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Robert Trump, Younger Brother of President Trump, Dies at 71; World Health Organization Reports Record Number of New Coronavirus Infections; CDC Acknowledges Kids Do Spread COVID-19; Trump Shifts Blame to Democrats for USPS Problems; Biden and Harris Prepare for Democratic National Convention; Protests Continue in Belarus. Aired 12-1a ET

Aired August 16, 2020 - 00:00   ET

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

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): This is CNN breaking news.

KIM BRUNHUBER, CNN HOST (voice-over): Welcome to you, our viewers here in the United States and around the world, I'm Kim Brunhuber. This is CNN NEWSROOM.

We are following breaking news at this hour. U.S. president Donald Trump suffered a great personal loss. He says his younger brother, Robert Trump, died Saturday at a New York hospital. CNN's Kristen Holmes has been traveling with the president and filed this report for us from Bridgewater, New Jersey.

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KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: President Trump's younger brother, Robert Trump, passing away late Saturday night, a night after President Trump had gone on an impromptu visit to New York City.

The press had known he was going to New Jersey at the last minute. They told us he was going to a hospital in New York to visit his brother, Robert. We had known he had been seriously ill but not clear what illness he had. He had been in and out of the hospital since the spring.

The White House issued a statement on behalf of President Trump. It is clearly an emotional and sentimental statement here.

It says, "It is with heavy heart I share that my wonderful brother, Robert, peacefully passed away tonight. He was not just my brother, he was my best friend. He will be greatly missed but we will meet again. His memory will live on in my heart forever. Robert, I love you. Rest in peace," the president said.

Clearly there, you can see the strength of their relationship. The president said on numerous occasions that Robert supported his candidacy for president 1,000 percent. Again, it is unclear exactly what the illness is that Robert Trump

passed from. We are waiting to hear more information from the White House. It is, again, his younger brother, who had been ill since around the spring, passed away late Saturday night -- Kristen Holmes, CNN, traveling with the president in Bridgewater, New Jersey.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: In less than an hour, Ivanka Trump tweeted out, "Uncle Robert, we love you. You are in our hearts and prayers, always."

Earlier this week, President Trump spoke at the White House about his brother. This is what he had to say.

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TRUMP: I have a wonderful brother. We've had a great relationship for a long time from day one. It's a long time ago. And he's in the hospital right now and hopefully he'll be all right. But he's pretty -- he's having a hard time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRUNHUBER: Late Saturday night Robert Trump passed away, President Trump is expected to attend his brother's funeral. He was 71 years old.

Meanwhile, the world is still losing ground in the battle against the coronavirus. The World Health Organization received reports of a record number of new cases in the last 24 hours, more than 294,000.

The figures from the U.S. are just as grim. It's reporting an average of 1,000 deaths or more from COVID-19 in a 24-hour period. That brings the U.S. death toll to more than 169,000.

Now California is still the hardest hit state with more than 12,000 new cases, including backlogs.

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BRUNHUBER: In Georgia, the governor is letting cities impose mask mandates with some restrictions. His executive order says they can't be forced on private property or at polling places.

And there the a scary report coming out of the CDC. It says COVID-19 rates among children are steadily increasing. The agency says children now account for more than 7 percent of all cases. Kids under 18 make up about 22 percent of the population.

The CDC also says one in three children hospitalized with the virus ends up in the ICU and that's the same rate as for adults.

Now those CDC numbers on children will certainly give parents something to think about as they ponder about what to do about school. Cristina Alesci has more on what top experts are saying about the virus is affecting kids. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CRISTINA ALESCI, CNNMONEY CORRESPONDENT: That's right, new CDC guidelines that parents might want to consider as they weigh whether or not to send their children back to school this fall.

The CDC now acknowledging children do transmit the virus in places like homes and summer camps. The CDC also noting the number of cases among children is rising: now 7.3 percent of all COVID-19 cases are among children. That is up considerably since CDC's last guidance, which was at 2 percent for children with COVID.

