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Cuomo Prime Time
New Models Predict Dramatically More Deaths As States Relax Shutdowns & Social Distancing Rules; California Allowing Some Businesses To Reopen Friday; Paris Doctors: Evidence Of Virus In Patient From December. Aired 9-10p ET
Aired May 04, 2020 - 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[21:00:00]
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, ANDERSON COOPER 360: Jay-Natalie La Santa was just five months old. Our thoughts go out to them and all families impacted by this virus.
The news continues. I want to hand it over to Chris for CUOMO PRIME TIME. Chris?
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST, CUOMO PRIME TIME: So much bad news, Anderson, I can't let go of the good news. How was the weekend with Wyatt? Come on, let's see the smile. There it is.
COOPER: He was--
CUOMO: Nothing changes a daddy's face.
COOPER: It was great.
CUOMO: Look it. I love it.
COOPER: It was awesome, yes. I spent the whole weekend just looking at him, and burping him, and feeding him, and it was great, yes. I was saying, during the break, he's like a little amphibious tree frog like on my chest--
CUOMO: Yes.
COOPER: --just tiny little.
CUOMO: You will come up with--
COOPER: Yes.
CUOMO: --better metaphors for what your son reminds you of than an amphibious tree frog where you're - you're new to this.
COOPER: Oh, I mean.
CUOMO: You got a new baby and it's a new you too. I love watching you laugh and smile. There will be nothing else like it in your life. I love you, congratulations again. It's good news I have to mooch off it. COOPER: Thanks.
CUOMO: I am Chris Cuomo. Welcome to PRIME TIME.
We're back in New York City doing the show with the rest of the CNN lineup, and we have Dr. Anthony Fauci tonight. Who better to ask? What about these new projections, so dire about daily deaths, does he buy this? Does he have a better picture of our future between now and June?
No matter which model though, let's be honest, there is consensus. Reopening is going to cost us cases. It's going to cost us death. The real question for you is are you OK with it? Are you OK with paying the cost?
This isn't about facts. It's about how you feel about what you know to be the facts. Science isn't going to decide these moves. Politics will.
Here's the proposition. Will we choose to stay together and stay at home until the virus is beaten back to safer levels, or is this new reopening our emerging reality? Will it really become everyone for themselves?
What do you say? Let's get after it.
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CUOMO: Now, be clear, it's not about the media causing madness, and excitement, and concerns, about what will happen. The news is being driven by government research.
A key model, often cited by the White House, now projects 134,000 deaths by early August, nearly double the previous prediction of more than 72,000.
Another model, reportedly from the Trump Administration itself, projects a steep rise in Coronavirus deaths and cases in the weeks ahead, just as many places are reopening again, even though not one of them has met the CDC guidelines for doing so.
Now, the numbers may confuse you, but this will bring it home. The model equates to us having the number of deaths we had on 9/11 every single day in this country.
And, again, you can argue about the numbers, and the assumptions behind them, but there is no arguing, unless you're on State TV, that reopening will mean more cases and more death.
You don't need a famous doctor to tell you that. But we do need Dr. Anthony Fauci to kind of keep us straight about where our efforts should be right now. Doctor, welcome back to PRIME TIME.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Good to be with you, Chris.
CUOMO: You didn't do the models. You're not about the modeling on this, but these numbers are making people nervous, not nervous enough to not reopen, by the way, which is an important point. What is your perspective on them?
FAUCI: Yes. Well models that change numbers like this, Chris, often confuse people. But the fundamental core principle behind it doesn't change, and that's something that we've been saying all along.
When you have a lot of virus activity, and you know that you're able to contain it to a certain degree, by the mitigation, the physical separations, the kinds of things that we've been talking about, Gateway, Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3, and you start to leap-frog over some of these, you're inviting rebound.
And rebound is going to give you spikes, and spikes are going to give you the kinds of numbers. I don't know if those numbers, because I have skepticism about models, about they're only as good as the assumptions you put into them, but they're not completely misleading.
They're telling you something that's a reality, that when you have mitigation that's containing something, and unless it's down in the right direction, and you pull back prematurely, you're going to get a rebound of cases.
And that's something that I've been talking about in multiple interviews multiple time. It is tempting rebound when you do something prematurely.
CUOMO: Now, you know, everybody sees you as the person who wants us to stay the course, and keep with the social distancing, and let's get the science right.
But they don't also understand that Tony Fauci knows what economic hard times are about, how your family came up, what life was like for you coming up. You know that people are in need right now. You know money is short for them. How do you balance those interests in your own heart and head--
FAUCI: Yes.
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CUOMO: --that you know people are strapped by this, and they're worried about their families losing whatever dreams they have? How do you balance?
FAUCI: Well Chris, I'm not at all insensitive.
