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Moderns Seeks Approval for COVID-19 Vaccines for Kids Under 6; Former WH COVID Task Force Coordinator Sees Another Surge Coming; Inside Bucha After Russians Carry Out Alleged War Crimes; Polls: Democratic Support Among Black Voters Is Slipping. Aired 2:30-3p ET
Aired April 28, 2022 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[14:30:00]
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: All right, the long wait to vaccinate your young kids against COVID may soon be over. Details next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CAMEROTA: The wait to vaccinate young children in this country may finally be over. Moderna asked the FDA to approve its vaccine for children under 6, claiming that their trial data shows it is safe.
Moderna says the efficacy results mirror those seen among adults against the Omicron variant.
[14:35:00]
Let's bring in Dr. Peter Hotez. He's the co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children's Hospital.
Dr. Hotez, great to see you.
Let's pull up the efficacy rates. I was surprised by the numbers.
It's 51 percent effective in preventing symptoms for kids aged 6 months through 2 years old. And then 37 percent effective at preventing symptoms for kids 2 to 6 years old.
Aren't the numbers for adults higher than that?
DR. PETER HOTEZ, CO-DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR VACCINE DEVELOPMENT, TEXAS CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL: Yes. It is pretty low. Will pediatricians have a difficult time persuading parents to accept those kinds of numbers?
We already know that the uptake of the 5- to ll-year-old age group, as low as it is, it's under 30 percent. So we may be looking at maybe only one-fourth or one-fifth of parents would accept the vaccine for under 5s. We don't know that. We'll have to see.
But I think an important issue that I'm thinking about is, so far for Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna, it has been a three to four-dose vaccine. Certainly, for the adults over 18 years of age. And now Pfizer has requested a third for the 5 to 11-year-olds. That seems to be the direction we're heading. So in my mind, the big question is, do we authorize it now or wait
until we have third-dose data? Because Moderna on the press release indicates they are looking at third dose taught.
And I think the way this will probably play out is the FDA will consult its advisory committee along those lines.
CAMEROTA: In terms of persuading parents to get their kids vaccinated, one of the arguments that I keep hearing now over and over is we have so many people exposed to COVID and surely there must be so many antibodies that we all have circulating out there.
And it's interesting because Dr. Deborah Birx just said today in an interview, she is looking at the data from South Africa where the majority of the population have been exposed to Omicron and do have antibodies, but they are seeing a surge.
So listen to what she said today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. DEBORAH BIRX, FORMER COORDINATOR, WHITE HOUSE CORONAVIRUS TASK FORCE: I know that another surge is coming and will be coming across the world.
In this very moment, you can -- and this is what I was waiting for to see -- South Africa cases are once again rising. Despite having 60 percent to 70 percent of their population with each surge.
So no one in the United States should be confident that because people are saying 60 percent to 70 percent of the Americans have antibody, that is true in South Africa, and it didn't prevent the surges.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: What are we supposed to do with that information, Dr. Hotez?
HOTEZ: I think she's actually right. And here's why. That immunity to the Omicron variant in terms of virus neutralizing antibody and other factors does not seem to be very durable.
Maybe, in part, because Omicron in so many individuals causes primarily upper respiratory infections, it is acting like one of the other upper respiratory coronaviruses.
So the bottom line, if you've been infected with Omicron and recovered and have not been vaccinated, I think you will still be vulnerable to new variants of concern.
But if you have gotten Omicron and recovered and you get vaccinated that does something very special.
That gives you this type of hybrid immunity where work at Rockefeller University and elsewhere show you get this phenomenon known as epitope broadening where you are not only going to get more durable immunity protection, but you can withstand new variants better. So that is a long way of saying, if you've been infected and
recovered, you should still get vaccinated. That will make a big difference.
To get back to the little kids, this is the other unknown. If 75 percent of little kids are infected, one, there's 25 percent who haven't. How are they going to respond to two doses?
And for the kids who have been infected and recovered, will two be enough, or should they get a third dose on top of that?
As you can see, it gets pretty complicated pretty quickly. And that's the reason for all of the deliberations by FDA and the advisory committee.
CAMEROTA: Right. So we will wait to see on all of that. You taught us a new word, epitope broadening.
