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Cases Surging Across Nation, Hospitalizations Highest in Two Months; Trump Admin Pushes for Last-Minute Foreign Policy Wins; Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) Casts Doubt on Stimulus Deal as Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), White House Continue Talks. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired October 21, 2020 - 10:00   ET

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

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[10:00:00]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Jim Sciutto.

A deadly strategy, that is what the U.S. surgeon general is calling the idea of using what's known as herd immunity the fight the coronavirus pandemic, a strategy that some White House officials have recently supported. The surgeon general warns it would overwhelm the nation's health care systems and simply that many more Americans would die.

Right now, not one U.S. state is trending in the right direction, hospitalizations at their highest levels in two months, with at least ten states seeing record hospitalizations now.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: That has some states going back to tougher restrictions. Starting Friday, parts of Illinois will ban indoor seating in bars and restaurants. They will limit outdoor seating and size of social gatherings to 25 people.

In New Mexico, where health officials say -- experience they -- where health officials say they have experienced the worst week for COVID-19 infections. Just last week, retail shops starting Friday will have to close by 10:00 every night. Businesses reporting more than four new cases in a 14-day period, they will also have to close for two weeks.

And in Washington State, as outbreaks go particularly on college campuses, the governor is announcing new restrictions, including limiting the number of students sharing sleeping areas.

All of this this morning with less than two weeks to go until Election Day and a day away from the final presidential debate. We're learning new information on both candidates' strategy heading into tomorrow night. We'll get to that in a minute.

But, first, let's bring in our Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Good morning to you, Sanjay.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. HARLOW: All of these headlines, all right now -- and, by the way, it's going to get a lot colder, right, and a lot more people are going to go inside.

GUPTA: Yes, I mean, that is a significant concern. And if you have been following this trajectory of this pandemic for some time, you remember it was sort of middle of July, after July 4th weekend, people were having significant COVID fatigue back then starting to not follow these basic public health practices. We saw the numbers go up. But to your point, they could still largely be outside here in this country at that time and we saw what the impact was, which was significant.

Now, if you add that sort of same thing, increased mobility, COVID fatigue that we've been hearing about, but now people cannot get together outside, they're getting together inside, that's a real concern.

Let me show you, just track this what's happening here in the United States compared to the European Union for a second, because I think this is really instructive and this is what a lot of public health officials are looking at. Green line is the European Union, orange line the United States. You remember back in March, we're all looking at Italy thinking that's not going to happen here, is it? And then a couple of weeks later, it did. And you can see what happened in the United States over the summer, now into the fall.

Look at the green line of the European Union now, almost straight up. That's the reflection of what is called exponential growth, cases start to really pile on one on another, and we are just behind that again by a couple of weeks starting from a much higher baseline.

So, look, this is a real concern for the number of people becoming infected, but also pointing out hospitalizations. Hospitals right now thinking, looking around counting beds, thinking do we have enough? What do we anticipate here? That's real planning happening right now.

SCIUTTO: So what should we be doing differently, right? I mean, you have -- Europe was ahead of the U.S., right, on keeping this under control and they've experienced some of the same things the U.S. have, fatigue and people just ignoring some of the advice, right, and opening up again. I mean, what is the plan? What is the best plan, Sanjay, going forward?

GUPTA: Well, let me preface by saying, Jim, that there are good plans available. I think people do look at graphics like the one I showed and say, well, this is just inevitable then. I mean, they tried their best and the numbers are still shooting up. I understand that. But there are places around the world, many Asian countries, for example, where they've been able to keep the virus transmission at very low levels.

To answer your question, Jim, let me get hyper local for a second and just talk about Arizona, because I, again, think that's instructive. We can show what happened in Arizona. Like the rest of the country, they went into sort of this pause mode, we're talking about March and April, and then as soon as things opened up, we can show this graphic, June 1st to June 15th, right as soon as things opened up, the overall cases went up dramatically. We knew they were going to go up. They went up dramatically, 151 percent.

But it's the second line, Jim, I want the people to focus on here. When they started to put in these basic, again, public health things, not shutting things down but mask requirements, limiting some of these large, public events where people aggregate indoors and certain business closures, think bars where you're inside, you can't wear a mask because you're eating or drinking.

