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Don Lemon Tonight

President Trump Eager To Reopen Economy By May 1; Asymptomatic Carriers Poses Threat To Public; Study Finds Differences Among Republicans And Democrats In Social Distancing Behaviors; Thousands Protest Michigan Governor's Strict Stay-At-Home Order; Researchers Predict U.S. May Have To Live With Social Distancing Until 2022 Without Vaccine; Los Angeles Mayor Warns Large Sporting Events May Not Return Until 2021. Aired 11p-12a ET

Aired April 15, 2020 - 23:00   ET

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

[23:00:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DON LEMON, CNN HOST: This is CNN TONIGHT. I'm Don Lemon.

Eleven p.m. on the East Coast. Here's the latest on the coronavirus pandemic. There are now more than 637,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the United States. More than 30,000 people have died from the coronavirus in this country. Worldwide, more than two million cases of the virus and more than 130,000 deaths.

The President of the United States saying tomorrow he's going to unveil new federal social distancing guidelines as he pushes to reopen the country. He is maintaining that some states may be able to get back to business by May 1st.

But a source telling CNN that during a conference call with business leaders today, they told the president what medical experts have been advising, that ramped up coronavirus testing needs to be put in place before the economy reopens and Americans start going back to work.

The mayors of Los Angeles saying today that large gatherings like concerts and sporting events may not be held in his city until next year.

Joining us now, CNN's White House Correspondent John Harwood, our resident fact checker Daniel Dale, and Elaina Plott, she is a national political reporter for the New York Times. Good to have all of you. Good evening.

John, you are first again this evening. The president says that he's going to announce these new federal guidelines tomorrow meant to reopen the country. We are told that he is laser focused on May 1st, even earlier maybe. So, what's going to determine that happening or not because it's not up to him really, but go on.

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's not up to him. But I think he's focused on May 1st as the date to announce some sort of point of departure for the country. My guess is that the -- it will end up being pretty limited in scope. He'll try to focus on some areas with the least number of cases and declare that they're able to be open.

There are likely to be states with Republican governors. They will be influenced by him. Don't know whether they will be acting against their own interests because they will take some action to relax some of the restrictions. And we'll see a surge of cases. Can't predict that. Don't know how cold those cold spots are.

But in terms of the most densely populated, largest metropolitan areas that have been hardest hit -- California and New York to take the obvious answers -- they're not going back. And the businesses don't want to go back.

Jamie Dimon, the Wall Street figure at J.P. Morgan Chase said on a call with analysts this week we're not talking about May. Maybe June, July, or August. So, it is going to be much less than the president makes it sound like. It may be something.

And I think the positive thing that happened today that you just alluded to is that the business leaders on the call echoed exactly what the public health professionals said which is we need a massive run up of testing to make this safe and to make us want to open up.

LEMON: Right. And just think if they start sending people back to work, people start getting sick. It's not going to be the president who's responsible. It's going to be the bosses and the company owners who have to take responsibility for that really and, you know, may have some exposure legally for it.

OK. So, Daniel, I want to bring you in because President Trump continues to blame the states for testing. But he is trying to have it both ways. Here's what else he said. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And if we're not happy, we'll take very strong action against a state or a governor, if we're not happy with the job a governor is doing, we'll let them know about it. And as you know we have very strong action we can take including a close-down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[23:05:03]

LEMON: Give me the facts, Daniel.

DANIEL DALE, CNN REPORTER: Don, this is the third consecutive evening in which the president has made a false claim of absolute authority over state coronavirus restrictions.

He doesn't have this authority. It's well established constitutionally, and I've heard this from a number of scholars, that the states have the power to address public health issues within their own jurisdiction. Now, the president has never identified any particular constitutional

clause, any particular law, or any particular precedent to justify his claim that he has this authority he claims he does. But even some Republican legislatures, people like Senator Marco Rubio, Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney have come out and said in their own way indirectly that they do not agree with the president's assertions.

LEMON: All right. Elaina, welcome. We don't get to see you every night. So, I'm glad that you're here.

ELAINA PLOTT, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Hi, Don.

LEMON: But do you -- you have -- hi, -- you have this very interesting reporting, new reporting tonight. President Trump wanted to start a coronavirus radio show but didn't want to compete with Rush Limbaugh. What -- tell us about that.

