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tv   Anderson Cooper 360  CNN  April 17, 2020 9:00pm-10:00pm PDT

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a book that you're ready to share with the world? get published now, call for your free publisher kit today! on a day the coronavirus death toll has climbed to nearly 37,000 people in this country, saw complaints grow about the lack of a federal strategy on testing, and saw the president call on protestors in three blue states to, quote, liberate those states. let's go straight to cnn's chief white house correspondent jim
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acosta. so, jim, are the president and the governors on the same page tonight? because that seems pretty urgent. >> no. absolutely not, anderson. and, you know, the vice president mike pence got an earful earlier today when he was on a conference call with some democratic senators. they were telling him what governors were saying yesterday. that this country does not have enough testing right now to put people back in their offices. send people back to restaurants and so on. and the president was asked about this tonight. he kind of punted. the vice president and dr. anthony fauci, both, answered this question whether or not there is enough testing in this country. and they both answered the question essentially the same way, saying that there are enough tests right now for states that are in phase one. but, anderson, that's clearly not enough to get us to phase two or phase three, which is a little bit more like life as we used to -- we used to experience it. in phase one, schools are still closed. people are still teleworking. they're not going into the office. and so that was an admission, i think, from the vice president and from dr. fauci that, no, the
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country is not where things need to be right now in terms of testing. now, dr. deborah birx got up there and was talking about how private labs are starting to get into action, and that will expedite the process. but this government is playing catchup at this point. and what you heard from the president, what you're hearing from administration officials, they want to shift this testing burden over to states. and, anderson, as you and i both know, we have chronicled this for the last several weeks, the states have been competing for ventilators, competing for ppe and masks and so on. now, they have to compete for testing? we just didn't get enough answers tonight on that key question. >> yeah. testing and nasal swabs and, you know, reagents. all the things that go along with testing. the -- i mean, i hate even talking about tweets that president trump randomly pops out after watching fox news. but, you know, sending tweets saying that, you know, michigan, minnesota, and virginia need to be, in his words, liberated. you know, in virginia, it was
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liberated and concerns about the second amendment. but the idea that, you know, he watched something on fox news about protestors in michigan. he, now, says liberate michigan. obviously, it's states, you know, battleground states, democratic governors. it's -- it's -- again, it's one of those things you want to take a step back and realize this is the president of the united states saying that these places needed to be liberated. you know, allegedly, he was leaving it up to the governors because the governors knew, and he, you know, is such a constitutionalist that the governors have the right, and know what's best for their state. he is saying liberate those states. >> that's right, anderson. it's not enough for the president, i suppose, to try to turn these briefings into his rallies. he wants to have rallies at state capitols against social distancing. talking to trump advisers, they admit this could backfire. keep in mind a couple things.
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one, these demonstrators are not practicing social distancing so they run the risk of spreading this virus around. putting that to the side, the president was asked about this but kind of danced around the question. he said, well, he's comfortable with the tweets he put out earlier today and went on to say he thinks some of these states have been too tough, in his words. but anderson, the states are following the government's guidelines, the administration's guidelines on social distancing and so that explanation just did not make very much sense. he was asked about what these protestors are doing and whether or not they are being safe, and he said, you know, they sound like very reasonable people to me. i mean, that is the president, essentially, giving these protestors carte blanche to continue to do this. >> yeah. the idea that you can look and say, oh, that person seems very responsible. i'm not sure how you tell that through the television of, you know, people wandering around with, you know, i guess they had trump flags and, therefore, that's what he projects. jim acosta, stay with us. i want to dig deeper into what was said and what wasn't said about testing. state governors, protestors, all the rest.
