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Doctors Slam Sweden's No-Lockdown Strategy as Cases Surge; Inside Texas Hospitals Filled to Capacity with COVID-19 Cases; Key Pandemic Relief Programs to Expire Soon; Mike Pompeo First Top U.S. Diplomat to Visit West Bank Settlement. Aired 1-2a ET
Aired November 20, 2020 - 01:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[01:00:00]
JOHN VAUSE, ANCHOR, CNN NEWSROOM: Hello and welcome to our viewers joining us from around the world. I'm John Vause.
Coming up this hour on CNN NEWSROOM.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES:. Vaccines are close by. They're coming.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: Dr. Anthony Fauci warns the U.S. is facing the pandemic's most deadly days so far and warns of the dangers of large holiday gatherings.
Donald Trump's legal team lays out what it says is a very clear and viable path to victory but in reality it was very crazy and a very unhinged news conference.
And while Trump stonewalls the transfer of power, President Elect Joe Biden has a harsh warning for the outgoing one-term president.
With spread of the coronavirus pandemic effectively out of control across the U.S., the number of new daily infections continue to shatter the previous day's record. Almost 190,000 new cases reported Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The total number of infections heading towards 12 million.
That's leaving hospitals overwhelmed, and the number of people dying every day nationwide is also rising to levels not seen since early May.
Experts from the University of Washington say the pandemic is so bad, the death toll could reach 470,000 or more by March. An increase of more than 30,000 from its forecast just last week.
We have more details now from CNN's Erica Hill.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ERICA HILL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (Voice Over): As testing lines grow ahead of Thanksgiving, this stark new advisory.
DR. HENRY WALKE, COVID-19 INCIDENT MANAGER, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL & PREVENTION: CDC is recommending against travel during the Thanksgiving period.
What's at stake is basically the increased chance of one of your loved ones becoming sick and then being hospitalized and dying.
HILL: The White House coronavirus task force holding its first briefing in more than four months, echoing that concern as the numbers get worse.
DR. DEBORAH BIRX, WHITE CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE COORDINATOR: Every American needs to be vigilant in this moment.
HILL: More than half a million new cases in just the last four days. Nearly 80,000 Americans now hospitalized. Yet another record high.
DR. NATHAN HATTON, UNIVERSITY OF UTAH HOSPITAL PULMONARY SPECIALIST: We are on 250 days of having a COVID patient in our ICU right now.
HILL: Deaths are also climbing, nearing daily numbers not seen since early May. Nationwide, more than 250,000 lives lost. Mothers, fathers, grandparents, friends.
DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, INFECTIOUS DISEASES, MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL CHIEF: I think we should all just pause at that extraordinary number. We need to grieve, we need to mourn, we need to remember. And then we need to double down and make sure that all of those lives were not lost in vain.
HILL: Arkansas businesses that sell or allow alcohol consumption on sight must now closed by 11:00 pm.
Minnesota pausing in-person dining, sports and social activities for the next four weeks.
A new curfew for nonessential businesses in Los Angeles County begins Friday.
Wisconsin's public health emergency and mask mandate extended through January.
GOV. TONY EVERS, (D-WIS): Call it what you want, flattening the curve, stopping the spread, staying safer at home. I'm going to call it what it is. It's about saving lives.
HILL: Public schools in Denver and all K-12 schools in the state of Kentucky shifting to fully remote learning.
New York City's move to do the same for its public schools prompting immediate backlash. MARK LEVINE, NEW YORK CITY HEALTH COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: These
priorities are totally backward. Today, in New York city, a kid cannot learn in their classroom but they can have a meal at indoor dining.
MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO, N.Y.: For everyone who honestly might feel somehow a little better if they knew that indoor dining was going to be closed or gyms were going to be closed, it's just a matter of time.
HILL: There is some encouraging news. AstraZeneca says its vaccine appears to generate a strong and immune response in those over 70 as it does in younger people.
But while we wait, the fallout from coronavirus is getting worse. New jobless claims rising for the first time in a month and still no stimulus in sight.
KARIN SMITH, WILL LOSE UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS: Until the election, I can't believe they're just not going to do anything again.
HILL: Food lines growing as families struggle to provide.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Seventy-five percent of those we are seeing are unemployed because of COVID-19.
HILL: Need and stress reaching dangerous levels and fears of a breaking point.
HILL (On Camera): California's governor just adding a new curfew which takes effect Saturday night starting at 10:00 pm, runs until 5:00 am for the next month.
Some of the hardest hit areas, it will impact about 94 percent of that state's population.
In New York, I'm Erica Hill, CNN.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[01:05:00]
VAUSE: For five decades, Dr. Anthony Fauci has guided the United States through health emergencies like HIV, SARS, and swine flu. His words matter.
And when it comes to the two imminent vaccines, America's leading infectious disease expert has high praise. Both candidates have a 95 percent efficacy which Fauci says is extraordinary.
Pfizer expected to apply for an emergency use authorization with the U.S. Food & Drug Administration in the coming hours.
Amid all this good news, Fauci tells CNN now is not the time to relax.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) FAUCI: Vaccines are close by, they're coming. I said help is on the way. Which, to me, I think should motivate people even more to double down because pretty soon we're going to get a heck of a lot of help from a very efficacious vaccine.
