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Interview with Sioux Falls, South Dakota Mayor Paul TenHaken; Biden to Meet with Republican and Democratic Governors Today; Brooklyn Food Pantry Sees 75 Percent Rise in Need. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired November 19, 2020 - 10:30   ET

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

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[10:31:12]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: All right, welcome back. South Dakota's governor this morning, still defending her COVID response as cases are soaring across that state.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. KRISTI NOEM (R-SD): Some have said that my refusal to mandate masks is a reason why our cases are rising here in the state of South Dakota, and that is not true.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: But the numbers, they are tragic and they do not lie. Right now, South Dakota ranks second highest in the nation in the number of COVID cases per capita. The spike in cases has led the largest city in the state to issue their own mask mandate -- that is Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The mayor, Paul TenHaken, is with me now.

Thank you very much for being with me. First of all, I'm so sorry for what you guys are going through. I know it is tragic, and it has been deadly for far too many.

You now have voted for this mask mandate, Mayor. But just about a week ago, you voted against one and you said it's not an effective way to control a pandemic that doesn't know where Sioux Falls city limits are. I wonder what changed your mind.

MAYOR PAUL TENHAKEN (R), SIOUX FALLS, SOUTH DAKOTA: Well, thanks for having me on.

HARLOW: Sure.

TENHAKEN: One clarification, I didn't vote to approve it actually, our council changed, they got the votes to approve it. So I didn't have to vote to approve this, the city council approved this.

HARLOW: Do you -- but you do approve of that move?

TENHAKEN: I do approve of their action, I'm not going to veto it -- I do have veto power. I think what's changed is a few things. One is for the first time in the last week, one of our large health care systems came out and said, hey, we need this. And that hadn't happened to date. Also, our state medical association asked for this as well, so that was a big change.

We also amended this so there's no penalty to this ordinance, and that's kind of a talking point of our mask mandate, is there's no penalty for noncompliance. And that's the compromise and kind of the interesting waters we're in right now with this topic of masks.

You have the -- kind of the freedom, you know, personal liberty group that is vehemently against masking, and then you have those who feel the penalties should be very, very severe for those who don't comply with masking.

Well, by not having a penalty, I think what we're trying to do is appease the people in the middle, you know, the 60, 70 percent of people who will say, listen, if it's a city ordinance I'm going to follow it, I may not like it. You'll still have some offenders, you know, who just say, hey, I'm not going to touch this because there's no penalty so why would I do it? And that's OK, that's their right --

HARLOW: Well --

TENHAKEN: -- but hopefully it changes some behavior a little bit.

HARLOW: So on your point about the state medical group just finally saying, you know, we should have a mask mandate, the CDC has been recommending masks -- you know -- since April 3rd, and the two main hospital systems in Sioux Falls have both had it posted on their website for weeks now, pleading with people to wear masks.

TENHAKEN: Yes, and I have been running PSAs and marketing messages. Obviously, we know masking is a basic infection control tool, and people will even debate that science -- I don't buy that, OK? We know that masks can help slow the spread of a virus.

What we haven't seen though --

(CROSSTALK)

HARLOW: Yes, including your governor in a recent op-ed, you know, saying it's debatable.

TENHAKEN: Well, and I think, you know, she has some valid points in that. What we haven't seen is mandating masks slowing the spread. Masks do slow the spread, but mandates have just been all over the board with some cities and states that have mandated it, where it's maybe made a little dent and then they're on the same trajectory up shortly after.

So I think that's the challenge right now, is finding consistent data sets that say when you do these three or four actions in a city or a state, it flattens the curve.

HARLOW: We just, as you know, saw Iowa governor change course there and mandate masks, North Dakota's governor said on Friday with a mask mandate, "Our situation has changed and we must change with it."

[10:35:03]

And I ask you because of your residents (ph), right? And people like Chris Bjorkman, who we heard from from our reporter Lucy Kafanov this week, who lost her husband there in Sioux Falls to COVID. Listen to what she said, and then also what her husband said after being airlifted to Minnesota for treatment just days before he died.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS BJORKMAN, LOST HUSBAND TO COVID-19: I wanted him to come home. I always thought he would come home.

JOHN BJORKMAN, COVID-9 PATIENT: When they flew me over here, I literally didn't know if I would see the next day. It makes me more nervous.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Do you think that more measures to mitigate the spread of COVID earlier could have saved lives like John Bjorkman?

