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New Day

Coronavirus Cases Soar Across the U.S.; Early Voting Begins in Wisconsin; Atlas Rejects Testing Advice. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired October 20, 2020 - 08:30   ET

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


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[08:32:10]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: President Trump is attacking the country's most trusted infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, despite signs that the U.S. is headed for more very dark days in the coronavirus outbreak. New coronavirus cases increasing in 31 states this morning, including Michigan. One emergency room doctor there wrote a "New York Times" op-ed that read in part, "now the patients I have come to know and love over the years are starting to feel the full impact of following a science denier down the primrose path. As the president mocked masks and flouted social distancing by holding packed campaign rallies, the virus took hold of my corner of America."

Joining us now is that doctor, Rob Davidson. He's an emergency room physician in west Michigan and the executive director of the Committee to Protect Medicare.

Doctor, thanks so much for being here.

It's interesting to talk to you because you're not in a big city. You're in a more rural part of Michigan. And so can you just tell us what's happening this morning in your emergency room and how it differs from a week or two ago?

DR. ROB DAVIDSON, EMERGENCY ROOM PHYSICIAN: Yes, right now, in our emergency department, and in many places around rural Michigan, and really the rural Midwest, we're seeing cases go up. And the first wave of coronavirus cases, where Michigan was a hot spot, it was mostly in metro Detroit area, in the large population centers.

And now we're seeing it creep into the rural areas, largely because people didn't see it in the first wave, they didn't understand why masks were important, why social distancing was important and they, frankly, were listening to a president where, in my county, folks voted for him with 70 percent of the vote. And we're seeing the impact of that now with just rising cases, hospitalizations going up.

Many hospitals in west Michigan now showing that they are -- their COVID units are full. They're opening up new units. And we know what happens after the hospitalizations go up, more and more people begin to die from this disease. And that's what we're trying to avoid. CAMEROTA: I mean your area is interesting because your county voted 70

percent, as you said, for President Trump. This is a particularly, I would assume, rude and painful awakening for some of your patients. And so what do they tell you when they come in and they're so sick?

DAVIDSON: Well, I think, honestly, people are just afraid. I mean it's a really profound thing when you go in a room and somebody literally feels like they can't breathe and their oxygen is low and they have a -- just a look in their eyes, I can -- I can think of a few people recently that, you know, just look at you and ask, am I going to be OK? And the problem is, you can't tell them that 100 percent. You can do everything you possibly can, but they might end up being one of those people who eventually succumb to this. So that's -- you know, that's the fear for us and the fear for my patients.

CAMEROTA: And are they surprised that this happened to them? I mean now that they -- now that it has knocked on their door and I know that you've said and written that there were a lot of people in the area not wearing masks, are they surprised by what's happening there?

[08:35:06]

DAVIDSON: Yes, I think a lot of people now have expressed maybe a bit of regret, although I just -- just a couple of days ago I saw a patient who came in for an unrelated complaint and I asked him to put a mask on and he said, oh, you mean for that flu? And I just shook my head and said, listen, this is serious and we just need to protect you and protect us. And eventually they put on the mask.

But, you know, that -- that sentiment still pervades and President Trump, frankly, had a -- had a rally 30 minutes from my hospital just over the weekend, in Muskegon, Michigan, where thousands of people gathered, mostly without masks and, unfortunately, are listening to him and not listening to the experts like Dr. Fauci.

CAMEROTA: And when you saw that rally close to where you are in the emergency room, what did you think?

DAVIDSON: It's, frankly, very depressing. You know, you do everything you can, you try following all of the guidelines and try encouraging your patients and your staff and your friends and family to do the same. And then, in one event, you may undo all of that hard work. It remains to be seen. Two or three weeks down the road is when you see more cases from something like that and then a few weeks later the hospitalizations and the deaths. So, you know, we can hope. We hope those people go back and wear masks in their -- in their grocery stores and the businesses around their homes. But I don't -- I don't trust that that will necessarily happen and I'm very concerned.

CAMEROTA: Do you have enough doctors and nurses in your emergency room for whatever is going to happen over the next couple of weeks?

DAVIDSON: You know, we always do. I love emergency medicine. I've been doing it over 20 years. And the people that work in this field figure it out, you know, the MacGyver's of medicine in the hospital. So you do figure it out. You figure out a way to serve the people that you've been serving for, again, like I said, two decades.

So, yes, I think we will. I, unfortunately, still am using an N-95 mask for an entire shift instead of with each patient, as they are intended to be used. So is my staff. And so we do take on some degree of risk when we do that, but that's what we signed up for. You know, we're going to be here no matter what, even if our president isn't there with us.

