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New Study Finds Possible COVID-19 Flight Transmission; Interview with The Daily Tar Heel Opinion Editor; Follow-up After Mike Lindell Interview Confirms No Phase One or Two Oleandrin Studies. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired August 18, 2020 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00]

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, NEWSROOM: What do you think she meant by that?

MICHELE NORRIS, CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST, WASHINGTON POST: Well, I mean, she said what she said, that you know, she's feeling a little low sometimes. And I appreciate that she was willing to make herself vulnerable in that way.

What you heard in that podcast -- and I think in the string of podcasts that you'll hear -- are conversations of the kind that she has with her friends. I mean, it was, you know, almost like a -- there was a microphone on the table for the kind of conversations that we generally have as close friends.

But she did it knowing that the world was listening. And in doing so, giving people both the language and the permission to talk about something that they may be feeling themselves?

These are unusual times, and it is not unusual for people to feel unlike themselves, to be having what, you know, you might call the blues. But we don't want to perhaps admit that, we don't even know what it is. And she's allowing people to have a conversation.

So on one hand, there were people who were saying, oh, she's wading into politics because she mentioned the current president in talking about the blues.

But on the other hand, if you noticed, a lot of people reacted with empathy and with gratitude almost because, yes, I haven't been feeling like myself, thank you for saying that.

COOPER: Yes. Michele Norris, it's great to talk to you and I appreciate it.

NORRIS: Good to talk to you too.

COOPER: Thank you so much. All right, take care.

NORRIS: Take care.

COOPER: Just past the top of the hour, I'm Anderson Cooper.

Nearly seven months after the first confirmed U.S. case of COVID-19, the nation is getting closer to a vaccine. That's according to the nation's top infectious disease expert and White House Coronavirus Task Force member Dr. Anthony Fauci.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: By the beginning of 2021, there should be limited doses -- you know, tens of millions, not hundreds of millions -- of doses. So at that point, the process is to make a prioritization for those who would benefit from most and who would need it the most. As we get well into 2021, it is likely that there would be enough doses for anyone who wanted it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Fauci's remarks come as several new studies offer insight into the virus' transmission. Researchers at U.C. Davis and Mount Sinai, finding that the flu and possibly other viruses like COVID-19 can hang in little particles of dust that float in the air.

Despite reports of racial disparities related to the coronavirus, there's word today that if black and white patients have equal access to hospital care, death rates are similar. That's according to the "Journal of American Medicine."

All of that as the latest numbers show a trend of new cases when compared to a week ago. More than half the country, now holding steady or on the decline, that's good news.

First, CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta is with me. Sanjay, U.S. air travel is hitting a high -- now for the pandemic that we're told, according to TSA, there's a new study from Europe that's found possible spread on a passenger flight. What's the significance of it?

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well you know, we looked at this study, the one out of Germany, Anderson. And it was from some time ago, back in March where there wasn't a lot of mitigation measures, as you'll remember back then, Anderson. I think people were still trying to figure out just how to create the most safe environment, whether it be on a plane or in buildings.

I think when you look at the data now -- and I spent some time with the airline industry, actually went to these planes, looked at how they're trying to prevent this -- as you know, there are some airlines which are trying to space out their passengers by keeping middle seats open, mask mandates on a lot of these airlines. That didn't exist back when this previous study came out.

And also, you know, Anderson, I think it's important to point out the air filtration. We talk a lot about how air moves and how the viral dynamics change as a result of that. Inside a home for example, your air exchange may be twice every hour, you know, on average. On planes, they're exchanged much more often, which they believe actually reduces the likelihood of viral exposure.

So masks, air filtration, spacing out: The chances of getting coronavirus on a plane seems to be pretty low. And we would have seen significant sort of outbreaks, I think, related to air travel if it weren't the case so far.

COOPER: There was a hopeful headline that a recent batch of early studies are giving some hope, that even those with mild symptoms could have a robust immune response?

GUPTA: Yes. This is interesting because I think you know, for some time we've been sort of trying to figure out, if you've been exposed to the coronavirus, the question is, you probably have antibodies but how long do those antibodies last and how strong are they?

And you may remember, Anderson, one of our town halls a couple of weeks ago, we talked about the fact that there was another study showing that about 20 to 30 days, the antibody levels started to come down. What this study seems to show is that regardless of how sick you were -- even if you had mild symptoms -- you do seem to have significant antibodies at least a few months later.

I mean, we're not going to really know until we have the passage of time, right? I mean, this is one of those things. Do antibodies last a year? Well to really know the answer to that question, it would take a year, right? To know that. But that was hopeful, that even in mild illness you still generate antibodies.