Also the CDC noting that the lower rates in children could be attributable to school closures in the early part of the pandemic and that's why it was lower for children.

Now given the new guidance, it is entirely appropriate to be questioning public officials, including governors and mayors, who have put forth plans to reopen schools or allow them to reopen.

In New York, particularly, the governor last week announced the fact that schools can reopen here. We have reached out to the governor here to see if these new CDC guidelines factor into the decision or change the plan at all. We have not heard back from them.

But educators here in New York City, the largest school district in the country, now expressing a lot of unease about schools opening here and whether they have the right precautions and the right equipment to deal with the large influx of students, who would be coming back to school here.

But for now, at least as far as New York is concerned, it looks like full speed ahead on school reopenings -- back to you.

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BRUNHUBER: Dr. Jonathan Reiner is a CNN medical analyst and professor of medicine at George Washington University. He joins me from Washington.

Thank you so much for joining us here. So let's start with the situation we're in now. Friday, we set the record for the most cases in a single day in August. But Saturday, President Trump claimed we have done it right.

Is there anything we have done right in this crisis?

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: No, not from a public health perspective. We're still not testing enough. We still don't have a universal mask mandate. We still have states that are open in really dense viral outbreaks, where they should be closed.

So there isn't a lot that we have done right. I will say that the care given to patients in hospitals throughout the United States has been magnificent. And the mortality rate, case mortality rate, is about half what it was at the beginning of the pandemic in the United States. So I think we've gotten that right and that's getting even better.

But from a public health perspective, no, we haven't gotten a lot right.

BRUNHUBER: So we heard dire predictions this week from the director of the CDC that said that the pandemic, coupled with the flu season, could create, quote, "the worst fall from a public health perspective we've ever had."

So then on Saturday, President Trump said he disagreed with those comments.

Who is more likely to be right here?

REINER: Yes, so the president really doesn't have the expertise to disagree with the CDC director. He may not like what the CDC director is saying. He tends to sideline people who issue statements that he finds distasteful.

But I agree with the CDC director's concern. Look, I'm hopeful that people wearing masks in the United States and social distancing will have a demonstrable effect on the flu. It should and I hope it does.

The other campaign that we need to start now is that we need to vaccinate everybody in this country for the flu. You know, in our best year in the United States, we barely vaccinate 60 percent of the population.

And if you look at younger people, it's barely a quarter. So we need to do much better than that this year and vaccinate just about everyone.

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REINER: We need to pave the way for making people comfortable getting vaccines, having trust in our public health experts, when we talk about vaccines and then look to vaccinate everyone when we have a COVID vaccine.

BRUNHUBER: But, yes, I'm curious as to how you will go about doing that?

Even with the COVID vaccine, for something that could be deadly, what is it, some third of Americans say they don't plan on getting it.

So how would you do that as a public health policy to try to get more people comfortable with the idea of vaccines?

REINER: Well, I think it's going to be different in different communities. But I think this has to be, people have to be educated at the grassroots level. I think, you know, there are parts of American society that distrust the government and, in those parts, I think it has to come from the people that are trusted in those parts of this country.

But the message has to be clear, that we won't release a vaccine until it's safe and effective. I hate the phrase "warp speed" because it sounds like we are just trying to get this out as quickly as possible.

You know, we have a saying during an emergency in the hospital, where we work quickly but we don't rush. I think that's the message that public has to understand.

We're working quickly but we're not rushing and we won't release a vaccine unless it's a great vaccine, restore public confidence in that. You know, we have a cancer vaccine. The HPV vaccine is a cancer vaccine. And barely half of teenagers are up to date on that. So we have -- we do have a long way to go.

BRUNHUBER: Now we used to think that the disease was basically just, you know, it impacted the lungs. But there seems to be more and more evidence it can have devastating effects on the cardiovascular system.