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joining us, dr. sanjay gupta, and chief political analyst, gloria borgeore. sanjay, everyone we have talked to, scientists, epidemiologists, i talked to a number of business owners around the country today on the phone just to find out what their thinking is. they all say the same thing. this hinges on the ability of states to, quickly, get on the same page in terms of testing, and to get widespread testing. it doesn't seem like the federal government or the administration is on the same page with what state governors are saying. >> yeah. it's -- it's been quite striking, and i did some of the same stuff that you did today, anderson. just really talked to people at these hospitals and understand. talk me through it. like, what's going on here? you want a test. where are the gaps? and dr. fauci referred to it. he said we do need to close the gap here. we recognize that maybe the capacity for some of these places to test has improved. so state labs, public labs, university labs, commercial labs, have come online over the
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past several weeks. that's been a good thing. and so -- and a lot of that has been at the state level. the problem, as you mentioned, anderson, all the stuff that goes into actually saying this person needs to be tested, and here's going to be the result. all the various steps that go in there from the swabs from the medium to transport the swabs to the reagents. all of that is -- has -- has been dependent on the supply chain. some of those products come from other countries, and that's traditionally been sort of handled at the -- at the national level. so -- so, yes, you know, when people say capacity is fine. in some places, capacity is totally fine. and -- but -- but, at the end of the day, can people still get a test safely, efficiently, you know, in some place that is in their own community? and the answer, unfortunately, in too many places, is still no. i had a chance to talk to dr. tom frieden who you know used to run the cdc. i specifically asked him whose obligation is this?
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you ran the cdc. whose obligation is this? the states? or the federal government with regard to testing? listen to what he said. >> it is, absolutely, the federal government's responsibility. currently, we're doing, in this country, less than 150,000 tests a day. earlier today, we released a report, and we calculated, quite simply, if we were just testing the highest-priority people and nobody else, we'd be at about three times as many tests. and since we are testing some lower-priority people, we're going to need more than that. and if we tried to test really extensively, it would be ten, 20 times that. >> so, anderson, the quick math there. 150,000 tests, roughly, a day being done right now. he says, in order to get to the point where we start having the discussions around reopening things, it's 10 to 20 times that. so, you know, more than a million tests a day. >> wow. gloria, i mean, it seems so obvious what the president is doing. i mean, you know, from the
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earliest days, he's obviously -- you know, once he came around to the realization this was serious and that, you know, they needed to take the -- the -- the social distancing things that his scientists wanted to take earlier. he's been looking for, you know, people to blame. whether it's, you know, china or the w.h.o. or, you know, the prior administration or governors or reporters. >> democrats. >> whoever it is. nancy pelosi. now, it is clear he seems to be setting governors up to blame, in the coming weeks and months, if things don't go well. essentially, putting the burden on them. and saying, you know, he's the one who put out these guidelines. in the guidelines, it says everybody should do adequate testing. but not helping the governors with money for their states to do testing and contact tracing. or -- or with negotiating, you know, bulk pricing and distributing all the reagents and the swabs and everything they need. >> i mean, let's be honest here,
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anderson. the president is playing this and i can't even believe i'm saying it, in the middle of a pandemic, he is playing this politically. and he's -- he's -- you know, he is talking about states that could very well go blue. democratic governors, who have a lot of problems on their hands, and he is saying, like tonight, he said about the governor of virginia. governor northam. well, they've been too tough. what is too tough? what does that mean, might i k ask? when the governors are following the guidelines that ju, just 24 hours ago, the president's science advisers outlined to the american public. that is what they are doing. so he can either -- he can -- if he wants to say i have no responsibility again, let him go and say that. but he seems to want to have it both ways. and that's kind of hard to swallow. if you're a governor in one of those states, and you've got outbreaks that you're worried
