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Case of Paralytics Polio Found in Rockland County, New York; Ten Months Later, Baldwin Says He thinks About Fatal Shooting Every Day; Rising Hate, Anti-Semitism in America Premieres Sunday at 9:00 P.M. Eastern Time. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired August 19, 2022 - 10:30   ET

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

JACQUELINE HOWARD, CNN HEALTH REPORTER: From the year 2019 and found that 44.4 percent of cancer deaths globally were attributable to preventable risk factors that year.

[10:30:09]

So, that's more than 4 million deaths total.

And here are the leading risk factors that we are talking about here, Jim. In this study, the top three for both men and women combined were smoking, excessive alcohol use and high BMI, that's having a high body mass index, so being overweight or obese.

And the study also found that the risk attributable deaths appeared to be on the rise. They went up 20 percent between the year 2010 and 2019. So, this tells us that these risk attributable deaths are becoming more of an issue here. And we all have the ability to take better care of ourselves, you know, eat right, exercise, watch how much you drink and not smoke. So, again, Jim, this is really a wake-up call, I think, for all of us.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, and pretty clear direction, right? It shows you exactly what to do, Jacqueline Howard, thanks so much.

Health officials in Rockland County, just north of New York City, are offering free polio vaccination clinics after a young adult who did not have the vaccine suffered leg paralysis after contracting the virus.

Back in the late 1940s, polio outbreaks disabled roughly 35,000 people every year in the U.S., but this is the first confirmed case in this country in nearly a decade. New York health officials say wastewater testing also found evidence of a polio virus capable of causing paralysis.

Joining us now, Dr. Adam Ratner, he's director of pediatric infectious diseases at NYU Langone. First, tell us why you believe this could be just the tip of the iceberg to see one paralytic case of this? What does it tell you about the broader spread of polio?

DR. ADAM RATNER, DIRECTOR OF PEDIATRIC INFECTIOUS DISEASE, NYU LANGONE HEALTH: Right. So, even one case of paralytic polio is a public health emergency. And the reason for that is that paralytic polio is a relatively rare outcome of polio virus infection, even in the setting of an unvaccinated population.

So, about 75 percent of people who have polio virus infection have no symptoms at all. Almost 25 percent of the rest have only very mild symptoms. And so you're down to less than 1 percent of people, even unvaccinated people, who come into contact with polio, will develop paralysis.

It's conceivable that if you see one case of paralytic polio that it's one very unlucky person an there is not community spread but much more likely there are hundreds or thousands of people who have been exposed to give us that one case of paralytic polio.

SCIUTTO: This had been eradicated in this country. Why -- outbreak may be too strong a word but why are we seeing a spread like this right now?

RATNER: Yes, that's why this is of concern. This is decades and decades of work toward polio control globally. And, you know, since the polio vaccine was first introduced in the 1950s and then the oral polio vaccine in the early 1960s, there has been this push to eliminate polio from the planet, to eradicate it, and we are relatively close. But even in places where polio has been under control, we are still at risk if we don't continue to vaccinate the population.

And so what we're seeing now is evidence that we are still at risk even though there hasn't been polio in this country for many years.

SCIUTTO: We just showed there national vaccination rates 93 percent, Rockland County, just north of New York, 60 percent. Why? And what's -- what must be done about that? I mean, do you need a broader kind of vaccination campaign there?

RATNER: Yes, I will do you one better. Within Rockland County, there is a zip code where the polio vaccination rate is 37 percent. And so, first of all, it shows you the danger of only looking at broad vaccine rates. We are doing a good job nationally. But if you look in at the state level, the county level and even the neighborhood level, there are pockets of undervaccination that are places of danger for children who may come into contact with polio virus. And we have to pay attention to that local epidemiology.

I think it's not lost on pediatricians and public health officials that the places where we're seeing -- where we saw this case and where we're seeing polio in wastewater has a lot of overlap with where there was a measles outbreak in 2019, again, the fruits of undervaccination and of a very successful anti-vaccine movement. And so this is a different disease but it has the same underlying cause.

SCIUTTO: Of course, this sounds familiar. We've been through the question of mandating vaccinations here. Given the severity of paralytic polio from a public health perspective, are mandates necessary, particularly targeting this low vaccination area?

[10:35:08]

RATNER: Right. So, we have mandates. There are school mandates for polio vaccines and there have been for decades. Part of the problem was there were a lot of nonmedical exemptions, so exemptions for reasons other than being medically unable to take the vaccine. New York State did away with those recently, but we're still catching up. And there are still pockets where there is severe undervaccination.

And so I think mandates are part of it and mandates demonstrably work, but there's also -- we have a messaging problem. Like we knew this was a problem in 2019 with the measles outbreak. We've seen this with COVID-19 vaccination. We are not communicating as well as we should be in populations where I think directed messaging is needed. We need to be more John Fetterman and less Mehmet Oz.