In fact, I'm very sensitive to the potential downsides of the kind of economic crises that we're having, the suffering of people who are not working. I mean that's something that, I mean, you'd have to be so callous not to really feel the pain that people are feeling.
But what I do know, as a scientist, a physician, and a public health official, that unless you turn this around in the right direction, and try, because of your desire, an understandable desire, to get back to some form of normality, if the situation is right to do that, if you're starting to see things coming down, and you start pulling back gradually, and you have the capability of when you do get blips to essentially put the lid on them, there is nothing wrong with doing that carefully.
The thing that I get really concerned about, despite this concern about what economic consequences you might have, is that when you pull back, and the virus is doing this, it's only going to do that. It's not going to turn around and come down.
So, there is a balance. And you've got to look at both sides of it. And there are - I mean, the United States is a big country, as you know Chris, and that things are going to be different from one region to the other.
And I think what sometimes confuses people is that when you talk about pulling back, under certain circumstances, there are regions, areas, counties, cities, in which you can do that safely now.
But there are others that if you do that, it's really dangerous, and that's the thing you've got to be careful of.
CUOMO: You are losing this argument, Doctor.
FAUCI: For sure.
CUOMO: Not to me. You can beat me in your sleep.
FAUCI: For sure, yes.
CUOMO: But people are fatigued. Some of it is need, as we spoke, and that's legitimate, and maybe, you know, you're the wrong guest. But maybe our government should be doing things it's not doing, to help American families. That's not your wheelhouse.
But there is fatigue. They want out. You saw the pictures from New York City this weekend. When I went out to shop this weekend, everybody was out there. A lot of people had masks, and there was some non-mask shaming where I was, but not in the parks.
The people have had it. The seasons are changing. It feels like summer. It's been long enough. How do you combat people's willingness to accept more cases, to accept even more death?
FAUCI: Well, you know, it's the balance of something that's a very difficult choice, like how many deaths, and how much suffering, are you willing to accept to get back to what you want to be, some form of normality, sooner rather than later?
You know, it's something that people feel very differently about it. You know, myself coming from the vantage point that I come, and seeing the danger in it, I have to. I feel I have a moral obligation to give the kind of information that I'm giving.
People are going to make their own choices. I cannot, nor anybody, force people, under every circumstance, to do what you think is best. The only thing that I can do, Chris, is to give the information based on evidence, and based on experience, and that's what I've been doing right from the very beginning.
And there are people that are going to be disagreeing with me, some of them rather violently in many respects, you know, telling me that I'm crazy, you know, "Fire Fauci," do this, do that.
That's part of the game. I'm just going to keep giving you the information that I feel is necessary to make the decisions that I think are prudent decisions.
CUOMO: People who think they're going to shake you up with their mouths don't know you very well.
FAUCI: Yes, no.
CUOMO: The idea that it happened this fast, are you surprised that after the country really did seem to get it that we have to stay home, I know we don't want to do it, but it's working, that it snapped back this fast?
FAUCI: No, I'm not surprised.
And the reason I'm not surprised, Chris, is because one thing this virus has that's really different from so many other viruses that we have experience with, it has a phenomenal capability and efficiency in spreading from person to person.
This is not a trivial issue. This virus has enormous capabilities of spreading like wildfire. We know that.
We've seen it in general, and we've seen it in confined situations, the Teddy Roosevelt aircraft carrier with the explosion of cases, many of them asymptomatic, the Diamond Princess, when you have people together.
This is a virus that spreads as easily as any virus that I've ever known apart maybe from measles. Measles is probably the only one that doesn't do it as well as this.
CUOMO: And look, you know, you were at the vanguard of the efforts against AIDS. You know what it's like to have a viral spread, and to fight, to have a way to treat it, and to control it. So, you're not new to this.
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And the reserve that you have here and the concern you have should be heeded, but it's not, because people want to get back, and we'll just have to watch what the price is. And unfortunately, even though you're not pushing the reopening, you will have to deal with the consequences of it. Now, what I will not spend time doing tonight, Dr. Fauci, is asking you about testifying, or not testifying, or questions about the messaging.
I don't know why anybody, who wants you in position, spends their time, coming after you about political questions. You're not a politician. In fact, in my experience, which I guess is about 35 years, you're a lousy politician.
You don't make those decisions. You don't want to make those decisions. You testify where they tell you. And you won't, if they tell you not to, because that's your job. So, let's not talk about that.
FAUCI: Right.
CUOMO: I want to talk about something else that nobody knows.
Why do I know what Tony Fauci thinks? I've known him a lot in my life. But I've never known him the way I know you through this pandemic. I have spoken to you, almost without exception, every day.
And you have been calling me, out of personal concern, to make sure that I'm OK, that my wife was OK, that my son was OK, a 11 o'clock at night, later, waiting for my show to end, Saturday, Sunday morning, the rare time you have with your family. Why?