Thank you, Dr. Peter Hotez. Great to talk to you.
HOTEZ: Thank you.
CAMEROTA: OK, back to Ukraine. Ukrainian officials identify the 10 Russian soldiers suspected of war crimes in the war-ravaged town of Bucha.
[14:39:26]
Up next, Anderson Cooper will take us inside that city and talk to one man who documented the carnage there.
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ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Today, the general prosecutor of Ukraine identified 10 Russian soldiers who allegedly tortured civilians in the town of Bucha. The soldiers are part of a brigade that was honored by Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this month.
Also, today, the U.N. secretary-general visited Bucha and called on Russia to cooperate with the International Criminal Court.
His visit came after Kyiv police announced the bodies of 1,150 civilians had been recovered in the Kyiv region with most of those casualties in Bucha.
Bucha's local prosecutors told us they now have photographs and videos taken as civilians were slaughtered.
I spoke to the man who captured what happened.
We want to warn you that some of the images are very disturbing.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
[14:45:00] COOPER (voice-over): In Bucha, blood still stains the streets. When Russian troops pulled out, this is what they left behind on Yablonska Street. The bodies of several men shot to death. Hands tied behind their backs.
Further down, this person was shot to death on their bicycle. And another, and another, and another, and another, and another.
(on camera): What happened here?
RUSLAN KRAVCHENKO, BUCHA PROSECUTOR (through translation): Local residents were killed on the street by the Russian military. They were shot and killed even just going out on the street around their business or going to pick up humanitarian aid.
COOPER (voice-over): Ruslan Kravchenko is Bucha's prosecutor. He's now collecting evidence of war crimes.
KRAVCHENKO (through translation): People were killed at this point. There was a woman killed here. There were bodies here and there, where the road is turning left. There were people riding bicycles who were killed by the Russian military.
COOPER: Russia denies it all. They say the more than 300 bodies found in Bucha after Russian troops withdrew were staged.
As for these satellite images taken in mid-March, when Russia was occupying Bucha, which show bodies in the exact same locations they were later found on Yablonska Street, Russia says they, too, are fake.
But the evidence, already overwhelming, continues to grow.
(on camera): The prosecutors have been gathering evidence for weeks and now revealed to us that they have photographs and videos taken over the course of several days as the killings occurred here.
They say the images were captured by a person in this house on their cellphone camera.
(voice-over): It was through these windows he saw the slaughter. This is one of his first pictures, taken on March 5. Two bodies reportedly killed that day were visible outside his window.
On March 6, when this picture was taken, a third body is visible on the street. This video, taken on March 7, shows at least two more bodies.
Ruslan Kravchenko says these images and the data in the camera phone they were taken with provides important proof of exactly who was killed and when.
KRAVCHENKO (through translation): It will prove that it was a particular phone that the pictures were taken with. And also the time and the location that they were taken. The Russian Federation will not be able to continue saying that this was set up with fakes.
COOPER: We tracked down the man who risked his life to take these photos and video. We agreed not to show his face.
(on camera): Were you scared to take pictures? If they had seen you taking pictures, you could have been killed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translation): Of course, there was fear, but I had to prove that it was them, that they killed people who were civilians. I had to do something.
COOPER: Do you remember the first person killed on your street?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translation): The first one to get killed was the man on the bicycle to the left of my house. On March 6, there were more dead people. There were seven people dead on the street on March 6, seven dead people.
I couldn't capture all the bodies from the window. There was a wall in the way.
COOPER: What do you want to see happen to those Russians, to everybody in the chain of command?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translation): They must be punished. There was a young guy who was bringing potatoes in a bag, maybe for his family. The stores were closed. There was no power, no heating, no water. He wanted to help, and he was killed. What do they deserve? Only punishment.
COOPER (voice-over): But punishing the guilty won't be easy.
(on camera): There were a number of different Russian units, as I understand, who were stationed here at one time or another. Do you need to try to identify which unit it was, what the chain of command was?
KRAVCHENKO (through translation): And it's very important to identify not only the commanders, but concrete troops who committed the crimes and have them held accountable.
COOPER (voice-over): Kravchenko says 10 Russian soldiers in Bucha have been identified using eyewitness accounts, along with drone footage and images like this one, taken by a traffic surveillance camera not far from Yablonska Street.
