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Pfizer and Moderna Vaccines Would Be First to Use New mRNA Technology; Tony Blinken Set to be Named Secretary of State by Joe Biden; Interview with Black Hawk County, Iowa Sheriff Tony Thompson. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired November 23, 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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[10:31:15]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Two drugmakers, Pfizer and Moderna, have vaccine candidates with very effective early results, Poppy, above 90 percent, which is remarkable.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Way better than even Dr. Fauci was hoping for. If they are authorized -- which we should know really soon -- they would be the first ever authorized by the FDA using a new technology based on our own genetic code. You've heard us talk about mRNA a lot, right? That's what Dr. Sanjay Gupta is here to explain to us. Watch this.

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ALBERT BOURLA, CEO, PFIZER: This is an historic day. An historic day for science and for all of us.

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Albert Bourla is CEO of Pfizer, and he's talking about their vaccine for COVID-19, 248 days from an idea to now, applying for the vaccine to be authorized. That's just eight months. For context, eight years would have been considered speedy.

But the truth is, the story I'm about to tell you actually began more than two decades ago. And to really understand it, you first have to understand how most vaccines work.

Since the first vaccine for smallpox back in 1796, they've all relied on the same basic concept: give a little piece of the virus -- also known as antigen -- to someone, not enough to make them sick, and their body will then be taught to make antibodies to it. Those are the proteins that neutralize the virus if it ever tried to invade again. That's what makes you immune.

But what if the body could be taught to do the whole thing? Not just make antibodies, but also to make the antigens as well, to essentially become its own vaccine-making machine?

It's why, in the 2000s. Dr. Drew Weissman started focusing on this tiny strand of genetic material that our cells make all the time. It's known as mRNA.

DREW WEISSMAN, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PERELMAN SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: Back then, we were thinking of using it for vaccines, for therapeutic proteins, for gene editing, for lots of different applications.

GUPTA (voice-over): mRNA stands for messenger RNA. It carries the instructions for making whatever protein you want.

WEISSMAN: Once you've got the sequence, it's a one-step reaction to make RNA, and that reaction is identical for every vaccine that we make.

GUPTA (voice-over): If this sounds more like code in a computer rather than medicine from a lab, that means you're getting it. This is an entirely new way of thinking about vaccines. It's also the basic technology behind Pfizer and Moderna's COVID-19 vaccines.

ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Vaccines are close by, they're coming. You know I said help is on the way.

GUPTA (voice-over): It's truly bio meets tech. The vaccine is not the virus at all, it's essentially just a genetic code for a portion of this virus: this portion, the spike protein. Why the spike protein? Because it's the key the virus uses to enter the human cell. But if you create antibodies to the spike protein, it's then blocked.

So, putting it all together, once the vaccine, made up of genetic code, is administered through a shot in the arm, our own cells then start making the spike protein over and over again. Now, remember, you're just making a part of the virus so you can't get infected from this vaccine. And within days after that, the body reacts and starts churning out the antibodies: plug and play.

WEISSMAN: With RNA, all you need is the sequence of the protein of interest. Within weeks, you can have a new vaccine.

[10:35:01]

GUPTA (voice-over): It's a technology that could help lead us out of this pandemic.

FAUCI: 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.

GUPTA (voice-over): If true, remarkable results for an entirely new type of vaccine, and also a new way of thinking about medicines, going forward.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: That was Dr. Sanjay Gupta reporting. I mean, I learned a lot from that and it really is, Poppy, a remarkable development.

HARLOW: It's amazing, it is amazing. We're grateful to Dr. Gupta for making it understandable to all of us.

SCIUTTO: Well, President-elect Biden is pushing forward with his transition, with plans to bring some familiar faces to his cabinet.

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[10:40:30]

SCIUTTO: Well, the transition to a new president is moving forward, and there are some new key cabinet picks coming from President-elect Biden, getting ready to fill those posts. Tomorrow, he is expected to make his secretary of state pick official.