FAUCI: Well, first of all, because you're a friend. I mean, you know, we have a professional relationship, but you're a friend. I've known you since, I hate to say it, since you were almost a kid.
And the fact is you were going through some difficult times. I don't think that the people who were seeing you on the show were really experiencing or realizing how you were really sucking it up to look relatively normal.
But when you finished the show, and we would start chatting, at 11 o'clock, 11:30 at night, you know, you were wiped out. You - you not only had the acute difficulty with a virus that was replicating in you, but you had some of the secondary effects, you know, the fever, the aches, the feeling washed out.
And even when you were viral negative, you know, I was concerned, because you're uncomfortable. I mean, people look at you, you know, you look pretty good right now. But boy, you put on a great act in front of the TV because you were really wiped out badly.
I was worried about you there for a while because we know, and I didn't want to scare you, I gave you the truth, that there is a period of time, in some individuals, when you look like you're recovering, and then all of a sudden things go really bad.
The reason why that happens, as you and I have discussed over the phone at night, is we're not even sure. We don't even have a full grasp of the pathogenesis of why some people do what you did. You felt bad, you felt bad, and then you started getting better and
better and better. Some people, they feel good, they feel bad, they feel bad, and then they start to feel better, and then boom, they go downhill.
We need to figure out what that is, because when we do, it will help us to intervene to do something about it. So--
CUOMO: And I know that--
FAUCI: --I cared about you--
CUOMO: Go ahead.
FAUCI: No. I was saying I cared about you, but I was worried about you. That's one of the reasons why I kept calling.
CUOMO: I appreciate it. And I appreciate you being gentle with me about it. But, listen, I just want you to know how much I appreciate it, not just from Tony, the guy, but as a member of the Administration.
I know the Administration wanted to make sure that I was OK. I appreciate it, I really do. I won't forget it. I always try to be fair, but that's something that, you know, just doesn't go away.
You know people care about you personally, and your wife, and your kid, it resonates. So, thank you for taking care of me the way you did. Thank you for giving me all the information that you did.
And the only reason I'm sharing it on TV, instead of saying it to you, as I have, many times in person, I want people to know who they're getting in Tony Fauci.
It's not just TV. It's not just 30 years of excellence in the scientific field. The head and the heart that comes together in your body is the real deal, Dr. Fauci, and that's why people believe in you.
It's not the science. The numbers are all over the place. Nobody knows what the hell they're talking about with this virus or what's going to happen. But they know that where you're coming from is a point of concern and humanity.
And I know that firsthand. And I want my audience to know it as well. It's never been more true about a public official than it is about you. So, Tony, thank you for caring about me and my family. Thank you for caring about all of us.
I know you're worried as hell about where we're going. And whatever happens, we got to just--
FAUCI: Right.
CUOMO: --try to keep ourselves together.
FAUCI: Right, thank you very much, Chris. Great being with you, my friend.
CUOMO: Dr. Fauci, the pleasure and the privilege is mine. Have a good night. I'll talk to you later.
All right, I wanted you to know that. I'm kind of tired of the whole personal sharing thing, to be honest with you.
But I've never had anybody do what Tony Fauci did with me. He's got a lot on his plate. But he took time, and the Administration knew, and they wanted to know. I respect it. All of you thank you.
This is one of the nights that we have our leader watching. I appreciate what you did for me and my family and caring about us. I'll never forget it.
Now, where we're looking in this country right now, one of the biggest shifts in one of the states where the Governor has been facing protests and rebellion for all the closing now, we're seeing a shift.
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Businesses are suddenly set to reopen legally this week in California. What does that mean for L.A.'s Mayor, OK? He's already warned crowds may not come back to concerts, sporting events, but what does he do now? How does he deal with what we were just talking to Tony Fauci about, needs and wants?
The Mayor, next.
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CUOMO: Everybody is feeling the pressure. We knew this would happen. As states start to reopen, pressure on other states is going to grow.
California's Governor today took a step toward reopening businesses despite the State not yet seeing a steady two-week decline in Coronavirus cases. That's the CDC standard. And, by the way, it's not that harsh a standard if you look at other countries.
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Now, some retail stores will begin to reopen on Friday. Clothing stores, florists, bookstores, you know, they're all going to do curbside pickup. But without that two-week decline, look, you know what the concern is, especially if you're the Mayor of a place like Los Angeles.
The City's stay-at-home order will not be entirely lifted in the days ahead. But there may be some easing of restrictions. How do you balance doing what's right when you know that so much of that will be wrong?
Mayor Eric Garcetti joins us now, thank you. I know this is a crazy day for you. I appreciate you carving the time out for us, Mr. Mayor.
MAYOR ERIC GARCETTI, (D) LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Hey man, great to see you back in studio. Welcome home.