Two vaccines that just two weeks ago and this past week were shown to be extremely effective -- I mean efficacious in 95 percent and 94.5 percent.
That's almost as good as measles vaccine which is an extraordinary vaccine that crushed measles in this country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: The E.U. is moving to distribute a vaccine quickly with the European Commission president saying conditional authorization could be given as soon as next month.
Joining me now live from Los Angeles, Anne Rimoin, professor of epidemiology at UCLA.
Dr. Rimoin, thanks for being with us.
DR. ANNE RIMOIN, PROFESSOR OF EPIDEMIOLOGY: It's nice to be here, thank you.
VAUSE: OK. With regards to the vaccine, while the trials have shown 95 percent effective, what is still not known is can they prevent the transmission of the coronavirus?
In other words, the risk people would get vaccinated but then potentially still carry and transmit the disease. How real is this concern to you?
RIMOIN: Well, we still have a lot to learn about the vaccines. Right now, what we have learned, is that the vaccine can prevent -- we can prevent symptomatic infection in most people and, in fact, can likely prevent severe disease in most people.
But what we don't know is that if the vaccine is going to stop people from being infected at all.
People may become infected, be infected asymptomatically and still be able to spread it on to others. And so we need to understand that.
We also need to understand how long does the protective immunity last from these vaccines? And then we also need to understand which populations these vaccines work the best in.
So there's still quite a bit to learn about these vaccines but the news overall is very good news.
VAUSE: And that gets us down to this issue of distribution because that's the next hurdle. Ideally, if they went around the world, got the vaccine at the same time or developed antibodies then this risk of transmission, once vaccinated, isn't really an issue. But many parts of the U.S. may not be ready. The Kaiser Foundation
reports to date only $200 million has been distributed to state, territorial, and local jurisdictions for vaccine preparedness though it's estimated that at least $6 to 8 billion is needed.
So a vaccine isn't much use if it's sitting in a warehouse.
RIMOIN: Right. You've heard many people say over and over a vaccine is fine and great, but what we need is vaccination. We need those vaccines in peoples arms to make them effective.
We come back to the same issue we've been struggling with from the very beginning of this pandemic, which is that we need the logistics in place. We need the capacity to be able to push these vaccines out to people, just like we need the ability to push out PPE to people, we need the availability to push out testing to people.
So where we may fall down are the logistics and so that planning must occur right now.
But the other thing that we really need to work on is we need to be able to work on people being willing to take this vaccine. We know that there's quite a bit of what we call vaccine hesitancy, people being concerned about taking a vaccine.
My team at UCLA has just done a study where we've been canvassing health care workers and many health care workers do have concerns about the vaccine. They believe in vaccines in general but they're still very worried about this vaccine and what it actually means for them.
So I think that there's so much work to be done for this vaccine to be effective, to be in the arms of people and doing what it needs to do which is to create herd immunity by vaccine. Which will protect us all and allow us to get back to life as we knew it.
VAUSE: Just very quickly. On the issue of evolving science. A month after the FDA approved remdesivir to treat COVID-19 comes word from the WHO that --
"Current evidence does not suggest remdesivir affects the risk of dying from COVID-19 or needing mechanical ventilation among other important outcomes. Any beneficial effects of remdesivir, if they do exist" -- this is what the guidelines say -- "are likely to be small and the possibility of important harm remains."
So they're recommending remdesivir not be used to treat COVID-19. Is this typical for a drug approval?
[01:10:00]
RIMOIN: Well, this whole process has been very, very fraught with a variety of different studies being done all over of the world. We haven't been using the same standards across the board.
So this is definitely important information. WHO has taken a whole host of information together and spent a lot of time evaluating it.
I think that there are benefits to remdesivir. We just have to be very clear what they are, at what stage and who exactly benefits from it. But it certainly does call into question the utility of remdesivir.
There's nothing that is -- there's nothing that's going to be a one size fits all solution here.
So remdesivir may have some benefit even if it is incremental and now we really have to understand what other tools we have in our toolbox.
VAUSE: Yes. I guess it's still early days, believe or not. We're about a week out from Thanksgiving now, the holidays are coming up in Europe and other parts of the world.
So what are you and your family doing this year? What's your advice and should we follow your example? What's the Rimoin family doing?
RIMOIN: Well, we are just having Thanksgiving with the people in our household. That's it. Because we know that bringing other people into your household at particular at this time is a dangerous proposition.
Now I'm not going to be the first to say this. But I'm going to repeat what so many other wise people are saying which is it's much better to have a Zoom Thanksgiving than an ICU Christmas.
And it's really important to remember we all want to spend time with our families, we all miss being amongst the people we love and sharing holidays and important events with them. I too miss that.
But we are at a very dangerous moment in this pandemic and this virus is escalating to incredible new rates every single day. We had 185,000 cases here in the United States.
We need to be doing everything we can to reduce the spread of this virus. Things that we're not doing right now will save lives.
So the thing to do is to spend Thanksgiving with your family or whatever holiday it is that you're celebrating during this season. We need to reduce the spread of the virus.
If you must see people for Thanksgiving or another holiday, do it outside, if you can. If you can't do it outside, spread out inside and have as much ventilation as possible. Only take your masks off when you are eating.
And if you are just drinking something, use a straw, put it under your mask. These are practical things that people can do.