PLOTT: Yes, so, early March when Donald Trump sort of accepting the reality that the coronavirus is spreading across the United States, that it was not, in fact, as his favorite commentators like Sean Hannity put it, a drummed up hoax by the media, he was contemplating ways to communicate with Americans directly.

And he and a few White House officials had considered quite strongly hosting a talk radio show of sorts. He wanted regular Americans to be able to call in to an open line, no screening whatsoever to ask whatever questions they had about the coronavirus so he could quell their fears.

LEMON: Interesting. And you're right. In part you said the president -- you said the president may have dropped plans for his own talk radio show, but for Mr. Trump, what Mr. Limbaugh offers is perhaps second best, a taste of the validation he craves as well as a blueprint for how to make his supporters even happier.

So, Limbaugh is advocating for a swift return to normal life. Is his voice influencing the president's desire to reopen the economy soon?

PLOTT: Absolutely. You know, what's interesting, Don, is that ever since Fox News commentators like Sean Hannity were sort of proven wrong, quite drastically wrong about their rhetoric about the coronavirus not being something to take seriously, they've actually tempered their advocacy quite a bit as to what sort of direction Trump should take when it comes to these questions like quote, unquote, "reopening the economy."

Rush Limbaugh though has not been that way. He has been a pretty forceful voice for weeks now that one, the coronavirus is akin to the common cold, but more relevant to what we're discussing now, that it's far past time for the United States to be back up and running economically as it was before.

And in this moment where Trump is looking for affirmation for his desire to get things moving in that way, Rush Limbaugh is somebody whose affirmation he really, really treasures. LEMON: Daniel Dale, over 2,200 people were reported dead in the U.S.

today, but President Trump claims that nobody needs ventilators anymore. Take a listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: At this moment, nobody needs them. We have to remember during the surge, nobody's needed them for weeks now. But we'll have them for stockpiles and very importantly we're going to have them for other countries. Because nobody is able to do things like we can do and we're going to be able to help other countries that are having tremendous problems to put it mildly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: So, what's the fact check here?

DALE: Don, I think this is one of those cases where President Trump takes something that could be an accurate boast and turns it into something inaccurate. So, he could accurately say that the needs that some states anticipated for ventilators has not been borne out, some states are indeed returning ventilators to the national stockpile. That's good news. Trump can boast about that.

Instead though, he's saying nobody needs ventilators which is self- evidently untrue in addition to the fact that thousands of people need ventilators, state governors have said in the last couple of days that they still need ventilators.

We have Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey on CNN on Sunday saying that we're -- he said, we're fighting to stay ahead on vent capacity, ventilators constantly running thin.

We had Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, on ABC on Sunday saying it's not true that everybody is completely happy with everything they need. He said everybody still has tremendous needs on PPE and ventilators.

And we have projections from the New Mexico health department that they will be running far short of ventilators when their state hits the peak that they expect. So, this is again the president making a maximalist exaggeration that's not borne out by the facts.

LEMON: And it would be helpful too if he added and maybe they don't have the need right now because of the social distancing that Americans have been doing.

DALE: Sure.

They've been complying, and therefore it is working.

[23:09:57]

So, John, listen, we are also learning about this emergency loan program set up to help business -- to help small businesses during this pandemic already running out of money. So, will they get the help they need?

HARWOOD: Yes. So, I think that Congress is going to pass and put a bill on the president's desk to provide some more money. The question is what goes in that bill. There is bipartisan support for supplementing that fund, another $250 billion for those small businesses. Question is do you also include money that states and local governments desperately need because they're broke right now.

And Andrew Cuomo has been making that pitch pretty eloquently in his news conferences. Do they add that to this bill or do they save that for another bill? Democrats want to add it. Speaker Pelosi has been in talks with Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, and they're trying to see if they can work a deal as they did on the last economic rescue bill.

But one way or the other, this bill is going to get there. First of all, businesses and I think states will get money. What the White House points out is that money from the initial relief bill, $100 billion, is going out to states next week and they're arguing that that can tide the states over until another piece of legislation can be passed. But there's a lot more aid on the way.

LEMON: John, Daniel, thank you. Elaina, don't be a stranger, OK? We love having you. We'll see you soon.

PLOTT: Thanks, Don.

LEMON: Thank you very much.

Joining me now is Dr. Jonathan Reiner. He is the co-director of George -- George Washington University's Cardiac Catheterization program. Good to see you again, doctor.

JONATHAN REINER, CARDIOLOGIST, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL: Hi, Don.

