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Coronavirus Cases Rising in States Across U.S.; CDC Recommends Avoiding Indoor Family Gatherings; Investigation into Unmasking of Individuals in Classified Documents by Obama Administration Officials Finds No Wrongdoing; Interview with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired October 14, 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]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: With a new warning to avoid indoor family gatherings, even small gatherings, as the holiday season approaches.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So this morning, there are no reports that the White House is explicitly embracing a herd immunity strategy. That means basically wanting at least certain people to get infected with coronavirus. Former Harvard medical professor William Haseltine offered this assessment of the theory earlier on NEW DAY.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM HASELTINE, FORMER PROFESSOR, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL: Herd immunity is another word for mass murder. That is exactly what it is. If you allow this virus to spread as they are advocating, we are looking at two to six million Americans dead, not just this year, but every year.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So the strategy seemingly on display at that super spreader Rose Garden event announcing the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, we now have learned that yet another guest has tested positive, you can see her circle right there. This is the wife of Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia.

We're joined now by CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. And Sanjay, I just want to start with the situation in the country as it stands this morning with coronavirus. More than 50,000 new cases reported yesterday, hospitalizations which is something that I watch very carefully, at a level that we haven't seen since the end of August, and now actually at a very steep upward rise. So what concerns you most this morning?

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, no, I'm very concerned about that hospitalization rate as well, because even when we look at the infection numbers, it's always been this sort of thing where you get up really high, and then if you have a couple day drop it may look like things are improving. But the hospitalization rates, as you see there, really tell the story. And we know in many places around the country some of their critical care beds, their intensive care unit beds are starting to get quite full, over 70 percent full. And that's a concern even going into flu season typically when you add into this this twin-demic of coronavirus and flu, that's going to be a big problem.

I've been talking to people who have been planning around the country, and they're starting to look, especially in colder weather states, at buildings in some of these bigger cities that could potentially be transformed, as you saw in New York, you the Javits Center and things like that, looking at other buildings here for possible overflow capacity. So this is a real concern. We've seen it before, as you mentioned, back in April. We're sort of seeing that same story more widespread now around the country in terms of planning for that surge of patients.

CAMEROTA: And then, Sanjay, this morning to see that split screen, it's so stark, of the maps, the graphs that you're looking at, the data, and President Trump's rallies, where most people are unmasked, there is no social distancing, people are yelling and shouting, President Trump is now mixing in with the crowd here. We had seen Governor DeSantis, Ron DeSantis, giving people high-fives, just all of the things that you are not supposed to be doing if you didn't want to spread coronavirus.

And now, for a while we thought, gosh, why are they doing this? Could they possibly not -- could they possibly be clueless as to how dangerous this is? But, no, now this morning we have actual information that the strategy at the White House that has gained a foot hold is herd immunity. We've talked about this. Dr. Scott Atlas, who now has the president's ear has been pushing this. But it's a real thing now. This isn't just theoretical. This isn't just, oh, maybe we should go with herd immunity. We now know that they have this paper from a libertarian think tank that suggests that herd immunity, particularly for younger people, not necessarily for senior citizens, is the way to go. And it looks like, and from what the president is saying, they're kind of embracing that and going with it.

GUPTA: Right. Right. I've got to say, first of all, just looking at those images of the rallies, it really is so stark. We have been talking like this for eight months now every morning, right? And I watch those rallies, no one wearing masks, people aggregating like that. It really does make me think that for eight months people have been screaming about this from the rooftops, and we're still going in the wrong direction. It's not made a single bit of difference with a significant percentage of the population.

It just -- I think historically my grandkids will read about this one day and think, so what exactly did you do for a living, granddad? So you were talking about this stuff and nothing really happened as a result. Good for you. It's really, really worrisome, this anti-science sort of movement that's really, really had a lot of fuel now.

With regard to herd immunity, it's interesting because people will say, well, this is a prevailing school of thought. It should be discussed.