But there is no substitute here for just staying with your own family. We don't need to be mixing people and creating opportunity for this virus to spread.
VAUSE: Keep those loved ones at arms length as best you can. Anne Rimoin, thank you for being with us, we appreciate it.
RIMOIN: It's my pleasure.
VAUSE: Just ahead, the news conference now being called the most dangerous one hour and 45 minutes of television and American history.
Donald Trump's legal strategy, it seems, revealed.
Plus how things will be different under President Biden. Get ready for a mask mandate but no national lockdown.
[01:15:00]
VAUSE: Donald Trump has lost the U.S. state of Georgia for a second time. A hand recount confirmed the original result, found no evidence of widespread fraud.
But that's not stopping the president's legal team.
During a bizarre news conference, Rudy Giuliani seemed to reveal what the real strategy might be, an attempt to undermine faith in U.S. democracy while soothing Donald Trump's fragile ego.
And the senior government official charged with election security and fired by Trump for confirming the entire election was free of fraud tweeted this --
"That press conference was the most dangerous one hour and 45 minutes of television in American history. And possibly the craziest."
More now from CNN's Boris Sanchez.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (Voice Over): As the U.S. crosses another grim coronavirus milestone, President Trump remains largely in hiding, trying to block the transition of President Elect Joe Biden and furiously tweeting dangerous nonsensical falsehoods about the election.
In an unprecedented move, Trump is getting personally involved in certifying election results in Michigan.
He called the two Republicans on the Wayne County board of canvas areas who initially objected to declaring Joe Biden winner there but both eventually voted to certify Biden as the winner.
Now a source confirms to CNN that both say they want to rescind their votes though it's legally too late.
That source also telling CNN President Trump has invited Michigan GOP lawmakers to the White House, as part of his effort to interfere in the results of the election.
All of this happening as the Trump Campaign dropped its lawsuit to overturn the results in Michigan. RUDY GIULIANI, ATTORNEY TO PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: This is a
disgraceful thing that was done in this country.
SANCHEZ: Meantime, the president's legal team is flailing. Even as some close to the president privately admit his lawsuits are destined to fail, his lawyers are desperately clinging to lies and incendiary claims, while offering no proof.
SIDNEY POWELL, TRUMP ATTORNEY: President Trump won by a landslide, we are going to prove it.
SANCHEZ: Despite those claims from Sidney Powell, a Trump attorney with a history of propagating debunked QAnon conspiracies, the facts tell a different story. Joe Biden won the election.
And the results of a recount in Georgia reaffirmed Biden as the winner in the peat (ph) state. Though Rudy Giuliani claims the numbers do not matter and that his team has evidence of a centralized pattern of fraud.
Though he declined to share details.
GIULIANA: And what emerged very quickly, this is not a singular voter fraud in one state. This pattern repeats itself in a number of states.
SANCHEZ: But in Pennsylvania, the Trump Campaign's lawsuit currently does not allege any fraud. And Giuliani himself admitted it in court.
JUDGE (Voice Over, Captioned): So the amended complaint, does the amended complaint plead fraud with particularly?
GIULIANA: No, your honor. And it doesn't plead fraud.
SANCHEZ: Adding to the circus, one of Trump's legal advisers, Jenna Ellis, also facing scrutiny after CNN's KFile discovered she made disparaging remarks about the president in 2016 calling him an idiot, unamerican and not trustworthy.
JENNA ELLIS (Voice Over, Captioned): "Why should we rest our highest office in America on a man who fundamentally goes back and forth and really cannot be trusted to be consistent or accurate in anything that he says."
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: Our thanks to Boris Sanchez there, reporting from the White House.
Ron Brownstein is CNN's senior political analyst and a senior editor for "The Atlantic." And he is with us this hour from Los Angeles. Ron, thank you for being with us.
RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SNR. POLITICAL ANALYST: Thanks for having me.
VAUSE: OK. The "Washington Post" sort of nicely summed up Trump's legal arguments put forward by Giuliani at that news conference. This is part of it.
"China is in on it, Cuba is in on it. Antifa and George Soros are in on it. At least two presidents of Venezuela, one dead and one living, are in on it. Big tech is in on it, a web server from Germany is involved. Argentina is in on it to, sort of."
On and on it goes. And what "it" is, is this giant scam.
But the news conference confirmed what seemed to be obvious. There is no legitimate legal challenge to this election result.
So then does that mean these lawsuits are being filed simply to undermine faith and confidence in the democratic process?
BROWNSTEIN: No. I think they're being filed to actually overturn the election by providing some kind of excuse for Republican legislators to throw out the results of the election in their states and send a slate of electors favorable to Donald Trump.
The news conference today was so clownish, so hallucinatory. Joe McCarthy would not have imagined a conspiracy so immense as Trump's lawyers confected today.
[01:20:00]
But it's easy to lose sight of how scary it was. We have the president of the United States seeking to systematically overturn that he is going to lose by something like 7 million votes.
That he lost in the decisive states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by three times as big a margin as he won them in 2016. He is trying to overturn that and virtually the entire Republican Party is either actively abetting him or looking the other way.
This is a frightening moment for American democracy and for the implications going forward about our ability to function as one unified country.