TENHAKEN: Well, that's the question that we'll always ask, and we'll never know the answer to that. I think what I have to look at doing is say, OK, within my 80 square miles of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, what are the steps I can take?

And you know, we see countries now, New York City, a great example of pulling kids out of school because of a three percent positivity rate that they had. Well, that comes with a whole other set of unintended consequences and public health issues.

And so those are the decisions that we each, in our own individual communities, have to wrestle with, to say, hey, what works in New York may not work in Sioux Falls and may not work in Tallahassee. And I wish there was more consistent measures that we could all take that we knew would have impact, but the data's just so wild on what works and what doesn't work that we kind of wrestle through this day by day to figure out how we can keep the cases low.

HARLOW: I hear you on the schools, I'm going through that with the New York City public schools in our own household this morning, I get it. But I -- you know, just to be clear for our viewers who just heard what you said, you have been clear on the mask science, that the masks work and there's no question about that. So I just want people to understand that, the question is about a mandate.

Let me just ask you this final question because from all I've read from you, one of your big concerns has been dividing your community even more, basically pitting people against each other, right? And I want you to respond to what one of your residents, Amy Billows, said just last Thursday at a city council meeting.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) AMY BILLOWS, SIOUX FALLS, SOUTH DAKOTA RESIDENT: Viruses are so small that expecting a mask to block them is like expecting a chain-link fence to keep out mosquitoes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: It's false, but she believes it. How do you combat, effectively, that misinformation for your community?

TENHAKEN: Poppy, that's a great question. And so we're battling the COVID pandemic, I'm battling the info-demic and I'm battling the politicalization (sic) of the pandemic. I mean, those are three issues I deal with every single day.

I am a purple city in a red state, and this has been an extremely divisive issue, probably a lot more divisive than other cities. And so what I have to do is just trust the information that I know, trust the CDC, trust the experts and say, hey, we know this is a basic infection control measure. I wish we didn't have to mandate it, I wish you would just do it. But absent that, the council did decide to do this mandate and we hope it has some effect in our community.

HARLOW: We hope it does too, and we wish you a lot of luck. Thank you for being here, Mayor TenHaken. I appreciate it.

TENHAKEN: Thanks, Poppy.

HARLOW: Of course -- Jim.

[10:38:29]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Still ahead this hour, government health workers are now said to be forbidden -- forbidden -- from communicating health information that (ph) impacts a response to a pandemic from President-elect Biden and his team. Imagine that.

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HARLOW: President-elect Joe Biden is set to hold a virtual meeting today of course about the COVID pandemic, and it's going to be notably with a bipartisan group of governors. This call comes as the Trump administration continues to stonewall formal transition efforts despite a bevy of experts warning about the consequences.

SCIUTTO: Listen, the latest projections show that death figure approaching 300,000 in three weeks. This matters. CNN's Jessica Dean joins us now from Wilmington, Delaware.

Jessica, so what is the Biden team doing to overcome these roadblocks?

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, guys, they are pushing ahead in all of the ways they know how. That includes having their scientific advisers meeting with drug makers like Pfizer to talk about the vaccine.

It also includes -- as you noted -- this meeting today with a group of governors from the National Governors Association, Republicans and Democrats coming together to talk about the coronavirus pandemic, likely to talk about vaccine distribution, states of course going to play a major role in that, in streamlining this process. We know that Joe Biden has said he wants to put a mask mandate in place when he assumes office, so expect for them to talk about these sort of things.

We know that Biden and his transition team have been reaching out to local officials, have been reaching out to people in the medical community, in the health community, trying to do what they can to get around the fact that they can't talk to the people they need to be speaking to maybe the most, which are the ones who hold all the current data, the federal officials who are making the plans for the vaccine distribution process. They're not allowed to talk to each other right now.

Now, Biden talked a little bit about this whole transition process yesterday. Take a listen.

[10:45:02]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: I am optimistic, but we should be further along. There's a whole lot of things that are just -- we just don't have available to us, which, unless it's made available soon, we're going to be behind by weeks or months, being able to put together the whole initiative relating to the biggest promise we have.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DEAN: Right, and they did make the coronavirus pandemic, getting it under control, absolutely central to their pitch to Americans when Biden was running for president. He promised to get it under control. And, Jim and Poppy, they know what a giant logistical challenge it's going to be to get this vaccine to millions and millions of Americans.

