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Boosters Coming For Ages 12 to 15?; Biden Set to Speak to Putin. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired December 30, 2021 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:00]

JAMES TAYLOR, MUSICIAN: We have an embarrassment of riches. She wrote too many good songs.

CAROLE KING, MUSICIAN: As did he.

BILL WEIR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The tour marked a milestone in the relationship.

TAYLOR: You couldn't ask for more. You couldn't ask for more.

KING: Absolutely. It was an experience that we had that we shared with every band member, every singer, every crew member. And everybody has the same treasure.

WEIR: And offered up a celebration of one of the most prolific partnerships in American music history.

DAVID BROWNE, "ROLLING STONE": When you left that concert, it made you realize what exactly, they have contributed to American music over decades.

WEIR: Bill Weir, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: I can't wait to watch it.

"Carole King & James Taylor: Just Call Out My Name" airs this Sunday at 9:00 p.m. Eastern, and Pacific.

Top of the hour. I'm Alisyn Camerota. Thanks so much for joining me.

New this afternoon, 12-to-15-year-olds may soon be able to get a booster shot. A source tells CNN that the FDA is expected to green- light boosters for that age bracket in the coming days. "The New York Times" reports it could happen as early as Monday.

CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us now.

So, Elizabeth, how soon will these 12-to-15-year-olds be able to get boosted?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Alisyn, it sounds like it could really happen just within a couple of days.

And, hopefully, then, we will see millions of young people go to get their boosters. We know how helpful it can be against Omicron. Let's take a look at what these numbers look like for the 12-to-15-year-old group. So, four million, approximately four million children that age are at least six months past their second shot.

That means, once the FDA gives the green light, they should be able to go out and get their boosters. And then another 4.7 million more will be six months past their second shot soon or in the coming months. And so they will in the coming months be able to get a booster.

But, Alisyn, really, the most important number is -- and it's not a good number -- more than a third of children ages 12 to 15 haven't even had one vaccination. We know that the initial vaccination, those first two shots, that's what's the most important.

So, it's -- we want to get this group boosted, of course, but really what's most important is someone needs to get to these parents of more than one-third of children this age in the U.S. and say, please vaccinate your child, especially with Omicron being so transmissible, going back to school next week -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Elizabeth Cohen, thank you for the update.

Well, the mayor-elect of New York City just released his strategy to fight COVID in the new year. The city is seeing its highest number of cases in a day, and more NYPD officers are calling out sick than ever before.

CNN's Polo Sandoval is covering this.

So, Polo, give us the latest.

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Alisyn, New York state actually experienced a huge spike when it comes to that daily COVID case count, about 65 percent increase from one day to another. Just look at the numbers alone here reported on Wednesday, just over 67,000 New Yorkers testing positive.

And then you look at it on a chart, Alisyn, and you can see that spike in cases. And now we're getting early indication that today is likely going to set another record. So what's concerning here, well, among many things, is that in those positive cases are many of New York City's first responders, for example.

Just look at how many EMS personnel have called in sick so far, according to FDNY, about 30 percent of the work force there, 17 percent of firefighters. And then you look at NYPD staff, about 21 percent of the force's roughly 52,000 members there calling in sick now.

Now, we should mention that's not just confirmed COVID cases, but those who are also feeling flu-like symptoms, and those who are just sick in general. We are hearing from city officials who are confident that they will be able to weather this, that they are able to actually answer all calls for service.

And that includes implementing mandatory overtime. And they are also confident that this will not interfere with the city's plans for tomorrow's New York New Year's Eve festivities that have obviously been dramatically scaled back.

And when you heard -- when you hear from Eric Adams, whose administration will soon be basically stepping in here, they are going to be implementing several changes when it comes to the way the city has been handling its COVID strategy here.

One of them, however, will be keeping in place what Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose administration will basically head out at the end of the year, and that particular protocol that would actually require those private sector companies to implement a vaccination mandate.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERIC ADAMS (D), NEW YORK CITY MAYOR-ELECT: But, right now, we're going to maintain what was put in place for the business community, that was put in place on the 27th. We want to continue that.

And if there's a moment when we can change or alter that, we're going to do so based on the science.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANDOVAL: And then the big question too, would there be any potential vaccination mandates for schools?

We did hear from the mayor-elect, who said at this point he is leaving that up to Governor Kathy Hochul. But they are in close contact. And at this point, he doesn't see the need, since he -- the numbers speak for themselves, that the students have been relatively safe at school.

[15:05:11]

CAMEROTA: OK, Polo Sandoval, thank you for all the latest.

