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Inflation Eases To 7.1% In Nov As Fed Weights Another Rate Hike; 40 Million People Under Winter Or Severe Weather Threats; Vaccine Fatigue Leaving U.S. Vulnerable To Flu; Hospitals Across U.S. Overwhelmed Amid "Tripledemic" Surge; U.S. Scientists Announce Historic Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired December 13, 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]

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: And it's also good news for the Federal Reserve. The Fed has been slamming the brace on the economy, rapidly raising borrowing costs to get inflation under control.

As we speak, the Fed is meeting and debating what to do next. In just under 24 hours, the Fed is expected to have another hike.

The expectation is to slow the pace from hike, go from 75 basis points the last four meetings to 50 basis points. Today's report does give them some cover to do just that.

Victor and Bianna, the hope is he Fed won't have to raise quite as much next year. And that would lover the rise of a recession in 2023 or 2024.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: All right, Matt Egan. Thank you, Matt.

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN HOST: We are following a massive winter storm that tens of millions of Americans are see in some way. Right now, 40 million people are in the path of the storm, as life-threatening blizzard warnings and tornado threats head east. We'll have more of this up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:35:16]

GOLODRYGA: Right now, a massive winter storm is barreling across the country, bringing tornado threats to the south and blizzard conditions to the central and northern plains. About 40 million people are in the path of severe weather today.

In Texas, severe storms rolled through the area, Officials there say several homes and businesses were damaged. Two people are injured.

A trail of damage was left behind in nearby Parker County where roofs were ripped off of homes.

BLACKWELL: In Wayne, Oklahoma, a suspected tornado tore building from their foundations and left the town without power. Good news here is no one was injured.

Let's go to Colorado. Heavy snow and strong winds are creating dangerous travel conditions there.

Our meteorologist, Jennifer Gray, is tracking it for us.

So created a mess so far. What is coming in the next few hours?

JENNIFER GRAY, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, guys, this is a big one. And a lot of different impacts. We have the severe component to this. We have the wintry side. We have the blizzard conditions going on. We have severe weather going on. So really a bit of everything.

We have a tornado watch across the Deep South. That's going to continue to migrate through the east throughout the overnight hours tonight and into much of tomorrow.

On the northern end, we have winter alerts. We have blizzard conditions ongoing in southern Nebraska where we've had winds of 45 miles per hour, and zero visibility, with the snow just coming down. So that's going to continue.

Travel will be impossible across many of these areas. Look at these wind gusts. More than 50-mile-per-hour wind gusts in Cheyenne with very heavy snow. Rapid City, 63-mile-per-hour winds. Current visibility down to almost nothing across a large port of this area.

Bianna and Victor, this will continue throughout the overnight hours. And then into tomorrow, we'll still see the severe side of this across the south.

GOLODRYGA: It's going to be here for a while. It's shocking when you have so many people there with zero visibility.

Jennifer Gray, thank you.

BLACKWELL: Triple wave -- COVID, flu, RSV. The cases are flooding hospitals across the country. Bed space is scares. We're going to hear from doctors who are trying to manage the emergency.

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[14:42:10]

BLACKWELL: Healthcare workers across the country are fighting a triple threat of respiratory viruses. According to medical experts, COVID-19, RSV and the flu are pushing some facilities to the breaking point.

On top of it, health leaders warn a growing number of people are not getting flu vaccines this year because of what they're calling vaccine fatigue.

Now according to the CDC, just 26 percent of adults received their flu shot by the end October and 43 percent of children received theirs by the end of November.

Dr. Steve McLaughlin is with the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of New Mexico.

His hospital is seeing a surge in patient levels so severe that it put up a triage tent outside the Emergency Department.

Doctor, thank you for being with me.

Give us some numbers behind this. What does it look like there at the hospital, and how is this impacting your ability to offer care?

DR. STEVE MCLAUGHLIN, PHYSICIAN, DEPARTMENT OF EMERGENCY MEDICINE, UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO: Hi, Victor. Good afternoon.

We've been experiencing historic volumes of patients over the last six to eight weeks. The way this is appearing at the hospital, we have a large number of patients admitted that are boarding in the Emergency Department, waiting for beds in the hospital.

While they wait, they're in the Emergency Department. That, of course, takes up space, makes it harder to see the new patients coming into the Emergency Department.

The tent helps us to have that flexibility space to see the new patients as they're coming in.

BLACKWELL: So we heard from the acting secretary of the New Mexico Department of Health, saying they're very close to imposing crisis standards of care.

Is your hospital at that level, trying to decide who will receive care and who will not unfortunately be able to be served?

MCLAUGHLIN: At this point, Victor, we're able, with the steps we have taken, including the tent, including opening up flexible space in the hospital, we're able to continue to provide the care that people need.

In some cases, there can be some delays to be seen. But overall, the staff and the facility are really, I think, doing a great job of providing the care that's needed.

BLACKWELL: Who is showing up? Mostly children and elderly? Those who you immunocompromised? Are we seeing the rest of the population here?

MCLAUGHLIN: We are seeing a mix of those. We are just past the peak of a surge of largely pediatric population. At this point, we're seeing a lot of elderly patients, some children, and those immunocompromised with serious cases of influenza.

The influenza numbers are really increasing very quickly.

[14:45:02]

BLACKWELL: And some people have said about the flu, the surge we are seeing typically comes later in the season.

