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Launch of First Biden-Era Vaccine may Stumble Over Confusion; Millions Freeze without Power as Debacle Escalates in Texas; CDC Warns that Variants may Lead to Rapid Rise in COVID Cases. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired February 17, 2021 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Hello, I'm Brianna Keilar, and I want to welcome viewers here in the United States and around the world.

Right now, the Biden Administration is facing a critical moment in the urgent fight against the coronavirus pandemic. The launch of the first vaccine under the Biden administration is hitting significant obstacles. The rollout of Johnson & Johnson's vaccine, this is the first big one that requires just a single dose, will be much slower than expected because of miscommunication.

A short time ago, the White House COVID-19 response team addressing the issue.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEFFREY ZIENTS, WHITE HOUSE COVID-19 RESPONSE COORDINATOR: I want to be clear that Johnson & Johnson has 100 million commitment for the end of June of doses. At the same time, we're going to be starting with only a few million in inventory. And we're doing everything we can working with the company accelerate the delivery schedule.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: We're joined now by CNN Political Correspondent Sara Murray to talk about this. Sara, what about this delay here off the top of this rollout, and what's the timeline now going to be?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, there was this expectation that once Johnson & Johnson is authorized, which it has not been yet by the FDA but could happen as soon as the end of this month, the expectation was that a number of these doses would be ready to roll out. And it turns out that that number is smaller than federal officials expected. So we're talking less than 10 million doses out of the gate. And the hope was that it would scale up 20 million, maybe 30 million by April. We're now learning the number is actually going to be even lower than that.

So, you saw Jeff Zients there saying by the end of June or early July, we could get these few hundred million doses, but that's really going to be on the back end of this order. And, obviously, officials were hoping this would come out sooner. They want to get folks vaccinated as quickly as possible.

There are also a lot of unanswered questions about how this is going to work when it gets to states. And states really haven't gotten guidance about whether this is going to roll out to the normal channels, what to do if people show up at an appointment and demand one vaccine over another. So there are still some unanswered questions on the distribution side of this as well.

KEILAR: And talk to us about testing. This has obviously been such a huge issue over the course of the pandemic. What is this announcement on testing?

MURRAY: Yes. Brianna, I feel like since this all started, we have heard officials say, if only we had more tests, we could get a better handle on where we are. And this has really plagued both the Trump and the Biden administration. So, today the Biden team announced a significant investment, more than a billion dollars to try to move forward these testing efforts. And the hope is to really expand the availability of testing in places like schools, in other congregate settings and underserved communities.

And the other that they're investing in is what the supplies you actually need to make these number tests happen. We've heard officials say over and over again they need pipette tips and things like that. So that is their hope to try to get this testing more available in bigger numbers.

KEILAR: It's certainly needed. Sara Murray, thank you so much for that update.

Joe Biden resetting expectations during his first town hall as president, which you saw right here on CNN. He's taking center stage as well as sticking to a centrist approach, refusing to point fingers, committing to millions more vaccine doses but also predicting several more months of pandemic restrictions.

CNN Political Director David Chalian is going to tick through the biggest takeaways here from the president's debut town hall.

He made some big promises, David. He also tried not to, as you put it, overpromise.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: That is true, Brianna. There were a slew of headlines. I looked at them in two groupings. The first were timeline sort of guideposts that the president put out there for the American public. Most important when is life going to get to something approximating normal? He said by Christmas is his goal to have some sort of a sense of a return normalcy in America, a post- pandemic world, if you will.

He was also asked about vaccines, about 600 million doses of vaccines available to Americans by the end of July. The president said that would be enough to get everyone in the country who wanted a vaccine a shot in the arm. But that's availability which is different than actually vaccines. Five days a week for K-8 schools, that's what he wants to see. That's his goal by the end of his first hundred days. He wants to see a majority of K-8 schools at five days a week open for business in the classroom. That's going to be a big check mark that we have to look back at the end of his first hundred days.

