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New Day

CDC Says, Vaccinated Americans no Longer Need Masks in most Cases; Capitol Officer Speaks on Riot's Trauma as GOP Whitewashes. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired May 14, 2021 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN NEW DAY: This is good news, Chad. There's that mask-induced upper lip sweat. There is the mask knee (ph). Perhaps this is a season where we won't have to deal with these things again. How much sun are we talking about?

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: All weekend long, Brianna. This is going to be really maybe the best weekend of the season so far. It's 49 in Ottawa and it's 45 in Charlotte, kind of upside down on the map, but warmer air is on the way. When that happens, severe weather can be on the way as well. We'll look for that in the plains today and tomorrow, and even through into Sunday.

Temperatures will be warming up. In fact, it will be well above normal across the entire eastern half of the country. The west, the Midwest is where it will remain cloudy and cool. There go the below normal temperatures, here come the above normal temperatures.

And if you're complaining about these 38s and 40s, you know what, more warm weather is on the way. You'll love temperatures like today when these numbers change to the 90s in just a couple of days.

New Day continues right now.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: I'm John Berman alongside Brianna Keilar.

On this New Day, America unmasked, falling cases and increased vaccinations mean no more mask indoors or out for vaccinated people. And the president has a message for those who have yet to get their shot.

KEILAR: Hesitancy on the Hill. CNN has the names and the numbers of who is vaccinated and who isn't in Congress.

BERMAN: CNN speaks with the Capitol Police officer who faced off with rioters on January 6th, calling the lies aimed at rewriting history of that fateful day a slap in the face.

KEILAR: And a state of emergency expands in Japan and it's just weeks before the Olympics. We will speak with one former athlete calling on Tokyo to cancel the summer games. BERMAN: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. Is a beautiful Friday, May 14th, and President Biden calls it a grit milestone and a great day for America. The president touting the new CDC guidance, no mask needed if you are fully vaccinated. That's indoors and outdoors almost everywhere. He says vaccinated Americans have earned the right to greet each other with a smile.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: And for now, after a year of hard work and so much sacrifice, the rule is very simple. Get vaccinated or wear a mask until you do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Well, that is a big caveat given that only a third of Americans are fully vaccinated. So what risk do those other two-thirds pose, and will this new guidance act as an incentive for those who have not yet gotten their shot? We have a lot of questions, which we know you do too, and we have the great Dr. Sanjay Gupta to answer all of them.

Okay, Sanjay, first of, let's talk about what went on behind the scenes ahead of this CDC decision. This is a huge one.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: A really big decision. And I'll preface by saying I had a chance to speak to Dr. Walensky after the briefing as well. So we got a little bit more of that back-and-forth. It was a big decision and I think it was really up until the last minute a back-and-forth by various people at the CDC trying to look at this data and come to this sort of recommendation. I think even a week ago, it was not at all clear that they were going to do this, just to give you an idea of the pace of this.

But I think it was a few things. First of all, we know that the case numbers have been dropping. We can show that. You've seen that for some time. They wanted to be sure that that was going to be a continued trend, and it certainly looks like it is.

I think one of the big things as well, you remember, we know that the vaccines are very good at protecting you from getting sick. There were two questions still. One was, how good are they at preventing asymptomatic infections, meaning you could still carry the virus even though you've been vaccinated.

There was data that came out of Israel. I think we've talked about this on the program at the end of last week. This was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, but basically showed that after two doses, you're fully vaccinated, the chance of being symptomatic, greatly reduced, 94 percent protective, but asymptomatic as well, 90 percent protective. So, not perfect, but really good at preventing what are these so-called breakthrough infections.

But then the final piece of data, which I think was the most critical perhaps for Dr. Walensky was the emerging data that basically shows if you've been vaccinated, even if you've been infected, even if you had test positive for COVID, the chance that you'd be able to spread that virus was really, really low. You simply don't create a high enough viral load in the body. That was a critical piece of data for, I think, the CDC and Dr. Walensky to go ahead and do this.