SANDOVAL: Thanks, Alisyn.

Joining me now is Dr. Michael Mina. He's the chief science officer at eMed. That's a biotech software company that offers at-home testing. And he's also a former professor of epidemiology at Harvard University.

Doctor, thanks so much for being here. And I just want to start with the at-home testing, because there are

so many questions about whether they're effective right now, particularly with Omicron. And I know you have some skin in the game, because you're at an at-home testing company.

But I just want to play for you what Dr. Rochelle Walensky said of the CDC. And it sounded like she was saying that they basically are not that reliable right now. So listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, CDC DIRECTOR: But we opted not to have the rapid test for isolation because we actually don't know how our rapid tests perform and how well they predict whether you're transmissible during the end of disease.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: So can we rely on them to find out if we're positive or not?

DR. MICHAEL MINA, CHIEF SCIENCE OFFICER, EMED: Absolutely.

That, unfortunately, I don't think was founded in all of the science. The science says quite the opposite. It's that when your antigen test is positive, you are very likely to have what's called culturable virus, meaning live infectious virus in your specimen.

I don't think that that was a correct statement about what these rapid tests do and do not do.

(CROSSTALK)

CAMEROTA: Well, what do you think that Dr. Walensky got wrong? I mean, what doesn't -- what do you think she doesn't understand?

MINA: Well, if you are positive on one of these tests at day five, when there's now a suggestion to leave isolation, you should assume that you are still infectious.

All of the data shows that if you're positive on a rapid antigen test, you still have infectious virus in you. And if you're -- you can actually look at the darkness of the line that forms. If it's a bright dark line, a bright red line, for example, it means you have 100 million or a billion viral particles per mil still in your nose to cause that.

So it's still at very infectious levels.

CAMEROTA: That's very interesting to know that the darkness of the line tells you something. I didn't know that.

But can't you also be testing positive for weeks after you are showing symptoms? I mean, haven't we heard anecdotal cases of people who tested positive for a long time even after maybe they weren't even shedding the virus anymore? MINA: Yes, so these are two very different types of tests. And this is exactly what I have been talking about, frankly, for two years.

The PCR test, the laboratory PCR test and molecular test, they can stay positive for weeks or months, which is why we should never have relied on a PCR test to tell us whether we need to isolate, because most people taking a PCR test, especially those without symptoms, get tested after they have already been infectious.

And that's why a rapid test, these antigen tests, are very specific. They will only turn positive when you are infectious, which is why they are the better public health tool, even if PCR is the better tool for a doctor who maybe is interested in asking the question, have you been infected in the last couple of weeks or even possibly months?

CAMEROTA: OK, that's very interesting to me.

But do the at-home rapid tests that you're talking about, do they detect you at the beginning of your infection? Or are there some days where you're infectious or you're just developing the infection and it doesn't turn up positive?

MINA: Yes, that's a great question.

So we're finding with Omicron is, it's a more infectious virus. And so we're actually finding that, sometimes, when people are getting their symptoms for the first day, for example, they will still be negative on a rapid. Then it will turn positive that night or the next day.

So my suggestion is, if you feel symptoms of coronavirus, assume that you are positive, quarantine and take steps not to infect others. But if you have a test, use it the next day, or maybe even two days later, if you can, to be sure that you actually catch yourself and see the positive, rather than testing too early.

CAMEROTA: What about for parents of kids who are under 5 years old who can't get vaccinated? Do these tests work on little kids? Because the instructions seem to be giving different guidance?

MINA: Yes, so the instructions -- and this is an important point -- when you read the instructions that are provided through the FDA program, that is just based on how the studies for those tests were done.

But, absolutely, the tests still work for young children. They work regardless of symptoms. They work identically. The test cares about the amount of virus you have. It doesn't care about who you are, what age you are, or what kind of symptoms you have. It is looking for virus. And that's really all these tests are able to do, is look for virus.

CAMEROTA: So it sounds like you think that the CDC, the new guidance of a five-day isolation period, instead of a 10-day, is, what, just a misfire? I mean, are you aligned with that philosophically or you don't like it?

[15:10:06]

MINA: No, I actually feel very strongly that, this entire pandemic, we should have been doing everything we could to shorten the isolation period by using information from a rapid test to ask the question, before I leave isolation, am I infectious?

And maybe that happens for some people on two days. Maybe that happens for some people at 12 days. So, we can shorten the isolation period from 10 days by -- but we should do it with evidence that we are no longer infectious. And the reason is that the people who have been diagnosed and know that they are infectious and are five days out from that diagnosis are still probably the highest-risk people for onward transmission in our society.

