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FDA Set to Grant Pfizer Emergency Use Authorization; Texas Sues Four Battleground States Over Election; COVID-19 Pandemic Continues to Worsen. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired December 10, 2020 - 14:00   ET

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

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BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: Welcome back, hour two for me here on CNN, I'm Brooke Baldwin, thank you for staying with me.

Right now, we are on standby for what would be a historic decision, the FDA is set to vote on granting Pfizer emergency use authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine. If -- if greenlit, it means tens of millions of vaccine doses will get into the arms of Americans in just days.

TEXT: Efficacy Conclusions: Both primary objectives met success criteria; In individuals without prior SARS-CoV-2 infection, observed vaccine efficacy against COVID-19 occurring at least seven days after dose two was 95 percent, with high probability (97.5 percent) that the vaccine efficacy is at least 90 percent; Observed vaccine efficacy was greater than 93 percent for the first primary endpoint across age, race, ethnicity, and all risk subgroups

BALDWIN: And this vote could not come soon enough. The United States just reported its deadliest day so far, yesterday alone. Look at the numbers, 3,124 Americans lost their battle with coronavirus.

Meanwhile, the daily case load continues to move just totally in the wrong direction. Every single day in this country, more than 209,000 Americans on average are getting sick. That is up 27 percent from just a week ago. You know, hospitalizations are also at all-time highs with doctors and nurses stretched thin and beds and supplies reaching new lows.

But let's get to potential history here, this FDA meeting, and CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Sanjay, the vote is scheduled to start in the next hour. How will all of this play out if the vaccine is authorized?

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is an FDA committee, and so they're making a recommendation to the FDA, which the FDA typically takes, so that's the expectation here. If it all plays out, I can show you the calendar here, the FDA will then at some point -- maybe even tonight -- issue this emergency use authorization. It could happen any time between now and the 14th, but, you know, it's expected to happen pretty quickly.

TEXT: Vaccine Authorization Timeline for Pfizer: NOW: Meeting over recommendation to FDA on EUA; TODAY OR LATER: FDA's decision on EUA (allows shipping, but not administering shots); FRIDAY/SUNDAY: CDC Advisory Committee meets to vote on offering vaccine to public

GUPTA: Sort of simultaneously, Brooke, there's another committee that's part of the CDC that's meeting to basically reaffirm what we've already heard, that the people who should be at the front of the line are people who live in long-term care facilities, and health care workers.

And then after that, you know, the vaccine can get distributed and then hopefully administered as quickly as possible. Looking like, Brooke, probably the early part of next week if this all goes as planned.

One thing I'll tell you, Brooke, about 6.4 million doses, we're told, of the Pfizer vaccine is available, ready to be distributed. They're going to keep about 500,000 doses in a stockpile, and then split the rest in half. That's what their plan is right now, so about 2.9 million doses go out, they keep the other 2.9 million -- as you know, Brooke, because it's a two-shot regimen.

So as things stand now -- this may change -- but they're planning on holding half the dosing, giving half the dosing right away and then waiting a few weeks to follow up with the second dose.

BALDWIN: OK. So I was curious how that was going to work. And then -- so potentially early next week, those first, you know, shots in the arms for folks. It won't be authorized for everyone. Who can and who shouldn't get the vaccine?

GUPTA: Yes. Well, you know, what we think is going to play out -- and this is in part by looking at the data that we've seen so far to see who they've studied, who they haven't studied -- of course we're going to see what the FDA actually says.

TEXT: Unclear if Pfizer's Vaccine is Safe For: Children under 16 years old; Pregnant women; Breastfeeding mothers; People who are immunocompromised; People with past severe reactions to vaccines

GUPTA: But we know for example people under the age of 16. In these trial results that we're looking at, they weren't really part of this although they are being studied now in phase two, three trials, so we may get data on children, you know, within the next few months.

Pregnant women, this is going to be a point of debate. They weren't really included in these clinical trials, but there's real concern about the potential impact of the disease on someone who is pregnant, so that's going to be a decision point for the FDA -- breastfeeding mothers, the same thing. People who have -- who are immunocompromised. The issue there, Brooke,

is when you're giving a vaccine, you're sort of counting on the body's immune system to react and to build antibodies. If you don't have a strong immune system, it may not work as well. And then finally, you know, the news over the last couple days, Brooke, as you heard, people who have a history of severe allergic reactions.

I could tell you, again, looking at the Pfizer data, people who had had a history of severe allergic reactions were excluded from the trial, so there's not a lot of data on people like that. We know in the U.K. for example, they're now recommending they don't get the vaccine if they've had that sort of significant history. So we'll see.