Don't forget as all of this is happening, as you have noted, we are seeing the highest, most danger spike of the coronavirus outbreak to date and Republicans are being equally silent as Trump walks away from his responsibility like a captain on a navy ship deserting the bow under fire. That's what he's doing.
And they are abetting him to walk away from that and kind of humoring him -- it's really more than humoring him -- allowing him to spin these fantasies that are so dangerous to the fabric of the democracy.
VAUSE: I want you to listen to a little more from what came out of that news conference today from Trump's legal team.
POWELL: This is stunning, heart-breaking, infuriating and the most unpatriotic acts I can even imagine for people in this country to have participated in, in any way, shape, or form.
JENNA ELLIS, TRUMP CAMPAIGN SENIOR LEGAL ADVISOR: We are a nation of rules, not a nation of rulers. There is not someone that just gets to pick who the next president is outside the will of the American people.
GIULIANI: The most important thing here is that this has been a massive attack on the integrity of the voting system in the greatest democracy on earth.
VAUSE: None of that is true but it kind of sounds credible. And notably, there's a Monmouth poll which found 81 percent of Trump voters say they're not confident the election has been conducted fairly, 77 percent say Biden won due to voter fraud.
So as a strategy to create confusion and doubt it's working.
BROWNSTEIN: Well, it's working for his audience at enormous cost. And it is working in part because, again, so many -- so few Republicans have spoken out in the same way that, for example, the secretary of state in Georgia has against these baseless and really somewhat insane allegations of a global conspiracy.
It is also a fundamentally racist argument. Donald Trump lost this election in diverse white college suburbs with a lot of white college- educated voters who voted against him in big numbers because they thought he was personally unfit to be president and also because they believe he has mismanaged the coronavirus pandemic.
And yet, what is the argument from his lawyers? It's that fraud was rampant in African American -- in major cities with large African American populations, even though, as you know, John, in most cases, Trump ran better in those places -- in most cases, he ran better in those places than he did in 2016.
It is a fundamentally racist argument and it is finding an audience. And there are those who think that is why Mitch McConnell is kind of countenancing it. Because he knows this will poison the waters for Joe Biden with Republican rank and file voters.
And as I wrote in my column today, that will make it harder for him to get Republicans to cross the line and work with him on his legislative agenda in '21 and '22.
VAUSE: So just looking at the Republicans right now in congress, it seems they're all trying to work out -- it's a bit like a hedge fund, they're trying to work out how much influence Donald Trump will have once this is over and will it tweak -- destroy their chances of being primary or make them primary for 2022? That kind of stuff.
Maybe that's a good move in the short term but in the long term?
BROWNSTEIN: Right. No, look, I described it today -- I described their approach today as a murder suicide. Because on the one hand, they are significantly potentially killing Biden's ability to speak to Republican voters if they believe it was kind of -- if he is only office from fraud to begin with and they are abetting Donald Trump in that. The suicide part is that they are snuffing out their chance of
emerging from Trump's shadow. If Trump leaves office and is able to say I wasn't beaten, I wasn't defeated, it was only taken from me by fraud, obviously that magnifies his influence in the party, makes him an even more formidable figu for 2024.
I don't know if he'll run in the end in 2024, but I bet -- I think I'm pretty confident that he will dangle the possibility of running until the last possible moment of filing for Iowa, New Hampshire, as a way of increasing his influence over the party.
And everything they are doing, as several Republican strategists said to me, is cementing him in that position, giving him even more leverage over the base and thus over them.
[01:25:00]
And limiting their freedom of action to kind of reset the party's course after an election in which, after all, Donald Trump is going to lose by about 7 million votes. Not only lose those blue wall states from the Rust Belt that went back to Biden but also suffer the erosion in Georgia and Arizona that allowed Democrats to plant a flag in the Sun Belt.
It's going to be much harder to change the direction now that they have allowed him to make this case that he wasn't beaten, it was stolen from him.
VAUSE: Ron, thank you. Some powerful statements there and insight from you on that. Thank you, appreciate it.
BROWNSTEIN: Thank you, John. Yes.
VAUSE: Ron Brownstein there in Los Angeles. Take care.
While Donald Trump ignores the pandemic and makes no mention of the 250,000 dead, Joe Biden has revealed part of his strategy to control the virus. Which includes a national mask mandate but not a national lockdown.
And the president elect had some harsh criticism for Donald Trump.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: What the president's doing now is really -- it's going to be another incident where he will go down in history as being one of the most irresponsible presidents in American history.
It's just out of -- not even within the norm at all. There's questions whether it's even legal.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: More now on Biden's agenda from CNN's Jeff Zeleny. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEFF ZELENY, CNN SNR. WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: President Elect Joe Biden moving forward despite President Trump's to sabotage the outcome of the election. Calling that inherently dangerous for the world and sending a bad signal.
ZELENY (Voice Over): Now clearly, Mr. Biden is trying to make the point that he is already in the job, working toward the job, he's on the job. Holding events virtually every day in different facets of the government from national security briefings to economic briefings, and indeed focusing on coronavirus.
We're also learning that he's going to be forming his cabinet faster than once thought. He's going to be naming his treasury secretary, naming others around the Thanksgiving time mark. Clearly trying to show that they are in motion and setting up a new government and ignoring what President Trump is doing.
But Mr. Biden did acknowledge for the first time in a significant way that what the White House is doing is causing significant damage here in the United States and, indeed, the message it's sending around the world.