[08:05:00]

The reality is that it's already been addressed in many ways around the world and historically. It's a bad idea. I can show you some of the numbers, first of all, in terms of what is likely to happen if you just start letting the infection run free. We know, for example, right now about 10 percent of the population has been infected with this virus, and how many people have died, some 216,000 people have died. Start doing the math here. So you need to get to 60 percent to 70 percent, just let the virus run free. That's where you get the million to million-and-a-half number of people who might die. And on top of it, as you guys have been discussing, we don't even know how long that immunity lasts from someone who has been I'm infected like this. It could be that it lasts a few months, they get infected again. We don't even know how long the symptoms last. Even in people who have milder symptoms they could still have long hauling symptoms, and that goes for young and old alike. It's a terrible strategy.

If you go to this website that is sort of advocating for this, the Barrington website, they'll say that they have some 36,000 signatories on here, but, in fact, there's only 38 confirmed signatures on there. This isn't some prevailing against school of thought. This has been an issue that's been addressed. It would lead to lots of deaths, hospitals becoming overwhelmed, and it's not even clear that it would work in any way. So herd immunity is not the way to go.

BERMAN: It does seem that both from a public health perspective and a political perspective it is something the president is leaning into. We will have to watch over the next few days whether he comes out and uses the words.

Sanjay, I'm also struck by the warning from the CDC director about small family gatherings. We look at big public events like the rallies, it's easy to see what's wrong with a rally like that, but small family gatherings, why do you think the CDC director is raising those concerns?

GUPTA: I think there's two things. One is that we were getting data going back to even May in California, for example, where they had more stringent lockdowns in some areas and still seeing these clusters of cases, and at that point the epidemiologists were saying this is happening primarily from gatherings at house parties, people inside at house parties, not going to a bar or restaurant, but you started to see clusters. So that was sort of some of the first clue.

I think as we go into the colder months what we've seen historically with other respiratory viruses is that as people are clustering inside and, again, even within their own homes around the holidays, you do see these outbreaks. If you have both coronavirus and flu sort of compounded this year, that could make it much worse.

I do want to share that I think it's, on a more positive note, this question often comes up. I have the virus, I have the infection, I'm living at home -- what is the likelihood that my family members are going to get it? Well, actually, it's quite low. What they find is that 60 percent to 90 percent of the time, according to some of these studies, your family members don't get it, OK? There is a really low dispersion factor, meaning about 10 percent of people account for 80 percent of the infections spread this this country. So just keep that in the back of the mind.

But as you go into a house party, you're starting to bring in other people who may come in from out of town, vulnerable people such as parents, grandparents that may come in. That's when you are starting to actually create a problem with possibly increasing that dispersion factor and passing the virus on to more vulnerable people. So that's one of the concerns. It's just this year they're saying, hey, look, you have got to really limit those gatherings because those could potentially become these new cluster hot spots.

CAMEROTA: I know it's just really hard to hear as we're approaching Thanksgiving. Everybody was really pulling for us to be able to all get together over Thanksgiving. It's so important. And I know we are out of time, there's still many weeks left and we will see what happens, but at the moment it's not looking promising. Sanjay --

GUPTA: I just had this conversation with my parents who live in Florida. They wanted to come up. It's tough. I don't want to minimize that part of it at all. I know. But it might be the right decision this year.

CAMEROTA: We will keep talking. Sanjay, thank you very much. Really appreciate you.

All right, developing overnight, the "Washington Post" reports that the much hyped Justice Department probe into the unmasking of Americans in intelligence reports by the Obama administration has turned up nothing, despite years of promises and threats by President Trump into what he called a big scandal.

Joining us now, CNN political correspondent Abby Phillip, and CNN legal analyst Laura Coates. Laura, are you surprised to find that this long investigation on the taxpayer's dime by the Department of Justice, no report, no findings of any wrongdoing?