CAMEROTA: Yes, I understand. I mean and that is, you know, laudable, obviously, that you are there to pick up the pieces for, you know, whatever happens. You've called President Trump anti-expert. And so when he says to people, as he did after he got sick, don't be afraid of COVID. Don't let it dominate your life. What's your message?

DAVIDSON: Well, I want people to at least respect what this virus can do. I don't want people to live in fear. And then I heard a segment you had earlier about people missing Thanksgiving. We're going to be doing that as well, missing Thanksgiving with family. But I think we just have to look at the prize at the end of this. The prize is less people dead. The prize is getting the economy open. And the way we do that is the simple measures, like wearing masks, like social distancing. It just doesn't seem that hard. I believe the science is in. We know the science. Now it's always about communications and behavior. And that's where the president could help us out a ton if he just behaved differently and communicated differently.

CAMEROTA: Dr. Rob Davidson, thank you for being here. Thank you for all you do. We'll, obviously, be watching very closely what happens in your area and all of the states that are spiking right now.

DAVIDSON: Thanks.

CAMEROTA: Voters in battleground Wisconsin get to cast their ballot in person starting today. So we'll take you there live to show you what the lines look like, next.

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JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So, as we sit here this morning, there are two weeks left to cast your ballots. More than 28 million Americans across the country already have. Early voting begins today in Utah, Hawaii, and in Wisconsin, a crucial battleground state where, by the way, the number of new coronavirus cases just hit a record high.

CNN's Omar Jimenez, live in Milwaukee, watching people show up to vote in person for the first time today.

Omar, what do you see?

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, John.

Well, for starters, the duty of voting and the coronavirus precautions are maybe -- being balanced nowhere more in the country than here in Wisconsin. Some voters we spoke to say -- who were even lined up before the doors behind me even opened, by the way, say they made a decision to come out anyway because they weren't sure what would happen with the mail.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Vote counting is the biggest aspect, knowing that your vote is counted, but it's also your duty, your civic duty. If you don't come and do it, you don't have a right to complain. Come and voice your opinion, that's what America's about.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We voted early in the spring also. So we kind of missed all of that. I'm glad. The only difference now is that we've got the social distancing. We have the masks on.

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JIMENEZ: And this, of course, is happening within the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic.

Back in the spring primary, on April 7th, there was concern about the combination of long voter lines potentially and the coronavirus pandemic. But for context, the positivity rate was less than 10 percent at that time, with a daily case count of a little over 150. Now that number is over 2,000. The positivity rate is over 20 percent. They've even had to open a field hospital to deal with the surge of hospitalizations. Yet people are still choosing to come out because they want their vote to count.

Again, walking that tight rope maybe more than anywhere else in the country through a significant role that Wisconsin can play in the general election, combined with the significant impact of the pandemic here in Wisconsin.

John.

BERMAN: All right, Omar, thank you very much. Keep us posted.

So, Scott Atlas has become something of a medical Rasputin with the president and coronavirus, whispering in the president's ear things that run counter to science, that masks don't work, that tests don't help.

[08:45:06]

Well, one Nobel Prize winning economist tried to convince Scott Atlas of the science. What happened? We'll ask him, next.

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BERMAN: So, Dr. Scott Atlas, the president's favorite coronavirus adviser, has pushed for the widely condemned theory of herd immunity. He has falsely stated on Twitter that masks don't work. He's called widespread testing grossly misguided.

One man who happens to be a Nobel Prize winning economist knows what it's like firsthand to try to get Dr. Atlas to accept the science. Joining me now is Paul Romer.

Professor, thank you very much for being with us right now.

I wanted to bring you in because you have had communications with Dr. Atlas. You wrote him a letter trying to convince him on the virtues of expanding testing and tracing in this country.

[08:50:06]

Why did you write him that letter?

PAUL ROMER, NOBEL LAUREATE ECONOMIST: Well, a mutual friend asked me to write Dr. Atlas. So I felt like it was a low probability endeavor, but I was willing to give it a try.

BERMAN: So when you wrote him saying that you would like to see testing vastly expanded in this country, how did he respond?

ROMER: Well, you know, I go into a conversation like this with the presumption that reasonable people can differ. So it's not a problem if somebody says they disagree with me, they think I'm wrong. But what I'm looking for are things like, first, coherence. Does the argument make sense? Or, as in this case, is he just stringing together a bunch of statements with "and." So it wasn't coherent.

Second, you look for specifics. One of these statements was, well, "and you mentioned are not." You know, are not is badly measured, but then there's no specifics about why it's badly measured or why that even bears on the arguments.

