>> brennan: welcome back to "face the nation." the american consumer is the engine of the u.s. economy, and we're now officially in peak holiday shopping. we are joined now by dave clark. he's the c.e.o. of amazon's worldwide consumer business. mr. clark, good morning to you. >> good morning. >> brennan: from where you sit, what can you tell us? is price inflation eating into holiday spending? what do you expect this season? >> well, we're right in the middle of what we call "turkey five, "which is between thanksgiving and cyber monday, and we're off to a great start. we had a record-breaking brack friday, and we're seeing customers engage-- it's really interesting to see how customers are spending in this first

postvaccine holiday as we start to come back together. and as you might expect, consumers are spending on things like apparel. we're seeing a lot of uptick in denim and dresses. we're seeing a lot of things like home decor, particularly in our holiday decor, which is showing i think families and friends are preparing to come back together, as they just did at thanksgiving, and plan to do in the christmas holidays. we continue to see spend on things like toys, lot of kids are going to have a good visit from santa this holiday season, i suspect, as we continue to support there. and a little bit of downturn in electronics. people have spent so much during covid, supporting their home office and various electronics, but off to a very good start. i don't see inflation particularly impacting consumers this holiday season so far. and we're very optimistic about what's to come. >> brennan: not impacting consumers. let me ask you about the pandemic, then. the white house has blamed the delta variant for adding to shipping delays. given this developing news about a new variant that's circ lathe,

i'm wondering what you think the impact on business might be here. >> well, i think as we've heard throughout the morning, it's very early in the process of understanding what's happening with the new variant. and i for one am incredibly optimistic around what the scientists and these companies that have supported us with these miraculous vaccines are going to do. and i think consumers are going to wait and see in terms of what happens with that but are going to move on with their lives into this holiday season. and i think we're going to continue to see-- people are definitely going towards deals and considered spend as what they evaluate for this holiday, particularly as they come back together with their family and friends. people want to have a very thoughtful holiday season and want to prepare themselves to go back out into the world, if you will. and that's what we're seeing in their spend. but we are optimistic about what's ahead and what's ahead in '22. >> brennan: you said "miraculous vaccines." are you going to change your company's policy and require vaccination of employees? >> well, we're going-- we've been in a really good position throughout the pandemic where we've been able to-- we spent

hundreds of millions of dollars investing in laboratory equipment to be able to test our teams weekly for whoever wants to be tested. and we have been promoghts vaccine clinics. we have done over 1800 onsite vaccine clinics at our own facilities to get our folks vaccinated. we're incent vielzing, make it easier to do, educating our teams. we're not planning to mandate as we sit today, but we think we have a very good balance of activity in place. we do think vaccines are the way out of this pandemic and we continue to work with our teams to incent vise them and help them understand why it's so important and get them vaccinated. >> brennan: amazon said during its earnings that it was labor that was a big constraint for you. if you pay $15 as a starting wage, $18 an hour average pay, why are you short on workers? >> well, we're having great success hiring, but it is a challenge. we hired-- we actually onboarded 45,000 people last week. so we are hiring a lot of people and continue-- people continue

to be attracted to the great offer we have in pay, which, as you said, is $18 on average, and lots of hiring incentives that are unprecedented really, these $3,000 sign-on bonuses, lots of extra hourly incentives. but labor across the u.s., particularly in metropolitan areas, has been very tight this season. i know when i talk to-- while we've had success and it continues to be a challenge and there are certain areas of the country where it's certainly harder to fill than others, you know, i hear from small business every day about how challenging it is for therm to fill their roles. >> brennan: why? >> well, i think it's just because people are looking at their lives so differently through the course of the pandemic. i don't think there's a silver bullet. there are a lot of different reasons, people have evaluated what kind of jobs do they want to have? do they want to be in the food service business? do they want to be in retail? do they want to be in fulfillment? do both people in the family want to work? what's the life structure and

setup. so many things have changed for people during the course of the pandemic, it's hard to say one particular thing. we're proud of the offering we have for employees, and we're finding success with it, as i said, hiring over 40,000 people a week for the next few weeks. but it's a challenge. >> brennan: in the april letter to shareholders, jeff bezos acknowledged, though, that amazon needs to do a better job for employees. when i looked at your web site, it says sick leave available based on local laws. it says most leaves are unpaid, except pregnancy and parental leaves. if someone gets covid and have to be out of work, do they get fired? what kind of guarantees do they have? >> well, first, i think we have among the best benefits in the world for our hourly employees. the employees who work in our fulfillment centers have exactly the same benefits as i do. and we offer maternity leave and parenty leave in a way most people at those levels don't have access to. >> brennan: so you don't want a federal mandate for that. >> i think it's-- i think it

could be very interesting to see what that could do for the country. i worry about what that means for small businesses. we have the capability and the resources at our scale to do a lot of good for our employees. it can be more challenging for small- and medium-sized businesses and i think that's most of the concern where you hear with that lies. >> brennan: dave clark. good to talk to you. thank you for making time today. we'll be right back. joints can be 3-d printed. and there isn't one definition of what well feels like. there are millions. we're using our world to make your world a world of well. (tiger) this is the dimension of imagination. ♪