[10:05:00]

When they did that, look what happened over three weeks, a 75 percent reduction in overall new infections.

Look, I show this because I think it should be aspirational, right? I do think that there is the sense that we all just want to wait for the vaccine, which is very important, but these measures, which people still question to this day, do work. We have evidence in this country and at a hyper local level but certainly places all over the world.

SCIUTTO: Yes. And to your point, that's not a massive national lockdown, right? I mean, those are targeted closures and simple health care measures.

GUPTA: That's right. And the idea of just simply wearing a mask, we've seen already and heard from these models, some of the same models that the White House uses, that tens of thousands of lives could be saved.

One thing that we're still trying to understand, and I think this is going to be critical, is that, obviously, we're different now in October than we were in March. We understand this disease better. The people who are becoming infected, the demographics, are different. So what does that mean? We know cases are followed a few weeks later by hospitalizations, followed a few weeks after that by, sadly, by the number of deaths.

But I want to show you what the death rate was at least in one large New York system hospital now -- right now compared to back in March. Back in March if you went into the hospital with COVID, you basically had about a 25 percent mortality risk. A quarter of the people were dying at that point, if you look at things now, or I should say a couple months ago, since March, April, closer to 8 percent. So what is that? It could be that healthier people were getting sick and they were more likely to survive, but I think it is also compounded by the idea we do know more about how to treat this disease.

So, look, there are a lot of reasons to be concerned about the next couple of months. But I do want to point out what we have learned and how that's actionable, I think, as we go forward as well.

SCIUTTO: No question, it's a good point. We're going to focus on the good news as well as the bad. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thanks very much.

So, another source of good news, and that is progress on a COVID-19 vaccine. The question is how everyone gets vaccinated, how quickly, who gets it. Much of that will depend on how broadly and how equitably, the keyword, a vaccine is distributed.

HARLOW: Right. So, this week, a leading voice on that sounded the alarm bills. Jim Blumenstock, the senior vice president for Pandemic Response and Recovery at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, told reporters this on Monday. Quote, as it stands now, we do not have any capability to fund the imminent implementation of the plan. Well, that's a problem. That's why we wanted him to join us. We're glad you are here. Thank you.

JIM BLUMENSTOCK, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT FOR PANDEMIC RESPONSE ASSOCIATION OF STATE AND TERRITORIAL HEALTH OFFICIALS: Thanks for having us.

HARLOW: Okay. So there's no state-by-state distribution plan yet or just not the money to implement it?

BLUMENSTOCK: Well, the states, territories, tribes and local health departments have been working for months in developing their plan, so that clearly is a good news part of this story. And having effective, comprehensive plans is a critical step. But it's just a first step.

What happens after the plans are you need to train your staff so they know how to follow the instructions and the game plan, you need to exercise those plans to the extent that we have time available to do that, just so that everyone is confident and proficient in all of their roles and responsibilities and actions. And then, obviously, you need the resources for the entire length of the campaign.

As you probably have heard, this campaign will be multi-phased. Initially, small amounts of vaccine will become available and provided to the highest risk individuals, and then over time, as more vaccine becomes available, the net will be cast broader so that eventually everyone across the country would have access to the vaccine.

So it's this resource-intense obligation of implementing the plan that we're concerned about. There is no funding for that last -- what we call the last tactical mile for getting the vaccine into the communities and arms of the people who need it the most.

SCIUTTO: So, Jim, here is my concern, because the main critique, right, of the U.S. response for the several months has been no national plan, right, no national testing plan, no national contact tracing plan, a patchwork of state plans on things like closures, restrictions, lockdowns where necessary, et cetera. So, if we haven't had a national plan this year for response to a pandemic, what confidence should people have that there will be a national plan for distributing a vaccine?

BLUMENSTOCK: So specific to the vaccine allocation and distribution, again, I feel confident in saying there is a plan. We certainly know the White House strategy, the Operation Warped Speed strategy, the inclusion of the public health sector across the country.

[10:10:07] So that is a huge step forward and people are working very hard to make this as effective, efficient and as equitable as possible.

So as the details emerge, every day, planning progresses and improves, recognizing that we are in a race against time. And that's why in our discussions earlier this week, we have to continue to raise the issue that resources are needed. We don't want to move critical resources from other programs across the country that are currently responding to the COVID outbreaks, to wildfires, hurricanes, diseases like HIV and the opioid epidemic.

