♪ judy: good evening. i'm judy woodruff. on the newshour tonight, a critical crossroads. the republican party ways punishing liz cheney for decrying the big lie of a stolen election. then, one-on-one. former secretary of defense and a cia director robert gates discusses american foreign policy, the biden administration, and the state of the republican party. and aid from afar. many indian doctors living in the u.s. reach out to their homeland to help as the country's coronavirus crisis continues every more dire. >> you have your day job. you take care of your patients here. when it's morning in india, it's night here.

so you stay up through the night talking to your friends and family, trying to help out as many people as you could there. judy: all that and more on pbs newshour. ♪ >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by >> johnson & johnson. the snf railway. consumer cellular. financial services firm raymond james. the kendeda fund. more at kendedafund.org.

carnegie corporation of new york, supporting innovations in education, democratic engagement, and the advancement of international peace and security at carnegie.org. and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions. >> this program was made possible by the corporation fopublic broadcasting and contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. lithan si: we will return to the

show after these headlines. the push to waive patents on covid-19 vaccines, to make them more available globally, is accelerating after the united states endorsed the idea. french president macron voiced support at a vaccine center today, in a bid to increase production for poorer nations. >> i completely favor this opening up of the intellectual property. today, the strangle points that complicate access to the vaccines will, at some point, be the price and access to intellectual property. today, it is technological transfer and the capacity to produce. vanessa: german chancellor angela merkel spoke out against a patent waiver today. ultimately, the wto with 164 members will decide. but opposition from just one could derail the effort. we will return to this later in the program. in india, the covid emergency is worsening. new infections have topped

400,000 for a second time with nearly f 4000 deaths in 24 hours. spittle's in new delhi and elsewhere are in crisis and the government -- hospitalizations in new delhi and elsewhere are in crisis. secretary of state antony blinken warned today that vaccinations must move faster. he said in an interview that "if we don't do more, if the entire world doesn't do more, the world vacnated until 2024." blinken spoke in ukraine, where he also reassured president volodymyr zelensky of u.s. support, and said russia's recent massing of troops was reckless. >> we are aware that russia has withdrawn some forces from the border of ukraine, but we also see that significant forces remain there, significant equipment remains there. we are monitoring the situation very, very closely. vanessa: a police raid in rio de janeiro, brazil, left 25 people

dead today, including one officer. heavily armed suspects leapt from roof-to-roof to escape the firefight. authorities said the operation targeted a gang of drug traffickers. at least 10 suspects were arrested. back in this country, authorities say a sixth grade girl brought a gun to her idaho middle school earlier today, shooting two students and a custodian. she was disarmed by a teacher, who held her until law enforcement arrived and took her into custody. the three victims are expected to survive. authorities are investigating the motive behind the attack and where the girl got the gun. president biden pitched his infrastructure plan, worth $2.3 trillion, in republican louisiana today. he spoke in lake charles, in front of a bridge that he said was 20 years past its intended lifespan. the republican mayor joined him to appeal for federal aid. the president also stopped in new orleans.

florida is the latest republican-run state to impose new voting rules, including limits on mail-in ballots and drop boxes. governor ron desantis staged a bill-signing today on the "fox and friends" tv program. he argued the changes will stop fraud, and suggested he would have gone even further. >> i'm not a fan of drop boxes at all, to be honest with you, but the legislature wanted to keep them. but they need to be monitored. you can't just leave these boxes out where there is no supervision, where there are in all hours of the night. so the drop boxes will be available only when they are monitored, and during regular voting hours. vanessa: opponents said the measure makes it harder for the elderly and minorities to vote, and they quickly followed suit to block it. a national moratorium on evicting renters during the pandemic will stay in effect for now. a federal judge in washington, d.c. had initially ruled that

the centers for disease control had no authority to impose the ban. but late wednesday, she put the ruling on hold to consider the justice department's appeal. and new jobless claims in the u.s. have dropped to a pandemic low. they fell by nearly 100,000 last week to 498,000. the labor department also reports that productivity rebounded in the first quarter, rising at an annual rate of 5.4%. still to come on the newshour with judy woodruff, the arizona gop continues an election review despite zero evidence of fraud. a wide-ranging discussion with former secretary of defense and cia director robert gates. we examine the logistical challenges of sharing vaccines with countries in need, and much more. >> this is the pbs newshour,