[07:05:00]

I got to tell you, it was very surprising, I mean, having covered this story so intensely for 14 months. That was a turn on a dime. I thought it was going to be a much slower sort of transition process into this, but basically saying, look, if you're vaccinated, no need for a mask, basically, in any situation whereas obviously a very significant move.

BERMAN: I'm so glad you pointed out breakthrough infection finding, Sanjay, that even if you get it after being vaccinated, you're really unlikely to spread it. That is key.

We have more questions about how this is going to affect all of us in real life, practical questions, right, Sanjay. So, how hard will it be for businesses and local governments to navigate these new guidelines?

GUPTA: I think this is going to be the biggest challenge, you know? And I think the CDC is basically saying, hey, look, we're here to make the recommendations and now communities, states, businesses, private, public, whatever, are going to have to sort of figure this out on their own.

And I can tell just even overnight, you're seeing basically the reaction, Nevada, for example, they basically decided even before this, we're just going to follow whatever the CDC says. So, now the CDC is saying you don't need to wear masks indoors. Their casinos, crowded areas indoors, are no longer going to have mask mandates.

Now, the guidance says that if you're unvaccinated, you still need to wear a mask but there's also no mandate to check for vaccination status. So, that's going to be a really tricky one. State of Hawaii, on the other hand, says, look, we're going to take it slow. We're still going to have a statewide mask mandate, Los Angeles County saying the same thing, Minnesota saying the opposite. So you're going to get a mishmash here and it's going to be left on these small businesses, grocery stores, movie theaters, whatever, to determine how they're going to do this.

One thing that doesn't appear to be at least at the federal level, something that's going to happen, is some sort of vaccine passport, the idea that you'd have a passport, you show it, and therefore you could definitively not wear your mask, go through another line, whatever it may be. That could happen at private venues, like sporting events and concerts and things like that, but this is going to be a very interesting and I think even maybe a tense time.

I mean, so, as a local business owner, what is going to be your sort of obligation then to say, hey, are you vaccinated or not? Are you even allowed to really ask that? You are allowed to ask it if it's a private organization, but who's going to do that? That remains to be seen. KEILAR: Yes. I mean, we do have passports, right? In a way, we have these cards that show if we are vaccinate or not. We have our vaccination cards.

Another question from a viewer, there was always a question about air travel for vaccinated people. What changed with that guidance?

GUPTA: So this is really interesting. And Kaitlan Collins was at that briefing, and she asked Rochelle Walensky, Dr. Walensky, about this. And she sort of -- Dr. Walensky sort of passed on the question and then got asked again and passed on it again. I asked her and I said, look, what is the guidance and explain it to me. And the guidance still is, right now, that if you're on these types of airplanes, trains, buses, you still need to wear a mask, period. Vaccinated, unvaccinated, it doesn't matter, you still need to wear a mask.

Now, how does that make sense, right? You just said vaccinated people don't need to wear masks indoors. How does this make sense? And what she basically said is, we're making recommendations at this point for individuals around the country, but entities, in this case, the aviation entity industry, can basically make their own guidelines. And they probably don't want to be in a position, like we are just saying, of trying to figure out vaccination status of every passenger on a plane.

So for now, they're going to still recommend -- they're going to mandate, frankly, on planes that you still wear a mask regardless of whether you show vaccination status.

BERMAN: Look, Harry Enten has talked to us about some of the overlay between people who are unvaccinated and people who are reluctant to wear a mask. And, unfortunately, there's a big overlap there. So that's part of the concern going forward.

I want to bring in Kizzmekia Corbett. She is the NIH's lead scientist for coronavirus vaccine research, who played a key role in the development of the Moderna vaccine.

Dr. Corbett, first of all, thank you for being with us, thank you for all of your work. The CDC just lifted mask restrings because of you. I mean, not just you but because of your work. So, how does it feel to be at least partially responsible for the freeing the faces of America?

KIZZMEKIA CORBETT, NIH'S LEADER SCIENTIST FOR CORONAVIRUS VACCINE RESEARCH: That's always what we were aiming for. We were aiming for a vaccine that will allow us to get back to some level of normalcy. And so we're all very happy about this.

