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Biden: Transition Delay Could Put Vaccine Plan Behind by Weeks; U.S. Surpasses 250,000 Coronavirus Deaths as Pandemic Surges. Aired 6- 6:30a ET

Aired November 19, 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: Biden and his team zeroed in on the pandemic, pressing their case for the Trump administration to coordinate with them on the crisis.

[05:58:54]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We haven't had any official contact between the transition team coming in and the current administration.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: I am optimistic, but we should be further along.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: The pandemic spreading with dangerous speed right now, shattering records every day.

JOHN VAUSE, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: More than a quarter of a million people have died in less than ten months in the U.S., by far more than any other country.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm the most concerned I've been since this pandemic started.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are in a war right now, and the virus is winning.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It is Thursday, November 19, 6 a.m. here in New York. And we begin this morning with a tragic marker of the toll the coronavirus pandemic has taken on the United States.

More than a quarter million Americans have died. That number is shocking, as is the daily death toll. Just yesterday, Johns Hopkins reported 1,848 people lost their lives. That's more than one person per minute. This morning, more than 79,000 people are waking up in the hospital; 10,000 were admitted in the past week. Across the country, some people are again waiting hours to get tested.

Look at this line in Maryland. And still, even in the face of this growing crisis, the outgoing Trump administration is prohibiting health officials from communicating with President-elect Biden. Something Biden warns could delay vaccine distribution by weeks, if not months.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And what does the defeated president have to offer to the public about this crisis today? Nothing. Nothing. The president has nothing on his public schedule today. It is the 12th of the past 16 days that he is doing nothing.

Folks who have covered the White House for years say they have never seen a stretch like this. So much nothing. To misquote Winston Churchill, "Never has so little been done for so many for so long." And that's with a pandemic that killed nearly 2,000 people a day over the last few weeks.

What he's not doing for the public, he is doing for himself. The president is engaged in overt efforts to overturn the results of the election that he lost. This morning, President-elect Joe Biden is leading by more than 5.8 million votes. That's a lot. But the president's campaign lawyer explicitly says their goal is to overthrow the results and have Republican legislators decide the election.

There's a new development out of Michigan overnight on that front. We'll have much more on that in a little bit.

Let's go first, though, to CNN's Jessica Dean, live in Wilmington, Delaware, covering the Biden transition. And Jessica, we've learned a handful of former and current Trump administration officials have actually reached out to the president-elect's team.

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right, John, and that is progress. But the fact remains that key officials and key federal agencies still are not allowed to talk with the Biden transition team.

The Health and Human Services secretary, Alex Azar, saying he will not brief the transition team on the coronavirus pandemic until the General Services Administration has signed off on that formal transition to begin.

This as the Biden transition team maintains that these delays could cost lives.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DEAN (voice-over): President-elect Joe Biden is focusing on the coronavirus response, thanking frontline workers battling the virus around the clock for nearly nine months, as conditions worsen.

BIDEN: It's not enough to praise you. We have to protect you. We have to pay you. And you deserve leadership that listens to you and that works as hard for you as you do for the families in your communities. DEAN: But as President Trump refuses to allow the transition process

to begin, Biden warns this will only slow efforts to fight the pandemic.

BIDEN: I am optimistic, but we should be further along. And there's a whole lot of things that are just -- we just don't have available to us, which unless it's made available soon, we're going to be behind by weeks or months being able to put together the whole initiative.

DEAN: Trump administration officials also stalling the transition, with the Health and Human Services secretary saying he will not begin working with President-elect Biden's team until he is officially declared the winner.

ALEX AZAR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: We've made it very clear that, when GSA makes a determination, we will ensure complete cooperative professional transitions and planning.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't make the rules. We all want to be transparent. We all want to transmit public health, but -- but it's not quite as ominous as you suggested it was.

DEAN: Health experts emphasizing that the president's unwillingness to cooperate with Biden will only delay plans to distribute a coronavirus vaccine.

DR. TOM FRIEDEN, FORMER CDC DIRECTOR: It's so important that that handoff be done smoothly, because this is going to be the most complicated vaccination program in American history.

DEAN: Trump staying largely silent on the pandemic, but he's spreading baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, as his campaign presses forward with legal battles in states that President-elect Biden won, promoting threadbare challenges to clear election results.

This as Georgia is expected to release the results of the audit of its recount later today, confirming Biden's victory.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have not seen any widespread voter fraud.

DEAN: The president-elect's team cautions Trump's decision not to coordinate with him may ultimately cause more long-term harm in the future.