from w eta studios in washington, and in the west from the water cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university. judy: now to a leadership shakeup in the gop and a critical moment for republicans. internal divides over last year's election and the future of the party have again come to a head, as house republicans seem to be moving to replace their number three leader. lisa desjardins has our report. lisa: a party leader, but for how long? house republicans seem to have had enough of their conference chair, wyoming congresswoman liz cheney, and in days are expected to oust her from leadership. it is a stunning turn of events in just three months. >> the number one thing that happened at the conference was unity. lisa: when republican leader

kevin mccarthy and cheney together resoundly defeated another attempt to remove her. >> we're not going to be in a situation where people can pick off any member of leadership. lisa: in a secret ballot, two thirds of republicans supported her over inner-party critics, like florida representative matt gaetz, who flew to cheney's home district to campaign against >> you can send liz cheney home. lisa: a staunch conservative and daughter of republican vice president dick cheney, the congresswoman was seen as a rising star on the right when she won the leadership position back in 2018. >> we will take a backseat to no one. lisa: but that all changed after january 6. cheney was one of 10 house republicans who joined democrats in impeaching former president donald trump for his role in the insurrection. defending her vote, she released a blistering statement that president trump "lit the flame of attack." >> the extent to which following january 6, i don't believe that he should be playing a role in the future of the party or the country. lisa: but president trump has kept a commanding role in the party and continued to blast falsehoods about november. this week, declaring it "the fraudulent presidential election

of 2020," trying to redefine things the results as the big lie. on twitter, cheney fired back that "anyone who claims the election was stolen is spreading the big lie and poisoning our democratic system." now, fellow republicans say she's gone too far. >> i have heard from members concerned about her ability to carry out the job as conference chair. lisa: mccarthy is openly asking whether cheney can communicate the party's message. and in a comment made before the fox news interview and leaked to axios, mccarthy indicated his personal patience has run out. >> i think she's got real problems. i've lost confidence. well, someone just has to bring a motion, but i assume that will probably take place. lisa: cheney has defenders. on twitter, republican congressman adam kinziger said she is being removed "for telling you the truth." and the wall street journal editorial board wrote, "purging liz cheney for honesty would diminish the party." >> get rid of them a. lisa: but none of that outweighs

the party's current standard bearer, who just yesterday called cheney a "warmongering fool" with "no business in republican party leadership." in the washington post, cheney blasted back, writing, this is a turning point for the party, that it needs to stand for "conservative principles" and steer away from "the dangerous trump cult of personality." >> police stuff not -- elise stefanik. lisa: but mr. trump moved on, endorsing an ally from the past whose name he tried to say at a 2020 rally, new york representative elise stefanik. with cheney on the outs, she's the favorite to become as the sole woman in house gop leadership. judy: and lisa joins me now. lisa, tell us the latest. what is expected right now with regard to a formal vote on cheney? lisa: it is extraordinary. it is quiet in washington with lawmakers mostly out of town, but it has been a storm in the republican conference this week. it seems all signs are for a

vote that may be impossible to stop right now next wednesday to remove cheney from her leadership post. some signs of that today, elise stefanik is calling around to members. but i talked to members like kevin brady of texas who says he supported cheney last time and is now undecided. another member who supported cheney last time tells me they believe that two thirds of the people who voted with cheney just three months ago are now going to vote against her. judy: what has changed since then? as you pointed out, that vote took place a few month ago. what are republicans telling you has changed? lisa: ihink consider house republicans in two groups in terms of what is happening with liz cheney.the first group is republicans who did vote for cheney last time but generally support president trump. what i heard from this group, talking to many of them over the past couple of days, is the last time they voted, marjorie taylor greene was also a factor.

remember, at that time, house republicans were choosing not to punish her for her statements thatere seen as inflammatory. these republicans tell me now that at the time they did not feel they could let greene off the hook but yet punish cheney. in a way, they see that vote as connected to both sides of the party. they say with cheney making these statements on her own with greene out of the picture that cheney has gone too far and is provoking too much when it comes to president trump, so that is the one group. the other group that i spoke with are republicans who say they agree with cheney. they think every think she is saying about president is correct. note they are not saying this in public. but they tell me the problem they have is they think her words are empowering president trump, that she is activating his base and making them consider and talk more about the election as fraudulent in a way they believe is unhelpful. they believe she is picking a battle that is harming things.