LAURA COATES, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Gosh, I'm so shocked, Alisyn, that a conspiracy theory could not be corroborated. This was something that, politically speaking, Trump was trying to use to suggest that an otherwise normal practice of identifying people who had been redacted from documents in order to better understand a classified document, that somehow this was going to transform itself into an overall conspiracy and an overall witch-hunt again against President Trump.

[08:10:14]

And so I'm not shocked to find that this had no results. What I am shocked to find, however, is that we may not actually see the full report. The last time there was a very important months' long plus investigation into an allegation, we had the Attorney General William Barr come out to give not only a preface, but also a summary and a press conference about the idea of no findings. And now it seems all I'm hearing is crickets. So I think this is something that the American people should be aware of and be cognizant of about why haven't we heard more about this no results finding when they bent over backwards during the last case.

BERMAN: We really haven't seen William Barr for days on a number of subjects, including the plots to kidnap the governor of Michigan or Virginia.

Laura, just one more question on this. You say we haven't seen a report yet. To me this is an indictment of what can happen in our culture now when the president yells and screams about something, and an entire television station devotes days and weeks yelling and screaming about something that really was never there. Unmasking is something that is common and legal, but because they yelled and screamed so much, they willed it into the public discussion. And now it has gone away in a way that probably should have been predictable.

COATES: As a former DOJ civil rights attorney and trial attorney, it is frustrating for the people who still work there to not have to just be maybe a pundit on TV talking about this, but to actually have that stomping and tantrum turn into time away from otherwise actual cases, cases that could yield results in the pursuit of justice. So you have this sort of tantrum that translates into lost work and squandering of resources for the federal government on the taxpayer's dime.

You think about this, John, this is an otherwise common practice. And the reason they are so upset about not having this be available is because of the election date. They hoped to use this to show that somebody who was prior a part of the Obama administration was somehow still under some sort of investigation. And so now that you have the squandering of resources, the deadline of the election, it really suggests that they were trying to use federal resources for partisan interests, and that just cannot stand.

CAMEROTA: Abby, this does raise the question, where is Attorney General Bill Barr? He also hasn't weighed in on that kidnapping plot to kidnap two sitting U.S. governors, which is unusual. And he was at that Amy Coney Barrett event, I think, which ended up being this super spreader, 34 people connected to the White House have become infected with coronavirus. I don't want to suggest that he's sick, but where is he? When was the last time he was seen?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, for starters, he said that he's been taking negative tests. They haven't said anything about his health. But I do think he is in a perilous position right now with the president because of all of these investigations that seem to have not borne the fruit that President Trump has wanted. And even Barr himself from the very beginning suggested even before these inquiries were actually launched that there was wrongdoing that he was trying to find. He seemed to already believe that people in the Obama administration had done something wrong. And so far there's been very little if not -- pretty much no evidence of that.

I think it bears repeating that this is something that not just President Trump wanted, but Barr wanted. And I thought at the beginning when he said, OK, let's get an investigation going, ultimately that might have been the right call because look at where we are today. There is nothing to show for all of this banging on the table about unmasking. And I think that that's important for the American public to know. But I do think that you're right, Barr should be the one out here saying, you know what, we looked into it and nothing has been found. Instead he's been absent, because, I think, because President Trump has made it very clear that if he doesn't deliver the goods, he's going to be pretty upset. The president wants these results implicating his predecessors before the election. It looks very likely now at this point that that is not going to happen.

BERMAN: Abby, overnight we saw both presidential candidates laying out who I think their target audiences are in a way, we talked about this before. It's very unsubtle. So listen to the president making his plea, and also former vice president Joe Biden.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Suburban women, will you please like me?

(APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: Please. Please. I saved your damn neighborhood, OK?

[08:15:01]

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: It's become painfully clear as this careless, arrogant, reckless COVID response has caused one of the worst tragedies in American history. The only senior that Donald Trump cares about, the only senior is the senior Donald Trump.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So is that how it works, Abby? Suburban women, will you please like me? Is that how you get people to like you? Because I've been doing it wrong if that's all it takes.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: You've been playing hard to get.

