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New Testing for Travelers to U.S.; Dr. Paul Offit is Interviewed about Omicron; Biden To Announce Boycott of Winter Olympics; Additional Charges in Michigan School Shooting; Michigan District Requests Independent Investigation. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired December 06, 2021 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

STEVE MARTIN, ACTOR: You want me to play you?

BIDEN: Steve, I'm afraid you understand me too well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: I'd vote for that. That would be awesome.

CNN's coverage continues right now.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: A very good Monday morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto.

Some encouraging news on Covid this morning as new coronavirus testing requirements go into effect for international travelers coming into the U.S. Everyone, regardless of nationality or vaccination status traveling into the U.S., must now be tested within one day of departure.

But we are learning at the same time some promising, new findings on the omicron variant out of South Africa. New details, new data suggests the strain is leading to less severe cases of Covid there so far. Dr. Anthony Fauci says he is optimistic, though he does caution it's too early to know for certain.

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DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Thus far, it does not look like there's a great degree of severity to it, but we really got to be careful before we make any determinations that it is less severe or really doesn't cause any severe illness comparable to delta. But thus far, the signals are a bit encouraging regarding the severity.

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SCIUTTO: Regarding the severity. That's key. That relates to hospitalizations.

More good news as well. The CDC says that demand for vaccines in the U.S. is up. Right now the U.S. is averaging more than 2.2 million doses per day.

Moments ago, the mayor of New York City announced that he is adding a vaccine mandate for all private sector workers there by the end of the month. He's also now adding children five to 11 to vaccine passes for indoor dining and entertainment. In New York you've already been required to show that card when entering restaurants for a number of weeks now.

Across the country, new cases in the U.S. on the rise. The U.S. averaging more than 100,000 new infections per day. That's the highest level we've seen in months.

CNN aviation correspondent Pete Muntean, he is at Dulles International Airport this morning, also CNN's senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen.

Pete, let's begin with you.

So what should travelers in and out of the country prepare for now?

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim, these changes just took effect at midnight, meaning that flights that are in the air right now are going to be impacted by this for the first time. Passengers coming into the United States now need to get tested one day before their departure. The CDC puts the example like this. If your flight's on a Monday, you can get tested any time on Sunday. It's a one-day rule, not a 24-hour rule.

You also need to show proof of a negative coronavirus test to your airline. Now, this is a shift from what it was, a three-day rule before, and the CDC compressed this timeline because of these concerns over the omicron variant. Airlines say they are going to comply with this but they're really pushing back on the efficacy of all this.

This is what United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby told me.

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SCOTT KIRBY, CEO, UNITED AIRLINES: And the reality is, omicron is already out of South Africa. It's already escaped. It's on every continent. Covid is unique. Covid is endemic. We need to learn to live with it. But we're not going to learn to live with it by simply locking down and shutting borders. The right answer is to get everyone vaccinated.

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MUNTEAN: Remember, this applies to foreign nationals and U.S. citizens. This is also regardless of your vaccination status.

One other big change here that is also just going into effect, the transportation-wide mask mandate. That's a federal rule. It was set to expire on January 18, 2022. Now it's been extended two months. The new expiration date now March 18, 2022. And it applies on all public forms of transportation, planes, trains, buses, boats and also here in terminals, Jim. SCIUTTO: Elizabeth, when we first heard about omicron, there were real

concerns this could be a marked change for the worse. But, since then, the early data from South Africa on omicron cases, particularly how severe they are, has been trending positive.

What are we learning from the latest data?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. So, let's think this through a little bit, Jim. For -- the -- a mutation needs really three things to be a true threat. One, more transmissible, two, it needs to resist the vaccine, at least to some extent, and, three, it needs to cause severe disease.

So this last one is what we're getting glimmers, and I want to emphasize the word glimmers, just glimmers of possible, and emphasize the word possible, hope on this. And this is data out of South Africa. So let's take a look. This is South African data on just 42 patients with omicron. That's why I'm being so tentative here. It's such a small number of patients.

But these hospitalized patients, 70 percent of them were not dependent on oxygen.

