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New Day
Coronavirus Cases Rise in 23 States as Economies begin to Reopen; President Trump's Rally in Tulsa has Lower than Expected Turnout; Noose Found in Garage of NASCAR Driver Bubba Wallace. Aired 8-8:30a ET
Aired June 22, 2020 - 08:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[08:00:00]
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are filling the stockpile in anticipation of a possible problem in the fall.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If we're going to continue to open up and not open up safely, we're going to continue to see increased cases.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: John Bolton casting President Trump as an uninformed, erratic liar.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He has done something very, very serious in terms of American national security.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think Putin thinks he can play him like a fiddle. I don't think he's worried about Donald Trump.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. Alisyn is off this morning. Erica Hill here with me.
ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning.
BERMAN: So new this morning, exactly what public health officials had been worried about. This morning, 23 states are seeing a rise in the number of coronavirus cases. Those are the states in red. Now, 11 of these states have a growth rate of more than 50 percent. That is enormous. Nationwide you can see in this graph right here, cases have risen more than 15 percent. In some key states there's a substantial increase in the rate of people getting sick, and an increase in the number of people who are so sick they're in the hospital. So this isn't about just more testing, which is some of the nonsense the president has been saying about that.
The White House also does now acknowledge that they're preparing for a second wave in the fall. This is just less than a week after Vice President Pence said fears about a second wave were overblown. This morning, I'll show you a couple more charts, the states of particular concern include Florida. You can see the steep rise in the number of cases there. And also Arizona, look at that curve. The president is holding an event there tomorrow.
HILL: We are also following this breaking news. NASCAR now investigating a noose that was found in the garage of Bubba Wallace. He is the sport's only top tier black driver. And this of course comes just weeks after he pushed NASCAR to barn the Confederate flag.
Also developing overnight, New York City's mayor announcing the statue of Teddy Roosevelt at the Museum of Natural History will be removed.
Joining us now is CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay, good morning, again. As John just pointed out there, when we look at Florida, so much focus on Florida these days because we see this increase in numbers. But it's not just the number of positive cases that's increasing. It's also the percent positive that we're seeing -- the number of -- sorry, the number of positive tests, right, not just testing. I'm getting all caught up in my words. But you know what I'm saying, Sanjay. And that is a number that speaks volumes.
SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, right. So the basic gist of it is that if you're testing enough out there, your positivity rate, that means the percentage of tests that are coming back positive should be lower, and typically, certainly below 10 percent, and even lower than that. If it's getting above 10 percent, it means you're actually not testing enough, you're not finding the cases out there in the community, especially the asymptomatic cases that could potentially be perpetuating the spread. That's basically it. You don't want to see positivity go up.
You mentioned Arizona earlier. I believe Arizona positivity is around 20 percent right now. So that's obviously much too high. So Florida poses all kinds of unique concerns. The numbers are going up, they're going out of proportion to the increase in testing. Hospitalizations have gone up, 75 percent of the ICU beds are full. Florida, I think -- my parents live in Florida. We think about Florida all the time. But you also have a vulnerable population, people who are older, people who are more likely to have preexisting conditions. So we've really got to pay attention to Florida.
Obviously, I watched the interview you had with the mayor. There's going to be all sorts of decisions that I think are going to need to be made now, not a week from now, not a month from now, but now in order to sort of try and get ahead of the curve as best as possible.
BERMAN: Like what, Sanjay?
GUPTA: Basically, deciding if there's going to be a mask policy. Trying to determine -- we know how effective masks can be if people are going out in the public. I get that there's a significant desire to not shut things down again. I understand that fully. But if some of these actions aren't taken now, that decision may no longer be in the hands of people. The decision may get made for them, especially if hospitals start to get to the red line capacity that we saw in New York. BERMAN: I want to ask you one of the things we are hearing from
Florida. Governor Ron DeSantis there says that some of the increase is coming in a much steeper increase in the number of younger people getting sick. And CDC director, former CDC director Tom Frieden just on Twitter moments ago, noted that that might mean the mortality rate isn't as high. The case number may grow, more people might get sick, but not as many people might die. I suppose that's true, but there are other potential long-term impacts if it spreads beyond Florida where younger people start getting sick in higher numbers. I start thinking about what's going to happen to schools in the fall if all of a sudden the numbers are increasing.
[08:05:00]
GUPTA: Yes, no doubt. So John, this is something that I think you and I have talked about almost since the beginning of this. There's the numerator and there's the denominator. The numerator, the number of people who died. The denominator, the number of people who are infected. As we talked about, as you find more people who are infected with this that haven't gotten sick or had minimal symptoms, it will bring down the case fatality rate. I think that is clear. And we still don't know exactly what the case fatality rate is, how likely someone is to die if they contract this.