♪♪ it starts with a mother's determination to treat her baby's eczema.

and grows into a family business that helps thousands more. it starts with an army vet's dream of studying the stars. and grows into a new career as an astrophysicist. it starts with an engineer's desire to start over. and grows into an award-winning restaurant that creates local jobs. they learned how on youtube. what will you learn? >> brennan: we runner now to our conversation with dr. anthony fauci about mistakes made, lessons learned, and whether we'll ever crack the mysterious case of covid's origin. i want to tick through some of these to see if you agree with some of the criticisms of the public health response. the u.s. didn't have a national surveillance system. testing was inadequate, and there was a lack of data. >> right. >> brennan: you agree with that? >> yes. >> brennan: it was a deadly mistake by the c.d.c. to try to use the flu as a model,

according to dr. debra birks. it meant doctors were looking for spread in the wrong places and didn't recognize asymptomatic spread. >> it was not recognizing it was spread in a very efficient way in an asymptomatic situation was really a problem, because what it did, it did not allow a testing of the asymptomatic individuals. >> brennan: and the flu model being used, why was it used? >> yeah, the c.d.c. would do that, and that's the way they looked at respiratory diseases. and it took a while to figure out that this is really, really different from flu in many respects. >> brennan: when did you realize that? >> well, debbie birx and i realized that in the middle of 2020. it was very clear. if you go back to some of the statements i made at some of the white house press conferences, we need to flood the system with testing, which means not just somebody who shows up with symptoms. >> brennan: we look back at statements in february of 2020,

very early on there, you were still saying it's certainly a possibility, but it's extraordinarily unlikely, that covid was spreading in the u.s. >> and that's because we didn't know it at the time. >> brennan: why did you have that blind spot? >> well, it wasn't a blind spot, because we weren't testing. that was the point. influenza-like illnesses are not noticed unless you get an influenza-like symptom. the asymptomatic model, when you have a disease in which you have 30% to 40% of the people who get infected have never-- no symptoms. then you say transmissibility, that was unprecedented in respiratory illness. so i guess you could say, well, you should have known that. the c.d.c. should have known that. but they couldn't have known it from day one. but it should not have taken so long to figure out that in fact we have a substantial amount of transmission that's asymptomatic. >> brennan: it also brings us to why people should have been wearing masks earlier. they didn't know that they were

spreading it. >> exactly. and that's the reason why in january and february we were saying we're not sure you need masks because we didn't realize at the time there was asymptomatic spread. as soon as that became clear, there was no doubt you should be wearing a mask. >> brennan: i point to some of these specific things because they don't-- they're not political. these were public health mistakes. that's almost scarier. >> well, you know, i think to defend the c.d.c., if i could for a moment, is that one can say something is a mistake because you know now data now that you didn't know then. displeg why aren't we having a national conversation about what went wrong, i mean, apart from this room right now, why isn't there a 9/11-type commission? >> i think what's going to happen is you are going to see that, for sure, margaret. i think the lack of doing that

now is because you're focusing on getting this thing under control. i would be astounded if we didn't have a very serious look at what went right, what went wrong. >> brennan: but you want one. >> oh, i absolutely want one. >> brennan: you were quoted as saying it was the worst possible decision for the trump administration to have left things up to the states. >> yeah. >> brennan: where do you rank that? >> i rank that right there maybe a little bit below some of the things you are talking about, but way up there. people always ask, "if you had a magic wand and did things exactly the way you wanted what would it be?" one of them would be if ever-- if ever-- there was a situation where are where you needed a synergistic, uniform, well-thought-out approach is when you're dealing with a common enemy of a virus that is a global pandemic, the likes of which we haven't seen in 100 years, to be able to say, "if i don't really want to do this