We heard the Heart Association this week say the cardiac complications of COVID-19 could be devastating and linger after recovery. And one doctor told CNN basically it was as if their patients' hearts were on fire.

I want to ask you, you are a cardiovascular specialist. I wonder whether there might be many otherwise healthy people who will have long-term chronic problems because of this virus.

REINER: Well, we'll see. We are learning a lot about this disease. This is a brand-new disease. We're learning about it in real time. And unlike the last major pandemic, the HIV/AIDS crisis in the '80s, now information is disseminated on a minute-by-minute basis. So we're learning a lot very quickly.

We know that if are you admitted into the hospital with COVID, about a third of those patients will have elevated cardiac enzymes, the muscle enzymes we use to detect small amounts of heart muscle damage.

There has also been a German study that used MRI data to look at whether people who are recovering weeks out have any evidence of the sort of small scars in the heart and you can see it in an almost 70 percent of patients.

You know, how meaningful these small scars are, we don't know. But we do know COVID is a systemic disease. It's not just a pulmonary disease. And it's best not to get it.

And you know, the message that some people have tried to disseminate, which is, you know, if you are not over 70 years old and you don't have substantial comorbid diseases, you are likely to do fine with this, is not true. It's best not to get this disease. It's best to wear a mask and social distance because we really don't know the long- term consequences of it.

BRUNHUBER: Yet, another reason people should take this seriously. Thank you so much for your time, Dr. Jonathan Reiner. We appreciate it.

REINER: My pleasure.

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BRUNHUBER: President Trump continues to attack mail-in voting. During a Saturday news conference, he repeated his unproven claims, that an election held largely by mail won't be fair or legitimate.

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TRUMP: We are going to have an election that takes place on a beautiful day, November 3rd. And usually at the end of the evening, they say Donald Trump has won the election. Donald Trump is your new president.

Whatever they say, you know what, you are not going to know this possibly if you really did it right for months or for years because these ballots are all going to be lost. They're going to be gone.

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BRUNHUBER: House Democrats are considering possibly cutting their summer recess short to deal with the growing controversy. The newly installed postmaster general and Republican donor, Louis DeJoy, has been criticized for changes he recently implemented.

Now those changes have effectively slowed down mail service by eliminating worker hours as well as hundreds of sorting machines. CNN confirmed the inspector general of the Postal Service is now reviewing those recent changes as well as DeJoy's ethics compliance. Senate Democrat Bernie Sanders responded Saturday with this brief tweet.

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BRUNHUBER: "The postmaster general must resign immediately."

Meanwhile, congressional leaders are speaking out about the impact President Trump's attacks could potentially have on voters.

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REP. JAMES CLYBURN (D-S.C.), MAJORITY WHIP: I never thought that I would live to see the United States of America tolerate a tyrant who seems to just trample upon our Constitution.

John Lewis would be so disappointed that he gave -- nearly gave his life to get the vote for people of color and to watch complicity of the Republicans in holding on to this kind of shenanigans is just beyond me.

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BRUNHUBER: As President Trump continues his attacks on mail-in voting, the United States Postal Service is warning of delivery delays to come. CNN's Sarah Westwood has more. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SARAH WESTWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: President Trump on Saturday continued to cast doubt on the reliability of mail-in voting, despite experts repeatedly saying that widespread voter fraud in the U.S. is exceedingly rare.

Many states have relied on mail-in voting to varying degrees for years. Although the postmaster general Louis DeJoy has made changes to the post office operations, that critics say will hamper its ability to deliver mail-in ballots at the volume expected in November, the president praised his efforts.

He also sought to draw a distinction between absentee voting and mail- in voting.

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TRUMP: Louis is working hard. As you know, the Democrats aren't approving the proper funding for postal and the proper funding for this ridiculous thing they want to do, which is all mail-in voting, universal, you could call it, mail-in voting.

