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tv   Erin Burnett Out Front  CNN  April 28, 2020 9:00pm-10:00pm PDT

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and now more of our special coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. and tonight president trump is at odds with his own plan for coronavirus testing. >> you're confident you can surpass 5 million tests per day? is that -- >> we're going to be there very soon. if you look at the numbers, it could be that we're getting very close. i mean, i don't have the exact numbers. we would have had them if you asked me the same question a little while ago because people with the statistics were there. we're going to be there very soon. we're really doing a great job on testing. >> 5 million tests a day?
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well, the president's own plan, you know, put out by the coronavirus task force is to conduct 6 to 7 million tests a month. they're nowhere near that yet. but 6 to 7 million a month as opposed to 5 million a day, well, that's just not even in the same strat o'steer. sphere. and dr. fauci on cnn just moments ago said they still need to connect the dots with states to expand the testing to begin with. >> one of the problems has been is the tests getting to the people who need them. or the tests out there, we're not connecting the dots. >> the president also defending the administration's initial response to the pandemic. here he is when asked if he stands by comments that he made in february. remember when he said the number of cases would peak at 15 and drop to zero? >> how did we get from your prediction of zero to 1 million? >> well, it will go down to zero ultimately. any very good experts, very good people, too, said this would never affect the united states. the experts got it wrong.
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>> well, the president also got it wrong even after u.s. officials told "the washington post" that they warned president trump about the coronavirus in more than a dozen classified briefings in january and february. well, even after those dozen classified briefings as reported by "the washington post," at the end of february here was president trump. >> when you have 15 people and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done. >> tonight, of course, the cases are not close to zero. they're more than a million now, and expected to continue to increase for months to come. >> i'm almost certain it will come back because the virus is so transmissible and it's globally spread. >> next fall and winter we are going to have two viruses circulating and we're going to have to distinguish between which is flu and which is the coronavirus.
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>> those top two advisors, of course, dr. fauci you heard today 37. jim acosta, who's at the white house, said we could be in for a bad fall and a bad winter. >> reporter: that's right. >> there are a lot of mixed messages coming out of the white house. to be accurate you have dr. fauci, dr. redfield consistently saying one thing and you have the president saying another. >> reporter: that's absolutely the case. when i posed that question to the president earlier today, he went on to say that the experts got it wrong. that they were going to say that this was going to be no problem. that's absolutely not the case. we should point out earlier in the day in the oval office, the president was asked about the warnings that he got earlier in the year from the intelligence community and he pinned the blame on dr. anthony fauci. at one point he referred to, quote, anthony and said that dr. fauci essentially said that all of this was going to be no problem, in the words of the president, no problem. when the president made that comment on february 26th about the cases going down to zero,
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erin, we should point out three days later after that remark from the president, dr. fauci was on another network saying that there could be a major outbreak. dr. nancy messonier from the cdc that same week was saying that the u.s. needs to prepare for community spread. and so the president is trying to rewrite history here and say that the experts were telling him at the time that there wasn't going to be a problem whvg we have video, we have audio, and we know that's not the case. i can tell you, erin, talking to my sources, surrogates at the white house, trump campaign surrogates, putting out really talking points to reporters trying to pin the blame on the experts. people like dr. fauci and saying they're the ones who are giving the president the bad information. it was really perfect that you played that video from dr. redfield from the cdc moments ago. because as you'll recall earlier today the president was saying, well, the worst of the pandemic might be behind us. he said that in the east room of
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the white house. when of course we don't know whether or not that's the case. and as dr. redfield was saying and dr. fauci, they've both said the coronavirus will be still around and it could combine with the flu outbreak over the winter months and make things very difficult for the united states. and so the president time and again on opposite ends from his experts in trying to rewrite history trying to say he never said these things when, of course, we know he did. erin? >> jim, thank you. i want oohing to to go to dr. ivan watts. gloria borger, and ryan goodman, co-kert in chief of the justice security blog where he has published a piece disseconding the timeline of the u.s. government's response pot pandemic. he's also special former counsel at the office of defense. gloria, let me start with you. the president basically saying the experts made mistakes. certainly some of them did. we talked about the w.h.o. and mistakes that were made. but we also of course have -- we know that he did receive briefings in -- "washington post" is reporting at least a
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dozen of them indicating the magnitude of the problem here. but that is not a responsibility that he's willing to take. i think today, in fact, he said heed have to check to see how many times he was briefed. >> well, that was such a curious answer, wasn't it, erin? imagine if you had been given a daily brief on this and if you had listened to it or if you had read it, and then according to "the washington post," these briefings became more frequent and were more widely distributed. imagine if you were president of the united states, you wouldn't recall that something had been told you about a potential pandemic that could cost lives, that could ruin the economy? i mean, imagine not recalling that that had been either said to you or given to you in a presidential daily brief. i mean, that's kind of a
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startling piece of information to forget, isn't it? >> it certainly is. doctor, it comes again as the president today said the virus, you know, may go away and/or may come back in a modified form in the fall, which seems quite dangerous because it implies it's going to be a different sort of virus and there's no experts that have spoken of that at all. in fact, dr. fauci tonight says we could be in for a bad fall and a bad winter. again, two incredibly divergent stories. >> erin, at a time like this you need two things. you need good leadership and you need good advice. i think most of us are pretty clear that dr. fauci and the other medical folks are giving good advice. what we don't have is someone who is willing to say i'm the leader, the buck stops with me, i'm responsible for this. and what happens, i'm the one.
