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Heat Alerts Across the U.S.; The U.K. Hits 104 Degrees; Dr. Jonathan Reiner is Interviewed about Monkeypox; Chris Stokel-Walker is Interviewed about Twitter and Musk; U.S. Recovers Money from Hackers. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired July 19, 2022 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:00]

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: New York City, even close to Boston. We're not going to move this heat anytime soon. This above normal temperature map right here stays in the same place through the weekend.

Now, it does cool down a bit. We are going to get a little bit better in Dallas over the next couple days. But today the thermometer, the air temperature is going to 110. And that's in the shade. And that's not standing on asphalt. And that's not doing anything outside. Temperatures should be around 96 for the high today. It's going to be 110. And it's not going to be cooler than that, not much cooler than that, over the next week.

Jim.

SCIUTTO: Wow. Heat waves in Europe historically off the charts as well. As you know, better than us, the climate models have shown for some time that climate change would lead to things like this, heat waves and droughts and heavy rain in some areas, but can you connect this to climate change?

MYERS: Sure you can. You can. And I'll show you the bell curve and why it matters.

Last hour in London it was 104.4 degrees. Nowhere in the entire United Kingdom, on any day, in any city, in any month has it ever been that hot across any part of the U.K. Right now it's 104 in Paris. So, what's going on here? Do we have heat waves? Yes. They happen every year. But what was the normal here, our bell curve, which would be 95, 96, 97 heat wave, now our bell curve has shifted. So what was a 5 to 6 standard deviation heat wave is now solidly in the bell curve.

So, yes, would there have been a heat wave in Europe, yes. Would it have been 104? Likely no. Maybe 98, 97, you know. And the people there are at 104, only about 1 percent or 2 percent of the entire population of the United Kingdom have air conditioning. Those houses are made to stay warm, not made to stay cool. So, this is -- this is tough for them over there for sure, and for us too.

SCIUTTO: That's a great visual representation of what the data shows. Chad Myers, always good to have you on. Thank you.

MYERS: You're welcome.

SCIUTTO: OK, let's get more on how folks are reacting to the heat wave in Europe.

CNN's Nada Bashir is in London where, as Chad Myers was saying, the U.K. hit highs it's never seen before.

Listen, most homes don't have air conditioning there. Same goes for stores and other venues. How are Britons coping?

NADA BASHIR, CNN INTERNATIONAL REPORTER: Well, look, Jim, it is extremely hot, sweltering heat. And as Chad mentioned, this is weather that the U.K. typically doesn't see in this time, although in other parts of the world, they do. And the infrastructure here in the United Kingdom simply isn't prepared to deal with this kind of heat, this level of intense heat that we are seeing.

Now, the MET (ph) office here in the United Kingdom has issued a red extreme weather warning. That's the first time that has been issued for this current heat wave that we're seeing. Other parts of the United Kingdom have an amber warning due to those exceptional temperatures that we are seeing.

But as I said there, it's a matter of both health and safety risk and also infrastructure. Now, we're outside King's Cross Station. It's typically one of the busiest stations in the capital. But today it has been brought to a standstill. All trains coming out of King's Cross have been canceled now. And that's as a result of those high temperatures which have had an impact on the railway equipment on the railway equipment, on the overhead wires and on the actual trucks themselves, which have overheated.

Now, previously, we heard a from national (INAUDIBLE) warning passengers not to attempt to travel unless absolutely necessary. Now, of course, no trains departing at all.

But there are also health concerns. The government has had several emergency meetings to discuss the contingency plans to deal with this heat. They have been in touch and working closely with the national health service, with ambulance staff, for example, in order to insure that they are prepared for what is expected to be an influx of calls from people suffering from heat-related illnesses. And they have been advising people to keep an eye on the elderly and young children as well.

Jim.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: Nada Bashir, thank you for the reporting. And 104 degrees, wow, in London. Thank you very much.

This afternoon, CDC advisers will vote on whether to approve a fourth Covid vaccine for adults as high case rates have some cities reinstating mask mandates. We'll talk to Dr. Jonathan Reiner about all of it ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:38:48]

HARLOW: All right, so the CDC director is defending that agency's response to the monkeypox outbreak in the United States. This is after the former FDA commissioner basically said, look, we've missed the window here, Jim, to contain this virus.

SCIUTTO: We should note the number of monkeypox cases nationally is nearing 2,000. It's a small number based on percentage of the population. A fourth of those infections, we should note, are reported in New York state.

Joining us now to discuss, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, senior medical analyst and professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University.

Dr. Reiner, good to have you back.

I think there could be a tendency of folks, when they seeing something like this, to say, well, this is the next big thing. We've had Covid and now we have this.

In terms of numbers, it's a fraction. So, I wonder if you could put some context around this. One, who's most at risk from this in the current environment, and how exactly is it transmitting?