KEILAR: Very happy is an understatement on this show for sure. You are so modest, I will say. This is amazing what your contribution has been, and I hope you are feeling the love for what you have done. I got a shot in my arm and I nearly cried. I know people have felt that way just from the person giving me my shot. And I know people want to know, Kizzi, if and when we're going to need another, if and when we're going to need a booster shot. [07:10:02]

CORBETT: Time will tell. That is something that we are assessing on a day-to-day basis, really determining whether or not we will need to have a booster based on the waning of the immune response where people who have gotten their two doses so far. So we'll let you know if we need a booster. It is plausible that we might.

Boosting for vaccines is actually something that is very normal, as we all know, so we'll keep you updated on that.

BERMAN: Just talk to us again about something Sanjay talked about, and this has to do with our ability to go around mask-less. People who are vaccinated, who still get infected with coronavirus, the asymptomatic infections from it, what have you found in terms of their ability to pass on coronavirus?

CORBETT: Very, very low. Transmission from vaccinated people onward is very, very low. And, you know, the reason why is because the purpose of these vaccines and how they work is actually by allowing your body or not allowing your body actually to replicate the virus. And so you don't really have any virus there or at least high levels that are enough to pass on to someone else.

KEILAR: Sanjay, you must have a question for Kizzi.

CORBETT: Hi, Sanjay.

GUPTA: How are you doing? I've got to say on a personal note, this is dating back to last spring. Kizzi, you'll remember, I think, you were on the program. We were talking about vaccines at that point. And it was early, early days. And you said to me that it is quite possible we would have a vaccine by the end of the year in 2020.

And I remember thinking, come on, no one really -- that's so aggressive, it's so fast. And you were right. You were right. And you were the first person to really point that out to me. So thank you for that and thank you for everything that you've done.

One graph I want to show to the point that Brianna was just making about just the impact of these vaccines, we saw as soon as the vaccine started rolling out just the impact, and red line is people in long- term care facilities and vulnerable populations. Look how fast that dropped. And then as soon as the rest of the population started getting those vaccines in arms, it dropped really fast as well. Did you expect that rapid impact, Dr. Corbett?

CORBETT: You know, with vaccines that are above 90 percent efficacy, absolutely. It always became a point of where we have the vaccine and now all we need to do is get people vaccinated to really start to see those types of trends and decreasing of disease and the burden of disease all over. So we're very happy to see those trends and rapidly so.

We obviously have some ways to go. There are still millions of people that need to be vaccinated, but we're on the right track. KEILAR: Let's take a moment, if we can, here, Kizzi, just to appreciate how we got to this point, and to Sanjay's point, how quickly we got here. You obviously had a big role in this. Let's watch some of Sanjay's new CNN film called, Race for the Vaccine.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CORBETT: Three out of four of the mice that were dosed with one microgram were protected against viral replication in their nasal turbinates.

GUPTA (voice over): The lab work was lead by Kizzmekia or Kizzi Corbett, thenjust 34 years old.

CORBETT: Ironically enough, I was interested in coronaviruses because most other people were not. You want to build a niche, and so you want to tap into some uncharted territory.

GUPTA: Kizzi first came to NIH as a teenage summer intern in Barney's lab.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I asked her, so how would you envision yourself in 10 or 15 years from now? And she said, I would like to have your job. So, that was unique in my years of interviewing students.

GUPTA: At the start of 2020 when she was running a tiny research team of mostly students --

CORBETT: In the case of SARS-Cov2, this receptor is the ACE2 receptor.

GUPTA: Kizzi could not have guessed that she would soon be leading the charge against a global pandemic.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: Kizzi, what has this been like for you? I mean, it is amazing just watching you from being such a young professional, and you're still a young professional. What has this been like for you personally?

CORBETT: I describe it as a whirlwind. It really has been hard to describe. We've been so focused on the end goal. And so it's hard to think about how our lives have changed over the last year-and-a-half.

But, you know, overall, I think that my feeling is just -- I'm grateful to be able do this in this way.

KEILAR: Well, thank God for you, Kizzi. Thank God for you.

BERMAN: I have to say, like America gets to smile today or at least we get to see America smiling today largely because of you. So thank you, thank you so much for the work you've done.