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i don't understand how that happens because the problem with not doing that is that credibility is what leaders need. so this is like leadership 101. leadership 101 doesn't allow you to blame everyone else if you want people to keep following you. it doesn't -- well, it makes sense if there is something called magical thinking going on. if you really believe that you can just wish it away, if you really believe that whatever you say is going to happen, if you just want it to happen badly enough, then you get something like this. but from a leadership perspective, from a public health perspective, it's dangerous to not have anyone at the top who is willing to take responsibility. >> and you know, ryan, when we've looked at the time lines here, there are some basic things as in the president, when he says he banned travel from china, which he did in part, but of course 40,000 people still came through. but even with that, even after he did that, he continued to say that the virus was going to go away. you've looked very specifically
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at the timeline of everything we know about the government response to the virus. what stands out the most to you? >> so i think what stands out the most to me echoes what jim acosta just said, which is we now know what the president knew at the time he was making these public statements. and what we can derive from it is not just wishful thinking, but it's engaging in public deception. he was being told by his public health officials. he was being told by his economic adviser, mr. navarro. he was being told by the secretary of health and human services, mr. azar, twice in which the president responded to mr. azar by saying he's being alarmist to raise the seriousness of the virus to him. and these over dozen intelligence briefings. you can look at the timeline when he's being told this. he tries to squelch it and threatens to fire dr. messonnier, which jim acosta just referred to after she tried to warn the public.
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the "wall street journal" just reported that last week. and instead there's a lot of pressure placed on senior officials to fall in line. so the time line also shows the ways in which the senior officials start to say things in their public messaging that doesn't step out of line with the president which makes a very difficult situation for them. >> i mean, gloria, it is pretty stunning, too, in addition to that contradiction, right, consistent, and now we know what was happening behind the scenes that he kept saying this, that it continues even today, right? >> right. >> in the past two days he said if the virus comes back. when dr. fauci said i have no question it's going to come back. then today the president says, you know, maybe it will go away. and dr. fauci says, we could be in for a bad fall and a bad winter. the president uses this very dangerous form of words to describe the virus that may be in some modified form. there is no scientific evidence that this virus is going to
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change form. >> right, and i think his language was, which kind of struck me, he said, we'll be able to put out spurts of the virus, whatever that means. and maybe this will just go away for months. and one day hopefully, you know, he might be right, erin. but what the public is seeing is dangerous, which is you have the scientists saying one thing. and, by the way, as we know that the public trust tony fauci, for example, by almost 2-1 over the president. the scientists saying, yes, this could come back particularly if people ease up too much on the social distancing, and the president who calls himself a cheerleader saying oh, no, no, no, this is going to be fine. well, there is a line between cheerleading and lying to the american public. and i think that the president is crossing it all the time because he's not listening to what his very own task force is telling him. and he wants to go out there to the podium every day, or whether
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it's in the rose garden or the east room and say, you know, we're really -- this is almost over and the economy is going to come roaring back. don't worry, i've got it under control. beneath all this is the question about what the president knew and when he knew it early on in this pandemic. >> all right. >> before it became a pandemic. >> thanks very much to all. and next, a plan to reopen casinos in las vegas. i'm going to talk to the leader of the largest casino workers union to see if the risk to his members is worth the payoff. and then to the jersey shore where a mayor wants to reopen his town and the beach even as hundreds are still dying in the garden state. his plan. and we're going to take you where fewer people have died during the entire outbreak, than died in a single hour in the united states. new zealand. we're going to talk to an expert. expert. what is new zealand doing?