LEMON: By the way, I spoke to an old friend who said that you've been his doctor for a long time and he spoke very highly of you. So, when we get to the break, I'll tell you who that is. I don't want to give up any private information here on the show.

By anyway, good evening to you. So, we are now learning people might be most infectious before they show any symptoms.

REINER: Yes.

LEMON: Does that make this much more likely to spread?

REINER: Yes, really fascinating study published today in Nature Medicine that looked at viral shedding and transmissibility. And it turns out that people appear to be most infectious probably the day they get symptoms. But maybe most importantly from a public health perspective, is that about 45 percent of people who are infected with virus are infected by somebody before they develop symptoms.

So, so much of the transmission occurs from asymptomatic people. So, which makes us understand that perhaps the way to really put this fire out is to start testing asymptomatic people.

Right now, if you're asymptomatic, almost nowhere in the country can you get a test. But that's where the virus is living. It's living in asymptomatic people. That's who's transmitting the virus all over the country.

LEMON: Yes, you know, I had someone on from -- doctor of obstetrics on last night from Presbyterian here in New York and they were testing women who are coming in to deliver babies. They found women coming in to deliver babies. And they found that women who are coming in they tested positive, they had no symptoms at a higher rate than a much higher rate than they expected.

So, I'm wondering, that said, the bottom line here is do we have to test everyone?

REINER: Yes, I think we have to test everyone. The study that you're referring to found that 15 percent of women coming in for just a normal delivery -- these aren't people who are sick -- 15 percent of those patients were positive for the coronavirus. So, think about what that means to the community, what even that means to the person standing behind you on the line to get into Costco.

LEMON: Interesting. So, I want you to take a look at -- this is what Dr. Fauci said about antibody testing during a SnapChat interview today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: The antibody tests that are out there, disturbingly, most of them have not been validated by the FDA, the NIH. So, we're not sure if they're really accurate.

But let's say they were. The thing we don't know yet is what is the relationship between the level of antibody and the degree of your protection? So, you may be positive for an antibody but not enough to protect you. And then have that person put their guard down and wind up getting infected.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: OK. So, if we can't trust that the antibody tests, that they're working or they're correct, then where are we?

REINER: Well, in an effort to try and spur industry to get these tests out, the FDA allowed companies to develop these tests without formal FDA approval. So, there are about 70 different companies developing these antibody tests, many of which will be available for you to do at home.

But again, if we can't trust the results, their value is somewhat limited. There are three companies that have had some form of FDA review of their products, about three tests.

[23:15:01] I looked at one of them today, and it looks like the positive

protective value and negative predictive value are somewhere in the mid-90 percent range, not bad but not perfect. Meaning that if the virus -- if the test tells you that you've been exposed to the virus, there's still a few percent chance that it is wrong. And the opposite also. So, these tests are not perfect. Hopefully they'll get better as we go forward.

LEMON: I'm just -- you know, sources are telling CNN that the president is laser focused on a May 1st reopening of the country or earlier. Considering what we just talked about, how would that even work?

REINER: Yes. You know, when you're treating a patient on a ventilator and they start to get better, the instinct is to try to get them off the ventilator as quickly as possible. But everyone who treats folks in the ICU knows that you can't do that because if you take someone off the ventilator too soon, it's an enormous step back.

So, picture this country as being on a giant ventilator to support the life in this country. If we ease social distancing too soon, it will be an enormous step back. You'll see surges in infection all over the country.

So, we're going to have to do this carefully with data, not base on just economic considerations but based on epidemiology, where the disease really has decreased to the point where it's safe to go back, and then using some of the caveats that places like California are starting to talk about. You know, limiting the number of people in restaurants, face masks everywhere, disposable menus, not bringing professional sports back at least with fans in the stands --

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: No big concerts.

REINER: -- until it's truly safe -- no big concerts. Who wants to stand in a crowded room shoulder to shoulder with people right now? No one wants to do that. And you know something, even if it was possible to do that in many places, people wouldn't come out for it.

LEMON: Yes.

REINER: So, we have to be smart -- we have to be smart about this, Don.

LEMON: Yes. Thank you, doctor. I appreciate your time once again.

REINER: Sure. My pleasure.

LEMON: Thank you.

REINER: My pleasure.

LEMON: Across the country cities, towns, and states are starting to plan for a return to normal that won't be normal at all. What's it going to be like for you when you go back to work? Will you have to wear a mask? And what happens if you don't? How long will it be living like this? We're all going to be living like this. That's next.

