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New Study on Safe Reopenings of Universities; CDC Shortens Social Distancing to 3 Feet; Putin Wishes Biden Good Health; Minnesota Pipeline Sparks Environmental Concerns. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired March 18, 2021 - 09:30   ET

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

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[09:32:43]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: So what's the secret to reopening schools? There is new research that shows the safest way to reopen, particularly colleges and universities, is by bulk testing. That means frequent, widespread COVID-19 testing all of students, faculty and staff.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. Our senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is with us this morning.

Good morning, Elizabeth.

Explain to all of us eager parents what all this means.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the University of Illinois set out to see, gee, we did certain things during the pandemic to try to keep down outbreaks at our school. Did it work and did it work at other schools as well?

So let's take a look at what they found actually did work because they followed the numbers, they followed the outbreaks. And what they found is that frequent testing, they called it bulk testing, meaning, lots of different people, even if they're asymptomatic. And that is so key. You don't just test someone because they've been exposed to someone with COVID or because they have symptoms. So frequent testings. And that the test results would be available in six to 12 hours. That's so important because if someone's positive, you need to tell them to go home. And if it's three days later, that's not really so useful. So it needs to be quick.

Also, this is very important, people needed to mask and they still needed to do social distancing. In other words, this frequent testing with fast results was not a replacement for masking and distancing. All of those things needed to be done together.

Poppy. Jim.

HARLOW: OK. But if you do them together, it's really effective. That's good to see more evidence of it.

COHEN: Right.

HARLOW: Thank you, Elizabeth.

HARLOW: Let's bring in Dr. Leana Wen, former Baltimore health commissioner and our CNN medical analyst.

Good morning, Dr. Wen. Good to have you.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DR. LEANA WEN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Good morning.

HARLOW: So you've been great in your coverage of the schools from a medical perspective. As a parent of young children, I wonder what you think about this. This is new sound from the CDC director, Dr. Walensky, talking about that study that showed effectively, you know, with masks, three feet of distance in schools works pretty much just as well as six feet.

Here she is.

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DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, DIRECTOR, CDC: So there's been one study that was published late last week that demonstrated in Massachusetts where there's generally 100 percent mask wearing, that three feet was actually safe. Student rates and teacher rates of disease were the same in six feet versus three feet.

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[09:35:06]

HARLOW: Is it? I mean do we know enough yet? Because she's like, well, it's just one study. We don't know. How many studies do we need to tell us this?

WEN: Well, I do think that the one study is important because if the goal for us, and it should be the goal for us to get all of our schools back for full, in-person instruction in the fall, we know that we can't have six feet distancing. We're just are not able to have enough space and enough teachers in order to do that come the fall.

So I think our goal should be to figure out if that is the overall mission, where they -- if we need to get our kids back, and if we need to have only three feet distancing, what are the other layers of mitigation that we have to have in place? So, for example, maybe you need six feet distancing whenever masks are not on, for example, during lunchtime. Maybe then you have two different shifts of lunch. Maybe you also need testing in addition to mask wearing in order for that to happen. And I also think that there needs to be a conversation about vaccination. As in, if teachers and staff are vaccinated, but come the fall, can we also make sure that as many parents as possible are vaccinated. That also sheds a level of community immunity or herd immunity in that school.

SCIUTTO: Dr. Wen, you have been very concerned about some spikes we're seeing in some states. New infections.

On the other hand, you note, as other doctors have noted, that vaccinations work to keep people out of the hospitals and keep people alive, right? I mean those two big things.

I wonder, with that in mind, and the increasing number of people vaccinated, does that take away some of our worry about the increase in new infections we're seeing?

WEN: Not really. And here's why. I think that we are on the cusp of a fourth surge right now with 15 -- more than 15 states seeing a rise in the number of infections, with more transmissible variants that are soon to be dominant here. And I think, on the one hand, it's a really good thing that many of our older individuals, the most vulnerable, are vaccinated. That's really good. I think we're going to see an increase in the number of infections but not necessarily an increase in hospitalizations and deaths, which, again, is a really good thing.

