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New Day
FDA Expected to Fully Approve Pfizer Vaccine; Catastrophic Flooding in Tennessee; Henri Now a Tropical Storm; HBO Documentary on COVID Outbreak; Entire West Texas School District Quarantined. Aired 6:30-7a ET
Aired August 23, 2021 - 06:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[06:30:00]
KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Vaccine mandates for its roughly 20,000 employees, but only when at least one vaccine is fully approved.
Full approval may also mean big changes in terms of vaccine mandates for teachers as students head back to school.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR, "NEW DAY": Is there a deadline? Do you have a time -- do you have a time deadline? Would it be this month if the FDA does give full approval?
RANDI WEINGARTEN, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS: Yes.
BERMAN: Even though you know there's no legal distinction between the two.
WEINGARTEN: Yes.
BERMAN: But -- but would that be a deadline when the FDA comes out?
WEINGARTEN: Yes. Yes.
HOLMES: And universities, like Louisiana State, have said they would mandate the vaccine quickly after authorization.
Some public health officials have said they were surprised it has taken so long for full approval. White House officials have maintained they will not put pressure on the agency.
JEFFREY ZIENTS, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORONAVIRUS ADVISER: The FDA is the gold standard for vaccine review and approval. They'll run an independent and rigorous scientific process. And when that process is complete, the American people can rest assured that the FDA maintained this world class standards throughout this period.
HOLMES: But for some, it still may not be enough.
DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The Pfizer shot is about to get full FDA approval. Would that change your opinion on it at all?
LAURA ADAMS, ALABAMA TRUMP RALLY ATTENDEE: Not until they do a whole lot more investigating in on it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HOLMES: And that woman went on to say that it would probably take ten years to do the kind of investigating that would get her to take the vaccine.
And so, clearly, look, not everyone is going to be convinced. And that's why you're hearing some administration officials kind of hedge on just how successful full approval will be at combatting vaccine hesitancy.
But I've got to tell you, John, there is a lot of hope that this will move the ball forward.
BERMAN: It may make it easier for some organizations and entities to issue requirements there, but I also think there's a possibility that some people who have been hesitant will find a new reason, even if they say this has been the one.
Kristen Holmes, terrific reporting. We are watching this. The decision is imminent.
Search and rescue operations underway in Tennessee where catastrophic flooding has killed more than 20 people. We are live on the ground.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Plus, Tropical Depression Henri drenching the East Coast. We are going to let you know where the storm is headed.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:36:21]
KEILAR: This morning, search and rescue efforts continue in middle Tennessee after severe storms triggered deadly flooding there. Twenty- one people have died, at least 20 others are still missing at this point.
CNN's Nick Valencia is joining us now live from the scene.
Nick, the pictures are just unbelievable. I think I -- I've never seen anything like this kind of damage from this flash flooding.
NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning, Brianna.
Residents here have not either. And the governor here in Tennessee, Bill Lee, calling the event over the weekend a devastating event and looking at the images you could see why.
Our crew tried to make our way into the hardest hit area but we encountered washed out roads, downed bridges. It was simply unsafe for us to pass at these dark hours.
The rainfall that happened over the weekend was unprecedented for this part of the state. Just over 17 inches of rain fell in a 24 hour period. They got a third of their yearly total in that span. At one point the storm system was so bad there was a tornado warning in effect. Residents here said they'd never seen anything like it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's houses moved off their foundation, cars and trees. I mean this is -- this is almost a biblical proportions here, like a massive tornado come through here.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was so much more water than I have ever seen in my life.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice over): The next thing I know, the water's in my house and it's up to my chest and my house fell off the foundation while we were still in it. So we had to break the window in the kitchen and crawl out of it and get up on the roof as fast as we could. And then all of a sudden it was like a tidal wave that just came over the road and into my yard and swept my house away.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VALENCIA: I'm here at a reunification center where a lot of families are coming to try to find out news of their loved ones. About 20 people are still missing. And in talking to local residents, they said it sounded like somebody had a fire hose outside of their house for three hours straight, more than three inches of rain fell consecutively.
I mentioned those missing. Among them are two children, including a local sophomore here, who's autistic, at this high school. There was really, according to residents, nothing they could have done to prepare for this. They knew that there was going to be a storm over the weekend but nothing, nothing of this magnitude.
Brianna.
KEILAR: The speed and the force of this storm just unbelievable.
Nick, thank you so much for your report from Tennessee. Appreciate it.
VALENCIA: Yes.
BERMAN: So this morning, Henri has weakened to a tropical depression after bringing heavy rainfall on me, also flooding to the Northeast. It was raining, raining and raining. Still is for hours. The storm made landfall in Rhode Island with sustained winds of 60 miles per hour. And it is continuing to batter states across the region.
Chad Myers joins us now to explain where this storm is headed.