But, of course, there's nothing he can do about that but simply work towards forming this government and try and make the case that he still wants to be a unifying president.
But there is no doubt all these false attacks that President Trump is leading from the White House are having an effect on the legitimacy of the election.
But Mr. Biden clearly believes that he's confident in his victory. Now nearly 80 million votes, a record number of votes, he's gotten the popular vote leading Donald Trump here in the U.S. in the popular vote by more than 5 million.
So that is giving him something of a mandate as he moves forward to set up his government.
ZELENY (On Camera): Jeff Zeleny, CNN, Wilmington, Delaware.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: Well, as the year comes to an end so do key relief programs set to help Americans during the pandemic. We'll have more on that in a moment.
And despite a second wave of cases, Sweden refuses to impose harsher restrictions. What Swedish ICU doctors have to say about resistance to a mandatory lockdown.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[01:30:47]
JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to our viewers all around the world. I'm John Vause. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM.
It became known as the Sweden model, a light touch to pandemic restrictions, personal responsibility over government intervention. But now daily infections on the rise once again. Sweden, though, is sticking with the Sweden model.
This report from CNN's Phil Black.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PHIL BLACK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): A gym, in central Stockholm. Sweden's government says, this is dangerous, but it won't not shut them down. And those, working hard at this socially-distanced class, don't want to stop.
ASA LARSSON, INSTRUCTOR: Workout, for me, is all I got right now. So I need to -- I need to do this, as long as I can, and for all the members as well. They are so happy that we're still doing it.
BLACK: Perhaps, they would feel differently, if they saw this. Upsala Hospital, the ICU, a ventilated patient is being prepped for helicopter transfer to another facility, with more free beds.
(on camera) Are you surprised that you are already having to double capacity?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not surprised, no. Yes, we expected it.
BLACK (voice over): After a quiet summer, the coronavirus is again surging in Sweden.
(on camera): This is not like the spring peak, It's nowhere near as intense yet but it feels, for the staff here, so familiar. They are tired and frustrated because there is a sense that this could have been avoided.
(voice over): A powerful second wave, hasn't changed the essence of Sweden's distinctive approach to slowing the spread. Still no force lockdown, few rules, mostly just advice of social distancing, with an emphasis on personal responsibility.
On the front line, they say, it is not enough.
DR. RAFAEL KAWATI, HEAD OF INTENSIVE CARE, UPSALA UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL: We need to put some, you know, consequences for not checking this. Doing this --
BLACK: Enforcement.
DR. KAWATI: Yes, enforcement.
BLACK: Sweden's official list of recommended behavior is tougher now. It reads more like a voluntary lockdown. Discouraging all nonessential mixing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you hear me. BLACK: But Anders Tegnell, the architect of Sweden's approach, admits too many are not following his advice.
(on camera) So that's the key difference. Your recommendations aren't enforceable.
TEGNELL: So far, I mean during the spring this works really well. We managed to have people to stop meeting each other, to create extent. If we can't get back to that level of --
BLACK: -- or advice.
TEGNELL: I think we can handle the situation and also during this fall.
BLACK: Flex. Make him look angry.
Tegnell is lionized here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He has been our like national hero in this crisis. He had put out guidelines that has kept our freedom.
BLACK: There is broad support for the country's policies, even though officials admit Sweden failed its elderly. Almost 90 percent of people who have died so far, we're over 70. And Sweden's total death toll is more than 4 times the combined figure of its Nordic neighbors. All of which embraced tougher measures.
But even among the sick, he made advocates for prioritizing freedom. Anders Eidsvik knows the suffering that COVID-19 can cause.
ANDERS EIDSVIK, COVID PATIENT: It shouldn't be too easy to close down the society, I believe.
BLACK: Sweden is sticking the model that relies on consent instead of (INAUDIBLE) but it's now asking people to voluntarily give up more than ever before and it's not yet clear they're willing to do it.
Phil Black, CNN -- Stockholm.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: Because of the coronavirus incubation period, the current surge in daily infections is a reflection of how fast COVID-19 was spreading a few weeks ago. Which means, no matter what is done now to slow the spread, the daily numbers continue to surge. So too hospital admissions.
CNN's Omar Jimenez has an exclusive report from Odessa, Texas on what this crisis looks like in an overwhelmed hospital.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT ((voice over): It is a reality this part of Texas has only seen in its nightmares.
[01:34:59]
JIMENEZ: The ICU, at Odessa Regional Medical Center in Odessa, Texas is at its capacity with COVID-19 patients.
Even with this hospital at maximum capacity, they are still trying to find places to put COVID-19 patients. All of the beds that you see in this section, curtained off at the moment did not exist before the pandemic.
Now, it's filled to its absolutely capacity. All patients here literally are fighting for their lives. DR. ROHITH SARAVANAN, ODESSA REGIONAL HOSPITAL: We lost about 10
patients last week and one of them had been on the ventilator for about a month. The ones that are here now, on average they've been on the vent for about a week or so.
JIMENEZ: Denise Mourning --
DENISE MOURNING, ACUTE CARE NURSE PRACTITIONER: We're getting closer, ok.
JIMENEZ: -- is an acute care nurse practitioner.
MOURNING: There was only a few times in the summer where we were really pushed to the extreme. But now, for the last few weeks, we're busting out of the scene.
