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Trump Mocks Coronavirus as Pandemic in U.S. Worsens; Johnson & Johnson Pauses Vaccine Trial Over Unexplained Illness. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired October 13, 2020 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A new warning as new cases nationally are up 40 percent.

[05:59:56]

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: I hope these numbers jolt the American public, because it's on a trajectory of getting worse and worse.

JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: Johnson & Johnson is now the second drug maker to pause human trials for the coronavirus vaccine.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You'd expect a few pauses. We've got to let the process play out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden hitting the campaign trail.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I went through it. Now they say I'm immune. I feel so powerful. I'm walking better (ph).

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: The longer Donald Trump is president, the more reckless he gets.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It's Tuesday, October 13, 6 a.m. here in New York.

And this morning, asking for trouble. Dr. Anthony Fauci may be the most trusted man in America when it comes to battling the coronavirus pandemic; says the president is asking for trouble this morning.

The country, in some ways, asking for trouble. Cases are rising in 33 states. All the states you see there in red, including Michigan, which just recorded its second highest number of new cases since the pandemic began. Five states are reporting record hospitalizations. Thirteen states

have a positivity rate above 10 percent. That means that community transmission is accelerating.

One of those states is Florida. Asking for trouble. The president held his first rally there since himself becoming infected, dozens of others connected to the White House infected, as well. But their health aside, what about these people? What about the thousands of people in attendance? No social distancing there. Few masks. Who is protecting them? In fact, if you ask, they tell us they would behave differently if the president only asked them to.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let me ask you this. If President Trump at the rally said, Everyone put on their masks.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I would put it on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Well, there you go.

Joe Biden also heading to Florida today. He'll hold a drive-in voter mobilization event designed to keep supporters socially distanced.

Three weeks now until the election, and voter enthusiasm is high.

BERMAN: It's zero days until the election.

CAMEROTA: Well, not for everybody, John.

BERMAN: It's 21 days until voting is over. It's not 21 days until election day.

CAMEROTA: OK. You make a good point. But not everybody can vote. But look at these lines.

BERMAN: Forty-six states in the District of Columbia they can vote, as of today.

CAMEROTA: OK. Those are high numbers, I guess I would say. You're -- you're making a good point.

This is Georgia, OK? Georgia yesterday set records on the first day of early voting, which John is very excited about. People waited in hours there -- I mean, sorry, in line for hours. Look at that. I mean, I just can't stop staring at the screen. That's some voter enthusiasm for you right there.

OK, also breaking overnight, Johnson & Johnson announcing it is pausing their Phase 3 vaccine trial because of an unexplained illness in one of the study's volunteers. We have more on that for you in a minute.

But let's begin with Joe Johns. He is live at the White House this morning.

Hi, Joe.

JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Alisyn.

The president and Joe Biden both back out on the campaign trail today with millions of ballots already cast in early voting. The president last night in Florida giving a preview of what at least part of his message on the campaign trail might be for the next three weeks. Mocking efforts to control the spread of coronavirus while holding re- election events that could potentially increase it.

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JOHNS (voice-over): Both presidential candidates on the campaign trail with just three weeks left until election day. President Donald Trump back on the campaign trail for the first time since his coronavirus diagnosis ten days earlier, holding a rally in Sanford, Florida. At the rally, few masks and no social distancing.

TRUMP: I went through it. Now they say I'm immune. I can -- I feel so powerful. I walk into that audience. I'll walk in there. I'll kiss everyone in that audience.

JOHNS: Former Vice President Joe Biden called the president's actions risky.

BIDEN: Just reckless personal conduct since his diagnosis, as well, has unconscionable. And the longer Donald Trump is president, the more reckless he gets.

JOHNS: At the rally, Trump spoke for a little over an hour and still does not seem to be taking the coronavirus seriously. Trump continuing to claim, without evidence, that he's now immune from the virus, criticizing lockdowns and mocking social distancing measures taken by Biden's campaign.

TRUMP: The cure cannot be worse. But if you don't feel good about it, but if you want to stay. Stay, relax, stay. But if you want to get out there, get out.

JOHNS: Trump arriving in Florida less than two hours after his physician, Dr. Sean Conley, said the president had tested negative for the coronavirus on consecutive days without saying which days.

Meanwhile, Biden set to campaign today to Florida following a visit Monday to Ohio, where he courted voters whose state went to Trump in 2016.

[06:05:07]

BIDEN: Ohio matters. You elected me and Barack in 2008 and '12. I'm asking for your support.