Now, he also had a bunch of policy proposals that I think we're going to see sort of cause some friction with progressives in his own party. Flat-out no defunding of police, he did not want to go there at all. As you know, Republicans are trying to tag Democrats being the defund the police party. He said absolutely not.

Take a look at some other proposals here that he did, student loan rejection.

[13:05:01]

$50,000 is what progressives want to see for student loan debt forgiveness. He said no. His proposal of $10,000 is where he's sticking at. We've already heard from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, even Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer aware of his own left flank is for getting this up to $50,000 forgiveness.

Immigration reform, we know we're going to see the big Biden proposal this week. He wants to put a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented here. But last night, he even said he's open to some negotiation around that. So watch out to see how progressives and advocates respond there.

And minimum wage, $15 an hour, that's what he would like to fight for. But when you heard him press as to whether or not it's going to be in this COVID relief bill, as Bernie Sanders and others would like to see. He said, not so sure. He has said previously he doesn't know if it will meet the rules of this bill, first of all, but he also has a couple of Democrats in the Senate, Manchin, Sinema, who aren't on board with that. So he's got some more work to do.

And I thought what you heard on these policy proposals was sort of that more moderate, more centrist Joe Biden, the one that navigated the progressive waters in the Democratic nomination fight to actually the nomination, say, sort of opened for business when it comes to negotiating both with his fellows Democrats and across the aisle with Republicans, Brianna.

KEILAR: David, thank you so much for taking us through that, making it clear. We appreciate it.

And as David mentioned there, President Biden made some definite moves away from the progressive wing of his party. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We need student loan forgiveness beyond the potential $10,000 your administration has proposed. We need at least a $50,000 minimum. What will you do to make that happen?

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: I will not make that happen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How can we be sure that we don't overlegislate police officers so that they can't do their job to protect the law- abiding citizens who live in these high-crime neighborhoods, and yet train officers to police with compassion?

BIDEN: By, number one, not defunding the police. We have to put more money in police work.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Let's talk now with Robert Reich. He was former labor secretary under President Clinton, and he wrote the book, The System Who Rigged It, How We Fix It.

Mr. Secretary, I wonder what you think about as you watched this last night, and, I mean, these were some pretty clear comments that he was making trying to be moderate on student loan forgiveness in particular. What did you think?

ROBERT REICH, FORMER LABOR SECRETARY UNDER CLINTON: Well, Joe Biden has been very consistent right through the campaign, right through his first weeks he has said does not want to forgive student loans above $10,000. And he's also been very consistent in terms of not committing himself with regard to a minimum wage increase on the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill.

So, I think that a lot of progressives are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, or at least hold off on any criticism because the COVID relief bill is so urgent, it is so large, there are so many conservatives and so many Republicans who are already taking pot shots against it. And I think the word on the street and the word among Democrats and progressives is, let's go along, let's stay united as long as we possibly can because there are so much huge and important issues that need to be addressed, and Biden is addressing him.

KEILAR: At a certain point, we are going see fissures. I think we are certainly seeing some concerns from some liberals. Do you agree with where he is on student loan forgiveness? He says no to the $50,000, $10,000 is where he's at. Is that the right move?

REICH: Well, I personally, Brianna, would like to go up to 50,000 because I teach, I know that student loans are extraordinarily burdensome, not only on students but on their parents and on others. I would like to personally have free public higher education. But we're not there yet. And we have higher priorities with regard to getting through this COVID and making sure the people survive. Also, infrastructure and dealing with a climate crisis. I mean, we can't do everything all at once.

So I am very sympathetic personally with where Joe Biden is, although I would like him to go further. As a former secretary of labor, I know that the $7.25 an hour minimum wage is ridiculous. Now, to have that, it hasn't been raised in nine years, it has got to be raised. People cannot live on $7.25. And 40 percent of minimum wage workers are the primary earners in their households. But I'm not going to press that point personally and I'm not going to be upset right now. Joe Biden is doing an extraordinarily good job, and the Republicans on the other side, what are they proposing? Nothing.

KEILAR: Sure. But, I mean, there are -- look, he has to figure this out. There are fissures in his own party. I wonder about families who have already paid these student loans off, and they look at some of these forgiveness initiatives.