CUOMO: It is good to be here with the fake City behind me. Let me ask you this, Mr. Mayor. How do you deal with this?
GARCETTI: Yes.
CUOMO: Because I know you're getting calls, "Hey, we're going to die here. The businesses aren't going to reopen. This is going to take us years. Money is tight." You're very responsive to those calls ordinarily, let alone now.
How do you balance what's right versus with what feels like what the people want?
GARCETTI: Well look, it's exciting. We're all really hungry to see those steps happen. But you've got to make sure that we're not just hungry, but we're smart.
Here in Los Angeles, we've been lucky. We adopted swift measures. We've expanded testing to everybody, including asymptomatic people. We have some best, you know, practices, not just in this country, but I think in the world.
But all that could go away, especially in a City where 96 percent of us have not yet gotten Coronavirus. So, we want to make sure we take those steps carefully. Our order goes to May 15th.
The Governor, who I support, did a great job today. He didn't say that everybody in the State has to open. He say they now can't (ph) open.
So, a rural Mountain County, as big as L.A. County, but with 9,000 people, might have a different circumstance than L.A., where some parts are as dense as New York, and other places are suburban, but where we have to be careful.
So, I have a lot of trust that we can take those steps. I'll give you one example. We've had the construction trades working throughout this. And we - we inspect them. We make sure they have PPE. And we haven't seen outbreaks among our construction crews. That's really important. So, I believe that we can.
But people got to remember. This isn't about mayors and governors. This is about their own discipline of knowing we're not moving beyond COVID-19. We're just starting to learn how to live with it.
CUOMO: Now, I remember that, and I remember when the Governor was contemplating what to do.
And, to be fair to the Governor, unlike other governors, he's given enforcement latitude to mayors, especially if a big city like L.A., and that's helpful, because he can't know the City the way you know it. So, that's a good thing going for California.
But that was a ballsy move, letting the construction stay open. It was very controversial. It's paid off.
GARCETTI: Yes.
CUOMO: Do you believe that building construction is unique in terms of people being outside, and it's an industry that is very adherent to code, as it is, or do you think it gives you hope for other businesses in general?
GARCETTI: It gives me a lot of hope. We've to be careful. We're not throwing the doors open to everybody, or else we're going to see some bad, bad numbers quickly.
But we have seen retail in the form of grocery stores stay open with a lot of protections, and maybe we need to add more. Retail, I think, has shown it can work.
Manufacturing, out here, we have a huge apparel industry, like you do in New York. We've had hundreds of companies making non-surgical masks, and they space themselves out. They took maybe three shifts, where they used to have one, do it 24 hours. So, they've adjusted, so I think manufacturing can too.
And lastly, absolutely, some of the outdoor things, whether it's recreational spaces, or things like construction, you just have to be thoughtful.
You can't give into political pressure, where people are saying "Do this because I'm getting antsy." Listen to the doctors. Don't make it as a politician, but make it as a professional. And I do think that there's going to be some good steps forward
One last thing, acknowledge you're going to make missteps, but you'll learn from them, and you'll correct them quickly.
And if you have the right measures out there, you got to tell people, OK, we're in a yellow zone now, where we can move forward. But we might have to go to Orange, and hold, or red, and step backwards, because we know this virus will do things, regardless of how we act.
And we're going to see some spikes probably in the fall, for sure in the winter, and we have to be ready.
CUOMO: You know, I've said this before. I don't envy being in public service right now, in a leadership position, like you are. I know you guys are getting some shine and, frankly, you deserve it, Mr. Mayor.
I know that people have been responding optimistically. But here's the reality of politics. It's almost, you know, I don't want to say anything that jinxes anybody's health. But it is almost impossible to not have more cases and more bad outcomes--
GARCETTI: Yes.
CUOMO: --as a reflection of reopening with where we are right now. Tony Fauci could tell you that. But you know it as well.
They're going to blame you when bad things happen, and that's going to be a tough time, because if you have what is being anticipated, more cases, more hospitalizations, more stress on the system, and then you have a bump in the fall.
Are you having nightmares about what it could look like for your City?
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GARCETTI: No question. I mean people like black and white, right? Look at our politics. People don't like nuance. People don't like difficult answers. They want things to just be clear one way or the other.
But our black and white, black, which is shut down the economy forever, until we all strangle to death our livelihoods, is unacceptable. White, you know, throw everything open, and watch people die, that's unacceptable too.
So, we all have to be comfortable living in that grey space. And absolutely, I take responsibility for everything that happens in this City of - I didn't bring a virus to Los Angeles. But it's important for me to lead.
But I remind people it's not just about a Mayor. It's about 4 million people in the City, 10 million people in this County, 19 million in our metro area. If we have the discipline, leaders are all around us. They're next door. They're in the room with you. They're down the street. They're in your workplace.