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tonight casinos in las vegas releasing plans for how they'll open for business. the venetian resort today listing safety protocols they'll follow including they're going to do temperature checks for both guests and staff at every entrance and in the rooms if you're going to stay there a personal care kit will be friefded, hand sanitizer, latex gloves, and a mask, although you will not be required to wear that mask. casino chips disinfected every
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two hours. slot machines rearranged so that they would be, you know, social distanced apart. "out front" now, international president of unite here, the largest casino workers union. i appreciate your time. mr. taylor, i summarized the plan laid out by the venetian. but you have temperature checks, masks handed out but not required of guests. chips cleaned every two hours. is that good enough? >> no, not at all. we think there has to be a few things. one, we think all the workers should actually get tested before they come back. 25% of coronavirus folks, as you know, are asymptomatics. we want to make sure the workers and guests aren't exposed. full allowance of p.p.e. for workers throughout where needed. three, enforcement of social distancing in a very strict way. four, cleaning standards up to the cdc on a constant basis. five, we have to figure out
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shifts. so, for example, around time clocks, around pre-shift meetings so there isn't a congregating of people. i think this has to be not decided by companies. i think both the state and municipality have to have a standard in regulation because we're not going to rely on companies to do the right thing. we've already seen what meatpacking companies have done in the united states. and we think that it is absolutely essential for both workers and the future of vegas and our industry to make sure there is a standard that's enforceable so workers aren't exposed and guests aren't exposed. >> so what was your reaction when you heard cleaning the chips only every two hours in terms of disinfecting and that a mask would be given to guests in the room but they wouldn't have to wear them. most of us have been on a casino floor in las vegas. that would mean a whole lot of people are in close proximity
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with no protection. >> yeah, it's not just that. think about all the different touch points you have in a casino. the casino is really no different than a cruise ship on land. thousands of rooms, tons of restaurants, the ability to congregate. i think it has to be totally reengineered. and first and foremost, i can't think of anything that would endanger business than another coronavirus hot spot in las vegas. so it's about protecting the workers, protecting the guests, protecting frankly the future of this city. but as we look forward, this is really our industry throughout the country, in hotels and casinos. we've got to be tough in this country about how workers are protected and guests are protected in order to have a future. >> so obviously, given the incredible uncertainty, the mass joblessness, the true economic tragedy that is also happening
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across this country, and you are seeing it, of course, with your union members. how do you keep them unified, you know, when there is going to be a lot of pressure on them to go back to work under any circumstances because they need those jobs? >> well, there are a few things. one, the unemployment system in this country is a joke. so if they can actually get unemployment, as you know, in places like florida and nevada and other states it's almost impossible even though they're qualified. number two, nobody should have to choose between your life and your job. that's what we're being asked to do here. we're not rats in a lab to be tested. so i think it is absolutely essential that we do this right. i heard earlier about dr. fauci, who we should listen to as compared to the politicians. we have to do this right. we can't cut corners. we can't have workers be expendable like a pair of gloves and a pair of shoes. >> all right. i appreciate your time. thank you. >> thank you. >> i want to go to new jersey now where the mayor of one town is looking at social distancing guidelines and the possibility of wearing masks on the beach
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when he opens it back up. beachside video there, this is from a few years back. you know, you can see possible social distance in part, but it can get pretty tight on some crowded days down there. as we have seen certainly in california, florida and elsewhere. "outfront" now, the mayor of point pleasant beach in new jersey. mayor, i appreciate your time. it's the lifeblood of your community. there's no question about it. in the summer that's when a lot of businesses make the money they're going to make. so i understand the pressure that you feel on both sides of this. but how would you safely bring hundreds, maybe thousands of people closely together? >> i think the whole plan that we have is a common sense one, erin. it's meant to make sure that we don't just open the floodgates up completely and immediately and endanger our citizens, endanger the tri-state area and put us at risk for the potential of a second wave. what we're trying to do is a very gradual approach where we
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know our residents here on point pleasant beach. we know our taxpayer. like you mentioned, the beach and the ocean is their lifeblood. and if anybody knows how to handle themselves, i think they do. and the fact that we can open it on a small scale first, start out with our residents, start out with our taxpayers and make it gradual. along the way we're going to find out a lot of these answers. we're going to find out how many resources we need, how many officers up there to enforce social distancing. how many people we can have on the beach. those kinds of questions. >> so, you know, you also have a boardwalk. this is a question for people in coastal towns around the country are going to have. a boardwalk is more difficult than a beach. right? it's narrow, it's jammed. that's the whole point of it. is there any way you could have that open safely? >> i think our boardwalk highlights just how different municipalities, especially beach municipalities, are up and down the coast of new jersey and across the entire country. we've seen what happened, you alluded to it earlier, in jacksonville and orange county where people opened things up