Again absentee voting is great. I'm an absentee voter. I requested and got it and sent in my vote. That's what we've had. Now they want to send in millions and millions of ballots and you see what's happening. They're being lost. They're being discarded. They're finding them in piles. It's going to be a catastrophe.

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WESTWOOD: And the president recently requested his own absentee ballot. But the distinction between absentee voting and mail-in voting is not black and white. And in fact the lines between them are pretty blurred.

Both are conducted in much the same way. Their ballots are delivered through the mail and only nine states and the District of Columbia are doing what the president was warning about, which is mailing every voter a ballot.

In most states, people will still have to request a ballot in order to vote. The president also is exploiting the likelihood that the election result may not be entirely clear on Election Night because it does take longer to count mail-in votes.

The president tweeted Saturday morning, "The Democrats know the 2020 election will be a fraudulent mess. We'll maybe never know who won."

Meanwhile, the Postal Service in late July warned 46 states and the District of Columbia, that their election laws are incompatible with the Postal Service operations.

For example, they said some of the deadlines that states have set for requesting and turning in their ballots just doesn't leave the Postal Service enough time to get those ballots delivered -- Sarah Westwood, CNN, Washington.

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BRUNHUBER: Meanwhile, President Trump's challengers are preparing for the Democratic National Convention next week. Former Vice President Joe Biden and his new running mate, Kamala Harris, are getting ready to accept the party's nomination.

For now, Harris is taking a step into the spotlight. Jessica Dean tells us more.

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JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Newly minted vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris giving her first interview since that announcement was made earlier this week.

And in that virtual interview, Harris praising her running mate, Joe Biden, for having what she calls "the audacity to put a Black woman on the ticket" with him, going also into the policies that they hope to put in place but continuing to go back to Joe Biden, really playing that traditional role as the vice presidential candidate and elevating the person at the top of the ticket, in this case, that being Joe Biden.

Harris also continues to fuel an incredible fundraising boost for the Biden campaign. They announced they've raised $48 million over the two days after her announcement, which is just a shocking number, considering that, earlier on the campaign cycle, Biden wasn't raising that in a whole quarter of fundraising. They're raising that in 48 hours.

We are told that both Harris and Biden will be delivering their nomination acceptance speeches right here in Wilmington, Delaware, when the Democratic convention happens next week.

But until then, it's a pretty quiet weekend here in Delaware, as Harris and Biden prepare -- Jessica Dean, CNN, Wilmington, Delaware.

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BRUNHUBER: Protesters in Belarus aren't giving up their fight. They're demanding their president step down. Coming up, Fred Pleitgen tells us what they are risking.

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BRUNHUBER: The president of Belarus doesn't want foreign mediation to calm the protests in his country, saying, he won't, quote, "give up the country to anyone." But he has reached out to Russian president Vladimir Putin. The

protests started this week after a highly contested presidential election. Tens of thousands of people have risked arrest, violence and even alleged torture to demand Alexander Lukashenko step down. Fred Pleitgen has the latest.

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FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Protests by the opposition here in Belarus are continuing to swell over the weekend. If we pan over here, we can see this is Pushkin Square, one of the main streets leading into the center Minsk, the capital of Belarus.

There are literally thousands of people here. The way they protest, they stand at the side of the street, their flags out, many holding flowers in the air. The motorists come by and honk their horns in support of the opposition.

Obviously, in this country, which is one of the most oppressive in the world, this is something that takes a great deal of courage. There are many people who were arrested here in this country ever since the demonstrations started last Sunday after the election here.

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PLEITGEN: Thousands of people were arrested. Many of them were beaten while in detention. People telling us of torture while they were in detention, also people were paraded and humiliated on staged TV.

Nevertheless, the folks here are still coming out. They're still calling for Alexander Lukashenko to step down. But that's not something he thinks he is going to have to do. In fact, he says he won the election by around 80 percent of the vote. And he's already spoken to Vladimir Putin and is still very much clinging to power.