But you're absolutely right. If you get significant outbreaks among young people, even among school-age kids, that's going to greatly affect the decisions that are being made right now about schools for the fall. I know lots of schools are planning on opening, they're planning on opening in a very different way, physically distanced, masks required, hygiene stations, protect vulnerable populations in terms of faculty, and things like that. But if you start to see significant numbers, again, these decisions may get made for them. They may be in school learning for a period of time, then they may have to go back to online school learning.
There's a significant ripple effect. There was a study that came out that said, I think it was more than a quarter of the nurses in this country, the primary caregivers for children, if you start to keep kids out of school again, you affect the health care capacity. There's a significant sort of downward effect from this. And that's not to be taken lightly.
HILL: And yet, you wonder what the preparations are on that end. And so many school districts are still trying to figure out, as you point out, Sanjay, what they're going to do in the fall. We're hearing from the administration that they are now planning for a second wave, although, as we heard from Dr. Fauci, and I know we've talked about with you, we're not really done with the first wave, Sanjay.
GUPTA: We're not done with the first wave. It's almost a luxury to talk about the second wave here. I think we've shown this image here, if we compare the United States to the European Union, you get an idea of what waves should look like. And a lot of the concepts of waves when it comes to infectious diseases, it really came from the flu pandemic from 100 years ago, seeing these true waves. When you look at the screen, the E.U. versus the United States, very
different. And I find this image at once both inspiring and horrifying. It's inspiring because you know it can be done. You can bring down infection rates very, very low. They did it in the E.U. It's horrifying because we obviously didn't do it, and now we're starting to trickle back up again. So this wasn't a wave thing here. We came down a little bit, and now we're starting to tick back up as places start to reopen. And that's obviously a concern.
We saw what happened in New York in terms of resources that were necessary, hospital beds, ICU beds, personal protective equipment, all that sort of stuff. You may start to see those demands. We already are in places around the country, like Arizona, like North Carolina, now Florida.
BERMAN: I want to bring in CNN White House correspondent John Harwood, if I can, Sanjay, for a second here. And I want to play the sound from Peter Navarro who is running the supply procurement operation for the White House. Peter was on, Navarro was on with Jake Tapper -- we don't have the sound. Peter Navarro with Jake Tapper acknowledged that he is trying to prepare the country with getting supplies for a second wave in the fall. And that's just a vastly different message than we're getting from Vice President Pence and others. Let's play that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETER NAVARRO, WHITE HOUSE TRADE ADVISER: It was tongue-in-cheek. Come on, now. Come on, now. That was tongue-in-cheek. Please.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: I don't know that it was tongue-in-cheek at all.
NAVARRO: I know it was toungue-in-cheek.
TAPPER: He has said similar things for months.
NAVARRO: Then that's news for you. Tongue-in-cheek.
TAPPER: He has said similar things for months.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: So that was not the soundbite about procuring more supplies for a second wave. That was suggesting that the president joking about slowing down testing was somehow meant for laughs. I don't know why they think it's funny when 120,000 people have died here, John. So clearly there's a mixed message here. On the one hand the White House publicly trying to diminish, I think, the severity of it. On the other hand, people who are involved in preparing are clearly preparing for something here.
JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That's the distinction, John, between President Trump, who lives in his own world, and the people who work for him who have to service President Trump and help President Trump, but at least are somewhat connected to reality. The problem that we have here is we now have enough testimony from people like John Bolton and John Kelly and Jim Mattis to go with what we can see with our own eyes to know that it's not really in serious dispute anymore that President Trump is not up to this job. And one of the reasons that he's not up to the job is that he has difficulty separating his personal interests from those of other people and the national interest.
So coronavirus comes in the beginning. He thinks I'm running for reelection. It's going to hurt the stock market. Deny that the problem exists. Now that the economy has reopened again, you've got a nation convulsed by racial unrest and coronavirus is coming back, he feels a strong urge to deny that it exists.
[08:10:02]
And so he makes these remarks about testing. He's made them, as Jake was mentioning in that clip, consistently said, if we don't test, we won't have as many cases. Same thing is true with that rally that he had over the weekend. He personally needed the adulation of people in a crowd to lift his spirits from the funk that he's been in because of the state of the country. The interest of the people who would be crowded into that rally without masks, those were secondary. And the fact that only 6,000 people showed up for that rally is an indication that there are a lot more people than before who are perceiving the reality of the situation and certainly had a very strong vibe of the wheels coming off the wagon.
HILL: It was also striking, John, too, to see this video of him arriving back in Washington and walking off there. When you see his face, as you continue to watch this video, to see President Trump with his tie undone, hat in his hand, he looks absolutely defeated. I'll go back to this again, the fact he would allow himself to be captured on camera really speaks volumes.
