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Pfizer's COVID-19 Vaccine Shows Over 90 Percent Effective; Biden Turns Focus to Fighting Pandemic, Announces Advisory Board; Trump Campaign Planning Messaging Blitz to Fuel Election Questions; Trump Team Pushes Forward with Legal Fight After Biden Win; Global Markets Surge on News of Pfizer Vaccine Candidate. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired November 09, 2020 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:39]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Good Monday morning, everyone. I'm Poppy Harlow.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Jim Sciutto. This morning coronavirus raging across the nation sadly like we haven't seen before, and President-elect Joe Biden is launching his plan to fight the pandemic. We expect to hear from Biden this morning, as more than 40 states are seeing a surge in infections. We're going to bring you those comments live.

And there is this. Good news, a potentially major breakthrough. Drug maker Pfizer says that early data shows its vaccine is more than 90 percent effective.

Those numbers, Poppy, just remarkable.

HARLOW: They are very promising. At the same time the president is launching his own fight, that is a legal battle over the results of this election, the election that he is refusing to concede. His team even taking and talking about holding rallies to fuel his unfounded claims of fraud.

First, though, let's begin with what could be very good news on the medical front. Our senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is with us.

Put it in perspective, Elizabeth. How big is this?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Poppy, first of all, just to put it in personal perspective it's lovely to be able to sit here and smile this morning rather than to deliver the grim news that the three of us are usually discussing. So this is really wonderful news.

There are four vaccines in clinical trials in the United States, phase three clinical trials. This is the first one to announce results. It's from Pfizer. And people were hoping, oh, maybe we'll get a vaccine that's maybe 60 percent effective, maybe 70 percent if we're really lucky. That's what I've heard month after month.

But, no, this one is more than 90 percent effective. In other words, if you get this vaccine, the data says that it has more than a 90 percent chance of protecting you, of keeping you from getting sick with COVID.

So my friend and colleague Dr. Sanjay Gupta just now interviewed Dr. Albert Bourla, he is the CEO of Pfizer. And here's what Dr. Bourla had to say to Sanjay.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALBERT BOURLA, CEP, PFIZER: I think that likely based on impact that would be the greatest medical advance in the last 100 years if you think about it. Right? And it is extraordinary that it's coming at a time that the world needs it the most. Right now only the U.S. we have 100,000 victims of COVID every day. 1,000 deaths every day. I can't count how many people are losing their jobs every day. So it's very important day for humanity.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: So now let's talk about some of the data that Dr. Bourla briefly mentioned. What they did was that they gave this vaccine to more or they enrolled in their study more than 44,000 people, so more than 44,000 people enrolled in the study and half of them got a vaccine and half of them got a placebo. What they found was that 94 people in the study got sick with COVID. So then the question was, wait a minute, did these people get the vaccine or did they get the placebo?

And when they take a look, what they found was that less than 10 percent of them got the vaccine. So if these 94 sick people, less than 10 percent of them got the vaccine, more than 90 percent of them got the placebo. So that's incredibly good data -- Poppy, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Elizabeth, thanks for breaking it down.

Let's discuss this news more with Dr. Jay Varkey. He's associate professor of medicine at Emory University.

Dr. Varkey, great to have you on this morning. So assuming this data holds up, more in fact than 90 percent effective, based on what the data is showing so far, how does that compare to other vaccines that folks at home like you and me are used to taking?

DR. JAY VARKEY, INFECTIOUS DISEASE PHYSICIAN: I think that's the key, Jim, is whether if the data holds up, if this is true, and again, just as a note of cautious optimism, we don't actually have any data to review, like most in 2020, the data presented has just been in press release form. But we know that Pfizer will be providing this data, thousands of pages of it, to the FDA, but if in the deep dive of that data, that really shows 90 percent efficacy, that'd be phenomenal. Because, again, the FDA has been clear that even a vaccine at 50

percent efficacy would actually help move the ball. 90 percent efficacy would really be a tremendous advance.

[09:05:11]

HARLOW: I'm glad you bring up the point that this is great news but it's news directly and only from Pfizer in their press release, that no third party has verified this yet and the data is not there for experts like you and Elizabeth and Sanjay to pore through yourselves. So we'll wait on that. There was major concern at the beginning about lack of diversity, participation in some of these trials, for a number of different companies.