JIMENEZ: But she and everyone else, remain at war with the virus even as some patients begin to take a turn for the worse.
(on camera): When you first have to make that declaration, what is the first thing that goes through your mind?
MOURNING: Please not another one. You know, it's a prayer. It's inevitable and we know it's going to happen but the probability of it being a good outcome is very, very low.
JIMENEZ: But most are able to fight it off in turn a corner.
Ruben Romero is feeling better after two weeks in the hospital, and says this isn't a game. I asked why.
"because this is really serious," he says, "this virus is not for people to be playing with, it is very dangerous, it attacks your entire body. I am living, it," he says.
And it's become life for so many in this part of the state. Hospital officials in Odessa say anywhere from 35 to 40 percent of the people getting tested are testing positive for COVID-19.
JIMENEZ: they fear becoming what El Paso has become. Mobile morgues for the dead. Hundreds in the ICU, amid record hospitalizations. And roughly one in every 24 people, actively with COVID-19. It is required a regional coordination like never before.
WANDA HELGESEN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, BORDER: In a relatively short period of time, our hospitals have added over 600 beds.
Even with that, we have flown out about 84 ICU patients to other communities in Texas.
JIMENEZ: And smaller towns, once thought to have escape the viruses grip, find themselves right in the crosshairs. Towns, like this La Mesa Texas near Odessa.
Shelly Barron was hospitalized twice with COVID-19. A diagnosis she's hearing more and more in her community.
SHELLEY BARRON, COVID PATIENT: They're scary, one of these pod things. I'm positive, you know. I tested positive. They've got two more right now, we expect the death in our targets yesterday.
And this step is real, they it's scary.
JIMENEZ: Medical arts hospital where she was mostly tweeted now has an wing dedicated to COVID 19 patients. Transformations that have become shared experiences.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're actually sanding home patients, on home oxygen to recover at home. That's not something we would normally do. But there is no space.
JIMENEZ: All, for a months' long fight, with no clear signs of an end.
MOURNING: People aren't taking the precautions that they need. Yes, we're frontlines here in the hospital, but the real frontline is on the streets, in the grocery stores.
Wash your hands, wear your masks, stay away. I promise that the little bit of time, the little bit of effort that it takes outside of here is worth it. Because once you are here, wearing a mask is better than having a tube down your throat, I promise.
JIMENEZ (on camera): And Denise went on to say, that in the beginning, she and her coworkers were cheered as frontline workers. Now, she says, she's getting threats as people believe she is the reason they cannot come see their loved ones.
The hospital is working with local officials here to request a mobile morgue, and all of this comes as the state of Texas set yet another record for daily coronavirus cases.
Omar Jimenez, CNN -- Odessa, Texas.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: Well, some obvious advice from a former chairman of the Federal Reserve. Alan Greenspan, just one of many who say controlling the coronavirus pandemic should be the number one priority in the United States. He spoke earlier to CNN.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) ALAN GREENSPAN, FORMER FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIRMAN: I have never seen this particular situation during my professional experience. Anything like this, in which you have to handle it in a manner of time when people know very little about its internal dynamics.
In other words, trying to forecast where the virus is going, at this particular stage, it is very little more than a guess.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[01:39:56]
VAUSE: Well, from enhanced unemployment benefits to temporarily prohibiting evictions, many key relief programs from the U.S. government either have expired, or will expire by the end of the year. It is unclear what will happen next, and what the impact will be not just on the U.S. economy, but the global economy as well.
CNN's John Defterios now live from Abu Dhabi. So that's the question here. We've talked a lot about, you know, the stimulus package and how it's stalled in Congress. And this money is desperately needed by so many people.
So what happens if it doesn't go through? What are we looking at? And what's the knock-on effect.
JOHN DEFTERIOS, CNN EMERGING MARKETS EDITOR: Well, there are at least three programs that I can count here, John, that will expire by the end of the year.
Extraordinary, it's almost like the Grinch who stole Christmas because beginning the 26th of December and the 31st and then going into 2021. Now two that stood out for me in a year that most people would like to wipe away and have to deal with small businesses, John. The payment -- Paycheck Protection Program, PPP, was designed for small businesses to be able to pay their employees, because they were responsible for 80 percent of the jobs in the United States.
There is another for gig workers, or freelance contractors to continue to get paid, because of how the jobs they have are dried up. We are looking at seven million employees in that program, and that will expire at the end of the year.
And finally, you talk about supplemental payments, that lasted for only four months, John. It was an extra $600 a week. And when they couldn't find that agreement you're talking about, it just vanished, there was no extension by the president.
And then we have to think about the long term unemployed, John, this shot up by 50 percent between September and October. You can link it as Alan Greenspan, the former fed chair was saying, right with the virus.
So the virus starts to spike, you see the jobless benefits wiped away and long term unemployed, unable to find work again beyond 27 weeks. That is another nearly four million people. We're talking about some serious numbers here, as the programs fade away.
VAUSE: Ok. So what we're 40 days or something away from the end of the year until all of this happens. We know that this bill before Congress has gone nowhere. I guess, what are the chances that something will happen, given that Trump is stalling the transition and the transfer of power and again what if it doesn't? I mean you'll not only have the pain of the pandemic. We know there is economic disaster on your hands as well.