[23:20:00]

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LEMON: President Trump saying he'll announce new guidelines on social distancing tomorrow in anticipation of reopening the country. Experts say more testing is needed before the nation can get back to business. And decisions to reopen are likely going to be made at a local level by governors and mayors.

Here's CNN's Erica Hill.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR & CORRESPONDENT: The iconic Hollywood Bowl will remain empty this year.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR ERIC GARCETTI (D), LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: It's difficult to imagine getting together in the thousands any time soon. We've got many miles to walk before we're going to be back in those environments.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: The mayors of Los Angeles and New York suggesting concerts and sporting events likely won't return before 2021.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D-NY): We got one chance if we move too quick, we put 50,000 people in Yankee Stadium, and that's part of why you see a resurgence of the disease, that would be the worst of all worlds.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: The mayor of New Orleans also recommending her city shelved major events like jazz feast until next year as the president continues to push for a symbolic May 1st reopening, officials around the country are trying to adjust expectations.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. JARED POLIS (D-CO): We also know that we're in this for the long haul. The virus isn't going to disappear or go away any time soon.

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D-NY): I say, personal opinion, it's over when you have a vaccine. It's over when people know I'm 100 percent safe and I don't have to worry about this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: That vaccine likely at least a year away.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT REDFIELD, DIRECTOR, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION: We're going to have another battle with it up front and aggressively next winter. This is why it's so important we take the time now to really improve our testing capacity, expand our public health capacity to do early case recognition, contact tracing, and isolation. I call it block and tackle, block and tackle.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: San Francisco is launching a partnership to tackle contact tracing. Los Angeles offering same or next day testing to its 10 million residents. Anyone with COVID symptoms is eligible.

In New Jersey, the nation's first saliva testing site is now open. Major League Baseball pitching in for antibody testing. Players, their families, concession workers, some 10,000 volunteers in total. Part of a nationwide study to better understand the infection and its spread.

As Georgia prepares for a potential surge, Michigan's strict stay-home orders brought protesters out in Lansing. New York and Connecticut announced new regulations for face coverings. And in Massachusetts which is now in the surge, the governor emotional, talking about the 957 lives lost in his state.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. CHARLIE BAKER (R-MA): I pay attention to the numbers, but what I really think about mostly are the stories and the people who are buying the stories.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Don, the governor of Massachusetts also saying today that he is intensely focused on mitigating the spread of this virus among the most vulnerable populations, the elderly specifically, and long-term care facilities.

He announced some $130 million in funding to deal with that. That money will go to staffing, also to updating certain facilities to COVID-19 only facilities, and also, Don, for equipment.

LEMON: Erica Hill, thank you so much.

Tonight, "The New York Times" is reporting that the navy is looking into reinstating Captain Brett Crozier to the command of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt. He was fired two weeks ago after his plea to officials for help in battling an outbreak of coronavirus on the ship went public.

[23:25:05]

His 5,000 crew members gave Crozier a hero send off. Six hundred fifteen members of the Roosevelt's crew have tested positive. One sailor has died. Captain Crozier himself is in isolation on Guam with coronavirus. Michigan's governor telling CNN tonight people in her state could have

spread coronavirus after ignoring social distancing orders while protesting those orders. We're going to break down how people across the country are viewing the guidelines.

[23:30:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: So a new study is suggesting a significant difference in how Democrats and Republicans carry out social distancing measures. Researchers from Stanford, Harvard, and New York University looked at location data from smartphones across the country and found areas with a higher concentration of Republican voters engaged in less social distancing.

So, joining me now is Matthew Gentzkow, one of the authors of the study, and CNN senior political analyst Ron Brownstein. Gentleman, hello. Good evening.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Hello.

LEMON: Fascinating research here --

MATTHEW GENTZKOW, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, STANFORD UNIVERSITY: Hello.

LEMON: -- so let's talk about it. Matthew, I'm going to start with you. Your research is fascinating, finds that nearly 20 percent difference in people visiting places outside their homes between republican and democratic areas. You weren't able to identify someone's party based on their phone, so how did you use the data to figure this out?

GENTZKOW: Yes, that's a great point. We're using GPS data from smartphones, but we don't look at them at the individual phone level. What we're doing is comparing democratic and republican parts of the country, counties that tend to vote Republican and Democrat, and seeing whether overall in those areas there are differences in social distancing.