And we all have to help each other lead or else we all bear some of the blame of what happens. But if we do it right, how often you get to save thousands, and maybe even millions, of lives?
We'll look back in this chapter, and say, "It wasn't perfect. Every disaster is messy. But America finally found its soul. We rose to the moment, and we did what was right, and we did it for each other. We didn't expect government to do it on its own. We expect a lot out of government. But we also saved the day."
CUOMO: There's no question. This was never going to be just about government, but also acutely so.
You guys have had to figure out how to do it for yourselves, and the American people have had to figure out how to do it for their-selves. No Savior was going to come in and sweep them up.
What is your best working understanding of how much more flow your capacity system can take?
GARCETTI: We're good right now. We're holding strong. We have, you know, over a thousand ventilators available right now, thousand-plus hospital beds, over 230 ICU beds, and we've got the capacity to surge even more.
But that's the number that every citizen should be asking their Mayor and their Governor. What's the hospital capacity, not just the number of cases? What are the hospital admissions and what's the capacity?
Because we should be shutting things down quickly when it's reaching capacity, or getting towards it, and we should open them up when capacity opens up. To me, it's the most important measure we have.
CUOMO: You know Pandora's box. I want to ask you one thing, and then I got to let you go, because your time is tight. Pandora's box, you know, is going to live itself out as a - as not a mythology, but a reality now.
GARCETTI: Yes.
CUOMO: People are not going to want to go back, and that's going to be a political challenge as well.
You have a significant homeless population. People migrate from all over the country out of California because of the weather, and other places on the West Coast. How much strain are you under in servicing that population right now? And what will this move mean for you?
GARCETTI: Well there's certainly always strain. But, as I said, we had the public health emergency before COVID-19 arrived in a lot of America's cities, and it's called homelessness.
I called two years ago for a FEMA-level response. Finally, and to their credit, FEMA is allowing us to pay to put people into housing, hotel rooms and shelters, before they're even hit by the disaster. This is before they have COVID-19.
So, I'm really actually pretty jazzed, pretty excited about this moment. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, not just to house thousands of people, as we've done off of our streets already, and hopefully thousands more.
But shame on all of us collectively, federal, state, and local, if we let them just hit the streets after this. So, we're spending a lot of time figuring out.
Let's make sure that these folks who are vulnerable to death, you're twice as likely to die on the streets, if you're homeless than if you're housed, let's make sure that those pre-existing conditions, long after COVID-19, don't kill more Americans just because they're experiencing homelessness.
We've done it for vets. We've helped a lot of them. We've reduced by 90 percent our veterans' homelessness here in L.A. We can do it for non-vets too. And that shows the soul of who we are.
CUOMO: I know a lot of people are listening to you right now, and they just went, "Veterans, homeless?" Yes, a huge part of the homeless population is veterans, who haven't gotten the help that they need.
You got a good one in Eric Garcetti though, the Mayor of Los Angeles. You look these people in the eye when they're homeless on the street. You see them as human beings maybe, you know, veterans as well, human beings who need the help.
You always have a platform here to talk about the need, especially where our most vulnerable are involved. Good luck to you, going forward.
GARCETTI: Thank you, brother, appreciate it. Be well, Chris.
CUOMO: Thank you, Sir. Mayor Eric Garcetti, big job out there, the eyes of the country will be on them.
Why? Future's in doubt. But we're learning more all the time, right? And one of the big lessons that we've been aware of on this show is this virus has been outside China and around this world, a lot longer than they were telling us.
Remember, January, end of January, "First case." Now they got one in December outside China. And guess what? This person says they never went to China. So, where did they get it? What we're learning about how long this has been happening?
Chief Doctor, Sanjay Gupta, next.
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CUOMO: All right, have you heard this yet? A hospital in Paris has a story to tell. This is what they've been doing, and you're going to see a lot of this in this country.
They started to backtrack. They went back to old samples of patients who came in before the pandemic with flu-like symptoms that they couldn't figure out, and it wasn't the flu, in December.
And remember what I said weeks ago, because of anecdotes like this, we're going to keep going back. Doctors there say they found evidence that one man who hadn't even been to China tested positive, in December. That's a month before France even reported its first cases. Dr. Sanjay Gupta has been ahead on this cause for concern for many weeks. We don't know. But the suspicions have been there, and they are growing.
First, in France, Sanjay, where did the guy get it, if he never went to China? What's their best guess at this point?
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DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I mean he most likely got it from the community, which raises a whole another level of concern.
If you remember, Chris, end of January, the first patient diagnosed, end of February, a month later, is when they say they have evidence of community transmission that this is now spreading within the community, not just from people who had known exposure to somebody.