JARED BERNSTEIN, HARRIS-BIDEN TRANSITION TEAM: Every transition day that's lost delays our transition team's ability to effectively respond. And this puts thousands of Americans at risk of illness and death and of economic hardship. And this is avoidable suffering. And it should be avoided.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

DEAN: Later today, President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris will meet with members and governors from the National Governors Association about the coronavirus pandemic. We do expect to hear remarks from Biden later today. [06:05:11]

And John, remember, these governors are going to play a key role when it comes to the pandemic, both as Biden works to enact a national mask mandate. He's going to need cooperation from local governments. But also as they try to coordinate across the states for more streamlined guidance as we move forward with this pandemic.

BERMAN: Yes. The governors are already playing a crucial role, because the federal government isn't.

DEAN: Yes.

BERMAN: The governors have had to step in to deal with the situation now. This will be really interesting, this discussion today between the governors, both Republicans and Democrats and the president-elect. Looking forward to see what they have to say.

Jessica Dean, thank you very much.

So as of this morning, more than 250,000 Americans have died from coronavirus. That's by far the most in the world. Again, the United States of America has done worse than anyone in this pandemic.

If you want to see the course of deaths over the last few months, 50,000 people had died by April, 100,000 by May, 150,000 by July, 200,000 by September, and as of this morning, you can see, we're at 250,548. That number just keeps on rising.

CNN's Natasha Chen live in Florida with the very latest -- Natasha.

NATASHA CHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, John, Florida just crossed the threshold of 900,000 cases yesterday, third highest in the nation. That's not a record anyone wants to have.

And like many other states, when you look at Florida's trend of seven- day average of new cases, it really looks like a tidal wave. Since the summer surge coming back down a little bit, now spiking back up, this is a state that since late September has lifted capacity restrictions on businesses.

So local jurisdictions like Orange County here can ramp up testing, like the site behind me, can have a local mask mandate, but cannot actually restrict capacity of restaurants, for example, without telling the state what kind of economic impact that would have.

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CHEN (voice-over): More than a quarter million people have died from coronavirus since the pandemic began in the United States. On Wednesday, over 1,800 Americans lost their lives to the virus.

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: If you were to read all of the names of the people who have died in the United States from coronavirus, it would take about ten days. That's the magnitude of the loss. CHEN: There's growing concern in the northeast, as new cases rise

across the region. The country's largest school district is closing down today, after New York City saw an average of 3 percent test positivity over the last seven days.

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D), NEW YORK CITY: We set a very clear standard, and we need to stick to that standard. And I want to emphasize to parents, to educators, to staff, to kids, that we intend to come back and come back as quickly as possible.

CHEN: In Pennsylvania, case numbers are soaring. The state reported approximately 6,400 new cases on Wednesday. Growing concern there is over 2,900 patients are currently hospitalized with the virus, the highest number so far in the pandemic.

And in New Jersey, Governor Phil Murphy has implemented new restrictions on indoor dining and outdoor gatherings. Since then, the state has reported more than 4,000 new cases each day for four of the past five days.

In Wisconsin, the governor announced he's extending his state of emergency order and statewide mask mandate until January, as ICU beds in that state are running out.

ANDREA PALM, SECRETARY-DESIGNEE, WISCONSIN DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH SERVICES: Over the past week, hospitals have reported nine of our ICUs at 100 percent capacity. There are zero ICU beds available in one region of our state.

CHEN: Along with Wisconsin announcing new restrictions, Minnesota is reporting it is closing indoor dining and gyms and limiting social gatherings.

And Kentucky is moving the entire state to online learning to try to stem the increase in confirmed cases.

These states join nearly two dozen other cities and states that have increased restrictions over the past week. Some states are still not taking many important measures, despite rising numbers, including Florida, which is starting to see an uptick of cases again after its summer surge. Even though some counties in Florida do have mask mandates, there's still no statewide regulation recovering face coverings.

And in South Dakota, Governor Kristi Noem is doubling down on her refusal to mandate masks.

GOV. KRISTI NOEM (R-SD): Some have said that my refusal to mandate masks is a reason why our cases are rising here in the state of South Dakota, and that is not true.

I'm not in favor of mandating mask wearing. I don't believe that I have the authority to mandate that.

(END VIDEOTAPE) CHEN: There's no statewide mandate in Florida, either. Governor Ron DeSantis has not been seen publicly addressing coronavirus since at least early November.

Now, he does on his public schedule today have some phone calls with the CEOs of various health systems here, but no public address. I asked his press office why that is, compared to the summer surge when he was giving regular press conferences on COVID-19. They have not gotten back to me yet, John.

[06:10:08]

BERMAN: Keep on asking, Natasha. Maybe you'll get an answer eventually. Appreciate you being there; appreciate your reporting. Thank you very much.

CHEN: Thank you.

BERMAN: So Alisyn Camerota, what's on the president's public schedule today?

CAMEROTA: I assume watching NEW DAY. You mean that?

BERMAN: No, public schedule. What's on his public schedule?