Those critical public health programs need to stay in place. But we need an augmentation to allow the resources available so that we could concurrently run this implementation plan for the COVID vaccine.

HARLOW: For sure. But you're asking Congress for $8.4 billion. I mean, the CDC has put out $200 million to states to figure this out. You say, we need upwards of $8.5 billion. Have you gotten that money? And what do you need it for specifically?

BLUMENSTOCK: Well, we're certainly banging that drum very loud and hard because it's critical. The $200 million was well placed and much appreciated to really jumpstart this planning phase. But breathing life into the plan and having the resources is a whole another story. And that is sort of the essence and the basis of the $8.4 billion.

CDC estimates that it's probably in the order of $5.5 to $6 billion, so our numbers certainly are not outrageous based on our best professional judgment. When you contrast what it took to do the H1N1 pandemic response 11 years ago, that was a much simpler process. Over $1 billion was appropriated to the state health departments then to implement a vaccination plan.

So there clearly is precedence, there's practice, there's need and what we really want to bring to everyone's attention. All of the leaders, whether it be in the administration and as well as Congress, is that these funds are sorely needed to ensure that the campaign is as robust as it needs to be for the length of the campaign, not just the start-up but bring it to successful conclusion.

HARLOW: Right, sure. Vaccine doesn't work if there's not broad vaccination. It won't help. So, Jim, thank you.

BLUMENSTOCK: The perspective (ph) is the investment in vaccine development, research development production was there and equal commitment and investment, it needs to be in the bottom, and the last mile for the distribution and administration.

HARLOW: Jim, thank you for being a voice on this and being here today. We appreciate it.

BLUMENSTOCK: Thank you for the opportunity.

HARLOW: Up next for us, a critical 48 hours for the millions of Americans waiting for a stimulus deal. Will it happen? Plus, this eye-popping billboard from a farmer and former Trump supporter now calling the president's rally a super-spreader event. He will join us talk about why he's now supporting Joe Biden.

SCIUTTO: And a final sprint for votes ahead of the election. Why the president is banking on foreign policy to help him win a second term in the White House.

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[10:15:00]

SCIUTTO: The president is still on the campaign trail, and as he is, he is hoping for some last-minute foreign policy wins to help.

HARLOW: Our National Security Correspondent, Vivian Salama, joins us this morning. Good morning to you, Vivian. What is the administration trying to accomplish here down the stretch? Because as I understand it, they also wanted more foreign policy topics in this last debate tomorrow night.

VIVIAN SALAMA, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Poppy and Jim. That's right. And so we're going to be hearing a lot about the president and Joe Biden's foreign policy, national security views tomorrow. But in the meantime, despite the president's positive rhetoric, on the campaign trail, privately, some of his top aides acknowledge that it's anyone's race in two weeks' time.

And so they're trying to push through a couple foreign policy initiatives, A, to try to encourage possibly some undecided voters to side with the president and go with him on Election Day, and if not, at least they want to leave a lasting legacy if Joe Biden were to become president.

And so in the last few weeks, we've seen them push through a couple of initiatives in particular. We've heard about these normalization deals between Israel and a number of Arab countries. In the last couple of days alone, the president tweeting about taking Sudan off the state- sponsored terrorism list and the hope that they would join. He's also been trying to push through very rapidly a nuclear deal with Russia, revised nuclear deal with Russia, as well as some other initiative crackdowns on China and whatnot.

And so some of our viewers may say, there is so much going on, does anyone really care about these things, but actually they do. A number of Republicans, in particular, really do still care about certain policy initiatives, and particularly with Israel. You have that, which really plays well with evangelical voters and old-school sort of establishment Republicans still do look at the Russia nuclear talks. And those issues do resonate. And so the president hoping for that last-minute boost with those policies. Jim and Poppy?

HARLOW: Okay. We will see if the strategy works, Vivian. Thanks for the reporting from Washington this morning.

Well, Joe Biden is preparing for the final debate today. Senator Kamala Harris stumps in North Carolina and former President Barack Obama set to make his first appearance on the campaign trail.