DR. JONATHAN REINER, PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE AND SURGERY, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: Right. So, Jim, this is a - obviously, a different virus than the Covid virus. This virus is spread predominantly via close physical contact, although there is some data to suggest that it might be transmissible also via droplets in aerosols.

[09:40:03]

But it looks like most of the initial cases have been people who have had close contact with other - with other people. Ninety-nine percent of the cases that have come to the United States have been seen in men, predominantly in the community of men who have sex with men.

But there is some uncomfortable resonances with the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic when the public sort of ignored a new disease because it seemed to be limited to a certain population. But this virus will jump from that relatively limited community out to the population as a whole unless it is contained. And the way you contain a virus like this is by vaccinating, not just folks who may have been exposed to this virus, but by vaccinating people who are at risk of being exposed to that virus. And that's what we've been slow to do.

HARLOW: So, I wonder whose assessment you agree with. I understand finger pointing doesn't help a lot right now, but I do think Americans want clarity on, is the window to contain this closed or not. So, the former FDA head, Scott Gottlieb, says, yes, the window is closed. Dr. Fauci says it's not closed yet, but we've got to do better. What do you think?

REINER: I agree with Dr. Fauci. I don't think it - I don't think it's closed. But in order to contain this virus, we need to have had larger quantities of the vaccine than have been made available to cities around the United States. And what we needed to do really, it was to -- and continue to do is to flood the communities at risk with vaccination. And we're starting to do better at that now, but we have not had access to the amount of numbers of vaccines. And we're going to have to go back and start to think about why our, you know, strategic national reserves don't have access to vaccines that we're going to need when an emerging epidemic comes to this country. So we're playing defense rather than being, you know, more proactive.

SCIUTTO: So for folks at home who need to make a judgment here as to whether they are at significant enough risk to do something, including talk to their doctor about the possibility of a vaccine, what do you recommend?

REINER: Right now I think the -- again, I think the community right now of men who have sex with men should be talking to their doctors about getting vaccinated for monkeypox. Right now that is the community I think that's at greatest risk. And cities like New York are developing a robust program to do just that. D.C., where I live and work, has maybe per capita the highest number of monkeypox cases in the United States. And the vaccination program here is increasing as well. But the word needs to, you know, to get out to the - to this particular community at risk that you should get vaccinated now. And time is of the essence.

HARLOW: CDC advisers are meeting today on the Novavax Covid-19 vaccine for adults. I just wonder if you could explain how that vaccine works. Is it mRNA so -- or is it - or is it more of a traditional vaccine? Would there be any benefit to getting it versus the others for Covid?

REINER: Well, Poppy, this is an interesting vaccine. It's not an mRNA vaccine and it doesn't use an adenovirus vector. What it is basically is a vaccine constructed of spike proteins that are grown in moth cells. So, what the company has done is basically infect a virus, insert into a virus the genes for the spike protein for the coronavirus. They then infect moth cells with that. The moth cells act as the factory to create spike proteins. The spike proteins are then harvested and constructed into particles that resemble the coronavirus but do not have the ability to cause illness in humans. But what it will do is create an immune response. And it's combined with an extract from a tree bark that actually boosts the immune response.

And in studies conducted last year, it was quite effective at preventing severe illness and -- or even symptomatic illness. But most of those trials were done in the pre-delta, pre-omicron.

HARLOW: Right.

REINER: It is an effective vaccine. I'm not sure what the group of people is who will now get it, but I think we've maxed out on our vaccination program in this country, unfortunately.

HARLOW: It's fascinating. Thank you for the explanation, very much, Dr. Reiner, on all of it.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

REINER: My pleasure.

HARLOW: In just over one hour from now, Twitter and Elon Musk will have their first court hearing as Twitter tries to force the billionaire to make good on his deal to buy the social media giant.

[09:45:01]

We'll talk about what's at stake, where this goes, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: This morning, a judge will hear arguments in Twitter's request to speed up its lawsuit against Elon Musk.

HARLOW: So, as you know, Musk is trying to back out of buying the social media giant, saying Twitter is withholding vital information about the number of users, actual human users, on its platform versus how many are bots. But Twitter is suing to force Musk to complete the $44 billion deal.

Joining us now is journalist and contributor to wired.com, Chris Stokel-Walker. His latest article is titled, "Twitter Has Entered the Elon Musk Twilight Zone."

[09:50:02]

It's a compelling read.

Thanks for your time this morning, Chris.

One thing that I just think we shouldn't forget in all of this is, this is an argument against who's real and who's not, the users. But in the merger agreement that Musk signed on the dotted line with a lot of high-paid, I'm sure, lawyers around him, and the same for Twitter, there's no mention of bots. There's no mention of who's real and who's not. And this is yet the ground on which he's trying to pull out.