and this group, when you think about it, you have a situation for cheney that if she has lost those who support president trump and also has a problem with those who want to move past president trump, she has lost nearly all the house republicans. judy: it does sound like it. just stepping back in terms of the politics more broadly, what is the thinking about political ramifications from this? lisa: there are some for cheney herself. she will have to defend her seat or decide if she will defend her seat. she has to decide if she will stick forth and keep up this leadership election next week. somewhat like her to resign. there is no indication she is going to. i spoke to a source familiar with cheney's thinking and she says she does not want this post if it requires that she has to lie in order to keep it. but it does sound like she is willing to not resign. she is going to make republicans vote on this. the other ramification, democrats tell me they are hopeful that perhaps this will

help them next year by making the republican party look more extreme, that it is ousting a conservative like liz cheney. i talked to a republican senator republican house members. they do not buy that. they think the election is a long way away and they think something like this is inside washington. judy: quickly, do we know that this vote will be secret ballot as the other one was? lisa: we expect it to be secret ballot. i would be surprised if it is anything else. judy: lisa desjardins with more excellent reporting. thank you, lisa. ♪ judy: although the 2020 presidential election is six months behind us, a review of nearly 2.1 million ballots in arizona's largest county is currently underway. stephanie sy explores the growing controversy and what it means for our democracy. stephanie: thanks, judy.

we explore the questions and concerns around the maricopa county review, ordered by the state's republican-led senate, with tammy patrick of the non-partisan democracy fund. she previously served as a maricopa county election official for more than a decade. tammy, thank you so much for joining us. i just want to remind viewers that joe biden did beat donald trump in arizona in november. but, like the former president, many republicans have been calling that outcome into question since election day. is that the basis of this recount? tammy: i believe that it is the basis of the recount. it is an unfounded basis because arizona already audited their ballots and they have already done all their hand counting and make sure that in fact it was the correct outcome. it has been standard process and procedures in arizona for more than a decade. stephanie: so this is really a process that is because the

republican led senate in arizona decided they wanted to do this. but is it an unprecedented review, and is it legal? tammy: we have never seen anything like this in our country before. and i have reached out to individuals that deal with democracy issues and elections globally, and they have never seen it. it truly is unprecedented, and we have used that word a lot in the last 15 months. not only is it the case that the senate has stepped forward earlier this year and asked for a forensic audit to be done of maricopa county voting equipment, which was done and they found no issues, no fraud, no problems, then the senate went to court and asked to obtain the actual ballots that were voted in maricopa county. that is something that is outside of any statute in the entire country as to how this should play out, what rules and regulations and guidelines need to be followed. so we truly are in uncharted waters. stephanie: and we learned that

the justice department, an official has sent a letter to arizona senate republicans concerned there may be violations of federal law here. in any case, they were able to obtain millions of arizonans' ballots. maricopa county, the largest county, most populous in arizona. they also turned over voting machines. they then turned those ballots and machines over to a private contractor called cyber ninjas. what do we know about cyber ninjas and what they're doing with those ballots and equipment? tammy: i have been working in this space for almost 20 years now, and i was not familiar with cyber ninjas, nor was anyone i am associated with or i know. there were a lot of questions to be asked. we started asking those questions weeks ago, and it took a court order to get and obtain some of the procedures and policies that are being done right now down at the veterans coliseum. this is really important for people to understand that under normal circumstances everything

that happens to your ballot is publicly available as far as what the rules and guidelines are. the laws are laid outcome of the procedure manual lays out how audits are to be conducted, votes to be counted. but this is something outside of that. so we obtained the procedures, and there were a lot of things included in there that raised many questions for election experts. and also, it was very questionable about what was omitted or what was excluded in those documents. there are a lot of unanswered questions here, and unfortunately those conducting this review have in fact called for the courts to maintain a secrecy around the materials and their processes. they have put parameters around who can observe that our extralegal and extraordinary in the election space. normally we want individuals to observe and be the eyes and the ears of the voting public in the room to be able to ensure that there is integrity to the

process. stephanie: tammy, what is the potential damage to election integrity here? our other states loing at arizona to follow -- are other states looking at arizona to follow the playbook? tammy: we have seen in the last couple days issues percolating around the country with grassroots organizations now calling into question the outcome and the legitimacy of the elections in their own state, whether it was individuals in new hampshire or california or elsewhere, where they are now saying ey too want a forensic audit like maricopa county. it is critical to understand this is not about individuals and election officials not wanting to be transparent about our elections. that is the core of a healthy democracy. it is about wanting the election certified and validated, and then moving on and moving forward and not continuing to relitigate and rehash literally the elections. the other challenge here is that