JOHNS: The Biden campaign heavily focused in these last few weeks of campaigning on flipping states Trump won in the last election. Meanwhile, back in Washington, Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows,

dismissing requests to keep his mask on while talking to reporters.

MARK MEADOWS, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: Let me do this. Let me pull this away.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, pull away.

MEADOWS: And then that way I can take this off to talk. Well, I'm more than ten feet away. I'm not -- well.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK.

MEADOWS: I'm not going to talk through a mask.

JOHNS: And Dr. Anthony Fauci slamming the president's campaign for using his words without permission and out of context in a campaign ad, saying he never publicly endorses any political candidates. Fauci said this when asked what would happen if the president's campaign made another ad featuring his words?

FAUCI: That would be outrageous if they do that. In fact, that might actually come back to backfire on them.

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JOHNS: The president heads out for Johnstown, Pennsylvania, later today for his event. Joe Biden is going to the state of Pennsylvania later this week, as well.

Meanwhile, back here at the White House, we saw a touch of irony as the Trump administration started using information from the World Health Organization to explain why it thinks lockdowns are not a good idea. As you know, the president withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization earlier this year.

Alisyn, back to you.

CAMEROTA: There are many touches of irony, I would say, in the past few months. Thank you very much, Joe.

All right. Breaking overnight, Johnson & Johnson announcing it is pausing their Phase 3 human coronavirus vaccine trial because of an unexplained illness with one of the study's volunteers.

CNN's Elizabeth Cohen is live in Atlanta for us with more. So what do we know about this, Elizabeth?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Alisyn, all we know is that something happened to one of these study participants. We don't know what. We don't know exactly what happened, but there was enough concern that this illness might -- and I emphasize might -- might be related to the vaccine. They have put the whole thing on hold.

They are not going to dose anybody. Nobody else is going to get another shot in this trial until they figure out, was it because of the vaccine or was it not?

Let's take a look at a statement from Johnson & Johnson. They say, "Serious adverse events" -- which is a fancy word for when a participant gets sick -- "Serious adverse events are not uncommon in clinical trials, and the number of serious adverse events can reasonably be expected to increase in trials involving large numbers of participants." Basically, what they're saying is when you, know, give a shot to a whole -- to tens of thousands of people, someone is going to get sick.

Now, let's take a look at the status of where these vaccine trials are at in the United States. Johnson & Johnson on pause, as we just said. AstraZeneca also on pause, similar. Participant got sick. They're still trying to figure that out. Been on pause for more than a month.

Moderna is still up and running. They started July 27. Pfizer also up and running. They started July 27.

Now, I want to add here that, of course, this is the right thing to do. When a study person gets sick and you think that it might be because of the vaccine, of course you put the trial on hold. However, experts tell us it is unusual for this to happen. It is unusual for there to be so much concern about a participant's illness that they put the trial on hold -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: That is really interesting context. Thank you very much. We'll be talking about that for the rest of the program.

Meanwhile, the pandemic in the U.S. is getting worse. So we'll show you how your state is doing, what you should do starting today to stay safe, even when President Trump does not model safe behavior. We discuss all that next.

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[06:13:11]

BERMAN: This morning, the coronavirus pandemic in the United States getting worse. The numbers are just undeniable at this point. Cases rising in 33 states, hospitalizations going up. The exact wrong time to be holding events like this, say almost every doctor you will speak to, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, who says rallies like this that the president now wants to hold every day are flat-out dangerous.

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FAUCI: We know that that is asking for trouble when you do that. We've seen that when you have situations of congregate settings where there are a lot of people without masks. The data speak for themselves. It happens.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Joining us now, Dr. Peter Hotez, the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and the codirector of the Texas Children's Hospital for Vaccine Development. Also with us, CNN political analyst Toluse Olorunnipa. He is a White House reporter for "The Washington Post."

Dr. Hotez, you have a distinguished medical pedigree, but I'm not sure you even need your decades of experience and vast education to look at the rally we saw last night to know it is a bad idea.

Right now, the pandemic is on the rise in the United States. It is on the march. It's just undeniable. What's the impact of holding an event like the president did?

DR. PETER HOTEZ, DEAN, NATIONAL SCHOOL OF TROPICAL MEDICINE, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: Yes, John, we started at already a pretty high place. We went down to the lowest point lately in early September, around 30, 35,000 new cases day. Now we're back up to 50,000 new cases a day. And it's going to continue to rise.