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about or you're worried about -- maybe your curve looks a little better but you have to wait 14 days, according to the president's guidelines. what would the president have you do? it's -- it's almost impossible to understand how a president, who is supposed to be a leader, in the middle of a pandemic, would, instead, decide that it's better for him to divide the country and to side with protestors, whom he said, by the way, i think it was yesterday, he said, you know, i think they like me. which, as we all know, is very key to donald trump. and used them so he could, potentially, play to his base and maybe make some inroads in those -- in those states that could be up for grabs. i mean, it's -- it's just quite remarkable. >> jim acosta, it's interesting. you know, the president likens himself a lot to a cheerleader. he is a cheerleader for the country. cheerleaders stand on the sidelines while other people actually play the game, execute, you know, the plays, call the
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plays. coaches and players. cheerleaders stand on the sidelines. sure, they work hard. i like to watch cheer on netflix, like anybody. but those are not -- cheerleaders are not actually leaders. the president seems to toggle between a cheerleader and a heckler. for a guy who doesn't drink, he acts like a drunk in a bar, yelling liberate michigan, liberate. you know, this is the president of the united states, during a pandemic, you know, targeting democratic governors so that people will go and not social distance and protest about his own guidelines, his own recommendations of social distancing, in states that he is concerned about for his own election. i mean, it's so transparent as to it's stunning. >> and, anderson, i will tell you what a trump advisor told me earlier today. this is merely a distraction. the president did this earlier today, partly because he was provoked by what he saw on fox news. that has certainly happened
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before. it'll happen again. but he did this to distract from the dismal record that he's compiled over the last several weeks when it dms to responding to th to this crisis. you can look at the poll numbers. gallup came out with a poll today showing his approval rating for handling the coronavirus has dropped six points in a month. that is a big drop. the american people are starting to form some fixed opinions as to how he's handled this pandemic, and it's not a good one. i will tell you, anderson, a couple other things that struck me coming out of that press conference. he is a cheerleader, who is not dealing with reality. he was saying that schools are going to be opening soon. no, they're not. maybe in a handful of states, that could possibly happen. but, in phase one of the president's own guidelines that were put out yesterday, schools stay closed. and most schools across the country are going to be staying closed through the remainder of this year. he was also saying that one of his indicators, in terms of how he's doing handling this pandemic, he pointed to the stock market returns today.
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i mean, has he -- has he looked at the stock market in terms of where things were before all of this started? and i mean, that is -- i -- i can see trump advisers tearing their hair out, as we speak. it sounds tremendously tone deaf when 20 to 23 million americans have lost their jobs over the last month. for the president to be turning to the stock market for sort of a daily score in terms of how he is handling this pandemic. my sense of it is, anderson, the president is putting out these liberate tweets merely as a distraction. he wants people to be talking about something else besides testing. we just simply aren't there yet. >> jim, gloria, thanks. there's a distraction every day. >> yeah. >> last week, he was going to adjourn the congress or -- or this week was it. he was going to adjourn the congress. now, he's taking after the governors. i don't know. disappeared. vaporized. >> every day feels like a week. jim acosta, gloria, thanks very much. sanjay, going to be back
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shortly. jim acosta mentioned the president was asked tontd aboig about protestors. one governor's reaction to it. here is what he said. >> earlier today, jay inslee said that your tweet encouraging -- >> who said this? >> jay inslee said your tweets encouraging liberation in michigan and virginia were -- rebellion. wondering how that squares with the sober and methodical guidance that you issued yesterday. >> well, i think we do have a sobering guidance, but i think some things are too tough. and if you look at some of the states you just mentioned, it's too tough. not only relative to this but what they've done in virginia with respect to the second amendment is just a horrible thing. they did a horrible thing. the governor. and he's the governor under a cloud to start off with. so when you see what he said about the second amendment. when you see what other states have done. no, i think i feel very comfortable.
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>> well, jay inslee is governor j jay inslee of washington and the governor joins me now on the phone. you called the tweets saying liberate michigan, liberate virginia. you just heard him. wondering what your reaction is. >> extreme disappointment and -- and -- and, frankly, anger because, you know, we've lost over 500 people in my state. and you know, there is an old saying in automobile, speed kills, well, words can be fatal, too. and when you have a president of the united states openly, willfully, maliciously, trying to encourage people not to abide by the law in these states, these orders are the law of these states. and they have a president of the united states, willfully, trying to inspire people to disobey the law and violate the law, with potentially-fatal questions, is unbelievably irresponsible. and i -- there's no other way to look at it.