So, if he got this in December, with no known specific contact, he's a fishmonger. So, you know, may - maybe he got it from an animal market, maybe there was somebody else that had flown in from China, and he got it from that person. We don't know.
I mean this is a - it's just like you said, Chris. It's quite a stunning finding, but not that surprising, at the same time. I mean I don't think we ever sort of thought, the scientific community never thought, that we definitely found the first patient, we definitely found the first patient, zero so to speak.
But I think, you know, the fact that, in China, we were saying the first patients were diagnosed in December, this guy was diagnosed in December, possibly getting it from the community does mean, just as you've said Chris, in the past as well, that if it was community transmission in December, that means that must have arrived at least at some point earlier than that.
So, how far back are we going? We don't know. But you go back and start examining, you know, the tissue, the blood, whatever, from people who came in the hospital at that point. You know, at some point, you're going to start to say, "Well maybe this started a lot earlier than we realized."
CUOMO: So, now the question becomes well why, and what does that mean? Does it mean that China had it and wasn't telling us?
Does it mean maybe it was somewhere else, but then that's disruptive of the whole theory of the case, about it originating in Wuhan? So, what is more - the most likely scenario that they had it longer?
GUPTA: I think that the most likely scenario is still that it was circulating in China earlier than they realized.
I mean global travel is - is robust. I mean we travel twice as much internationally now as compared to 10 years ago. I mean you can circumnavigate the globe before you even realize what's happening with a particular virus. But - but I think that, you know, Chris, you said this a while ago, as you mentioned, that it probably had been circulating a lot earlier than we realized. They identified these clusters of unusual pneumonias, I think, in November, late November, early December in China, and - and then it was sometime after that.
But they finally said, "OK, well this is definitely a novel Coronavirus, something that we haven't seen in human beings before." But how - you know, were there other clusters that just got missed?
Were there other patients who said, the doctors there, or in other places around the world, even said it's flu, we don't have to bother diagnosing it. This is acting like flu. And most of those patients did recover, so they didn't really dig too deep into it.
Now that they have this obvious novel Coronaviruses, some places, and not just in France, we heard about this in California as well, where they found a patient actually had died of this on February 6th, much earlier than we - than we first thought. In many places around the world, they're going to start doing this.
My guess is, Chris, places that have large international airports, the hospitals that service those areas, are now going to start going back and looking at their patients from December, maybe even earlier, and saying, "Hey, was Coronavirus already here?"
CUOMO: And look, you know, just to be clear, the reason I have this curiosity, one, is because I believe it's going to turn out to be accurate from anecdote. And second, it's not about spreading fear. It's about the opposite.
The longer this thing has been here, the better chance that we're going to have resistant people, who have antibodies, and didn't even know it. That's why, if anything, it's fueling my curiosity.
It's, you know, hope that, you know, we're going to get a - we're going to get a little bit of a good luck here that this has been around--
GUPTA: That's right.
CUOMO: --before it became so assaultive.
And then you get to the projections. You know, Sanjay, I was a little slow on this story about the projections. One, I think there's too much wiggle room for the White House and the government to get away from owning these numbers. Obviously, the death toll has had to pop.
But no matter what the number is Sanjay, there's no reason to debate the reality. You reopen, you're going to have more cases, and more deaths. Period! There is no other potential outcome.
GUPTA: Absolutely. I mean, no matter when this happens, there are going to be people who get infected that otherwise wouldn't, get hospitalized who otherwise wouldn't, and sadly, may die, who otherwise wouldn't. I think it's just a question just like, you know, your previous guest, and Dr. Fauci as well said, what are we willing to tolerate? I mean this has become almost an existential sort of question.
I think there's a couple things though. One is that, you know, if you look at the models that - that a lot have been put forth, I mean I think in many ways, they were the - the lower end of the projections.
I mean I was surprised, I think you were as well, many - when the IHME model became sort of the predominant model, not that they're not good modelers, but Columbia had a model. The CDC had a model. There were a lot of models out there.
CUOMO: Right.
GUPTA: So now, you know their models double almost overnight, in terms of projected deaths. And even that is got to - I mean, look at that screen. That's a huge variation still.
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I mean that's the nature of models, I guess, to have a huge variation. But before, you know, up until yesterday, they weren't even factoring in, Chris, the impact of reopening these states.
CUOMO: Right.
GUPTA: Now you're starting to see some of that impact. And the numbers jumped, just like you - like you said, that - that's to be expected.
CUOMO: Right. Well we took away the only thing that was keeping the numbers down. You don't have a cure. You don't have herd immunity.
So, the only thing you had was keeping the spread down by keeping contact down. And if you take that away, what do you think the model is going to do? They're going to pop.
GUPTA: Right.
CUOMO: You know, I feel for Tony Fauci on this because this is going to wind up redounding to a failure of the Administration.
