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New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is Interviewed about Closing down Hot Spots; Uncertainty in Markets; Dr. Anthony Fauci is Interviewed about his Award. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired October 05, 2020 - 08:30   ET

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

[08:30:00]

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D), NEW YORK CITY, NY: I expect to hear something in the next few hours. But the bottom line here is, this is consistent with what we've done, the city and the state together, in previous situations. Remember, we all applied tough restrictions at the height of the crisis. We were at the epicenter of the country. And that's what got us out of it, Alisyn. You saw the discipline and the strength and resiliency of New Yorkers. It was very tough to have those restrictions on us. But then we beat back this disease. And for months on end kept it low. But this new problem we're having, we've got to address it head-on.

You know, overall, again, the city is doing well. The economy is coming back. Schools are now all open. But if we see a specific area that needs that kind of tough specific intervention, that's something we do for the good of everybody.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: I've read that some yeshivas, meaning Orthodox Jewish elementary schools, that have had a problem with complying with masks and some social distancing, is that your understanding and why aren't they getting that message?

DE BLASIO: I think it's a bigger issue across these nine zip codes that really have a wide range, diverse range of New Yorkers in them. We have to get people into the basic practice of wearing masks, socially distancing, really following the rules that have worked. And this city's been really disciplined. And I think it's natural over time people get fatigued, they get a little less disciplined, but this is a wake-up call to everyone in New York City to tighten up again, to do the things that work.

Look, we overcame the worst problem in the entire country in remarkable fashion. So I know we can do it in these nine zip codes. But I think this is something where people have to remember, again, those rules work and we have to be devoted to them.

CAMEROTA: Governor Cuomo put out a statement yesterday about where his head's at with this. I'll just read it to you. He says, local governments have not done an effective job of enforcement in these hot spot zip codes. New York state will be doing aggressive enforcement starting today. The state cannot take over effective enforcement for every jurisdiction and if a local jurisdiction cannot or will not perform effective enforcement of violating entities, notify the state and we will close all business activity in the hot spots where the local governments cannot do compliance.

It sounds like the governor is implying that the city has not done a good job of enforcing the rules.

DE BLASIO: I don't want to take that implication from it because it's just not accurate. Look, the problem we're having now, it's not just New York City. Obviously some of the suburban counties to the north of the city are having a problem, too. That's not my jurisdiction, obviously, but we know there's a problem in other parts of the state. We know it interrelates to some of the communities in Brooklyn and Queens.

But, look, we have, for weeks and weeks, been doing deep enforcement in these communities here in Brooklyn, Queens, huge amount of testing, a lot of education, a lot of mask -- free mask distribution, the things that historically had worked. We had other problems earlier in the summer in other communities, Alisyn, and we went in with intensive efforts, turned them around quickly. In different parts of Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, we were able to keep things very isolated and quick turnarounds.

This is the time where we've seen something different. The problem was deeper and more pervasive. So I think it goes far beyond the question of, quote/unquote enforcement. I think here's a case where we need to really work deeply with communities, with community leaders to have a bigger turnaround in the way people are handling things and, unfortunately, the restrictions are the way to ensure that we can reset, get these rates back down again and then hold at that lower level long term.

CAMEROTA: Mayor, in our -- in our final moments, we've not spoken to you since President Trump tested positive for coronavirus and checked into Walter Reed.

What are your thoughts on everything that's happened since last Saturday's Amy Coney Barrett event where so many people since then appear to have tested positive?

DE BLASIO: The first thing to say, Alisyn, you know, even in -- with all the partisan rancor and all the challenges, some of which this president, unfortunately, created, he's still our president. I wish him well. I wish him a speedy recovery. It's in the interests of the nation that we somehow have some stability as we fight this disease together.

But I do think the message, whether you're talking about in neighborhoods in New York City or you're talking about that event in the White House or anyplace else is, we need people to remember the power of wearing the mask, practicing the social distancing, the really simple tools.

I've got to tell you, I saw it with my own eyes in the city that was the epicenter, those simple tools are what turned it around. We need the whole country to be devoted to doing the basics. And if people bought into it, I know the country can come back.

CAMEROTA: Mayor Bill de Blasio, thank you very much. Always great to have you.

