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CDC: More Cases Of Monkeypox Are Likely; Preparations Underway To Send 2nd Baby Formula Shipment To U.S.; Amber Heard's Team Rests Case In Defamation Trial, Rebuttal Begins; Migrants Seeking Asylum Wait In Shelters At U.S.-Mexico Border After Lifting Of Title 42 Blocked; White House Scrambles To Avoid Boycott Of Latin American Summit; World's Fastest Passenger Jet Goes Supersonic In Tests. Aired 1:30-2p ET
Aired May 24, 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]
DR. KURT ZAESKE, VETERINARIAN WHO CONTRACTED MONKEYPOX IN 2003: I first contracted monkeypox by coming in direct contact with a prairie dog that had been infected by a Gambian rat that a client of mine had imported through Chicago and purchased.
ANA CABRERA, CNN HOST: That's pretty wild that it obviously had moved from animal to animal eventually to humans. What can you tell us about the symptoms you experienced and how bad did it get?
ZAESKE: Well, initially I had handled this particular prairie dog, and it took about several days or so before I started to feel like a rough flu was coming on, chills, fever, aches, headache, maybe mildly swollen lymph nodes, kind of dizzy, not quite feeling well.
The interesting part was one of the reasons why we were looking at that one prairie dog was to euthanize it so that we could send it to the Wisconsin state lab for analysis and testing.
Because my client and his sister were both ill after he had lost the Gambian rat and a number of his prairie dogs. So we were doing that in an effort to find out what was wrong.
Within about a week, then, I started developing some pox-like lesions. And a particularly nasty one developed on my thumb.
CABRERA: And how long did it last? And how did you get over it?
ZAESKE: Well, interestingly, the initial thing that I did for my client's prairie dogs was place them on an antibiotic combination. All of his prairie dogs recovered, which would be unusual for a pox-virus- type situation.
He was placed on antibiotic. I was placed on antibiotic when I went to the hospital and notified them of a possible outbreak going on. And I responded quite well to antibiotics.
So the illness phase was fairly short for me. However, the pox lesions that I had lasted about two weeks. The lesion that I had on my thumb actually had become quite serious. I
was in fear of possibly losing my thumb and not being able to practice anymore.
(CROSSTALK)
CABRERA: And I believe we have a picture of your thumb, too.
Continue.
ZAESKE: Yes.
CABRERA: I just want to show our viewers what you're talking about.
ZAESKE: Absolutely. And so I ended up going in and having that lesion excised, and biopsied. That was submitted for analysis.
It was during this time that monkeypox was diagnosed from a biopsy that was taken from a young girl in Marshfield, Wisconsin, who had a pox-like infection.
They were very concerned about the possibility of smallpox. But when they evaluated at the Marshfield labs, they found that it was a pox virus, but of the monkeypox subtype.
(CROSSTALK)
ZAESKE: That's how we understood that that probably came in from West Africa, from the Gambian rat and contaminated all the prairie dogs that came in.
CABRERA: Gotcha. Thank you so much for sharing your story. Do you have any lasting side effects from that?
ZAESKE: No. Not at all. Once it was gone, it was gone, kind of like chickenpox. I have a scar from my thumb, but that was it.
CABRERA: It's like that war wound. Right? Proof that you survived.
Thank you so much, Dr. Kurt Zaeske.
ZAESKE: Yes, I have plenty of those.
CABRERA: Don't we all.
All right, well, I want to --
(CROSSTALK)
ZAESKE: Thank you for having me.
CABRERA: Thank you.
I want to head to Germany right now. Some good news for a lot of parents stressed right now. Trucks packed with baby formula are arriving at an Ramstein Air Base. The next U.S. bound shipment taking off tomorrow as the nation
continues to battle a crippling shortage.
CNN senior medical correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen, is there at the Ramstein Air Base.
Elizabeth, how is this going down, and where will this shipment end up?
DR. ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: So just less than an hour ago, we watched a truck come in, the final truck for the shipment tomorrow morning. They loaded it up and palletized. I learned a new word, palletized.
All of this formula is powder formula just like the shipment before. Also both hypoallergenic.
That is because, Ana, a lot of the problems that parents have been having is, when they have a child that can't tolerate cow's milk, they're allergic, they have to have hypoallergenic formula. They've been having a tough time.
On the flight tomorrow, it's 108,000 pounds of this powdered formula. On Sunday, it was 73,000 pounds. The one tomorrow will be larger. And together, that can make 1.5 million eight-ounce bottles of baby formula.
[13:35:09]
So what's interesting is the shipment that went out on Sunday was sent to hospitals and doctor's offices and pharmacies and places like that.
This next shipment -- we've asked but haven't gotten an answer -- whether it will go out to store shelves. And certainly parents would like to go to stores and start seeing more product.