because i want, you know, my own opinion of what it's going to be with this state versus this state versus this state," to me, that's one of the antitheses of public health. how can you possibly have a situation where one state says, "i'm sorry, you shouldn't be wearing a mask. in fact, you have executive orders saying you shouldn't be wearing a mask. you have-- >> brennan: florida. >> you have another state that does not want to get vaccinated because they think it's a political statement to get vaccinated or not. the divisiveness in this country, to me, is the biggest mistake that supercedes everything we're talking about. i mean, when we look back historically and look back at this and said, "we had this devastating plague out there that were killing hundreds of thousands of americans, and we're having public health principals being decided on the basis of political ideology." >> brennan: public health is often politicized. you know that so well from your

experience with aids. >> yeah. >> brennan: what was the chief lesson you brought into dealing with covid from that experience with aids? >> never underestimate infectious disease outbreak, because it can be insidious, the way aids was. you learn, also, to pay attention to what's going on in the community. and that's the major lesson i learned. you don't do it from above and dictate down. >> brennan: was that happening at all in china when this first appeared, going back to the fall of 2019? >> it was very tough what was going on in china. it's kind of opaque. clearly, there was infection that was percolating, you know, as early as november, maybe even earlier. you had an infection that emerged almost certainly out o of... animal reservoir. the more you study bats there, the more you see how close some of the viruses are to

sars-cov-2. so it was assumed in the beginning, where will, this is a coronavirus. why isn't it just assumed that it's sars-cov-1, which means it doesn't transmit very well and will be controlled by public health measures, which is exactly what happened with sars-cov-1. you find out, even though it's sars-cov-2, it's a very, very different virus than sars-cov-1. because it is transmitted spectacularly efficiently from person to person. and, "b," most of it-- 40% to 50% to 60% is asymptomatic. >> brennan: why is it so efficient? >> it evolves in animals. it evolves in humans. sometimes viruses jump into humans and they take off and run right away. >> brennan: but we don't know what went between the bat and the human. there was something in between? >> yeah, it was very likely a host-- what the chinese did-- i don't have firsthand knowledge of that-- but the people who were reporting it, who

investigated, what they did is they cleaned out the markets as soop as it turned out that it was clear that there were clusters coming from the market which, you know, in typical fashion, i think trying to make sure that things don't get pointed to them, they probably got rid of the animals that were the intermediary hosts there. >> brennan: baig acknowledges now they don't think it originated in that market. >> well, it may not have originated in the market, but it certainly could have. >> brennan: there were clusters that may have been picked up and transmitted, as i understand it, through the market, but the place of origin was not within the market itself. >> no, i don't think you can say that. i think you can say we don't know how and where it originated. >> brennan: when was the first time that you heard that there was something, some strange pneumonia? >> i think it was the very last day-- it may have been december 31 or the 30th or first of january-- >> brennan: when they informed the world health organization.

>> i got a call from bob redfield who said, "i just heard from colleagues in china that there's an unusual pneumonia among people there that has been detected so we just have to stay heads-up for that." a few days later, i think it was january 9 or 10, the sequence came out. as soon as i heard there was a new pneumonia, i said new pneumonia,s wuhan, wet virus, it's almost certainly going to be a wet market. and that's when i got my team organized immediately and said as soon as we get that sequence of what it is, let's go after that vaccine. let's plug it into mrna. we were collaborating with moderna, with mrna, and let's do it. it was rocket speed. about five, six days later we were starting with the vaccine development with moderna. 65 days later, we did a phase one trial, and multiple months later we knew we had a safe and effective vaccine. >> brennan: that was incredible speed, but it was despite the lack of information

being shared. >> all i needed was the sequence. the public health parent was the c.d.c. >> brennan: live virus samples wouldn't have made a difference? >> ,. >> i didn't need it. >> brennan: we'll be back in a moment.

when you humble yourself under the mighty hand of god, in due time he will exalt you. hi, i'm joel osteen. i'm excited about being with you every week. i hope you'll tune in. you'll be inspired, you'll be encouraged. i'm looking forward to seeing you right here. you are fully loaded and completely equipped for the race that's been designed for you.

>> brennan: towards the end of our conversation with dr. fauci, we asked him about whether there should be tougher global regulations put in place for labs that deal with highly contagious viruses. he brought up legislation sponsored by republicans that would limit u.s. government support for "gain of function" research in which experts modify viruses to better understand them. there has been speculation that a lab accident led to the spread of covid. dr. fauci said there are already strict guardrails in place that the public doesn't fully appreciate. this is a political football, right now. >> it is a total political football, total. >> brennan: and you take the fire, specifically, for this. >> i do, i do. all the time. >> brennan: there's a congressional act with your name on it, literally. >> yes, exactly. and it's just a lot of-- well, anyway... >> brennan: finish the thought.