[07:15:00] I also have to say, you know, what a great advertisement for internships, in general. If an internship led to America being unmasked today, man, did that internship go well. Thank you so much.

CORBETT: I can imagine that the NIH is getting floods of internship applications.

BERMAN: All right. Well, we appreciate your work. And, Sanjay, we always appreciate you. So, thank you very much.

And be sure to tune in to the all new CNN film, Race for the Vaccine. It premieres tomorrow night at 9:00 P.M. only on CNN.

The Capitol Police officer who came face-to-face with rioters inside the Capitol on January 6th speaking about the lies being spread to whitewash what happened.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OFFICER HARRY DUNN, U.S. CAPITOL POLICE: I don't know how you can convince people. This has nothing to do with politics. It was an all- out attack.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: More from our exclusive interview coming up.

KEILAR: And New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ties to explain what is or isn't harassment. An attorney for one of his accusers is calling his remarks, quote, jaw-dropping.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:20:00]

KEILAR: Capitol Police are in the midst of a crisis. This year has brought new levels of trauma for officers, threatening morale as some Republican lawmakers downplay the insurrection, act like it didn't happen.

Last hour in an exclusive interview, one officer who defended the Capitol, who thought he was going to die during the insurrection, spoke to us about the pain caused by politicians who are whitewashing the attack.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: We heard Officer Fanone pleading, saying, I have kids, I have kids, trying to save his own life. You said you didn't think you were going to make it through alive there. And, again, I don't want to make this about the members of Congress. You work around them and near them, but you know there's a notion out in the country among some people, these people, they weren't out there for harm. I mean, how do you convince them?

DUNN: I can relate to Officer Fanone when it comes to that. I have a daughter. And I had a moment where I didn't think that there was a possibility I might not make it home. So I relate to that. And it's saddening because you know what you went through, and I felt like that's a lot of time where officers find solitude in each other is because nobody really understands what we went through, even with thousands of hours of footage of what we went through, it's hard to believe that people still deny what really happened.

How do you look at that tape and see anything else than an assault? I don't get it. I don't understand.

KEILAR: Have you wondered why some people either lie or they don't want to believe what they're seeing with their very eyes? Do you think that they're fooling themselves or do you think that they know that they are misrepresenting what we can see?

DUNN: I just think people, in general, not just politicians, people, in general, have a problem with being wrong. It's okay to say, hey, I got it wrong, or, hey, I didn't understand that it was this way, or my initial thoughts were this, but once the film is released, whoa, I didn't know that.

And when you have footage released and people telling you firsthand experiences what they went through, for people to contradict that, it's insulting, it's slap in the face and it's like -- it's kind of like we're being dismissed like our opinions and what we experienced didn't matter. So, it's just frustrating.

KEILAR: You've talked, Officer Dunn, about rioters calling you the N word over and over on January 6. At one point, there was a crowd of you described about 20 people who were hurling that slur at you. How do you think racism -- now that you've had a chance to speak with other officers and you're working day in and day out with other officers, because it sounds like you are talking about how you're moving through this emotionally, how do you think racism has compounded the experience that you and black officers have had to deal with this the last few months?

DUNN: Racism didn't just appear a few months ago. Everything is made public now. It's been occurring, I guess, since the beginning of time, you know? Working through it, you have to -- I guess the best way to put it -- I'm thinking about what I'm trying to say -- the best way to put it is when you see racism, you have to call it out, you have to confront it, you have to not just brush it to the side and look the other way. When you see something wrong, that's what you have to do. You have to stand up against it.

And the more people are aware of it -- you know, I'm an optimistic person, so I believe that most people in the world are good, so most people know about something, they're going to push back against it. So, continue to call it out, speak out against it.

People feel emboldened when more people allow things to happen, good or bad. So the spike in racism that you see, it came from something, you know? Draw your interpretations of what you think it may have come from, but people felt emboldened to be racist blatantly, but we need more people to speak out against it when it's clear that that's what happened and, you know, say that it's not okay.

