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Jon Steinbrecher, Mid-American Conference Commissioner, Discusses Cancelling The Season, College Football In Jeopardy Amid Pandemic; Experts: "No Way" Moderna Vaccine Will Be Ready By November Election; Mark Zandi, Moody's Analytics Chief Economist, Discusses Confusion Over Trump's Executive Action After Stimulus Talks Collapse; State Media: Lebanon's Government To Resign After Deadly Blast. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired August 10, 2020 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:30:00]

JON STEINBRECHER, COMMISSIONER, MID-AMERICAN CONFERENCE: What I can say is we've put in place a process to study and plan and prepare for the ability to provide competitive opportunities for our fall sports student athletes in the spring.

It will include bringing together administrators, coaches, student athletes, faculty and medical advisers to lay out essentially a 12- month calendar from January to December where we look at the possibility of playing two seasons in a calendar year and examine all the facts around it.

I've got a list of a host of items that you would all think about and then we'll come to some conclusions. And then, somewhere down the road, whether that's in October or November or December or really when the virus allows us to, we'll make some determinations.

I would also say, we'll engage our student athletes very deeply in this conversation of, do they want a spring season or would they prefer to roll it into the next fall.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Interesting.

So a lot of folks are seeing this as the decision by the MAC as the first domino to fall. Do you think that the mac is the first domino to fall for the other major conferences like the Power Five?

STEINBRECHER: I have no idea. You have to make the decisions in the locales you're at based on the information you have.

These are all wonderful conferences of just world-class universities across all of FBS. They're all guided by wonderful medical advisers. And I know they're all looking deeply at the information in front of them and I trust they'll make decisions that are in the best interest of their student athletes.

BOLDUAN: Has any of the heads of the Power Five reached out for you for advice? Because you've looked at this so closely. You're so entrenched in it. What advice did you have if they did reach out or would you have for them right now?

STEINBRECHER: No, really no. I haven't been in communication with a number of them. I communicated with all of the FBS commissioners in advance of our making the announcement.

In fact, we've been having conversations over the past months and I shared, in the weeks leading up to this, that we were, as a league, skeptical of our ability to move forward. But we're continuing to work the process.

I have heard from several individuals who were thoughtful in their comments. They did not ask for advice. I didn't provide any.

But, again, we are all membership organizations where -- this is not a commissioner in a conference office making a single decision. It's a commissioner who is providing a structure for their membership to come together and, in a thoughtful process, work through the information to come to some conclusions.

BOLDUAN: You had to make that tough call.

Commissioner, thank you for coming on. I appreciate your time.

STEINBRECHER: Good to be with you.

BOLDUAN: Thank you.

Coming up for us, President Trump goes around Congress when it comes to economic relief related to COVID. Will these executive orders that he announced over the weekend actually provide any real relief?

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[11:37:48]

BOLDUAN: Major questions this morning about President Trump's executive orders signed over the weekend. The president says that they will deliver relief to millions of Americans out of work and businesses struggling because of the pandemic.

But is there any real help here behind the president's promise?

Joining me now is Mark Zandi, the chief economist for Moody's Analytics.

Mark, I'm so glad you're here. I read your deep dive into this with much interest. I want to dig into the various elements in a second.

But overall, how much do these orders, even if fully implemented, do -- how much do they do to help? Is there a "there" there?

(AUDIO PROBLEM)

ZANDI: No, there's no "there" there.

(CROSSTALK) BOLDUAN: I think we're having --

(CROSSTALK)

ZANDI: Not much at all. It's distracting from the practicalities of -- (AUDIO PROBLEM) -- implementing something like this any time soon. (AUDIO PROBLEM)

BOLDUAN: Mark, we're going to try to fix -- we're having a technical glitch. Welcome to the coronavirus era.

We're going to try to fix our connection with Mark and we're going to get back with Mark in a second to continue that conversation.

In the meantime, as we try to fix that, let me move on to this, President Trump claims that he is optimistic a COVID vaccine will be available by Election Day, by the beginning of November.

But vaccine experts tell CNN there's no way that will happen. That's not just -- that's not opinion. That's based on data from the drug company, Moderna, the first company to begin phase three trials on a vaccine candidate in the U.S.

CNN obtained a portion of an e-mail from the company to principal investigators in its trial and the details undermine any claim from the president or otherwise that a vaccine should be ready in less than three months now.

CNN's Elizabeth Cohen joins me with all the details on this.

Elizabeth, what did you find out from this e-mail?

