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Dr. Anthony Fauci: "All Or None" Mentality On Reopening Isn't Helpful; Dr. Anthony Fauci: U.S. Needs Coronavirus Baseline Around "A Thousand Or Two Rather Than 20,000"; New York Attorney General Sues To Dissolve The NRA; Joe Biden Says He Is Briefed On Pandemic At Least Four Times A Week; Stimulus Talk Stalked. Aired 12-12:30p ET
Aired August 06, 2020 - 12:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[12:00:00]
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: How did it happen in an instant? Thank you Arwa so much for your great reporting as always. Thank you all so much for joining us this hour. I'm Kate Bolduan. CNN's coverage continues now with John King.
JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Thank you, Kate. Hello, everybody. I'm John King in Washington. Thank you for sharing your day with us. Trouble ahead, those the words of the nation's top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci who says he sees warning signs in the data and if those warning signs means the Coronavirus uptick could mushroom into surges if the country doesn't adjust its behavior I'm going to do that right now.
Another painful remainder today of the Coronavirus disruption, 1.2 million more Americans filing first-time unemployment benefits. We may hear from the President this hour, he is heading to Ohio today and he is again predicting the virus will just disappear and in his view it is already fading.
Now much of the data this hour is positive. The U.S. seven-day average of cases is the lowest it's been since mid-July. You see it there just under 57,000 new infections per day. That is important progress. Yes, but progress we need to note from a summer surge point that simply didn't have to happen.
Remember the baseline was down to 20,000 new cases per day back not too long. Dr. Fauci says even that was too high, not a good baseline, are his exact words. Another thing to watch the number of daily tests fell again on Wednesday to 665,000. That's the lowest level since July 8th. Experts say millions of tests per day are the number required to map and then control this pandemic.
Even as the new cases are falling new deaths sadly are not at least not yet 1,388 COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday the United States averaging at the moment 1,000-plus deaths a day. The presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden says he would roll back some reopenings if he was in charge today and in a new interview the Former Vice President talks in detail about the challenges of reopening schools.
The President sees things more black and white. He says the economy should stay open and that schools must reopen. Listen to Dr. Fauci and you hear something you don't hear that often from the President. Talk of a middle ground.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Some people tend to think you really need to shut down completely or some people then think let it rip. Just do anything you want. No. You can proceed to open up the country and get the economy back even when you have situations that we have now. So we have to get away from that all or none phenomenon. We can carefully proceed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Let's take a look through the numbers and again many of them at this moment are more encouraging. First let's start with our state trend map, if you look at this map what do you not see, not a lot of red. Only a little bit of orange. That is great. Three states trending up. Two in orange, one is red and the red is Hawaii, Illinois and Massachusetts trending up.
24 states that's the beige or the yellow holding steady. 23 states that's the green heading down including Florida and California, Arizona they have been part of the big summer surge. As of this day, this is a much better map than we have seen in sometime. Just for comparison remember this.
Remember this? This is one month ago. One month ago look at all that orange and all that red 32 states trending up one month ago. Again I just want to come back to this. This is a much improving map. Three states trending up. 23 states down and 24 steady.
Sadly and we have learned this the last six months, even as the case picture improves, and let's hope it stays that way deaths are lagging and we still have 15 states where deaths are higher this week than the previous week. This is an improvement from the last few days but still 15 states the deaths are still trending up.
17 steady, 18 states where the deaths are trending down including the large state of Texas which is been part of the summer surge. So where are cases going down? Florida and Arizona have been part of the summer surge. You see the seven day moving average in Florida the red line trending down that's the good thing.
The challenge is keep it there and push that lower. Arizona same deal you sees the seven-day moving average moving down. New Mexico, smaller number of cases numerically but still you had the summer surge now you see that trending down that's the way you want to keep it. The question is does it come back?
Where do you see cases going up? Illinois is one of them and the numbers here are pretty sizable. You see it is not a giant spike but the seven-day moving average trending up and trending up the Governor there trying to move on that. Hawaii, a smaller state, much lower case count if you're doing individual numbers but again you see it pretty low in July, beginning in July trending up there that's what you do not want happening. Here is one of the things we watch as the state by state data does improve, the question is, is there something troublesome around the corner?
Positivity in the case, the percentage of new Coronavirus tests that coming back positive, you see Nevada's seven-day average it was moving down. 32 percent, it was 32 percent yesterday. That is evidence of major community spread Nevada now among the hotspots.