These shipments, as large as they are, will probably not make an immediate difference for parents. They need to be inspected. They're imported from a foreign country. The FDA needs to inspect them.
Also, 1.5 million bottles is a lot. But think of the millions of babies in the United States who drink infant formula.
It's going to take a lot of other efforts and those efforts are ongoing. But parents might not see a really visible difference on supermarket shelves for many weeks -- Ana?
CABRERA: OK. Elizabeth Cohen, thank you for that update. We know you'll continue to monitor and track all this.
And in the meantime, the defense rests. Amber Heard's legal team has wrapped up its case in Johnny Depp's defamation trial against her. But we could be on the brink of the most dramatic testimony yet. We'll discuss.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [13:41:06]
CABRERA: The drama intensifying in Fairfax County, Virginia, as Johnny Depp's defamation trial enters its final days. His ex-wife Amber Heard's team rested their case this morning without calling Depp back to the stand.
Depp's team is now focused solely on rebutting the claims Heard made while testifying about alleged abuse and attack on her career.
CNN's Jean Casarez is closely following all the disturbing details for us.
Jean, the goal for Depp's team is to poke holes in the credibility of Amber Heard and her witnesses. How are they doing about it?
JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right, and all the way around. We always think about this as a defamation case, Johnny Depp versus Amber Heard, but she actually is counter suing.
She tried to get all this dismissed. When that didn't happen, she countersued Johnny Depp for defamation for $100 million.
And what they're really relying upon are articles in "The Daily Mail" that Heard is saying that Adam Waldman, who was the attorney for Johnny Depp, he got the information in these articles for "The Daily Mail," saying Amber Heard is a fraud and many other things, April 2020 through June 2020.
They're saying Depp was behind it and he defamed her was the acting roles didn't come after that came out. She's asking for $100 million.
Today, Depp's team called the president of D.C. Films, which is a division of Warner Brothers, Walter Hamada, to testify as to why she wasn't getting the starring role in "Aquaman II." It's via deposition.
Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BENJAMIN CHEW, JOHNNY DEPP'S ATTORNEY: What if any creative concerns did Warner Brothers have about casting Amber Heard as Mira in "Aquaman II?"
WALTER HAMADA, PRESIDENT, D.C. FILMS: Were the concerns ever brought up at the wrap of the first movie, the production of the first movie, which is the issue of chemistry, did the two have the chemistry?
I think, editorially, they were able to make that relationship work in the first movie. But there was a concern that it took a lot of effort to get there.
And would we better off recasting, finding someone who had better, more natural chemistry with Jason Momoa and move forward with them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CASAREZ: So the rebuttal case is continuing. Ana, we believe it's going to be the next two days. But once again, this is Depp's side being able to present the witnesses in rebuttal to Amber Heard.
CABRERA: OK. Jean Casarez, thank you very much.
Authorities are hunting for his daughter, wanted in an apparent love triangle murder. But the father of Kaitlin Armstrong insists she is not responsible.
Here he is on "Good Morning, America" today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MICHAEL ARMSTRONG, FATHER OF KAITLIN ARMSTRONG: I know her. I know how she thinks. And I know what she believes. And I know that she just would not do something like this. I know her.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CABRERA: Authorities allege Armstrong, on the left here, killed Anna Mo Wilson in a jealous rage. They say Armstrong's boyfriend, on the right, was dating Wilson on and off since the fall.
Video surveillance places Armstrong's vehicle at the scene of the murder, and ballistic evidence shows that a gun owned by Armstrong and purchased by her boyfriend has significant similarities.
The U.S. Marshalls have asked anyone with information on her whereabouts to come forward.
[13:44:32]
Breakfast in New York, in London for lunch, a new business. Jet travels faster than the speed of sound. When you can hop a ride, and how much it will cost you.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CABRERA: Welcome back. I want to take you now to the U.S.-Mexico border. CNN is there on the ground in Mexico where migrants are anxiously awaiting the green light to cross the U.S. border.
It looked like that was set to happen soon, until a federal judge just days ago blocked the administration from lifting Title 42.
That was a controversial pandemic-era policy, which has allowed the U.S. to quickly turn away people for public health reasons to help limit the spread of COVID.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MATT RIVERS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Are you nervous that the authorities are not going to allow you to enter the country? UNIDENTIFIED MALE MIGRANT (through translation): Yes, very much so.
More than the nerves, it's the uncertainty of not knowing how long we will have to be here, especially for the baby. He's only a year and a half old. So, yes, it's difficult.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CABRERA: CNN correspondent, Matt Rivers, is live now from the border. This is in ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
Matt, what more are you seeing and hearing?
[13:50:03]
RIVERS: Yes, we just played that sound byte, Ana. That was an interview we did yesterday with a Venezuelan migrant who was here with his family at a shelter, which is not too far from where we are in Ciudad Juarez, which is just across the border from El Paso, Texas.