the public have not been told the truth. they have not been told the truth that last year was the most secure, most observed, most transparent, most audited election in u.s. history with the most number of voters. that is the truth. it had integrity and we should have confidence in it. but instead, they have been fed misinformation and disinformation that has been propagated on social media and in echo chambers to call into question existing laws, spurring legislators to take these types of activities like we are seeing in arizona with this review,, and other legislators to introduce legislation to change the options that voters have in their states. and this is happening all across the country. hundreds of bills being introduced to change the options that the voters have in those states. unfortunately, there is only one or two very good, positive stories to tell, like in kentucky where they had bipartisan bills to codify some

of the changes they made last year to give voters new options. but more often than not, it is being used to restrict what voters can do in order to make their voices be heard. i hope voters are paying attention. all across the country, remember this moment. remember what your legislators are doing. when you personally go to vote by mail, or try to vote early in person, and find out that the rules have changed. stephanie: the latest rules to change of course in florida with governor ron desantis signing what voting rights advocates say is a restrictive voting law. tammy patrick with the democracy fund. thank you so much. tammy: thank you. ♪ judy: it's been over 100 days since president biden was sworn in. in addition to combating the

pandemic, the president has sought to rebuild relations with allies in asia and europe, and punish russia for election interference and cyber espionage. the administration has also decided to withdraw troops from afghanistan, and attempts to root out extremism in the military. how is the president doing dealing with these national security issues? we turn to former defense secretary, and former cia director, robert gates. he's served in both republican and democratic administrations. he's the author of "exercise of power: american failures, successes, and a new path forward in the post-cold war world." robert gates, it is very good to see you again. thank you so much for talking with us. i want to start with a story in the news today, and that is what is going on inside the republican party with the efforts by house republicans to punish congresswoman liz cheney. you served four republican

presidents. what is your thinking about this? robert: i think the republican presidents that i served would be hard-pressed to recognize the republican party of today. it is very different, that is for sure. judy: are you in essence saying they are making a mistake by pushing her out? robert: i am not going to get into -- i have never done domestic politics and i am not going to start now. i will say this, i have not met liz cheney, but i obviously know her father very well. based on everything i read, i have a lot of respect for her integrity and for her patriotism. so i guess you would have to say i am an admirer of hers. beyond that, this is internal republican party politics. judy: let me ask you about the

reason we invited you to be on this show, and that is foreign policy, defense policy. you famously wrote in another book in 2014, so you know the quote i am about to use, and it was about joe biden. you said, i think he has been wrong out nearly every major policy and national security issue over the past four decades. that was in 2014. how do you think he is doing in these early weeks of the weeks and months of the election? robert: i think he is doing really well. i think there is a continuity on several of the really big problems, on china, on russia, north korea. i think there is a lot of continuity with the previous administration, in fact, and i think the tough line he has taken has been the appropriate one. on north korea, they basically

said they will try to thread the needle between the strategic patients of president obama and the maximum pressure of president trump. as i write in the book, we have tried -- we have been down this road before under four presidents and it has not yielded much progress. i think the only area that concerns me is the effort to renew the nuclear agreement with iran. first of all, the agreement is half over in terms of its duration. it was supposed to be for 10 years or so, and i was heartened initially by the administration's references to strengthening and lengthening that agreement. i think our objective should be for iran to never have a nuclear weapon, n just time-limited. and i think we need better monitoring and adherence to the

policy. i think we need to do something about their ballistic missile capabilities. picking up the old agreement where we left off is probably insufficient. but in the other areas, important areas of public policy, i think they are on a good path. judy: let me ask you about afghanistan. it has been a controversial decision, president biden saying he wants all u.s. troops out of there by september 11. one of the arguments he is making, bob gates, is the threat has now moved to different parts of the world, al qaeda and isis. he is saying they are in places like yemen and syria. was this the right decision? robert: it was a very tough decision. i think i probably would have recommended keeping a small u.s.

force there. but the reality that the president was facing is that even with our forces there, every day the taliban is taking over more and more of the countryside and making greater and greater progress against the government of afghanistan. so even if we kept troops there, that is no assurance that the current trend would not continue. i think of all the possible endings in afghanistan at this point, the least likely is a happy ending. i would say the one thing that is important, and critically important is that we continue our economic and military assistance to the government of afghanistan even after our troops are gone. the government the soviets installed in kabul survived for three years after the soviets

pulled all their troops out in 1988. because of the flow of economic and military assistance, it was only when the soviet union collapsed and the aide stopped that the government collapsed. i think there is a lesson in that for us. the only chance that this regime, this government in kabul has of surviving and preserving the rights of women and other areas where there actually has been progress in afghanistan is for the united states and our allies to continue economic and military assistance. judy: there is so much to ask you about and i want to include china. the secretary of state tony blinken has been saying several times over the last few days that the united states is not, in his wares, trying to check china or hem it in, but rather the biden policy is to push the chinese to follow the rules based border?