The opposition here, however, says that he will (INAUDIBLE) be elected. They are calling for a new vote and they're also calling for an end to violence by the police and by other security institutions here in this country -- Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Minsk, Belarus.

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BRUNHUBER: Just ahead on CNN NEWSROOM.

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TRUMP: I want college football to come back.

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BRUNHUBER: As more and more college athletes test positive for coronavirus, we'll talk to a top sports doctor about why he thinks the U.S. president might be out of luck.

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BRUNHUBER: Welcome back to you, our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Kim Brunhuber. You are watching CNN NEWSROOM.

The U.S. president Donald Trump is calling for the return of college football this fall, even though more college athletes are testing positive for coronavirus.

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TRUMP: I want college football to come back. These are strong, healthy and incredible people. These are people that want to play football very badly.

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BRUNHUBER: Mr. Trump made these comments as the University of Oklahoma announced that nine of its players have tested positive for COVID-19. Yet the team is still scheduled to open its 2020 season against Missouri State in September.

In the last week, the Big 10 and the PAC 12 conferences, two of what's known as the Power Five, voted to postpone their seasons.

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Dr. Brian Hainline is the senior vice president and chief medical officer for the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

Thank you so much for joining us on this important topic. Every day, we are seeing more cases of college athletes testing positive for coronavirus. The list of schools and programs is too long to list here. Let me start with this.

Given the severity of the pandemic, given we are already seeing so many cases of student athletes testing positive, should schools play sports?

DR. BRIAN HAINLINE, NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION: Well, it's a great question, Kim. So you know, the pathway to play sports is so exceedingly narrow right now. Everything would have to line up just perfectly.

And that's why you see so many schools have decided they can't play sports. It's not just an individual school decision. There are very strict mandates the NCAA has put out. The schools must follow this.

So you are seeing some of the schools made decisions very early. Many others made them more lately. And some conferences are still waiting. I think they're waiting for that one possibility that maybe there could be a breakthrough. But the mandates are pretty rigid. BRUNHUBER: But if the path to play is so rigid, why are so many

schools still going ahead?

HAINLINE: Well, so what they decided, the conferences that are still going ahead, they've postponed their season. And I believe that the rationale for postponing the season is a few things really need to get in place.

And one is that testing has to considerably shift in the United States. Right now, if testing stays as it is, there is no way we could go forward with sports. Contact tracing has to improve.

And the other thing that is the big unknown and really is a greater risk than playing sport, that's what happens when students resocialize in school. So there is really a risk even of students being in dorms.

And so can the schools handle that?

And can they create somewhat of a semi-permeable bubble?

Or is that going to really be sort of the downfall, that we can't even do that?

So those are the things that people are still weighing at the moment.

BRUNHUBER: Hmm, I wonder, there are so many parents out there who are sending their kids to school.

They're wondering, is it safe?

What do you say to those parents of student athletes who are wondering that.

Can you assure them that it will be safe for them to play?

HAINLINE: Well, I think that we can say with certainty that if there are sports or even a return to school, there will be positive COVID cases. So we know that.

So the question is what do we do as a society?

Does we stay closed down?

Does we try to open up, knowing we will do everything possible to keep everyone safe?

That's the balancing act. There's the, on the one hand, the economic collapse of our society if we all stay home. On the other hand, we know the only way you can really have a sound economy is if you have sound public health.

So the public health is continuing, hopefully, to improve. But again, that really depends on the infrastructure of testing and contact tracing. And right now, where we stand today, we're not in a place today where we can safely play sports. BRUNHUBER: You mentioned the economy. Some who have been trying to

get college sports shut down during this crisis complain that schools and health officials are being too lax because of the amount of money that college sports generates.

How would you respond to that?

HAINLINE: Well, there is no question that some schools generate a considerable amount of money. I think when you put this in perspective, you look at what COVID has really laid bare, that those that are able to move forward in our society, unfortunately, it's often dependent on the wealth that you have or the resources that you have.