[07:25:10]

Continue to push back against it. It's not going anywhere, but I guess we want to push a racist into a little hole, you know, because they're not going away.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: Joining me now to discuss this and more is National Political Reporter Alexi McCammond. And I wonder what you think covering politics in Washington. When you hear that a Capitol Police officer who's kind of grappling with the fact that you have Republican lawmakers just acting like what happened to him and so many other officers didn't happen to him.

ALEXI MCCAMMOND, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, it's not only defying his own reality and lived experience that he documented to you so well but it's defying the facts that Americans all over the country watched play out in real-tie on their T.V.s on January 6th.

As you know, I think 140 officers were injured, folks lost their lives, people had their eyes gouged out. This was not a normal day. But I was thinking back to then-President Trump after that horrific Charlottesville rally with white supremacists, when he said there were very fine people on both sides. And now you see Republicans taking a page out of that same playbook with a similar but worse situation in some ways.

KEILAR: Yes. It's really -- it's despicable to hear them say it, to say that this didn't essentially happen.

I want to talk about Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, who's currently embattled. He said something. He was asked about accusations of harassment by former staff members, and what he said got a lot of attention. This is how he responded.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D-NY): I never said anything I believe is inappropriate.

Harassment is not making someone feel uncomfortable. That is not harassment. If I just made you feel uncomfortable, that is not harassment. That's you feeling uncomfortable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: I mean, I just want to be clear here, because even by his own standards that he has outlined in the past, the accusations against him would meet the standard of harassment. But why does Governor Cuomo think it's up to him to personally determine what harassment is and is not now?

MCCAMMOND: Right. I mean, I think it's a good example of the post- MeToo movement. There is still a lot of need for long-term consistent reforms and solutions and even how folks know how to talk about these types of things. He might not understand sort of the ins and outs of what harassment means, but that's something that him and his staff need to figure out.

And I think a big part of this, as you know well, is that it's about intent versus impact. So whether or not the person accused had a different intention in their actions, the impact of the person who was harassed or whatever is what really matters. And that's what's totally missing from his response.

KEILAR: He doesn't seem apologetic or remorseful. He seems kind of emboldened. Why is that?

MCCAMMOND: That's politicians, right, especially now, politicians today. And I think especially in the post-Trump era, we've seen folks, whether it's Matt Gaetz or even some Democrats try to take this strategy of defiance to really push their way through a difficult, controversial, potentially scandalous situation to really try to buy their time and wait for an investigation to happen. But in those moments, we see how these missteps happen and the language is just not there to really address the gravity of the situation regardless of if you didn't feel you didn't do what you're being accused of.

KEILAR: I will just say, it seems like more contrite. Andrew Cuomo was kind of more effective in the P.R. round than sort of this I don't really give a care Andrew Cuomo that we're seeing.

But let's talk about something that has happened in recent days around the halls of Congress. Republican QAnon-sympathizing Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene verbally accosted Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This happened outside the House chamber on Wednesday afternoon. Greene was shouting at her, asking why she supports Antifa. She was saying, why do you support terrorists? They're not actually a designated terrorist organization. She claimed that Black Lives Matter was as well.

How do you this proceeding? Considering if there's a threat of like an ethics action, how does that do anything but work in Marjorie Taylor Greene's favor? She would love to have this sense of being persecuted.

MCCAMMOND: Yes. I mean, as we've seen not in just the last couple of months but under the Trump era, there are very little, if any, consequences for Republican members who totally obliterate decorum, and I think that's being nice. When I read the accounts of Marjorie Taylor Greene harassing Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, it reminded almost as if it were a Twitter exchange come to real life, right?

That's not how folks talk to each other in a civil and respectful way, and that's because Marjorie Taylor Greene is a right-wing superstar on the internet. So she does this type of behavior offline in real life that reinforces this kind of celebrity online. And if democrats come after her with these procedural things in Congress, she can just, to your point, use it to her advantage, try to fundraise off of it, use it to vilify Democrats more, and that's her whole goal.

KEILAR: It's such an interesting point you make. [07:30:00]

It is sort of this online trolling come to life. Alexi, it's great to see you. Thanks for coming on.

MCCAMMOND: It's good to see you. Thanks for having me.

KEILAR: And next hour, House Republicans.