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New CDC Study Vaccination Protect Against COVID-19 Hospitalizations; Fears Grow Putin Could Invade Ukraine Soon; Ohio Math Teacher Travels Across The U.S. To Spread Debunked Election Claims. Aired 1:30-2p ET
Aired January 19, 2022 - 13:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[13:30:00]
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ANA CABRERA, CNN HOST: Welcome back. A new pandemic study just dropped and it gives us an idea of just how much protection the COVID vaccine offers compared to infection, and CNN's Elizabeth Cohen is taking a look at this for us.
[13:35:03]
So this is compiled by the CDC, all this data, Elizabeth. What does it show?
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, it's very interesting. It shows once again that vaccination is superior to prior infection. So let's take a look at what these CDC folks did. They did this with researchers in California and New York. They looked at 1.1 million cases from May to November in those two states. What they found was that vaccination was more effective than prior infection at preventing hospitalization.
And Ana, you and I have talked about this countless times. What we look for from a vaccine is to keep you out of the hospital and out of the morgue. And in this case when we're looking at out of the hospital, it was definitely the vaccination that won.
It was interesting, though, as the year wore on and as the vaccines starred to wane in the summer and the fall and before boosters were recommended for everyone, prior infection was better at preventing infection compared to vaccination.
So two thoughts on that. One is that, again, this was at a time when vaccinations were starting to wane and before boosters were being given to everyone. Two, it looks at preventing infection. While preventing infection is a good thing, it's not the primary job, it's not what we really look for out of vaccines. What we look for is preventing hospitalization and death, and in this study what they found vaccination better than prior infection at preventing hospitalization -- Ana.
CABRERA: That is such important information. Thank you so much, Elizabeth Cohen. Up next, fears of a military invasion are rising. Ukraine says it is
now surrounded by more than 125,000 Russian troops and the Secretary of State Antony Blinken says Putin could launch an attack on short notice.
I'll take you live to Moscow next.
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[13:41:40]
CABRERA: The situation could get worse very fast. Secretary of State Antony Blinken issuing that blunt new warning today as he meets with Ukrainian leaders in Kiev. Now Blinken stressed that the U.S. will stand by Ukraine in the face of a potential Russian invasion. But he also pulled no punches on Moscow's military capability. Listen.
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ANTONY BLINKEN, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: As we meet today, Russia has ratcheted up its threats and amassed nearly 100,000 forces on Ukraine's border which it could double on relatively short order.
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CABRERA: This as Russia's deputy foreign minister says Moscow is not going to move any troops away from the Ukrainian border because of foreign pressure.
Senior international correspondent Frederik Pleitgen is in Moscow.
Fred, there's widespread agreement you don't send 100,000 plus troops to an area with zero plans, zero intentions. Have the U.S. and its allies given Putin enough to lose right now if he were to invade?
FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That really is the huge question that everybody is sort of trying to read into, what exactly is going on in this situation. If you look at some of the moves that the Russians have recently made, it's not only those troops that they have around Ukraine right now, they're also moving troops into neighboring Belarus as well, which also has a border with Ukraine, and so it really seems as though the Ukrainians are more and more sort of almost surrounded by Russian and pro-Russian forces and that's certainly that is grave cause for concern.
And I was actually able to speak to the deputy foreign minister of Russia today, and I asked him that very same question. If Russia is not threatening anyone, why are there so many troops amassed around the borders with Ukraine? And here's what he had to say.
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SERGEI RYABKOV, DEPUTY FOREIGN MINISTER OF RUSSIA: We do not want and will not take any action of aggressive character. We will not attack, strike, invade, quote-unquote, whatever, Ukraine.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
PLEITGEN: So the Russians there are saying that they're essentially not threatening anyone. They are the ones, they say, who feel threatened. And of course in those talks, Ana, last week in Geneva which were actually led by that gentleman right there from the Russian side, the Russian said they wanted security guarantees from the United States, they want guarantees that NATO would not be enlarged and also that Ukraine would never become a member of NATO.
The U.S. has obviously said that those are non-starters but the Russians have said they want written answers from the U.S. as to what exactly the U.S. is willing to do, and so far they haven't gotten those either. And that's why that meeting on Friday between Secretary of State Blinken and the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is of the utmost importance. And you can sense that here in Moscow as well.