HARLOW: That's right, Arlette Saenz is in Wilmington, Delaware. Good morning, Arlette. CNN has learned that it sounds like the vice president -- former vice president and now president-elect -- is going to pick Tony Blinken, someone he's been very familiar with for a long time. What do Americans need to know about him?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, President-elect Joe Biden is making it clear that he wants to go with a seasoned hand in the foreign policy and diplomatic world to help lead his State Department.

And Tony Blinken has been a longtime adviser to Joe Biden on issues relating to foreign policy. He served as a deputy secretary of state during the Obama administration, and also as Biden's own national security adviser at the start of his vice presidency. So the two of them have been working very closely when it comes to foreign policy, as Biden is hoping that one of their goals is that they want to restore America's standing in the world and repair some of those relationships with allies.

But in addition to the secretary of state announcement that is expected to come tomorrow, Biden is also expected to announce his picks for his national security adviser and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Now for the national security adviser role, Jake Sullivan is among the leading contenders. He has also served as the national security adviser to Biden as well as working with Hillary Clinton in the State Department.

And Linda Thomas-Greenfield is the leading contender for that U.N. ambassador job, and she is also notably a woman of color. So if Biden were to nominate her, this would lend some diversity to the top officials in his administration, as he has vowed to have a diverse cabinet and administration officials.

But what Biden is trying to make clear with these announcements tomorrow is that he is moving forward with his whole process during the transition, even as the Trump administration continues to put up road blocks.

SCIUTTO: There you go. Arlette Saenz with the Biden team, thanks so much. HARLOW: Let's go to the State Department. Our Kylie Atwood joins us

this morning. Good morning to you, Kylie. What's the reaction been to this news?

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, folks here in Washington at the State Department and around the world -- diplomats -- are welcoming this news that Tony Blinken is expected to be named as Joe Biden's secretary of state.

Now, there are a few things to consider here. He's a well-known commodity in this building. He was the deputy secretary of state in the last two years of the Obama administration. Folks like that they have worked with him before, and they had good experiences with him then.

The other thing is that he is a huge advocate for alliances, and that is fundamental to the work of the State Department: diplomats work with partner countries around the world, he is an advocate for firming up those relationships.

And then the other thing to consider, as Arlette was saying, you know, Blinken is someone who is extremely close with Joe Biden. He has worked with him for nearly 20 years, so when he travels abroad as secretary of state, there will be no question that what he is saying has the seal of approval from the president of the United States. That is really important in making the world of these diplomats feel like it actually matters, like it actually is going to go somewhere.

And the other thing I want to explain, though, is that even when President-elect Joe Biden does name Tony Blinken tomorrow, as is expected, the transition team of the Biden transition team and the State Department team here that helps them kind of get reoriented with the building, learn what the challenges are, that formal work will not be able to start yet, and that's because GSA hasn't ascertained President-elect Joe Biden's victory yet.

So folks here in this building are looking forward to Blinken being named, but they're also frustrated that the real work hasn't been given the green light yet.

HARLOW: Well, they could do it today -- she could do it -- the GSA administrator -- with, you know, the stroke of a pen today after we see the results in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Thanks, Kylie, very, very much.

Ahead for us, this story, Tyson Foods now suspending managers after accusations that some of them -- believe it or not -- were placing bets on their own employees getting COVID during the height of the outbreak this spring. We'll speak with a sheriff who toured that plant and demanded its closure in Waterloo, Iowa, next.

[10:45:02]

SCIUTTO: That's just an incredible story.

Well, it is a place where all are welcome, another powerful season of "THIS IS LIFE WITH LISA LING" premiers with back-to-back episodes, Sunday night, 9:00 Eastern time, right here on CNN.

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HARLOW: Well, this morning, an astonishing and tragic story. Tyson Foods' managers are suspended at their Waterloo plant in Iowa for allegedly starting a cash betting pool back in April. They were betting, allegedly, over how many of their own employees would contract coronavirus. By May, more than 1,000 of the plant's workers were infected and five employees died including Isidro Fernandez.

[10:50:07]

Fernandez' family claims in a wrongful death lawsuit that Tyson Foods mismanaged COVID-10 by "gross negligence... and," quote, "wanton disregard for worker safety."

The company says in response, they are "extremely upset about these accusations," saying they "do not represent who we are." They have put those managers on leave without pay.