Dr. Deborah Birx of the White House Task Force looks at these areas here Boston, Baltimore and D.C., Atlanta, Detroit, Chicago, Kansas City, Omaha, the central valley out in California, Portland, and Oregon. These are the places she identifies right now as of major concern to the White House Task Force why? Because positivity rates are going up and if you listen to Dr. Fauci a little bit more.
[12:05:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. FAUCI: What Dr. Birx is saying is now is the time to accelerate the fundamental preventive measures, that we all talk about masks, social distancing, avoiding crowds, outdoors greater than indoors, washing hands et cetera.
Those kinds of simple things can actually prevent that uptick from becoming a surge. So she was warning the states and the cities to be careful because this is a predictor of trouble ahead.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Here with me now to share her expertise and her insights our CNN Medical Analyst, Former CDC Disease Detective Dr. Seema Yasmin. Dr. Yasmin, thank you so much for being with us. We're at one of these cross roads moments where I need your expertise to help people understand.
If you look at the state by state map, that is the most optimistic map I have been able to show in quite some time and yet you hear Dr. Fauci and you hear Dr. Birx say potential trouble ahead. Explain that.
DR. SEEMA YASMIN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Potential trouble ahead, John, because we are kind of playing whack-a-mole in a way in that some states they see the surges. We saw this in New York and the Northeast and the spring then they see a decline and then what do we see is more new hotspots.
More states dealing with very troubling numbers of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths so even as you saying rightly that places like Arizona and Florida may be starting to plateau and may be seeing a decline two things are happening. One is in most states they're still not doing enough testing on a daily basis.
In Arizona they're only doing about 16 percent, 16 percent of the daily testing that they should be doing. It's really low. And the test positivity rate is really high. On the other hand I'm worried about John and this is what I think Dr. Fauci is alluding to when he says about bad predictions for the future is even as some states are getting a handle on things possibly we are seeing spikes in places like Montana, Missouri and Oklahoma.
So these are some mid western states that historically have had lower levels of COVID-19 infections and then we're starting to see these troubling metrics that could spell out a bad news for the future.
KING: And so those states are less populated so if they start to spike there, every case counts and every individual who is ill accounts obviously. But the numbers would move less dramatically if it is in the smaller states. The issue is and Dr. Fauci tried to explain this, as if we were back in time we were down around Memorial Day to about 20,000 cases nationally on average per day.
Everybody thought well, the United States is doing a much better job. Then we have this summer surge. Listen to Dr. Fauci who makes clear he wishes that when we are at that 20,000, everybody would have taken a breath slowed down about reopening and shoved that down more.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. FAUCI: We saw in Arizona which was a good example they went up and they started to really clamp down and do things right and the cases came right down. We can do that throughout those areas that are surging. So we will be able to get that baseline down to a level of hundreds of cases and maybe 1,000 or 2,000 rather than 20,000.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: How long would that take? If, if we are perfect or near perfect and by we that means 50 states, that means 13,000 school districts now as we go into the school year, how long would it take to feasibly get down to where Dr. Fauci wishes we were before the reopening happened? 1,000? 2,000 cases a day? Right now we're closer to 50,000.
YASMIN: So in the midst of this despair and these really troubling numbers John I think here is where we can find some hope and some optimism because the message is really this. If we were to start taking this seriously tomorrow, if we were to start saying, instead of doing about 600,000 or 700,000 tests a day in America.
We're going to really aim for at least 2 million if not 4 million tests a day, if we're going to make sure we get those test results back in a few days, if we're going to follow up with contact tracing and isolating then we're looking at a situation where we can start to see those lower levels of daily infections in about six weeks.
So that's the optimism here that if we were to take it seriously we actually have the public health tools and strategies that can help us do that. Sadly we are flailing because we are not taking these very basic measures and that's like Dr. Fauci saying is that we reopened too early sadly. We got down to 20,000 cases a day, which is still really high, compared that to what Italy was doing, Germany was doing. They were only reopening when that baseline was very, very low. But I think the message needs to be that we are fatigued, we are so fed up out of our brains of this pandemic.
But if the government was to really get us act together tomorrow take this seriously have a cohesive national strategy we could start to get back to normal as other nations have within the next month or two.
KING: Well, then let me close with this. There are seeds of potential optimism. Let me put it that way. Let me show you a map. There 20 states where the positivity rate is up this week compared to last week and yet at the very same time testing is down.
[12:10:00]
KING: The number of tests conducted is dropping in those states even as the positivity rate goes up. That's a problem, right? That's a wrong direction?
