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Biden Coronavirus Task Force Hasn't Talked to White House About Transition; Interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci About Coronavirus at All- Time High; Georgia Secretary of State Claims Lindsey Graham Told Him to Toss Out Legal Ballots; Cases and Hospitalizations Surge in North and South Dakota; U.S. Futures Mixed After Dow and S&P Hit New Highs. Aired 9-9:30a ET
Aired November 17, 2020 - 09:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[09:00:00]
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: The transition, and U.S. hospitalizations hit their highest total ever of this pandemic. Right now more than 73,000 Americans are in hospitals battling the virus. And the numbers don't lie. Cases rising. Hospitals therefore filled. And then sadly deaths climb as well. Right now 73,000 families are praying simply for their loved ones to come home.
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: And again the trend starts with cases. The United States added 166,000 new COVID-19 cases yesterday alone. That is why more state leaders are now putting tighter restrictions back in place. You're seeing that across the country. This as a team of CDC experts prepares to meet to discuss how they're going to distribute all of these vaccines. They're even going to do trials in four different states.
Dr. Anthony Fauci is with us in just a few minutes on that. But first CNN's senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen starts us off this morning.
Good morning, Elizabeth.
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.
HARLOW: This is a huge spike once again. Do you have a sense of how it is shaping the president-elect's response once he is in power to make changes?
COHEN: Poppy, I think we can only imagine that as Biden sits there getting ready to become president, seeing these numbers grow and grow he is getting even more of an idea of what a herculean task he has in front of him in two different ways. One, he is trying to quell an outbreak that is raging, that is from everything that we can see, basically out of control. And he is going to have to get a vaccine to basically every corner of this country.
Those are two unprecedentedly difficult tasks to accomplish. Let's look at the first one first. Let's look at hospitalizations in the United States. This map has all the states that have record hospitalizations. Not high, record, never been this high before. 73,000 people on Monday were in the hospital in the United States with COVID-19.
Now let's look at another map. This map shows percent positivity. The number I want you to keep in mind is 5 percent to 8 percent. That's what the WHO and the CDC says essentially keep it under 5 percent to 8 percent. These numbers are not even near 5 percent to 8 percent. Idaho, 42 percent of their tests are coming back positive. Iowa, 52 percent. South Dakota, 57 percent. You can see how difficult the task it will be to get this under control.
Now let's talk about the other challenge that will be facing President-elect Biden. And that is getting a vaccine out to the entire country as quickly as possible. He actually spoke to this recently. Let's take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT-ELECT: More people may die if we don't coordinate. Look, as my chief of staff Ron Klain would say, who handled Ebola, the vaccine is important. It's of little use until you're vaccinated.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COHEN: And so what we're talking about here is trying to get this vaccine out everywhere. It's two vaccines that will likely be distributed first. One of them is very difficult to handle and store because it has to be kept at such low temperatures. This is an operational project of unforeseen proportions. It is also a marketing challenge. We may have to convince some people to get this vaccine. Both of those could be done a lot more easily if the Trump administration would cooperate in all of this planning -- Poppy, Jim.
HARLOW: It's such a good point. The New Jersey Health commissioner said just a few weeks ago just over half of their health care professionals even want the vaccine right now. It shows you what a difficult task it's going to be to get everyone to take this.
Elizabeth, thank you. Jim?
SCIUTTO: Joining me now is Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Doctor, welcome back to the program.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Thank you, Jim. Good to be with you.
SCIUTTO: It is two weeks since the election, we're in the midst of a transition. Have you been able to speak to President-elect Biden or any members of his COVID team?
FAUCI: I have not had contact with the president -- with the Vice President Biden. No, I have not, Jim.
SCIUTTO: OK. Biden said yesterday, and we just played this, that more people may die if the outgoing administration and the incoming administration don't coordinate. I wonder if you agree. Does this delay potentially cost lives?
FAUCI: Well, the only thing I can say, Jim, is that transitions are important and if you don't have a smooth transition, you would not optimize whatever efforts you're doing right now. As you know, Jim, I've had the opportunity to serve six administrations which amounted to five transitions. So I have been involved as a health person in the transition. And it is really quite important. As I use the metaphor the other day, it's like a relay race in which you're passing the baton and you don't want to slow down what you're doing, but you want the person to whom you're giving the baton to be running with it as opposed to stopping and starting all over again.