DEFTERIOS: Yes. This is something that Jamie Dimon the CEO of JPMorgan Chase was saying in addition to what Greenspan had to say to CNN. He said come on, let's stop the madness and park the politics.
Now, we saw a hint at the close of trading yesterday, that Chuck Schumer reached out to Mitch McConnell, his counterpart, who's the majority leader in the Senate, saying they may restart the talks along with Nancy Pelosi who's the Speaker of the House.
We have to mind the gap again John, something we've talked about for the last four months. The House package is $2.2 trillion dollars. The White House got up to $2 trillion. Mitch McConnell, because of budgetary reasons is looking at a half trillion. So they can go back to the bargaining table.
How do you close that gap is the big alarm? And to your point here, as the programs expire, and they don't park their political differences during a vote recount right now, we see the jobless benefits shot up yesterday for the first time in five weeks. Historically high, still hovering around 760,000.
So to answer your questions, John, it's going to get a lot worse with the case spike and then going into the first quarter of 2021, without a program in a word is disastrous.
VAUSE: Yes. John, thank you. John Defterios live in Abu Dhabi. Appreciate it.
VAUSE: Still to come, one emergency room doctor knows the battle of COVID-19 all too well. His message, after finding himself a patient, in his own ER. That's next.
Also the U.S. Secretary of State, making a historic visit but encountered a lot of criticism. Details next.
[01:43:44]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VAUSE: Mike Pompeo, is now the first U.S. Secretary of State, to visit a settlement in the West Bank on Thursday. These settlements are considered illegal under international law, and his visit breaks with decades of U.S. foreign policy.
But Pompeo possibly eyeing a run for president in 2024, said the visit was simply recognizing reality, that the settlements are part of Israel.
Susan Glasser is a CNN global affairs analyst and staff writer at "The New Yorker", and co-author of "The Man Who Ran Washington: the life and times of James A. Baker III" which I can tell you, the financial times just listed as one of the best books of 2020. Congratulations, Susan.
Good to have you with us.
SUSAN GLASSER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Thank you so much. delighted to be with you.
GLASSER: Great, thank you.
Now look, if nothing else, I guess, Mike Pompeo seems convinced that he will be secretary of state beyond January 20th, at least the way he was talking on his trip to Israel. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MIKE POMPEO, U.S. SECRETARY FO STATE: Today, I want to make one announcement with respect to a decision by the state department, that we will regard the global (INAUDIBLE) and Israel BTS campaign as anti- Semitic. I know this sounds simple to you Mr. Prime Minister it seems. It seems like a statement of fact.
But I want you to know that we immediately will take steps to identify organizations that engage in hateful BTS conduct, and withdraw U.S. government support for such groups.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: You know, In and of itself, that's fine. But you know, he is acting as if this is ongoing administration.
And since day one, you know, the Trump administration has been obsessed with these meaningless firsts.
You know, the first secretary of state to go to the occupied territories, focusing on photo ops and not substance. So does this visit by Pompeo, does it result in any significant lasting change?
GLASSER: NO, of course not. I mean look, this is a part of the ongoing campaign to box in the new administration, which will not be a second Donald Trump term, but will be a Joe Biden administration, according to the results of the presidential election we've had.
And, you know, what you are seeing in regards to Israel, and I think on a number of fronts, our efforts by Trump's foreign policy team to box in the incoming administration, to make it harder for them to pursue policy. I would note, that it's been the policy of previous Democratic and Republican administrations, to support a two-state theory, and to criticize the Israeli settlements as an obstacle to that two-state solution when it comes to Israel, and the Palestinians.
So in a way, you know, this is actually a departure from what, you know, policy of both Democrats, and Republicans has been in the U.S.
And there is a reason that, you know, Pompeo seems to be playing, almost, to U.S. domestic politics, almost, with his own eye, on the 2024 Republican presidential primary, or something by engaging in an act like this.
And this doesn't have any foreign policy significance, as much as it does, it seems like a political photo op.
VAUSE: Well, the Palestinians are not pleased with Pompeo's visit. The Turkish foreign ministry also unhappy, issuing a statement which says "Behind the visit lies the aim of legitimizing Israel's illegal actions in the occupied Palestinian territories."
Syria's mission to the U.N. told Newsweek Magazine, "By visiting the occupied Syrian go along today, the secretary of state, Pompeo, expresses the will of the Trump administration, to prove to the last day of its tenure, it's allegiance to Israel, and serving its interests on the expense and stability and security of the region, and welfare of its people.
So the impact on the region, more specifically, is this the impact on Iran. The Israelis and the Americans have reportedly been working closely on Targeting Iranian interests inside Syria. Is this settlement visit, in some kind of way, an attempt to provoke Tehran?
GLASSER: Well, no.. I would say that the overall goal, right now by Pompeo and the rest of the Trump national security team, is definitely to find ways to further pursue their campaign against Iran, and to impose more sanctions they are talking about and any measures that they can think of, that would, you know, further make it harder for the new U.S. administration, the Biden administration, to return to the Iran nuclear deal, which is what Biden and his advisers have said they would like to do.
[01:50:01]
GLASSER: Obviously that was a centerpiece of the Obama administration's diplomacy. And Biden has said he wants to return to it.