The Kremlin itself said today that they believe that that meeting will be absolutely key to how things move forward -- Ana.
CABRERA: I know you are going to cover that thoroughly for us. Thank you so much, Fred Pleitgen.
A math teacher says he has uncovered an algorithm that proves the election was stolen. The problem? His math does not add up. But that hasn't stopped him from touring the country spreading the big lie and getting paid to do it.
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CABRERA: An Ohio math teacher believes he has uncovered proof that the 2020 election was stolen and is touting his so-called discovery across America. However, mathematicians and election experts have easily dismissed his claims as nonsense.
Take a look at what CNN's Sara Murray uncovered.
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DOUGLAS FRANK, MATH TEACHER: Just about every county in the country was hacked.
SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is how the big lie that the 2020 election was stolen gets even bigger.
FRANK: I'm standing against a whole establishment that's saying, oh, that was the cleanest election in history.
MURRAY: That's Douglas Frank, an Ohio math and science teacher who's traveled here to Texas and dozens of other states.
FRANK: Hi, everybody.
MURRAY: With the financial backing of other conspiracy-minded Americans, claiming he uncovered an algorithm proving the election was stolen.
[13:50:02]
He has even absurdly claimed his findings could land Donald Trump back in the Oval Office.
FRANK: I'd like the country to stand up and say, wow, this thing was ripped off, let's do a do-over or let's put Trump back in office.
These data we're bringing in are --
MURRAY: Frank's findings have been debunked by mathematicians and election experts. And more than a year later, there is still no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. But Frank is still winning audiences with lawmakers, election officials, and voters across the country.
FRANK: We're going into each state clandestinely, and I meet privately with legislators, and secretaries of states, and attorney generals.
MURRAY: He is just one in an army of foot soldiers inspired by Donald Trump's election lies now trying to convince others the 2020 election was stolen.
FRANK: Who are these 35,000 people who mailed in ballots? You need to find out, Super-Mom.
MURRAY: Frank is connected with women he calls Super-Moms who have embraced voter fraud claims and are clamoring for post- election audits, running their own door-knocking campaigns to try to uncover fraud and advocating for hand count only elections.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In Colorado, we are a red state.
TONI SHUPPE, ELECTION DENIER IN PENNSYLVANIA: There's absolutely no way that Joe Biden legitimately won the state of Pennsylvania.
MARYLYN TODD, ELECTION DENIER IN CONNECTICUT: We need to stand our ground here in New Hampshire and we need to have a real audit.
MURRAY: Perhaps most critically --
FRANK: So if you don't know who I am, I'm the guy that Mr. Lindell discovered.
MURRAY: Frank has the backing of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.
FRANK: He paid for me to be here talking to you, so buy his pillows.
MURRAY: A deep-pocketed purveyor of election disinformation.
MIKE LINDELL, CEO, MYPILLOW: We have poured so many resources into this. Now you can help out and get a good night's sleep. I am now offering the lowest price ever on Queen MyPillows.
MURRAY: With Lindell's support -- FRANK: Mr. Lindell flew his private jet to pick me up to take me to
meet with the secretary of state.
MURRAY: -- Frank has crisscrossed the country sharing his fraud claims wrapped in a fancy-sounding mathematical equation.
FRANK: I was the perfect person in this world to discover this. I have exactly the right skills. I have found a sixth little (PH), you know, in every state in the country. They're inflating our registration rolls, stuffing phantom ballots, and then cleaning it up afterwards. It's that simple.
MURRAY: Experts say Frank's conclusions are nonsense.
JUSTIN GRIMMER, POLITICAL SCIENCE PROFESSOR, STANFORD UNIVERSITY: He's much better at presenting himself as a professor than even myself. He gets up, he has a bow tie. He talks about all this data. He talks about a sixth order polynomial.
MURRAY: Justin Grimmer is a Stanford University professor who looked at the data for 42 states and found Frank's algorithm to be essentially worthless.