But we also note that many governors are not going to re-impose restrictions unless we see our hospitals becoming overwhelmed. So we could see a situation of a lot more infections outpacing the ability of our vaccines to work and people letting down their guard but not having the restrictions in place to curb it. And I fear that we may lose, as a result, this race of variants versus vaccines.

HARLOW: But would the fourth surge, and maybe I -- you know, I don't want to be Pollyannaish and I just wonder, would the fourth surge be less severe in terms of hospitalizations and deaths because -- because you would have more people vaccinated and then each week that goes by their immunity to it goes up?

WEN: It's certainly possible. I think that, as a result, though, we're going to see the proportion of people who get sick, very sick and die, it's going to skew towards a younger population because the older individuals are going to be protected.

SCIUTTO: Oh.

HARLOW: Right.

WEN: And I think that may also really impact our ability to keep our schools open. If there's an overwhelming level of infection, and our kids are not protected because they can't be vaccinated --

SCIUTTO: Yes.

WEN: And you have this more transmissible variant, that really spells a lot of problems when it comes to our goal of reopening schools.

SCIUTTO: Yes. I mean, listen, it just speaks to -- we're so close. Just keep being smart with masks and distance. It's like taking your seat belt off, you know, two miles from home, right? We know, a lot of accidents happen close to home.

Dr. Leana Wen, thanks so much.

WEN: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Moscow has recalled its U.S. ambassador, and Russian leaders are calling out President Biden after he called Vladimir Putin a killer. Well, he is. A live update on the rising tension between the two countries, next.

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[09:43:19]

HARLOW: This morning, Russian President Vladimir Putin is speaking out after President Biden called him a killer, which, as you noted, Jim, he is. He is wishing President Biden, his words, good health, but what does he really mean by that? This comes on the heels of Russia pulling its ambassador to the United States.

SCIUTTO: CNN's Matthew Chance is in Moscow with more.

Matthew, you know better than us that Putin says these kinds of things with a plan, with an intention. Was this a veiled threat or was he trolling Biden here?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I certainly think, Jim, that Putin is very adept at hiding his real feelings and his demeanor when he was making these comments about Biden -- President Biden's health, saying he wishes him well. Clearly masking what he was really thinking. I wouldn't see it as a threat, but, I mean it's true that Russian television has been filled with speculation about President Biden's age, about his mental state of mind and how that could have had an impact on these comments that he made about Putin being a killer. And so President Putin was clearly talking to that, and he was adding to that sort of speculation that's been so prevalent in the Russian media.

He didn't just talk about that, though. He raised all sorts of other issues as well. He said that people tend to see others as they are themselves. It's almost like he was saying, it takes one to know one.

He then -- you know, he referenced that comment you're a killer.

And then he went on to talk about, you know, a whole litany of, you know, kind of abuses and historical misdeeds by the United States. He talked about the genocide of Native American tribes, slavery.

[09:45:01]

He talked about the dropping of nuclear weapons on Japan during World War II.

And so, you know, remember, Putin was not speak -- not just responding to the Americans -- to the American president, he's also speaking first and foremost to a domestic audience. And so he used this very stark criticism from President Biden as an opportunity to remind Russians about the historical grievances and the historical criticisms that they've had of the United States for many, many decades. And so that's how President Putin himself is at least domestically trying to brush aside these very pointed allegations by the U.S. president.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: Matthew Chance, laying it out well for us, thank you for that reporting from Moscow.

Well, ahead, this story. President Biden shut down, as you know, the Keystone XL Pipeline. He did that on his first day in office. There is a different pipeline already in the works, and the company behind it is racing to finish it before it can get stopped.

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[09:50:29]

SCIUTTO: Twenty-one states led by Texas and Montana are now suing the Biden administration over President Biden's decision to effectively kill the Keystone XL Pipeline. But as that legal fight wages on, another pipeline in Minnesota is already under construction.

HARLOW: And the fight there could set a precedent for the future of pipelines across America and the fossil fuel industry as a whole.

Watch this reporting from our Bill Weir.

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BILL WEIR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Way up north, where the mighty Mississippi is a twisty ribbon of ice, this is the new front in an old fight. It is called Enbridge Line 3, a Canadian pipeline set to runs through the woods, wetlands and wild rice of Minnesota, setting up another Natives versus goliath clash over energy, sovereignty and our life threatening addiction to fossil fuel.