[09:05:01]

That is certainly a good sign.

And, in the last two weeks, the length of stay for Covid patients in the hospital, well, it's been about 8.5 days and it's now about 2.8 days. So that tells you that perhaps the dominant that's becoming stronger and stronger there, omicron, does not seem to be quite as damaging. People don't seem to get quite as sick from it. But, again, this is just a, you know, dozens of patients, we need much more data than that, but certainly this is much better than what everyone feared, which is that this was say another delta, another variety that was really possible of getting people very, very sick. We'll see what happens with omicron.

SCIUTTO: More to learn certainly. Elizabeth Cohen, Pete Muntean, thanks so much to both of you.

So, let's dig a little deeper. Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He's also a member of the FDA's vaccine advisory committee.

Great to have you back, Dr. Offit.

As you heard Dr. Fauci says, yes, it's early, but he's optimistic based on what he's seen so far. I wonder if you share that optimism?

DR. PAUL OFFIT, DIRECTOR, VACCINE EDUCATION CENTER, CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA: Yes. And I think, you know, this is a bad coronavirus. It's trying to adapt itself to the human population. From the virus' standpoint, it wants to do two things. It wants to become more contagious, that way it can continue to spread. But it also wants to become less viral, less likely to cause serious disease. It's never to the virus' advantage to kill you because then it can't be transmitted any more. It needs you to reproduce itself. So you may be seeing the natural evolution of an animal virus as it adapts itself to the human population.

SCIUTTO: That's an interesting point. And, again, I don't want to get ahead of the data. I know you're a data guy and we have a lot more to learn from this. And, by the way, here in the U.S., delta remains dominant, right? It remains to be seen how omicron fares, right, in that battle here.

But are you saying it's possible -- possible that omicron could take over, in effect, and be less dangerous than prior iterations of coronavirus?

OFFIT: That's true. And that is, to some extent, an advantage to us in that you have a virus that could knock out a more virulent strain like delta and evolve to what would be the best case scenario, evolve to essentially a common cold-like virus. I mean we'll see how this progresses but I think we should be reassured by the fact that to date, all the evidence is that two doses, for example, of an mRNA- containing vaccine still appears to protect against serious illness. We don't have any evidence that that's not true. So, I think that should reassure people.

SCIUTTO: Well, that was going to be my next question, because on the question of vaccine -- existing vaccine efficacy against omicron, again, it's early but we have heard some early comments from the makers, from executives at the makers of those, both Pfizer and Moderna, who seem to say, and tell me if I'm reading this right, that indications are that vaccines might not protect as well against transmissibility of this but do against getting severe illness, ending up in the hospital.

OFFIT: And that's what you care about. I mean the goal of every vaccine, all the vaccines we have, is to prevent serious illness, prevent the kind of illness that caused you go to the doctor, go to the hospital, go to the ICU or worse. That's the goal. So far these vaccines have done just that. They've done it for the first variant, the so-called D614G variant. They've done it for the alpha variant, they've done it for the delta variant, meaning protection against serious illness is provided by these vaccines. And, in all likelihood, that will also be true for the omicron variant. We'll see, but I think all the early indications is that you are going to be protected against serious illness with two doses of mRNA containing vaccine.

The third dose, the booster dose, can arguably increase neutralizing antibodies and decrease sort of more mild or asymptomatic infection. But what you care the most about is protection against serious illness.

SCIUTTO: It's good to hear that and it's always good to get your expertise on that. So let me ask the next question. We have seen, as we've often seen in the past, when a new variant comes out, perhaps some greater urgency among Americans to either get their first shot or boosters up to an average of 2.2 million doses per day. And I believe the data is just over 600,000 of that are first-time doses, right? So eating into that unvaccinated portion of the population.

Are those numbers significant enough to make a difference?

OFFIT: It's encouraging. We still have tens of millions of people who have chosen not to vaccinate themselves or their children in this country. I can tell you, I just came off a week of being on service. We admitted five children to the hospital yesterday. A couple in the intensive care unit. The problem is not booster dosing. I mean the problem is that these children are invariably not vaccinated, even though they could have been, the parents are not vaccinated even though they could have been. So it's really a matter of vaccinating the unvaccinated population and that's going to be the key to getting on top of this pandemic.