And we also heard from their COVID advisory board earlier this week, guys, that they're not getting access to data like the amount of PPE that's available, how many hospital beds are available, things like that that they want to be on top of so they can track how things are ebbing and flowing all across the country.

But again, we do expect to see President-elect Joe Biden giving remarks later this afternoon on this -- guys.

HARLOW: OK, we'll watch for those, Jess --

SCIUTTO: We will.

HARLOW: -- thanks very much for the reporting.

SCIUTTO: Well, the NFL is rolling out strict new coronavirus guidelines. This, after one team says it will be without most of its defensive starters this weekend due to COVID. We'll have more.

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[10:50:52]

HARLOW: Well, we've been talking about this all day, that millions and millions of Americans are facing the tough reality as we head into the holiday season, that they're out of work and they're out of luck -- at least right now -- in terms of Congress reaching a deal on more stimulus. Right now, food is being distributed to hundreds of families across Brooklyn.

SCIUTTO: Americans in 2020 cannot feed themselves. CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich is there in Brooklyn.

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Hi there, Jim and Poppy, that's right. We are seeing the physical manifestation of this hunger crisis in America right now. Food is being distributed behind me to about 1,200 families. If you take a look at this line, these are the people waiting for food, they're waiting for their Thanksgiving meals.

We spoke to the organizer, and she said that she is seeing a 75 percent increase in need since last year, and that is largely in part because of COVID and the amount of people that are unemployed. I spoke to several in this line, they said that they've never been to a food pantry before. They are here for the first time in order to get a meal to feed their family.

And this is not just happening here in Brooklyn, this is happening across the country. We know that about 6 million people have fallen into poverty in the last year because of the pandemic, and Feeding America is expecting about 50 million people to be food insecure in 2020.

And as you mentioned that stimulus, the stimulus that these people waiting in line need in order to survive is nowhere in sight. A lot of federal protections are expiring by Christmas, at the end of this year. It is really not a good sign for people who are in need. These are just some of them, right here in this line today here in Brooklyn -- Jim, Poppy.

SCIUTTO: We've seen lines like that across the country. It is sad to see, it's a hard fact of this new reality. Vanessa Yurkevich, thanks very much.

Well in very different news, the college football schedule has been thrown into disarray with more games being called off to coronavirus concerns and infections.

HARLOW: Andy Scholes has more for us in the "Bleacher Report" this morning. Good morning, Andy.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning, Jim and Poppy. Yes, in just the last hour, Maryland's game with Michigan State has been cancelled. Maryland having a big outbreak on their team, their head coach and 15 players have tested positive. So for the second straight week, Maryland has had to cancel their game due to COVID.

And this weekend in college football, 15 of the 62 games scheduled are not going to be played due to the virus. Every conference across the country, they've had to postpone or cancel a game this week. And this comes after the same number, 15 games, were called off last week.

Teams, certainly running out of dates to make these games up. And when it comes to the playoffs at the end of the year, the playoff committee, the executive director, telling ESPN they would not replace any of the top four teams if one of them was going to be unable to play due to coronavirus.

Now, NFL games, meanwhile, continue but Commissioner Roger Goodell is now making all teams operate under the league's intensive coronavirus protocols for the rest of the season. Now, previously those protocols were only for teams that had a positive test or played against someone who did.

But starting Saturday all meetings will be held virtually or in large spaces approved by the league; masks and-or mouth shields are going to be mandatory during on-field practices, and the amount of players in locker rooms and weight rooms will now be limited.

In a memo sent to all teams and obtained by CNN, Goodell says, "The upcoming holidays, beginning with Thanksgiving next week, will introduce new risks of exposure that we need to address now."

In the latest round of testing results released by the NFL, 52 players and personnel had tested positive for the virus.

And the Las Vegas Raiders, meanwhile, they could be without most of their defensive starters for this Sunday's game against the Chiefs, seven players were out of the COVID-19 list yesterday, joining two others who were already put on that list earlier. only one player had tested positive, but the rest of them are deemed high risk contacts.

If those players, though, do continue to test negative, they could be allowed to return for the game on Sunday. But you know, Jim and Poppy, as cases rise around the country, you know, football is not immune to this, and we've certainly seen how games have been affected.

[10:55:10]

HARLOW: Andy, thanks very much for the reporting.

And thanks to all of you for joining us today, we'll see you back here tomorrow morning. I'm Poppy Harlow.

SCIUTTO: And I'm Jim Sciutto. NEWSROOM with Kate Bolduan will start right after a short break.

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