DE BLASIO: Thank you, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: President Trump's coronavirus diagnosis is having a big impact on the stock market. The latest, next.

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[08:38:53]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So we're now less than an hour from the opening bell on Wall Street. The markets opening for the first time since President Trump was hospitalized for coronavirus.

So let's get to CNN's chief business correspondent Christine Romans and CNN anchor and correspondent Julia Chatterley.

Romans, the market's looking up a little bit.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

BERMAN: It does seems as we sit here this morning as if they've digested --

ROMANS: Yes.

BERMAN: This enormous amount of news and upheaval.

ROMANS: You sound like a stock market reporter, John, because that's exactly what's happening.

BERMAN: I sat next to you for four years. It rubs off. Talk about contagious.

ROMANS: Over the weekend surprising stability in global markets and a couple of reasons here. Obviously, there's a lot of uncertainty injected into things because of the president's health, but it changes the story from a contested election, which is what the markets really feared last week, to now monitoring the president's recovery and talking about whether this injects potentially new energy into talks of stimulus, new stimulus, coronavirus stimulus.

So the conversation has shifted from a contested election to the president's health, and there was a weekend here, a weekend for investors and global markets to really see what was happening and, honestly, to see that Covid joy ride that people are so up in arms about, that did show a president who was ambulatory, a president who was smiling -- well, we don't know if he was smiling, he was behind a mask, but waving, and that put a little bit of a -- I think a little bit of a pause into some of the worries over the weekend.

[08:40:11] CAMEROTA: Yes, I think you're right.

Julia, what's your impression of that? That the market believes the President Trump's health is on the upswing, though we don't have any real concrete information.

JULIA CHATTERLEY, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Presidential Covid watch, welcome to that for the next week.

I would agree, I think stocks have stabilized as we believe that the president's health has stabilized. But, actually, I agree with what Christine was saying about financial aid and stimulus hopes. I mean one investor said to me over the weekend, for the Republican Party, this is Covid carnage. And, obviously, we wish everybody well. But does the fact that we're seeing Covid carnage in the Republican Party make them more amenable to agreeing to further financial aid and, in the end, is the $2.2 trillion worth of stimulus going to be the price the president and the Republicans are willing to pay in order to boost their re-election chances, quite frankly? And I think that's part of some of the optimism and the stabilization that you're seeing feeding into stock market here.

BERMAN: I do think it's really interesting because what both of you seem to be saying is what matters here is the stimulus.

ROMANS: Yes.

BERMAN: Everything else is sort of a little bit of theater around it, including Friday when we found out that Joe Biden had tested negative. There was a spike in the market. The market appeared to jump when it heard that Biden was negative. But, at that same time, there was also news that a stimulus might be more likely.

I also think that the markets are watching Mike Pence --

ROMANS: Yes.

BERMAN: Every time he tests negative, that may also help them because, Christine Romans, they just, you know, a, they want the stimulus, and, b, they want things to be as smooth as they can for 29 days.

ROMANS: And, you know, you've just rattled off a bunch of things that could go wrong or could change, so every -- anything could happen this week, honestly. I mean Julia's right, Covid watch, that is exactly what this is here. We'll be watching every single headline about all of these top players. And I think that what's really important about the stimulus is just about every thinking head thinks you need more money soon in this system. We're going to see an October jobs report that could be job losses again headed into -- and that -- that number will come out after the election. We know that jobs growth waned in the month and slowing down pretty quickly here. We know millions of people are still out of work.

This is a jobs crisis in this country still. So even as we're talking day to day about what the president's, you know, oxygen saturation is and all this stuff, the markets want to see more money to help real people before this thing turns ugly in the fall.

CHATTERLEY: Yes, stock markets don't need more stimulus, the economy does.

ROMANS: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Great points.

Julia, Christine, thank you both very much. Great to see you.

All right, we are about to be joined by the man that so many Americans have trusted to give them the straight scoop during this coronavirus pandemic. Dr. Anthony Fauci joins us live, next.

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[08:47:01]

BERMAN: So just hours from now, Dr. Anthony Fauci will be honored as federal employee of the year. The top honor in the service to America medal is known as the Sammy's, which are kind of like the Oscars for federal workers. He already received his trophy from some very special visitors.

Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NIH: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: And the Sammy goes to Dr. Anthony Fauci, who joins us now.

And, Dr. Fauci, for people who aren't huge basketball fans like you, those are the Nationals mascots which hand delivered the trophy to your house. So congratulations on that.

Why do you think you won this year, finally? Why now, all of a sudden?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: You know, I don't know, John. It's -- it's one of those things, when you get awards, they're really, you know, quite humbling and you always think about the people around you that make what you do possible. So, I mean, obviously, I've been in the federal government for a long time. I hate to even say how long because people look at me and say why is he still standing, but -- but I've been at the NIH for like almost 50 years and I think just the activity that's going on with Covid-19, and what I've been doing with that, with my team, which is an amazing team here at NIH, I think that's probably the thing that triggered it.

But, you know, John, it feels a little bit strange to be getting a recognition when we're still in the middle of a really important, historic battle. So although I'm -- I'm pleased and humbled by the recognition, what I'm going to do in a couple of minutes when -- when we're finished here is to just get right back to the compelling issues that we're dealing with, with Covid-19.

BERMAN: You have talked about what a difficult time, unprecedented time it has been to do this job. As a federal worker, as a government scientist, what pressures are you facing that you've never had to face before?

FAUCI: Well, I've been involved, as you probably know, John, in a -- in a number of -- of very important outbreaks. I mean I started off way back when I became director of the institute in the early 1980s, it was the very beginning of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. And then we had a whole bunch of things like the anthrax attacks and pandemic flu and Zika and Ebola and now we have this unprecedented, historic outbreak of Covid-19.

The issue that's a bit different here now is one that I've commented on, even on your show a few times in the recent past, is that we're living in such a very divisive society right now, not only in the United States, but even globally that's very charged politically.

[08:50:09]

And you've got to keep your eye on the ball of doing things that are purely on the basis of science and evidence and make sure you stay on that path because otherwise things don't work out right. And that's one of the things that as scientists and public health officials we've always got to rely on the science and the evidence to guide us in our decisions. That has been very intense through this outbreak. You always have a degree of that when you have outbreaks as we've been in the past, but nothing to the intensity that we're experiencing now with Covid-19.

BERMAN: You talked about the fact that even after receiving this award, in just minutes you're going to go do your day job, which is to try to protect the American people from this pandemic.

Let's talk about where that is right now, on the screen next to you, 209,734 Americans have now died, more than 7.4 million cases.

The daily case rate is up around 40,000. We saw 50,000 the other day.

FAUCI: Right.

BERMAN: The hospitalization rate, which had been falling, has stopped falling and it's showing some signs maybe it's rising again.

So how far away is that from where you think we should be today?

FAUCI: Well, I -- well, John, as I've said it over and over again, and particularly as we're entering into the fall season, and then ultimately the winter, I am certainly not pleased, satisfied, but I'm actually disturbed and concerned about the fact that our baseline of infections is still stuck at around 40,000 per day. That's no place to be when you're trying to get your arms around an epidemic and get it to a very low baseline as you get into a situation where you're going to be indoors more than outdoors. You know, being outdoors is one of the things that we always talk about, you know, wear a mask, keep your distance, avoid crowds and try and do things outdoors more than indoors.

If you look at the map, although parts of the country, John, are doing really well, I mean have actually got the levels down, if you look at the test positivity rate in certain areas in the Midwest and northwest, and now we're even starting to see a bit of the uptick in New York, you've got to pay attention to that and you've got to jump all over that because if you don't do that, then what happens is you're going to see the surges that we've seen in different parts of the country where parts come down and parts go up. We've got to stop that trend and get everything going down as a country, all together, working together.

BERMAN: One of the new cases, obviously, is in Washington, D.C., the president of the United States. What has been your involvement in handling this case and the president's care?

FAUCI: Well, I think it's obvious, John, that I have not been involved. But, again, you know, I don't -- I don't want to get into talking about the president's case because that's not something that I really have been cleared to talk about. But, personally, I have not been involved in the direct care of the president.