SCIUTTO: Just quickly before we go, if you are vaccinated, are you safe?

RATNER: Yes. The short answer is yes. So, the recommended polio vaccine, which is the inactivated polio vaccine in this country, 99- plus percent effective against paralytic polio, that's what needs to be done.

SCIUTTO: Dr. Adam Ratner, thanks so much for joining us.

RATNER: Thanks.

SCIUTTO: Coming up next, CNN's one-on-one with the actor, Alec Baldwin, ten months after the fatal on set shooting. He says he still thinks about it every day. We are going to have that story coming right after the break.

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[10:40:00]

SCIUTTO: The NFL and the NFL Players Association have now suspended Deshaun Watson for 11 games without pay after a series of sexual misconduct allegations against him. More than two dozen women have accused the Cleveland Browns quarterback of misconduct. Watson must also pay a $5 million fine and undergo behavioral evaluation and treatment. He had this to say after the announcement.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DESHAUN WATSON, CLEVELAND BROWNS QUARTERBACK: I'm moving on with my career and my life and I'm continuing to stand on my innocence. Just because settlements and things like that happen, it doesn't mean that a person is guilty for anything. I feel like a person has an opportunity to stand on his innocence and prove that and we proved that on the legal side and we just got to continue to push forward as an individual and as a person.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Watson, as we said, will not be paid during his absence and can still practice with the team in the pre-season.

This morning, another story we're following, the actor, Alec Baldwin, has spoken to CNN after new developments in the Rust movie death investigation. The actor does not believe he will face criminal charges in last year's fatal shooting of Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, pictured there, despite an FBI report that found the trigger of the gun had to have been pulled, Baldwin maintains that he never pulled the trigger. He also explains why he feared for his life after comments from former President Donald Trump.

CNN's Chloe Melas has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHLOE MELAS, CNN ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER (voice over): Ten months in and confusion still persists over the sequence of events that led to a deadly shooting on the set of Rust. This week, an FBI report concluded this gun could not be fired without the trigger being pulled while the gun was cocked and eventually malfunctioned after internal parts fractured.

In his first interview with CNN, Alec Baldwin denies pulling the trigger.

ALEC BALDWIN, ACTOR: I never once said -- never -- that the gun went off in my hand automatically. I always said I pulled the hammer back and I pulled it back as far as I could. I never took a gun and pointed it at somebody and clicked the thing.

MELAS: While waiting for the results of the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office investigation, Baldwin says he hired his own investigator.

BALDWIN: That private investigator, as you probably know, did not have a difficult time accessing the staff of the sheriff's department and that person told us, quote/unquote, we've known in the department since January that Alec would not be charged with a crime.

MELAS: A sentiment echoed by his attorney.

Do you think that there is a possibility, though, that he could face charges at all?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It would be a huge miscarriage of justice.

MELAS: But the then president fanned flames against him.

BALDWIN: The former president of the United States said he probably shot her on purpose, to me, was really the only time I thought that I needed -- that I was worried about what was going to happen. Because here was Trump who instructed people to commit acts of violence and he was pointing the finger at me and saying I was responsible for the death.

MELAS: No one has been charged for the tragedy on set but Baldwin said there are two people responsible, Armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed and Assistant Director Dave Halls. Through their attorneys, they accuse Baldwin of defecting blame. But Baldwin points to the findings of an occupational safety report.

BALDWIN: Hannah Reed handed the gun to Halls and said, don't give it to Alec until I get back to the set, I have got to do something else, and he proceeded to the set and, A, handed me the gun.

MELAS: Baldwin said Gutierrez-Reed should have known the difference between dummy rounds, which make a rattling sound, and live ammunition.

BALDWIN: I mean, anybody on Earth to works in that business can determine that.

MELAS: Baldwin raised questions about the supplier of guns and ammunition for the film, Seth Kenney, being sued by the armorer. An FBI report said 150 live rounds were found on set.

BALDWIN: What was the provenance of all the bullets on the set? Where did those come from?

MELAS: Well, according to the FBI report, as far as I'm aware, the bullets were commingled.

BALDWIN: Right. So, if that's the case, then who commingled them? Did Seth Kenney provide her with prop ammunition where he commingled live rounds with blank rounds?

MELAS: Questions Baldwin says kept him up at night as he replayed the final days of a talented friend and cinematographer.

BALDWIN: And she was great at her job and she died, and she died, and that hurts me every day. You know, every day of my life, I think about that. It's horrible.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MELAS (on camera): So, in January, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the film's armorer, she filed a lawsuit against Seth Kenney, the film's ammunition supplier, saying that he provided her with a cache of dummy rounds that also included rounds of live ammunition.