I mean, we're all seeing this play out real-time, and some real debate going on over these issues and also issues like if you've been infected recently, should you still get the vaccine? Brooke, that's probably a question you would be considering at some point, given your own history, right Those are all the sorts of pragmatic, practical questions that will need to be answered.

BALDWIN: Right, because I had COVID back in April.

I'm -- so if it gets in people's arms, let's say early next week. If -- if -- how long will it take before we actually see the impact from vaccines?

GUPTA: You know, Brooke, I think of this as a very powerful medicine that can take some time to work. It's not surgical in that regard, it doesn't happen right away. When we look at the models, I think there are sort of two significant points.

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When you get about 30 percent of the population immunized, vaccinated, you start to see some impact in overall viral transmission, basically making it harder for the virus to find a host, making it far less likely that people would get sick.

But it's really that 60 to 70 percent herd immunity that you've heard. When you get to that point, that's when you really see the impact of the vaccine, you see the number of new infections hopefully coming down to a very low level that can be managed, that you can test for those people and you can trace. Remember those words, testing and tracing?

I mean, the numbers have been so high, Brooke, that it's impractical to really do that. But you could, you know, get to that point, you know, once 60 to 70 percent of the country is protected.

BALDWIN: Good, good. I can't wait. We will wait to see in the next hour what happens out of this meeting, Sanjay Gupta, for now, the good doctor, thank you so much.

GUPTA: You got it, thank you.

BALDWIN: Preparation is under way to get the vaccine ready to go for distribution once the FDA and CDC sign off on it, so let's go straight to Alex Field, she is live in New Jersey.

And, Alex, you looked at how one hospital plans to vaccinate people. Tell us how.

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, they are pretty much waiting by the phone right now, holding (ph) a medical center in New Jersey. That is one of the sites across New Jersey, and of course many of the sites across the country that will actually be tasked with giving out those vaccines once they came in.

Here's how it will work. After the emergency use authorization, they should in fact get that phone call to let them know when the vaccines will actually be shipped. From there, the vaccines will be moved into the ultra-low freezer that they have at the hospital.

This is a hospital that's expecting about a thousand doses of the vaccine in its first delivery, that will be enough to vaccinate some 500 frontline workers. But they are still waiting to find out how many more doses they could receive beyond that, how quickly the doses will come.

The more vaccine that arrived, the bigger the job gets because that's when you've got to start going out into the community to actually vaccinate the public, a massive undertaking. Holy Name says they're looking at a lot of different ways to reach the public. Listen to this.

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NANCY PALAMARA, V.P. OF DIAGNOSTICS AND THERAPEUTICS, HOLY NAME MEDICAL CENTER: So through all of those avenues, we would be setting up locations throughout the counties that we service. And in addition, we have an expectation that we should be able to come to you. So for instance, we have a mobile education lab that we can bring some staff out to your place of work, or -- and set up clinics like that as well.

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FIELD: So, Brooke, today we're actually standing in the gym of a nursing school, and it's already been configured in order to give vaccines to the general public. They tell us the whole process would take about 15 minutes, you'd have people make appointments, come in, get their vaccines, wait for about 15 minutes, leave, and then come back 21 days later.

So this is just one of what will be many sites in the county, certainly many sites in the state. Of course, we're still waiting to find out just how quickly they'll be able to start administering those vaccines to the general public -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: Gym and a nursing school, and so 21 days in between doses, that's good to know just for people who want this thing. Alex Field, thank you very much, in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.

As Americans die, President Trump is spending his time touting this new long-shot lawsuit aiming to overturn the election. We'll walk through the case, and call out his priorities or lack thereof.

Plus, we will take you inside the Nevada hospital that had to use a parking garage to handle all these new coronavirus patients, the same parking garage that the president referred to as fake.

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And why a large number of Americans still say they will not take the vaccine once it's available, stay here, you're watching CNN, I'm Brooke Baldwin.

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BALDWIN: Welcome back to CNN, I'm Brooke Baldwin, thank you for being here.

As this pandemic continues to devastate Americans, Wednesday was the country's deadliest day yet. And millions are struggling as unemployment claims are now hitting the highest levels we've seen since mid-September.

So what is President Trump focused on? Well this morning, a flurry of tweets showing he is still obsessed with overturning an election he lost, for a job he clearly doesn't seem to want to do. The president is now throwing support behind this Texas lawsuit that seeks to toss millions of legal votes in four swing states, states that Joe Biden won. By the way, all 50 states have now certified their election results.

Let me add to this. Seventeen Republican attorneys general, in addition to President Trump, have signed onto this particular lawsuit. They are all appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court to hear this case, which is pretty unlikely. But if they do, President Trump called on a lawyer to argue the case. Who did he go with? This guy.