I'm all ears, Chad.
CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Right back over to you again. It kind of made a trip into the Catskills and now it's headed back out into the ocean, likely traveling over Boston over the next probably 24 hours. But the rain is back in New York. This is really a train kind of day
if you're going to -- if you're a train or a car and weather depended on it, today's a train day without a doubt.
We can zoom in here. We'll really see the heavy rainfall now into Queens. It was over Manhattan quite a bit of the morning hours. Already a couple of inches coming down just today alone.
And look at this. These are six inch rainfall total. Now, this is Fred. This happened just a couple of days ago. You know, Fred came on by. And then the rest of this, that's all Henri. And Henri brought down trees. Tremendous tree damage up here in the northeast. For a time, Washington County, Rhode Island, that's kind of like Narragansett area, 73 percent of all customers were without power because the wind was just knocking down trees.
[06:40:08]
I saw Twitter comments saying they're coming down like toothpicks.
Flash flood watches still in effect here for the Northeast. We are going to probably see another one to two inches of rainfall before it all spreads out here.
But you see these little bands. Can't really tell you where they're exactly going to be. But anywhere where there's a band here you could get some street flooding certainly in some of these bigger cities.
John.
BERMAN: Well, I know where one of them is, my house. My house.
MYERS: Yes, no doubt (ph).
BERMAN: And it has been for the last day and is staying there.
Chad, thank you very much.
MYERS: You're welcome.
BERMAN: We're watching this very closely.
MYERS: Yes.
BERMAN: Coming up, we're going to speak to a filmmaker who has documented the early days of the coronavirus pandemic in China. What she saw inside hospitals in Wuhan.
KEILAR: Plus, a deadly fire fight at the Kabul Airport overnight involving American Marines. We are live on the ground.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:45:09]
BERMAN: This morning, we are standing by for full FDA approval of the Pfizer vaccine. This could come at any minute. The average number of new coronavirus cases in the United States nearing 150,000. That's up nearly 200 percent from one month ago. More than 90,000 Americans are hospitalized. You can see that number rising.
A new HBO documentary in the same breath takes a close look at how the pandemic unfolded in China and the United States. And the similarities between leaders in both countries in their response.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The official news report said that everything was under control.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE).
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE).
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But people were dying on the streets.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The risk remains low.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Remains low.
MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D), NEW YORK CITY: There's very little threat here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: Joining me now is Nanfu Wang. She is the producer and director of this HBO documentary, appearing now on HBO and HBO Max, which, like CNN, is a unit of Warner Media.
It is so nice to meet you.
This is chilling stuff. This documentary really leaves you with a feeling of, wow, this has been bad. And I want people to know the circumstances with which you started making it and it involved your own son.
NANFU WANG, DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER: Yes. Hi. Thank you for having me.
I started making this film in January of 2020. And I am a Chinese citizen and a U.S. permanent resident. So, in January, I visited my mom in China who lives 200 miles away from Wuhan. And that was before the lockdown of Wuhan.
While I was there, I heard, you know, quote/unquote, the rumors about a virus, but immediately the Chinese officials said it was a rumor. There was no virus.
So, I left my son, who is three years old, with my mom and I came back to the U.S. for a work trip. And it was during that time Wuhan was locked down. And, initially, it was purely, as a mother, as a daughter, that I was trying to figure out how dangerous the virus was and how -- what was the real information, would I need to get my son out of China? And in doing that, those research, I realized there was a huge discrepancy between what the Chinese government told the people and the world and what the actual reality was in Wuhan. And that was what compelled me to make this documentary initially.
BERMAN: And that's really the theme, I think, the overarching theme of the film, what was happening and what we were told was happening. There was just this universe in between there. And, ultimately, not just in China.
WANG: Exactly. And we're seeing that in the U.S. as well. And it was astonishing for me to experience that in March in New York last year because I had preconceived notions that in a democratic country that things like this wouldn't have happened. And I was surprised. And the film became my tour of exploring the answers of why it happened here and what had gone wrong.
And what I discovered is this eerie similarity between two similarly different ideological, politically different systems, which is that both governments and both governments leaders prioritize to preserve its power, preserve its own image over the actual people's safety and health.
BERMAN: You actually, at one point, late in the film, allow yourself to half ask the question, what might have happened had these governments levelled with their people from the very beginning. What do you think the answer to that is?
WANG: Well, it was a fantasy sequence in the film that I imagined. If, from the very beginning, the government, instead of trying to cover it up, instead of trying to mislead all of us, instead of spreading misinformation, if they had told the truth, if they had taken measures from early on, what the world would look like. And we all can imagine, yet it is also hard to imagine, but one thing for sure from experts, from scientists and from all of us just knowing that the casualties of this virus would be much, much, much less. And we knew that the pandemic was political before it was a pandemic. So the film really tried to examine the actions of the leaders and the governments and the authority that led us to where we are today.