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too quickly. there was a deluge. it was unsustainable and people weren't practicing proper social distancing. our boardwalk at some points is only 10 or 15 feet wide. now, that's drastically different than atlantic city and seaside heights where their boardwalks are a lot different and a lot wider. what we're looking for and the governor of new jersey has given us a lot of latitude in this front, is for the municipality, who know their town the best, to be able to make the decisions for them using that data and that knowledge that we have. >> so how would you enforce -- when you set your restrictions and you say you're going to have strict social distancing which you're going to need to have, how are you going to enforce that? >> so we're in the process of looking at printing up temporary resident and taxpayer badges. we're looking at how we're going to have badge checkers on the boardwalk and how many seasonal officers we're going to have up there. point pleasant beach in the offseason is only 4,500 residents. now, in the main season we grow
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to almost 50,000-plus residents on busy weekends. so again, this small approach where even if we have 5% or 10% of our residents on the beach, it's a very manageable 250, 300 or so residents up there. and i think that's something really palatable and something we can really figure out how to do this properly and see if it's scalable too on a larger scale. >> all right. mayor, kanitra, i appreciate your time. thank you. >> thanks for having me. >> next, a small business owner on why some big companies and organizations like the l.a. lakers could get a small business loan from a federal program and he can't. also tonight, new zealand's prime minister, expecting 75% of the economy up and running. coronavirus-free. how was, it is it possible? one of the nation's top doctors is out front. you doing okay?
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president trump holding an event today with small business owners touting the paycheck protection program known as the ppp. >> when 14 days they did more work and more loans, both in terms of applications and in terms of dollar amount than they did in 14 years, and then the kind of jobs that have also been saved, it's incredible. you'll be seeing that in the coming weeks. >> it comes as many business owners, though, have been waiting weeks to find out if their applications have been accepted and others have not been able to get past glitches on the website due to what it says, quote, unprecedented demand. out front now, tom sopit he owns the los angeles restaurant employees only. tom, we talked recently about the status. you had tried to get a loan the
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first time and then, boom, the money is all gone. where are you now in the process? now they have a second tranche and you're applying. >> i'm not exactly sure because they just really send a generic message on, you know, hey, you're in line, we're working on it, but there's really no concrete details to where we stand. so we're just kind of still waiting. >> so the small business administration i just referenced there, the unprecedented demand is how they're describing what happened to their website when they relaunched the program yesterday. so you're basically saying you have no idea. it went into the ether and you have no idea if someone will see it or if you'll get a response? >> yeah, i have no idea. i just know i sent it in. it was submitted. but we don't know if there's -- you know, where we stand in that virtual line. we're just -- we're just waiting like many other americans and
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business owners out there. >> so when, you know, the president says in the past 14 days they've done more work than they've done in the past 14 years in terms of the small business administration getting these loans out and that it's going to be saving a whole lot of jobs, what's your kind of gut reaction when you hear that? >> that's great. we haven't had a pandemic like this in the last 14 years, so that sounds accurate. it still doesn't help our cause as much as i would like to, you know, try to understand that. but our bills are still not being paid. we're still not getting the loan. people need jobs. so it's still not very helpful. >> so, you know, last time we spoke you said you had lost faith in the system because a lot of big businesses were able to get loans as part of this program. and now the treasury secretary steve mnuchin is saying, look, there's going to be stricter oversight of these loans, this won't keep happening, they're
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going to have an audit on every loan over $2 million. do you think any of this will actually help when it comes to your situation where you need money right now to keep your business and your family afloat? >> no, that -- that doesn't help that they're going to retroactively do something later because we need the money now. the funds that are being returned do not even get automatically redistributed. new loans can't be made against those funds because congress will still need to authorize another loan. so it doesn't matter that all these companies are returning $20 million, what's probably well over $100 million now. it's not like we get a piece of that. -6 >> well, tom, i am glad to check in with you. i really hope you'll have some news for us next time we speak. our fingers crossed for you. and i want to go straight to austin goolsbee, former chairman of the council of economic
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advisers under president obama. you heard tom speak, trying to keep his business afloat to get through this. it is pretty incredible, right, just the frustration. last time applied, basically doesn't get a response. now they open the money again yesterday, and you go in and it just says unprecedented demand and who knows what's going to happen? >> yeah, look, first of all, every time we hear from tom, you can sense his frustration. and we should be frustrated. we're the taxpayers. i mean, we put hundreds of billions of dollars into this program to try to save businesses exactly like tom's. the neighborhood restaurants, dry cleaners, beauty salons, whatever they might be. we're trying to prevent this thing from turning into an epic history-making recession or even depression. the fact that there's so much oversubscribing of people wanting the money is a sign of desperation. i mean, you've seen the surveys of small business.