HARWOOD: He was defeated, Erica. And that's -- you couldn't walk away from that rally. When he's looking out, having been told that it's going to be a packed arena, and 40,000 people outside on an overflow, and the overflow people don't show up, and there's acres of empty space inside the arena, he could see that. He understands it. He performed for a while and feels good from having performed, but he can see what's going on. He knows he's behind significantly in the polls. And it was in that moment, you're right, it was striking because he rarely allows that part of himself to be seen. But he knows that he is getting beaten and battered, and it's not obvious that there's a way out of it for him.
BERMAN: John Harwood, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thanks so much for being with us this morning.
We do have some breaking news from overnight. NASCAR is investigating a noose found in the garage of driver Bubba Wallace in Talladega. He's the only top tier black driver in NASCAR. Wallace pushed for the stockcar series to ban of the Confederate flag just two weeks ago. CNN's Dianne Gallagher live for us with the very latest on this. Anything turn up yet in the investigation, Dianne? DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: No, not at this point,
John, but I can tell you that it shouldn't take long for NASCAR to try and figure out who, or at least narrow down who may have put the noose in Bubba Wallace's garage stall, and that's because this area, if you're not familiar with the track, this garage area is a restricted area to essential personnel only, especially during this pandemic.
So people who were around there are credentialed, we're talking about NASCAR team, officials, security, medical personnel, people like this. So they should be able to track this down pretty quickly. When they released their statement late last night, saying that the noose had been found in the number 43's garage stall, NASCAR said "We are angry and outraged. We cannot state strongly enough how seriously we take this heinous act. We have launched an immediate investigation and will do everything we can to identify the person or persons responsible and eliminate them from the sport."
NASCAR has been taking stances over the past couple weeks, following the lead of Bubba Wallace who, as you said, is the only black top- level, full-time driver in the sport. He raced with a Black Lives Matter unity car at the last race. He helped usher in, leading the charge to take down those confederate flags. He issued a statement last night on his Twitter account saying, in part, "Today's despicable act of racism and hatred leaves me incredibly saddened and serves as a painful reminder how much further we have to go as a society and how persistent we must be in the fight against racism. This will not break me. I will not give in, nor will I back down. I will continue to proudly stand for what I believe in."
John, Bubba said that his mother told him yesterday that they were just trying to scare him, and it wasn't going to work.
BERMAN: Not working on him, and I have to say, I think the world is now rallying around him, hoping that he wins there in Talladega. It would be wonderful to see. Horrifying to see that noose, and also the Confederate flag flying overhead like it was. Dianne Gallagher, thanks very much for being with us.
So barber shops and nail salons reopening this morning in New Jersey. Malls next week. The governor of New Jersey joins us next.
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[08:18:08]
BERMAN: All right, you can get a haircut or your nails done in New Jersey as of today. Personal care shops are opening. That includes barber shops, nail salons, tanning beds and tattoo parlors. Customers, they will have to make appointments, and everyone gets a temperature check, and face coverings are required.
New Jersey Governor, Phil Murphy joins me now. Governor, it's a pleasure to have you on with us. Thanks so much for being here. I know this is a big step and it's taken a long time and a lot of work to get here. What do people in New Jersey need to know as they head to some of these establishments today? GOV. PHIL MURPHY (D)NJ): Good to be with you, john. Folks have got to
be careful. I mean, we have got a lot of parameters in place for a reason.
This virus, based on any evidence that's out there is a whole different animal indoors than it is outdoors. So, with successfully opened parks, beaches, outdoor dining last week, all with success, we or now going inside. Folks are going to have to be careful, obey the rules, and this is a big step for us today.
BERMAN: Now, next week is shopping malls. Shopping malls are almost the state bird of New Jersey or something tantamount to that with New Jersey.
You know, that's a big deal. I mean, malls are places where people, by definition, congregate inside. How safe would you feel walking into a shopping mall next week?
MURPHY: Yes, I think folks can feel safe, but also this is a time for personal responsibility. So there are going to be parameters in terms of face coverings, lots of available disinfectants, capacity restrictions. Where needed, Plexiglas partitions. So I think we'll go as far as we can in terms of parameters, but I also have to plea with folks, this is a lot -- a lot of this is on us, as individuals.
We have a phrase -- common sense for the common good. It isn't just for yourself, but it's for the folks you're in there with. We wouldn't take the step if we didn't think we could take it responsibly. And again, malls a week from today is another big step for us.
[08:20:10]
BERMAN: I want to look outward now, beyond New Jersey, and I want to give people a sense of the difference between what's happening in your state and in other states. So, I want to put up on the screen. I don't know if you can see it, but I know you know what the graph will show, which is the case number in New Jersey, just how much the seven-day moving average of the cases in New Jersey has been. You can see the chart going down, down, down, down, down.