GRIMMER: I think this took my research group an afternoon to uncover that there's no basis for this. But if you're not someone who, like me, spends all day working on statistics and data, sixth order polynomials in nearly perfect correlations, it sounds like he's uncovered something, you know, really impressive.
FRANK: The red curve --
MURRAY: Frank uses the number of registered voters by age group and prior voter trends to predict voter turnout, then claims it is evidence of fraud when it aligns with actual voter turnout.
GRIMMER: Effectively, what he's doing is he's discovered that anything that you measure in the world is closely related to itself.
MURRAY: Debunking Frank's wild claims also wasn't difficult for Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill, who met with Lindell and Frank on two occasions.
JOHN MERRILL (R), ALABAMA SECRETARY OF STATE: Every time they gave us an example we were able to refute what they showed us without even knowing what they were going to do.
MURRAY: Frank blamed the, quote, "complete botch" in Alabama on his newly-hired staffer. To others, Frank's presentation confirms their baseless suspicions that Joe Biden wasn't fairly elected.
ADRIENNE SOUTHWORTH (R), KENTUCKY STATE SENATE: People say we know that other states are wrong but we think Kentucky must be right. And I say, well, how do you know if they have no idea, they just assume? And so I said, well, that's kind of the problem.
MURRAY: Kentucky State Senator Adrienne Southworth says she came away more convinced 2020 was problem-plagued after hosting an event with Frank.
SOUTHWORTH: I think the whole world's on the edge right now of, are we going to continue trusting the system?
FRANK: So I'm a scientist.
MURRAY: It was just one of Frank's stops on his nationwide tour. In Missouri, a "Voter Fraud is Real" bootcamp featured Frank and a state representative, with a flyer calling on county clerks to attend. In Colorado, Frank met with Tina Peters, the Mesa County clerk now under investigation by the FBI for her alleged involvement in a security breach of the county's election system.
In Montana, the "Montana Free Press" reported Frank met with staffers for the state attorney general. Here in Texas --
ISABEL LONGORIA, ELECTIONS ADMINISTRATOR, HARRIS COUNTY, TEXAS: I'm going to walk through these checks and balances again.
MURRAY: Harris County elections administrator Isabel Longoria says a scam like Frank describes with widespread hacking and phantom votes would never succeed.
LONGORIA: If you even change a period, a period in the election programming, it sends up a red flag that immediately stops the entire process until we can identify what would have triggered that red flag.
MURRAY: In Harris County alone, election officials inspect thousands of voting machines.
LONGORIA: Six months out we start checking all 13,000 pieces of voting equipment in Harris County, opening them up. Do they turn on? Have they been tampered with? Can we take them to a voting location? Are all the buttons working?
[13:55:01]
MURRAY: They run accuracy tests under the watchful eyes of bipartisan observers. And on election day, they track the number of people showing up to vote and the number of ballots cast, one of many safeguards that would catch an election inflated by phantom voters.
(On-camera): So somebody would have to find a way to break into the voter rolls for every single county?
LONGORIA: In tandem. Again, breaking into multiple buildings, multiple systems in tandem with not a single red flag going off in this incredibly sensitive system, all in unison, right, as you have all eyes on elections from every election staff.
MURRAY (voice-over): After Frank's pitch in the Lone Star State this week --
FRANK: What does the media say? Oh, Texas might be turning purple. Don't believe it. You're red.
MURRAY: He sat down for an interview with CNN and defended his efforts to undermine confidence in America's elections.
FRANK: It'll be a constitutional crisis. It will be a crisis. It's going to happen. It's inevitable. It's going to happen and I'm helping that happen, yes.
MURRAY: He stands by his flawed conclusions convinced the elections are rigged, regardless of the many experts who have debunked his claims.
FRANK: I said I know the elections are not real. I know the elections are being manipulated. Regardless of who wins, I just want them to be fair.
MURRAY (on-camera): Now demands for Douglas Frank's bogus presentation isn't dying down. Across the country, groups are still footing his travel bill to hear him speak.
Sara Murray, CNN, Austin, Texas.
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CABRERA: Our thanks to Sara. And that does it for us today. Thank you for being here. I'll see you back here tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. Eastern. Until then you can find me on Twitter at AnaCabrera. The news continues with Alisyn and Victor after a quick break.
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