♪ >> brennan: welcome back to "face the nation." we go now to louisiana congresswoman elect dr. julia letlow. welcome to "face the nation." >> thank you so much for having me, margaret. >> brennan: doctor, you are the first republican congresswoman in louisiana's history, and you won your seat in a special election that was held after your husband, luke let letlow, recently passed away from covid. i'm wondering how that experience, firsthand, with covid, is going to inform your work here in washington. >> doctor: well, it is definitely going to inform my work. i just want to take a second to acknowledge all of the americans out there

who have lost loved ones to covid. i want to say that i see you, i hear you, and i pray with you. i'm a huge proponent of the vaccine. it has life-saving capabilities. i want to encourage anyone who is eligible to go ahead and get that vaccine. it is so important. >> brennan: and that's a resonant message coming from you, and, frankly, looking at your district. louisiana is going to open up eligibility on monday for everyone 16 and up. but what we're seeing in our own apolo polling is hesitation among republicans 65 and younger. when you're speaking to voters, what is your message to them about why they should trust this vaccine? >> that's right. that's why i want to be an advocateand a voice for everyone. look at my family. use my story.

i experienced a tragedy in my immediate family. andid couch every amilout the.t has life-saving capabilities, i went to encourage everyone to trust it and get the vaccine. >> brennan: i know you spoke with former president trump, and you also received a phone call from president biden who talked to you about your loss. can you share with us anything about that phone call? >> sure. they were both so gracious and expressed their condolences. president biden, you know, who is no stranger to loss as well, shared with me he ununderstood the pain i was walking through, and that it will get better, and i know it will. >> brennan: i know we all hope it certainly does for you, and you have a lot of business to carry on, on behalf of your constituents when we get here. you have one of the highest poverty rates in the country, about 25%. you said for you a

priority is expanding broadband access infrastructure. and that's high on president biden's list oes that mean as a republican in the house, you are going to get on board with his proposals? >> well, i'm definitely going to get on board with any proposal that is going to provide broadband to my district. like you said, we have some of the highest poverty rates in the nation right here. my background is in higher education. i believe if you can educate a child, you give them a future. i want to champion education from early childhood, "k" through 12 to our four-year institutions. there is nothing like a pandemic, margaret, to bring to light how vital rural broadband is in educating our children, but also providing health care to the constituents in my district. >> brennan: there has already been apprehension -- the bill hasn't even been proposed yet, just being talked

about, but the p it, another $2 trillion or more, and does this mean as a republican you would vote for it, anything that would expand broadband access? >> i would definitely have to take a close look at the bill. i'm not up there yet, so i would definitely have to analyze it. i'm going to be looking for avenues to find a way to expand broadband in my district. so i'll look at everything on the table. >> brennan: you're joining a record-breaking number of women in the house of representatives. when we looked at louisiana, it is at around the bottom of the country when it comes to equal pay for women, particularly black women. about 47 cents on the dollar, latino women, about 52 cents, and women at large,ut cenypority for yo > it isefelsomet wl oko.

i am so proud to be the first woman to be elected to the state of louisiana. when you look at the makeup of louisiana, roughly 52% is women. and every issue is a women's issue. >> brennan: we will be watching what you do. i want to ask you just to share some of your personal experience. you talked about your personal loss here. and i know when we looked at your background, you've experienced quite a lot of grief in your life. you also lost your 17-year-old brother in a car accident when he was in college. you wrote a thesis and a dissertation on grief itself. what is your lesson, as you said, for those who have lost during this pandemic? how do you continue moving forward as you did, with bringing your children here to washington, continuing to push forward with a career in the mass

of such a loss? >> that's right. i happen to be a woman of faith. i believe that the lord doesn't waste an experience, good or bad. so even writing a dissertation on finding meaning after the loss of a family member is helping guide me through. one of the findings of my dissertation is that when a person can get outside of themselves in the grieving process and find ways to serve others, that can actually be cathartic and help guide them through the grieving process. everything in my life and marriage has led me to this one moment in time. i'm so honored and excited to serve theeople of the >> brennan:t. congresswoman-elect, we will be watching. thank you for joining us today. we'll be right back. so, if you haven't tried botox® for your chronic migraine check with your doctor

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that kept us afloat. keeping our diners informed on google was so important. the support from our customers, it honestly kept us going. i will always be grateful for that. ♪ all right that's a fifth-floor problem... ok. not in my house! ha ha ha! ha ha ha! no no no! not today! ha ha ha! ha ha ha! jimmy how happy are folks who save hundreds of dollars switching to geico? happier than dikembe mutumbo blocking a shot. get happy. get geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more. >> brennan: most regions of the world are seeing an increase in covid infections as highly contagious variants continue to spread.