BERMAN: Yeah.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's kind of like telling black voters, what the hell do you have to lose? Just go ahead and vote for me and see what happens.

It's almost iconic, but in the wrong kind of way for President Trump. I mean, look, he's tried all kinds of things, he's tried, you know, warning them that minorities and low become people are going to invade their suburbs and that Senator Cory Booker is going to be the sort of boogie man that she should be afraid of. None of that has worked.

And so, he's trying the strategy, it might be all that is left, but what I think is really interesting about those two clips back to back like that is that President Trump is literally -- he is embodying the thing that is making it hard for him to appeal to women voters, and also making it hard for him to appeal to older voters, to seniors, by holding these kinds of rallies in which you can clearly see outside of the people standing directly behind him in the audience no mask wearing, mass event, the kind of super spreader event that people have been warning about and that is what is teeing up Joe Biden to just simply say, hey, I'm not going to do that thing.

And I think that that's why those two clips back to back really kind of tell the whole story of this campaign right now.

BERMAN: Abby Phillip, Laura Coates, great to have you both. Have a wonderful morning. Appreciate it.

LAURA COATES, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Thank you.

PHILLIP: Good to see you, guys.

BERMAN: So New York was the early epicenter, early epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States. What's being done to prevent another surge as we enter into the colder months?

Governor Andrew Cuomo joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:20:51]

CAMEROTA: As the coronavirus cases surge heading into the winter, the national map this morning is a sea of red and orange. No green, which would mean that cases were going down.

New cases also rising in the state of New York after a brutal spring, the state had been able to flatten the curve. So what's happening today?

Joining us now is New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. He has just written a new book about lessons learned from the coronavirus pandemic. It's called "American Crisis".

Good morning, Governor.

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D), NEW YORK: Good to be with you, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Good to see you.

So, let's talk about what's happening in New York. We have some graphs. Cases have gone up in the past month. Hospitalizations have gone up in the past month, as has the positivity rate in New York.

So, on a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst, what's your anxiety level about New York this morning and the direction we're heading in?

CUOMO: Well, as you know, Alisyn, my anxiety level -- my anxiety level has been at a ten since COVID started. But we're entering a new phase with COVID that we have to understand because this is not going away anytime soon. I think best case scenario, we're looking at another year by the time even if everything works out well.

And what we're seeing now is while the states overall -- my state's overall infection rate is one of the lowest in the country, one of the lowest on the globe, what you see are what we call mini clusters. That's what this virus is going to be doing. It's going to be popping up in small areas. One sweet 16 party created 40 cases. One bar that violated the rule, dozens of cases.

And a state needs the sophistication where you're doing more testing, more contact tracing and you can attack that small cluster. We've now identified many clusters in the state which are small geographic areas, there may be two, three miles, square miles, but we then rush in with resources to make sure we stamp it out there.

We're now having issues in the orthodox Jewish community in New York where because of their religious practices, et cetera, we're seeing a spread, but we see it, we know it, we understand it because we're doing more testing than anyone else and then you have to attack them. But this is going to be the next year, and those are the lessons we have to learn from the past seven months.

CAMEROTA: So -- so let's talk about that. So you're saying what you predict right now for the next year there will be pockets and you will be able to stamp it out, another pocket and you will be able to stamp it out. Is that your number one lesson from -- I mean, what you write in the book and what you've learned since spring?

CUOMO: Yes, with a caveat. To identify that mini cluster, you have to be doing extensive testing. Many states are now reducing their testing. They're doing fewer tests than they did seven months ago.

This is the President Trump logic of denial. If you don't test, you don't find the cases and if you don't find the cases you don't have the disease. That's just wrong.

If you can't identify these mini clusters, they're going to spread and then you're going to have a state-wide problem, which is what you're seeing in many states. You're seeing the infection rate go up all across the state and they don't know where it's coming from. They haven't identified the mini clusters because they don't have the sophistication to do it.