[14:05:13]

And the other part of that, Anderson, was that even people who had never been exposed to this novel coronavirus, probably because of exposure to other coronaviruses -- like the ones that cause the common cold -- a certain percentage, 20 to 50 percent, seemed to have what is known as T-cell reactivity.

T-cells are sort of the cornerstone of the immune system, it can help create antibodies quickly. And it seems like those T-cells have some memory from viewing previous coronaviruses.

COOPER: That's amazing. Sanjay, stand by, I want to talk to you more in just a second.

On the heels of nine University of Oklahoma football players contracting coronavirus, an off-campus sorority house at Oklahoma State is now under quarantine after nearly two dozen members tested positive. Only one of them was symptomatic. CNN's Lucy Kafanov has more.

LUCY KAFANOV, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Anderson, an entire Oklahoma State University sorority house is under isolation or quarantine after 23 members tested positive for COVID-19 according to the university. The school and local health officials are monitoring everyone involved and doing contact tracing to prevent further spread. According to Johns Hopkins University data, the state has nearly 48,000 confirmed cases -- Anderson. COOPER: Well, it has only been a week since in-person classes resumed

at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. And already the school has been forced back into remote learning because scores of students have contracted coronavirus About 130 tested positive, there are multiple clusters across dorms and a frat house.

UNC's chancellor said he was stunned by how quickly the virus spread.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEVIN GUSKIEWICZ, CHANCELLOR, UNC CHAPEL HILL: We had a good road map that we developed, and it was implemented back in June. But when things started -- activities began to happen off-campus and then bring some of that back into the residence halls, that's where we began to see the positive cases. And we were surprised at the velocity and the magnitude of the spread. And we made the right decision for the health and safety of our campus community today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: And Sanjay's back with me, along with Paige Masten, the opinion editor for UNC's newspaper, "The Daily Tar Heel." Paige, let me start with you. You just went back to school, it's only been a week, and now this. Why do you think it spread so much? I mean, were people social distancing? Were people wearing masks on campus, in frats and dorms?

PAIGE MASTEN, OPINION EDITOR, DAILY TAR HEEL: In my opinion, I think that people, the wide majority of students were trying their best but I also think that it was kind of poorly thought out for the administration to assume that college students would social distance and wear masks, and wouldn't do what college students normally do when they weren't given any incentives not to do just that.

So I think that if they really wanted to keep the student body and the workers safe, then they wouldn't have given them so many incentives to continue going about college life as they normally would. And I think that's why it was able to spread so fast.

COOPER: The headline of the paper you work for, "The Daily Tar Heel," the editorial page used some very colorful language to describe the situation on campus. It said, "UNC has a cluster-F on its hands."

What happens now? I mean, the -- what specifically is the cluster-F that you now face? Are you -- are all students still on campus and just taking classes remotely? Or are people sent home?

MASTEN: Well, I think that's what we're all really wondering -- we don't know because the administration expected everything to be OK and they really didn't think this out very well, with the off ramps that they called them with the road map metaphor. We really don't know what's going to happen now.

They say that they want to, quote-unquote, "de-densify" student housing so that there's fewer people in those residence halls where it can spread so quickly, but we don't know what that looks like, we don't know who's allowed to stay and who's going to have to go home. And when these students go home, they're going to be putting their families and their home communities in danger because they may have been exposed to the virus here.

So we really don't know what that's going to look like and we really just have to wait for them to give us more information on that.

COOPER: Sanjay, I mean, this shutdown -- I mean, it seems like a big deal potentially for the rest of the nation's colleges.

GUPTA: Yes, it really is. I mean, this is tough to hear. I mean, I know Chancellor Guskiewicz, he's a smart guy, he's a neuroscientist, McArthur Genius guy. This just shows how smart this virus is. Frankly, it just shows that this virus behaves exactly the way that you'd think it would behave, it's a very contagious virus.

[14:10:00]

As Paige I think was alluding to, college students behave exactly the way you expect college students to behave. They get together, they're not always going to be diligent about wearing masks.

And I want to show you, Anderson, if you just look at North Carolina and you say, hey, look, we followed the data -- I don't know if we have these graphs -- we can show you the data that they were looking at prior to the opening here in North Carolina.

You could see when it comes to the positivity rates, actually not bad, right? Somewhere between five and 10 percent. If you look at the overall number of cases, you had some blips here and there. But overall the trajectory was downward. It was -- you know, over a couple of weeks. There you see it, there.

Here's the point, Anderson. Is that even if you look at that objective data, unless everyone is super-diligent, everyone is super-honest and transparent, you can have a significant spreading event.