You have a pop in cases, it's going to expose the weaknesses in the system, right, that we don't have the PPE that we need, we don't have the testing and tracing that we need. That's the biggest part of the mass delusion to me, Sanjay.
It's not things will be OK. OK is subjective. If you want it to be OK, it's OK. You're not going to know the truth because while these states are growing, they're testing and tracing, none is anywhere near of being able to monitor half their population, let alone all of it.
GUPTA: That - that's absolutely right. And the thing that's really struck me is that, you know, the physical distancing measures have had an impact, I mean, you know. And we've done something in this country and, really, in many places around the world, which I think a lot of people would have been shocked, if you told them six months ago, this is what the world is going to look like. It's had an impact.
But I think what it's brought things down to, Chris, is sort of a slower burn. I mean, there's still a lot of cases that are happening every day, a lot of people who are dying, sadly, every day.
And we haven't really seen the back-end of this curve yet. So, I think this is what the data is telling us that physical distancing will plateau us. It's not going to be a way out.
So, we have to maintain this for a period of time until there is an actual way out, which is either going to be a vaccine, which everyone talks about, a really effective therapeutic, or a way to test so robustly that you can immediately find these - these patients who are - who have the infection, and isolate them.
And we're not in a position to do those things yet.
So, for the time being, and I think this is what Dr. Fauci is saying in a very "Dr. Fauci way" is that we have to continue physical distancing. I've given you the guidelines. I've made them easy to read. I, you know, really spelled it out for people, governors and states all across America.
If you're not doing it at this point, you must realize what's going to happen. We've seen it around the world. We've seen it here in the United States. And it doesn't just grow linearly once it starts to grow.
CUOMO: Right.
GUPTA: It grows like this slowly, and then exponential. That's what exponential growth is, and nobody wants that. Nobody wants it. No matter how much you want the economy to be open, nobody wants that.
And - and finally, Chris, you showed those images, you know, Central Park, you know, today, you know, people take risks all the time, right?
But the difference here is you're not the one taking the risk. You're taking the risk for you, but you are possibly going to spread this to other people. That's what's different about this.
This isn't just about "I'm going to eat cheeseburgers and I'll take my risk, maybe I'll have heart disease, maybe I won't." You could harbor this virus and then spread it to other people. This isn't a normal kind of risk.
We have to evaluate risk differently here because it's not just about any individual. And I think people realize that, and most people have done a really good job. But, you know, we've got to stay the course right now, and we'll get through this.
CUOMO: They realize it.
GUPTA: We've got to stay the course.
CUOMO: But they have to realize it right now. When they want to make that decision to go do something, they have to remember what they're doing to everybody else.
And, let me just say quickly, Sanjay, my gratitude tour. I wouldn't be here as soon as I have if I hadn't had your guidance, and I hadn't had your love and support. I'll never forget it. I've seen you do amazing things.
I've never seen you control coverage the way you have in this story. And you've done amazing things for a long time. But what you did for me personally, I'll never forget. You will stand out in my mind for two reasons, three.
One, how you cared for me, two, I've never seen someone your size carry me on their back with the legs that you have, and three, you used the word fishmonger, which I've never heard anybody use outside of Shakespeare.
But those are - the first one is what matters--
GUPTA: It's good, it's--
CUOMO: --most. Thank you for taking care of me and my family.
GUPTA: Hey, I love you, seriously. It was a nice moment between you and Dr. Fauci today as well. You got a lot of love around you, Chris. I'm glad you're feeling better.
CUOMO: Well you are the real deal. Anybody who wants to know who you are, they get to see the real deal on television. Sanjay Gupta, thank you brother, appreciate it.
GUPTA: You got it, thank you.
CUOMO: All right, Closing Argument tonight, tough one, why? Because, look, we all know that rushing to reopen is risky.
This really hard question, may be the hardest one I've ever seen us take on, "Is the risk worth it?" The answer seems to be yes, but I don't think we're really seeing it for what it is, and what it may cost us, and why we're doing it.
This is tough, and we're not treating it that way, but we should. So, let's give it a try, next.
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CUOMO: Hindsight will surely be 2020 after this. This year's going to loom large about lessons learned, about COVID-19, about communities, across the country and the world.
Now personally, the lesson for me is obvious. My lesson is gratitude. It's my first day back in the office in more than a month.
So many of you were so good to me, both in my family, and to my family, I'll just say thank you. I will spend my time, in this capacity, trying to justify the faith that so many of you have put in me.
But while my own COVID battle is mostly over, I'm worried that so many seem to think it's mostly over for all of us, and that is just dead wrong. Facts, case numbers climbing, pretty much everywhere, 68,000- plus deaths now.
[21:50:00]
Two weeks ago, the President said, we would have 60,000 deaths, period. Now, his Administration is reportedly privately projecting there are going to be 9/11-like death tolls on a daily basis by early June. And yet, they want to push reopening?