So we should probably at least be making sure that, before they go to work, that they are negative, rather than having them go to work and potentially causing three new people to become infected and having an additional three people each having to take five or 10 days off of work.

CAMEROTA: OK, Dr. Michael Mina, thank you. Really interesting to hear the details of how to do this. Thank you.

MINA: Sure.

CAMEROTA: OK, moments from now, President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin will speak on the phone. The Kremlin, somewhat urgently, we're told, requested this call. So what does Putin want?

Plus, the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse are speaking out after his longtime associate and counterpart Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking. So we will bring you their reaction.

And a tiger attacks a man at a Florida zoo, causing officials to have to shoot and kill the endangered animal. We have details on what went wrong here just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:16:10]

CAMEROTA: In just about 15 minutes, President Biden is set to have a phone call with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Though they already spoke this month, the Russian president reportedly made this request somewhat urgently to discuss -- quote -- "extremely complicated issues."

As many as 100,000 Russian troops have been stationed at the border with Ukraine in recent days. The White House says, with this call, President Biden will attempt to defuse those tensions.

Joining me now is CNN global affairs analyst Susan Glasser. She writes for "The New Yorker." And, in Moscow, we have CNN senior international diplomatic editor Nic Robertson.

Great to see both of you.

So, Nic, what do we think is Putin's goal with this phone call today?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, look, it's come as extremely urgent, we should have this phone conversation.

The whole scenario here with the Russian troop buildup has been a situation that Putin has created. He's put a lot of pressure on the United States to get the initial conversation with President Biden back in early December. It's his idea to have this other conversation now. He's given the United States a set of very clear demands.

So while there's this whole sense of, like, urgency that we really have to talk tonight, and the actual negotiations don't begin for about another 10 or 11 days in Geneva, let's take a step back and look at the really big picture.

Putin thinks NATO has been overstepping its bounds for decades now. I mean, he looks at his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, and the breakup of the Soviet Union and thinks that was a mistake, that it was -- that, essentially, Ukraine, which was part of the Soviet Union, is really in the sphere of Russia's influence.

He thinks every step along the way, where NATO has gone through its enlargement, through the late '90s into the early 2000s, under a number of U.S. presidents, he thinks that has all been to Russia's detriment. So, although there's this extreme urgency about having these calls and getting the conversations going right now, this whole scenario, in President Putin's mind, has been building up for years and years and years.

But here's what makes it a pressure point for him. He can see what's happening in Ukraine. He can see that it's getting Western military support through NATO. And his assessment could be that, if he doesn't act soon, either to call NATO out and get it to change course, or make whatever military steps he feels he needs to take, if he doesn't do it soon, his window of opportunity will be lost.

I cannot read his mind. Very few people can. And it's too much of a stretch to say these are definitely the scenarios that are playing -- that will play out in his conversations right now. But this is a pressure point in a long arc. It has a ways to go. But the real question is, for President Putin -- and if President Biden can get this out of him over the coming weeks, that would be -- that would be a real positive for the United States.

Is he really, really determined to go to the wall on this issue of NATO, is his view, expansion eastwards towards Russia? Is he ready to go to the wall on that right now?

CAMEROTA: Susan, what are your thoughts on all of that? And what do you think has changed in the past 23 days since these two leaders last spoke?

SUSAN GLASSER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: You know, Alisyn, that really is a very important question, because, frankly, this whole thing is largely a manufactured crisis on Putin's part.

I think that's very important. It can be misleading. He cites NATO and NATO expansion, as if it's the pretext for this crisis. But, in fact, it's not. There is no imminent threat. I think it's very important to people to underscore this. This is just not true that there is some imminent threat of NATO expanding into Ukraine. That's not happening now.

And it was a subject of discussion back in 2014 when Putin originally invaded Ukraine. Ukraine is actually not really significantly closer to joining NATO today than it was all those years ago.

[15:20:03]

So it's a narrative that Vladimir Putin (AUDIO GAP) but I think Nic really pointed out really pointed out in some ways what may be the even more significant factor for Vladimir Putin. This is the 30th anniversary this week of the breakup of the Soviet Union, which Vladimir Putin has called the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century, notwithstanding all the other terrible catastrophes of the 20th century.

He really does not recognize the legitimacy of Ukraine as an independent nation. In his view, it is and should be a part of mother Russia. And that has nothing really to do with NATO at all. It is all about his view of Russia, perhaps his view of his own legacy.