[06:50:09]
BERMAN: Imagine if the pandemic were not political. That number, 600,000, I don't think is one we'd be seeing, 600,000 Americans dead.
Nanfu Wang, in the same breath, it's a terrific piece of work. Thank you so much for being with us this morning.
WANG: Thank you.
BERMAN: An entire school district in western Texas now in quarantine as coronavirus cases surge there. That story coming up.
KEILAR: Plus, the airport in Kabul now reportedly closed to Afghans who hold Special Immigrant Visas and those applying for them. What will that mean for the desperate effort to evacuate Afghans who helped U.S. troops during the war?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KEILAR: This morning, an entire school district in a small town in west Texas is under quarantine.
[06:55:03]
And the local hospital does not have ICU care available. If residents need ICU-type care, the closest trauma centers are about 100 miles away.
Rosa Flores has the latest.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): In this small oil field town of Iraan in west Texas.
NANCY BECK (ph): Oh, we'll check it out and see.
FLORES: Just about everyone passes by Nancy Beck's barbecue joint.
But recently, most of the traffic stopped.
BECK: It was quiet. You know, the lady across the street, she has it. She's been flown out. She's in ICU.
FLORES: In the span of two weeks this month, 119 people got tested for COVID at Iraan General Hospital and 50 tested positive, a 42 percent positivity rate.
VICKI SAPATA (ph): So this is Carla's (ph) desk.
FLORES: Vicki Sapata say her co-worker, Carla Baderas (ph), and Carla's husband Sammy (ph) both got infected.
SAPATA: Because this is somebody that I love so much. I know her love for her husband. I tell her, I knew I loved you but I didn't know how much I loved you until you went through this.
FLORES: Sammy got sick first, Vicki says. And in a matter of days, had trouble breathing and was hospitalized. Carla quarantined at home with her nine-year-old son as her fever spiked, says Vicki.
SAPATA: And it breaks my heart that I can't, you know, open the door and hug her.
We believe in healing in the name of Jesus.
FLORES: Vicki organized a community prayer outside the couple's home and streamed it live.
SAPATA: It was a cry of mercy to God for him to have mercy on our town. Like I said, we had had COVID before but never to this magnitude.
FLORES: Town residents followed along from their cars to be COVID safe.
SAPATA: In the name of Jesus, we declare healing over Sammy, over his lungs, Father.
FLORES: But Sammy's condition deteriorated. Iraan General Hospital doesn't offer ICU care. Vicki says she started praying for an ICU bed to free up.
SAPATA: That was hard. But we know that our facility doesn't have the capability to be able to take care of him.
FLORES: When a bed opened up, Sammy was rolled out on a stretcher and air lifted about 100 miles away to San Anglo, Texas.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Fight for your life.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fight for your life.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We love you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We love you.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We love you Sammy.
FLORES: At least one Iraan resident has been air lifted out of state for care because of the lack of available ICU beds in Texas.
No one here knows exactly how the outbreak started. Last week the school district shut down after about a quarter of staff and about 16 percent of the students got infected or exposed to the virus, says the superintendent there who is also quarantining.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In the last week we've seen more COVID cases for staff and students than we did the entire year last year during school.
FLORES: The beloved football season is postponed. Homecoming hangs in the balance.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Iraan City Council --
FLORES: And city council members met over a conference call.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All in favor?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Aye.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Aye.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Aye.
FLORES: To close the city building to residents.
FLORES (on camera): How concerned are you?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Very. I mean, this is -- to me it's pretty serious. FLORES (voice over): With so many people in quarantine, Iraan is
quieter than normal, especially now as the town begins to mourn.
Sammy died just five days after an ICU bed became available.
BECK: It's just horrible. You know, it's just horrible. And we're going to miss him so bad. We're going to miss Sammy so bad.
FLORES: Nancy, like everyone else here, just wants this COVID outbreak to end so this little Texas town can get back to its big old self.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROSA: According to the superintendent there, she says that there was no mask mandate at the school because of Governor Greg Abbott's executive order on masks, which bans mask mandates. And, Brianna, I can tell you from talking to people in that town, they say that there was division about wearing masks before this outbreak with some people wanting masks, others not wearing masks. Now they say it doesn't matter. They have to come together because of what's going on there and they're saying learn from what is happening here so it doesn't happen across the state, across this country.
Brianna.
KEILAR: Rosa Flores, thank you so much for taking us into that community and showing us what is going on there.
NEW DAY continues right now.
I want to welcome our viewers here in the United States and around the world. It is Monday, August 23rd.
And, overnight, a new round of chaos at the Kabul Airport.
[07:00:01]
A deadly fire fight involving U.S., German and Afghan forces.