WEIR (on camera): So how much of this fight for you is about the immediate concerns of a leak that would spoil the water and land, and how much of it is about stopping manmade climate change?

TARA HOUSKA, TRIBAL ATTORNEY: For me, it's all the things at once. So it's the spills, right, which always happen with pipelines. It's the disruption itself of just the pipeline going into 800 wetlands, 200 bodies of water. Then there's the climate change piece, the emissions of this, 50 coal fire plants, absolute insanity.

WEIR (voice over): Line 3 starts in the tar sands of Alberta, where forests are replaced with open pits and toxic lakes so big you can see them from space. Since it is scraped and steamed into a thick sludge, tar sand oil takes tremendous amounts of water and energy to push through a pipe. And one study found Line 3 will contribute as much planet warming pollution as 50 coal fired power plants.

WEIR (on camera): What is Enbridge's position overall on the climate crisis?

MIKE FERNANDEZ, CHIEF COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER, ENBRIDGE: We agree, climate change is an issue. And, in fact, almost as our name implies, right, Enbridge, we're very keen about trying to building a bridge to the energy future.

WEIR: So at what point, in order to break this addiction, do we say, you know what, we're going to start with the worst -- we're going to start with the black tar heroin at we detox our way toward being clean?

FERNANDEZ: Yes, that -- I mean I think the real challenge here is that we have a demand for energy. And the reality is, even as we see great growth in renewables, we're still going to need some fossil fuels for years to come.

WEIR (voice over): After President Biden pulled Trump era permits and killed the Keystone XL, those who lost the battle at Standing Rock have found fresh hope. The tribes and their allies who failed to stop the Dakota Accession oil from flowing just watched the first Native American interior secretary get confirmed and now they pray that the president or a judge will stop Line 3.

WEIR (on camera): But that's a much bigger ask. Unlike Keystone XL, which was starting from scratch, Line 3 is a replacement. And of the 340 miles that will cut through Minnesota, 40 percent of it is already in the ground.

WEIR (voice over): To outrace a court or White House order, Enbridge is working as fast as the thawing ice and growing protests will allow.

HOUSKA: There have been over 130 people that have been arrested so far in just the last few months fighting Line 3. We've got people that have been crawling into the pipeline itself, that have been chained to the machines. I mean it's an all-out struggle for mother earth that's happening here.

BARRY SIMONSON, PROJECT DIRECTOR, ENBRIDGE LINE 3 REPLACEMENT PROJECT: We do respect everyone's views on the project. We respect safe protesting. What we don't want is individuals to become unsafe or trespass. And we ask our workers for de-escalation. Don't engage. Because it goes back to safety, integrity and, the last none, respect.

KEVIN PRANIS, MARKETING MANAGER, LABORERS' INTERNATIONAL UNION OF NORTH AMERICA: The truth is that the carbon emissions aren't coming from pipelines, they're coming from cars. And so if you really wanted to go directly to the source, you could protest car dealerships, you could protest gas stations.

WEIR (on camera): When you compare a job on the pipeline, compared to a job building turbines or solar panels or drilling for geothermal, does it pay the same?

PRANIS: That's an excellent question. In Minnesota, because of the work we've done over the past few years, our laborers working on the pipeline and our work labor that's working building wind turbines are making the exact same money.

WEIR (voice over): For one side of this fight, it all comes down to supply and demand.

[09:55:04]

While the other demands a supply of energy that doesn't come with thousand mile pipes, droughts, floods, fires and rising seas. It's a debate that will define the 2000s and beyond.

Bill Weir, CNN, Palisades, Minnesota.

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HARLOW: Incredible reporting, as always from Bill.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: Incredible. We'll keep a very close eye on it.

All right, concern over a coronavirus surge, another one, a fourth one, is growing rapidly in this country as a dozen states see a big rise in new cases. Michigan key among them with an increase in cases over the last week of 50 percent. We'll take you there.

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[10:00:00]

SCIUTTO: A very good Thursday morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto.

HARLOW: And I'm Poppy Harlow.

This just in to us. President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will meet with Asian-American leaders in Atlanta tomorrow.