the world health organization called it a worrying sign. senior foreign correspondent liz palmer reports from tel aviv. >> reporter: good pmorning. israel, where i am, has now vaccinated almost three-quarters of adults over 16 years old. and the effect has been dramatic. t weekow to 12.eople whoied, o by contrast, europe isig troubl. czechoslovakia stopped for a minute of silence on monday. in the old town square, white crosses marked the lives lost so far, and now deaths are climbing again. most european countries are either headl heading for or are in a third wave of infections that warned could be the worst yet. europe's vaccine rollout has been plagued by supply

problems. with tem prep temporary centers springing up everywhere. including here. and three vaccine sites are being approved, which will also help. and then there is brazil, now responsible for a quarter of covid deaths worldwide every day. regional governments have cs, stricted traffic, and told people to stay home. medical teams are doing their best, but poverty, disinformation, and a more contagious variant means 80,000 new cases every day. and a warning that brazil may end up with more coronavirus deaths over all even than the united states. as for the world health organization report by the team that traveled to china to look for the origins of the virus has been much delayed, once again it was due out on friday. so far know sign of it. margaret? >> brennan: liz, thank you. we go now to former f.d.a.

commissioner dr. scott gottlieb. he sits on the board of pfizer, and he joins us from west port, connecticut. good morning to you. >> doctor: good morning. >> brennan: do you agree with dri fauci in terms of his projectioning on where proje we're headed, stuck at this 60,000 infections per day level? >> doctor: we have now vaccinated 92 million americans. about 50 million have been fully vaccinated. and israel started to see a big decline in cases when they hit about 25% of theulat vaccinated. what we're seeing around the nation right now, which is worrisome, are outbreaks in certain states, michigan, metro detroit, around massachusetts, new york, are experiencing anicut,- upsurge of infection. i think we need to continue to vaccinate and have vaccine in those parts of the country. i think the biden

administration can allocate it to parts of the country that look hot right now. if we could get two or three more weeks about three million vaccines a day, that will be a pretty good backdrop against a surge. >> brennan: we're already at 140 million, and that sounds like you're saying a very hittable target. but how do you overcome that last hurtle of skepticism, particularly among republicans? is the government going to be the best message messenger n this case? >> doctor: they won't be. you need to get the vaccine into community sites that have relationships with patients and get it into more doctors' offices, get it into pharmacies. the administration is starting to push a lot of vaccine out through different channels. they have given the pharmacies a big role. they're been marketing the vaccine very aggressively. and that's what we should be doing. they're going to start vaccinating patients who

present to dialysis centers. we should be vaccinating centers on discharge from the hospital, patients that go into infusion sites. we should be looking at every single interaction that patients have with medical centers, and try to offer vaccines through a provider that patients know. that is how we'll get people who are more hesitant about being vaccinated to take up the vaccine. >> brennan: people you trust, not necessarily celebrities? >> doctor: exactly. >> brennan: on the world health organization, i want to ask -- nothing gens celebrity endorsements of vaccines. on the world health organization and what dr. fauci was saying, i know you must be looking at this. he said, yes, the white house is talking about it, but he has no indication of what policies there might be regarding patent protections of pharmaceutical companies who make covid vaccines. the world health organization chief has endorsed this idea of lifting it in order to help some developing countries get access.

what is the implication if that happens? >> doctor: well, look, i think the implication is you'll provide for the future. the reality is looking at the practicality of it, the rate is not the intellectual property around these vaccines. these companies -- including pfizer, which i'm on the border, are producing as much as they can. there is just a limited global supply of those highly specialized inputs. if you appropriate the intellectual property and give it to other companies to make the vaccines, they're not going to be able to make them efficiently, and they don't have the supply chain, either. it will just come at the expense of companies like pfizer and moderna that are making the vaccines far more efficiently. we have to get more resources into expanding that manufacturing capacity. this is an opportunity for president biden to do what president bush did to create a global campaign to try to supply vaccine around the world using the

u.s. intellectual property. these companies have already donated vaccine. they would be rilling willing to provide more if the u.s. government would backstop some of the legalities doing that. i think, unfortunately, giving away our intellectual properties isn't going to result in more vaccines in these countries. >> brennan: when someone, like liz palmer showed, the surge in brazil, where it is uncontrolled in their borders, this is not something you would point to as a solution, to surge vaccine into a problem country? >> doctor: it would be a solution -- right now we don't have the supply to do that. i think we can get the supply, but not in time probably for brazil. and brazil has been reluctant to take up the vaccine. that is part of the problem, policy failures down there. >> brennan: you and i have spoken about this in the past, and we had matt

totenger, the former security advisor to president trump, and they have spoken about the theories of the origin of covid, to be clear here, when it comes to this report, you said you believe the most likely scenario on the origins of covid, it was bouncing back and forth between people and animals for a period of time and finally broke out, but you said the lab theory is never going to be fully dispelled, the world health organization shouldn't walk away from that so easily. do you expect them to walk away from that when this report comes out? >> doctor: it looks like the w.h.o. report was an attempt to try to support the china narrative -- the chinese narrative around this origin of the vaccine. the lab-leak theory doesn't seem like a plausible theory unless you advocate the biggest collection of coronaviruses and put them in a minimum security lab