What we know from the Pfizer trial is that roughly 42 percent of the participants had diverse backgrounds. I don't have the breakdown in terms of how many African-Americans, how many Hispanics, et cetera, but seeing that number, did that also give you optimism?

VARKEY: It does. And I think that that's -- Poppy, you hit on one key thing that I think is going to be so critical, not just with identification of a safe and effective vaccine but establishing trust among the American people.

HARLOW: Right.

VARKEY: Because of all the politics that have been injected into this not just vaccine debate but regarding the pandemic response, I think it's really important for your viewers to recognize the fact that this initial data is not skewed. This is actually from an independent data safety monitoring board and these are often career scientists that have no affiliation other than to stop at a checkpoint that's been preestablished and to look at the data like Elizabeth Cohen presented.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

VARKEY: And the diverse participants within this trial should give us some measure of comfort, because it's going to be critical that we reach those groups, because again --

SCIUTTO: OK.

VARKEY: -- you know from this data that the black and brown populations in particular have been adversely hit by this pandemic.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: OK, so, again, it's early. We have to take this as we go, right? It's a good, positive indicator. So what does this mean about the likely timeline? You had a number of health officials, even in this administration, saying that the likeliest point at which most of us can have this vaccine is really late spring, possibly into the summer next year. If this data holds, could this possibly move up the timeline for broad availability for a vaccine?

VARKEY: Yes, Jim, I think time will tell and I think again the cautious approach would be to let that process take its -- let the process play out, but for all of us as Americans, to realize that identification of a safe and effective vaccine doesn't stop our responsibility for ourselves and to those that we live with to do our part to prevent disease transmission. Remember, Pfizer was not part of Operation Warp Speed so initially they are pushing to try and have 25 million doses available by the end of this year, but it is going to be critical that those vaccine doses are distributed efficiently, and equitably. And to that end, as a physician, I don't expect to actually have access to this vaccine or some of the others of those face three studies, probably well into early 2021, at the earliest.

So it's going to be key (INAUDIBLE), you're wearing a mask, watching your distance and staying out of closed contact situations.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Yes. We will take our time. It's important, but big picture, this is a remarkably fast timeline for something like this really unprecedented.

Dr. Jay Varkey, thanks very much.

VARKEY: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: President-elect Joe Biden is all in on fighting this pandemic, as he pivots now to transition mode.

HARLOW: Jessica Dean is with us in Delaware. She's been following the Biden campaign for well over a year. Brittany Shepherd joins us as well, national politics reporter for Yahoo!

Jess, if I can just begin with you, there has been an expensive bide Biden-Harris plan that, you know, is online but now it's about, you know, where the rubber meets the road and putting all those words into action. That begins today. Right? What will they say and do today?

JESSICA DEAN, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Right. So let me lay it all out for you because you're right, Poppy, this is about operationalizing all of these plans and promises. So first of all, President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris are going to get a briefing from their COVID advisory board. I'm going to walk you through the board here in just a second and then we are expecting to hear from President-elect Biden later today.

He's going to give remarks on the COVID situation and the economy. Also this morning, the transition team announcing its COVID-19 advisory board and we're learning a bit about who's going to be in charge of really taking these ideas and making them actionable steps that Biden can take when he goes into office in January, and we're learning who is going to be cochairing. So we know there are three co- chairs of this advisory board, that includes Vivek Murthy, who was a former surgeon general who has been advising Biden on this for a while.

David Kessler who is a former FDA administrator, or commissioner rather, and Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, who's from Yale University. They're going to be heading up a consortium of doctors, experts, scientists, who will be advising Biden and Harris as they move forward on this.

Now, also the number of board members, one that stands out would be Dr. Rick Bright. You'll remember he was the whistleblower from the Trump administration, who said that his early, you know, actions and concerns about the pandemic were not heeded, and Poppy and Jim, that's drawing a stark contrast right there in terms of letting the science lead by putting him on this board versus the way the Trump administration has handled it.

SCIUTTO: Now, Brittany, we're going to be in a bizarre situation here in a normal world that we all wish we occupied, that there would now be a transition and cooperation between the outgoing administration of Trump and the incoming administration of Biden, but you have these kinds of parallel tracks now, right? Because you have Biden announcing his team, meeting today, Vice President Pence, the -- you know, the Trump administration task force meeting today for the first time since October. Is there any communication between those groups, those two tracks?

