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Bomb Cyclone Threatening Parts of Northeast with 2 Feet of Snow, 60 MPH Winds; U.S. and Ukraine Have Different Views on Russian Threat; Athletes Village Officially Opens One Week Ahead of Games. Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired January 28, 2022 - 05:00   ET

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


[05:00:25]

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: It is Friday, January 28th. Five a.m. exactly here in New York. Thank you for getting an EARLY START with us to end your week. I'm Christine Romans.

LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, Christine. I'm Laura Jarrett.

Welcome to the viewers in the United States and around the world.

ROMANS: All right. This morning, 45 -- 45 million Americans in the Northeast are bracing for a wild winter weather event in the next 24 hours. Millions are already under a winter storm watch in major metro areas like Philly, New York and Boston. Some regions could see two feet of snow or more. And that's just not it at all. It's also combined with winds reaching 60 miles an hour.

JARRETT: There's also a very real threat of coastal flooding and different forecast models show different paths for the storm, predicting precisely what will happen and where is pretty hard. But the airlines are not waiting for any clarity. So far over 1,600 flights scheduled for Saturday in the U.S. have already been preemptively canceled.

CNN's Derek Van Dam is tracking the system. He joins us from Atlantic.

Derek, good morning.

What exactly is a bomb cyclone? I know that's what you're calling it. Is it fair to think of it as a winter hurricane?

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yeah.

I think it's a good apples to apples comparison. The outcome is different than a hurricane. But could we see hurricane force gusts? Yes, along the coast. Will we see snow with this? That's the different factor between a winter storm and hurricane. Bomb cyclone term we use of a certain criteria, of a strengthening coastal low that meets this powerful, powerful low pressure system and what its result is, of course, is a major winter storm. In fact, new this morning, we have blizzard warnings for some of the

major metropolitan areas of the East Coast from Portland, Maine, to Boston, Massachusetts, all the way to Atlantic City, New Jersey, for instance.

But honing in on New York City, you have been included within the winter storm warning. That means the National Weather Service, the meteorologists at the CNN Weather Center all converging on where this heaviest snow band will set up with the evolution of this storm within the next 36 hours. And this storm means business.

I want to highlight the wind potential here because that is going to bring down visibilities below 1/4 of a mile. Gusting upwards of 60, 70 miles per hour at times along the coast into Nantucket, Boston, all the way down to the coastal areas of Long Island and New Jersey, I-95 through the East Coast is going to be a rough go.

This is the model comparison with snow totals. Some of them indicating two feet or more for Boston and the coastal areas of Massachusetts. That is where we have our blizzard warnings in effect, the American model showing slightly less. But we're starting to split hairs here because the potential for a crippling storm is in the cards and on the table for the next 36 hours along the Eastern Seaboard.

Here's the evolution of the storm, Saturday midday, that is when we expect peak intensity of this particular system to impact places like New York, Boston, Philadelphia. And then it exits just as quickly as it entered the scenario and behind it cold, arctic air all the way down to Florida. We're talking about hard freeze watches, down to Naples, believe it or not -- Laura, Christine.

JARRETT: Wow. All right. Sounds like a good weekend to hunker down. Derek, thank you.

ROMANS: All right. To the crisis in Ukraine now. President Biden and Ukrainian President Zelensky on the phone for an hour and 20 minutes Thursday, assessing the risk levels of a Russian attack. A Ukrainian official tells CNN the call did not go well.

Now, the White House pushing back hard on that claim saying that's just an anonymous source, quote, leaking falsehoods.

Joining us live from Kyiv, CNN's Melissa Bell.

Melissa, it again seems the White House and Ukrainian officials are not exactly on the same page here.

MELISSA BELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. And according to that source, the nature of the disagreement, the reason that phone call didn't go that well was the difference of assessment of the risk that is currently faced by Ukraine. The Ukrainian assessment very different than the one presented by the White House. We have been hearing from the Ukrainian defense ministry, he's been expecting in parliament, explaining from the Ukrainian point of view, things have not shifted that much in the last year, and the military situation he said he believes is rather similar to what it was in the spring of last year. So, two very different assessments of the threat posed by Russia to Ukraine right now.

And, of course, the trouble is, Christine, the longer this waiting game goes on, the more chance there is that divisions will emerge. Now, so far, the White House's strategy of being open about its intelligence assessment about being very forthright and aggressive in its rhetoric has been to bring together, for instance, European ally that is have been dividing the question what starts to adopt towards Russia and the question of how hard to go on sanctions.