DR. ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Kate, there's no magic in vaccine trials. You have to recruit 30,000 people for this particular trial.

You have to give them a first shot and then wait a month to give them a second shot. You have to wait for it to work. You have to wait to see if they get sick or not.

[11:40:04]

And so this e-mail we got from Moderna, sent from Moderna to their scientists running these trials, shows us that is not going to happen by Election Day, according to the experts we consulted.

Let's take a look at what we found. This internal e-mail says that between July 27th and August 7th, Moderna managed to give the first round of shots to 4,536 study participants. Now mind you, they need 30,000.

Moderna expects to give first shots to all 30,000 sometime in September. Finish that first round. And then they said their second dose will be 28 days later.

Now even if Moderna does ramp up the speed at which they are giving people shots, and I think by all accounts they will, when you start off, it's always going to be slower than when you've ramped up.

Even if they do get all those shots into arms by, you know, sometime in September, they then have to wait 28 days. They have to give the second shot.

It takes about two weeks to really get immunity. And then you have to wait and send these people into the world to see who gets coronavirus and who doesn't get coronavirus.

They said there's just absolutely no way that that is going to happen by November 3rd.

One note, Kate, just after -- I'm sorry. Just after Moderna started their trial, Pfizer started their trial. Their CEO has said he thinks they will be essentially done in October and ready to go to the FDA to ask for permission to put it on the market.

But, again, the experts I talked to said they think that timeline is very, very unrealistic -- Kate?

BOLDUAN: Still with Moderna, I wanted to ask you, if the Moderna vaccine turns out to be effective, what is the realistic timeline experts think could get to market?

COHEN: Right. First of all, I'm glad you said "if" it turns out to be effective. It might not work. None of these might work. That's why they're doing these clinical trials.

The experts I consulted, as well as Tony Fauci, pointed to first quarter of next year. Dr. Fauci said December of this year, January of next. The vacsologists thought it would be in the first quarter. Dr. Hotez said I think by Inauguration Day.

By mid to late January, we might have a glimmer of whether or not this vaccine -- and Moderna and Pfizer, whether or not they might have a chance of working, what that data looks like, both in terms of is it safe and does it work.

BOLDUAN: So interesting.

Elizabeth, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

I think we've fixed our connection as well with Mark Zandi, of Moody's Analytics. Bring him back in to talk about the executive orders that President Trump signed over the weekend.

Couldn't hear any of the top answer, so say exactly the same thing you said, Mark --

(CROSSTALK)

BOLDUAN: -- because I'm sure it was gold.

Overall, how much do these orders, if they are fully implemented, that the president has announced, how much do they do to help? ZANDI: Well, you know, if they're fully implemented, that's a key

assumption, because that's going to be tough to get done given the legal obstacles and the practical obstacles of getting anything like this accomplished in the near future.

But abstracting from all of that and assuming the president gets exactly what he wants today, retroactive back to August 1st, the total package is about $400 billion. For context, the Democrats have proposed $3.4 trillion. The Senate Republicans about $1 trillion.

My calculation, we need about $1.5 trillion, something of a compromise between the Democrats and Republicans, to avoid going back into recession. And $400 billion, even if he got all of that, it wouldn't cut it.

BOLDUAN: There's not a lot there. Even if it -- and that's even if it would happen, which we're not sure it can or will.

So let's focus in on the unemployment benefits. What the president says, they've got is $400 a week in additional unemployment benefits. Some of it now, they say, has to come from state governments.

Even with all this confusion, is that enough, $400 a week, do you think?

ZANDI: Well, it's not going to happen, even $400. This is another program. It's not like he's saying let's fund $400 a week through the existing program.

BOLDUAN: Right.

ZANDI: You have to set up a whole new system here. And that's not going to happen. As we can see, the states cannot implement an effective way with the current U.I. system, let alone try to resurrect or put up another system.

Even if he got $400 a week, that would be OK, but it still would cost the economy, by my calculation, about 700,000 jobs by the end of the year.

You know, but, again, that's very farfetched. There's no way he's going to be able to implement something like this, at least not in any timeframe helpful to the folks that now are out of benefits.

BOLDUAN: That's the point. Time is of the essence. This isn't a 10- year program we're talking about here. It's the here and now. You and I have discussed this previously with other efforts.

ZANDI: Yes.

[11:45:04]

BOLDUAN: In general, Mark, there has been a debate over, when it was $600 a week, when it came to unemployment insurance during the pandemic.

