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Repeating Past Pandemic Mistakes with Omicron; Judge Throws Out Lawsuit against Former Saudi Intel Official; Top 10 Climate Stories of 2021. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired December 30, 2021 - 10:30   ET

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

[10:32:11]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. Global cases of COVID are up 11 percent in the past week as the Omicron variant takes hold and a new study from the U.K. estimates 75 percent of people experiencing cold-like symptoms actually have COVID. The U.K. is amongst several European countries including France and Spain that have seen a record number of cases. Paris says it's now going to require masks outdoors starting on Friday.

And in southern China, a shocking response to the rise in cases. Police publicly shaming people for allegedly breaking COVID protocols, parading four people in front of a crowd wearing hazmat suits, face masks, and goggles. Each carried place cards showing their names and photos according to video shared on social media and republished by state media outlets.

So how did we get back to this place? My next guest just wrote a piece for "The Atlantic" questioning what we've learned if anything since March of 2020, saying we keep making the same pandemic mistakes over and over again.

Let me bring in Katherine Wu, staff writer for "the Atlantic." Also she has a degree in microbiology and immunobiology from Harvard.

Well, why? Why? Why do we keep making the mistakes over and over again?

KATHERINE WU, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: Yes. Thank you for having me. And, you know, it's a great and complicated question. I think honestly the biggest overarching thing here is that we keep coming back to single, one-stop solutions as a country. You know, Americans, it's very easy for us to get locked into an individualistic mindset, how does this benefit me, rather than focusing on collective issues.

And it's very easy for us to look at solutions as, you know, panaceas. If I take this vaccine, I'm set. If I just, you know, take this one test, I'm set. And I think these are the same things we encounter over and over again. These are easy messages to hear, but they're not the right way out of this pandemic, which is a collective problem, a collective threat that we have to tackle together with layers of protections that we keep using in tandem.

HARLOW: I think that really gets to a point that struck me in the article is that you talk about, you know, the fact that we are making this mistake of repeatedly treating vaccines as a panacea, a sort of an all or nothing shield against the infection and what we've seen with Omicron is you can still get it if you're vaccinated, right? You're not going to get as sick, you're probably not going to go to the hospital, you're not going to die from it, but I just wonder how important you think this moment is in helping people understand even if you are vaccinated you need to take these other precautions.

WU: Absolutely. And I think people can't hear this enough. You know, and this is not just an issue in the age of Omicron. You are seeing this with Delta. We were seeing this even pre-Delta. The vaccines were really never designed to be, you know, impenetrable shields against the virus. Really that's not a bar that we've been able to meet for pretty much any vaccine in history, not sustainably, not permanently.

[10:35:07]

That's not really how this works. You know, if we think back to the summer of 2020, you know, some 400,000 years ago, the original bar set for this vaccine was, you know, lowering the chance of disease or severe disease by 50 percent. When the vaccines got here, they really blew that out of the water and it seemed like they were doing really amazing things against infection and transmission for quite some time. But, you know, those protections naturally ebb a little bit.

What is really sturdy is protection against severe disease, and we are seeing that to an extraordinary degree. That is durable protection and that is still protecting people against Omicron. I think a better way to think about this is, you know, if we are all going to encounter this virus at some point, how can we prepare our bodies to fight that infection off once it occurs?

HARLOW: What can we do?

WU: Well, certainly getting vaccinated is the first step, but again, it's the first step that really needs to be combined with infection prevention measures, masking, staying away from large indoor social gatherings, being really conscious of who else is around us, who is vulnerable, testing when people are feeling sick or when they've been exposed and just being really conscientious at this time.

None of these things are going to work in isolation. None of those things I just listed are panaceas by themselves, but in tandem they can really make a huge difference.

HARLOW: It's a great piece and such an important piece right now. You also dive into the CDC's -- some of their missteps from the beginning of the pandemic and lessons to be learned there.

Katherine Wu, thanks very much.

Next, a federal judge throws out a lawsuit against a former Saudi intelligence official who says he was the target of the crown prince. It's a remarkable story. Why the Justice Department claimed the case could reveal state secrets.

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[10:41:27]

HARLOW: A really significant development this morning. A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit against a former top Saudi intelligence official after the Justice Department said allowing that case to move forward could threaten U.S. national security.

Now this case was brought by a group of Saudi companies controlled by the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and was viewed as part of a vendetta against the former counterterrorism official.

CNN's Alex Marquardt has been following this from Washington. Really from the beginning.

Alex, explain to our viewers who this man Aljabri is, what he was facing, and what it now means to have this judge dismiss the case.

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, the reason that the U.S., the U.S. intelligence community, the Department of Justice got involved in this case was because Dr. Saad Aljabri was a longtime intelligence, counterterrorism official in Saudi Arabia who worked hand in glove with the U.S. and is credited by the U.S. and former officials of saving hundreds if not thousands of American lives.

He helped in the fight against al Qaeda. And in that fight, they used a number of companies to -- in those counterterrorism efforts, and some of those companies are part of this group of Saudi companies that brought this lawsuit against Dr. Saad Aljabri. So Aljabri said was that essentially in order to defend himself he would have to reveal some of the activities of those companies. And the head of U.S. Intelligence Avril Haines said that if this court case were to proceed that it could cause what she called exceptionally grave harm to U.S. national security.