And you are seeing the same thing play out in the United States with our colleges. You look at the only conferences that really have a possibility and an exceptionally narrow path at playing football. Those are the high resource schools because they can build their own infrastructure at their university that can allow frequent testing and can allow for a different level of contact tracing.

So it really is a metaphor for what's happening in the United States right now.

BRUNHUBER: Hmm, absolutely. Well said. All right, thank you so much for your time, Dr. Brian Hainline. I appreciate it.

HAINLINE: Thanks for the opportunity.

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BRUNHUBER: All right, so let's turn now to Nicole Auerbach, the senior writer for "The Athletic." She's in Chicago.

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BRUNHUBER: We just heard from Dr. Hainline, actually playing is unlikely, if I wrote his quote down correctly, he said, we're not in a position to safely play sport.

What do you think of all that?

NICOLE AUERBACH, "THE ATHLETIC": He said pretty clear throughout all of this. When they unveiled the document he referred to about certain guidelines that needed to be met to be able to participate in sports, it also outlined, if you hit certain criteria, you need to shut down.

Some of those pieces to the puzzle involve the community. They involve the pressure that college sports are putting on the healthcare system in certain communities, outbreaks, numbers like that.

As the doctor mentioned, the fact that regular students are returning to these campuses could end up making the decisions that haven't happened yet pretty straightforward. We're already seeing outbreaks at Notre Dame, North Carolina. These are schools that just started classes on Monday.

BRUNHUBER: It seems to me, you know, from the outside, that so much of this policy, at least from the schools and the conferences, is being formed on the fly. You see a conference saying, oh, we're going to play in the next week, we're shutting down, you know.

Speak to that for me. It seems that things haven't been thought out really well here.

AUERBACH: Yes, there are certainly schools of thought. People wondering what have these administrators been doing for the last 4.5 months?

They have been telling us they had contingency plans in places, even with two leagues, the Big 10 and the PAC 12, that did call it quits on the fall, they did have schedules released and that baked-in flexibility for them to make up games, move back the start if they needed to.

Then they still decided not even to get to that point. So people are making decisions that are changing on almost an hourly basis. It's sort of crazy, the conversations I am having with people in all different levels of college sport.

You also had the NCAA officially announce there will be no fall championships in the sports not major football this year, too. So right now, we're leading toward this path where only certain leagues and certain schools are going to try to play football.

That might be the only sport that they are trying to play. So again these decisions are going to continue to change on a rapid hourly basis.

BRUNHUBER: So I'll ask you the money question that I have asked the doctor there.

Is so much of the willingness to just forge ahead, just the result of the amount of money tied to college sports?

AUERBACH: The short answer is yes. There is a lot of money tied to these decisions. After the Big 10 and the PAC 12 made their decisions, we started hearing from athletic directors at places like Wisconsin that, one individual school could lose $100 million by not having one college football season.

That is money that funds and props up the rest of the athletic department. It allows them to sponsor other sports, pay coaches, have great facilities, you know, have scholarship opportunities for college athletes.

So those are the things that are going to be restricted if and when more leagues continue to pull back on the fall season. So there is a lot of money at stake in media rights deals. Obviously, a lot of these places are already saying, we're probably not going to get ticket revenue.

But the media money is still massive for these schools and for how they operate and sponsor other sports.

BRUNHUBER: Well, speaking of money, you know, the additional risks that the athletes are facing here has again raised questions about whether college athletes should be compensated.

What have you been hearing?

AUERBACH: This is a hot topic right now. You've had a number of student athletes speak up about not feeling safe about certain elements of, like you mentioned, economic disparities, the power imbalances between coaches, administrators, conference commissioners and the labor, which is being asked to play during a pandemic.

They've never had this kind of leverage before. They've always had a power, if they could be collective, they don't have a union. But they are now pushing for a players' association, some sort of representation. And they have that power.