[13:10:06]

What do you say to them?

REICH: Well, there is the issue with regard to both families that have paid the loans off, but also if you forgive all of these loans, then what do you do to families and for students who are just beginning to get loans. And you have so many on both sides. You've got to have some sort of a program that responds to the needs of all families with regard to these huge student costs and student debts. And that's why free public higher education, I think, needs to be a national objective.

KEILAR: And certainly it's going to continue. We'll see this debate continue. Thank you so much, Mr. Secretary. We appreciate it.

REICH: Thank you, Brianna.

KEILAR: A debacle unfolding in Texas right now. Millions are freezing without power. So who is to blame for these power outages?

Plus, the feud between Donald Trump and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell intensifies as Trump returns to high school insults, maybe middle school insults, after a short break from them. We're going to roll the tape.

And as cases drop across the nation, the CDC now warning that variants, these new variants, these mutations of the virus, they may lead to a, quote, rapid rise in cases.

This is CNN's special live coverage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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KEILAR: Right now, nearly 70 percent of Texas is under some sort of winter weather alert with more than 3 million customers currently without power as extreme cold continues to grip the state. And today, there's a new issue emerging, water restrictions because of frozen pipes. In Galveston, stage 5 water restrictions in place this morning after a major water line broke from the lack of power.

Everyone is looking for someone to blame here. So far the major fall guy is the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, known as ERCOT, and an independent organization that operates the state's power grid. I'm joined now from Houston by Daniel Cohan, who is Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice University. Daniel, thank you so much.

I think the rest of the country is watching what is going on in Texas right now with incredible interest. What is the situation like in Houston right now?

DANIEL COHAN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING, RICE UNIVERSITY: Thank you. Yes, I wish it was better circumstances to be with you. It's really a dire situation here. We are one of the fortunate homes that has power and heat at the moment, although we never know when a rolling blackout might come. The water pressure is extremely low. We just got the boil water alert from the city. And this is colder weather than people are used to. The homes aren't as well insulated to be prepared for that. And it hasn't just been rolling blackouts but a lot of people who have been out of power for many hours or days.

KEILAR: I mean, the pictures we're seeing are incredible, water that is frozen coming through ceiling fans in the ceiling. And just to the north of Texas, as I'm sure you're tracking, Oklahoma is also being hard hit by the weather but they're not seeing the same impact when it comes to the power supply. Why is Texas faring so poorly right now in that regard?

COHAN: Right. Really, what we're seeing in Texas is that our energy systems fail us. And I say energy systems because this goes beyond our power system, which is so clearly (INAUDIBLE) on this with the blackouts. But we are seeing how vulnerable our national gas and our electricity systems are to each other when we are so reliant on natural gas for supplying both our electricity and our heat.

KEILAR: So, explain what's happening with natural gas. That seems to be the big culprit here.

COHAN: Right. Natural gas is the largest source of electricity in Texas, and it's also what many of us use to heat our homes and hospitals and businesses. So we rely on it for a number of purposes. It's also exported. It's also used by our industries.

And natural gas has a unique vulnerability when we use it in our power systems is that power plants need a continuous supply of natural gas at all times. So each power source has its own vulnerability, but that's the particular one that natural gas faces.

And so what we're seeing is not just a failure of individual components or individual natural gas power plants but a failure of the overall systems to supply an adequate and properly pressurized stream so that power plants can use it for electricity, and an inadequate diversification to have other sources of power as well.

KEILAR: The governor is blaming ERCOT, basically, the manager for the power systems in Texas. Should leaders have seen this vulnerability coming though? COHAN: Well, there's absolutely a lot of blame to go around. This is a totally unacceptable crisis for millions of people to be out of power, out of heat, for water systems to be going down now, and a deadly situation for people to be so cold in their homes.

And so ERCOT shares a big part of the blame for that. They do planning each season. They got a lot of aspects of this season right. They weren't that far off on how much demand would be. They got a number of aspects correct. But I think what they didn't prepare for was the systemic failure that could happen when the natural gas systems that so many power plants rely on struggles as much as it is today.