And, look -- but I might -- I might comment that my colleagues that I know, including Sean Connolly, are very good physicians and they're very qualified. So I am really confident that the president of the United States is getting the optimal care that you can get with the team over at Walter Reed.

BERMAN: You say you don't want to comment on his case specifically. Let's talk about, though, I think, some of the issues that have arisen, which is that we talked to "New York Times" reporter, Michael Shear (ph), who was at the White House event more than a week ago where Amy Coney Barrett was officially nominated for the Supreme Court. There were a lot of people there. There was an indoor portion of that.

He stopped by the White House that day and then traveled with the president that night. He has now tested positive. He says he hasn't been called for contact tracing.

Should he be contacted? What does that tell you about the contact tracing from that potentially dangerous event?

FAUCI: You know, John, I don't know what the process of the contact tracing is that's going on at the White House. In general, the CDC is very much involved with the local authorities. So I don't think it would be appropriate for me to comment about the contact tracing that's gone on around the White House because I'm not informed on it.

But the one thing we do know is that when you get cases, if you have a situation where someone comes into contact and is infected and you know that there are people around him that the important public health measure is to do the identification, isolation, and contact tracing so that you can get people who have been exposed to go under the appropriate quarantine, get tested and do the things that are very clearly delineated in the CDC guidelines. BERMAN: Yes. The only reason I brought it up is because I was

surprised that Michael, who, in fact, has tested positive and is a known figure hasn't been contacted and you say that's par for the course, it should be that that -- all those people were contacted.

[08:55:02]

FAUCI: Yes. Absolutely.

BERMAN: Dr. Fauci, from a moment when someone is, someone like Michael, or someone else, from the moment when you start to show first symptoms, you display symptoms of coronavirus, how long at this point do we believe you are contagious?

FAUCI: You know, John, it really varies from person to person. What usually happens is that you get exposed. After a couple of days, the virus replicates in your upper airway and you can be ineffective to other people for a day or two before you actually get your symptoms. Once your symptoms come, that's a median of about five days, is the median time from exposure to the expression of symptoms. And then after a few days, you might be sick and yet the virus is no longer transmissible because we've done studies, when you try and isolate the virus from the nasal farings (ph), when people even are in the disease state or recovering and you don't have it. So it's usually before they get symptomatic and for a few days thereafter.

The general guidelines are, when is it safe for a person to go out from the time they get symptoms, it's probably around ten days from the onset of symptoms. You usually have no virus and in the studies that have been done, those people generally are not at all ineffective to other people.

BERMAN: Look, I know you don't want to talk about it, but you said ten days from the moment you're showing first symptoms. The president was in an SUV last night with members of the Secret Service four days after he showed symptoms. So it seems to me that that is short of the window where you would want to, you know, do anything other than isolate. Am I right in reading into that, not this case specifically, but --

FAUCI: Now, John, I don't -- I don't want to really go there, John, and comment on that, OK?

BERMAN: Broadly speaking, now that the American people have seen what can happen to anyone, to anyone, what lesson should the American people take from what we've seen happening in Washington the last several days? Something that maybe will turn this pandemic in a more positive direction?

FAUCI: Well, John, the only thing I could do is to just refer you and others and I'll repeat it now briefly of things that I have been saying for months and months and months. This is a highly, highly transmissible virus. We know it goes from person to person in a very efficient way. We know it's respiratory borne. And when we say there are five things, four or five things that we know can prevent the acquisition and transmission of infection, and that is universal wearing of masks, avoiding crowds, keep your distance, doing things outdoors more than indoors and washing your hands regularly. Those are five things that I must have said on TV and radio, in the print, tens of thousands of times. And if we do that, we will not see the kind of outbreaks that we've just experienced.

BERMAN: You know what, 10,001 is a good thing, 100,001 to tell -- say it is a good thing.

FAUCI: Yes. You bet.

BERMAN: So we appreciate you saying it. Thank you for the work that you're doing. Congratulations on the award.

The federal government worker of the year, Dr. Anthony Fauci, appreciate your time, sir.

FAUCI: Thank you very much, John. Good to be with you. I appreciate you having me.

BERMAN: So we're just hearing from the White House chief of staff that the president, he says, is still on track to be released from the hospital as soon as today.

Our coverage continues, next.

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