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and what is doubly enraging to us, both republicans and democrat, that the day before this president put out very clear guidelines, based on substantial epidemiological evidence of his own experts, dr. fauci, dr. birx, that had a lot of reason to it. and that reason is, it said very clearly, that we have to wrestle this virus down sig thinificant before we let off the pressure of social distancing. this is his own physician saying this and his own guidelines. that we are pretty consistent with in our state approaches. both republicans and democrats. >> just that he was on just at the podium saying that some things are too tough. meaning some of these guidelines in michigan and minnesota, virginia, these are the same guidelines he, allegedly, you know, saw the light on and was encouraging everybody to do.
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>> if they're too tough, they're his. and they are based on decent evidence. and for a brief, shiny moment, that lasted about four hours, we had sort of a unified approach between the federal government and states. and, then, for some -- this kind of cheap bombast to do dog whistles to his base, he goes out there and creates this unnecessary tension. look, we got to be working together on this. and we have sometimes. i've had good discussions with mike pence. i've had good discussions with dr. fauci. i have good discussions with the admiral the other day. but we got to get the federal government to help us get these test kits. that's the other thing that is such a frustration to us because we have increased analytical capability to test but we can't test because we don't have the it kits. we don't have the swabs. we need millions of swabs. we need millions of material for
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virus. and we have been pleading with the president to show leadership on this, and he just really has not been willing to do so. now, some in his administration are helping. some in the supply chain are beginning to help. but, until we have that testing capability, we will not be able to successfully start up our economy, which should be our mutual goal. so it would be helpful if we had a little help from the president, rather than this che cheap bombast we keep getting from him. >> can you -- can you come up with any valid reason that the president of the united states would not be fully leaning into getting as many tests out there as possible, you know, quick, rapid tests, so that employers could use them. people could get back to work. people could be confident and not be, oh, you can get a test if you are over a certain age. or if this or if that. but, you know what, if you feel you want one and you need one, and you want to see if you were infected in the past. i -- i just -- is there any -- i
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can't think of any rational explanation, other than sort of political ones, of not wanting a higher count of infected people to be on his record. and i hate to stoeven think tha. but i am trying to think of a rational reason, and i can't think of one. >> well, you know, i should not try to figure out what goes on there in that mind. but the only thing that strikes me is just an inability to accept responsibility for this leadership position. and we need somebody with the guts of franklin delano roosevelt and the commitment to mobilize the manufacturing base of the united states. and that does not relieve governors from responsibility, as well. look, we're -- we have got an obligation to go out there and fight everywhere we can to get this material to do it as well. and we are doing that. republicans and democrats. big time. but the federal government and the president is the only organization that has the
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capability to order people to manufacture this equipment. it is the only organization that can mobilize the entire defense industry of the united states and the supply chain. this is a supply chain that made 70 jeeps in 1941 and 65,000, i think, in 1944. but we need the president to order the pentagon to do that. governors cannot do that. and that's the part where we really need assistance. and -- and it's just been maddening because you know, i have talked to president several times about this. and he just kind of has this view -- he likened it of not being a supply clerk. but we need a quartermaster. we need somebody to take pride in creating this supply chain. it's a noble pursuit. that's why it was -- itgot the beams and the bullets in normandy. something you can be a hero on. >> if people are dying or staying away from getting tested
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or unable to figure out their futures because of nasal swabs, yeah, let's get a supply clerk. let's get a supply clerk because, you know what, nasal swabs is what is hobbling america right now? i mean, it's ludicrous. >> it is ludicrous. and to see it firsthand, where i -- my people literally just can't wait and when we find a few thousand of these swabs, we rush to open the box just to make sure we got right kind. that's how desperate governors are working on this. and i want to repeat these are redoubleness a republicans and democrats that are all doing this great work as ambitiously and effectively as they possibly can. but they do not have the ability to turn the entire manufacturing capability in the united states to this task. only the president is in a position to do that. and that's why we really need
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that leadership. and we need to be working together rather than have what are distractions of these tweets to ferment sort of -- against these states. and look. these orders are the law of these states. to have a president of the united states entreat people to ignore the law, that cannot stand. >> he says he is a wartime commander. he is telling parts of his army to rebel against and agitate against other -- anyway, governor inslee, i appreciate your time. coming up next, new modeling from the researchers that the white house seems to have been leading on and the more hopeful bottom line that they now have. it's some good news. later a former governor and secretary of health and human services weighing in on the president's testing strategy or what needs to be done when we continue.