[09:05:08]
And that's the reason why it's important at every level to have a smooth transition.
SCIUTTO: What specifically, just so folks at home understand, what is lost? What would those communications be like now? What would the baton passing look like if there was communication like that?
FAUCI: Well, first of all, you can talk about things like what is the level of supply that is available? What is the utilization of PPEs? What about the hospital beds that the various members of the current Coronavirus Task Force are in communication with the health groups in different states getting interaction at a formal level with the governors?
Understanding every detail of the vaccine program. Not only the two vaccines that have fortunately been shown to be very effective but where are we in Operation Warp Speed with regard to the other candidates which are coming into their own in the sense of clinical trial, accumulating data. All of those things can be done in partnership.
SCIUTTO: That sounds to me as a layman as things that matter, things that would make a difference.
FAUCI: Yes, of course they would. As I mentioned, you know, I can recall in the transition that we had from the Obama administration to the Trump administration that then chief of staff Denis McDonough worked with Reince Priebus and brought several of us together to talk about how we had handled Ebola, how we had handled Zika to give them an idea of the kinds of things that you need to do.
I mean, it's easy to hear about it in the news and to read about it. But when you sit down with somebody and talk about what went wrong, what went right, that's important.
SCIUTTO: OK. Let's talk if we can about the next several weeks. More than 100,000 cases, new infections a day, approaching 200,000 a day. Where do you see those numbers go in the next several weeks?
FAUCI: Well, they are going to go up, Jim. And that's the reason why I keep, you know, almost pleading with the American public that clearly we're not going to have a national shutdown. But we need to intensify common, easy to do, relatively speaking, public health measures that are not shutting down the country, not shutting down the economy.
The uniform wearing of masks, let's get it straight. They work, use them. The next is avoiding congregate settings particularly indoor, keeping distance that we talk about, to the extent possible doing things outdoors preferentially to indoors, and washing your hands frequently. We've got to get that point across.
You know, vaccines are important. But the important issue is that we don't want the extraordinary success of these two vaccines to get people to be complacent. I've often said help is on the way, but help is not here yet. So one of the things we need to do is to use the success of the vaccines to get people to be motivated to hang in there a bit longer and double down on the public health measures without necessarily shutting down the country.
You can continue to do activities which are good for the economy, but still adhering to the public health measures that we're talking about. I just can't understand why there's pushback against that. They're not that difficult to do. And they save lives, Jim. They save lives.
SCIUTTO: No question. It's in the science, we repeat that on this program virtually every day. Are there things that should close while others remain open? For instance, we've seen in Europe there's been some success with closing restaurants because of the prevalence of cases there. Do you want to -- are there specific steps you would recommend short of then a national shutdown?
FAUCI: Yes. And you know, if you look at the local level, the local authorities, particularly governors and mayors know that in their own particular location and region of the country. But in general what we're seeing when you look at what the CDC's analysis, the places of high vulnerability are bars, are restaurants, particularly if you have indoor at full capacity, it's very difficult. Any kind of congregate settings are difficult.
So what we're seeing -- we're not going to see a national lockdown, but what we're seeing certain local people, be they mayors or leaders in the community doing selected closing of places that are highly vulnerable. Clearly among them are bars and anything that has congregate setting particularly indoors.
[09:10:02]
SCIUTTO: Can you keep schools open safely through this?
FAUCI: You know, I think in many respects you can. As I've always said, Jim, and I'll repeat it now, the default position to be is try as best as possible to keep the schools open. But you've got to have not one size fits all. You've got to take a look at what is going on in the particular location where you're at. But we should be trying to keep the children in school as safely as we possibly can. And that is getting resources to the schools to allow them to do things while keeping it open maybe in a hybrid fashion, maybe in doing some physical separation, maybe alternating classes in certain ways.
I don't want to dictate that from here to the school because I'm not there, but do what you can to keep the children and the teachers safe. But try as best as possible to keep the schools open.
SCIUTTO: The vaccine news, as you know, remarkable. In the span of a few days, two, not one but two vaccines showing remarkable efficacy here. Just for you to speak to the American public right now, some of whom have questions about a vaccine. Based on the data you've seen, would you yourself take one of these vaccines and recommend it to members of your own family?