Now, I want to put up another state. I think we have Florida here so people can see the difference, and it is the opposite, it is just the exact opposite situation in Florida than it is in New Jersey.
So, my question, Governor is, if you had a chart that looks like that Florida chart, if New Jersey looked like Florida right now in terms of the numbers going up, what would you be doing?
MURPHY: Listen, John, I can't speak for Florida. My nose is pressed against the jersey glass, but that chart that you showed was New Jersey a couple of months ago and we were pretty tightly shut.
Again, I can't speak for Florida, but I do know when we were on the ascent, we were really battered down and shut down, so we are trying to drive the rate of transmission as close to the ground as possible. We were increasing and continued to increase both testing and contact tracing.
I'm proud to say we're one of the most tested states in America right now, sort of putting that infrastructure in place so that you can quickly determine what the facts are. We also say data determines dates, so we're data heavy and data specific, and we use that data to determine what steps we take on closing on the one hand or opening on the other.
BERMAN: Let me ask you it in a different way because I know you don't want to get into Ron deSantis' business here. So, let me just ask it as a New Jersey question. What would you do, if the curve were to go up like that in New Jersey? What actions would you take, particularly after you've been reopened?
MURPHY: Yes, you'd have to put some sort of break on the reopening. You'd have no choice. By the way, folks should, I think, understand and anticipate that, as we open up indoor activities in our state, we'll almost certainly see some amount of spiking.
Now, the hope is that you've got enough testing. Again, we're number one, two and three in the nation in terms of testing. Contact tracing in place. You could surround it quickly. So you don't have to go through the hell that we went through two or three months ago with the entire place shut.
But hopefully you could spot those flare-ups quickly and drive it to the ground.
BERMAN: Very quickly, the President at a rally Saturday night said he had been asking his advisers to slow down the testing. Now, the White House later said the President was joking, 120,000 Americans have died. I want to know your reaction to what he said, whether it was a joke or not.
MURPHY: Listen, I can't speak for the President. I do know we've had an awful toll in terms of lost lives in New Jersey, almost 13,000, and we have believed from moment one that ramped up, scaled up, best-in- the-nation testing capacity was essential for our ability to, not only figure out what's going on, but also take the steps responsibly to reopen, and that's what we've done and that is what we will continue to do.
BERMAN: Is it a funny joke, if it was a joke?
MURPHY: I can't give -- I don't have any context for you, John, but I do know we believe in testing in a big way in New Jersey.
BERMAN: Governor Phil Murphy, we wish you the best of luck going forward with the reopening today and next week. Thanks so much for being with us.
MURPHY: Thanks for having me on, John.
BERMAN: All right, this morning, an investigation is under way after a noose was found in a Talladega garage of NASCAR's only black driver. That's next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[08:28:00]
ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking overnight. NASCAR says a noose was found in Bubba Wallace's garage. Wallace, of course is the only top tier black driver in NASCAR and all eyes are on Talladega this afternoon as some fans return to the stands, the Confederate flag ban of course is in effect now.
Joining us, CNN political commentator, Angela Rye, the former Executive Director of the Congressional Black Caucus and CNN political commentator Errol Louis who is a political anchor for "Spectrum News."
Good morning. Good to have both of you with us. As we-- I mean, to call the news disturbing is putting it mildly when you wake up to this news that a noose was found in Bubba Wallace's garage. NASCAR saying they started an investigation, as our own Dianne Gallagher reported, this area is restricted. You to be credentialed to get in there.
So Angela, you would think we could get an answer as to who was behind this pretty quickly.
ANGELA RYE, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, you would think you could unless there are people or several folks involved who didn't have an issue with the fact that the noose was hanging at all. I think the backdrop of this is, is that there has been two black men found within the last month hanging in public places even in California. So a noose is particularly triggering.
There's never a good time, but I think, especially given the climate that we are facing right now, this is a huge problem.
BERMAN: Yes, and it happens, Errol, I know NASCAR banned the Confederate flag and banned this kind of imagery on the request of Bubba Wallace. I mean, Bubba Wallace really pushed this. The one black driver in the top tier circuit, but the Confederate flag was still around. It was flying overhead. Someone flew a plane with it overhead. You can see the picture right there. It was outside the track as well.
So, look, it's definitely still an issue for NASCAR, clearly and that goes without saying given that a news was found at Bubba Wallace's garage.
ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I don't think anybody expected this to be moved with the wave of a hand. The edict comes down from NASCAR and all the flags just disappear.
I think we should all salute Bubba Wallace for taking on what he had to know was going to be a big institutional and cultural fight.
[08:30:09]