Now, in a response from his attorneys, they say that that's absolutely not the case, but they did admit that he was the sole supplier of the ammunition for the set of Rust.

Now, I also want to tell you that in this wide-ranging nearly two-hour interview that I had yesterday with Alec Baldwin, he also said that the last ten months have been really tough, that it's been hard on his family, he thinks about this every day. As you saw, he got emotional there at the end, but he also said that it's been hard to find work, that he's been fired from five jobs and that people simply don't want to hire him. But he did say that he's leaning on the support of his family, his friends, especially his wife, Hilaria Baldwin, who is expecting their seventh child this fall.

SCIUTTO: Personally, I'm still amazed that live rounds were anywhere near a set like that. Chloe Melas, thanks so much for a fascinating conversation.

MELAS: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Well, this weekend, CNN takes an in-depth look at the rise of anti-Semitism here in America. Is this hate being normalized in this country? That's right after the break.

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[10:50:00]

SCIUTTO: Conspiracies about Jewish people are some of the oldest on the planet. And in 2022, they are still some of the most pervasive around the globe, even here in this country. In our new documentary, Rising Hate, Anti-Semitism in America, Dana Bash looks at how these hateful age-old anti-Semitic tropes can become dangerous and deadly. You'll want to see it. Here is a preview.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I thought I heard a click, the click of a gun. I went to the back of the room and that's when he pulled the gun on me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And within a few seconds, he got up and started yelling, I have got a bomb.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Jeff Cohen came to pray and became a hostage.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My phone was sitting next to me and I quickly dialed 911.

BASH: people watching the live stream could hear the gunman.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People need there to be one individual that is holding people hostage inside Beth Israel Congregation.

BASH: The hostage standoff lasted for nearly 11 hours, while FBI Special Agent in Charge Matthew DeSarno's team negotiated with the gunman.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was demanding the release of a convicted Al Qaeda terrorist who was housed nearby.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He believed that coming in here and attacking Jews, that the Jews controlled everything so they would make it happen. Jews controlled the government, Jews controlled the banks, Jews controlled the media. He truly believed this.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: Dana Bash joins me now. I mean, Dana, we imagine that the world, the country moves beyond this kind of thing, and, of course, it hasn't. I mean, we see reminders of that every day. But why? Why has it prevailed for so long here? BASH (on camera): That's the question we tried to get answered during our research and during this -- working on this project for the past many months. There are lots of answers to the question of why, as you can imagine.

One of them is that these conspiracy theories -- and anti-Semitism is, in some ways, one of the oldest conspiracy theories, most pervasive, has the longest life. And these conspiracy theories tend to bubble up at times of strife in societies, and this has happened across Europe, across the Middle East for generations and generations. And we are in one of those periods right now.

Combine that with the easy access that recruiters have online, with the fact that our political leaders are, in some ways, normalizing this kind of discussion, these kinds of tropes, and if not normalizing them, failing to condemn them. And that is a very, very important lesson that we learned.

We talked to data experts who said that they could see a spike in anti-Semitic sort of chatter online and maybe even to the point where it got more violent when the people who have these beliefs, anti- Semitic beliefs, saw a leader fail to condemn this.

SCIUTTO: Well, sometimes it's not just fail to condemn.

[10:55:01]

I mean, it's deliberately attempting to take advantage, is it not, of this kind of thing.

BASH: And they are one and the same, and that's really the key. And there is a feeling among these people who are looking for a green light, that when they see any inkling of it, even a flickering of a green light, they take advantage of it. But the internet is also a very large part of this, Jim, because it's so pervasive.

SCIUTTO: Very quickly, your son, Jonah, you wrote in a piece on cnn.com about how he wanted to wear a necklace representing his Jewish faith.

BASH: One of the things that I learned from experts, even you saw Jeff Cohen in that piece, he was one of the hostages in Colleyville, even victims like him, their response is not to retreat. For centuries, a lot of Jews understandably retreat add and just tried to stay quiet and not rock the boat. The answer in today's anti-Semitism is to be loud and proud. He wears his yarmulke, Jeff Cohen, and, oddly, my son, who has not, thank goodness, witnessed anti-Semitism sort of innately understood that he wanted to show his Jewish identity, asked me at age ten for a Jewish star to wear around his neck and I wasn't sure if I should give one to him and I said, yes, and he got what I had to learn through doing this hour.

SCIUTTO: It's a national story, it's a personal story. Dana Bash, thanks so much.

Don't miss it, special report this Sunday, 9:00 P.M. Eastern right here on CNN, Rising Hate.

And thanks so much to all of you for joining us today. I'm Jim Sciutto. I hope you have a great weekend.

At this hour with Boris Sanchez starts right after a quick break.

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[11:00:00]