But is that your experience, that you would see these numbers just later or even for another part of the flu season? This is especially high?

MCLAUGHLIN: This is especially high. When you look back over the last couple years, we really didn't have much of a flu season because of the precautions people were taking for COVID.

The timing of the flu can change year to year. This year, it is a bit early, and the numbers are much higher than we have seen in the last few years.

BLACKWELL: Dr. Steve McLaughlin, thank you for your time. Thank you for the work that you are doing. And we'll check back in with you to see how things go throughout the season there in New Mexico.

Thanks so much.

GOLODRYGA: The Department of Energy announces a nuclear energy breakthrough that could lead to an infinite source of clean energy. And ahead, how that could impact all of us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:50:41]

BLACKWELL: It's being hailed as a major scientific breakthrough that could revolutionize the way we power our world.

For the first time in history, U.S. researchers have triggered a fusion reaction that created more energy than the laser energy needed to make it happen.

This is a first step towards ending our reliance on fossil fuels. And it comes at a critical time for our planet.

Here is Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm speaking with CNN about the importance of this moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JENNIFER GRANHOLM, ENERGY SECRETARY: The president has a 10-year goal of getting to a commercial fusion reactor, and he announced that goal this past summer. We're hopeful that within a decade we might be there.

Of course, we have a goal of getting to net zero energy by 2050. That would be within that time frame. Now that this breakthrough has happened, the scientists can go to work on improving the process.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GOLODRYGA: Hakeem Oluseyi is an astrophysicist and visiting professor at George Mason University and the author of "A Quantum Life: My Unlikely Journey from the Street to the Stars."

Hakeem, thank you for joining us.

Talk about this real milestone in science and the achievement there. Give us an explanation of why this is so significant in the quest for clean energy.

HAKEEM OLUSEYI, ASTROPHYSICIST & VISITING PROFESSOR, GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY & AUTHOR: Thank you for having me.

This is not hyperbole. This is truly a fundamental breakthrough in developing the energy of the future.

So the greatest stores of energy that we have is what we call matter. Albert Einstein informed us 100 years ago that matter, as we think about it, may not really exist at all. Basically what we call matter may, in fact, be combined energy.

We now know this has been confirmed. If you take the proton, the particle that makes up the nucleus of all of our atoms, along with neutrons, 99 percent of what we call mass is energy inside of them.

So the question is, how can we get that energy out? There are three ways to do it.

The first way we've been doing for decades. That's with this fission reactors. But they're really dirty with radioactive waste. Now there's this, fusion.

This is how starts do it. Energy is at a premium, yet stars have the ability to pump out energy for billions of years.

Now we may be able to do that. The final is matter-antimatter conversion chambers like "Star Trek" does.

BLACKWELL: So what is creating the energy? I want to be as excited about this as you are. But there's a little bit I'm missing here. I need you to tell me what's creating the energy.

(LAUGHTER)

OLUSEYI: So the energy is there. The energy is just sitting there inside of nuclear matter.

So when you combine small nuclei, like these isotopes of fusion, you start with these products. We'll say two plus three equals five. But when you add those things together, two plus three does not equal five. Two plus three equals four.

You ask yourself, where does that other one go? The other one was converted into energy. So you end up with less mass when you plug these things together, and that mass was converted to energy.

"E equals MC squared" tells you how much energy you get. For one unit of mass, you get a one followed by 17 zeros units of energy. That's a big win.

GOLODRYGA: To not be Debbie downer here because I know this is a huge discovery.

BLACKWELL: Here you go.

GOLODRYGA: Let me finish. Follow me here.

Scientists were surprised. Some of the technology they had and equipment they had there actually got damaged because of the power of this energy they finally produced.

My question to you is, now they can do it. How do you scale it? Do we have the infrastructure and support systems for it to actually make this feasible to use?

OLUSEYI: The devil is in the details. There are so many tiny details they had to get and trips they had to do to make this happen.

[14:55:00]

Like, you know, you're shooting all these lasers into this capsule. You expect the energy of the lasers to go into the capsule, right?

What they found when they started doing experiments is sometimes the energy from one laser got diverted and went back up the other laser. So, you know, there's all these little things you have to do.

But what you're looking at here is primarily a way of making heat. So most energy reactors that we have that produce heat, like coal burning, wood burning -- I don't know if we have any of those -- but also fission reactors, they take the heat and boil water with it.

The water turns to steam. The steam turns the turbine that produces electricity. So there's another step. The step is you create the heat. Now let's create the energy.

But you -- it's not just the laser energy that goes in. There's energy that goes into making the laser energy.

Making this breakthrough is the key step, but you still have to make it way more efficient. And then you have to have a means of making electricity from it.

GOLODRYGA: This little step was a big one. And it shows us that it can be done.

OLUSEYI: It is the big one.

GOLODRYGA: I think you've got Victor getting really excited here now.

(CROSSTALK)

BLACKWELL: I'm in it now.

GOLODRYGA: Hakeem Oluseyi, thank you.

BLACKWELL: Thank you.

GOLODRYGA: We appreciate it.

OLUSEYI: Thank you. BLACKWELL: In just minutes -- certainly -- President Biden will sign the bipartisan bill protecting same-sex and interracial marriages in this country. We'll bring that to you live.

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