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Dr. Chavi Karkowsky is Interfered about COVID Effect son Health Care Workers; Four Broward County Teachers Die of COVID; Greg Sankey is Interviewed about his Plea for Vaccinations. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired August 13, 2021 - 08:30   ET

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

[08:30:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: To get inside these hospitals. So I want to thank you for that. Thank you for going and talking to these people. And to hear that regret. To hear the regret.

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Every single one of them. (INAUDIBLE).

BERMAN: Every single one of them.

LEMON: Everyone.

BERMAN: So if people don't want to take your word for it, Don, and, by the way, I think they should because I think you're 100 percent right, take their word of it.

LEMON: Yes.

BERMAN: Take the people who got sick, who thought, you know, I don't have to do this now, I can wait, or they weren't hearing quite enough, take their word for it because there is 100 percent regret now.

LEMON: Yes. Yes.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: It also, you know, makes -- makes you wonder about this hesitance that we're hearing from so many people, right, to get this. They say, well, it hasn't been around that long. As you point out, this mRNA technology is -- it's pretty, you know, it's been developed, right?

LEMON: Yes.

KEILAR: This vaccine is new.

But if people had cancer and there was a new chemo out, it's not like they would reject getting that chemo.

LEMON: Right.

KEILAR: Right?

LEMON: Right. Yes.

KEILAR: I mean it's just -- it's an interesting thing that we heard from some of those patients there.

LEMON: Yes, and you hear it from a -- from a lot of people. And -- and, you know, they've gotten vaccines as -- as children. And there's a reason why we don't have polio running rampant in the country. There's a reason why we, you know, take the measles, mumps and rubella shot and that people don't get it. There are breakthrough cases, there are people who still don't believe in vaccines and you may get -- it may pop up in society sometimes, but it's not rampant. It's something that we have taken care of because there is a remedy. There is a cure for it.

And so I just -- look, I -- when I spoke to them, I told each of them, I'm not here to judge you, I'm just here to hear your story. And many of the people -- all of the people I spoke to said, hey, you know, I just -- you know, I didn't think. I was quarantining. I had -- I just didn't know. I didn't know what to believe.

But we know that there are politics involved in this. We need to stop with the politics. This is nothing at all to do with politics. This is about helping each other out so that we are able to be free in society, that we don't have to, you know, wear these any more as we walk around, as we move through life.

And that's really the bottom line. If you -- if you are out -- if you are out there and you are a believer and some sort of God, and especially if you're a Christian here in America, do unto others. And, remember, God created the scientists and the science and the vaccine as well. And so if you believe in anything that has to do with helping other people and a higher power, then that goes beyond just thinking about yourself.

Just remember, Maxine said, I never prayed -- she's been there since the first of the month. She told me, I've never prayed for myself at all. I prayed for the medical workers who are there busting their butts every day, the doctors, the nurses, the people who are cleaning up, the -- I won't tell you all the liquids that go on the floor and all over the beds and all over the walls of the hospital. I pray for those people because they are there, they are the people who are there doing God's work. Don't be selfish.

KEILAR: Don't be selfish.

Don, thank you so much for that wonderful report and the message as well.

And, up next, growing frustration on the front lines. No wonder, right? We're going to talk to one doctor who's not holding back on the state of her mental health.

BERMAN: And the dramatic move by Britney Spears' father. Is this a victory for the free Britney movement?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:37:29] BERMAN: As the United States grapples with another surge of COVID, one doctor is shedding light into the mental health -- the state of mental health among medical workers. She writes, a year ago we worried about dwindling N95 mask supplies and a limited ventilator inventory. Now we're burning through our most irreplaceable health resource, hope.

Dr. Chavi Karkowsky joins us now. She's a high-risk pregnancy doctor and author of "High Risk: Stories of Pregnancy, Birth and the Unexpected."

Dr. Karkowsky, great to see you here.

I think even more than that description I just gave, what you illustrate in this article you just read is the anger, frankly, that is starting to arise among people in the medical community over what they're seeing.

DR. CHAVI KARKOWSKY, HIGH-RISK PREGNANCY DOCTOR: I think that the medical community is tired. Globally, I think we've been through a trauma over the last year and a half. But in the medical community, we were really asked to do heroic things. And many of us signed on for that, right? That's why we became doctors, nurses and other health care workers. But this sort of progressive slog this has become, and especially the feeling that maybe we're not all in this together, makes it really hard for those heroics to continue.

KEILAR: And they're --

KARKOWSKY: That's what I'm hearing.