I mean, you know, Anderson, we talked about this. When we decided to pull kids out of school, there were 5,000 people in this country, roughly, that had been infected, 97 people who had died. Now, we're putting people back in schools when there's more than 5 million who have been infected, and more than 170,000 who have died.

I mean, it defies logic, right? We can at least agree on that. People are kind of trying to do the best they can, but I think UNC unfortunately is an example that everyone should pay attention to.

COOPER: Paige, I wish you well. It's crazy times that you are studying through -- or trying to study through and report through. So I appreciate you being with us, thanks so much.

MASTEN: Thank you.

COOPER: All right, you take care.

Sanjay, stand by, I've got to ask you about this MyPillow CEO guy who I just talked to, who's pushing -- he has the president's ear and he's pushing completely unstudied, unproven therapeutic that he potentially will financially benefit from.

Plus, I'll speak live with a man who was just released from the hospital after three months battling the coronavirus. His story, ahead.

And just in, the postmaster general, suspending all changes at the Post Office as he gets ready to testify against accusations of voter suppression.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:16:21]

COOPER: In our last hour, I had a conversation with Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow company, who has the president's ear and is promoting a completely unproven substance, claiming that it can cure COVID-19. There are no studies that are peer-reviewed, that are legitimate that have been published that say that. There's no human trials, there's no animal trials, there's nothing. And yet he's out there promoting it. Here's some of that conversation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE LINDELL, CEO, MYPILLOW: This thing works, it's the miracle of all time.

COOPER: You said -- sir, you said you've seen this test. Where is it?

LINDELL: The tests are out there, the thousand people, phase one, phase two --

COOPER: Where is the test? Show it to us.

LINDELL: I don't have the test on me.

COOPER: Name where it's from. Who did the test? What university, what doctors?

LINDELL: Well, you'd have to talk to -- I guess you'd have to have Dr. Carson and then the company, all the tests that were done, on your show.

COOPER: You said you saw the test, you read the test. So tell me about the test. How -- where was it done?

LINDELL: The test, it was done on over a thousand people, it's for safety --

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Where was it --

LINDELL: -- they did it --

COOPER: -- done? And what were the procedures for the test? You read this, let's hear it.

LINDELL: The procedures are, it was used against cancer so they did -- when you do a safety test of phase one and phase two, it's to see if there's any --

COOPER: There's been no phase one and phase two on this drug, sir.

LINDELL: What's that?

COOPER: There's been no phase one and phase two on this drug, sir.

LINDELL: Yes, absolutely, there has. The FDA has had it since April, a hundred percent.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: I want to bring Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay, I mean, the interview I think went on -- I don't know how long, it seemed to go on for much of my life. But I mean, he has a track record of, you know, he was sued in California for having medical claims, testimonials in commercials for his pillows. He settled for a million dollars because of those claims. He has an F rating from the Better Business Bureau.

This is the guy that the president is apparently listening to? He gets a meeting with the president on this substance that's never been tested or peer reviewed.

GUPTA: Yes. Well, Anderson, first of all, that was a masterclass in interviewing, everybody should go back and watch that. I'm sure it was frustrating for you, but you really got at this issue with him.

And I've got to say this is -- you know, all kidding aside, this is dangerous. You know, you and I were talking during this town hall right after, you know, the president talked about disinfectants being ingested as a possible thing, and I thought that's just crazy, why are we even talking about it? And then you come to find out that people -- it actually did make an impact. And there were people out there who started doing that sort of thing.

This substance, oleandrin, which comes from the oleander plant, is a toxin. If it's known for anything, it's known for being toxic and potentially even deadly.

There was this book and movie, "White Oleander," I don't know if you even remember that --

COOPER: Right, yes.

GUPTA: -- but it was all about somebody using this substance to kill somebody else. This is more dangerous than the COVID-19 disease itself. So I really feel strongly about the fact that we need to dump a lot of cold water on this.

I looked up, I -- you know, soon as I heard this, I started doing the homework, Anderson, and I looked it up again during your interview. There is no study, just like you mentioned. Certainly not any studies in actual humans.

There have been human cell studies, cancer cell studies on human cancer cells. There was a monkey kidney cell with regard to coronavirus, but there's been no studies that actually are in phase one or phase two, like you said. That doesn't exist. All we know about this substance is it could potentially be harmful. I mean, this is just that important.

I mean, they say it can kill the virus in a test tube? So can bleach, right? That doesn't mean anything. I worry because the supplement industry in this country is so unregulated, people may start to sell this as a supplement. The FDA --

[14:20:05]

COOPER: Right.

GUPTA: -- usually doesn't get around to pulling these things off the market until they hurt people. So we've got to be very careful here.