And another important factor that I would point out that has been happening right now, NATO expansion is not happening. What is happening is a crackdown by Vladimir Putin and his government inside Russia itself, the elimination of Memorial, the leading Russian human rights organization, founded in the waning days of the Soviet Union.

Just this week, it was thrown out of business by the Russian Supreme Court. And you have the jailing this year of Alexei Navalny, the leading dissident inside Russia. Instead of talking about that, Putin has changed the subject once again to external aggression. And the reason we're having a crisis, of course, is because he sent 100,000 troops to his neighbor's borders, which tends to get people's attention.

CAMEROTA: Nic, what's NATO's plan if, in fact, Vladimir Putin decides to up the ante, instead of de-escalate?

ROBERTSON: Yes, it'll be exactly the opposite of what President Putin wants.

NATO will be -- will send more troops to Europe's eastern flank, to President Putin's western border, the very thing that he says he is concerned about. The movement and the increase since the breakup of the Soviet Union of NATO forces has been because of precisely Russia's unpredictability, its invasion of Georgia in 2008, its annexation of Crimea in 2014.

And it's created a fear among NATO's Eastern-most allies that Russia is in an expansionist mood, and they need to have greater forces there to defend themselves. So, when NATO has deployed, it hasn't deployed in heavy numbers. It's been sensitive to what Russia has said. It has deployed as sort of a trip wire force, several hundred troops, fighter aircraft into the Baltic states, these sorts of light touch.

But what NATO has done is keep a significant number of forces in ready reserve, mobilized and equipped and ready to go, the transport networks pre-checked out, what rail routes would be used, what troops would be moved from other bases within Europe, and got them on a more rapid, ready footing to come to the border.

So this is what the expectation would be. If Putin invades Ukraine, NATO is going to be worried -- NATO members are going to be worried about their borders. They have a long and troubled history with the Soviet Union and concerns about Russia today, and Putin's version of Russia, at that.

So they're going to want NATO to step up. And that's what we're going to see. And that's not the outcome that President Putin is going to be happy with at all. So, this is a long and difficult negotiation we're getting into. Putin has created his own narrative.

As your guest is rightly saying here, this is about his legacy, about ensuring his future, and it's his narrative for Russia. But that's the one that is selling in Russia and the Russian population. Those that -- those that are not having their voices crushed in terms of the media and the opposition and the NGO-type groups, human rights-type groups are turning a blind eye to it.

There aren't protests out in the street -- in the streets against this action, because many people are now inured to President Putin's version of Russia. Many of them are also very afraid to go out and protest.

CAMEROTA: So, Susan, what is President Biden's goal with this call? He's accepting that Putin -- this is a call at Putin's behest. Is he just listening on this call? Can he steer Putin in any direction? Or is that an impossibility?

GLASSER: Well, it's interesting, Alisyn.

So, first of all, a lot of what Putin is demanding is not Joe Biden's or the United States' to give. And that's one of the big challenges, is that Putin is essentially refusing to negotiate directly with the Ukrainians and insisting this be sort of a superpower-to-superpower type discussion.

Biden has and his administration have worked around that. They have been aggressively consulting with Ukraine and with European allies in NATO in order for this not to be a sort of divide-and-conquer thing. The idea that big powers could settle the fates of little countries is anathema really to what the United States hopes to achieve in its foreign policy.

[15:25:08]

So, that's one complication, number one. Is Putin even making a set of demands that it's possible to accede to in any way? Number two, for Biden he says he can only engage with Putin and counsel de-escalation. But we're not yet in de-escalation mode. There's no evidence whatsoever that the Russian troop presence is drawing down in any meaningful way.

Now, there are talks, I should point out, that have been agreed to for January 10 in Geneva between the United States and Russia, as well as other talks between Russia and Europeans. So this seems to be potentially a prelude to that. But, again, it's very unclear.

The threat of sanctions obviously has not deterred Russia in the past, although there is definitely escalation and much harsher measures that the United States could take than it took in the wake of the 2014 takeover of Crimea.

So there is room for a much more painful set of sanctions, sanctions that might hit Putin personally in the pocketbook, for example. We have not taken those steps up until now. That could be something that Biden has to sort of show in this call today.

CAMEROTA: We will be waiting for a readout from the White House of this call. Really interesting.

Thank you both for all of the background here, Susan and Nic. Great to talk to you.

All right, well justice for the accusers of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, after a jury found his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell guilty. How they're reacting to the verdict and what this might mean for other cases, that's next.

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