Return to Transcripts main page

Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Positive Vaccine News Provides Optimism Ahead Of Challenging Winter; Biden Hopes To Work With Trump Administration; CNN Reveals Appalling Conditions Inside Russian Hospitals. Aired 5:30-6a ET

Aired November 17, 2020 - 05:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:31:40]

LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, this is EARLY START. I'm Laura Jarrett. It's about 31 minutes past the hour here in New York.

And finally, some much-needed hope on the horizon for a COVID-weary nation. Moderna joining Pfizer, closing in on the vaccine finish line. This means there could be two U.S. vaccines in distribution to help the people who need it the most in the coming months.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES, NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH: The cavalry is coming but the cavalry is not here yet. So what we should do is that we should make the hope of a vaccine motivate us even more to be very, very stringent and very, very attentive to fundamental simple doable public health measures.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JARRETT: The vaccines obviously cannot come soon enough. Monday was the third-worst day ever for the spread of coronavirus in the U.S. At least 100,000 cases per day for two straight weeks, we're seeing right now.

Moderna says its vaccine candidate was nearly 95 percent effective at blocking infection and critically, it doesn't need to be kept at temperatures as ultra-cold as Pfizer's vaccine does.

And with more patients in hospitals than at any time in the entire pandemic officials are warning that the winter surge could push some medical centers to the breaking point.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. DARA KASS, EMERGENCY PHYSICIAN, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER: There is a fixed resource -- not just hospital beds and personal protective equipment, but also respiratory therapists, doctors, nurses, even janitorial staff. And when that -- those resources get stretched, at some point, the entire system really does break down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JARRETT: Some of the areas being hit the hardest by the current surge in cases are also the least equipped to handle them. CDC data shows that Americans in more rural areas are dying at nearly 3 1/2 times the rate of those in urban centers.

Now, ahead of Thanksgiving, more cities and states are tightening restrictions. It's a harsh reality for business owners struggling to keep the lights on.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAZI MANNAN, OWNER, SAKINA HALAL GRILL: Each time we open we're sitting all day, there's no customers. So we end up just shutting down and let the employee go.

ED GROSE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GREATER PHILADELPHIA HOTEL ASSOCIATION: These statistics mean jobs, they mean hardship, and it's awful for a lot of people right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JARRETT: President Trump's refusal to coordinate with the Biden transition team could slow down the delivery of a vaccine.

CNN's Jessica Dean is live this morning with the Biden team in Wilmington, Delaware. And, Jessica, I thought it was noteworthy that the president-elect really tried to strike a hopeful note but also measured and disciplined about this vaccine news, saying this is going to take a while.

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it was very purposeful in that way, Laura. And it was interesting to see him say it's really been what he said when we first heard about the Pfizer vaccine as well. It was that he's excited about the possibility of this vaccine but also reminding Americans that this is far from over, much like what we heard from Dr. Fauci just a few minutes ago that it's going to be a while before this vaccine can be distributed. And in the meantime, people have to keep washing their hands, wearing their masks, socially distancing.

We heard President-elect Biden yesterday talking a little bit about the economy -- how it's tied to the coronavirus -- but also turning up the pressure on the Trump administration to allow them to coordinate. Take a listen.

[05:35:09]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT-ELECT: More people may die if we don't coordinate. They say they have this warp speed program that not only dealt with getting vaccines but also how to -- how to distribute this. If we have to wait until January 20th to start that planning it puts us behind over a month-month and a half.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DEAN: And remember, the Biden transition team and its scientific experts are not allowed to talk to the White House Coronavirus Task Force, not allowed to talk to or coordinate with Health and Human Services -- people who are involved with coming up with a vaccine distribution plan.

And that's because the General Services Administration has still not signed off on the formal transition process. President Trump, of course, has still not conceded, which is blocking them from being able to do any of these things. So they are working around it best they can but they're still not allowed to talk to those people they really need to be speaking and coordinating with.

And also of note, Laura, we did hear the president-elect call on Congress to pass a stimulus package -- a COVID stimulus package in this lame duck session that's coming up.

JARRETT: Jessica, we're also starting to see Biden's senior staff take shape at the White House. What do we know about that?

DEAN: Yes, we're getting more information on that. Of course, we had incoming chief of staff Ron Klain named last week.

But what we're hearing now is we're expecting that Congressman Cedric Richmond, who served as a co-chairman of the Biden campaign, will take some sort of senior role within the White House. We're also learning that Biden's former campaign manager, Jen O'Malley Dillon, the first woman to successfully run a Democratic presidential campaign, will be serving as deputy chief of staff.

So these staff positions are beginning to fill out. We expect to hear much more on this front. Again, these are the people that are going to be talking with the president every day, guiding their giant portfolio that they're going to have when they get into office as they face a multitude of crises in this country -- Laura.