And what we're seeing at that shelter is kind of a microcosm of what we're seeing up and down the border, going from south Texas to southern California.
It is that this part of Mexico, the border towns, are basically inundated with a number of migrants. Thousands of migrants are arriving every single day.
That shelter that we were at is completely full. They can't accept any more people, according to the shelter's director, unless some people leave.
But the problem is that no one is leaving at the moment. Part of the reason they're doing that is because this Title 42 obligation in the United States has been extended after that federal judge's ruling in Louisiana.
And so you're not giving people an incentive to leave these shelters here to go try and apply for asylum in the United States.
That means one of two things. Either people are trying to cross illegally or they're staying here in Mexico.
And the shelter's director told me that even though Title 42 has been extended, Ana, he sees no world in which the number of migrants arriving here in northern Mexico will slow down.
Meaning Title 42 being extended just kicks the can down the road in terms of dealing with this immigration issue in a substantive way.
CABRERA: So many lives in limbo in the meantime.
I want to pivot, Matt, to another issue facing the Biden administration as the U.S. is preparing to host a summit of Latin American countries next month. Officials are scrambling to prevent a boycott of this summit.
Explain. What's the controversy?
RIVERS: This is a summit, Ana, that happens once every three years with countries throughout the Americas attending. It's designed to encourage diplomatic dialogue between all of the countries here in the western hemisphere, at least in this part of the western hemisphere.
And there's a diplomatic controversy brewing because the United States, as host, gets to set the guest list. And the United States has said they were likely not going to invite Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.
Three socialist countries where the United States has serious issues with, not the least of which is Venezuela and Nicaragua, where they regard the presidents as being illegitimately elected. And so they would probably exclude them from that summit.
Other leaders around this region, however, including the president of Mexico, have said they will boycott the summit of the Americas if not everyone is invited. They're going to do so, according to the words of the Mexican president, "in solidarity with those leaders."
You could also see a boycott of presidents from countries like Bolivia and Honduras. And even the president of Brazil, one of the countries most important in this part of the world, is also saying it might not send its president as well.
CABRERA: OK, Matt Rivers, thank you.
If you feel the need for speed, check out a new passenger jet that may be just the ticket.
A Canadian company has unveiled what it calls the world's fastest and longest-range purpose-built business jet as part of an effort to resume supersonic passenger flights for the first time since the Concord was retired in 2003.
Let's get to CNN aviation correspondent, Pete Muntean.
Pete, how fast are we talking? Tell us about this plane.
PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: We are still subsonic. That's what we're talking about. Not quite supersonic, not quite the speed of sound but really, really close.
We're talking about an airplane called the Bombardier Global 8000, just rolled out yesterday at a big aviation conference in Europe. The 8,000 comes from the range, 8,000 nautical miles. Really long.
The speed is key here. Mach 0.94 is the top speed, 94 percent of the speed of sound. Can fly up to 19 passengers. This is not a commercial airliner. This is a private jet.
But just want to give you a little perspective on the speed here. A typical airliner, Mach 0.8, 80 percent of the speed of sound. The Global 8000, Mach 0.94. This is all about bragging rights.
Not near as close to the Concord. We haven't seen that fly in almost 20 years. It was going Mach 2. New York to Paris in three hours.
Concord, this is one of the last flights, in 2003. It's sort of a sad state of affairs. It was beleaguered by problems. There were fatal accidents. It was really tiny inside.
It was the lap of luxury, though, and this is what private jet manufacturers are trying to appeal to.
They just did a test flight of the test bed for the Bombardier Global 8000. This plan is called the 7500.
But in a bit of a dive with an F-18, they were able to get this plane over the speed of sound, Mach 1.015. Nothing in the civilian market has ever been that fast in a long, long time.
So, we will see, Ana. This is the new standard for luxury. It's all about speed.
And the big thing here is the range. The city of Paris. You can essentially go really long distances on the same amount of fuel. L.A. to Singapore, 12 hours. Houston to Dubai, the oil route, also 12 hours. London to Perth in Australia, 12 hours.
[13:55:04]
This is going to change things. We will see when it comes to the market. Hopefully, in 2025. A big market for private jets, still going up even though commercial airliners are going down because of the pandemic.
CABRERA: I want to know when it's going to be available for the vast majority of us who, you know, always never have enough time.
(CROSSTALK)
MUNTEAN: Yes, you know, $78 million is the price tag on this, Ana. And you can see why. Look at the interior here. Pretty plush.
CABRERA: Oh, man.
MUNTEAN: You can see the mahogany there. You can see the leather seats. Four different zones on this. It's all first class on something like this --
(CROSSTALK)
CABRERA: Do away with the first-class stuff and make it cheaper so that the rest of us can appreciate the convenience of it.
Thank you.
MUNTEAN: It will be a little while.
CABRERA: That does it for us. We'll see you tomorrow, same time, same place.
The news continues right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