That's a formula for disaster, Alisyn. That means we would have learned nothing from the past seven months. What we're doing here in New York, because we did learn the hard way, a tremendous number of tests, true sophistication, identify the mini cluster and pounce on it before it can spread.

CAMEROTA: One of the things you address in your book is the criticism that you got about the deaths in nursing homes and the directive from you or your Department of Health that sick COVID patients had to be transferred out of hospitals to nursing homes.

Do you wish that you had done something differently on that?

CUOMO: Well, I wish I had done things differently on the entire situation, right? I wish what we know now we knew when it started. I wish that we knew that it actually was not a China virus, it was a European virus, and it came from France and Italy, and it had been coming here for months before the federal government told us.

I wish that we told there was asymptomatic spread. I wish I had done masks earlier, even though we were the first state in the nation to do it, we should have done it even earlier.

On the nursing homes, you have to separate the political propaganda from the facts here. The White House has been very good at blaming Democratic governors for deaths in nursing homes. People did die in nursing homes and it was terrible, but that's where this virus preys -- on the old and the weak.

There was never a directive in New York state that said nursing homes must accept COVID-positive patients. That's political propaganda. We said -- we did follow a federal rule that said you can't discriminate against people who have COVID, not in a hospital, not in a nursing home. But --

CAMEROTA: But you're saying that you -- but just let me be clear. Your Department of Health and or you didn't tell hospitals to send patients back to nursing homes?

Because it's not just Republicans, Governor. I mean, as you know, there's Democrats. I mean, there is a Democratic assemblyman who says for me, the biggest question still remains is who made the call to transfer the patients and the impact of transferring those patients back and forth.

So, that's -- I mean, look, I could go on. There's obviously patient family members who think that that was a directive from your office.

CUOMO: Yeah, no, look, the White House is very good at spreading misinformation, but here are the facts -- the directive was a federal directive that said you can't discriminate against a person because of COVID. We never in the state told the nursing home, you have to accept the COVID-positive person. Never happened.

(CROSSTALK)

CAMEROTA: But where else could they have gone? If they were being taken out of hospital because hospitals were overrun, then where else could they have gone?

CUOMO: Good question. Hospitals were never overwhelmed. We always had excess capacity in hospitals. We always had excess capacity in emergency hospitals that we built.

So we were never in a situation where we had to have a nursing home accept a COVID-positive person.

(CROSSTALK)

CAMEROTA: There was never an instruction given to hospitals that nursing home patients had to leave and go back to nursing homes and you're saying there was never an instruction to nursing homes that they had to take them?

CUOMO: There was never a point in time where we needed beds and said to a nursing home, you must take a COVID-positive person. The law is exactly the opposite, Alisyn. The law in this state says a nursing home may not accept a person unless they can care for that person and do it without endangering the other people in the facility.

So, we never got to the point -- other states have, we didn't in New York -- we never got to the point where we had a scarcity of beds. We only had 18,000 people in our hospitals at the end of the day. We have a 50,000-bed capacity. We had thousands of extra emergency beds. So it never happened.

But the point you make is right.

CAMEROTA: Yeah.

CUOMO: The White House is very good at misinformation and a lot of people believe the president still -- you know, it's a great title, president, and people think you're supposed to believe the president. They are very good at spreading misinformation.

And it was mean and it was cruel because it's bad enough to lose a loved one, when you're then told, well, maybe you didn't have to lose that loved one, that really makes the pain even worse.

CAMEROTA: Definitely. I mean, obviously. And that's what we have heard from lots of loved ones of nursing home patients who ended up dying.

Governor Cuomo, we're out of time. Thank you very much for all of the information. Again, the book is "American Crisis" and we will talk to you again very soon.

CUOMO: Always a pleasure to be with you, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Thanks, Governor.

OK. New details on the plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan over her handling of coronavirus. The FBI now says the suspects were targeting yet another governor. We have the details for you, next.

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