They know how much money is at stake. We just went through some of it, if there is no fall season. So they know what they're worth and they have this leverage collectively. So with or without a fall season. I think that movement, the voices we are hearing from college athletes, is something that will continue into next year and beyond.

BRUNHUBER: Just speaking for myself, I love sports. I wish that they could, you know carry on. But just so many unanswered questions and so many things up in the air. Thank you so much for your time, Nicole Auerbach, senior writer for "The Athletic." Appreciate it.

AUERBACH: Thank you.

BRUNHUBER: Coming up, Japan has been relying on voluntary restrictions to handle the pandemic but not everyone is willing to follow through.

And the days-old bush fire in California continues to sweep through part of the state. So we'll have an update on the destruction coming up next.

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BRUNHUBER: Well, firefighters are taught to deal with all kind of scenarios during fires but running away from a bull, well, that's probably not one of them.

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BRUNHUBER (voice-over): You can see there, they did pretty well in that video. Those firefighters are some of the hundreds battling a huge bush fire in southern California, the Lake fire, as it's been called started Wednesday. It's burned more than 17,000 acres of land, which is only 12 percent contained.

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BRUNHUBER: More than 175,000 customers are still without power in Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota, five days after a damaging line of storms known as a derecho ripped through the Midwest. In Iowa, around 10 million acres of farmland were flattened and millions of bushels of stored grain were damaged or destroyed.

A ship that has leaked more than 1,000 tons of oil near the coast of Mauritius has broken apart. The country's national crisis committee released this photo, showing a large section of the ship now detached.

The Japanese vessel still has an estimated 90 tons of oil on board. It struck a reef three weeks ago near the island. Salvage crews have scrambled to pump the remaining oil from the ship to help save a nearby marine park that's home to mangrove forests and endangered species.

In Japan, officials are trying to manage COVID-19 numbers without imposing a lockdown. So far they've counted on public conscience to get through the pandemic but it seems that strategy is starting to backfire. Kaori Enjoji has the details from Tokyo.

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KAORI ENJOJI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The staff at Monsoon Cafe is thankful the customers are back. While it's hardly a full house, the diners come, knowing that the bar will be open until midnight.

This is just the kind of scene the Tokyo government wants gone, convinced that nightlife is a big reason behind Tokyo's infection surge since mid-July. It has asked all restaurants and bars to stop serving alcohol at 10:00 pm until the end of the month.

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KOZO HASEGAWA, CEO, GLOBAL-DINING: For what?

It doesn't make any sense. That's why I declare that we don't follow them. We keep on operating as normal as possible. I don't like to obey. I didn't like the Japanese culture that they expect you to obey.

ENJOJI (voice-over): Hasegawa says it's more than a question of financial survival.

HASEGAWA: Are you putting the business on top of the people's life?

Of course not. The life is the most important, freedom. Just like freedom.

ENJOJI (voice-over): Freedom to be out and about, despite day after day of record new infections. And there is a tinge of defiance among those who are venturing out.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): Yes, we share the reason to the government but we cannot always just swallow what they say.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): The government should pay us if they want us to act with restraints.

ENJOJI (voice-over): This shift in attitude presents a new challenge to a government that is restricted in its ability to impose a lockdown. Politicians and the public have been wary of overreach by authorities out of fear of rekindling memories of sacrifices during World War II.

Instead, Japan has relied heavily on the mantra of jisuku (ph), that one should hunker down for the collective good during challenging times.

KYLE CLEVELAND, TEMPLE UNIVERSITY: So the concept of jisuku (ph) means self-restraint, kind of a sober reflection, not being too ostentatious. So we saw this during the Fukushima nuclear crisis. It's not like a month ago jisuku (ph) existed and now it doesn't. What's happened in Japan is that people are gradually starting to accommodate this.

ENJOJI (voice-over): Pub owner Tokohari Hiraiama (ph) says he, too, is trying to adapt. Profits are gone. What's left are piles of raw fish with nowhere to go.

"I've decided not the put up a fight," he says.