How precarious legally does that make Musk's argument here?

CHRIS STOKEL-WALKER, CONTRIBUTOR, "WIRED": I think it's pretty significant, Poppy, and I think it's notable because any lawyer worth his or her salt will probably be pointing to that and saying, well, Elon Musk wanted to take over Twitter way back in April because he thinks that Twitter has too much of a problem. And now, suddenly, we get to July, fast forward to this point and he's trying to back out because, again, he thinks Twitter has too much of a bot problem.

I guess the Musk point of view would be that, you know, Twitter has filed to the SEC saying it has 5 percent or few of its accounts being bots and Twitter basically has held to that. Musk disagrees, obviously, although some of the methodology that he's suggesting to try and identify what is and what isn't a bot seems relatively shaky to the data scientists that I talked to.

But, yes, I think ultimately the whole why (ph) here is a bit of a farce.

SCIUTTO: Yes. And he had the chance for due diligence before signing that deal.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: The other thing that has happened here is that since he signed this deal, Twitter's stock market value has dropped, along with the rest of the stock market, as has Tesla's stock value. And, by the way, he was going to borrow a lot of money from Tesla to make this purchase here.

So, why should, not just people at home, but why should the courts believe that his desire to pull out is not tied to those dropping graphs you're seeing on the screen there right now but rather to the bot issue as he claims?

STOKEL-WALKER: Truthfully, I don't think that there is any justification for that. And I think that's exactly what we're seeing. We're seeing Elon Musk's bluff being called here. He offered to buy Twitter at a premium of 38 percent of what it was trading at, at the beginning of April. We've seen since then the price essentially cratering. And now that there are all of these issues, it seems difficult that value will ever be recovered.

HARLOW: Yes.

STOKEL-WALKER: Because, ultimately, you know, it's often weird, if we - if we don't look back at the last three months, Poppy and Jim, at what's actually happened, you know? Elon Musk has kind of dragged Twitter's name through the mud. And, likewise, Twitter's fall back and said that Elon Musk isn't a fit person.

HARLOW: Yes.

STOKEL-WALKER: So, as Poppy said, I think we're in this new twilight zone where Twitter wants a boss (ph) that doesn't really think it can run the company.

HARLOW: I mean, so, Chris, to your point at, like, let's take the billionaires out of the equation because, you know, what matters to most of the folks here are the people that work there. Sort of average folks. And you've been talking to them, employees at Twitter. You talk about how they sort of feel leader-less in your piece. But talk about the actual cost to them beyond the reputational costs of the company. Like, what has this done to them, their careers, their morale?

STOKEL-WALKER: It's on the floor, Poppy, to be honest. It's completely on the floor. You know, Twitter has been focused almost entirely on preparing itself for this purchase, and for this purchase to go through. So, there's been a freeze on hiring. I spoke to someone who was offered a job at Twitter earlier this year and then had that job offer rescinded because of the deal. I've spoken to current employees who say that basically things aren't getting done. They're seeing head count decrease. People tarting to leave because of unhappiness and also because just simply their contracts run out and ultimately things start to fall by the wayside.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

STOKEL-WALKER: So, you know, there is a significant problem here. And I'm going to be reporting on a story later today, which hints that there is a more significant issue beyond Musk in terms of morale and pay at Twitter.

SCIUTTO: Yes, and has it poisoned Twitter for other potential suitors as well in the broader market.

Chris Stokel-Walker, thanks so much for joining us today.

This just in to CNN, the U.S. has recovered $500,000 in ransom payments that American hospitals were forced to pay to hackers. A live report on who was behind those hacks and how they managed to get this money back. That's coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:58:34]

HARLOW: The just in to CNN. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco says the U.S. has recovered ransomware payouts that American hospitals had to pay after being targeted by hackers backed by the North Korean government.

CNN's senior justice correspondent Evan Perez joins us now.

Evan, the deputy attorney general speaking about this just moments ago. Not the first time they managed to squeeze some money back, clawed back from hackers. I'm curious, are they letting on at all how they managed?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: They're not saying exactly, Jim. One of the things that's really remarkable about these -- about this one incident is that the FBI was able to, because they got notice from a Kansas health care organization, that they had been hacked, that they are -- essentially been targeted by ransomware, locking up their computer systems. They were able to take quick action. They were able to not only recover about $500,000. they were able to also get to this -- these accounts that were being used by Chinese money launders essentially using crypto currency. This is how the North Koreans were getting this money back to North Korea is through some organizations in China who were essentially laundering the funds.

So, the FBI as able to take quick action, recover about $500,000 not only in money but also in crypto currency. And what Lisa Monaco was talking about at this conference in Fordham University today is this idea that companies tell the FBI very quickly about when they've been hit by ransomware, and the FBI can actually take action, as they did with the - with the Colonial Pipeline hackers.

[10:00:09]