Now those companies are owned by the public investment fund of Saudi Arabia which is ultimately controlled by the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and he has been carrying out this vendetta against Aljabri over the past few years because Aljabri had worked for one of the rivals of MBS. And in fact Aljabri accuses MBS of sending a hit squad to Canada to try to kill him around the same time that Jamal Khashoggi, the "Washington Post" journalist was murdered, dismembered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

Aljabri says that he was given a warning that he could be killed. Take a listen to what he had to say to CBS's "60 Minutes."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SAAD ALJABRI, FORMER SAUDI INTELLIGENCE OFFICIAL: And the warning I received don't be in our proximity of any Saudi mission in Canada. Don't go to the embassy. I said, why, they said they dismembered the guy. They kill him. You are on the top of the list.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

MARQUARDT: So this case has now been thrown out by the federal judge in the Massachusetts district court. And while that is a victory for Saad Aljabri, his two children are still being held in Saudi Arabia. Sara and Omar, they are in their early 20s. After they were arrested, they disappeared for a while. Their family says they are now being held in a maximum security prison in Saudi Arabia. A group of senators, both Republicans and Democrats, have appealed to President Biden to put pressure on the kingdom to get those two young Saudis released -- Poppy.

HARLOW: Alex Marquardt, thank you very, very much for the reporting, for being on this, and to "60 Minutes," too, for highlighting that. It's really important development. We appreciate it -- Alex.

MARQUARDT: Thank you.

HARLOW: Still ahead, LL Cool J forced to cancel his performance in Times Square for New Year's Eve after testing positive for COVID.

[10:45:04]

But the scaled-down show for now will go on. Why? The New York State Health Commissioner speaks to CNN at the top of the hour.

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HARLOW: Extreme wildfires to devastating tornadoes, the impacts of climate change have been front and center in 2021. Our Bill Weir has a look at the top 10 climate headlines of the year.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The signs were everywhere in '21, starting at the top of the world, where Greenland's highest peak was so freakishly warm that it rained for several hours.

[10:50:11]

(On-camera): They believe that this is the birthplace of the iceberg that sank the Titanic. But now scientists are really worried this place could help sink Miami, and Boston, and Bangkok, and Shanghai, because just this part of Greenland has enough ice that if it all melts will raise sea levels by two feet.

(Voice-over): A new study predicts that the Arctic will see more rain than snow as soon as 2060. And in the meantime, the ice sheets so vital to a planet imbalance is melting at a staggering rate. At number nine that icy surprise in Texas which illustrated how the

climate crisis can run hot and cold, with wind chills below zero on the Rio Grande, nearly 10 million lost power. The February blast became America's costliest winter storm event ever.

At number eight, flash floods on three continents. In Germany and Belgium, modern-day warning systems failed as a month of rain fell in one day. In China, commuters clung to the ceiling of a subway as a 1000-year flood hit Henan Province. And back in the US, the deadliest flood in Tennessee history came like a tidal wave.

At number seven, the U.S. rejoins the Paris Climate Accord hours after Joe Biden became president. But pledging to slash planet cooking pollution by half this decade is one thing, convincing Congress to take bold action is another.

At number six, a code red for humanity, as scientists around the world issue their most dire warning to-date. The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says it is unequivocal that human activity has cranked up the global thermostat by over two degrees Fahrenheit and that we are careening dangerously close to a point of no return.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We meet with the eyes of history upon us.

WEIR: And those warnings made number five all the more urgent. COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland.

(On-camera): Of the four main themes laid out by COP26 host Boris Johnson, coal, cars, cash and trees it probably is going to be cash that provides the biggest challenge.

(Voice-over): For the first time in 26 meetings, the world's delegates agreed that fossil fuels are driving the climate crisis. But not a single country committed to stopping oil or coal production anytime soon.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: A monster named Ida, the hurricane is intensifying quickly and drawing chilling comparisons to Katrina.

WEIR: Hurricane Ida comes in at number four. As 150 mile per hour winds screamed ashore in Louisiana in early September. But that was just the beginning. Ida's aftermath dropped a rain bomb on New York sudden enough to drown families in their basement apartments. And all told, the single storm cost over $60 billion.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: We are following breaking news this morning. A dangerous and deadly night across the Central United States. A powerful line of storms unleashing at least 24 tornadoes across five states.

WEIR: At number three, tornadoes in winter. December usually brings the fewest twisters of any month. But record warmth in the heartland spun up funnel clouds from Arkansas to Ohio. And weeks later, the damage is still being tallied. At number two, the Pacific Northwest heat dome, which pushed the

mercury in famously mild Portland well over 100 degrees for days, creating a mass casualty event of creatures great and small, over a billion shellfish baked to death on the shores of British Columbia. And the little town of Litton broke the Canadian heat record three times in a week before most of it burned to the ground.

And at number one, America's mega drought. Your water can come from rivers, reservoirs, or from wells, all of which have been impacted by a 20-year mega drought fueled by the climate crisis, with 90 percent of the West starving for rain. The Feds declared the first ever shortage of the Colorado River, which is a source of life for over 40 million Americans. Meantime, smoke from Western wildfires reached the East Coast this year.

From one to 10, it is all connected and without dramatic changes on a global scale, scientists warn us the worst is yet to come.

[10:55:07]

Bill Weir, CNN New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARLOW: Bill Weir, thank you so much for that reporting.

And thanks to all of you for joining me. I'll see you right back here tomorrow morning. I'm Poppy Harlow. "AT THIS HOUR" starts after a quick break.

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AMARA WALKER, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, everyone. I'm Amara Walker, in for Kate Bolduan. Here's what we're watching at --

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