A sign on his door signals that he has chosen to comply with government requests. By zapping this code on their mobile phones, passerbys (sic) are encouraged to report stores that are not being cautious enough.

Hiraiama (ph) says it's peer pressure. But he's not taking any chances. He says he can't afford to be ostracized when he is barely surviving. So he boards up, like many in his neighborhood, when the clock strikes 10:00 -- Kaori Enjoji for CNN, Tokyo.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: After the break --

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(MUSIC PLAYING)

BRUNHUBER (voice-over): Lissie is keen to feel peace and she wants you to feel it, too, as we all cope with the pandemic. I have been talking to the singer-songwriter about her contribution to what we could call the soundtrack of 2020. You will see what I mean. It's pretty cool. Stay with us.

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[00:50:00] (MUSIC PLAYING)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRUNHUBER (voice-over): The song is called "Peace" and couldn't we all use a little more of that in these times.

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BRUNHUBER: And the musician is Lissie. And the newly released video carries clips sent in by her fans, showing how they're coping with various forms of lockdown during the pandemic, the good, the bad, happy and sad times, they're all there. And it's kind of a soundtrack to 2020. And Lissie joins me now from Rock Island, Illinois.

Thank you so much for joining us. The song came out in 2018. But this video, the collage, the snapshots of fans' lives during the pandemic, it's a hopeful video for challenging times.

How did it come about?

LISSIE, SINGER-SONGWRITER: Yes, well, thanks for having me. In the very early days of quarantine, you know, as shows were getting canceled and I was talking to a lot of my creative friends and just adjusting with the rest of the world to this surreal new reality we are all facing collectively, a good friend of mine, a brilliant director and collaborator, though it would be a beautiful thing to encourage my friends and family and followers to submit honest videos of what lockdown was like for them in the beginning there.

And we encouraged them to send us the playful sweet things and also maybe some of the more harrowing or challenging or painful parts of it, too. To round it out, it's a collective human experience we are going through together.

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BRUNHUBER: What struck me from that experience that I saw, there wasn't necessarily the emotional toll it was taking on people. It was the small ways we learn to make the unbearable bearable.

But your song got me thinking, on one hand, we are living through a fairly communal shared experience and on the other hand, the individualism and the lack of social cohesion that is being highlighted by the pandemic. It's never been more keenly apparent.

After having gone through the process, gathering the unifying, uniting moments for the video, are you more hopeful now about the country than you were in 2018 when the song came out or less?

LISSIE: Yes, well, I mean, I think what is so interesting about the times, I think we are all personally grieving and struggling and navigating.

And we are also, on another level, doing it collectively. So the time I wrote the song, it's a general longing to just have my more presence and peace and surrender when I have a heavy heart.

But in the context of this song, I think it's hopeful because I think one thing I witnessed through the video and just since COVID has changed all of our lives, is people really, you know, spending time with their families, spending time in nature.

[00:55:00]

LISSIE: Remembering those simpler kind of really soul satisfying things we don't have the opportunity to do because of other obligations or the hectic pace of life.

If there is a bright side, seeing people get outdoors and move their body and play with their kids and make art and maybe finding some time. So I think that everyone is really had to confront themselves in one way, shape or form. And I like to think we will have regrown and reconnected to some lost parts of ourselves.

BRUNHUBER: I think we will leave it on that optimistic note. Thank you so much for talking to us. It's certainly a moment of calm and optimism that we need. We appreciate it.

LISSIE: Absolutely. Thank you for this opportunity and I hope people enjoy the video and stay strong out there. We're more -- I think we are more resilient than we realize.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: Taylor Swift is telling her fans to request ballots and vote early because the U.S. president is trying to restrict voting. Trump says it will hurt his re-election chances and Republicans across the board. Taylor Swift says his actions are an attempt to, quote, "destroy our right to vote and vote safely."

Well, that wraps up this hour of CNN NEWSROOM. Stay right here. You're watching CNN.