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New Day

Nearly 3 Million Without Power in Texas; Slower Johnson & Johnson Rollout; Biden Predicts Normal Life by Christmas; First Hearings on Capitol Insurrection; Protests Grow in Myanmar. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired February 17, 2021 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00]

CAMILA BERNAL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And heat, including more than 1 million residents in the Houston area. City officials slamming The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the private company that runs about 90 percent of Texas' electric grid.

JUDGE LINA HIDALGO (D), HARRIS COUNTY, TEXAS: We've been hit hard by nature this week, but we can't deny that some of this is a man-made disaster, as well. And the 5 million residents of this county and really this region and the state will deserve answers from ERCOT and the state once this is over.

BERNAL: ERCOT's CEO saying the company is dealing with more outages because of frozen wind turbines and limited natural gas supplies.

BILL MAGNESS, CEO, THE ELECTRIC RELIABILITY COUNCIL OF TEXAS: I think what has happened here is a response that kept the grid from collapsing, that kept us from going into a blackout condition, and certainly we need to look at what has happened here once we get everybody back online, which is the number one priority.

BERNAL: Texas Governor Greg Abbott placing the blame squarely on ERCOT and has called for a review of the electricity system in the state.

GOV. GREG ABBOTT (R-TX): The power generators froze up and their equipment was incapable of generating power. And then on top of that, the natural gas that flows into those power generators, that has frozen up also.

What ERCOT should have been able to do is to have backup systems in place. They have provided zero explanation why they do not have backup systems in place.

BERNAL: The state's water supply is now in jeopardy. In Galveston, Texas, the water supply is critically low. And in Houston, the mayor warning its residents to conserve water.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERNAL: And I did speak to a family in Houston that told me that once they started losing the water pressure, they went out to try to get some water. They could not find any water in any of the stores in their neighborhood. It is completely sold out. And so officials are telling people to be patient and to be careful, especially because there's been an uptick in carbon monoxide poisoning. There's dozens, including children, that have been taken to the hospital. At least four people died yesterday.

And it may seem like common sense, but people here are not used to this and they're simply trying to stay warm, John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Camila, thank you very much for that report. Appreciate it.

A lot of questions this morning about what has gone on in Texas. You know where they have cold weather? Minnesota. You know where they have cold weather? Iowa. You know where they don't lose power like this? Minnesota and Iowa. This is a choice that the Texas power company and Texas officials have made.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: A long time ago. I mean because they wanted independence.

BERMAN: Well, it was not just independence, but over the last several years, they have made the choice not to spend the money to winterize the infrastructure like this. And they've had cold weather like this. I think it was 2011, 2018, but they still have made the choice not to upgrade to deal with this.

CAMEROTA: We're going to be talking to local officials about what now and how this went so horribly wrong.

BERMAN: All right, Johnson & Johnson's vaccine rollout will be delayed. We have brand-new reporting about why, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:37:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: By the end of July, we'll have over 600 million doses. Enough to vaccinate every single American.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: OK, you heard it here, President Biden announcing last night at the CNN town hall that by the end of July every American will be able to get a vaccine. That's a different date than we had heard before. Is this new date connected somehow to the reported delays in Johnson & Johnson's single dose vaccine?

CNN's Kristen Holmes is live for us in Washington with the details.

What's happening with this, Kristen?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn. Well, look, federal health officials are telling us that due to a miscommunication over production and timeline that this launch of Johnson & Johnson is now going to be slower than they originally anticipated. So what they said it was going to look like was that once it was approved, that first batch would be in the single-digit millions of doses. But that would quickly ramp up and by April you'd be looking at a much larger number, 20 million to 30 million doses available.

Now we are hearing that that number in April is less than 20 million. And we're told that this sets them back about a month.

And this actually isn't the only potential issue that could slow down this rollout. I've talked to health officials, providers, as well as state officials who say that they're all still relatively in the dark as to how this rollout will actually look. Very different from what happened with Pfizer and Moderna. They still don't know exactly how many doses they're getting, how they're getting them, where they're supposed to be going.

Now, I have heard from the administration who says that they're not going to get ahead of the science. An official telling me they want the FDA to do its job first. But health experts say that this lack of detail could really slow down turnaround time to actually get those shots into arms. And that's a huge problem right now, especially as we're seeing more and more people tell us that they can't get appointments even if they qualify, John. And those who do, some of them actually being canceled, states siting lack of supply.

BERMAN: All right, Kristen Holmes, thank you very much.

Joining us now, CNN contributor Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. He's an epidemiologist and the former Detroit health commissioner.

Dr. El-Sayed, thanks so much for being with us.

Look, the president, last night, says by the end of July there will be enough vaccines to, you know, give doses to all Americans. He hedged a little bit and then said the vaccines will be there. How -- you know, we can get them in arms after that, or it will take some times to get them in everyone's arms.

But what was interesting is he said by Christmas. It will take until Christmas until we start to feel like normal again.

So, you know, how do you get from the end of July, August, to Christmas? That's a pretty big gap there. If we're all vaccinated by the end of the summer, why until Christmas before it starts to feel normal again?

DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, first, it's good news that we have a new vaccine coming on. It is frustrating that it's going to take a bit more time than we had thought to get as many doses out into the communities where they can get into people's arms. That timeline -- you know, the Biden administration is not known for putting out aggressive timelines. You know, the million shots in 100 days -- excuse me, 100 million shots in a hundred days was not the most aggressive timeline.

[06:40:03]

They really were trying to make sure that it was a timeline they could get to. And so when he says 600 million doses by July, we hope that we're going to be able to get there faster because they have a habit of setting lower expectations and then exceeding them.

The question of going quote/unquote back to normal, there's a whole lot more than just getting vaccinations out. It has to do with the decisions that societies make, that governors make, that people make about what they feel like they are safe doing. And at this point, right, the real question is, once we get to July, God-willing we get all of those shots in arms, are we going to be in a scenario where people feel comfortable and confident because of the low case transmission, because of the low hospitalizations, to really fully open back up, that employers feel comfortable bringing their workforce fully back on location and that people feel comfortable being and doing in the way that they have. That really is the question. And I think we'll have to wait and see once we have that level of mass vaccinations what the virus is doing.

CAMEROTA: OK. I mean I think that for everybody's mental health, everybody's looking for a finish line. I know I am. And so if you're saying that you think that President Biden is being sort of overly circumspect about the end of July, as long as we can just keep that in mind because sometimes we've heard, OK, we can get vaccinated in April, sometimes we hear May or June, sometimes we heart end of August. But if we can just -- you think it is safe today to say, we will be vaccinated, for the most part, by end of July?

EL-SAYED: I think, you know, assuming people meet their production schedules and assuming people choose to take the vaccine, that July is a timeline that the administration, of course, has a lot more insight into this than I do, feels as comfortable putting in the president's mouth. And so, you know, if you sort of look at the place where the science meets the production capacity, meets the politics of putting a number out there, they're pretty darned sure that they can get there.

The real question here, though, isn't just about vaccines. We've known for about a month now that we are in a race between vaccines and variants and we don't know what's going to happen with the variants. And so I think they're hedging here because they know that the variants could really mess up a lot of our best-laid plans.

The other point I want to make here, Alisyn, is that it's really hard to be thinking about a full finish line with this, right? The pandemic is not just going to end one day. We're not going to wake up and the lights are going to be on and everybody's, you know, blowing (INAUDIBLE) saying the pandemic's over. It's more that it's going to end with a putter. You're going to have fewer and fewer cases and then soon enough we're going to turn our attentions elsewhere and COVID-19 is probably still going to be with us, but it will become an endemic thing, kind of like the flu, which, unfortunately, we have to deal with every single year, but not to this degree. And so I just want folks to understand, right, that this is going to

be the kind of thing that takes some time. But if you look into, you know, how they make decisions about what the president's actually going to say, they really are being circumspect around that timeline. They're not setting an ambitious, aggressive timeline. They're trying to set expectations at a place where they can definitely meet them.

BERMAN: I think you're right. I think what you just laid out there is exactly the reason why sometimes they're hazy on this. Number one, I think there's concern that something could go wrong. Something that they can't predict, like the variants, for instance. I think that's a -- and the other thing is that -- is that if you look at the 1918 flu, for instance, it just doesn't -- you don't snap your fingers and it's gone one day. I mean people were still dying of that flu for years after, just a lot fewer every year.

CAMEROTA: But the roaring '20s did come out of that. And that's what I'm looking for.

BERMAN: Well --

CAMEROTA: I am waiting for the roaring --

BERMAN: Good luck.

CAMEROTA: And I'm not kidding. I am waiting for the moment when we can all blow those horns and get back. And I just -- I'm hoping that somehow it's Merry Christmas or merry Labor Day.

BERMAN: But it won't just be one -- what he's saying and what he's right about is, it's not just going to be overnight. It's not -- you don't -- you don't go to bed one night in a pandemic and wake up the next day and say, woo, whoo, let's french kiss! It doesn't work like that.

CAMEROTA: Oh, I'll be the judge of that.

BERMAN: The first Senate hearing on the attack on the U.S. Capitol is scheduled for next week. Interesting. Who is going to be called to testify? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:47:54]

CAMEROTA: The Senate will hold its first hearing next week into the security failures during the Capitol insurrection. Lawmakers calling four current and former officials to answer questions about what went wrong.

CNN's Jessica Dean is live on Capitol Hill with more.

Who do they want to hear from, Jessica?

JESSICA DEAN, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning to you, Alisyn. We've got new information this morning about how this is all shaping up as we look to the hearing on Tuesday. A committee aide telling me that this is really the first opportunity for them to get answers to some key questions about the events that transpired here during the deadly riots on January 6th, including why was the Capitol allowed to be breached in the first place and also why was law enforcement so delayed in responding to what was going on here?

And to that end, it's a joint oversight hearing between the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committees and Rules Committee. And they have called four key witnesses to testify next Tuesday. And that includes the former Capitol Police chief, the former Senate Sergeant at Arms, the former House Sergeant at Arms, and also the current chief of the Metropolitan Police Department here in Washington, D.C. And those four witnesses, I'm told, have been called for their specific roles in security planning for that joint session of Congress that was going on that day.

