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U.S Marks Deadliest Day of summer in Pandemic; Biden and Harris Vow to Lead U.S. out of Pandemic; Over 2,000 Students and Teachers Quarantined amid Outbreaks. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired August 13, 2020 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: All right. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. Alisyn is off. Erica Hill with me here this morning, good morning to you.

ERICA HILL, CNN NEW DAY: Good morning.

BERMAN: All right. Breaking this morning, the most new reported deaths from coronavirus that we have seen since May, the most since May, the death toll moving in the wrong direction, just under 1,500 new deaths in a single day. That is double, double the rate from early June. We had 56,000 new cases in a single day. That's a bad number. Again, particularly notable because over the few days and weeks, you can see the amount of new cases has been going steadily down. We'll have to see if we're really to go back up again.

A blunt warning from the CDC director, if Americans don't adhere to public health measures, the U.S. could see the worst fall in its history. Overnight, the White House issued vague new safety tips for schools while still not requiring masks. By our count, more than 2,000 students and teachers are now quarantined across the country after returning to reopen schools.

HILL: And that reality, front and center as the newly minted Democratic ticket vows to lead Americans out of this pandemic, laying the blame squarely on President Trump's failed leadership and offering a sharply different view of the country's future. Mr. Trump and Republicans, meantime, launching a hodgepodge of attacks on Kamala Harris with 82 days remaining in the race for the White House.

BERMAN: All right. Joining us now is CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, she is the Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General hospital.

Sanjay, I want to start with you with just top line number, the number of new deaths yesterday nearly 1,500. We're up to nearly 166,000 at this point. The number is twice what we were seeing at the beginning of June.

I know that deaths are a lagging indicator, but our daily case count hasn't dropped so much that I think that we can expect to see the daily deaths drop that much over the next week or two or month. DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I mean, that is the problem, John. I mean, we have seen this pattern happen over and over again, overall confirmed infections go up, a few weeks later, hospitalizations go up, and a few weeks after that, deaths go up. And so we're seeing the ramifications of those significant spikes that we saw several weeks ago, you know, in several places around the country.

I think there's a couple of concerns here, John. First of all, if you look at some of the models that look out to the end of the year, we're sort of predicting that there may be a thousand or more people dying every day for the entire year, basically saying the situation is not going to get better.

And even if you look at the case counts, you know, the numbers of new infections every day, frankly, you know, we've really been digging into these numbers. I have a hard time trusting those numbers. Why? Because at the same time in some places, many places, you see positivity rates going up, which means that they're still not doing enough testing in those places.

So that's a problem. You know, the numbers you can count on more so are the hospitalizations. You can be pretty certain that someone comes in the hospitalized with COVID, that's a true number. Someone dies with COVID, you can be fairly certain that's a true number.

The overall testing is still in so much shambles, I think, in this country that we really don't have a clear idea just how many people are infected, which is a huge problem seven, eight months into this.

HILL: That may be an understatement at this point to your point about the data that we have and what we can actually extrapolate from it.

We have the hospitalization data in Texas. That's actually trending down a little bit, which is, you know, hopefully a good sign. But you pair that with a skyrocketing positivity rate, it's 24.5 percent as of yesterday, and it's been climbing the last couple of days.

And this decline in testing that we see in that state, Dr. Walensky, how do we put all of those things together. Do we only look at the positivity rate and the hospitalizations or only look at the hospitalizations?

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Good morning, Erica. You know, I think we have to look at all of this together and also realize that today is just a single snapshot in time. So, a positivity rate of 24 percent today means we'll probably have more hospitalizations in a week or two ahead.

When we start thinking about trends that are improving at numbers around 50,000, that's just shameful. I mean, we should be happy about improving trends. 50,000 is no number to be proud of. And when you see that still in Texas, Florida, also with positivity rates over 20 percent, you know, Mississippi.

I think we really have to understand that we're going to be in these hot spots for a very long time if we don't sort of listen to the science, rather than the politics, if people do not take more responsibility for others rather than what they'd simply like to do and to really just take care of our vulnerable populations.

[07:05:01]

BERMAN: The data is noisy right now. There's no question about it, the data is noisy, maybe intentionally noisy. Remember, the administration has changed the way it's reported. We also have the national positivity rate and you can see what I mean by noisy here. I think that we had a one-day spike right there, you can see, in the daily positivity rate. And it's just hard to know what that means. Is it because the number of tests dropped in a single day? We just don't know.

Sanjay, to the science though, and something that I think is important as we talk about whether and how and if kids should go back to school, where are we in how young people transmit this to potentially older people?