So there was an inadequate preparation of the severity of the storm as well as how our interconnected systems would be resilient to responding to it.

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KEILAR: Daniel, look, we're glad the power is on in your house. You are an exception. There are so many people suffering. Thanks for being with us, Daniel Cohan.

COHAN: Thank you. Bye.

KEILAR: A question at CNN's town hall with President Biden is putting a spotlight on what some clinics call the Vaccine Hunger Games, how some are skipping the line.

Plus, Donald Trump's insult silence is over, and his new target is Mitch McConnell. Why he says the minority leader needs to be replaced and what he said about one of his cabinet members.

And just in, The New York Times reporting that the Pentagon delayed promotions for female generals over fears of how Trump would react when he was president.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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KEILAR: There is a new warning from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There are two new studies that have found that coronavirus variants could lead to a rapid rise in cases. The CDC says there are about 1,300 cases with these strains that they have been able to identify, and they, once again, emphasize the importance of washing hands, of social distancing, and wearing masks to stop the spread.

There is some good news though, and that is that in a briefing from the White House coronavirus task force, the head of the CDC announced coronavirus cases are declining daily. That is also the same for hospitalizations. But, of course, to keep that trend going, vaccinations are much needed.

Unfortunately, severe weather around the United States is expected to lead to widespread delays in vaccine shipments and deliveries here in the coming days. And as we learn today, the rollout of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will be slower than expected due to a miscommunication.

For some Americans, getting their first shot of the coronavirus vaccine has become an incredibly frustrating process, calling for weeks, constantly refreshing appointment websites, waiting in line for hours at a time, sometimes for not.

President Biden addressed this issue at last night's CNN town hall.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you have a plan to vaccinate those who are most vulnerable sooner, to give them a priority?

BIDEN: Well, the answer is yes there are. But here is how it works. The states make the decisions on who is and what order. I can make recommendations, and for federal programs, I can do that as president of the United States. But I can't tell the state you must move such and such a group of people up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: My next guest is Teresita Batayola, she is President and CEO of International Community Health Services, which owns several non- profit clinics that serve thousands of low-income people in the Seattle area. Teresita, thanks for being with us.

It's interesting to hear how you talk about this because you've compared this search for a COVID-19 vaccine to the Hunger Games. Tell us about this.

TERESITA BATAYOLA, PRESIDENT AND CEO, INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY HEALTH SERVICES: Well, just like in the Hunger Games, you have to be very fit to be able to get a vaccine. So, digitally fit, you have to have the right device. You have to have the right fast plan. And then you, yourself, have to be digitally able, so fit in terms of knowing how to actually get through to -- in our state, the face finder to figure out if you qualify. And once you're qualified, then you get on to a number of sites where you have to go scan and look for that available appointment for a vaccine.

KEILAR: And I think a lot of us have heard this from people we know. I also wonder what your reaction is when you hear reports on hospitals in your area inviting big donors to get their vaccines before vulnerable low-income people.

BATAYOLA: Well, absolutely disappointing. We all know that coronavirus or COVID-19 has disproportionately affected our seniors and also communities of color. And so the privilege get even more privileges, it was really very disappointing.

KEILAR: Do health officials need to take action against these hospitals? Is there something they need to do to make sure this doesn't happen? BATAYOLA: This is not something that I would enter into because I do think what the health officials need to focus on is how do we equitably distribute scarce supplies and make sure that the most vulnerable communities are indeed vaccinated because of the rapid spreading virus strains that we have now.

KEILAR: Besides more vaccines, which obviously this country needs, what else do you need most from the Biden administration or from state and local health officials?

BATAYOLA: I think that community health centers, getting direct outpatients is going to be very important because we serve the low- income, the uninsured, the underserved. In my community health center's case, we serve a lot of immigrant and refugee populations.

So I'm actually glad that there's a development in that direction. I see just as one of the 25 pilot community health centers around the country that Biden administration will be sending direct shipments of vaccines to.

[13:30:09]