BRITTANY SHEPHERD, NATIONAL POLITICS REPORTER, YAHOO NEWS: Well, in this timeline and this universe, unfortunately there is not much communication, at least from what the Biden campaign has told me, and look, the Biden campaign is not waiting around for Mike Pence or for Donald Trump to acknowledge their win, they're ongoing with their transition. I think every member of the G-7 has acknowledged and congratulated both Biden and Harris.

I think a tricky part of the politicization of this hand-off is that there is this little agency called the GSA, you know, they help keep the lights on in the buildings and they get the budgets for folks. They have not signed over, just this one letter that allows this transition to begin logistically, having keys swapped, having money and members of Secret Service put over to the Biden-Harris team and its teams that that one member of the GSA is being loyal to Donald Trump right now and that's going to be a real snafu and pick-up for the Biden folks.

SCIUTTO: Yes. But apparently not loyal to the job sadly, sadly.

SHEPHERD: Unfortunately not.

HARLOW: Jess, you know, I think executive actions happen from Democratic presidents, after Obama, a lot of them came under President Trump and now it sounds like the Biden team, Biden-Harris will continue executive actions quickly, starting day one to overturn, you know, a number of things that the Trump administration has done. Is that what they're saying and is it because they do not think they can get them through legislatively?

DEAN: Right. Well, this is what President-elect Biden said on the trail many, many times, Poppy. He promised and has vowed that on day one, he's getting back into the Paris climate accords. On day one he is reversing the so-called Muslim travel ban, so he has pledged to do a lot of things. At this point, obviously timing is going to be fluid. They're still trying to get the transition process going, as Brittany was just alluding to, trying to get everything moving in the right direction, get access to what they need.

But to your point as well, it's unknown how that Senate is going to shake out, what they're going to be able to get through legislatively. So there's still some pieces that have to be put into place, but they are prepared to sign those executive actions.

HARLOW: Thank you, ladies. Jessica Dean, Brittany Shepherd, we appreciate it very much.

SCIUTTO: All this is happening as President Trump is launching what he claims to be a legal fight over the election that he won't concede. Legal analysts we're speaking to don't see much merit behind these cases. How is the Republican Party then handling his refusal?

HARLOW: Also, the election has been called, some states still counting though where those votes stand, ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:15:00]

SCIUTTO: Welcome back. This morning, we're learning more about the Trump campaign's attempt to fuel what are unfounded claims of widespread election fraud in this election.

HARLOW: That's right. Sources tell CNN that close advisors to the president, some of them are pushing him to hold campaign style rallies to amplify that message, really that would just spread disinformation because there is no proof of it, and to push for recounts in key battleground states, let's discuss with Richard Pildes; professor of constitutional law, election law at NYU. It's good to have you.

RICHARD PILDES, PROFESSOR OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW & ELECTION LAW, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY: Nice.

HARLOW: I think it's important to remind people this Monday morning that a litigation that has been put forward by the Trump team does not include any substantiated allegations of widespread voter fraud, and widespread is a major issue there. And they have not put forward information that would change the outcome in any state. Given those two facts, do you believe at this point that there is a realistic chance or an iota of a chance that this push changes the outcome?

PILDES: There seems to be no realistic prospect of that at this point. People have to understand, the margins in these states, they may sound small to viewers, but 40,000-plus votes in Pennsylvania, 35,000-plus votes in Nevada, these are enormous margins for overturning the results of an election to anyone who understands election law and this process.

And moreover, none of these cases so far even involve enough possible ballots to get anywhere close to that magnitude. So, the claims are weak legally that we've seen so far, they don't involve a significant number of ballots, and these are very big margins across multiple states that you would have to have overturned. I see no realistic prospects so far of that.

[09:20:00]

HARLOW: We'll state right out, this is more of a PR campaign than a legal campaign here. And one reason is that you have even elected GOP officials in those swing states saying very publicly, there is no evidence of fraud. I want to play comments from one in the state of Georgia, the lieutenant governor there, and a Republican, and his statement to CNN this morning. Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEOFF DUNCAN, LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR OF GEORGIA: My office has been in close communication with the Secretary of State's office and the Attorney General's office and made sure that if there's any sort of systemic examples of fraud or voter, you know, disenfranchisement across the voting base to let us know.