GUPTA: Well, you know, I've looked at, you know, several of these studies and I spent part of the day yesterday talking to a few pediatric infectious disease doctors, trying to get a better idea about this. Look, I think that, as a general rule, respiratory viruses, you know, I mean, we've all had kids, you know, kids get sick with these little viruses. And, generally, they spread it pretty well. I know one of our little kids got sick with it when they were particularly young. You could predict that the entire house would eventually get hit with this.

I think that that's still the case. I mean, there was this Journal of the American Medical Association study which showed that kids carried 10 to 100 times as much virus in their nose as do adults. Okay, so that's just one point of data. There was another study out of South Korea showing that younger kids did not contribute to overall spread as much as older kids, but the problem was those kids had largely been at home.

When you looked at it overall, out of roughly 60,000 contacts that were followed, only about 250 or so were in young kids. They had largely been at home. It wasn't that they weren't spreading as much. It was that they didn't have as many contacts over that period of time when the study was conducted.

So I have to believe. I mean, we'll see, obviously, and in some ways, we're undergoing this big national experiment right now in this country, but I have to believe that young kids can transmit the virus. I mean, we don't know for sure, but I haven't seen anything to lead me to believe otherwise and plenty of evidence would prove these viruses to suggest they will.

HILL: I see you nodding your head in agreement, Dr. Walensky. You're also helping to advise the State of Massachusetts, as I understand it, on their plan to move forward. You're meeting later today. How does all of this data that we're looking at, that is noisy, that is important, how does that influence your advice, where you stand and what you'll tell them? WALENSKY: Right. And I look to the science, as Sanjay just mentioned. There are data from other places in Europe, Norway, Denmark, that have done this really well. And you need to first look at the community and the case count and see how much disease is surrounding you to see if you can do this safely.

Places that have done so safely have case counts of less than 5 per 100,000. Places like Georgia and Florida and Texas don't meet those marks. Places in Massachusetts do -- some places in Massachusetts do meet those marks.

Then you have to sort of de-densify your classroom. You have to make sure that you don't have kids on top of each other. You have to ensure that people are wearing masks.

I also want to remind people, we're talking about our kids here. We also have to remember that there are 4 million teachers who teach in these schools. We have facility workers in these schools. We have to not just keep the children safe, we have to keep everybody safe.

BERMAN: So, Sanjay, one of the questions we ask in my household is, what is Sanjay doing? How does Sanjay see this when it comes to how we navigate the public health crisis? I promise, I'm not kidding. My wife honestly asked me that when in regards to school.

You wrote an op-ed about how your decision process inside your family about how you are approaching this school year. And people should know, you live in Georgia, which is seeing obviously a much higher case rate than other places.

GUPTA: Yes. And I'll preface by saying, these are some of the toughest decisions, not because of the science and public health. I think that is pretty clear once you start to actually do something, your homework. But I got three pre-teen and teen girls, and this has been some of the toughest stuff, because they want to get back to their friends and social structure and humanity and all of that. So I don't take this lightly.

But I think that the science is pretty clear. Our school has done a reasonably good job. I mean, there is a mask mandate at our school despite the fact that there isn't one at the state level. They have hand hygiene. They're doing their best with physical distancing, being smart about the use of libraries and gymnasiums and other big spaces, trying to do outdoor classes.

I visited the school. I spent time really trying to do my homework here. The problem is there's just too much virus that is actually spreading within our community right now. We've seen the numbers have gone up, not gone down. I mean, by the White House's own criteria, the numbers should have been going down 14 days in a row, a 14-day downward trajectory, before you would graduate to the next phase. that hasn't happened here.

As Dr. Walensky has mentioned, we looked at our own county, even there's been 360 new cases out of the last hundred thousand people over the last several days. [07:10:06]

It's supposed to be much lower, as Dr. Walensky was mentioning. And also, the positivity rate here is not as high as Texas, but it is, you know, closer to 11 percent, which is too high.

The thing that strikes me overall, and we've talked about this, and just in terms of the overall picture, is that when we pulled our kids of school in the country, there were around 5,000 people who had been infected and fewer than 100 people who had died. And we made a decision that we needed to pull kids out of school.

Now that there's more than 5 million infections and 166,000 people have died, we're putting kids back in school. The numbers are higher, they're growing faster and we're doing the exact opposite thing.

Everyone has to agree, that doesn't make sense, right? I mean, I'm not a crazy person. That doesn't make sense. And now, where Dr. Walensky lives in Massachusetts, they've done a much better job, frankly, than we have in Georgia. They can point to these same numbers in that community and point to a different picture.