SCIUTTO: I was saying, we just had a graphic up as you were speaking there and it's nice to see that kind of spike as opposed to a spike in a rise in cases. And the spike we just showed you, folks, is a spike in the number of the folks getting their shots, as doctors, like Dr. Paul Offit recommend repeatedly.

Doctor, thanks so much for joining us this morning.

OFFIT: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Well, China says it is threatening to take, quote, resolute counter measures if the Biden administration chooses to enact a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Olympics.

[09:10:10]

Several sources say the administration will likely announce such a boycott this week. And to be clear, what this means is no U.S. government officials would attend next year's winter games, but crucially the athletes would still be able to compete.

CNN White House correspondent Arlette Saenz following all of this.

Arlette, what more are we hearing from the White House on this? I mean is this set in stone? And is there any consideration of that next step, right, of a full boycott without athletes going, or is that not on the table?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim, this is the latest flash point is what become -- is becoming an increasingly tense relationship with China. As the U.S. is expected to announce as soon as this week that U.S. government officials will not be attending the Olympic games in Beijing this coming winter.

Now, it's an important distinction. This does not apply to those American athletes who will still be allowed to go and compete with these games.

Now, the White House has not made this decision official, but it is expected that this announcement will come this week. And it comes as Democrats and Republicans had been pushing for such a diplomatic boycott in order to send a message to China when it comes to their human rights abuses.

Now, President Biden had said for quite a few weeks that this was under consideration, but White House officials, last month, said that the issue of the Beijing Olympics did not come up during President Biden's call with President Xi Jinping.

Now, China is upset about the reports that the U.S. is considering making this announcement this week. A spokesperson for the foreign ministry in China said the U.S. should stop politicizing sports and hyping up the so-called diplomatic boycott so as not to affect China/U.S. dialogue in cooperation in important areas.

Now, the last U.S. boycott of an Olympics game came in 1980 when President Jimmy Carter decided not to send government officials or even athletes to the game in Moscow over Russia's moves -- or then the Soviet Union's moves regarding Afghanistan. Of course, this year's expected boycott will only apply to those government officials and U.S. athletes, for the time being, are expected to be allowed to play in those games.

SCIUTTO: Yes, that's certainly a marked difference in degree.

Arlette Saenz, at the White House, thanks very much.

Coming up next this hour, the parents of the suspect in the deadly Michigan school shooting are now under arrest. There are pictures there. They're being held in the same jail as their son. Now a third man is being questioned for possibly helping them try to hide from police.

Also ahead, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar says that she is confident House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will take action this week against the Republican colleague who made a series, not just one, but a series of anti-Muslim remarks.

And, later, President Biden is set to speak directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin tomorrow, as new U.S. intelligence estimates the number of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border is increasing and rapidly.

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[09:17:34]

SCIUTTO: We are learning new details today about how the parents of Ethan Crumbley, the teen accused of shooting and killing four fellow students in Michigan last week, were able to hide out from police before their arrest. A man who police say helped the Crumbleys get into the Detroit building where they were ultimately arrested has come forward, is now cooperating with authorities. According to his attorney, Andrzej Sikora (ph), did not really know what was going on and didn't know the couple had active warrants. It is still unclear whether that man will face charges. This comes as the school district superintendent has now requested an independent third party investigation into the deadly school shooting. Prosecutors on the case tell CNN they have not ruled out pursuing charges against others, including school officials.

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KAREN MCDONALD, OAKLAND COUNTY PROSECUTOR: It's under investigation. So, no, I haven't -- we haven't ruled out charging anyone.

Our first priority is keeping the community safe and holding the people accountable who could have prevented this. And right now, the Crumbleys are those two people. None of this should have happened. A 15-and-a-half-year-old should not be sitting in jail facing life in prison. These children who were terrorized and killed and shot, none of it should have happened. And it could have been prevented.

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SCIUTTO: Could have been prevented, she says.