COOPER: That's -- that's my sense of what the strategy here is with this company (ph). Again, all I know is what I've talked to this guy and what I've read about. But it seems like, you know, the FDA usually doesn't weigh in on supplements. You can - you know, who knows what's in a lot of supplements that are on store shelves --

GUPTA: That's right.

COOPER: -- we all assume, oh, it's on a shelf, it must be legit. They're going to probably advertise this as a dietary supplement, get it on a shelf if it gets that far. And then they just hope that there's enough publicity from people like Mr. Lindell and people will go and buy this with a, you know, wink and a nod, thinking, OK, it's a dietary supplement but I hear it cures COVID, which it doesn't. There's no evidence, there's nothing.

GUPTA: There's no evidence. And this isn't one of those things -- you know, with a lot of supplements, people generally have this attitude, won't hurt, might help, why not? That is not the attitude you should take with this supplement. Can hurt, especially in people who have cardiac problems of any sort.

This is like foxglove or digoxin, it's called a cardiac glycoside. It pumps the heart, you know, changes the balance, the way that the heart actually absorbs electricity. It's not something you want to take.

And I really worry about this because the supplement market, again until something is actually proven to be harmful, you could go into a nice-looking store, pay with a credit card and think you're buying a product that has been proven to be safe and effective. With the supplement industry, we don't have that assurance in this country. It's a real concern.

So, you know, the more we can -- I hope that the FDA weighs in on this. We called them after your interview with him, they're not commenting at this point. I think they should weigh in on this and make clear that all we know about this particular substance is that it can be harmful, that's all we really can say for sure.

COOPER: Well remember, the FDA was pressured on hydroxychloroquine. You know, the U.S. ended up buying, you know, 60 million doses or something that's now stockpiled or being given away, I guess, to other countries. And then the FDA pulled Emergency Use Authorization for it --

GUPTA: That's right.

COOPER: -- once studies actually came out.

Sanjay, appreciate it. Thank you very much.

GUPTA: Yes, thank you.

COOPER: President Trump, escalating his attempts to sow doubt in the election, saying that the only way he loses is if the election is rigged.

[14:22:26]

And he also retweets Russian propaganda designed to attack Joe Biden and influence the election. Sure, why not?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:27:12]

COOPER: New report from the Senate Intelligence Committee offers details on the extensive list of contacts between 2016 Trump campaign aides and Russian operatives. Among the findings, the bipartisan report found that campaign chairman Paul Manafort was regarded as a, quote, "grave counterintelligence threat" because he shared campaign data with a Russian intelligence officer.

CNN's senior justice correspondent Evan Perez joins us now. What else is in this report?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Anderson, this is a reminder that what the Russians were doing in 2016, they're still doing in 2020. We heard from -- this is a bipartisan report, Republicans and Democrats agreed on these findings. And I'll give you just a few of the top lines.

It said that Paul Manafort was trying to share internal campaign data with someone who was a known Russian intelligence operative -- somebody who was a known Russian intelligence officer, rather. And that is something that, you know, it bears repeating just because it's not normal for you to have your campaign chairman in business with a Russian intelligence officer.

The Trump campaign sought to get in advance, information about what WikiLeaks was trying to release about the DNC hacks and about Hillary Clinton. Again, this was damaging information that Roger Stone was trying to coordinate. And according to this committee, they don't believe when the president

says that he doesn't remember talking to Roger Stone about this. They're plainly saying that they believe there were these conversations between the president and Roger Stone.

The Russian disinformation campaign began again in 2015, 2016, perhaps with some of the information that was used in the Steele dossier. But it also continued into January of 2020, Anderson.

And according to the most recent information we got from the intelligence community, that effort is still ongoing right now. They're trying to prop up Donald Trump's campaign, they're trying to hurt Joe Biden's campaign and it is something that I think, you know, wasn't normal in 2016 and it should not be considered normal in 2020.

COOPER: Evan Perez, appreciate it. Thanks, Evan.

President Trump again, trying to cast doubt on the U.S. election process while at an event in the crucial battleground state of Wisconsin, falsely claiming that the only way he would lose in November is if the election is rigged.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have to win the election, we can't play games. Get out and vote, do those beautiful absentee ballots or just make sure your vote gets counted. Make sure because the only way we're going to lose this election is if the election is rigged, remember that. It's the only way we're going to lose this election. So we have to be very careful.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Well, just this morning, the president went a step further, suggesting the election may have to be held again if universal mail-in voting is introduced.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: By the way, absentee is great, it's been working for a long time, like in Florida. Absentee, you request and it comes in, and then you send it back. Absentee is great.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[14:30:00]