JARRETT: Yes, they sure have their work cut out for them, that's for sure.

All right, Jessica Dean, thanks so much.

All right, it's time for three questions in three minutes. Let's bring in CNN senior political analyst John Avlon. John, nice to see you, my friend.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Good morning.

JARRETT: So, President-elect Biden and Sen. Harris are going to get a national security briefing we're told, today, but it's from a team of experts, diplomats, officials, not the FBI. This is not the presidential --

AVLON: Right. JARRETT: -- daily brief.

So at the start of last week, Trump allies were saying things like well, he's just licking his wounds, he's got a bruised ego. But now people are saying oh no, this is real. They're concerned he's not -- he's not going to concede. This isn't going to end soon.

AVLON: His denial is real but that doesn't change reality. I mean, I think what we found out -- there's no strategy here except some degree of ego preservation. But for the president, it's far more personal.

The president doesn't have to concede. The Constitution says his term ends on January 20th at noon. But is this going to be ugly or more difficult than people who are coddling him and humoring him thought? Inevitably so because this is Donald Trump.

The real deal, though, as you said, is Emily Murphy at the GSA needs to start working with the incoming administration. This isn't just a matter of coddling the president, this is a matter of national security during a pandemic. Lives could be lost because of this petty recalcitrance, so let's start dealing with reality.

JARRETT: Yes, let's always start dealing with reality.

AVLON: How about that?

JARRETT: OK. Well, here's a little reality for you.

The Secretary of State of Georgia, a Republican, says he's getting pressure from members of his own party, including Trump's very close ally --

AVLON: Yes.

JARRETT: -- Sen. Lindsey Graham, to find ways to exclude legally cast ballots. Not fraudulent ballots, legally cast absentee ballots.

Now, Republican senators, at the same time, are sort of shrugging off all the baseless claims of fraud as no big deal. But look at your screen at some of these quotes from top Republicans, none of them suggesting that Trump move on and face facts here. Even McConnell won't even answer questions on this anymore.

The Secretary of State of Georgia says he's getting death threats about this.

AVLON: Yes.

JARRETT: He and his wife are getting death threats while they're trying to finish this recount. This nonsense about voter fraud is obviously just feeding a tremendous amount of disinformation and vitriol. It seems as people are working off different versions of reality here.

AVLON: Yes, and that's the danger with having a president press disinformation and denial in a party that is afraid of a lame duck president and afraid of, more particularly, his base.

I mean, Josh Hawley's quote that was up there again. He seems to think he wants to run for president. He's just willing to fully embrace the disinformation for fear of offending his base. McConnell playing a slightly cooler game.

But the real deal in Georgia, as you just said, is not just that the Secretary of State is getting death threats, not just that he's -- that he's openly fighting with Republicans who are angry that he's trying to contain a transparent -- have a transparent and honest election. But that apparently, Lindsey Graham, out of the Judiciary Committee, called him and started asking him how he could move some ballots around, which would violate all sorts of statutes if it held up in court.

[05:40:05]

This is ugly and these are folks who don't seem to want to deal with reality or even feel a sense of partisan affront to a fair, honest, and transparent election.

JARRETT: Yes. I should note, obviously, Sen. Graham disputes the Secretary of State's allegation. But there doesn't seem to be any reason that the Secretary of State would go against his own party --

AVLON: That's the thing.

JARRETT: -- on this in the middle of this recount.

OK, one last question for you. So, "The New York Times" is reporting that the president asked his senior aides last week about possibilities for a strike on Iran's nuclear site because of increased stockpiles of uranium. Of course, he pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal.

AVLON: Bingo.

JARRETT: But CNN is also learning -- Jake Tapper is reporting that the military expects the president will order troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and Iraq even though before he was fired the Secretary of Defense Mark Esper warned that he and everybody else in the chain of command actually recommended against pulling out troops.

Now, Trump still has some time left on the job --

AVLON: Yes.

JARRETT: -- about nine weeks. What do you think is driving his decisions the rest of the way, and where are the guardrails for what can happen in these next nine weeks?

AVLON: Guardrails are gone but he's constrained by the fact that he's going out. The danger in the case of the Pentagon is, of course, that Esper and all the top brass were fired and loyalists put in.

JARRETT: Right. AVLON: And there's a danger when you've got apparatchiks in those kinds of position of power.

Look, the most generous explanation is that Trump has been chafing against the resistance he's gotten from the Pentagon and he's been wanting to draw down from Afghanistan and Iraq completely from the beginning, and this he sees as his chance to do it.

JARRETT: Yes.

AVLON: There are less generous explanations among which is if all your generals are telling you this is a terrible idea, who benefits from a vacuum in the Middle East? But apparently, he was persuaded in the case of a strike against Iran.