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SEN. TED CRUZ (R), THEN-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'll tell you what I really think of Donald Trump. This man is a pathological liar. He doesn't know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth. The man cannot tell the truth, but he combines it with being a narcissist, a narcissist at a level I don't think this country's ever seen.

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BALDWIN: I give you Senator Ted Cruz of 2016, clearly in a much different place than the Ted Cruz we know in 2020.

Joining me now, CNN political commentator and former Republican Congressman Charlie Dent, and CNN contributor Steve Vladeck, law professor at the University of Texas.

So, gentlemen, nice to have you all on. And we'll get to all things Ted Cruz here in just a second, but Steve, first to you. Help us understand what is this Texas lawsuit claiming? STEVE VLADECK, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes. I mean, Brooke, part of what's

weird here is that the Texas lawsuit is claiming a whole bunch of different things. Texas is suing these four battleground states: Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, arguing that different changes to election procedures in each of those four states, all of which were in response to COVID, were each themselves somehow in violation of the federal Constitution, even though most of those procedures were approved by the state legislature, even though none of those procedures have been held to violate their state constitutions.

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And so Texas is basically asking the U.S. Supreme Court, through its original jurisdiction, this arcane set of precedents where states can sue each other over border disputes and water rights, to actually allow one state -- or now 17 states -- to tell four other states how they should have conducted their elections? It's novel and frankly it's a little bit preposterous.

BALDWIN: And just quickly to follow up on that, do you think the Supreme Court takes -- hears the case out of Texas?

VLADECK: No. I mean, I think the Supreme Court isn't going to want to hear this case. I think there are procedural problems, the foremost of which is standing. I mean, one of the ironies, Brooke, is with President Trump trying to intervene, with all these other states trying to intervene, Texas has basically abandoned the argument that Texas is somehow uniquely injured by what these --

BALDWIN: Right.

VLADECK: -- four other states did. It drives home, Brooke, that this is a political dispute, not a legal one.

BALDWIN: Let's -- on the politics piece of all this, Congressman Dent, you know, now you have Representative Mike (ph) Johnson (ph), Louisiana, good buddy of the president, sending an e-mail from his personal account to every single House Republican, essentially pressuring them to sign onto this lawsuit, you know.

And a lot of these people, your former colleagues up on the Hill, many of whom are standing by the president in his, you know, continued baseless election claims. What would you like to say to them?

CHARLIE DENT, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: What I would like to say to them, what this Texas lawsuit is about, the attorney general, who has problems as far as I'm concerned that are unrelated to the election, and he's speaking to an audience of one.

I would tell --

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BALDWIN: Indicted on securities fraud, let's just get that in there.

DENT: Yes, (INAUDIBLE) motivation here. But having said that, boy, you know, on a grand scale, this attorney

general is asking state legislatures in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia to substitute their judgment for that of the voters. The voters made a decision. This would be a disenfranchisement of people on a colossal scale. I mean, this is so undemocratic. I mean, how can anybody possibly contemplate such a thought?

And by the way, we've seen this before. Well, not quite like this, but we've seen, you know, I remember when I came into Congress, there were some Ohio congress, a Democrat congressman who didn't like the outcome of the 2004 election, thought there was some shenanigans in Ohio and didn't want to approve the electors.

Well, it was absurd. Nobody pays attention to it, nobody should pay attention to this either. In fact, this is much, much worse and frightening.

BALDWIN: Given all that, you used a phrase, how could people possibly contemplate a thought? That's my segue to Ted Cruz. Thank you, Charlie Dent.

We played that clip of him from four years ago. You flash forward to today, certainly he has bigger political ambitions. So why go on the record and sign onto this ridiculous lawsuit?

DENT: Well, I think maybe because he's -- you know, he's looking out for the future, maybe he thinks this plays to the Trump base.

But if you really think about the absurdity of what's happening here, he -- could you imagine if some Democratic state, you know, maybe made a complaint about, you know, wanted to file a lawsuit about Texas' outcome and who they elected, maybe somebody like Senator Cruz, for sending him to Washington? They would -- you know, it's absurd.

Or, you know, Texas complaining about Vermont sending Sanders. This is --

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BALDWIN: Yes, it would be absurd either way, call them out either way.

DENT: It is so outrageous, it is -- and 2016, had states like California, New York and Illinois and Massachusetts, you know, tried to disenfranchise voters in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan for voting for Donald Trump, well, this would have been a human rights violation as far as, you know, I'm concerned, and probably most Republicans in Congress would have been concerned.

So now that it's -- the shoe's on the other foot, it's -- why is this OK? Politics is so situational these days. You know, if my guy does it, it's OK; if your guy does it, it's horrible. I mean, that's what it's come down to, sadly.