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the president alluded to it in the briefing tonight. new modeling from the team the administration's been relying on to help guide decisions during the outbreak. being done by university of washington's institute for health metrics and evaluation which is just out with new projections of fewer fatalities a a number of other notable items. i want to bring in dr. chris murray. dr. murray, it's great to have you back. can you just explain the newest modeling and how it differs from previous set of projections? >> sure. we've taken advantage of cell phone mobility data, to get a better insight as to where
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social distancing has been working. and that's led us to have lower projections for places like florida, texas, some of the states that we thought there wasn't as much social distancing. we have also had to upgrade our estimates of deaths in new york because the peak is lasting longer. so the combination of those lead us to about 60,000, 61,000, deaths overall. but, more importantly, we've also looked at the trajectory of the models going forward. and given some ideas about when it might be possible to think about relaxing social distancing by state. >> and what does that tell you? >> well, it says that it can't be that soon. even the earliest states, let's say hawaii, which has had a very small epidemic. doesn't seem to be taking off. that's probably the first week of may they could be thinking about it. and then we are seeing states where they really shouldn't be thinking about relaxing social distancing right out into
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mid-june. some of the states, you know, where there is big epidemics unfolding, like south dakota or oklahoma, not so big, but in terms of the time course. so we are seeing most states in the mid to late may. so i think the key thing around testing capacity, ability to contact trace, is you've got to wait till the load of cases in the community is at a manageable level. >> hmm. i know sanjay wants to get in some questions, as well. >> yeah. professor murray, you know, so the big discussion obviously has been around testing. and -- and we've just discussed this topic with you a few times over the past few weeks. some of these states seem like they may have built up their capacity for testing, which i'm sure has informed your models. but if they can't get the basic supplies, like anderson was talking about the swabs and things like that, they can't do the testing. so that does seem like it's more of a federal issue. how does that affect your models for each state if these states
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are dependent on -- on just materials from the federal government? >> and, by the way, before you answer that, i just want to -- the map that we are showing on the screen, which is from your modeling, just so viewers know what they are looking at. the lighter states are states that could, possibly, open up sooner. the darker the green you get, the later you get, is that correct? >> that's correct. >> sorry, i didn't want to interrupt. >> no. no. there's two factors that are going into this. which is how quickly are we going to come off the peak? and get, you know, cases down to a very low level. and then how quickly can the states build up their testing capacity and contact-tracing capacity so that they can manage, you know, reasonable numbers. i think we heard in the briefing today from the white house, some people talking about trying to manage a load of 200,000 cases in the community. but we believe that the risk of resurgence, then, would be very large. and so the best strategy is to get the number of cases down to
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a more manageable level, and beef up the capacity for states. if that happens, we'll revise that assessment about when it seems reasonable to -- or safe, from an epidemiological point of view to actually, you know, relax some aspects of social distancing. >> and -- and you put a number on that, right, professor murray, in terms of what is manageable in a community? i think i raeead somewhere in t studies i was looking at it, less than one estimated infection per million people. is that correct? >> so we took a very conservative approach about this. so we said one per million because, if you look at the number of contacts you have to trace, the number of people you have to screen to find the case and then trace their contacts, even one per million is really quite a load of effort on the capacities for some states. now, states may be able to do better. and then we can take that information into account. but compare what we're doing to
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singapore or korea or, you know, china. then, you know, we don't, yet, have that contact tracing and testing capacity to manage a big caseload. >> yeah. again, let's highlight that. we don't, yet, have that contact tracing to manage a big caseload. again, what so many experts have been saying. dr. murray, as always, appreciate your work. sanjay, thank you. just ahead, one of president trump's favorite ways to deflect blame for the handling of the virus. attack former president obama, former vice president biden for obvious reasons. wait, what's that? that's just the low-battery warning. oh, alright. now it's all, "check out my rv," and, "let's go four-wheeling." maybe there's a little part of me that wanted to be seen. well, progressive helps people save when they bundle their home with their outdoor vehicles. so they've got other things to do now, bigfoot. wait, what'd you just call me?