Finally, when there are specifics, and this is what police do when they're trying to test the reliability of somebody, when there are specifics, you watch to see, is a person consistent? Dr. Atlas apparently said in a coronavirus meeting that we could reach this herd immunity threshold after 40 percent to 50 percent of the population gets infected. He wrote to me that it would reach that threshold after 25 percent to 20 percent of the population.

So this is somebody who, you know, I just concluded he was over his head. He was thrashing around. He really doesn't know how to engage or to process the evidence.

BERMAN: Yes, his letter to you said that herd immunity could be reached if 20 percent to 25 percent of the people get the infection. Did he provide any evidence of that, any research to back that up?

ROMER: No. No, no. And it was funny, he gave it in the other order. He said it could be reached at 25 or 20. I thought he was going to keep going, or 15 or 10. You know, it's -- it was just like wishful thinking, not science, you know.

BERMAN: And you, of course, are pushing for more testing. And it's one thing to think or to argue that maybe more testing, increasing the number of tests, isn't necessary, but he seems to be arguing something even different than that, which is that testing is bad policy. ROMER: Yes.

BERMAN: Why?

ROMER: Well, in particular, that the test and isolate is a bad policy. Test and isolate mean find the people who are infectious, isolate them so everybody else can go about their daily business without the risk of infection. I -- I'm afraid -- he didn't say this to me, but I'm afraid he thinks it would be good if people keep getting infected, if the virus keeps spreading because he wants to get to this level where so many people have already been infected that the virus dies out.

BERMAN: You just said to me that you got the impression that he was in over his head. What gave you that impression?

ROMER: Well, it was the fact that he couldn't respond coherently. He couldn't give me specifics. The things he was citing about are not being miss measured, this sounds like something he heard from somebody in the hallway but he couldn't give the specifics. So it was incoherent, it lacked specificity and then when there were specifics, they were inconsistent over time.

BERMAN: What do you think is motivating him? Based on your communication, did you get a sense of what drives Dr. Atlas?

ROMER: To be honest, I can't infer that from this e-mail. But I can tell you the pattern that we see.

There are people who are drawn to this president like moths to a flame and they burn out. You know, they realize they can't do anything sensible so they quit or they get fired or they quit first and then the president says they're fired. These people come and go.

But if you want to understand why we don't have testing, it's not the advisers that Trump collects and then throws away. It's Trump himself. He's said from the very beginning, go all the way back to March when this ship was off the coast of California, "The Grand Princess," there were sick people on these ship -- this ship. It was Americans. And he was saying, I don't want them to get off the ship and get treated because this will raise our numbers, it will raise the count of people who are infected. And, you know, he said, this is a ship that will raise our numbers and is not even our fault. So he's treating the numbers of cases like it's like ratings for a TV show. And ever since March he's tried to do everything to just keep the numbers down, even when the virus is raging and it's killing people.

BERMAN: I have to let you go, but how does it make you feel to know that Dr. Scott Atlas seems to be the only guy that the president is listening to at all right now?

ROMER: I don't care who -- the president doesn't listen to these guys. You know, it's like you (ph) said about Biden, Biden listens to scientists. Atlas isn't persuading Trump. Trump set the policy.

[08:55:00]

I don't want to test because I don't want the numbers to show that people are infected.

BERMAN: Paul Romer, as always, we appreciate you being with us. Thanks so much for sharing your story.

ROMER: My pleasure.

CAMEROTA: How about some "Good Stuff," John?

BERMAN: Yes.

CAMEROTA: OK, it's time for that.

A 14-year-old from Texas winning $25,000 for her work on a potential treatment for coronavirus. Anika Chebrolu won the 2020 3M Young Scientist Challenge with a molecule that she discovered that stops the function of COVID-19 by binding to a certain protein in it. Anika tells CNN any effort to stop the virus can help.

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ANIKA CHEBROLU, 14-YEAR-OLD WINNER OF 3M YOUNG SCIENTIST CHALLENGE: My research is actually just a drop in the ocean of research being done by numerous scientists and individuals across the country, but at this point every research and every effort matters to help end the pandemic and control its aftermath.

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CAMEROTA: It's Anika, and Anika says the scope of the pandemic and the stories of those suffering inspired her work. She also credits her grandfather for pushing her to thrive in science.

BERMAN: Look, can we get her in the White House? Maybe we'd rather have Anika there than Dr. Scott Atlas. We'd be in a better place this morning.

CAMEROTA: OK. Maybe they'll call her.

BERMAN: It's a thought.

CAMEROTA: All right, CNN's coverage continues next.

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