it. And I spent the first day of school -- online school at Westminster School in Atlanta.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So who's going to be in the class today?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know.

MCMORRIS-SANTORO (voice over): The running list of school closings nationwide changes by the minute due to coronavirus. For the time being, the face to face school day has been replaced by e-learning. Many college students may be used to logging into school, but now online learning has become the norm for students of every age.

SAM MONTAG, STUDENT: So we have four classes a day with 15 minutes in between each class and a 30 minute lunch break.

MCMORRIS-SANTORO: Sam Montag is 13. This is his first day attending seventh grade from his bedroom.

MONTAG: I think going online is a smart idea because we don't know when we'll be able to get back to school.

MCMORRIS-SANTORO: Westminster School, a private k through 12 in Atlanta, is trying to make online school as close to regular school as possible. So the day starts with home room, from home.

CAROLINA MARES, TEACHER: Just follow what I'm doing. Everyone's doing it.

MCMORRIS-SANTORO: Carolina Mares has been teaching French and Spanish classes for eight years. For the past few days, she's been translating her classroom lesson plans into e-learning.

MARES: We've been working on learning how to order food, and being open minded about trying new foods. Field trips are completely out of the picture now. And so we are trying to change the focus of this unit to be, instead of ordering food, to cooking at home.

MCMORRIS-SANTORO: This is the first day she's wrangling her students from her dining room table.

MARES: And we have everyone in class. Applause. Everyone made it.

Control over the class is one thing that I just have to let go of. I'm not there. So I'm not going to have the same amount of control.

MCMORRIS-SANTORO: The obvious question, is this going to work? Online education has been around for a long time, but it's never been tested quite like this.

MARES: You know, there's that rule or that guideline that your attention span is only as long as your age in minutes. So for middle schoolers, we're talking attention span is usually 11 to 14 minutes max.

MCMORRIS-SANTORO (on camera): Do you think that you can leave your students with the same kind of education that they would have if they were with you in the classroom?

MARES: Yes, I can probably cover everything that I need to cover, but education is so much more than what we cover in class. The little extracurricular activities, robotics, all of that is part of a student's education.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCMORRIS-SANTORO: So it's not just the idea of being out of school that's the problem. There are several challenges with this.

[09:45:01]

Number one is just access to the Internet, right? I mean Westminster School is a school where kids have access to the Internet. They're -- you know, it's a private school. Then there's also the issue of just maintaining people's attention through this.

HARLOW: Yes.

MCMORRIS-SANTORO: I talked to a bunch of experts about this. An online education is a very specific form of education. Everybody's being thrown into it now and it's not clear that as the days go on how sort of focused and how this will actually maintain itself as an actual educational future.

HARLOW: And it -- you know, nothing compares to the social emotional learning of being next to someone, right? And so you can't do that now. You miss out on that. But bless those teachers for what they're doing.

MCMORRIS-SANTORO: They're doing their best.

HARLOW: And the parents at home trying to help too.

MCMORRIS-SANTORO: Yes.

HARLOW: Evan, thank you very much. Really interesting.

So aside from helping your kids as much as you can learn at home, how do you talk to them about coronavirus, especially the younger ones?

I'm so glad we have Nancy Kislin here. She's a child and adolescent psychotherapist.

Nancy, thank you for being here.

I guess I have all these questions too as a mother. What is your recommendation for how we start to explain what coronavirus is to our children, especially the younger ones?

NANCY KISLIN, CHILD AND ADOLESCENT PSYCHOTHERAPIST: Thank you.

I think the first thing you need to do is take a deep breath and check in with yourself. And I say be the parent to yourself. Take a few minutes to -- how are you doing? How anxious are you? And if you need to build a support system, family, friends, online, do that before you go and start to have that conversation with your child, with your child. And then it's like the same when we're on an airplane, right, we say, put that oxygen mask on first. I want parents to do that too. I want them to take care of themselves so they can be the best version of themselves. So now hopefully they shelve that anxiety for a little bit so they can meet their child where they're at. Less is more. Depending on the age of the child is, get curious and assess how are they doing? Look for signs. Are they asking questions? Take -- let you -- take the lead. Let them take your lead. HARLOW: You know, I -- I did -- one of my colleagues here shared this.