So I think a lot of what you're seeing, in terms of the actions and the messaging from the Trump team in his final days in office, will be all around ratcheting up the pressure on Iran, and seeing what other measures they can put in place that would make it harder for the U.S. to return the Iran nuclear deal come January.
VAUSE: The Trump administration and Secretary Pompeo could not be more different to a previous U.S. Secretary of State, James A. Baker, who back in June of 1990 testified before the House. He was very frustrated by the Israelis and their delays, and you know, taking up these Mideast peace talks. So he held up the White House telephone number, he read it out aloud, and he said to the Israelis, when you are serious about this, give us a call.
It was some tough love I think that the Israelis, that the Americans believe the Israelis needed at the time.
Compare that to what the Trump administration has done which gives Israel pretty much every single thing that it wants.
There's a proverb, it's either African or Turkish which says an intelligent enemy is better than a stupid friend. Has the U.S. been a stupid friend to Israel in terms of its security over the long term?
GLASSER: Well, you know, I think you are absolutely right. There's been a dramatic change in the Republican Party politics here in the United States when it comes to Israel. And Jim Baker, along with his boss at that time, President George Herbert Walker Bush were really last generation of Republicans to express, you know, real skepticism about the settlements. They saw those as an obstacle to peace.
Obviously, other presidents, Democratic presidents, have shared that viewpoint. They were very frustrated by the Israelis and felt that, you know, they were attempting to put facts on the ground that would make it harder and harder to come up with a two-state solution.
By the way, that was an accurate prophesy, as far as it went. But what you see I think is a radical shift in the domestic U.S. politics of Israel. Such that, now the Republican Party, it is a matter of orthodoxy to reflexively support Israel. That is why you see people like Pompeo and Trump absolutely, essentially almost outsourcing aspects of U.S. policy in the Middle East to Prime Minister Netanyahu.
And I think that, you know, they are going to do everything they possibly can including potentially some concerted action with the Israelis against Iran, in the next two months before Trump is forced to leave office and Joe Biden comes in as the new president.
VAUSE: Ok. Susan, great to have you with us. We really appreciate it. Good to see you again.
GLASSER: Well, thank you so much.
VAUSE: You are watching CNN NEWSROOM.
When we come back, for months he was treating COVID-19 patients in the emergency room only to end up there himself. His message to others, in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VAUSE: Well, after treating COVID-19 patients in the emergency room for months, one doctor in the U.S. State of Michigan is urging everyone to take this virus more seriously. That's after finding himself a patient in his own ER.
CNN's Sara Sidner has his message.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The simple act of walking is a struggle for Grand Rapids emergency room doctor, David Burkard. (on camera): When do you start feeling yourself going like oh boy?
DAVID BURKARD, EMERGENCY ROOM DOCTOR: Right away.
SIDNER: Really?
BURKARD: Yes.
SIDNER: Dr. Burkard is just 28 years old with now underlying medical conditions. He's run a marathon, and normally runs five days a week. But coronavirus stopped him in his tracks.
[01:54:59]
BURKARD: Day six, I got out of bed, I went to make a sandwich, moved around my apartment a little bit, I just couldn't catch my breath. It was like no matter what I did -- I tried different positions, tried sitting and it was just this heaviness that's like, man, I cannot breathe.
SIDNER: Suddenly, he was the patient.
BURKASRD: I think the hard thing is having seen it and having been the person that talks to the patient with COVID, and says you know what, it's time to call your wife. We are going to have to put a breathing tube down and it's time for you to say goodbye.
SIDNER: There he was, lying in the same unit, wondering if you would be able to catch his breath.
BURKARD: The loneliness of going up to the COVID floor, and knowing that you can't have visitors. I'm literally at my place of work, where I have lots of friends and colleagues and incredible people and not a single one of them can come and say hi. It's isolating.
SIDNER: He is no longer shedding the virus, and anxiously waiting to return to the ER as Michigan's positivity rate hits nearly 12 percent.
(On camera): How bad are things now, compared to March, when all of this first kicked off here?
BURKARD: We have over 300 patients admitted to the hospital right now across the Spectrum Health (ph) which is markedly higher than we ever were before.
SIDNER: He also wants to send a message to people who still doubt the novel coronavirus is real.
BURKARD: I have had a lot of people say that I am a hoax. I had someone report me to Facebook's for being a fake profile.
SIDNER: Someone called you -- you a hoax?
BURKARD: Yes.
SIDNER: A doctor? BURKARD: Yes.
SIDNER: Who's had coronavirus? Just simply telling your story?
BURKARD: Simply just trying to breathe instead of just like saying mean things from behind a keyboard, it's like imagine what it is like to have that conversation with someone that you're putting a breathing tube down my throat, they might not be able to say, I love you to their loved one ever again.
And that is what we are doing every day, constantly. You can prevent that conversation, possibly, by putting on a mask, or you can prevent that conversation by skipping Thanksgiving dinner, like we have got to do our part.
SIDNER: Dr. Burkard being very clear in saying that we simply don't know all there is to know about this novel coronavirus. And that everyone should do their part, if not to save their own life, to save others.
Sara Sidner, CNN -- Grand Rapids, Michigan.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: Thank you for watching. I'm John Vause.
My colleague Kim Brunhuber is up next with more CNN NEWSROOM at the top of the hour.
[01:57:21]
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