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tonight's coronavirus briefli briefing featured a lot of power point slides. federal back up on testing but not a centralized plan for managing, implementing it, or taking responsibility for it or funding for it. more now on that, on what it means to the states and the politics of blameshifting, which was also on display at the briefing. before, president tweeting disaster in handling h1n1 swine flu. polling at the time showed disastrous numbers. according to the cdc estimates, the death toll was actually about 12,000 people out of a possible range of 8 to 18,000. nearly 37,000 people have died on the coronavirus in this country in nearly seven weeks. joining us now former kansas governor who was secretary of health and human services during the h1n1 outbreak of 2009. secretary, the president said we
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are getting very close to seeing that light shine very brightly at the end of the tunnel. is that what you see happening? >> well, anderson, i find what's going on just really baffling. the scientists are very much coalesced around we have to do more testing. it's been suggested about half a million tests a day need to go on in the united states. we have to have an army of people ready. less for smaller states. more for bigger states. to do contact tracing, so when we find someone who is infected, we can, indeed, lock down the virus. shut down the virus. and, then, we have to make progress on treatments. there is some light at the end of the tunnel. it looks like there is some positive news on treatment. the other two. the testing, we're still way, way behind. in fact, we're going in the wrong direction. there were about 100,000 tests done on the 5th of april. a week later, on the 12th of april, there were 75,000 tests done. so we're going downhill, not up.
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but, until those factors are together, people really are being urged to continue to keep these health guidelines in place. and the last thing we want is people to choose between going to work and their health or their family's health. to put other people in jeopardy or danger. and so health guidelines are put in place to save lives. and, hopefully, to save jobs in the long run. >> first of all, the idea, again, it boils down, in some cases, to swabs. that we are being hobbled by swabs. it is just extraordinary to me, in this day and age. and that the -- the president, so often, and i hate to, you know, focus on this. but it just -- it is so glaring and -- and it's just -- i mean, this is a pandemic. people's lives are at stake, and the truth matters. the president just seems to be a bystander on this, and clearly politics is just enmeshed in all of this. i'll ask you the same question i
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asked governor inslee. i don't understand why the president wouldn't, with full force of the federal government, be getting as many tests to as many states as possible, in as many different ways, and getting the reagent and, you know, having some company manufacture enough swabs. it's -- do you -- does it make any sense to you? is there any rational reason the president would not be behind this and pushing this? >> well, the only thing that makes any sense to me is that if we don't test, the numbers don't change. we don't have as many infections. we know there are lots of people who are asymptomatic, who don't show signs of the virus, who are wandering around, affecting other people, making other people sick. but as long as we don't test, we don't know where they are. i live in the state of kansas, where we are one of the least tested states in the country. our numbers are low. that's good.