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most small businesses have less than six weeks' worth of cash on hand. if we get to june 1 and rent is due and payroll is due and materials and they have their inventory and they can't pay it, that's going to be a deciding point. there are going to be a lot of companies that have to shut down for good. and i certainly hope that secretary mnuchin is right, that they're going to have more oversight and better discipline on the money this time around. but do you really think they're going to? what happened last time, they ran through the money, blew through $350 billion in two weeks. the companies that needed it didn't get it. the companies that were the bank's favorites got concierge service. and they got the money -- >> it's outrageous. i'm not saying that he doesn't want to have more oversight, i'm sure he does. but it is what it is. there hasn't been a lot of investment in the small business administration.
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how are you suddenly going to have the head count to be going through this in a different way than you did a couple days ago? it doesn't add up. when i mentioned the l.a. lakers earlier, austin, they were able to get a loan. they have returned the money along with other high-profile companies. it's sort of crazy when you look at it. someone like the l.a. lakers would have even been able to get one to begin with. never mind their judgment in using their ability to go through all the red tape to get one in the first place. and the treasury secretary felt the same way about it. here he is. >> i never expected in a million years that the los angeles lakers, which i'm a big fan of the team, but i'm not a big fan of the fact they took a $4.6 million loan. i think that's outrageous and i'm glad they've returned it or they would have had liability. >> i mean, does he bear ultimate responsibility for this? it's his program ultimately. >> look, i think he does. and the administration actively
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went out of its way to say we want to be in control. the president said he doesn't have to respect the inspector general. they control the money. and the thing is, if you take all the power of controlling the money, then you have to take the accountability that comes with it. nobody's saying at this point is the biggest amount of money of all is still coming down the pipe. $500 billion for big business with a $5 trillion lending facility coming through the fed. now, is that going to be better monitored than this $350 billion was for small business? it better be or there really is going to be hell to pay. >> so this all comes as the economic crisis here. we're just really i think starting to see how horrible it could be, and that's saying something because the numbers we've seen have been absolutely horrible. kevin hasset, one of the president's top economic
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advisers, he's now predicting the unemployment rate could be 16% to 20% by june. and he's saying that's like the great depression, right? great depression peaked at 24.9%. these are unimaginable numbers. yet he comes out and says this, auston. as the president of the united states says something different. here is kevin hassett today and here is president donald trump today. >> gdp tomorrow will probably be a negative number and that will be just the very tip of the iceberg of a few months of negative news. it's unlike anything you've ever seen. >> third quarter, it's obviously a transition quarter, but i think it's going to be okay, maybe better than okay. i think fourth quarter will be great. and i think next year is going to be a tremendous year for this country. >> why do you think they aren't on the same page? is there any possibility that in a sense it's coordinated? you've got the good cop and the bad cop, then if trump doesn't hit 16% unemployment, he looks
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good? or do you think they're just not on the same page? >> that's an interesting idea that i hadn't thought about. i don't think they contradicted each other because kevin hasset is saying the second quarter is going to be epically horrible. and donald trump is saying, well, the third quarter is going to be good. now, the thing that everybody should try to wrap their head around is both of those could be right, but if we have, let's say, the gdp growth rate is minus 20% in the second quarter and is the worst number we have ever seen, and then in the third quarter we come back 8%, are you going to feel better if the unemployment rate goes up to 16 and then comes down to 11, are you going to feel better? maybe you'll feel better, but i kind of think the economy is
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mostly going to feel worse. and what we've got to do, it all just goes back to we've got to get control of the spread of this virus. that's the best way to get the economy back and growing because if we don't do that, we're going to need more and more money for relief, over and over, because every business like the small businesses you have on, erin, is going to be saying, i can't survive. i need help. >> all right. austan, thank you. and next, new zealand says it has eliminated coronavirus, eliminated. one of the nation's top public health experts is out front. plus a spectacular aerial tribute to the superheroes down on the ground here in new york. ♪
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tonight new zealand says it has eliminated coronavirus after five weeks of strict lockdown measures, 400,000 new zealanders s went back to work. 75% of the economy up and running. there were only 19 deaths in the country. the entire country. for the entire outbreak. out front now, michael baker, epidemiologist and professor of public health at the university of atigo in new zealand.