does that sound like the right approach to you? robert: it does, and i think secretary blinken has essentially said that the relationship with china essentially should fall into three baskets, the areas where we can actually cooperate, the areas where we can compete, and the areas where we will be adversaries. that sounds about right to me. the question is whether xi jinping and the chinese government and the chinese communist party are willing to consider to have that kind of relationship going forward. frankly, i don't think we know the answer to that question yet. judy: one other thing i want to ask about, the decision that is going to be made soon inside the pentagon about whether sexual assault claims should be considered outside the chain of command. robert: i read that the chairman of the joint chiefs has stated recently that he is open to the

possibility of changing the way that this is dealt with and taking it out of the chain of command. i think if were secretary today, i would be very open to the idea of removing sexual assault, and i would say only sexual assault, from the chain of command. we have been promising for 10 years to do something about this problem, to prevent it, or dramatically reduce the frequency. and frankly, it has not led to the kind of progress we should have had. there are still too many cases of sexual assault. i think we owe it in particular to the women in the force to try -- if nothing we have tried before had in fact, we need to be open to changing the way that those prosecute -- investigations and prosecutions take place. judy: former secretary of

defense, robert gates. his new book out in paperback, "exercise of power." thank you very much. robert: thank you, judy. ♪ judy: let's return to the pandemic, here and abroad. president biden has given the initial go-ahead for the u.s. to waive patent rights on covid vaccines in an effort to boost production internationally for countries in need. but there are real questions over how effective these moves would be, what else is needed, and when this would translate into more shots in arms. william brangham focuses on that part of the story tonight. william: the response by some european countries today on this patent question hinted at some of those very competitions.

the president of the european commission, for example, would not commit a block of european countries to waiving these patent protections. but that is not the only concern here. let's explore more of this with rachel silverman, a policy fellow at the center for global development. great to have you on the newshour. what was your reaction when the biden administration made this announcement yesterday? rachel: great to be here this evening. my reaction is that i am very encouraged that the biden administration is signaling its willingness and eagerness to take bold action, that it understands the scope of the challenge before us, but is treating this as one number one global issue, diplomatic issue, security issue that needs to be solved, and is signaling it is willing to make moves that might upset others, that break out of old paradigms, and show real ambition. i tnk this move itself is probably largely symbolic in this respect. it will be quite a long time

before wto members agree on a patent waiver, if they agree at all. i think the practical effects of that patent waiver would be fairly marginal, but i am optimistic that this signals a more proactive role for the biden administration in entering the fray andeally solving this problem on behalf of the entire world. william: if waiving this intellectual property is not the most effective route, what would you argue is the most urgent and we ought to be doing? rachel: i think we need to be thinking much more ambitiously about the scale of resources we are willing to put into scale up vaccines. i think we are still thinking very small. the u.s.' contribution to covax 's a $4 billion. william: covax being the global vaccine supply. rachel: yes, exactly. it is not enough to vaccinate the world. the united states has produced

these vaccines. we are very fortunate that most people in the united states have the ability to access these vaccines. that is not true in most low income countries. what can help is more money. there is not enough money inhe system to purchase vaccines on behalf of everybody in the world, to provide the commercial certainty to industry that it should be continuing to scale up production. there needs to be much more money in the system, financing, a much more ambitious version of what it would take to vaccinate the world in short order. william: supporters of this move argue there has been a lot of money, including taxpayer money, put into the development of these vaccines, and we are in a crisis and these nations need to speed this process. so this is the obligation of the companies, that they need to get this out. rachel: i agree that we are in a crisis and we need to speed this process up. there is no time to delay

whatsoever. that is exactly my concern. what is the most practical way forward? if we look at the waiver, it will probably go ahead and will be fine, but take quite a bit of time to negotiate. there are still complicated issues around technology transfer, giving companies in low and middle income countries the recipes of proprietary knowledge. that will not come easily. but what we can do in the short term is put more money into the system to pull through more manufacturing capacity, to build it and pay for it and vaccinate the world. i think it is a mistake to put this onus on the pharmaceutical companies. yes, they received taxpayer money. yes, we need these vaccines and we need them to be equitably shared and we have a stake in doing so.