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we have very few people in the hospital. that's good. we've had deaths, unfortunately. but what we know is there are thousands more cases around us, and until they get identified, until we can do contact tracing, people won't be comfortable going out and about. the president doesn't want his numbers to change. that's what he said in early march. he is still saying it. the federal government is the only authority who can command companies to make the supplies we need. who can make sure that we use the purchasing power and the logistics power to get tests where they need it. who can send tests from a very busy lab to a lab that is less busy. as -- as scientists have said, if you have a test that takes more than 24 hours to get the results, it's really not effective. >> yeah. >> because in the meantime, it's circulating. >> you think the president doesn't want his numbers and i know his numbers is phrased -- you pointed this out. i talked to you a couple days ago on air. that's a phrase he used when he
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was at the cdc about his numbers rising. you think it's a calculation. he doesn't want that on his record. >> well, what he has on his record right now is we have 22 million unemployed americans. we've had over 30,000 deaths. and that's in a six-week period of time. and we need to make sure that we don't have more deaths. and we don't have more economic tragedy. the only way the economy of this country is going to recover is if we get a handle on the virus. and we have, anderson, you said light at the end of the tunnel. i mean, this is a marathon. until we have a fully-vaccinated nation, we need to have a plan that goes from mid-april, where we are right now, with some pretty shocking numbers, to a full vaccination program in the united states. and if we're not going to use the muscle and the logistics and the revenue of the federal government to get supplies, to
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get personal protective equipment for our front lines, to get ventilators, what in the world are we going to do when we have a vaccine available? what are we going to do in terms of getting that vaccine throughout the country? and distributing in a fair and equitable fashion. we need a national plan. >> i should also just point out the term light at the end of the tunnel is a term that johnson administration folks started to use that. i think it was in like late '67 or '68 about the vietnam war. and, of course, the war dragged on for years after that. it was a very, very long tunnel, indeed, sadly. secretary, appreciate your time. thank you. >> good to be with you. >> just ahead, the head of one company that just got a government grant worth hundreds of millions of dollars. joining me to talk about the timeline for his company vaccine trial and how long it may have to wait if, indeed, it works. we'll be right back. at&t has connected us every day for over 100 years.
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we turn to the hunt for a vaccine now which has produced some promising, even market-moving headlines the last 24 hours.
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the testing for vaccines obviously still in the early stages. no drug has received fda approval. tonight i want to talk to the leader of one company who this week received $483 million in government grant money to develop a drug showing some promise. joining us, president of the biotech company moderna. doctor, thank you for being with us. i know you just completed phase one of your trials and are about to start phase two. can you just talk about what that entails exactly? and how this might work? >> sure. so, first, point of clarification. we announced, this week, that we've actually fully enrolled the original phase-one study, which is actually being conducted by the national institute of health. dr. tony fauci's team. and they actually invented that protocol to involve a couple additional cohorts to look at older americans, 55 to 70 and 71 plus. and the goal is to build out a complete dataset. >> so you -- does that mean it -- it has started?
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or i'm not sure if it starts when you are not fully enrolled. how does that work? >> yeah. so the original study is actually we have dosed all the subjects in that study. the original 45 subjects across three dose levels. >> got it. okay. and can you just talk about what you hope to see and what sort of the timeline might be? >> yeah. so, for the -- for the phase one, what we're really looking at always first and foremost is safety. but also we are look at something called immuno genicity. what we will do from here, and what we announced this week is we are hoping to start a phase-two study in the next month or two. that phase-two study will be in several hundred subjects. build out that dataset on safety and immunogenecity.