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professor, i really appreciate your time. so you know, first of all, when people hear the word "eliminated," i think eyes light up around this planet to think how that could happen, and yet that is exactly what you are saying right now in new zealand. so what exactly does eliminated mean? does that mean you think it's gone and basically no one can come or go from the country until -- while the rest of the world deals with this? >> good evening. yes, i think we're still working on all of the details around what elimination looks like, but basically our health authorities are using the definition there is no community transmission desight very large volume testing across the country in many settings. >> okay. so you're in this situation where now you have some return to normalcy. can you explain what 75% of the economy means? did you put any restrictions on that as we hear italy considering in terms of the age of people that can go back to
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work to protect the vulnerable? or how did you define the 75% opening? >> that's a very good question. we have a four-level system. we were in level four, which is essentially a lockdown of the whole country. now we're going to level three. certain workforce groups can return. but not many children are back in school yet. only some. and also industries that involve contact with people like retail settin settings, they've gone to a contactless approach. so it's still a very intense scrutiny of physical distancing and travel restrictions, so it could be many weeks before we're back to normal. but certainly the new normal as we are calling it, also involves very intense control of the borders. there are very few people coming in and they all have to go through two weeks of quarantine. it will be a long time before we can think about resuming contact with the rest of the world. that will only be with countries that have also achieved
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elimination or the widespread use of an effective vaccine or very good anti-virals. >> right. so it's interesting as you say, it's obviously something to celebrate. but it isn't a return to normal in any way. if we look at this as an indicator of where the rest of us could hopefully be going, it is a long path. and to that point, professor, dr. birx today, deborah birx, you know, who in the u.s. has been one of the leaders of the coronavirus task force in the white house, she said she really is watching what happens in new zealand and in part because in the coming months is when normally respiratory diseases move from the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphe hemisphere. do you have concern that, you know, as you come into the winter that it could get worse in new zealand? >> yes, if we have the virus it will get worse in winter. we always treat viruses with conditions. but it if we have -- if we
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succeed with elimination, and this is the first stage, it will involve several stages along this path, to be assured we don't have virus, it can't come back in winter because it won't be here. i mean, we are doing the same thing taiwan did. a month or two ahead of us. they also succeeded very well. and australia is also succeeding on this path. i think it would be an option for any country or even region that can put a ring around its borders and pursue themation strategy. it is possible for anywhere in the world theoretically to do this. >> the world, of course, will be watching new zealand. incredible country, and one that i suppose will be staying on my dream list to visit for a little while longer. thank you very much, professor baker. i appreciate your time. >> thanks. >> and next, food banks faced with challenges likely not seen since the great depression, these images are heartbreaking and incredibly powerful. people who say they need help feeding themselves and their families for the first time in
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their lives. plus, something to nourish the spirit. even if it means a rumble in the bronx.
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don't bring that mess around here, evan! whoo! don't do it. don't you dare. i don't think so! [ sighs ] it's okay, big fella. we're gonna get through this together. [ baseball bat cracks ] nice rip, robbie. ♪ raaah!
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new tonight president trump signing an executive order to keep meat processing plants open
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amid growing concerns about the food supply as families across the country are turning to food banks for the first time for help. jason carroll is out front. >> reporter: the line of cars stretch for more than a mild. the wait for food at this emergency distribution site in newark, new jersey, more than an hour. but the need so great those who came looking for help were more than willing to wait. >> i've never done this before. it's a shame that i have to do this. >> reporter: many here say it is their first time asking for food. >> there's two families in here, okay? >> open your trunk right here. >> reporter: people like rita charles who brought her elderly neighbor. >> you're alone, even my neighbor, she's alone too. so, that's why we appreciate it. >> reporter: julio or todtega w laid off as a truck driver.