KEILAR: And there's something specific about this current upswing. And you write about that. You say that people are choosing it. Like, we don't have to go through this. People are choosing it, you say, and intent matters. Intent is the different because a child who goes hungry because their parents can't afford dinner and the one who goes hungry because their parent won't buy them dinner.

KARKOWSKY: I think for the medical community, the feeling that people don't trust science, which, after all, is what I'm bringing to you, right, when you come to me in my office, when you come to me in the operating room. What I have for you is evidence, science, technology, things that I've interpreted into life-saving therapies. And when you don't trust that, and when you don't trust us, it just becomes a really toxic environment to work so hard in for so long.

BERMAN: The phrase that I've heard for the first time, frankly, this past week is "compassion fatigue." What exactly does that mean and how does it manifest itself inside the hospitals?

KARKOWSKY: We talk a lot about compassion fatigue when we talk about these jobs where, at baseline you really need to be so empathetic, so compassionate, so smart at 3:00 in the morning, maybe wearing PPE like Don Lemon was wearing, hot, tired. That is the compassion that's required to do this job. And I'm so proud of all of us that do it. And I think we need to note that when those people can't muster that compassion, basically two things happen. We call those things burn out. People either work burnt out, angry maybe, or tired or exhausted, can't bring their full self to the patient the way they need to, or they leave.

[08:40:04]

And I've gotten a lot of emails from people who have left medicine in the last year and a half. I want to remind you that it takes 20 years to make a really good doctor and sometimes longer, and it only takes a little while for them to leave. And when they leave, or they work burnt out, neither of those is good for all of us.

KEILAR: It's a huge loss, right, a huge loss in expertise, and it doesn't have to happen. And doctors need to be appreciated. I also think that's important. We're seeing people protest them and it makes absolutely no sense.

Dr. Karkowsky, thank you so much for being with us and for writing this. We appreciate it.

KARKOWSKY: Thank you for having me.

KEILAR: So we are getting more on a breaking story out of Florida this morning. This is very sad. There are four teachers in just one school district who have died of COVID in the course of 24 hours. We'll have more from Broward County, next.

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KEILAR: We have some breaking news out of Florida. WFOR is reporting that four teachers from Broward County have died of COVID in a single day.

[08:45:03]

The teachers' union chief told the affiliate that at least three of the four were unvaccinated.

Joining us now is Rosalind Osgood, she is the chair of the Broward County School Board.

We are so -- we are so sorry for the loss of this community. If you can just tell us a little bit about what happened, four teachers in a day.

ROSALIND OSGOOD, CHAIR, BROWARD COUNTY, FLORIDA, SCHOOL BOARD: Yes, we got information on Tuesday that was reported to us, I know of three of those teachers that passed away from COVID in Broward County.

Florida is the epicenter for the COVID-19 virus. In Broward County, our hospitals are now close to being filled with capacity.

We're in a very, very difficult moment in time. We're losing people to COVID or having people get infected with COVID, and then having lifelong complications.

Our district is using our SO2 (ph) funds to incentivize staff to get vaccinated. But there are a lot of people that have still not gotten a vaccination and it is becoming a deadly thing for them not to be vaccinated, or it's becoming very challenging where people are getting COVID and they're living with lifelong complications.

We have not opened schools yet. So that's why the eight of us on our board are adamant that we cannot have people in schools without masks because we are living --

KEILAR: Yes.

OSGOOD: (INAUDIBLE) backlash of people dying with COVID.

KEILAR: You open next week and you have defied the governor and are proceeding with having a mask mandate in your school -- schools.

Does the loss of these teachers affect that battle or the reopening?

OSGOOD: Well, it doesn't affect the reopening and we have made our decisions. We don't have any agenda items to discuss it again. We feel very strongly that it is a responsible decision that we've made as policy makers, as people that care and love the people that work with us, our students. It -- just as moral human beings. You know, you can't take a risk with people's lives. We feel strongly that the lives of our students and staff are invaluable. And we're not willing to play Russian roulette with their lives or take a risk of losing people because we have people in schools without masks.

As we look around the country, we see what happened in Palm Beach, where they opened and in two days they had over 400-plus people that had to quarantine. They had a couple of thousand that opted out because people don't want to send their kids in an environment and have to be worried and traumatized that they are taking a risk or gambling as to whether they get COVID or not. And we don't have to do that.

Mandating masks is the best procedure right now. It gives us the protection that we need. It provides some level of safety in the midst of the trauma that communities are dealing with as we see people continue to die, people continue to get extremely sick with COVID. And we're just going to protect the people that we love and that we've been elected (INAUDIBLE).