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>> i think it was your company that dr. fauci said has the ground speed record or land speed record for getting the trial up and going. pretty fast. but is this a binary thing, if you're not getting good response, can you tweak at that point or do you have to start from the beginning again? how does that work? >> one of the advantages we have with our platform because we provide instructions for the body to make its own vaccine, use a technique called messenger rna. we're able to substantially change and tweak that vaccine. has to be done responsibly but if we need to make changes to vaccine, protein we're encoding, antigen or other features should be able to do that using your current platform. we don't foresee that to be a challenge, but it is something that we're able to do if it's necessary. >> what's enabled you to move so fast? literally people working around the clock and getting more
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people and working more? >> yeah, certainly it's felt like a sprint that started three or four months ago and continues to this day every day. people working around the clock. one of the key advantages we've had, our platform. our approach is new but our approach to making vaccines is based on messenger-rna, a set of instructions for making protein, it's in every cell of your body, how all biology makes protein to make. and even this virus, its genetic message is encoded in that large messenger-rna inside of it. with traditional vaccine approaches, you manufacture a vaccine by literally making the virus or sometimes making a protein of the virus and scaling that up significantly. what people do, in our case, is we will actually just provide the instructions, make that messenger-r number a, provide the instructions, give it directly to the patients who can
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develop an immune response. difference between software or hardware approach, we use the software approach. same four ingredients is used every time, it's just order of the letters in genetic code that make up the information, we can move quickly. in a pandemic situation such as this. >> thank you so much. appreciate it. sanjay, thanks. he's going to stay. a lot more ahead as the coronavirus death toll continues to rise and we will go to jacksonville, florida, where local officials in jacksonville, florida, reopened the beaches to the public. we will show you what happened. we're at the movies and we need to silence our phone.
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who knows where that button is? i don't have silent. everyone does -- right up here. it happens to all of us.
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we buy a new home, and we turn into our parents. what i do is help new homeowners overcome this. what is that, an adjustable spanner? good choice, steve. okay, don't forget you're not assisting him. you hired him. if you have nowhere to sit, you have too many. who else reads books about submarines? my dad. yeah. oh, those are -- progressive can't protect you from becoming your parents, but we can protect your home and auto when you bundle with us. look at that.
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in how they craftith us. tatheir orange juice? the corporate executives of coke and pepsi, or the farmers of florida's natural? only florida's natural is always made in florida by florida farmers. great taste. naturally.
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a book that you're ready to share with the world? get published now, call for your free publisher kit today! in the last 24 hours, more than 4,000 more people have died from coronavirus in this country an in the last hour, you heard a researcher talk about a new
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modeling that that shows on60,00 fatalities by early august, more than killed during 15 years of fighting in vietnam. with that as backdrop, country grappling to get back to some sort of normality, president and task force briefed the country tonight, lot of slides and details, federal backup on coronavirus testing but not a centralized federal plan for managing it, implementing it, helping pay for it, supplying materials needed to do it or taking responsibility for it. president took questions about his support for protesters in three states to resist social distancing guidelines, the guidelines his own task force is calling for. sent out three tweets saying liberate those states. that and much more ahead. kaitlan collins, any better sense why the president is talking about liberating certain states?
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what he's talking about is liberating them from the very guidelines that he and the task force have been suggesting. >> reporter: and he's also urging them to liberate them a day after he said it was up to the governors to call the shots and decide when the states would reopen and when to loosen the guidelines. president didn't offer a lot of insight beyond he thinks some of them are unfair, but he was asked about the governors that feared his comments to incite further protests and have more protesters not observing social distancing guidelines out in the streets of the cities in the states. this is what the president said about those concerns. >> earlier today jay inslee said that your tweets encouraging -- >> who said this? >> inslee, said your tweets encouraging liberation in michigan, minnesota, virginia, were fomenting rebellion.
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wondering how that squares with the sober and methodical guidance you issued yesterday. >> we do have a sober guidance but i think some things are too tough. some of the states you're mentioning it's too tough. not only relative to this but what they've done in virginia with the second amendment is a horrible thing. he's a governor under a cloud to start off with, so when you see what he said about the second amendment, what you see what other states have done, i feel very comfortable. >> reporter: president defending what he said. we should note that the states the president called out on twit remember all of course all blue state, battleground states for the election in november. didn't single out republican governors working, or ohio led by republican even though also had protests in that state as well.