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>> it's an experience, first time. the kids, it's hard for them. >> reporter: week after week as the number of unemployed rises across the country so too does the number of people needing food assistance. feeding america, the nation's largest group of food banks is now seeing a staggering 100% increase in demand at some of its distribution sites. but this one in little rock, arkansas where they ran out of food in less than an hour tuesday. the state seeing the biggest spike, ohio, florida, california, and texas where in san antonio last week people lined up for hours. with the increased demand comes more worries about meeting those demands. give diminished donations food banks once received from what were reliable sources before the pandemic. >> restaurants, hotels aren't donating. grocery stores are selling out. so, there's not as much food to collect while the demand is
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doubled. >> so much need and yet so much waste. down the food chain, hogs in minnesota to be euthanized, chickens slaughtered, carcasses thrown out while dairy farmers forced to dump 8,000 gallons of milk last week. part of the problem, restaurants and schools now closed so farmers have fewer outlets to sell in bulk to. with so many people sick, it has crippled their distribution channels like the trucking industry. >> the food is here. the farmers have it and the consumers need it. somehow we've got to get the system in between to work for that. >> billions in federal assistance is scheduled in the next few weeks to aid farmers along with a program to get distributors to work with food banks. new york saw a 60% jump in food bank demand launched an initiative to help cut the waste. >> we're also immediately to
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stop this dumping of milk and get it to people who need it. >> in the meantime, the lines and the demand keeps growing. >> and that was jason carroll. and finally tonight, a beautiful noise from out of the blue, a soaring voice to complement the cheers at 7:00 every night here in new york. for doctors and nurses and everyone else on the front lines, here's genie. >> reporter: instead of sending thank you cards or flowers, why not send the thunderbirds and the blue angels? blue angels makes sense when you're honoring medical workers being hailed as angels. here at elmhurst hospital in queens workers gathered outside for the fly by dedicated to them and others like them. new yorkers watched, gun boats patrolled the hudson, choppers buzzed by.
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but this was the buzz the city awaited, falling in formation 1,500 feet above, spewing white trails, they were fuelled in the air and did more fly byes over philadelphia and trenton. even clebs by hugh jackman couldn't believe it up . up to 400-miles-per-hour. so fast elmhurst hospitals didn't have time to get their cameras rolling. masked faces and gloved hands underscored the medical nature of the thank you emission. spectators tried to social distance with varying degrees of success. >> yeah, well, are those airplanes six feet apart? >> actually the jets meet social distancing standards, staying
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apart in fore mags, about 10 feet. as for those medical workers -- >> i don't think words can say how grateful we are. >> and we can all use a little sparkle these days as the blue angels fly by, will the real angels in blue stand up? gene jeanie most. >> thank you so much. it was absolutely beautiful to see those planes fly over but it was really, really fast. let's hand it over to chris now for cuomo prime time. >> i love it. i love having our most powerful somehow of respect for the people who are most powerful first line defense against this virus. i love it. we'll be talking about it as well. erin, have a great night. i am chris cuomo. welcome to "prime time." is the worst behind us? now, trump said that and he will
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be right but only if we do the right things right now. and here is the problem. the right things are the hard things, and we haven't seen this president and his pals do well with making hard calls up to this point. heck, they added a coronavirus task force and the vice president didn't even wear a mask at the mayo clinic. why not? he has an answer. it's even more surprising than what he did. another surprise. are we going to run out of the mee meat? we also have the governor of ohio here to test his call to reopen in part on friday. can he test and trace enough? we'll see. and we must remember one of our best who was lost to the silent killer in this pandemic. we all mourn when a health care hero is lost because we are one in this. what do you say? let's get after it. ♪
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the president is not only recognizing the need for testing now. he also gave you some key insights today. >> well, it will go down to zero ultimately. if you test you're going to show many more cases. there will be at the appropriate time, it will be down to zero. >> first of all, you have to remember trump told you that covid would be gone by now, all right? there is no science behind his suggestions. but you know that already at this point, or i hope you do. but there's a key part of that statement that you may miss. if you just told you why he ducked testing for so long -- and they did duck it -- more testing means more cases identified. trump did not like the idea of showing how fast covid was spreading seeing how he was calling it a hoax and saying it was going to go away after a dozen or so cases. now we