We can't do that in Georgia. It's hard to do it as a country because of the overall numbers that I've said. But it's a hard decision, but it's the right decision for our family.

BERMAN: You're not a crazy person, Sanjay. You have affirmation right here, I think, from all of us.

HILL: I'll second that, yes.

BERMAN: Thank you both, Sanjay, Dr. Walensky, we really appreciate you both being with us this morning.

GUPTA: Thank you.

WALENSKY: Thank you so much, John.

BERMAN: President Trump's handling of the pandemic now a major focus of the 2020 race. What the Democratic ticket, the new Democratic ticket is offering as a way out of the crisis, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:15:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D), PRESUMPTIVE VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: It didn't have to be this way. Six years ago, in fact, we had a different health crisis. It was called Ebola. And we all remember that pandemic. But you know what happened then? Barack Obama and Joe Biden did their job. Only two people in the United States died, two. That is what's called leadership.

But compare that to the moment we find ourselves in now, when other countries are following the science, Trump pushed miracle cures he saw on Fox News.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Senator Kamala Harris placing the blame for the coronavirus response squarely on President Trump, offering a vision for how the new Democratic ticket could get America out of this crisis.

Joining us now is CNN Chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash and CNN White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins.

Dana, as we look at this, it was clear, and I think there was much made after the speeches that we saw there, that we were seeing what Senator Harris does as a prosecutor, as she was laying out that case. And this Biden/Harris ticket is really making the election about where we are right now as a country and changing that direction by getting hold of this pandemic.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. Look, it already was a referendum on President Trump. That's something that the Biden campaign wanted and that they want. But just because of the nature of what you spent the first 15 minutes of this hour talking about, how completely out of control this virus is in the United States of America, and the fact that it is Donald Trump who is the president during this time, and has a lot of things to answer for when it comes to his leadership.

It would be malpractice for the new Biden/Harris campaign ticket to not focus squarely on that. And, of course, it fits right into what Joe Biden said he wanted to focus on when he first ran, which is that this is a country in desperate need of radical change when it comes to leadership and a course correction, and somebody who's been there and done that. And you're absolutely right, Kamala Harris, she kind of stepped in line on those arguments.

Those are arguments that she made very clearly and very loudly when she ran her own presidential campaign. She's been making those arguments in the United States Senate. But she used much more of the Biden campaign language, which she wove into her own, as you said, prosecutorial style, even saying, you know, Kamala Harris for the people.

I mean, that was the beginning of her presidential campaign. And she kept it, even though she tried to make extremely clear that she is now Team Biden and she is subordinate to him and what he wants in his tragedies and in his policies.

BERMAN: As Dana has noted on the T.V., and I listen to every word you say closely, one of the things they did even as they were rolling out the new ticket was to really continue to make this a referendum on President Trump, because that's where they want to be in this race.

The question, Kaitlan, is how will the White House and Donald Trump respond? How are they responding, and to an extent, Joe Biden predicted it, right? Joe Biden came out there and commented on how all the White House has in response and the president has in response is for the president to hurl the terms he has in the past to women, strong women, words like nasty, and you know, like 20 minutes after Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were done, that the president came out and called Kamala Harris angry.

Has the White House settled on a response or how does that strike you?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And he claimed that he had not watched that entire speech by Biden and Harris, but, clearly, he had watched some of it. Because then even when a reporter read him the attacks that Senator Kamala Harris head directly on the administration's COVID-19 response, saying that he did not take it seriously from the beginning and that he failed to listen to the experts.

The president didn't really refute that. He didn't say, no, I've been taking this seriously since January or February, and he didn't say, no, I do listen to the experts every time they recommend something. Instead, the president kind of shifted his eyebrows up and he talked about testing and he talked about ventilators. But what's been clear is they did not have a strategic line of attack on the vice presidential candidate yet.

[07:20:01]

And aides actually thought around the president that after 24 hours, he would have a much more successful line of attack. They looked at how he treated Republicans in the Republican primary in 2016. But yesterday, he really just repeated a lot of things that he had said the day earlier when they had announced that Senator Harris would be running with former Vice President Joe Biden. And other than that, there was no real line of attack that you saw coming from the president.

Now, that could change, of course, his campaign is going to be going through everything in her record to try to find some spot of weakness and they're going to try to emphasize that. But so far, the president doesn't seem to have been able to land a really successful line of attack against her.