But whether he can learn the identities of the Russians stationed on Yablonska Street is unclear.
The man killed on March 5 on his bike was 68-year-old man Volodymyr Brovchenko. His wife, Svetlana, lives not far away.
(on camera): Is that him?
SVETLANA BROVCHENKO, HUSBAND KILLED BY RUSSIANS: Yes.
COOPER (voice-over): They were married for 45 years and have two kids and three grandchildren. BROVCHENKO (through translation): We told him not to go to work,
because there were tanks on Yablonska Street. We told him not to go. He said, no, I have to go to work. I have work to do.
I don't know what to tell you. It's awful. It's awful.
COOPER: It is all so awful.
The bicycle her husband rode is still on Yablonska Street near the spot where he died. She doesn't want it back. The horror of what happened is just too terrible to face.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[14:49:58]
COOPER: And, Alisyn, the camera that was used to take those pictures that the man on the street took, he gave the camera over to prosecutors.
So they are actually in possession of the camera that took the photographs, where they can get the data off of it or any prosecutor with the criminal court would be able to gather the metadata from the camera to determine exactly what day the pictures were taken.
And that's significant because the Russians have said, well, it's satellite images, it's not precise to date and this is all fake. Well, now you can see what date they were killed on. It shows it was the days the Russians were there and in full control of that street.
CAMEROTA: I mean, the photos are so devastating. But as you say, so important to document exactly what's happening there and the carnage.
Anderson, great piece. Thank you so much for sharing that with us.
We will check back with you.
Back here, Latinos, young Americans and now black voters. Why Democrats are losing ground with those key voting blocs as the midterms approach.
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[14:55:10]
CAMEROTA: It's not just inflation that's challenging President Biden before the midterms. There's another potential headwind. New polling suggests that black voters may be souring on Democrats.
CNN's senior data reporter, Harry Enten, is here.
Harry, great to see you.
HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: Nice to see you.
CAMEROTA: You found Biden's approval with black Americans is down. How far are we talking about?
ENTEN: I mean, it's really down. You can see it here. At the beginning of his term, he was at 87 percent. Look at where he is over the last few months, 67 percent. That's a 20-point drop.
And not only is it a 20-point drop, but that 67 percent, Barack Obama, the last Democratic president, never dropped below 75 percent in any Gallop Poll. This was lower than Barack Obama ever was.
CAMEROTA: Do you know what's driving this, what's behind it?
ENTEN: There are a number of things that are behind it.
But one of the things I think is so important as we look toward the midterm elections, right, if you look at younger voters, you don't really see that there was much of a change with them in terms of their generic ballot or how they would vote Congress, even though they had soured on Biden.
But look here. The choice for the House of Representatives among black voters in the 2020 election, Democrats won them by 77 points. Look at the recent average of polling. They're only winning by -- get this -- 62 points.
I want to put this in a historical comparison. This gets to how low that 62-point margin is. Choice for House of Representatives, Democrats have won black voter by 75 points or more in every single election this century.
So if you go back here and you see them with just a 62-point margin, that is much worse for wear than any performance for Democrats in the House of Representatives this century.
CAMEROTA: That's really interesting. So in other words, this has been a sudden decline, meaning like in the past year-plus?
ENTEN: Well, you know, if -- I think one way to sort of look at this is the choice for president. And we go back since 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020. Right now, if you go back to 2020 --
CAMEROTA: Yes.
ENTEN: -- Joe Biden won black voters by 75 points. That was down from 2016, 2012, 2008. You really have to go all the way back to 2004.
You were asking before, why? What is driving this erosion? This, I think, will give you the clue. It's black conservative voters.
Black conservatives -- look at that. In 2016, Dems won it by 58 points, Hillary Clinton. Look at that. Just a 20-point margin for Joe Biden. All others, moderates and liberals, that 87-point margin helped.
It's black conservatives that are driving this.
CAMEROTA: Really helpful, Harry. Great to see you.
ENTEN: Nice to see you.
CAMEROTA: Thank you so much.
OK, President Biden puts forth a new proposal to help Ukraine at the cost of Russian oligarchs. We'll tell you what's in it, next.