BALDWIN: I know, and it's just -- listening to Ted Cruz when he was up against Trump, you know, wanted to be president back in 2016, it's like, we have the tape of him them and of course he said yes to this now. It's like, I don't even want to say it's amnesia, but you're right, the shoe is on the other foot and on the flip side, had this happened the other side, would have been screaming.

Charlie Dent, Steve Vladeck, guys, thank you very much for perspective on this Texas lawsuit. Thank you both.

We should also note, speaking of those 17 attorneys general, CNN has reached out to every single general (ph) backing this lawsuit, and so far we have heard back from the states of Florida, Indiana, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia. And listen to this, we are told that none of them is available to discuss why they have signed onto this effort.

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Mind you, these are the attorneys general who do not want to talk about why voters in their states should have their ballots tossed out. You heard Charlie Dent say it, it would be disenfranchisement, you know, it's incredible this is where we are. So we will keep you posted when we hear back from the other nine.

Health officials across the country, running out of room for all the sick people. Coming up next, we'll take you inside a COVID hospital that was once a parking garage.

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BALDWIN: Right now, an FDA panel is meeting to consider giving the green light to the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine. This is all coming as the nation is experiencing the worst period of this entire pandemic, so many (INAUDIBLE). Take a look at this with me. A Nevada hospital, here you (INAUDIBLE) medical unit in its parking garage after this new influx of COVID cases.

And just to be clear, this is all very real and not fake, as President Trump has falsely implied. Sara Sidner is in the hospital's parking garage there in Reno, Nevada. And, Sara, how are hospital officials reacting to Trump's suggestion -- this retweet that was a suggestion -- that the parking garage is, quote, "a scam"?

SARA SIDNER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Ultimately, they're reacting by doing their jobs, making sure to try and save every patient who comes through here.

I do want to give you some idea of where we are, we're standing outside of the parking garage. It doesn't look like anything different really when you first look at it, but if you look at those silver pipes behind me, those are pumping all of the air out so that's a negative pressure situation so that the diseased air is pumped out, and it is clean air inside.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) SIDNER (voice-over): Dr. Jacob Keeperman is mustering all his mental and physical strength as another wave of COVID-19 patients show up in the intensive care unit at his hospital. Everyone here has been going nonstop for months.

SIDNER (on camera): What was your worst day?

JACOB KEEPERMAN, MEDICAL DIRECTOR, RENOWN TRANSFER AND OPERATIONS CENTER: So my worst day this pandemic was actually the day I posted the tweet, thanking my teammates. I had just finished a seven-day stretch in the intensive care unit. There had been patient after patient after patient who was not surviving this illness.

SIDNER (voice-over): The tweet he sent was a simple selfie, showing off their new COVID-19 wing. That wing? Set up in the hospital parking garage. That fact seemed to set President Trump off, who retweeted a tweet calling it fake and a scam. That unleashed the Twitter trolls.

KEEPERMAN: I was sad and devastated and I was angry.

SIDNER (voice-over): Devastated and angry because all of the hard work being done by his colleagues inside this parking garage hospital every single day, from the food staff to the CEO.

ANTHONY SLONIM, PRESIDENT AND CEO, RENOWN HEALTH: This is not fake. This is as real as it gets.

SIDNER (voice-over): The idea was conceived and executed months ago. But during this COVID surge, patients are now parked in the spaces instead of cars.

SIDNER (on camera): The number of coronavirus cases in Washoe County, Nevada that this hospital services has exploded. This week, there are actually 10 times the number of COVID-19 cases than there were just a couple of months ago, so the hospital had to do whatever it takes to find more bed space. And so here we are on floor G of the parking garage.

JANET BAUM, NURSING MANAGER, ALTERNATE CARE SITE: It was scary. You know, we don't expect to go to work and be working out of a parking garage. We've made it a hospital, so we don't even consider it a garage any more.

SIDNER (on camera): Did you ever think that in America they would have to treat people in a parking lot?

ROSALIA MARTINEZ, CORONAVIRUS PATIENT: I apologize for what I'm going to say. When they started building this, I laughed.

SIDNER (voice-over): Making a dusty, dirty parking garage into a sanitary space seemed laughable, but then she ended up hospitalized here.

R. MARTINEZ: People don't realize how bad this is, the pain, how you feel, the not being able to breathe. That's one of the worst things that I ever had to experience in my life. SIDNER (voice-over): A few days later, her husband of 35 years was

also hospitalized with COVID.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I thought, you know, she's going to die.

SIDNER (voice-over): After spending days in isolation with no visitation, they found each other again, parked just four beds apart in the parking garage.

R. MARTINEZ: He coughs at nighttime, I can hear him. And if I yell, he can hear me. He knows that I'm still alive.

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