FAUCI: You know, the answer, Jim, is yes. I mean, I will ultimately take a good look at the data as will actually the rest of the country be able to hear from people like me. So what they need to understand, Jim, is that the process is transparent and independent. You have to trust me on that. The independent Data and Safety Monitoring Board looked at that data and judged that this was an effective vaccine to the point of 95 events, five in the vaccine, 90 in the placebo, 11 severe events, zero in the vaccine, 11 in the placebo, for a 94.5 percent efficacy.
Those data are going to be scrutinized by career scientists at the FDA. Those data are going to be presented to an advisory committee that are going to look at it, that independent advisory committee. And people like myself and fellow scientists will have access to the data. When they say it's safe and effective to give, I can tell you, Jim, I will take a vaccine and I will recommend to my family to also take it.
SCIUTTO: I always ask you when we get the opportunity to speak the best news, the best sign of hope you can offer to folks here who are now probably battening down the hatches, right, for a difficult winter. What are the best words of hope you can offer them right now?
FAUCI: Well, the best words of hope are two things. One of public health and one a scientific issue. The public health issue is that the kind of interventions that I just mentioned work, Jim. You've got to understand they do work. We know that as a scientific fact. And therefore implement them. You don't have to shut down any businesses to do that. You can still have the economy going along in a slow way, in a prudent way, staying open. Do that from a public health standpoint.
Secondly, from a public health standpoint, do a risk benefit discussion with your family about what you're going to want to do with the holidays. In other words, you might say, you know, I have vulnerable people in the family. I have elderly people, I have people with underlying conditions. Do I want to get 10, 15, 20 people flying in from different parts of the country?
SCIUTTO: Yes.
FAUCI: That's a wonderful, beautiful tradition that we have, Jim, but maybe the time now is to take an assessment of that risk benefit ratio and maybe modify what you're going to do from now. And the scientific thing is that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Help is on the way. So a vaccine should not have you then make a decision, well, we're going to have a vaccine so we don't have to do anything else.
No. The fact that we have a vaccine coming means we should double down and hang in there because help is on the way, which would motivate us to do even better with public health measures.
SCIUTTO: Patience. We'll take the message.
Dr. Fauci, thank you for the work that you do and we appreciate you taking the time this morning.
FAUCI: Thank you for having me, Jim.
SCIUTTO: Still to come this hour, Georgia's Republican secretary of state says that Senator Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, implied that he should throw out legally cast ballots in Georgia. The senator denies this. We're going to discuss the facts.
HARLOW: Meantime, President-elect Biden will be briefed by national security experts today but that is still not an official U.S. government briefing that would be part of a normal transition. What's the impact of that? We'll talk about it ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:15:00]
HARLOW: Welcome back. This morning, Georgia's Republican Secretary of State is leveling pretty stunning accusations against his fellow Republican. He says he felt pressured by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham to throw out legally cast votes. Listen to what he told our colleague, Wolf Blitzer.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WOLF BLITZER, CNN: You came away with the impression that he essentially wanted you to look for ways to toss out mail-in ballots. What exactly did he say to you?
BRAD RAFFENSPERGER, GEORGIA SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, he asked if the ballots could be matched back to the voters, and then I got the sense it implied that, then you could throw those out for any -- we'd even look at the counties with the highest frequent error of signatures. So, that's the impression that I got.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCIUTTO: Senator Graham has since denied the claim. He says he wanted to understand the process for verifying signatures on mail-in ballots. The senator went on to say that the president did not urge him to call the Secretary of State Raffensperger. Let's discuss now with Richard Pildes; he's professor of constitutional law at NYU Law School and Abby Phillip; CNN political correspondent. Thanks to both of you.
[09:20:00]
Richard, if I could begin with you. There have been many allegations of fraud leveled by the president and his allies in this without foundation. I just wonder, this is a Republican Secretary of State saying that he was pressured in some way here. Is this a credible example that needs to be investigated in your view?
RICHARD PILDES, PROFESSOR OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL: Well, you don't need an expert in legal issues concerning American democracy to tell you that if a senator actually pressured a Secretary of State to disqualify legally valid ballots, that, that would, of course, be an outrage and very disturbing.
And you know, one of the things that's very troubling about all of what we've seen is that a lot of these election officials including these secretaries of state have actually done a superb job in running the election under very difficult circumstances, including this Secretary of State in Georgia.