CNN national correspondent Athena Jones is live in Oxford, Michigan, this morning.

Athena, what is the school saying now, and what are you hearing about the possibility of school officials facing some responsibility here?

ATHENA JONES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Jim.

Well, it's unclear at this point if school officials will be facing any sort of charges. That is clearly something that Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald has not, you know, concluded or certainly not announced yet.

But we do know that the school superintendent has -- the school district has requested an independent third party investigation into the events leading up to Tuesday's shooting. And they're also sharing their version of events. And the upshot of all of it is that at no point did school counselors or school staff feel that Ethan Crumbley was going to be of harm to himself or to others.

We heard how they responded on Monday when a teacher saw him searching for images of ammunition on his cell phone. Ethan Crumbley telling school officials that, you know, shooting sports were a family hobby.

On Tuesday, when another teacher saw a concerning drawing that Ethan Crumbley had made, a drawing that depicted, among other things, a semiautomatic gun and a bullet, a body with bullet holes in it that appeared to be bleeding, Ethan told the school that that was part of a video game he was designing.

[09:20:08]

And so school officials said, look, he had no prior disciplinary infractions. His parents, when asked to take him home, flatly refused. They left the school without their son, presumably to go to work, according to the superintendent. But they decided that because he had no prior infractions, he could be sent back to class.

And, of course, this is something that's raising a lot of questions. This -- these discussions were never raised to the level of assistant principal or principal, another thing that is leaving a lot of parents of students here raising questions about how the school handled this.

As for that third party investigation, Michigan's attorney general, Dana Nessel, has said that, you know, her office could -- has offered to have the attorney general's office conduct that investigation and she's suggested that it's not exactly appropriate to have the school, you know, deciding who's doing this investigation. She says, I'm not accusing the school district of anything in particular, but in the past, sometimes these investigations end up being that third party investigator ends up carrying out the investigation in such a way as to protect those asking for the investigation.

So, we'll wait and see how the school district responds to that offer.

Jim.

SCIUTTO: Athena Jones, in Oxford, thanks very much.

Let's discuss the law behind this now.

CNN legal analyst Areva Martin, as well as forensic psychologist, co- founder of The Violence Project, Jillian Peterson. She also co-wrote a book on how to stop the mass shooting epidemic.

Areva, I want to begin with you because I'm curious about the law here. What does the law say about parental responsibility for this sort of thing? What is -- what is the standard here? What is the law that would have been broken potentially?

AREVA MARTIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, what we know about the legal issue so far, Jim, is that the parents have been charged with involuntary manslaughter. The prosecutor laid out a pretty strong case for criminal negligence as it relates to the parents.

As it relates to the school, I think one thing that's troubling for me is, you know, schools have an ability to search backpacks. And all they need is reasonable suspicion. They don't have to have the higher standard of probable cause. So, you know, if there was reasonable suspicion that a school rule or that the law had been broken, they had the right to check the backpack in this case, and they did not check Ethan's backpack, which is still very troubling.

And what we do know is that the counselors told the parents that if they didn't get counseling for Ethan within like 48 hours, they were going to alert child protective services. So if they were so concerned that they were going to alert child protective services, it begs the question as to whether, you know, it was a wise decision on their part to allow him to return to the classroom and definitely given that they didn't alert the principal and other school safety officers.

SCIUTTO: OK, I want to get to the school responsibilities in a moment but -- and I know that the charges are about criminal negligence here, but what is the legal standard, Areva, what would prosecution have to prove to get a conviction in court that the parents shared responsibility here? MARTIN: Well, they have to prove that the parents had knowledge that

Ethan, you know, was troubled, that he had expressed some concerns about either harming himself or harming others in the school context, that he had access to this gun, that they failed to protect the gun, and that they failed to take those steps that were reasonable to prevent this kind of tragedy from happening.

And it goes beyond just ordinary negligence. And that's why the prosecutor laid out the extraordinary things that happened in this case, from the text messages, to access to the gun, to the ignoring of, you know, really red flags that were apparent in this case.