And it's -- and this is the fall/winter surge that everybody worried about. Now it's happening. And it's happening especially up in northern Midwest. The northern states are getting hit very hard: Wisconsin, Montana, the Dakotas. But it's going to be nationally soon enough. It may be worse in the north than in the south.

[06:15:08]

This is not a time to be holding rallies. It's not a time to be sending the message that we should be holding rallies. We need to be sending the message that this could be a terrible time for the nation as we head into the winter.

Even as bad as it's been in March and April and what we saw and then over the summer, the worst could be yet to come as we head towards the winter.

So to hold rallies, to be defiant of masks, all those things are just going to continue to erode at the -- at the morale of the American people.

CAMEROTA: Well, I mean, the medical warning that you're talking about, Dr. Hotez, is the opposite of what President Trump is saying at his rallies, Toluse, and to his supporters.

I thought it was so interesting when President Trump was sick with coronavirus and hospitalized, some people thought that he was going to have this sort of epiphany and come out and do something different. And, you know, that is hope springing eternal, I guess. That's not what has happened.

He has doubled down on his message of getting back out there, you know, ripping off the mask, wanting to kiss -- force unwanted kisses on everybody in the, you know, crowd.

And I think that one of the things that we've learned, Toluse, is how much people do rely, actually, on their leaders and how much people do mimic the behavior of their leaders. Coming up in the next hour we'll talk to somebody who is a big Trump supporter and who got very, very sick because he said he listened to the president and thought it was all sort of a hoax. And so anyway, I mean, we're just watching it play out. Your thoughts.

TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: People do follow the president's lead, especially his supporters, especially people within his base. We see this huge breakdown between Republicans and mask wearing and Democrats and mask wearing, even though mask wearing continues to be popular across the country. So it's a little curious why the president has decided to be anti-mask.

But people within his base, when they talk to pollsters, they say they don't like wearing masks compared to other people; compared to Democrats; compared to independents. So the president has sort of led this charge against public health measures which are, you know, designed to help the country, designed to keep us from having, you know, tens of thousands of deaths between now and election day, which is looks like is what's going to happen.

So the president, you know, holds these massive rallies. He has a huge audience. He has an opportunity to lead the country on smart public health measures, and instead, he chooses to play politics. He chooses to sort of lead part of the country, the members of his base who don't believe in masks, who don't believe that this virus is anything that they need to worry about, and the president continues to downplay it.

Even though it may have been a smarter political move, as we've seen other world leaders who caught coronavirus to come out of it more humbled, more willing to be focused on how to keep the country from going through what he personally went through with his hospitalization and having to come off the campaign trail for ten days. He's taken a completely different approach, and he's, you know, deciding to be defiant.

And we'll have to wait and see whether or not that works for him, but the polls show that that's not something that's helping him right now.

BERMAN: So Dr. Hotez, I keep inadvertently dating you by suggesting you've been around a while. That's not what I'm trying to do. You are a young, vivacious man.

But you've known Dr. Anthony Fauci for a long time, for decades, which again, inadvertently dates you. Have you ever seen him as put off as he is right now? Because he is fighting back against the Trump campaign for putting him in an ad.

We heard him with Jake Tapper say it would be outrageous if they used him again in an ad. You heard him ask out loud on that interview, he wishes the Trump campaign would take the -- the words that they have in there down, because they're out of context.

And he told "The Daily Beast" -- and this is something. He goes, quote, "None of my wildest freaking dreams did I ever think about quitting. By doing this against my will, they are, in effect, harassing me. Since campaign ads are about getting votes, their harassment of me might have the opposite effect of turning some voters off."

You've known him a long time. What do you hear there?

HOTEZ: Well, two things, John. I think I first met Tony, Dr. Fauci, when -- in 1980, '81. I was a medical student at Cornell then. He was also a medical -- Cornell medical graduate, and I think he came back for a visit and known him, then, for over the last 40 years, a long time.

And two things about Dr. Fauci. One, he's one of the most unflappable individuals I've ever met: always calm; always thoughtful; always, you know, really trying to make good decisions.

He's also probably the least political person I've ever known. He never publicly voices any endorsement or support for a candidate, even in private. For all the conversations over the last 40 years I've had with him, he just doesn't go there.

[06:20:05]

And it's not because he's trying hard not go there. He -- he's not that interested in politics. He -- he loves the science. He loves to learn. He loves to, you know, use his influence and knowledge to make the world a better place. That's just not his thing.

So, for him to get so upset, you know, really shows how hard this campaign is willing to go to exploit people for their own means.