Nonetheless, hold onto your hat. This president's not going to go out quietly. And by putting apparatchiks in positions where experts should be, that's always a recipe for disaster.

JARRETT: Yes. It was interesting they were able to talk him out of it --

AVLON: Yes.

JARRETT: -- in the case of Iran, but it seems as cold comfort that everybody has to tell him that's not a good idea and that he doesn't understand it on his own.

AVLON: That's been true for four years.

JARRETT: John Avlon, thank you so much.

AVLON: Thank you, Laura, bye.

JARRETT: See you tomorrow.

All right, U.S. stocks hitting record highs after the positive news on Moderna's coronavirus vaccine. Still, as Wall Street soars, Main Street has a much longer road to economic recovery.

CNN's Julia Chatterley joins us live this morning. Julia, good morning, nice to see you.

It seems as though the stock market is having no problem at all but yet, this week we're seeing lines for miles of cars -- people standing and waiting for food.

JULIA CHATTERLEY, CNN BUSINESS ANCHOR: And this is the key. I mean, we've got vaccine vroom going on on Wall Street because investors are viewing life beyond the pandemic. But for ordinary Americans, as we well know, we're still well and truly in this pandemic and there's a lot of suffering going on.

So investors are buying up stocks tied to airlines, cruise ships. We're not traveling and we're not going on holidays at this moment in time. The reality is vaccines don't fix these things. They don't fix the

fact that one in seven Americans are still having to use food banks in this crisis.

And one of the big illustrations for me, an estimated 11 to 13 million Americans are facing eviction at this moment, according to one global advisory firm. Around half of those could get eviction notices as early as January the first if the CDC doesn't extend its moratorium on evictions. And, Laura, even if they do, these are people who've got months of debt overhang due to unpaid rent.

So the truth is that vaccines don't negate the need for more financial help from Congress nor do they negate the need to get a COVID plan to control the virus outbreaks that we're seeing all over the country.

JARRETT: That's such an important point. That rent didn't just magically disappear.

CHATTERLEY: Right.

JARRETT: It's been building for months and it's going to come due, as you mentioned, in January.

Julia, also yesterday, the president-elect, Joe Biden -- he called for the passage of a stimulus plan. He says once the virus is controlled and economic relief is delivered, then the country can start to think about building back better. Now, lawmakers, so far, haven't felt nearly enough pressure, clearly, in these months to get it done on the stimulus.

So what do you think it's going to take?

CHATTERLEY: It's a great question. There were so many eureka moments listening to the president-elect speaking yesterday. To your point, he was saying look, get a deal signed immediately in this lame duck period. Don't wait until January the 20th.

And we have to see if perhaps he can facilitate some kind of breakthrough by talking at least to the Democrats. We know, obviously, it takes two to tango here so whether the Republicans will budge or not is the open question, and right now it looks like a checkmate situation as it has for months.

But there were some other things that can happen immediately. He was talking about things like a national COVID plan, ramping up testing. He even said --

JARRETT: Right.

CHATTERLEY: -- a national mask mandate was discussed yesterday. I mean, we know that comes down to decisions from states. But just getting the messaging right on handling this virus is, like I say, a eureka moment, Laura.

[05:45:06]

JARRETT: Yes, critical --

CHATTERLEY: Yes.

JARRETT: -- and well past due.

All right, Julia Chatterley. Thank you so much for getting up.

CHATTERLEY: Yes.

JARRETT: We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JARRETT: Well, logistic companies around the world facing the daunting task of delivering billions of COVID vaccine doses.

CNN's Frederik Pleitgen is live inside an airplane cargo facility in Germany being used as a distribution center. Fred, obviously, the logistical issues here are going to be immense. What more are you learning?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. The logistical issues, Laura, are going to be immense and certainly, the companies have already been preparing for this for months because obviously, they knew these vaccine rollouts were going to start happening.

[05:50:00]

I'm actually in the biggest pharma hub in all of Europe. This is from Lufthansa cargo at Frankfurt airport.

And these containers are basically going to be the centerpiece of that logistical challenge in making that work. You can see here they're a bit electronic. You can see the temperature right now inside is five degrees Celsius -- the outside temperature.

But the key thing is going to be in these logistics is the stuff that you see right here is this dried ice -- the dried ice blocks that you see right here. Those cool this container down to up to minus-105 degrees Fahrenheit. Of course, we've been talking so much about the Pfizer vaccine and how it needs to be stored at minus-100 and how difficult a challenge that's going to be.

Now, obviously, what these guys here are telling us is the more dried ice you need, the less vaccine you're going to be able to transport. The colder a vaccine needs to be, the more difficult it is to transport that vaccine.