LEMON: So, how do you know that this is just at the hard hit areas right now where people will be taking social distancing more seriously, also happen to be an urban areas that tend to be progressive? I mean, may have -- it doesn't mean it has anything to do with politics at all. It's just that in dense areas which happen to be big cities, people happen to be more liberal and democratic.

GENTZKOW: Right. Yeah. I think that's a really good question. That's actually what we see as the main contribution of this research. People I noticed before on surveys, there are differences in what Republicans and Democrats say about what they're doing. And our big concern was maybe that's just because the hardest hit areas, you think about Washington State or New York City, those tend to be democratic areas and it might just be people are responding to how serious the virus is. So, we did a lot of work to try to control for those factors, the severity of the virus, what state people are in, so we can adjust for the kind of shelter-in-place orders that people on to your -- under population density, whether you're in a city or a rural area.

So, we can adjust for all those things and basically compare republican and democratic areas that look otherwise similar. And when we do that, clean out all those other factors, this partisan difference still remains pretty large. As we've said, it's about 20 percent.

LEMON: All right. So, you feel like you control for that. OK. So, Ron, I want to bring you in because thousands of people gathered in Michigan's capital tonight.

BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.

LEMON: There's some video there. They were protesting the governor stay-at-home orders. Many stayed in their cars. But others, they weren't following the social distancing guidelines. This is what Michigan's governor said about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. GRETCHEN WHITMER (D-MI): They absolutely impacted peoples' lives today and threatened peoples' lives. And we'll never know the precise number of COVID-19 cases that come as a result of this gathering, but we know that there will be some.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: So, Ron, you know, the protesters say that they were worried about their economic existence, a very real concern for many Americans. Does that explain what we're seeing in this study, especially in areas that may be seeing -- may not be seeing many cases?

BROWNSTEIN: To an extent, but not entirely. There obviously is a geographic component to this. There's a piece coming out in The Atlantic that shows in virtually every state, even adjusting for population, the per capita number of cases of coronavirus is much higher in the big population centers than it is in the rural areas.

And modern American politics is that Democrats now dominate the big population centers in almost every state, even the reddest of states, while Republicans are strong in the smaller places that are feeling less of the public health threat from the disease.

Someone said to me a couple of weeks ago, in kind of blue America, this is seen as a public health crisis. In much of red America, the economic effect is more immediately apparent. I only got (ph) the entire story, Don. I also think part of the story is that a big part of the ideology for much of the republican base that Trump has very much touched on and accentuated is suspicion of expertise of all sorts, including medical expertise. The idea that all of these kind of "experts" are elitist looking down on you makes it a very receptive audience for the argument that they are, you know, basically trying to control your lives rather than trying to save your life. And I think that contributes to what you saw in Michigan today, too, along with the waving of some confederate flags, we might add.

LEMON: Yeah. Well, I think it's interesting because the virus doesn't really care what you are and what you believe in, whether you're Democrat or Republican.

BROWNSTEIN: Right.

LEMON: Matthew, I also think it is fascinating because your study doesn't explain why there are partisan differences, it is just that they exist, but it did find that Democrats and Republicans have very different beliefs about this pandemic. Talk to me about that.

[23:35:00]

GENTZKOW: Yeah, I think -- first of all, I think it's a great point as you were just saying. We need to be really careful to remember there are lots of very good reasons why different people might respond differently.

You might have different risks that you face based on your age and other things. You might have a job that requires you to go out. So, you don't want to jump to the conclusion that people who were doing different things are making mistake.

What we did do was survey about 2,000 people and asked them to make forecasts of how many cases they thought there would be in the U.S. over the month of April. There's one way to get it or there are really differences in the way people perceive the severity of the crisis.

And there is a pretty big gap there, too, between Democrats and Republicans. We even paid people up to $100 if they got the answer right, and still Democrats predicted a lot more cases in April than Republicans.

LEMON: Yeah. And you said we should look, Ron, to another study in The Atlantic tomorrow, right?

BROWNSTEIN: Yeah, absolutely. Don, we started this way. You know, if you look at the polling in March, Republicans were much less likely to say this was going to be a serious challenge than Democrats. That narrowed -- we saw that reflected in the differential activities of the Republican governors in many states versus the Democratic governors, even the Democratic mayors in the red states that we talked about that moved earlier to try to shut things down.

