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WHO Says, No Current Concern Monkeypox Will Cause Global Pandemic; E.R. Doctor Advocates For Gun Reform in Wake of Mass Shooting. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired May 30, 2022 - 10:30   ET

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

MARJORIE ERICKSON, SURVIVED 1999 COLUMBINE HIGH SCHOOL SCHOOTING: You know, I -- there's 23 years of data that they can use to help their responses now.

[10:30:01]

I don't want fourth graders being able to relate to me, and I don't want other families being able to relate to my family in Littleton, Colorado. And it isn't right that Columbine survivors have to now explain to their children about these shootings because not enough has been done. Something more needs to happen.

Officers know they cannot wait to storm schools. Over the decades, I've received so many thoughts and prayers, and I wasn't spared from what came from Columbine and other kids are not being spared from these shootings. I appreciate the gestures of thought and prayers, but more need to be done and it can be done?

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. You were a sophomore in high school.

ERICKSON: I was.

HARLOW: So, you were still a child, teen, but these -- these were little kids, I mean, fourth grade, and you've talked about how you just can't imagine fourth graders going through this. I wonder how you coped, right? What was most helpful to you? I know you obviously wrote the book with your mother about it a few years later, but how did you cope? What can be done for these survivors?

ERICKSON: I didn't cope well initially. Initially, I was in trauma, but it took years for me to start dealing with the trauma, you know? I tried to speak out about it a little bit in my 20s but it was too traumatizing. But what made me really angry about this is the night before the shooting in Texas, I was up with my seven-year-old niece trying to get a skittle out of her nose because she wanted to impress her classroom with orange boogers. And the fact that kids her age were running out of the school, I don't want that. I don't want that ever again. These minds can't handle this.

HARLOW: They can't. And unless significant changes are made, what we've seen is that this happens over and over and over again.

I know that you were encouraged by your mother at the time, I believe, to start writing in a journal, right, and then eventually this became a book. How much did that help you to, you know, at some point, deal with the trauma? As you said it took years.

ERICKSON: Yes, it helped. Journaling helped. What helped me the most was EMDR.

HARLOW: Okay.

ERICKSON: That really helped down the road.

HARLOW: Is there anything from your mother that you would like to share with parents who are trying to figure out how to help their children cope?

ERICKSON: She didn't press me to talk about it right away. I was too traumatized. But over the years, she kept talking to me just slowly. She encouraged therapy. You know, after Columbine happened, so many of my classmates and even myself, you know, we got in self-destructive behaviors. I've lost classmates to suicide and addiction and people don't know how to deal with this level of trauma, especially when they are still developing. And just to keep pushing me to go to therapy and then if I can't talk about it, I need to write about it. And if these kid can't write about it because they are too young, then maybe they can draw pictures.

There's also something called the butterfly hug, which, you know, if you tap both sides while you talk about it, it helps to process what you're saying. And these kids need help processing this because they don't understand this. They weren't meant to understand this.

HARLOW: No. How did you go back to school? It's summer now, but all of these children will be schooled in some way, whether they go back to school, albeit a different building, whether they are home schooled. How did you go back to school?

ERICKSON: I had to go back the next year because, you know, my father had already bought my cheerleading uniforms. But after that, I actually dropped out of high school and I tried to go to college and I kept having panic attacks. And then online college became a thing and I was able to get my degrees through online. And it was only once I hit graduate school that I could walk in the classroom again and only at night when the campus was more empty.

You know, some of these kids might need to be taken out for a few months or a hybrid model.

[10:35:00]

I don't know. I know that I panicked. I needed help.

HARLOW: Thank you so much for being here and being so open with us and candid about what you went through and I'm -- we're all so sorry what you had to go two but your resilience in what you wrote I hope you know will undoubtedly help and has helped so many people. So, Marjorie, thank you very much.

ERICKSON: Thank you.

HARLOW: We'll be right back.

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[10:40:00]

HARLOW: Right now, new this morning, a World Health Organization official says there is no current concern that monkeypox will cause a global pandemic. That is a relief.