And the most interesting thing that I found out today is that obviously, that there's more of this stuff and there's less space for vaccine.

But the other thing is also you can see the fumes coming out right now, right? This stuff also emits CO2 and if there's too much CO2 inside the cabin of an airplane it can become dangerous for the crew for that airplane. So you can only put so many of these containers on an airplane and still maintain safe flight.

So that's another logistical challenge that these companies -- companies like Lufthansa cargo face. And you can see it's a very, very large area here.

These guys are already gearing up. What they're telling us is that there is obviously already vaccine being produced in Europe and elsewhere. A lot of that vaccine is already in storage. They say the moment that anything is approved -- the moment that they get the signal they're going to be able to get the vaccine onto planes very quickly and then get it to wherever it needs to go.

They say that there's plans in place and they've been in place for a very long time. It's going to be a big logistical challenge. But they also say that they are very much prepared for it and they seem to think that they can get vaccine to people very quickly, guys.

JARRETT: That's just so fascinating, Fred. Thank you for walking us through it. It's just so interesting to see how is it going to actually get from point A --

PLEITGEN: Yes.

JARRETT: -- to point B. And as you made -- the dry ice complicates. It's just fascinating.

Thanks so much.

All right, now to a CNN exclusive. Startling new evidence that Russia may be severely understating the country's death toll. We need to warn you this report contains disturbing video inside the country's overcrowded hospitals and morgues.

CNN's Matthew Chance reports from Moscow.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is the pandemic response Russia wants us to see, a vast state-of- the-art field hospital set up to manage the coronavirus surge.

CHANCE (on camera): And we're just about to head into the -- to the red zone.

CHANCE (voice-over): It was a world championship ice skating stadium called the Ice Palace. Now the view from the stands is 1,300 beds and the staff of highly-protected medics apparently in control of this COVID-19 crisis.

We have all the necessary diagnostic equipment, including ultrasound and ventilators, the chief doctor on the left tells me. The Russian government is taking serious anti-coronavirus measures, he insists, not just here in Moscow but far beyond.

But there's another side of Russia's raging pandemic, one the authorities here would prefer that we ignore, with shocking evidence of an overloaded health care system buckling under the strain of COVID-19.

On social media, there are heartbreaking scenes like this one of an ambulance medic trying in vain to get a 90-year-old patient admitted to an overcrowded ward. I won't take her home to die, the paramedic shouts. Why do I have to weep and beg you to take in a patient, she cries.

Russian authorities admit hospitals in some regions are at more than 95 percent capacity. But there's mounting evidence of a surging death toll, too. In this video recorded last month and sent to us by an opposition-linked Russian doctors' union, a dead woman dangles unattended from her hospital bed while other patients gasp for breath just feet away.

We lost another two in the ward overnight, says a male voice on the video. This is how COVID-19 is killing everyone, he says.

There are horrific scenes of inundated morgues, too, some too graphic to show, of corpses strewn across floors and stretchers.

It's also emerged that official Russian COVID death figures suspiciously low compared to other badly affected countries may grossly understate the real toll by excluding people who are presumed to have COVID post-mortem. Even those with preexisting conditions that proved fatal due to the infection. If they were counted, as in many other countries, Russia's official death toll of over 33,000 people would be higher.

[05:55:00]

Much higher, according to a former government statistician who has compiled figures on excess deaths and spoke to CNN.

ALEXEY RAKSHA, FORMER GOVERNMENT STATISTICIAN: I think -- I think it's 130,000 people.

CHANCE (on camera): One hundred thirty thousand people who have died --

RAKSHA: Yes.

CHANCE (on camera): -- in Russia with COVID-19?

RAKSHA: The kills of COVID. The kills of COVID.

CHANCE (on camera): And do you believe that the Russian government is purposely hiding the real cost of the COVID death toll?

RAKSHA: Yes, of course. They need to make people not afraid of the virus.

It's very helpful for providing a good picture. So we are Russian -- we are Russians, we are proud of our country. Everything is good with us.

CHANCE (voice-over): Russian authorities haven't responded to the allegations they're downplaying the figures. But outside the highly- organized and spacious field hospitals, the authorities are having to showcase there are signs Russia's pandemic is getting worse.

Matthew Chance, CNN, Moscow.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NASA EMPLOYEE: Very good, SpaceX -- capture confirmed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JARRETT: The SpaceX crew Dragon safely docked with the International Space Station overnight. The process may look slow but the spacecraft and the ISS were traveling more than 17,000 miles per hour. NASA and SpaceX have been working to put launch capabilities back in American hands a decade after the retirement of the shuttle program.

Thanks so much for joining me today. I'm Laura Jarrett. "NEW DAY" is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: More than one million new infections in the United States in just the past week.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We've seen our cases go up five times.