KEILAR: Yes, they -- they need to protect themselves, too, though. I mean we understand three of the four here were unvaccinated. Is that right? Do you know -- do you know what the status is of their vaccination status?

OSGOOD: Well, I was also told that they were unvaccinated. We are also working very aggressively to continue to share messages about vaccinations and how important it is.

But let's just be honest, when we started COVID, we had leadership that first didn't even want to acknowledge that it was a real pandemic and that it was deadly. Then all of the false information started to spread to make the vaccine suspect, saying, you know, that it was warp speed and all these kind of things that put fear and questions in people's mind that they didn't feel comfortable being vaccinated. And now we're paying a deadly consequence for it because people are dying.

So we are working very aggressively all across Broward County, our school district, the South Florida Health Foundation, many of our churches, New Mount Olive, Mount Herman, First Baptist Piney Brook (ph), we're working to get people vaccinated. And, you know, being a person of color, a lot of times in our community, we are suspicious about these types of things because of what happened with the Tuskegee experiment. But as we are telling people today, they have to be vaccinated.

I was vaccinated. I did it because I wanted to protect my grandchildren, my children in this community. And I'm encouraging everybody, if you don't trust the vaccine, trust me, you need to get vaccinated. This disease will kill you or leave you with a lifelong complication that not only impacts you, but also impacts your family and the people that you love and care about.

[08:50:06]

KEILAR: Yes, it is heartbreaking to see what has happened in your school district just in the course of a day.

Thank you so much, Rosalind Osgood, with the school board there in Broward County.

OSGOOD: Thank you.

BERMAN: Up next, the big-time college football boss making an urgent plea directly to fans.

KEILAR: And the dramatic twist in the Britney Spears case. Is it the beginning of the end of her father's hold on her life?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: College football season now only about two weeks away. Players suiting up for practice. Students heading back to campus. And the commissioner of the SEC is making a heartfelt plea to fans.

Greg Sankey tweeted, state policies limit the SEC's ability to establish conference-wide mandates. We need individuals, our fans, to join in accessing the vaccine, reducing the COVID-19 spread, limiting the chances for more variants to emerge, and enjoying a full year ahead for college sports.

Greg Sankey joins me now.

So great to have you.

Why did you write this?

GREG SANKEY, COMMISSIONER, SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE: It started with a memory of last year at this time as we had college conferences deciding not to play football. We simply kept trying, sought testing protocols and strategies that would allow us to conduct healthy competition. We had fans ask me, are we going to play football? And so the reverse is true. One, remember what we did last year. But when you're asking me to try to play football, my ask of our fans is to take advantage of what science has done, access the vaccine.

Our teams have done that. I heard the report Tuesday or Wednesday with Keith Carter from Ole Miss talking about their team's vaccination rate. Our team's vaccination rates across our conference are incredibly high relative to the general population. And we need the population to catch up.

BERMAN: Yes, I mean, the vaccination rates of the teams is amazing, where it's 100 percent, Ole Miss says and it's over 90 percent at Alabama and LSU and other places are doing a great job.

And I know the SEC, the conference has really limited abilities as to what you can mandates. You can't tell these stadiums that they have to require vaccinations if the fans want to come. And I know it's a hypothetical question. But I also know the answer deep down in my soul. If you told, you know, a bunch of SEC fans that they couldn't go to a game unless they were vaccinated, what would happen?

SANKEY: There'd probably be three responses. One, I think the bulk of our fans who actually attended the games are likely vaccinated. So that would be easy. Then there would be those who would react and they'd rush to access the vaccine to make sure they could be part of the game day atmosphere.

[08:55:01]

And then there'd be a level of anger. And it's that third part that I think is just the miss. And it's a contrast to our teams.

Where we started in February with just great doctors who serve on our medical task force, over and over providing information, that doesn't mean we're automatically at 100 percent of our student athletes accessing the vaccine. But if the people who have stayed away will access information from doctors, from physicians, from first line workers, I think the stories that were told on CNN this morning were powerful. And I've seen the same on other media outlets.

Rather than simply relying on what somebody told me or what I read on the Internet, access the information, that's educated our players. That will educate our fans as well.

BERMAN: Greg Sankey, I love the message you're sending. I -- look, I know, in your business, there's almost nothing more important than football. But what you're saying is there is something more important, and that's saving lives. And you're trying to do it.

Greg Sankey, I appreciate you being with us this morning.

SANKEY: Thank you.

BERMAN: More on our breaking news. Afghanistan on the verge of collapse as the Taliban seized four more cities in the past 24 hours. So what is the U.S. doing this morning, I mean right now, to get Americans out? (COMMERCIAL BREAK)