YASMIN: A huge problem and actually when you look at these graphs of what the test positivity rate is in different states and then on the same graph you can see how much testing is that state actually doing you start to see a correlation, John.
In the Northeast states like Vermont, Maine, Connecticut where they have a really low infection rate, in fact, test positivity rates of around 1 percent, they're doing like 200 percent or 300 percent of the testing that they should be doing so they're knocking it out of the park and then you directly see, okay, these states are doing tons of testing.
Their infection rates are way down. That's how important COVID-19 testing is. Testing really helps you get a handle on a pandemic. It helps you figure out who's a case and who isn't? Who needs to have contact tracing and who doesn't? And those states really show that that's the strategy we all need to be taking.
KING: If we're going to get out of the whack-a-mole as you noted we're going to need all of the pieces at the same time. That is yet to happen. We'll see if we can get to that point. Dr. Yasmin, very much appreciate your insights. We'll continue the conversation and for much more on this cross roads moment join Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta, tonight for Coronavirus facts and fears that's live at 8:00 eastern right here on CNN.
Coming up, the President and his Democratic rival, well, very different takes on how much time and what to do to handle this pandemic?
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[12:15:00]
KING: Some breaking news just into CNN, the state of New York now suing in an attempt to dissolve the National Rifle Association. Here's the New York Attorney General just moments ago.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LETITIA JAMES, NEW YORK ATTORNEY GENERAL: Just a few minutes ago my office filed a lawsuit against the National Rifle Association to dissolve the organization in its entirety. For years of self dealing and illegal conduct that violate New York's charities law and undermine its own mission.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Let's get right to our Crime and Justice Correspondent Shimon Prokupecz. Shimon, it would be a big deal but I also want to note it's also an election year. Is there merit to this suit? Does the Attorney General think she can prove enough criminal conduct to dissolve this organization?
SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. That's exactly the question I posed to her because she is going to be criticized for doing it in August just months from the election. Of course, the NRA a very pro-republican group, I asked her specifically if she was concerned about the President's reaction to this which I'm sure we'll get at some point.
And she said look, this is all based on the facts and what their investigation has found. They spent months subpoenaing information from various organizations. They say they have whistleblowers people who worked at the NRA, they also subpoenaed information from a marketing company that once did work for the NRA.
So they say they have a lot of information which essentially shows that its leader, the NRA's leader Wayne LaPierre, was using the organization as basically a slush fund to fund a lavish lifestyle. It was money that they used that was supposed to go to the organization that they used for personal gain, flights, meals, things we always hear in some of these organizations.
They say they have the receipts, they have the information. The other thing that she says that basically the organization took millions of dollars away from its charitable mission and, of course, filing this lawsuit in New York, John, because the NRA, the organization, is registered as a charity here in New York State.
And so that's why the Attorney General has jurisdiction over the organization. She was also asked if she would be referring this for criminal charges. She is alleging all sorts of misconduct, some of it illegal and potentially criminal she would not discuss that but she did say that they were referring some of the information that they received to the IRS because there are allegations that they lied on their tax returns and tax forms so all of this is still very much early.
She filed the lawsuit today. The NRA is expected to respond to the lawsuit so we're waiting to hear from them on that, John.
KING: Important issues and we can't discount the timing, as well. Shimon Prokupecz in New York we'll watch this one as it plays out. Thank you so much for us. The President attended his first Coronavirus Task Force meeting since April the other day. He tweeted some pictures so that you knew he was right there in the thick of it his first task force meeting in more than three months.
And we know he sometimes goes weeks or more without talking to his experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci. Elections are about choices. That's the old saying goes. So how much attention does Joe Biden give the pandemic?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Four times a week, an hour a day. I just did one through an 87-page memo with my team. Including Vivek Murphy who you know and other docs, former Heads of the CDC, they're part of an entire team that I have that we put together and go through it at least four times a week.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Let's bring in our Chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash. Dana, elections are about choices and voters can decide what matters most to them. But in the middle of a pandemic it is striking to hear that the challenger Joe Biden who is out of government who has no authority about the levers of government spends a whole lot more time on this than the President of the United States?
DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It really is striking to hear that. There are so many reasons. Let's just start with a one basic. Joe Biden is a creature of government. As Vice President for two terms he dealt with obviously nothing as bad as this but certainly dealt with a lot of crises.
[12:20:00]
BASH: And understands the importance of getting briefed up and understanding what he doesn't understand. Never mind having to make policy decisions when he was in the Senate for all those decades.