The county sheriff, Tony Thompson, who toured the plant in April -- when this betting ring was allegedly happening -- is with me now.

I am sorry that you're joining me under these circumstances, but I'm glad you're here since you've been in this community and witnessed firsthand what has been happening. When you toured the plant back in April, you said that what you saw -- just in terms of worker conditions there -- shook you to the core. Now, hearing that some managers were allegedly betting on how many of those frontline workers would get coronavirus, did you have any idea this was happening?

TONY THOMPSON (D), SHERIFF, BLACK HAWK COUNTY, IOWA: I didn't have any idea that they were betting on people getting sick. But you know, you get that kind of sixth sense about something's not right, you feel like you're kind of being shined on, you feel like you're being led around by the nose, so to speak, and you get kind of that intuition, that cop sense that something's not right. And that clearly was part of the reason why we raised the red flag as quickly as we did.

HARLOW: Well, now that you're hearing these allegations that are taken seriously enough by the company that they've suspended these folks, are you surprised?

THOMPSON: No, I'm not surprised by it at all. In fact, a lot of the local officials that were standing lockstep with me in calling for that plant closure, trying to get them to shut down, trying to get them to give us that pause so that we could cull (ph) the herd and figure out who had it, who didn't have it, you know, that we didn't get, we weren't getting the cooperation from the Tyson corporate folks. I don't think any of us are surprised by that kind of behavior.

HARLOW: You think about Isidro Fernandez dying and you think about his family and you think about the families of the five -- you know, five total employees that died as a result of contracting COVID, you begged -- you basically begged Tyson to close their plant before they ended up finally doing that on April 22nd. Do you think that if they would have shuttered earlier, when you and

others called on them to -- the mayor included -- lives would have been saved?

THOMPSON: Absolutely, absolutely. In fact, there are many around here that consider that a win, that we finally did get them to close down. We don't. You know, those additional 12 days were a failure, and we ended up losing lives because of them.

HARLOW: It -- obviously for you personally, this is very hard to digest. I know you went -- you say you went up to the governor. Do you feel like your hands were tied and that your people were dying because of it?

THOMPSON: We worked all the way through state legislature and state government, we worked all the way up through the federal legislature. In fact, that's where the Defense Production Act came from, working simultaneously as we were.

You know, working through the legislative steps that we needed to try and get this plant to stop production, to try and halt all of the processes that we were seeing laid out in front of us here in Black Hawk County, we felt like the governor's office, we felt like President Trump's office, they were all working counterintuitively to what we were trying to do here in Black Hawk County.

HARLOW: The --

THOMPSON: In fact, when -- yes, go ahead.

HARLOW: I was just going to say to the company, just we did reach out to them of course, and they say , look, we've invested hundreds of millions of dollars in our facilities, making them safer. They say they have temperature scanners now, social distance monitors, always on testing. Have you been back in the plant recently? I mean, are things truly safe now?

THOMPSON: I believe things are safer than they were when we walked through the plant in April. I got the opportunity, with the mayor, to walk through and with the health department to walk through after they implemented those things.

So they shut down that plant for 14 days after they ran out of employees, and the amount of work that they put into that plant to make that plant right in those 14 days was astronomical. And I will get credit where credit is due, they really truly have done an incredible job in that amount of time, and I think they continue to leverage the resources they have available to them.

It's just the unfortunate time frame where we saw the foul being committed until the time where we could get them to stop, that really, the fault lies.

[10:55:01]

HARLOW: Let's hope so because the representative, the attorney for the family, told us that "Nothing that Tyson does now can bring back these loved ones." They say it was "entirely preventable," but they are at least happy that "steps are being taken" so that others might "avoid the horror" that Isidro Fernandez' family is facing.

Sheriff Tony Thompson, thank you for being vocal and a voice on this throughout. We appreciate it.

THOMPSON: Yes, thank you.

HARLOW: We'll keep an eye on that, we promise -- thanks --

SCIUTTO: Yes, what could be more callous than that, betting on people's health and lives. It's just disgusting.

HARLOW: We promise that we'll keep you updated on that. Our thanks to all of you for being here, we'll see you 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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