in the million of a densely populated center and experiment on animals. which is what wuhititute did. the usi these us infngls. so k. might t be most likely scenario on how this virus got out, but it has to remain a scenario. what we're going to have here is a battle of competing narratives. >> brennan: uh-huh. and we will continue to cover it. thank you very much, dr. gottlieb, for your annuanalysis. we'll be back in a moment. nowot

international. he joins us from

marriott cut thousands of jobs. you lost about $276 is million. when do you expect to get back to that pre-pandemic level of both jobs and business? >> it really depends on demand recovery. and demand recovery will be driven by consumer confidence. the good news is we have such great visibility into realtime data. in certain markets, where the virus co containment seems to be proceeding well, and where you're seeing broad distribution of vaccine, we are seeing demand recover, and that is allowing us to bring many of our employees back. >> brennan: so demand is up. arizona, texas, and florida, it is up, but still low in some of the big cities. is that a trend you think is going to stay with us for some time?

>> we'll continue to see growth in demand in drive-to destinations and i think leisure destinations. one of the really interesting phenomenon we've seen over the last year is a blending of trip purposes. people have learned they can, in fact, work from almost anywhere. as a result, we're seeing our guests combine business travel with leisure travel. >> brennan: gas prices aren't going to impact those drive-to destination bookings? >> certainly they'll have some measure of impact, but we've really not seen it yet. there is enormous pent-up demand. and because of concerns about safety, we continue to see lots of drive-to destination appeal. >> brennan: when we look at the jobless rate in the company, your industry is so frequently pointed to as one of the biggest places of losses, particularly for women. i'm wondering, of all of the adaptations you have had to make in your hotels for safety reasons and

protocols, with not checking in in person, but doing it on your phone or doing it, you know, digitally, haven't you managed your way towards just needing to employee fewer people? are these jobs actually coming back? >> in markets where demand is recovering, we're absolutely seeing those jobs come back. and in many of the markets you described, we are actively hiring. i think what the technological advances allow us to do is really engage our employees more in interacting with the guests and meeting their needs. >> brennan: so desk clerk is not a job that is going to disappear? >> absolutely not. >> brennan: in new york state, they're kind of experimenting with something i'm interested in getting your view on, which io to sak kinf e be vaccinated. is this something that you

think business-wise you would encourage other states to adopt? would it help give you some reassurance? >> time will tell what the right platform is. what we know with certainty, however, is a global, coordinated, reliable health credential system will be key to giving folks comfort about traveling and to giving jurisdictions comfort in opening their borders. >> brennan: but who is going to run that? since the states are administering these vaccine programs, the particulars of how you actually get this up and running are kind of a big stumbling point? >> it is the right question to ask. i worry a bit that the approach to date is a bit fragmented. again, we need a comprehensive and global solution for it to be affective. >> brennan: have you spoke to the white house about that? >> we're in active discussions with the

administration, with our industry colleagues, to try to identify opportunities to inform borders as they consider opening. >> brennan: two dozen or so industry groups wrote a letter to the white house pushing for international travel to be reopened by this summer, saying that is a really key timeframe for them. do you have any indication that any of the travel restrictions will be lifted, that international travel will return? >> it really varies by jurisdiction. we know there is enormous pent-up demand for international travel. and we know those destinations, like many european cities, are struggling mightly because they rely so heavily on inbound international travel. the markets that have recovered most quickly are those that have depths of demand domestically. so we've seen that in drive-to dest ?aitionz in destid we've seen it in china. >> brennan: no promise

from the white house on lifting travel restrictions to countries on the summer? >> not yet. >> brennan: thank you, anthony capuano, for your time and your perspective. we'll be right back. this is the planning effect. as carla thinks about retirement, she'll wonder, "what if i could retire sooner?" and so she'll get some advice from fidelity, and fidelity will help her explore some different scenarios, like saving more every month. ♪ and that has carla feeling so confident that she can enjoy her dream... right now. that's the planning effect, from fidelity. lactaid is 100% real milk, just without the lactose. so you can enjoy it even if you're sensitive. yet some say it isn't real milk. i guess those cows must actually be big dogs.

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watch cbs in bay area with the kpix 5 news app. >> brennan: that's it >> brennan: that's it for us today. thank you all for watching. and before we go, we did want to extend a thank you to broadcast producer jillian hughes, who is leaving our program and our network. she will be missed. until next week, for "face the nation," i'm margaret brennan. ♪ captioning sponsored by cbs captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

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watch cbs in bay area with the kpix 5 news app. deadly weather on the move, in tennessee, record rains sparked flash flooding. trapping people in cars and claiming lives. hail and tornadoes also tearing across the south. the dangerous systems now threatening millions in the east. >> biden's battles, the president targets gop led voting restrictions while represent are cans slam him for the migrant surge. we are putting in place, a plan that i feel confident about. >> plus, chauvin's trial begins in the police killing of george floyd, minneapolis braces and the world watches. the covid economy, o