Donald Trump comes at this from such a different point of view on so many levels. And - but the fact that, I think this is what you're getting at, the fact that Joe Biden who isn't in charge and doesn't have the responsibility that Donald Trump does seems to be more engaged than Donald Trump is very telling.
Now we shall also say that Mark Meadows is Chief of Staff was - yesterday and insists that even though he doesn't go to Task Force briefings he is constantly on top of it. You know? He maybe has a different style but in knowing the basics like the charts that he puts forward in interviews and the basic information whether he chooses to ignore the bad things or whether he just doesn't listen to it, we don't know the answer to that.
KING: And so again, let's dig deeper into it. The big issue of many parents around the country are going through right now, we know a little bit about this, is can my kid go back to school? What will it be like? What precautions are the schools taken? Will it be in class? Will it be online?
Let's listen to the two of them here the two candidates for President, one the incumbent and one the challenger discussing a central issue for parents in America today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Parents want the schools open. We want them open, safely. We're going to practice very strong hygiene and all the other things that I've enumerated many times. But we want to see the schools open.
BIDEN: First get the cases down in the communities through social distancing, masking, testing, tracing and PPE. Second, give school districts uniform guidance without interference on effectively and safely the safety protocols including ventilation, physical changes in classrooms and third gives those district the resources to implement the guidance.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Again, they sound a lot different. The Vice President offering more details, the President saying we're going to practice hygiene, keep them open.
BASH: Yes, because this is a President who understands that schools have such a direct correlation to society and the economy opening. They all are connected as we have talked about so many times and the President is desperate to do that.
Never mind not really appearing to learn the lesson of what Dr. Fauci has been talking about over the past 24 hours which is that if you push too soon and too hard it is going to make it worse.
And again, just on the raw politics of this, Joe Biden doesn't have the responsibly right now but he does sound like somebody with more of a plan. He does sound like somebody who can have the empathy for parents and for school districts who want to do what the President is asking them to do.
They just don't have the capability of doing it and also keep kids safe and teachers safe and follow the guidelines of the President's own CDC.
KING: I want to shift gears here. Here you're the Chief Political Correspondent so that makes you the Chief of the stars among stars who are part of on the trail which premieres tonight, a documentary premiers on HBOMax tonight that is about many of the remarkable women that CNN has out covering this campaign. Let's play a little snippet we'll talk on the other side.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There is nothing like the rush of covering Presidential Campaign.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are CNN's eyes and ears on the ground.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We need to stand by. Be ready to go.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The embeds on a campaign bus, you're at a rally. Your life is not your own.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are in the thick of it right now.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We get a front row seat to history.
TRUMP: I am your President of law and order.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We thought 2016 was crazy.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Stressful, isn't it? Don't really breathe until the day is over.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You also just feel like you have to say something because if you don't say it who is?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What we have is an economic crisis, public health crisis, social crisis. This moment is unlike any other.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The question of what kind of leader do I want has never been more real than right now?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Why was this project so important? Let me just start before you answer by saying this is a great place to work in part because of the empowerment of people and the empowerment of reporting and to see all those remarkable women and you are the Chief of the Chiefs out there covering the campaign trail. And someone who has done it a few times it is pretty cool.
BASH: It is very cool. I want to give a shout out to Katie Hinman (ph). This is her brain child to really highlight and to take people behind the scenes and on the trail to really get a sense of what it's like. There are so many reasons why this is a remarkable film but I'll start with one.
I mean, John, when you started covering campaigns in 1988, the reporting--
KING: Child prodigy.
BASH: The reporting area did not look like it looks now, right?
KING: It didn't.
[12:25:00]
BASH: I mean, it was a lot more men, mostly men. There were some women but it was mostly men. The boys on the bus from before that and it are different now. Women have a long way to go but the fact that there is representation not just in terms of gender but also in terms of diversity have matched the very slowly changing but yet changing diversity of the candidates that we cover.
And I think that this documentary really shows that in addition to how exhilarating and grueling and exhausting and fantastic it is to have that front row seat to history.
KING: Well, it is a great project and we hope people can watch to get all the perspective that Dana just noted especially to also see some of the people that you don't see on television, there are a lot people you don't see on television who are out there busting there you know what's every day and they do an amazing job.
BASH: Yes, they are.
KING: And so they get some credit and this is why which is wonderful. Dana Bash I appreciate the insights there. And be sure to watch it "On the Trail: Inside the 2020 Primary" start streaming on HBOMax today.
Up next, a million plus new applications for unemployment benefits but still no signs of real progress as Congress considers new help for struggling American workers.
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[12:30:00]