We saw some of those polling gaps narrow from late March through now as President Trump kind of reluctantly come along to the idea of closing down the country and virtually all Republican governors have, as well. But it is easy to imagine that as soon as he changes direction and kind of the whole Fox machinery gets behind the idea that we have to reopen the country and this is kind of, you know, nanny state run amuck, that republican opinion will shift.

We're going to see the same conflict, I think, in early May that we saw in late March, which is in particular these governors in red states trying to reopen while the mayors of many of the population centers are trying to keep things closed, and also more pressure on the Democratic governors if the Republican governors are saying we're open for business now and Democrats are still trying to say it's not safe to do so yet.

I think we're heading for a period of partisan conflict over this as soon as the president turns the corner.

LEMON: You are probably right. Thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate it. A Harvard study is warning social distancing will be the new normal

until 2022 if a vaccine isn't quickly found. We're going to bring you the latest on vaccine, treatment, and testing research. That's next.

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[23:40:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: OK. So, President Trump is anxious to reopen the nation, but medical experts and governors say more testing is needed and so is a vaccine. Let's bring in Dr. Kent Sepkowitz, a professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases at Weill Cornell here in New York. Did I get that right?

KENT SEPKOWITZ, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST, PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES AT WEILL CORNELL MEDICAL COLLEGE: Close enough.

LEMON: Close enough. I get it. Thank you very much. And then Dr. Esther Choo, the associate professor at Oregon Health and Science University. It is so good to have both of you on.

So listen. Dr. Choo, I'm going to start with you. According to a Harvard study, unless a vaccine becomes available, the U.S. may have to endure some social distancing measures on a rolling basis until 2022. So, how close are we to a vaccine?

ESTHER CHOO, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, OREGON HEALTH AND SCIENCE UNIVERSITY: I mean, a lot closer than we've been almost any other circumstance. There's an amazing team at the NIH led by Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett that is moving about as fast as they possibly can, thanks to their early experiences developing vaccines.

Still, it's probably going to be this fall until we're able to roll out early vaccination of health care workers first, and then at the very earliest assume everything goes perfectly smoothly, which is not always the way that science goes, but if everything goes smoothly, then probably spring before there will be widespread vaccination.

So, it is not immediate, but not the usual time course for vaccines, which sometimes can be years.

LEMON: All right. So, it'll be faster, but not May 1st. OK. So, Dr. Sepkowitz, business leaders told the president on a call today that testing is a key to reopening the country. We still don't have widespread testing. Without that, what happens?

SEPKOWITZ: We're lost without that. We are just as much in the dark as we were two months ago in terms of how it spread, who it spread to, how -- why one person gets sick and the other does not. So, without this basic tool, we're just kidding ourselves. It's kind of bizarre that we haven't moved through really with wide-scale testing and yet we're pretending that May 1 is somehow a reasonable target, May 1 has complete random selection, and we're focusing on the wrong thing.

We need to understand which way is up, how bad it is, do 10 percent of the people in New York City have antibody. We don't know the most basic stuff, and it's incredible to me that we're talking about reopening without really the first fact in place.

LEMON: Why are you shaking your head, Dr. Choo?

[23:45:00]

CHOO: Yeah, I'm in absolute agreement. I mean, the reason that we are here today in this pickle of all being at home is because we have no testing. And we know now this is an invisible virus. It's a very smart virus that spreads in the asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic stage. And the only way to make an invisible virus visible is testing. But we didn't have testing, at least not testing at a scale that allowed us to test asymptomatic people.

So, that's how we got here. When you are not able to see the enemy, you do what we had to end up doing, which is widespread hiding, basically. We are hiding from the virus because it's invisible. So, that's working. You know, for the most part, in places that are really aggressive about social distancing and stay-at-home orders, it's working and virus rates are going down and will continue to go down --

LEMON: So let me ask you this, Dr. Choo.

CHOO: -- until we'll back where we were at the beginning.

LEMON: Let me ask you this.

CHOO: Yeah.

LEMON: Let me get this question in. What about people who are saying, well, you know, the death rate and the number of people who have it is going to be lower than the flu maybe from 2018 and on and on? So, this was all for not. And then I'll get to Dr. Sepkowitz after this, please. Go ahead, Dr. Choo, quickly.

CHOO: Yeah. I mean, just simply not true. I mean, the death rate is kind of unknown because we are not doing widespread testing and we're missing a lot of cases outside of hospitals. But clearly from every piece of data we have, the death rate is extremely high with this disease.