CAMEROTA: Oh, not what he's doing right now? Nada.

BERMAN: Nothing.

CAMEROTA: Nothing.

BERMAN: Nothing.

CAMEROTA: Zip.

BERMAN: Surely he must be doing something. There's more than a quarter million people dead from the coronavirus.

CAMEROTA: It's interesting. He -- I'm going to have to start having to conclude that he's not interested in the job of being president very soon. I'm going to have to start concluding that. Though he's fighting tooth and nail to keep it, he's not doing any of the things publicly that presidents would do in a pandemic.

BERMAN: Like president?

CAMEROTA: Presidenting.

BERMAN: He's not doing the presidenting thing.

We'll have much more on that, ahead.

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[06:15:05]

BIDEN: There's a whole lot of things that are just -- we just don't have available to us. So unless it's made available soon, we're going to be behind by weeks or months.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: That was President-elect Joe Biden, warning that America could fall behind by months in distributing a coronavirus vaccine, if the Trump administration continues to block the Biden team from getting ask to the plans.

A source tells CNN that current HHS staffers have been instructed not to communicate with the Biden team.

Joining us now, CNN political commentator Errol Louis; and Natasha Alford, vice president of digital content and senior correspondent for TheGrio. Great to have both of you.

Errol, it's -- I don't even know what word to use, funny, sad? I know that it is life and death. It is life and death, now, that the Biden team is being blocked. The idea that we could be behind by months in this country in terms of the distribution of a vaccine.

The one thing that everyone is holding onto, the light at the end of the tunnel, and it could be -- I mean, even if it were delayed by days, it would be life and death for some people. And that's where we are.

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: That's where we are. It is important that, I think, people remember that, while the vaccine is an attractive possibility, right now, the emphasis has to be on the safeguards that are necessary to save lives right now.

And it's doubly shocking that we don't see the commander in chief -- He called himself a wartime president in this war against the pandemic -- taking no action to help galvanize the country.

You know, if you remember back to March and April, Alisyn, the president would talk in public meetings with the governors of the most severely affected states. He would deploy the Navy. He deployed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. They would set up mobile field hospitals where it was needed. All of that emergency activity is needed and more right now, as well as putting in place some kind of a plan to bring this to a conclusion with a vaccine some months down the road.

The fact that none of these things is -- are happening is shocking; and it's a dereliction of duty, at the worst possible time. And to think -- it's a mistake to think that, hey, it's only 60 days until this is all over on January 20 and a new administration is sworn in. Well, those 60 days are the difference between the start of this pandemic and absolutely catastrophe back in March and April. And we're set to relive it all over again.

BERMAN: He's not a wartime president; he's a tee-time president. As in golf tee. I mean, he's spent more time golfing than speaking to the public about the pandemic that's now killed 250,000 people.

Natasha, 12 out of the last 16 days, he's had nothing on his public schedule. Nothing. I mean, I covered the White House for a year. I've never seen anything like this. People who have covered it for far longer than I have have never seen a stretch like this. He's doing aggressively nothing. Like the aggressive absence of power and authority here.

And as Alisyn says, I mean, he's trying to overthrow the Constitution to keep his job. You would think he would at least want to do it.

NATASHA ALFORD, VICE PRESIDENT OF DIGITAL CONTENT/SENIOR CORRESPONDENT, THEGRIO: Yes, the president has completely checked out. He's more invested in flexing his Twitter fingers and fighting for an election that he already lost than the health and the safety of the American people. And it's truly a shame. It's truly a shame.

I think that, you know, President-elect Joe Biden is being the president right now. And frankly, you know, he's asking for things that are perfectly reasonable.

Let's get specific. He's asking about hospital bed numbers, mask shortages, how deep vaccine stockpiles are, right? So he's not asking for anything -- He's not asking for nuclear codes. He wants to know information to save American lives.

And Donald Trump is more interested in golf and the election of the past rather than the future. And again, it just -- it shows what his priorities always were.

CAMEROTA: Errol, I just want to put that graphic up one more time of no public events scheduled. No public events scheduled. This is the guidance from the White House, OK? It came courtesy of Michael Shearer at "The New York Times." He has, as John said, covered many White Houses. He's never seen anything like it. "The president has no public events scheduled." Ditto, ditto, ditto, ditto, ditto, as far down as the eye can see.

And that's just, again, astonishing that he has so washed his hands of trying to deal with this pandemic whatsoever. And of course, as we said, the upshot is that people with all the institutional knowledge, like Dr. Fauci, cannot talk to the Biden family, or feel as though they cannot talk to the Biden team without being fired or losing their, jobs or in some way getting cross-wise with the president. Here's what dr. Fauci had to say about this.