Do you see evidence that that was disincentivizing people from going back to work? That's the arguments the White House is making?

ZANDI: Yes, I really didn't. I mean, sure you can come up with anecdotes of folks taking advantage of the system but you can't see it in the data.

For example, I looked across states and looked at replacement, assessed the amount of unemployment insurance people were getting relative to previous wages, and looked at what happened with regard to job growth and unemployment, and there's no discernible relationship. You can't see it in the data.

So, you know, my guess is that if the economy were in a better place, if unemployment was at 10.2 percent, and you had this kind of a program, there would be disincentives.

But in this current environment, people are nervous about getting a job. If they're offered one, they're going to take it, regardless of whether they get these extra benefits for a few more extra weeks.

So I think that's a really stretched argument at this point.

BOLDUAN: The payroll tax cut, it's actually like a payroll tax deferment. What does this do? Democrats and Republicans were against it. That was one of the problems in the early days.

ZANDI: Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I mean, this is -- you're not getting a tax cut. All you're doing is delaying the tax payments to the -- to next year and then your tax payments next year will be higher.

Kate, no employer is going to implement this. For this to be workable, the employers will have to change withholding schedules for their employees. But the employers know that, you know, this is not a tax cut, that, next year, their employees have to pay more. So they're not going to implement it.

So at the end of the day, this isn't going to happen. It's just not workable.

BOLDUAN: I mean, guys, listen to Mark. One, none of this is likely to happen. And, two, it's empty promises. It's a press release and nothing more when you look at the -- when you try to grasp the need that is out there right now.

Mark, thank you. It's always good to have you.

ZANDI: Sure thing, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, state media is now reporting the Lebanese government will soon resign. This is just days after the massive explosion that rocked Beirut. What does this now mean for a country very clearly already in crisis?

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[11:51:44]

BOLDUAN: Major political fallout today from that deadly explosion in Beirut. State TV in Lebanon is reporting the government will be stepping down today. Reports are the prime minister will make the formal announcement next hour.

Just last week, that massive explosion brought the city of Beirut and the country to a standstill, killing more than 160 people. So far.

CNN's Ben Wedeman is on the ground and joining me now from Beirut.

Ben, what are you learning about the resignations?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: What we know already is that a variety of ministers have already announced that they're resigning from this government that was formed on the 21st of January, so it's relatively new.

But simply the pressure from this street is so intense after that explosion last Tuesday evening that this government clearly has a very limited life span at this tonight.

We understand that the president (sic), Hassan Diab, will go to the presidential palace and submit his resignation. He is scheduled to make a televised address to the nation in 40 minutes.

But certainly, in addition to the blast, the Lebanese economy is collapsing. Lebanon is struggling with a coronavirus pandemic, which has seen, for a few days, record new numbers of cases.

And the problem is that the people are not just blaming this government for these disasters but the Lebanese state, writ large, Kate.

We have gone day after day to the areas most affected by the blast and what we have seen is ordinary citizens are doing all the work of cleaning up, of taking care of those who have been injured, of generally doing the job of what a government should be doing.

And what we have seen is that the government is represented in those areas by police and soldiers who are doing little more than sitting, sipping tea and smoking cigarettes -- Kate?

BOLDUAN: Unbelievable on a normal day but unbelievable seeing the scope of that devastation that that could be happening right now.

What is the latest on the investigation into that devastating explosion, Ben?

WEDEMAN: Well, the investigation is moving slowly ahead.

Now, what we have learned so far is that officials within the government had told various other organs within the government that something has to be done about the fact that 2,750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate are sitting unsecured in a warehouse in Beirut port, in a warehouse that also contained confiscated fireworks. But at this point, it seems that everybody is sort of passing the buck, saying, well, I told somebody to take care of it but then it just sort of goes in circles.

And so the investigation is really doing in circles, as well, since nobody seems to want to take responsibility for what happened.

[11:54:57]

And if you look at the history of investigations going back decades into a long string of assassinations of presidents-elect, presidents, prime ministers, former prime ministers, human rights activists, journalists, government ministers and others, in no case has anybody actually gotten to the bottom of those crimes.

And you speak to ordinary Lebanese and they think, in this case, it will be no different. The truth will never emerge -- Kate?

BOLDUAN: Tragedy compounding tragedy.

Ben, thank you.

Coming up still, a new study says nearly 100,000 children tested positive for coronavirus in the last two weeks of July. What should that mean for schools? That's next.

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