LEMON: Got it. So, Dr. Sepkowitz, Dr. Fauci talked about these antibody tests. He says that they are not sure if they are really accurate and if they do work. They don't know the level between the level of antibody or the degree of protection. So, that's a big deal, right?

SEPKOWITZ: It's a big deal, but it's a whole lot better than nothing. I totally agree with everything Dr. Fauci says about this disease. But it's a start. It is very unlikely that people with positive antibody tests will be susceptible in the next months to exposure to someone who is infected.

So, we probably can take to the bank that much that in this sort of crisis, we can wiggle our way forward a little bit with the antibody tests. We've been burned with the antibody test in the past, for sure, just like we're getting burned now with some of the detection of some of the virus itself, swab test.

LEMON: Mm-hmm.

SEPKOWITZ: We've got to move slowly. We can't let the urgency cloud our judgment. But yeah, I think we can take the first step forward with widespread antibody testing, and we still have to swab people. We're going nowhere fast --

LEMON: Yeah.

SEPKOWITZ: -- with the diagnostic test for acute infection.

LEMON: Thank you both. Appreciate your time. We'll be right back.

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[23:50:00]

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LEMON: Our new normal may not include sporting events the way we have always known them, but can the major sports leagues operate in a way that isn't going to put teams and fans at risk?

Let's discuss now. Sports writer Rick Reilly is here. He is the author of "Commander in Cheat" and for every book he sells, he is donating a dollar to Feeding America. Rick, that's awesome.

RICK REILLY, SPORTSWRITER AND AUTHOR: Yes.

LEMON: That's really awesome. You're a good guy. It shocked me. I'm messing with you.

REILLY: I added a new chapter to the book for the paperback, which has even more eyebrow-melting stories about Trump cheating at golf. People are going to like it.

LEMON: We'll talk about that. Let's talk about this thing, though, because people love sports. A lot of people are saying, you know, I really miss sports, and we can understand everyone wants sports back. I mean, but listen, no one knows how to do it safely right now.

REILLY: Yeah, but there is a way I think, Don. I mean, Dr. Fauci gave us a little hope recently. He said, look, which is what I've been saying, play the games, just don't have fans, sequester the guys in the hotel, test them every day or whatever you got to do once a week, and play the games because then we could all watch them on television.

And can you imagine an NBA game where, say, a really bad free throw shooter is at the line and there's no fans and he can hear the announcer go, and this guy is a 47 percent free throw shooter, he's terrible, and the guy goes, you know, I can hear you, I'm trying to shoot.

I mean, golf. I think golf will be the first back hopefully by June. They're talking about mid-June. Golf, I would love to see golf without fans because people don't realize players get a great advantage with having fans. I've probably seen ten times the guys stand in front of Tiger's ball to keep it from going off the green, let it hit him in his chest, fall on the green so Tiger has a putt --

LEMON: Yeah.

REILLY: -- be able to do that. A lot of times, players hit it way in the rough just completely in the spinach. And when there are fans, all that is trampled down. They got an easy lie.

LEMON: Got it.

REILLY: With no fans, they're playing like you and I would have to. So it's going to be fascinating.

LEMON: So let's talk about baseball because baseball in particular has been talking about this and the governor of Arizona is open to this plan. What about the players and their families?

[23:55:00]

REILLY: Well, I mean, I think the baseball plan they're coming up with is fantastic for the families, especially, because their plan is to go to Florida and Arizona. They're not sure. But the idea is to go to Florida and Arizona, where they hold spring training every year.

They have all the facilities there. Guys rent houses or they stay in hotels. And so it will be easy to be with their families. And then they'll just play the whole season or at least half of the season in the spring training site.

The only weird thing is the American League and the National League will be mixed in Florida. The AL and the National League will be mixed in Phoenix. And you will have to rig up some kind of crazy World Series that has nothing to do with AL or NL. But I think it's -- I think it's a brilliant idea. They are talking about this in hockey, too. Taking everything to this small town in Canada that knows hockey, plays it in a small arena because you don't need a big arena, put it on TV. It'd be wild.

LEMON: Well, we'll see. We don't know. We'll see, though. I got to go, Rick.

REILLY: The sad thing --

LEMON: I got to run, though. I got to run, buddy. I'm out of time. I'll see you soon. But congratulations, keep doing what you're doing, especially with the proceeds for the book.

REILLY: Thanks, Don.

LEMON: Thank you, sir. See you soon. Thanks for watching, everyone. Our coverage continues.

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