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[06:20:10]

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: There has not been any form of discussions with -- with the Biden people on this. That kind of thing makes it easier to just go from one to the other. So, yes, I would wish that we would be able to do that. That would be helpful.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: And Errol, what Fauci has said is that he thinks that the Biden team doesn't want to compromise him. They're not reaching out, because they know that he has had a bull's-eye on him, and so they don't want to put him in that compromised position.

LOUIS: Yes, and look, as always with President Trump, you have to assume that this isn't an accident, this isn't mere negligence, that this is some kind of a strategy. Perhaps this is the only leverage that he's got left, as his administration comes to a close. That maybe he thinks he can bargain for or negotiate something, if he simply sits on his hands and brings the government to a halt at a critical time in the nation's history.

I hope that that's not the case, but there's -- there aren't that many other explanations.

You know, because ironically enough, it would bolster his fading futile quest to actually get a second term, it would actually help if he were out there doing the job. If he were to make himself seem as if he was indispensable, clearly ready to sort of take on a second term that he claims that he has earned. If he wants to do that, at least we would get the benefits of continuity of government.

But he's not even doing that. And I think it undermines his claim that he won a second term. I mean, you know, even if you want to believe these conspiracy theories, this is not somebody who's acting like he's president of the United States.

CAMEROTA: Natasha, Errol, thank you both very much.

And we want everyone to know that Wolf Blitzer is going to talk to the incoming White House chief, Ron Klain, today at 5 p.m. Eastern for more information on all of this.

So coronavirus has killed a quarter of a million Americans. Some governors, though, still do not believe that wear masks helps save lives. That's next.

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[06:26:22]

BERMAN: Overnight, more than 1,800 new deaths from coronavirus reported in the United States. More than 1,800; 1,848, to be exact. Every single one matters. That is the most reported since May 1, and that number will continue to rise.

More than 79,000 Americans are hospitalized this morning. We also just had the second highest number of cases ever reported.

Joining us now is Dr. Ali Khan, dean of the University of Nebraska Medical Center's College of Public Health.

Dr. Khan, thank you for being with us this morning, and I have to say, it's a grim morning. When you've got more than 1,800 deaths reported, the highest number since May 1. And honestly, no end in sight. I don't see where this stops in terms of the rising death toll with the cases and hospitalizations where they are this morning. What do you see?

DR. ALI KHAN, DEAN, UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA MEDICAL CENTER'S COLLEGE OF PUBLIC HEALTH: So, good morning, John.

And I agree with you, those statistics are pretty grim. And they're a reflection of the magic-based strategy the U.S. has been using and the choices that they've made.

But as a public health professional, I want to remind everybody that we can come back from this. We can celebrate double donuts like Australia is with zero cases and zero deaths without a vaccine. And just recently, Israel and Belgium had cases two to three times what we have seen so far, and they've come back to lower case counts. So we can still come back from this.

But this was expected. Absolutely expected. You know, we squandered the economy and the goodwill of the American people with the partial lockdown in the spring, without having public health completely geared up and ready to address any increases. We opened up way too fast, including colleges. And then it became cold, and people started coming together and congregating.

So with all those factors put together, you couple that with a patchwork of a national response, and the current cases are completely expected.

However, I want to reassure people, with 30 years of experience in pandemics, this, too, will plateau. It's not going to continue to go up indefinitely. But we can and we must interrupt these cases. Two thousands deaths a day, that's more than one death every minute. By the him time this segment is over, five to ten people will have died. That's just unacceptable for preventable deaths.

CAMEROTA: What will we plateau at and when?

KHAN: That's a crystal ball and game of when we will plateau. What I can tell you is the current deaths reflect, actually, cases from two to three weeks ago when we had about 100,000 cases. So it would not be unexpected to see 2,500 -- 2,500 deaths from cases that are occurring today, or more.

So this is a grisly pace of 2,000 deaths a day. That may well -- may increase more than we saw back in the spring, and that's inexcusable with nine months of public health knowledge of how to get this disease out of [SIC] control.

BERMAN: That's devastating. I have to say, it's just devastating. And I think it's important for people to hear it and begin to anticipate it, particularly with Thanksgiving happening next week.

And a bunch of governors, a bipartisan group of governors, has gotten together in an op-ed overnight. I just want to read part of this op-ed from governors Whitmer, DeWine, Evers, Walz Pritzker, Holcomb, Andy Beshear. They write, "Think about your last Thanksgiving and the people you

were surrounded by. As hard as it will be not to see them this Thanksgiving, imagine how much how much harder it would be if their chairs are empty next year."

And Dr. Khan, just as clearly as you can, because I know people are sensitive to Thanksgiving, and they want to see their loved ones. And sometimes I think they use language that dances around the reality, what do people need to do and not do for Thanksgiving next Thursday?

KHAN: So, we do not need to create yet another super-spreader.