>> no, 32 of there's a lot of politicization of that, and i think there's a lot of misinformation, disinformation, and outright lies about that. and that's really unfortunate. >> brennan: you're angry about it. >> it's painful and disturbing to see when you're trying to focus all of your attention on doing what you can do, the way we did to create the vaccines, to develop the drugs, to save millions of lives, and then you have this completely outlandish politicization of it. >> brennan: two "washington post" reporters said that back in july of 2020, you had been speaking to your wife about resigning. >> i never spoke to my wife ever about resigning. they got that wrong. i never even considered for a moment of resigning. >> brennan: why do you feel so strongly about that, about staying on the job, when you become-- i mean, you were personally, not just rhetorically, threatened, your security, your safety, your family. >> yeah. >> brennan: how did you deal with that? >> i dealt with it by focusing

on what my job is from the time that i went into medicine to the right now, where i am at my age, my job has been totally focused on doing what i can with the talents and the influence i have to make scientific advances, to protect the health of the american public. so anybody spins lies and threatens and all that theater that goes on with some of the investigations and the congressional committees and the rand pauls and all that other nonsense, that's noise, margaret. that's noise. i know what my job is. >> brennan: senator cruz told the continual you should be prosecuted. >> yeah ( laughs ) i have to laugh at that. i should be prosecuted? what happened on january 6, senator? >> brennan: do you think that this is about making you a scapegoat to deflect from president trump? >> of course, of course. you have to be asleep not to

figure that one out. >> brennan: well, there is a lot of republican senators taking aim at this. i mean-- >> that's okay. i'm just going to do my job. and i'm going to be saving lives, and they're going to be lying. >> brennan: it seems another layer of danger to play politics around matters of life and death. >> exactly. exactly. and to me, that's-- that's unbelievably bad. because all i want to do is save people's lives. i mean, anybody who's looking at this carefully realizes that there's a distinct antiscience flavor to this. so if they get up and criticize science, nobody's going to know what they're talking about. but if they get up and really aim their bullets at tony fauci, people could recognize. there's a person there. so it's easy to criticize. but they're really criticizing science, because i represent science. that's dangerous. to me, that's more dangerous than the slings and the arrows

that get thrown at me. and if you damage science, you are doing something very detrimental to society, long after i leave. >> brennan: is there a playbook that you are handing over to the next person right behind you at the n.i.h., when that retirement day does come? >> yeah, the playbook for them is to do what i'm doing now-- focus on what your goal is. and your goal is to end an outbreak by what you have at your disposal. and what we have at our disposal is science. if you get caught up in this nonsense of politicization, you're not going to be able to do your job as well. >> brennan: in this playbook you're handing off to your future successor, do you say the next pandemic comes at us faster? >> you know, i think we likely will, though you can't predict,

you know... i've been through multiple, multiple emergences of diseases. some have been one-off, trivial. but i think the idea of the human animal interface is something that we've really got to address that. you know, that's the reason why i get back to the fact of these wet markets that bring in animals that are next to bats in caves in wherever-- who knows-- in southeast asia, in china. >> brennan: you want more regulation of this internationally. >> i want that to be regulated. i really, really do. and we know the chinese were trying to regulate that. but there were people who were breaking the law, and there is good documentation from people who photographed that, that animals that were not supposed to be brought in from the wild into the wet markets were there. and i think that's the reason why when this happened-- i don't know, but i think-- why the chinese just completely cleaned it out. i think that is one of the

reasons why we're not able to find out what the original source was. i think they destroyed some of the evidence. >> brennan: we'll be right back. this is the only healthcare system in the country with five nationally ranked hospitals, including two world-renowned academic medical centers, in boston, where biotech innovates daily and our doctors teach at harvard medical school, and where the physicians doing the world-changing research are the ones providing care. there's only one mass general brigham. ♪ say it's all right ♪ ♪ say it's all right, it's all right ♪ ♪ have a good time 'cause it's all right ♪ ♪ now listen to the beat ♪ ♪ kinda pat your feet ♪ ♪ it's all right ♪

♪ have a good time 'cause it's all right ♪ ♪ oh, it's all right ♪

today. thank you all for watching. 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

york. this is the "cbs overnight news." good evening, i'm meg oliver. tomorrow, the u.s. joins the european union imposing strict new travel restrictions in response to the new omicron variant. in addition to south africa, a host of other countries are included in the u.s. restrictions, affecting an estimated 122 scheduled flights between the u.s. and south africa in december. cbs's deborah padda leads off our coverage tonight from south africa. >> reporter: once again, a pandemic-weary world has been

plunged into uncertain