I think we can pull up the video on the screen so people can see it, but it's going around on Instagram, this experiment where you can teach your kids about germs by putting your finger in soap and then in water with pepper and then the pepper just moves away to show how effective soap is at fighting germs. My three and a half year old girl loved this. My two year old boy tried to eat it, but, you know.

But the point is, this was effective for me, right? Things like this to show them what we're going through, but not scare them.

KISLIN: Exactly. I love that experiment. And I love the fact that it sounds like you were very present with your children. And that's what I ask of parents right now, as hard as it is, you need to show up, you need to be present, put your phone down, lower the TV when the kids are around and be present. So whatever it takes to -- whatever activity you're doing, you're reading, you're taking a walk, hopefully no other kids are with you other than your own is be present and then you're more available for them to answer those questions.

And just remembering the most important thing, children need and we need is to feel safe. And, you can say that you're scared, you can be -- show your vulnerability, but then show them, these are the things we are doing to keep our family safe. And just like the water in the -- with the pepper, do other activities, we wash our hands, we take our shoes off when we come in the house. We eat healthy foods. We engage in exercise.

HARLOW: Nancy, thank you so much. I wish we had a little more time with you, but we have some breaking news to get to, but we'll have you back. Thanks for the advice.

KISLIN: Thank you. Stay safe.

HARLOW: You too.

Here's the breaking news. The president just confirming that the U.S./Canada border will now be closed to all non-essential traffic. Again, this country's northern border is now closed to anything non- essential. The president noting this will not impact trade, so the movement of goods, that's very important, especially for farmers and the ag business. We'll have more details on this as we learn it.

Stay right there.

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[09:53:50]

HARLOW: Well, former Vice President Joe Biden three for three in Tuesday's primary battles. And now Bernie Sanders' campaign says this morning he is assessing all of it.

Our MJ Lee is with me.

MJ, first, let's talk about what we saw play out yesterday. MJ LEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: (INAUDIBLE) turning point for Joe Biden and

his campaign. He had significant victories in three major contests, Arizona, Florida, and Illinois.

Let's just do a quick breakdown of each of those three states. In Florida, Biden had a sweeping win. Take a look here, 61.9 percent to 22.8 percent for Bernie Sanders. And in Illinois, also Biden projected to win with huge margins, 59.4 percent to 35.7 percent for Sanders. And then in Arizona as well, a decisive victory for Joe Biden, 42.4 percent to 29.9 percent for Sanders.

And, of course, what matters most right now is the delegate count. And Joe Biden, right now, has a total of 1,086 delegates to Bernie Sanders' 772.

What this means is that Joe Biden now has an almost insurmountable lead in terms of the delegate count.

09:55:04]

And it is very hard to imagine how Bernie Sanders might be able to turn things around. And we know that this is obviously going to be a moment of soul searching for the Bernie Sanders campaign and his campaign actually just put out a statement, his campaign manager. Let me just read that out loud. He said, the next primary contest is at least three weeks away. Senator Sanders is going to be having conversations with supporters to assess his campaign. In the immediate term, however, he is focused on the government response to the coronavirus outbreak and insuring that we take care of working people and the most vulnerable.

So, again, Poppy, a huge night for Joe Biden and the coming days will be incredibly critical for the Bernie Sanders campaign as well.

HARLOW: MJ Lee, thank you for that reporting. Sorry, we can't see you, but this is sort of life as we know it, technical difficulties there. MJ, thank you for that.

Ahead for us, the coronavirus is now infecting patients in all 50 states. Health officials say that Americans must take this much more seriously. We're on top of all of it right after this.

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