[05:05:05]

We've been hearing from the president of the European Commission speaking yesterday with Christiane Amanpour saying all options now are on the table. So the White House's strategy has, Christine, managed to bring European, and NATO allies together on this question, but there is that risk, of course, of intelligence assessments being different between Ukraine and the United States, and those differences being able to emerge. Now, here in Ukraine there are fears within official circles that that ongoing rhetoric, the ongoing tensions around the country are not doing it any economic good. Hence that desire to stamp down the rhetoric and bring things down a notch.

But again, it is all about bringing opinion together in order to face Vladimir Putin in a forceful way. That's been what's been behind the American strategy. For now, we await his response to NATO's proposals as well and what needs to happen next. For now, the noises are not strong because they haven't gotten what they wanted from the start, which is a guarantee that there will be no further NATO expansion.

But again, Christine, we await to hear from the man himself, and the only opinion that really matters, that of Vladimir Putin and what he intends to do next, Christine.

ROMANS: All right. Melissa Bell in Kyiv, thank you so much.

Laura?

JARRETT: So, speaking of that, this potential disconnect between the U.S. and Ukraine could play into Russia's hands undermining president Biden's threats and given Biden's critics here at home more ammunition.

CNN's Nic Robertson joins us live in Moscow on that angle.

So, Nic, picking up where Melissa left off there, will Putin spot an opening here?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Potentially. They're looking for any openings they can find. We heard from Putin's spokesman just a few minutes ago saying that so far, Putin hasn't made a decision yet. The foreign minister has said they're still working out their position. You know, the line from here seems to be very much a holding pattern on what their response is going to be, that it's -- you know, it took the United States and NATO, they said, a month to get back any written response. But they actually had a verbal response way before that. The foreign minister said he can't say diplomacy is dead but you get

that sense from what he is saying here. You know, he looked at the two statements, one from NATO and one from the United States and said the United States was essentially a gold-plated version of polite diplomacy whereas the NATO response, he said, was really very much about their own interests and he said he felt sorry for the person that wrote the text of it.

So it seems certainly where they see an opening, a potential for an opening between the United States and NATO. They're looking for that. Their perception is the United States and NATO haven't changed their position. Russia's not going to change theirs. They don't want to go to war, they say, but they're not going to let their interests take a back seat here either.

So, yes, where there's an opening we can certainly see the Kremlin try to drive that open. At the moment they're just in a holding pattern waiting until they can see how best to take advantage of what little they seem to have gotten in these responses.

JARRETT: Nic Robertson, thank you as always.

Up next for you, we are just one week away from the 2022 Olympics as the number of COVID cases in Beijing continues to rise.

Plus, a majority of Americans think getting COVID is inevitable. We're going to go behind the numbers, just ahead.

ROMANS: And retiring Supreme Court Justice Steven Breyer says the American experiment will work. We'll talk to his brother, just ahead.

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[05:13:08]

ROMANS: The Beijing Olympics are just one week away now. The three villages of the games have officially opened.

Right now, supplies and food are being stocked while rooms and facilities are being prepared for the arrival athletes from around the world. This morning members of Australia's Olympic team touched down in Beijing. This as the number of COVID cases found in people arriving for the Olympics has risen to more than 100. At least 50 of those people were already inside the village's closed loop bubble.

Let's bring in CNN's Will Ripley.

Good morning, Will. Good evening to you.

What's the mood in the athletes' village? What are you hearing?

WILL RIPLEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the mood in the athletes' village and the mood of the people who are in the closed loop system, meaning the journalist and other people arriving in Beijing for the Olympics. You have around 4,000 people who have arrived and especially among those who have been training for these games, training for their lives to compete in the Winter Olympics, knowing that if they test positive for COVID and these are extraordinarily sensitive COVID tests that China is using that could detect COVID even after somebody no longer has symptoms, even if somebody is not contagious, they could test positive with the COVID tests and the daily COVID testing that they're using in China, the threshold that will cause somebody to be yanked out until they test completely negative.

It is nerve-racking. It is rattling athletes who are afraid to look each other in the eye or stand too close in many cases because they have been training so hard. They want to get into China and they want to compete and they absolutely do not want to test positive because that could mean the difference between being able to compete or having their lifetime dream, you know, go by and they're having to watch it on television sitting in a tiny room where they can't go out side because they're stuck in COVID isolation.

This is the reality inside zero COVID China which, you know, regularly locks down tens of millions of people on the outside of the Olympic bubble when there are a relatively small number of cases. And now, they're hosting this international sporting event, people coming in, thousands of people from hundreds of countries and they have to input their health information for 14 days before they can get on the game.

They're staying in basically a fortress guarded by guards 24/7 on secure transportation that never has contact with the outside world, the outside public and constantly having to live with the possibility that if they test negative, it could all go away. Right now, we know that a small number of cases are inside the bubble. So, it's not a large number but it is a small number and we'll have to see if that continues, Christine.