Now look, no one has accused this President of being fact-focused or even read-in on any of this, but you don't need him to mislead you. In fact, don't put this on Trump. We are deceiving ourselves.
You know the virus is still spreading in too many places. This shows - it exposes the reality. You know testing and tracing capabilities are nowhere near what we need to just get the truth of the risks that we all seem too ready to take. So, why are we doing it?
This is the hard part of the argument. Because the agony of this is legitimate angst. We can't just say it's too soon. Why? Because it's almost too late for too many suffering real economic pain. 30 million unemployed, who knows if they'll be able to find jobs again?
It took us a decade to rebuild fewer jobs than that, literally, like, 10 million fewer, after 2008. Yes, different circumstances, but the desperation here is different, too. We're talking food lines, not 401(k)s, dreams dying, not just deferred.
Even if you don't have COVID, this situation is making us sick. Mental health is going to open eyes as never before, and that will be a good thing, but it's coming at a bad price.
Those are the facts, but there is also feel, fatigue. "I've had it. Seasons changing. It's getting warm. Want to get back to it."
Look at these fools, fools. I know they want to be out there. Fools, it's not about you. What about the other people? And look, I'm not going to castigate you. That's not my job. I'm not your daddy.
But we have to think about this. We are rushing to get back out of want, not just out of need, all right? Beautiful weather does not make for a beautiful reality.
Yes, we're tired of bad news. Yes, the government is not doing things it should be. And there's no question that this is all real. But so are the numbers.
The relaxing of stay-at-home orders doesn't mean COVID isn't a problem anymore. In fact, the opposite is the truth. I know I said that already. I'm going to repeat a lot of things because it's not getting through.
Things will get worse. I don't care how you reopen. So, if you're going to go against the science, well, what is better? What is better than this reality?
This is something I've been asking myself, and I hope you do as well. What are we rushing back to? Politicians are making this decision, not scientists. Fauci's not in charge. Don't ask him political questions. It's not his job.
The politicians are doing this because of you. Politicians act out of fear of consequence much more often than they do out of good conscience, OK? So, that's what's going to happen now.
We know we can't do nothing forever, but think about what you are so anxious to get back to, in terms of normal, and what you're going to lose that we've gained in this pandemic, OK? Think about it.
Be careful what you wish for, the time with family, the time together, the time leading more simply, the time thinking about where to go and where not.
Those pictures of what we see in Venice of clearer water, and clearer skies, that they're showing us all over the world, I know we can't do nothing forever. But we can think about how to be together better.
I'm just asking you to do this. I know what you wish for. I wish for the same. But remember, we may be headed back to a time that we think we remember as better, but we may live to regret. That is my argument, and I hope you give it a listen.
All right, now when I come back, I want to talk to you about what is at stake here, all right? The worst-case scenario is dying, but what about short of that? I want to show you what we can do, you and me, not to make risks, but to make rewards for people.
We can pay forward to heroes on the frontlines. I got great ways. You want to know them? Stick around.
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CUOMO: Double dose of Ameri-CANs for you tonight.
First up, college students, Amy Guan and Rine Uhm, they came up with a service called Give Essential. Essential workers list what they need. They get paired with donors who can send the items free of charge.
You want to get involved? Of course, you do. Giveessential.org, E-S-S- E-N-T-I-A-L, OK? Giveessential.org.
Second, remember Lauren Leander, the ICU nurse we had on, from Arizona?
Remember what she did? She didn't make a big stink. She didn't say anything. But she just stood there, in her mask, in front of the protesters, and they let her have it, in Phoenix, last month.
She saw our interview with Navajo Nation President, Jonathan Nez, remember? That's the third biggest concentration of cases in this country, is the Reservation. There's the President himself.
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CUOMO: He told us how the federal government wasn't appropriately meeting its responsibilities on aid, OK? Even the virus is going to be something that now they're going to have to live with, with the insult to our humanity that those reservations have become.
Lauren set up a GoFundMe page to help raise money for Navajo Nation hospitals and their workers. I'm going to tweet out the link. The donations will be given to Nez, who will oversee the funds.
How about that? She's saving lives in an ICU, working 12-hour shifts, and thinks about how to do more. Ameri-CAN!
Thank you for watching. CNN TONIGHT with D. Lemon starts right now, trying to bite my outfit, but it won't work. DON LEMON, CNN HOST, CNN TONIGHT WITH DON LEMON: You didn't even let me get to it. Could you stop it? You are so competitive.
CUOMO: I am.
LEMON: OK.
CUOMO: I just want to be better than you.
LEMON: OK. So, let me--
CUOMO: I want to be better than you.
LEMON: --let me tell you. That font is awfully small on the teleprompter, so can you guys fix that?