This announcement comes as the number of confirm or suspected cases here in the United States has grown to 12. According to the CDC director, Dr. Walensky, though, the agency has been preparing for any potential monkeypox outbreak for decades and is exploring ways to get monkeypox-specific testing more widely available across the country.

Let's go to my colleague, CNN Health Reporter Jacqueline Howard, who has more on this.

Obviously, from the COVID pandemic, we have learned how important early widespread testing is. So, is the CDC saying they have that availability for monkeypox if needed?

JACQUELINE HOWARD, CNN HEALTH REPORTER: That's right, but if needed. Because the way testing is conducted now, Poppy, if there is a suspected case, the state test is sampled for orthopox virus. And orthopox viruses are the are the genus of virus that includes monkeypox, as well as smallpox, cowpox and other viruses.

Now, if the state finds a case, it tests positive for the orthopox virus, and they kind of clear out smallpox, then it's then sent to the CDC and the CDC does the monkeypox-specific testing to verify that this is indeed monkeypox. But if the outbreak escalates and develops into a more concerning situation, then the CDC says that it will look into giving monkeypox-specific testing to the states. So, that way, if the state can do that specific testing, it speeds up the process.

But for now, Poppy, there's no concern that this will escalate. The World Health Organization held a news briefing just this morning and an official had this to say. Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROSAMUND LEWIS, HEAD, WHO SMALLPOX SECRETARIAT: We are not concerned of a global pandemic. However, we are, and that word would need to be defined in the context of an orthopox virus. We are concerned that individuals may acquire this infection through high-risk exposure if they don't have the information they need to protect themselves.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOWARD: And what she means by protect yourself, simple steps to take if you think you are at increased risk, hand hygiene, washing your hands, which we all kind of revisited during the COVID pandemic, the ongoing COVID pandemic, and, of course, any suspected case should isolate, so that's important as well. But right now, Poppy, again, the takeaway is that there is no concern at the moment of this becoming a global pandemic.

HARLOW: We appreciate that headline very much. We needed some good news. Jacqueline Howard, thank you very much.

Well, there's a hurricane headed for Mexico that has rapidly intensified in the last 24 hours. Agatha went from 60-mile-per-hour winds to 110 miles-per-hour winds, making it just shy of a category 3 hurricane. Forecasters expect the storm to make landfall later today. (INAUDIBLE) bringing 10 to 16 inches of rain in (INAUDIBLE), we'll watch that very closely.

Meantime, here in the United States, an outbreak of severe storms and tornadoes likely today across the Dakotas and Minnesota. The storm prediction center says tornadoes are probable as well as large to giant hail and 60 to 80-mile-per-hour wind gusts.

Well, ahead, the NRA once told doctor, quote, stay in your lane when they spoke out against gun violence. But with this epidemic of mass shootings in America, emergency room physicians are standing up and speaking out and one of them joins me in moments.

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[10:45:00]

HARLOW: Welcome back. The family of one of the young shooting victims in Uvalde, Texas, is hoping to make their late daughter's dream come true. Fourth grader Tess Mata loved Ariana Grande, the Houston Astros and TikTok dances. But she was just ten years old when she was killed and that means she was too young to have an account.

After she died, her family started posting these TikTok dances posting those videos that she had recorded, and they are hoping that they will go viral, something that Tess dreamed of being able to do, the two videos of nearly 60,000 views with many people expressing their grief and leaving messages of condolence.

And our next guest has seen firsthand the kind of loss and grief parents in Uvalde are feeling. She's an E.R. Doctor who has treated young victims of gun violence. And she wrote an opinion piece that reads in part, quote, it's the parents I remember because of how their bodies collapse under the weight of our words, under the burden that it is not theirs permanently. I have paused at the door to give mothers another minute knowing that their lives will be forever split into all the time before I opened that door and all of the time after. If I wait, I give them more of the before time in a world in which their child is still alive.