And as it relates to the school, Jim, the question becomes the same, was there gross negligence, was there negligence beyond ordinary negligence with respect to the school officials.

SCIUTTO: Jillian, you've done a lot of work in this space. Schools, I imagine, deal with questions like this often, right, and have to make judgments about what -- what is truly worrisome and what can be dismissed. They clearly made the wrong judgment here. Four kids are dead. But what are the standards? Are there any? What are the practices that school put in place to try to make that judgment?

JILLIAN PETERSON, PSYCHOLOGIST: You know, schools are being put in a really difficult position. We've been tracking both school shootings and threats of school shootings and this year they are at absolute record highs. And so schools are having to deal with, is this a joke, is this just a drawing, is this a real threat, does the person really have capability, and there are no real standards for how they operate.

What we find in our research is the best approach is to have a team, either a threat assessment team or a crisis response team, so no one person in the school is responsible for making these decisions, but you're gathering all this information with input from the principal, mental health professionals, security professionals to do the best assessment and make the best decision about how to move forward.

SCIUTTO: Do you worry, Jillian, here that the focus is misplaced, right? I mean I've covered a bazillion, sadly school shootings. I mean it's an American epidemic.

[09:25:01]

And one refrain -- I mean you'll hear a whole host of refrains when they happen now. Well, the police missed this, the parents missed this, the kid, you know, et cetera. For a while you had people saying, well, arm the teachers, right, that's the best, you know, first defense here. Now you have, well, the school should have been able to, you know, spot this, assess the mental health and so on and then take the gun away or report to authorities.

I mean do you -- do you worry that the focus is on the wrong core issue?

PETERSON: Yes, and in doing the research for our book, we interviewed perpetrators of shootings, we interviewed their families, we interviewed survivors and really tried to piece together, what does that pathway to violence look like for these individuals. And the thing that we found is that the circumstances of the Oxford shooting of the same that we see again and again and again, a white male student of the school with a trauma history who's leaking their plans, telling other people in crisis, actively suicidal, taking guns from their parents. It's the same pattern over and over. But that means we can really put things in place to prevent this from happening once we recognize that consistent pattern.

SCIUTTO: Areva, what is the path forward for the parents here now? And I'm curious, they're not -- at a minimum not showing up for the police, right, when asked. I mean what -- it hasn't been established legally that they were running or trying to make a run for the Canadian border, but they certainly didn't show up when they were supposed to.

Does that affect or undermine their defense going forward?

MARTIN: Well, it remains to be seen, Jim, if they will be charged with, you know, absconding or evading the police. The prosecutor hasn't spoken out since they were actually apprehended and we saw the arraignment over the weekend. So it's not clear if additional charges will be filed against the parents and then, as you said at the top of the show, there is this individual, 65-year-old man or so who gave them access to this commercial building in downtown Detroit. It also remains to be seen if that individual will be charged with obstructing justice or somehow aiding and abetting the two parents.

So, the prosecutor has made it pretty clear that this is an ongoing investigation and there could be additional charges, not only against any individual that helped the parents, but potentially additional charges against the parent. He hasn't ruled out the possibility of charges against school officials as well.

SCIUTTO: Well, a lot of legal questions to be answered. One thing we know for certain is four teenagers are dead, shot in their school.

Areva Martin, Jillian Peterson, thanks so much to both of you.

PETERSON: Thank you.

MARTIN: Thanks, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Still ahead this hour, just days after those teenagers were shot and killed at their school, a GOP congressman thought this was the appropriate Christmas card photo to share. Why critics are slamming Kentucky Representative Thomas Massey, next. Look at those guns.

And we are moments away from the opening bell on Wall Street. Stock futures are mostly up this morning. This after Wall Street ended a tumultuous week lower, fueled by weak U.S. job gains, also concerns about the omicron variant. The Nasdaq alone lost 1.9 percent Friday due to a sell-off of high-value tech stocks. Market also closed lower for the week. Smaller company stocks taking the biggest hit. You see green arrows there this morning. Some market watchers say this is partly relief from early signs about the omicron variant being less severe.

We'll have more.

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