And these people should actually be celebrated for the tremendous job they did instead of coming under these baseless attacks.
HARLOW: You know, Abby, the Secretary of State is getting death threats. He and his wife are getting death threats. People saying you better not botch this recount, your life depends on it. Given that -- and even without that, what is the Republican senator of South Carolina, Chair of the Judiciary Committee doing, calling Georgia's Secretary of State?
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, that's really the question, isn't it? That what -- for what logical purpose could Lindsey Graham be calling into Georgia to interrogate frankly the Secretary of State?
It really just reflects the level of desperation that the president and his allies and his attorneys are kind of resorting to, to try to find anything that would work to throw out not just a few ballots or, you know, a few thousand ballots. They're looking at the hundreds of thousands when you take all of the states together that they would have to overturn the results of those elections in order to get the president to 270 electoral votes.
And I just want to make sure people understand here that Brad Raffensperger is a Republican. He is a Republican who has said he wants President Trump to win. He wants Republicans to win those two seats in Georgia.
HARLOW: Right --
PHILLIP: This is not a man who is pushing -- who has been constantly pushing back against President Trump. I spoke to him several times over the Summer about issues of mail-in voting. He was loathe, reluctant really, to criticize President Trump publicly, even though the president was spreading wildly false misinformation about mail-in voting. So, for him to come out and say this, to push back against his own party in such a public way, it's really an extraordinary thing. I think people should really understand that.
SCIUTTO: Richard, the president and his campaign, their legal challenges have come up empty virtually across the board. Last night, you had a remarkable development, their last remaining case in Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign lawyers ditched the case at the very last minute. They asked for a delay as they replaced those lawyers, were not granted that delay hearing going on today. But are you -- are any of these legal challenges going anywhere for the Trump campaign?
PILDES: Absolutely not. There are all sorts of allegations that are easy to make in public with political rhetoric, but of course, when you get to court, you actually have to back these things up. They have abandoned claims as they did recently in Pennsylvania when they've been forced to actually come up with the evidence to support those claims.
And even the claims that have some legal plausibility -- and there's one or two that, you know, are arguable cases, they simply don't affect a significant number of ballots, nowhere close to the number of ballots that would overturn an election in even one of these states, let alone in the several states that would have to be required to overturn the election.
So, the bottom line, this has been actually clear from the beginning of this litigation effort, is that the claims are extremely thin and there aren't enough ballots that they would affect in any event. The election is not going to be overturned in the courts.
HARLOW: So, Abby, I think building on that one important point is that if more Republican leaders in Congress followed the example of what Republican Governor of Ohio Mike DeWine said this weekend which is, you know, sure, Mr. President, if you want to continue this legal attempt, fruitless as it may be, you can. You have the right to do that. But, you know, for God's sake, can -- let the transition happen --
SCIUTTO: Yes --
HARLOW: To save lives as Joe Biden said. I mean, it's just interesting to me that you're not hearing even more of that from Republican leaders especially the walk-back from Lankford, right? I mean --
PHILLIP: Yes --
[09:25:00]
HARLOW: They don't have to say abandon all of your legal pursuits, but you can do that and also have a transition.
PHILLIP: Yes, it is becoming unacceptable for Republicans to even say just in case, let's get the transition going.
HARLOW: Right -- PHILLIP: You know, Senator Lankford had to try to --
SCIUTTO: Yes --
PHILLIP: Walk back his own crystal clear comments because he was speaking to a channel that the president watches, and that the president listens to. And he wanted to make sure that message was sent up to the White House.
So it just tells you that Republicans are really afraid of retribution from the president and his allies. It's been pretty clear that the president's children in particular, Don Jr. and others are attacking viciously Republicans who step out of line, and I think we'll see a lot more of that in the coming weeks.
SCIUTTO: Listen, the facts are the facts, and folks can recognize it or choose not to, and that's where we are. Richard Pildes, Abby Phillip, thanks very much. Well, the Dakotas are quickly becoming the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S., positivity rates there, hospitalizations as well simply skyrocketing.
HARLOW: We're also moments away from the opening bell this morning on Wall Street. Taking a look at futures, it looks like a mixed open, stocks did hit record highs yesterday on the positive news about Moderna's COVID vaccine. The Dow inching closer to the 30,000 level, the level never reached. We'll take an eye and look at the market when it opens.
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