CAMEROTA: Toluse, I want to talk about former VP Joe Biden and how he is approaching the campaign trail and just his message on the campaign trail. So listen to what he said in Ohio yesterday.

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BIDEN: Like a lot of you, I spent a lot of my time with guys like Trump looking down on me, the Irish Catholic kid in the neighborhood. Guys who thought they were better than me because they had a lot of money. Guys who inherited everything they ever got and still managed to squander it. I still have a little bit of chip on my shoulder about guys like him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: It's interesting, Toluse, to hear him stick with that message. We've heard that now for a few weeks. And do we have any data points on if that is, you know, turning people or resonating with voters?

OLORUNNIPA: Well, we do know that Joe Biden is doing better with white working-class voters than Hillary Clinton was four years ago. And that's part of who that message is directed at.

Joe Biden wants to be seen as sort of lunch-packed Scranton Joe, and he wants to paint Donald Trump as, you know, this guy who lived on Fifth Avenue and has gold everywhere and, you know, looks down on people who support him.

And it's been tough to separate President Trump from his base, which is very loyal, which is made up of a lot of white, working-class voters. But we have seen Joe Biden sort of peel at the margins of some of President Trump's support, especially among some of these working- class voters who have about hit hard by the pandemic, maybe lost their job, maybe had been relying on some of the stimulus that Congress had pass and is no longer existing and that, you know, President Trump is now saying he wants to pass again.

So Joe Biden is really trying to focus on how to peel at the margins of President Trump's support. And if he is able to do that in states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, even parts of Florida, that could be the difference.

So he is putting forward this message of, you know, middle-class Joe against Fifth Avenue, Park Avenue Donald Trump, Wall Street. And it does appear that, in the polls, there is some -- some resonance for that message. It just remains to be seen how much he can, you know, disassociate President Trump's loyal base from the president, even though they've been rock-solid for the better part of the last four years.

BERMAN: Yes, it was interesting. The place he was doing it, where he was standing was in Ohio, which was a state that Donald Trump won by eight point. It really, for most people, wasn't supposed to be on the map in 2020, but it very much is right now.

Toluse, thank you very much.

Dr. Hotez, stick around, because there is this vaccine trial that we just learned overnight is now on pause, due to an unexplained illness. So we want to ask you, Dr. Hotez, what this means for vaccine development and what we're supposed to take away from this. That's next.

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[06:27:16]

CAMEROTA: Breaking overnight, drug maker Johnson & Johnson announcing it is pausing its Phase 3 trial of the single-dose coronavirus vaccine because of an unexplained illness with one of the volunteers. This is the second vaccine trial in America to hit pause in just the last month.

And Dr. Peter Hotez is back with us.

So Dr. Hotez, what should we make of this?

HOTEZ: Well, we don't have a lot of information. The drug maker, Johnson & Johnson, which is -- has a lot of experience with vaccines, has decided that -- to be cautious and to voluntarily put the company -- put the trial on what's called pause. That's different from the FDA putting it on clinical hold.

The way I look at that time is this. You know, this is a 60,000-person trial. Think of it like a small city of 60,000 people. You know, if you're in New York, Rochelle, White Plains, or you -- bad things are going to happen to a city of -- to people in a city of 60,000 people. So that's -- that could be what's going on and nothing much more than that and it's unrelated to the vaccine. We don't even know whether -- which arm of the trial it is, whether it's the placebo arm or the vaccinated arm.

I guess the only thing that would concern me is that the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is still on hold in the U.S. but not the U.K., is an adenovirus-based vaccine, and this -- this one from J&J is also an adenovirus-based vaccine. Is it a similar -- is it a similar serious adverse event? We have no idea about that. So we'll just have to give it some time.

But I think it's also a good reminder of why we don't rush these clinical trials and we don't try to force this thing before the election for political expediency. Let it play out. Let the scientists review the findings. And I'm sure they'll come to the right decision.

BERMAN: This is how science works. I think we're all just much more focused on every part and parcel of the process than we have been in the past, but this is how science is supposed to work.

Dr. Hotez, you've been concerned about this winter for a long time. Obviously, more people will go inside. Obviously, it's possible the virus will spread more easily in dry environments. That's the fear of the winter. But where are we now compared to what you fear we might be?

HOTEZ: Well, you know, we're already starting to see that -- that surge, that rise. So we went up from 35,000 new cases a day to 50,000 new cases a day. And, you know, if you look at a map of the country where the new cases are, you're already seeing this popping up in red in the northern states.

And so this is kind of predicted and predictable. We were waiting for that next wave to come, and it seems like it's happening.