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SCIUTTO: CNN Political Correspondent Abby Philip joins us now. Abby, so, debate prep, the typical pattern is the president kind of wings it a little bit but, Joe Biden has been taking it very seriously. What do we know about tomorrow?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Jim, it's really a study in contrast between these two candidates and how they're preparing for tomorrow night. This is going to be the last big opportunity for them to make an impression on voters before Election Day.

And Joe Biden has spent the last several days off the campaign trail studying, working with his advisers on debate prep for tomorrow night. And one of the big things that the Biden campaign knows they're going to have to deal with are these allegations that are being pushed by the president and his allies about Biden's son, Hunter Biden.

And a source in the campaign told CNN that they are preparing for those attacks but Biden is going to try to redirect and focus, as he has been, on the coronavirus and using a tactic that we saw him use in the first debate, which was directly and literally addressing the American people in the context of the debate.

The president, on the other hand, as you alluded to, is not doing that. He has been on the campaign trail. He's been doing interviews and town halls and he's kind of eschewed a formal campaign prep. Remember, the last time he did do formal prep, most of the people in that prep session contracted the coronavirus. So they have been taking a different strategy.

And his aides are urging him to come across as less angry than he did in that first debate. The president privately telling aides, according to sources, that he might be willing to interrupt less but they are also gearing up these attacks on Hunter Biden. And I think the president is preparing to do as much, to put that on the table in terms of topics, given that the campaign has said that they don't believe that most of the media is taking it seriously enough.

HARLOW: Okay. So we're just going to have to hold our breath and wait and see what happens tomorrow night.

But something stunning happened yesterday. The president cut short, it sounds like, a 60 Minutes interview with Lesley Stahl, who is just about the most fair interviewer that there is out there. Just look at her interview with the president four years ago. What happened?

PHILLIP: Well, this is a preview potentially of what we can be seeing from the president. He's been attacking journalists for several days now, Savannah Guthrie at NBC, Kristen Welker, who is going to be moderating tomorrow's debate, and now, Lesley Stahl.

What we're told is that this interview had been going on about 45 minutes and sources say that the president was unhappy with the line of questioning. Another source telling CNN that the interview focused quite a bit on the coronavirus, and we know that this is something that President Trump really wants to change the topic on. He wants to focus more on recovery.

So this interview really went sideways. He didn't continue on, didn't do the sort of walk and talk with the vice president. And now, we are hearing from the president and from the chief of staff, the chief of staff saying this morning there's a, quote, high probability that they will try to release that interview before it aired on 60 Minutes. So we will have to see if that, in fact, that happens and what exactly it will show about the president's behavior in the line of questioning.

SCIUTTO: I'm just going to quote what the president told Lesley Stahl four years ago in December 2016 when she asks him why he attacks the press. He said, according to her, you know why I do it. I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you. The president said that in his own words, according to Lesley Stahl, four years ago, just for context --

HARLOW: I forgot that line.

SCIUTTO: -- as we this again.

Abby Philip, we know you're going to be watching tomorrow. We will as well. Thanks very much.

PHILLIP: Thanks, guys.

SCIUTTO: So the White House says there is progress in stimulus deal talks with Speaker Pelosi. Mitch McConnell though telling a very different story here. What is happening? You'll want to know. We'll tell you.

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[10:25:00]

SCIUTTO: While, the White House and Speaker Pelosi are working on a stimulus deal for millions of Americans, many of them desperately need it, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell seems to be on a different page here. Remarkable disagreement within the Republican Party, Poppy.

HARLOW: That's right. Manu Raju is on Capitol Hill with more. Good morning, Manu. Getting my words screwed up here this morning.

So we just saw the majority whip James Clyburn on, and here is what he said about the timeline, he thinks, for a deal. Listen.

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REP. JAMES CLYBURN (D-SC): The election is less than two weeks away, and I believe we'll be back in Washington a week or two after the elections, and we can do something there. At least the elections will be behind us. People will know what their futures are.

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HARLOW: What are you hearing, Manu?

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's similar to what I'm hearing. It just seems highly unlikely that any deal could be passed certainly through both chambers of Congress, before Election Day, not only because of major disagreements between the Republicans and the White House but also the details are still yet to be sorted out between Pelosi and the Trump administration.

Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, is having a phone call today with policy staff of Speaker Pelosi's, also Meadows is expected to speak to some Republicans.

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