HILL: Dana, I find that not just surprising but really remarkable that at this point, it was very clear that Kamala Harris was among the top contenders as a vice presidential pick for Joe Biden. So the fact that they're just now figuring out, oh, we need to do some opposition research, we need to really dig into who she is, she's not an unknown quantity by any stretch of the imagination. The fact that they don't have any sort of a coordinated plan, I think, really says something about the campaign, as well.

BASH: It is surprising. Look, we have seen in a lot of the fundraising emails and so forth that they've put out since Senator Harris was picked. They've dubbed her radical left and probably -- and it's probably a cut and paste job that they would have put in for whomever Joe Biden picked. But you're right, it is clearly much more difficult for them for whatever reason. And there's a lot of frustration that the one thing or the one line that the president has seized on is really transparently seems to be anti-woman, and because of the terms that he's using, nasty and so forth, and also personal. I mean, you mentioned this. He walked right into what clearly has been a Biden campaign trap that they were preparing to lay if Joe Biden decided on Kamala Harris and that trap is, of course, you can't imagine picking somebody who criticized you, because that's not the kind of person you are. It's the kind of person Joe Biden is who can look beyond that and not, as you saw, you remember, in that press conference, on the back of his page, you saw his talking points, doesn't hold grudges. This is premeditated when it comes to the Biden campaign and Donald Trump can't help himself. He just, as I said walked right into it.

BERMAN: So, Kaitlan, you are a regular attendee at the president's coronavirus briefings. A lot of people have noted overnight, and we've put it together ourselves so you can see that these briefings, the president goes in there -- and yesterday's was lateral rambling and winding, but he sits there and reads from a page, and it turns out he seems to be reading from the same page every single time. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: The United States has now conducted more than 61 million tests, which is far more than any other country in the world.

America has the largest at-risk population of any developed country. By far (INAUDIBLE) the United Kingdom and other European countries.

We have delivered over 1,800 rapid point of care testing devices.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Wow. Kaitlan, the Trump campaign criticizes Biden occasionally from read talking points or reading off a teleprompter. It's remarkable to see that. And I do want to say, as Jeffrey Toobin has noted in the past, repetition is not necessarily truth.

COLLINS: Well, yes, that is very true. And you notice the president is reading from prepared remarks, but there doesn't seem to be an overarching theme to what the president is saying. When he restarted these coronavirus briefings, one of the conditions that aides had talked about was the president should only come out when there's positive knew. Because they believed in the earlier days of the pandemic, when he was coming out, spending hours in the briefing room and talking about these devastating numbers that we're seeing, it wasn't helping is standing with voters.

So their plan was for him to come out and talk about vaccine development, talk about therapeutics, things of that nature. But, of course, it's the president, and so often, it's what he doesn't say or what he says during the question and answer sessions that really gets him.

But he is reading from prepared remarks. Because even yesterday, you notice he brought in two of his financial advisers, the treasury secretary and one of his economic advisers, Larry Kudlow, who was reading from the prepared remarks along with the president, as he was going through them. And the other aides were kind of looking over as he was going through it.

But it's questions about what the president says during the Q&As that often can get him in trouble, because that's when he really says what he actually thinks about the pandemic. And that's when he says things that aren't backed up by science and other things like that.

BASH: John and Erica, can I also point out, it's more evidence that these daily briefings, in the president's mind, have completely taken the place of campaign stump speeches, because all of us have been following campaigns where you begin to be able to recite what the candidate is saying, because repetition does work in politics.

[07:25:06]

And that's why they say the same thing over and over again.

The difference, of course, is that this is the president talking about a national crisis. And he's repeating things that he wants people to think about his response to that crisis as opposed to a regular stump speech. But it's clearly the same kind of idea from his point of view.

BERMAN: Yes, of course. You talk about the Q&A. Yesterday during the Q&A, he basically announced that he wants to eliminate completely the payroll tax, which funds social security. The White House has got to explain how on earth they intend the program to go forward after that. We'll talk about that much more later.

Kaitlan Collins and Dana Bash, thank you both for being with us.

HILL: Well, the White House released some new guidance aimed at reopening schools this fall. How will districts deal with outbreaks which have already forced some schools to shut back down? You won't find that answer in the guidance.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: So, this morning, some 2,000 students and teachers are quarantined after outbreaks at schools that reopened for in-person learning. And that's just a sampling from five states.

CNN's Bianna Goldodryga join us now with an update on how schools are handling this.

[07:30:03]

And, again, this is so confusing because you look to your left, you look to your right in some schools, doing it differently than your own.

END