ROMANS: You know, covering the Olympics, working at the Olympics and going to the Olympics in normal times is a thrilling and fun experience. None of that sounds very thrilling or fun.

Will Ripley, senior international correspondent, congratulations on your promotion, sir, by the way. Thanks, Will.

RIPLEY: Thank you. Thank you, Christine.

ROMANS: All right. Trying to get a COVID test still a struggle for many Americans. Why Dr. Fauci says, just hang in there a little longer.

JARRETT: And Stormy Daniels taking the witness stand, testifying against her former lawyer, Michael Avenatti. Her damning testimony, next.

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[05:20:48]

JARRETT: This just into CNN, brand new polling from the Kaiser Family Foundation that shows just how much Americans are still struggling to get a COVID test, 35 percent say it's difficult to get an in-person test and 65 percent say getting a rapid at-home test is also been hard.

ROMANS: The polling also reveals that more than three quarters of Americans believe infection is inevitable.

Joining us now, Dr. Ali Raja. He is executive vice chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and he's a professor at Harvard Medical School.

Good morning.

JARRETT: Dr. Raja, so nice to have you back on EARLY START this morning.

This new poll shows what we all know has been true. We've been living it together. It's been hard to get tests quickly which means a lot of people, I imagine, just probably gave up at some point even if it turned out that they were positive.

So when we see the case numbers -- COVID case numbers going down now compared to those sky high numbers we saw around the holidays in December, how confident can we be that there isn't just a vast undercount in cases?

DR. ALI RAJA, EXECUTIVE VICE CHAIR, DEPARTMENT OF EMERGENCY MEDICINE, MASS GENERAL HOSPITAL: It's a really great question. I think that we have to agree and admit that there is an under count. The question is whether or not it actually changes the trend.

JARRETT: Yeah.

RAJA: I think that there is an under count. I think there are lots of people who could get tested but just can't get access to tests and because of that, that we are definitely seeing a gap between what we're measuring and what is the reality, but I think the fact that it's coming down can be trusted.

ROMANS: Dr. Fauci told Anderson Cooper last night that he's cautiously optimistic about the trajectory here, about the direction of the pandemic. Listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: My message would be just hang in there because things look like at least for what's going on now with omicron, that things are turning around. We've got to hang in there and really prevent it from going back to a surge.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Hang in there. Is that the right message to be sending right now?

RAJA: I think it is. I think what Dr. Fauci is really great about saying there is that, look, I acknowledge that this has been hard, but we just need to keep doing what we're doing for a little longer because we're seeing that spike come down. And it would be like fumbling the ball at the 5 yard line. We're almost there. We just need to hang in there a little longer.

JARRETT: Doctor, there's all of this fighting two years into the pandemic about masking kids in schools. And so, I've wondered about this for a while. When you compare a place like New York, where Christine and I are, where the rules are very tight, every kid is wearing a mask, not an issue. You compare that to Florida where Governor DeSantis has tried to ban mask mandates.

Some schools have sort of pushed back on that and they're doing their own thing.

But are kids in Florida actually getting more sick more often? In other words, does the fact that they're not wearing masks as much actually make a difference in what we're seeing in the case rates?

RAJA: You know, it's a great question. We haven't seen that the masks themselves are preventing at a population level kids from getting sick to a vast degree.

But, remember, it's not the general kid or the general population of kids we're focusing on. We have kids with serious health conditions. We've got kids who are immunocompromised. We have kids who live with adults who are either one of those things.

So we're not focused on the entire population of kids, we're focused on making sure every kid stays as healthy and possible. And that's the big difference that we all need to focus on.

JARRETT: Well, and the other thing strikes me is that no state has banned a parent from actually putting a mask on their child, right? So, even if your school doesn't have a mask mandate, you can still put a mask on your child and protect them that way. We used to think the mask was protecting other people. But now we understand it's protecting you as well. So, parents can arm their children in that way too even if the school isn't doing something to try to protect the whole population as you point out.

ROMANS: I've been so impressed, honestly, I've been so impressed watching the kids wear the mask and understanding it's their golden rule at the moment, to do unto others as they want to be done unto them. You know, they're taking care of their neighbor. I've been impressed with the kids in this area who I know who I think have done a great job.

JARRETT: The 2 1/2-year-old in my household does not even question it.

[05:25:01]

He -- it's just part of his routine.

ROMANS: All right. Dr. Ali Raja, thank you so much. Nice to see you again this morning. Have a great weekend.

RAJA: Thank you.

ROMANS: All right. Ahead on EARLY START, the thinking behind Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer's decision to retire now. We'll talk to another federal judge who knows him very well, his brother.

JARRETT: And President Biden about to leave for Washington for the Steel City. The message he's bringing to the people of Pittsburgh, next.

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ROMANS: Welcome back.

Retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Bryer is leaving the bench concerned.