Now, this hearing is also coming as we are seeing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi move forward with her plans for a commission for establishing a 9/11-style commission to really probe deeply into what happened here. That is moving along at its own pace we're told. I'm told, actually, by one source that legislation on that could come as early as this week.

In the meantime, this committee aide tells me that they are welcoming all avenues in terms of getting answers about what happened that day. But, again, Alisyn, they see this hearing next week as that first opportunity for Americans to get real answers about what happened that day, why it happened, and, also, how they can prevent it from happening in the future.

Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Jessica, thank you very much for all of that.

[06:50:02]

So mass protests overnight in Myanmar against the military coup there. A U.N. officials fears that widespread violence is imminent. We have the latest, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Developing overnight, demonstrators defying the threat of violence in Myanmar, gathering in huge numbers to protest the military coup there.

CNN's Clarissa Ward joins us now.

And, Clarissa, there's growing concern that a crackdown could be imminent.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, John. The protesters are not backing down. As you said, big protests across the country today. Continuation of those walkouts that we've seen.

But the military is warning that some of the protesters are, quote, behaving like terrorists. That is a baseless claim, but one that has many people worried that a bloody crackdown could be on the way.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WARD (voice over): For weeks, the streets of Myanmar have been flooded as hundreds of thousands have come out to reject the military coup that overthrew the country's democratic government on February 1st.

[06:55:11]

We are one, these protesters chant. They are met with water cannons and rubber bullets. But, still, they hold their ground. Among them, teachers, lawyers, doctors, even monks, part of a civil disobedience movement that aims to bring the country to a halt and put pressure on the military regime.

Many flash three fingers, a symbol of defiance taken from "The Hunger Games" movies.

Thirty-one-year-old activist Myo Htet has been out on the streets every day.

MYO HTET, ACTIVIST: Every day we see more and more energy on the street. People are very committed. People are very energetic here against this (INAUDIBLE).

WARD: But there are signs that a military crackdown may be imminent. Civilian leaders have been arrested and much of the country's Internet regularly shut off. Already, blood has been shed. Nineteen-year-old Mia Twi Twi Kin (ph) was shot in the head last week while attends a protest. She has been on life support since.

Myanmar, also known as Burma, has endured decades of repressive military rule. Sandwiched between India and China, the country of 54 million is rich in oil and gas. The 2015, a democratically elected civilian government under Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi was allowed to take power. But her position has always been precarious. Suu Kyi has been detained since the coup, along with the Burmese president.

Last week, U.S. President Joe Biden announced sanctions against the generals.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The people of Burma are making their voices heard and the world is watching. We'll be ready to impose additional measures.

WARD: But as the situation continues to escalate, U.N. Special Rapporteur Tom Andrews, has a stark warning.

WARD (on camera): Give us a sense of what's at stake here?

TOM ANDREWS, U.N. SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON THE SITUATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN MYANMAR: A disaster. And it could take many forms. It could take a bloodbath. And we've seen this happen in the past. This is not an idle threat by the military. They have shown that they are capable of massacring people, large numbers of people. But for the incredibly brave people of Myanmar that are on the streets protesting, engaging in civil disobedience despite that threat, what is more terrifying for them than anything is going back into the clutches of a military authoritarian regime.

WARD (voice over): Myo Htet says he is aware of the risks.

WARD (on camera): Are you scared?

HTET: No. Not. We will fight until the end. We -- we will fight until we get back our rights, until we get back our democracy. We will fight -- we have -- we will -- we will win this -- win this fight for sure.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WARD: But, John, let's be clear, this is going to be a very tough fight, especially if there isn't united action from the international community. And for those U.S. sanctions to have any bite, really, China needs to be onboard as well. So far, China has even refused to condemn the coup despite pressure from the U.S. This is just another case of a human rights situation where the U.S. and China have very opposing views.

John.

BERMAN: Yes, it's a real crisis. Look, and the world is watching as liberty and freedom is stifled and crushed, perhaps, before our eyes. What will the world do? What can the world do? We'll see over the next few days, Clarissa. Thanks so much for that report.

NEW DAY continues right now.

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY.

At last night's CNN town hall, President Biden wanted to give Americans a shot in the arm, in many ways. He talked of a new date when most of us can get COVID vaccines and his plan for economic relief. The president predicts by Christmas the country and our lives might start to feel normal again.

How did he come up with that date? Well, President Biden says the U.S. should have enough vaccine doses for everyone who wants one by the end of July. He also talked about how he wants to go big on an economic relief bill. The president also says he wants K-8 schools opened by the end of his first 100 days in office for five days a week. He also wants teachers prioritized for vaccinations.

But maybe the most notable thing he said or didn't was just the shift in tone and focus. He says the last four years have been spent talking about Donald Trump. He wants to shift his focus to the American people.

[07:00:00]

BERMAN: So this morning, why is the power out in Texas still? Millions still suffering. Yes, they have had awful weather, but this morning new questions about