We've not had any sort of credible incidents raised to our level yet, and so we'll continue to make sure that the opportunity to make sure every legal ballot is counted is there. But you know, at this point, we've not seen any sort of credible examples.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: No credible examples. So, I wonder how long does it take for those facts to win the day in court? You know, probably, do you expect courts to very quickly overrule these cases, dismiss these cases?

PILDES: I think if courts realize or see very early on that there really are not credible facts to support these claims, they're going to dismiss these cases quickly because they understand the significance in an election contest. Now, you know, if a very credible claim with evidence was brought forward, the courts would certainly take that seriously. But the courts are not going to let themselves be used as --

SCIUTTO: Right --

PILDES: Sort of pawns in a PR or a political game. You're going to have to back up claims in court. It's fine to go to court, but then you have to -- actually, you have to show that you have the evidence.

SCIUTTO: Richard Pildes, good to have you on to break through all the fog on this, we appreciate it.

PILDES: Thanks very much.

SCIUTTO: Well, there is this fact, top congressional Republicans still have not acknowledged President-elect Joe Biden's victory, most have not at least. Ahead, we're going to speak with one of the few GOP lawmakers who has not only acknowledged the victory, he's congratulated Joe Biden. What is his message to members of his own party? HARLOW: Also, the stock market, take a look at futures, way up, Dow

futures are up nearly 1,.700 points, folks, why is that? Obviously, a big driver is the very strong news out of Pfizer, and it is remarkable. Markets reacting very positively to the news on Pfizer's vaccine candidate, being more than 90 percent effective. The pharmaceutical company says it plans to ask the government for emergency use authorization as soon as the end of this month. We'll keep an eye on markets when they open in eight minutes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:25:00]

SCIUTTO: Welcome back. Lower the temperature, that's what President- elect Joe Biden says he wants the country to do, as he takes over the White House in a number of weeks. But that may not be the plan for all Republicans, many of -- many of whom have not yet publicly acknowledged Biden's victory, with some now calling for President Trump to fight the results. Joining me now is one of the few Republicans in Congress who has congratulated the president-elect, Florida Congressman Francis Rooney. Congressman, thanks so much for taking the time this morning.

REP. FRANCIS ROONEY (R-FL): Thank you for having me on, Jim.

SCIUTTO: So, you very quickly tweeted congratulations to Joe Biden, to Kamala Harris, and urged all Americans to come together now to support him. Now, as you know, many of your colleagues have either hesitated to do that or have encouraged the president to fight this, citing as yet unsubstantiated claims of fraud. I wonder, why do you believe your Republican colleagues are so reluctant to recognize this victory?

ROONEY: Well, there will be books written about this hold that President Trump has over a lot of the Republican leadership and base. And I don't understand it. It was never that way with previous Republican leaders, and I think the peaceful transfer of power is a critical element of our democracy. So, I want to compliment and congratulate the president-elect.

SCIUTTO: The hold is interesting to me because previous presidents who lost after one term, whether they'd be a Carter or George H.W. Bush, you know, reaction was somewhat the opposite, right? What is it that maintains this hold? Is it fear of the president attacking them?

ROONEY: Oh, I think that's a large part of it with the elected officials. They don't want to get tweeted at in an adverse manner. His -- this hold that he has on the base that -- whether it's borne of frustration with globalism or changes in demographics or all the different things that are cited is unique to our society, and to me it's a little dangerous to have that much personal affiliation.

SCIUTTO: Understood. I want to get to that, and how -- well, both parties frankly, reach those people. But just briefly once more, because the president apparently is going to step up these attacks on the election, right? And spreading, frankly, conspiracy theories in many cases that sadly people buy, right? I mean, a lot of people in this country are buying this. What damage does that do to the process, if you deliberately undermine confidence in it, trust in it?

ROONEY: Yes, I think we're playing into Russia's hands here by undermining our own democratic principles. So then --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

ROONEY: There's an election. It appears that the vice president won it. You look at all that vote counting that you all do such a great job of, I don't see there's any way that it could ever be changed in any of these states, maybe Georgia, but -- so let's get on with the program.

SCIUTTO: Yes --

ROONEY: And I think that the GSA or whatever it is should go ahead and certify to start the transition.