Joining me now is Dr. Esther Choo, a professor of emergency medicine at Oregon Health and Science University.

[10:50:00]

And reading those words, as a mother, you know there is only the world when your child is alive and everything after that is unimaginable. How urgent is this moment, Doctor?

DR. ESTHER CHOO, PROFESSOR OF EMERGENCY MEDICINE, OREGON HEALTH AND SCIENCE UNIVERSITY: Yes. I just -- I'm reacting to the segment that was the lead-in because I have two fourth graders at home, twins, and at idea of those parents losing those children. And, of course, I have seen it on the hospital side and it's impossible news to give.

And I don't know what we prioritize more as a society and within health care than valuing the lives of children, of young people who have so much more in their lives to live, so many dreams to realize. And I think that's really why my colleagues and I have mobilized against this because we just cannot bear to see that there's nothing that's more important in our charge than to prevent exactly what we saw happen this week.

HARLOW: And you and your colleagues have been mobilizing for years, even when the NRA said a few years ago in a tweet, doctors, stay in your lane. But the numbers show how much worse it's getting. I mean, the Gun Violence Archive shows that in 2016, 382 mass shootings, in 2020, 610, 2021, 692, this year, more than 220 mass shootings, more days than we've had in the year.

I know you keep fighting, but do you believe that fighting will lead to change?

CHOO: I think we have to believe it, to just keeping moving forward. But you're right, the urgency -- I mean, if you had asked me ten years ago was this an urgent problem, we would have said yes then, and the urgency keeps on growing. And I think we've seen so much division over this, but I still think there's common ground.

I mean, firearm injuries have now become the number one cause of death for children over the age of one. I mean, nobody feels good about that. Everyone feels like we should come together and do something about that. So, I have to believe in the growing conversation. I have to believe in the fact that many of the people engaged in discussions about how we can prevent or improve this problem are themselves gun owners.

The majority of physicians are actually gun owners and many of them are engaged. The American College of Surgeons in 2018 put out a statement about the many things that we can do to prevent firearm injuries and deaths, and 18 out of 22 of those authors were gun owners.

And the other thing is not everything is about the very difficult conversation of how much we restrict access to firearms. A lot of it is about how we improve our communities, our social structures. There's a great researcher in Philadelphia, Gina South, who has looked into how greening neighborhoods actually reduced its firearm violence.

And so I think there is a lot of latitude to be creative to have innovative discussion to think about how we can really focus on safety and reduction of injuries and not just controlling restriction, which seems to be so divisive when we bring up those words. HARLOW: When it comes to other solutions to at least help, last year, the federal government awarded $25 million in grants for firearms research, that's after 20 years of not a lot of years of federal funding at all, and I know there can always be more funding. But what is most urgent that you believe funding like that can actually address?

CHOO: I do think we need to start -- and, again, you're totally right, $25 million, we're grateful that there's something rather than nothing. But consider that when patients hospitalized for firearm injuries cost this country $2.8 billion a year, and then we're offsetting that with such a small investment in trying to reduce and prevent that problem. And so where the money is going is completely wrong. So, we need to change that balance.

But I do think investing in a wide portfolio of research, the community-type interventions that I just mentioned, looking an innovative science for how we can make firearms and self safer, really engaging communities that are most affected by gun violence, injuries and deaths, trying to correct some of the racial disparities that are experienced in gun violence. Those are all things that need a solid investment hopefully in the community more than in the ivory tower and in bring together diverse voices, including people who are gun owners who understand gun safety intimately and all of whom are invested in improving this problem.

I mean, we do amazing things in science. We transplant faces. He cure Hep-C. We do ultrasounds in space. This is not too difficult a problem. It's just a question of investment, commitment and money.

HARLOW: We can do hard things. Do we have the will to do it is another question. Dr. Choo, thank you very much.

[10:55:01]

CHOO: Thank you, Poppy.

HARLOW: And thanks to all of you for joining me. I'm so glad to be back with you. I'm Poppy Harlow.

At This Hour with Pamela Brown is next.

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