but they are companies. they are private companies. we are the global community, the united states government, and we need to take the leadership role , not just exacting pharma to do it on our behalf without our intervention. william: i want to ask you about another argument the industry makes, which is if they go about developing these vaccines and we swoop in and break their patents for that vaccine, this sets a terrible precedent going forward. do you share this concern? rachel: i think it is somewhat overstated, but i think it is overstated because i think the effect of this patent waiver will be quite marginal. that said, the part i agree with them on is that we definitely want to send a signal to the market that you will be rewarded if you solve the most important issues facing humanity. what we don't want is a situation where all the private pharmaceutical companies decide it is not worth our while to

tackle the big problems. we would rather find the next botox, work on cosmetic treatments, or things we can sell for a lot of money, and they will never bother us about giving it for free to poor people. that is not an optimal solution. we have a lot of situations. there is hiv, no vaccine. we want pharma focused on solving the world's most important problems. i think the effect of the waiver will be fairly marginal in this respect, but i would like to see a focus on incentives to produce what matters. you will be rewarded if you do. and not penalized because what you produce is so important. but that does not mean hoarding the supply, it does not mean it is not ok to vaccinate the entire world. it is not, and we can do both at once. william: rachel silverman, thank you for being here. rachel: thank you. ♪

judy: the covid crisis in india continues to devastate that country. the past 24 hours brought more daily records there. 400,000 plus new cases and nearly 4000 new deaths. all of that a likely undercount, and it comes amid a severe shortage of vaccinations. many of the 4.2 million members of the indian diaspora here in the united states say they are stricken with panic, pain, and grief. many are volunteering to help. special correspondent fred de sam lazaro reports on the efforts of indian american physicians. it's part of fred's series, "agents for change." fred: the funeral pyres and makeshift crematoria now go 24-7, the final stop in a health care system that has crashed, unable to provide the

most basic care that could have prevented most of these covid deaths. hospital beds, equipment, and most critically, oxygen. one irony in this tragedy is that this country is a major producer and exporter of technical and medical experts, especially to the u.s. about 80,000 doctors of indian origin practice in the united states today, found everywhere from the mayo clinic to the farthest reaches of rural america. the vast majority of them graduated medical school in india before immigrating to the u.s., so their ties to their homeland are recent, and they run deep. >> hi, ms. goel. this is dr. rohatgi. how are you doing? >> i'm fine, . rohatgi. fred: when she's not at work at stanford medical center hospital in california, dr. nidhi rohatgi is regularly dispensing care to family and friends 13 time zones away in india. cook's he should try to get up and walk a little bit, and also

make sure that his breathing is ok when he's walking. it's been quite overwhelming. you have your day job. you take care of patients here. and when it's morning in india, it's night here. so you stay up through the night talking to your friends and family, trying to help out as many people as you could there. fred: she's hardly alone. >> so, this is my twitter feed. i decided to open up my direct messages. and now, it's maybe 15 to 20 a day. fred: so busy has this telemedicine routine become, dr. priya sampathkumar has taken a leave of absence from her job as an infectious disease physician at the mayo clinic. these are random strangers from twitter? >> random strangers from twitter. i'm saying, okay, adjust the oxygen, turn the camera on, so i can see the concentrator. let me help you. this is what i'm doing. is she getting prone? is she lying on her stomach?

>> she's been aed to, but i think she's assisted by a nurse to do it. >> that's fine. she just needs to do it. fred: getting advice in delhi on this call was diksha bajaj, caring for an elderly aunt. >> i found it extremely, extremely useful. it was becoming extremely difficult to g through to a doctor. we weren't getting any clarity on how much he had improved and if we were on the right track. and the do's and don'ts for the patient. fred: that assistance often extends beyond medical advice. >> we called our friend and asked him to send the oxygen cylinder. did he get it? fred: dr. sampathkumar used connections to locate an oxygen cylinder for this couple she met on twitter. they live in the u.s. and are trying to keep his covid positive mother, who lives india's capital delhi, alive. >> right now, there's no hospital in these hotspots that is not completely overwhelmed. fred: i paid a visit to the young couple, who are bothctors.

they asked to remain anonymous, fearful of repercussions for family back home. the government has cracked down on messages deemed negative, even things like a plea online for oxygen, ostensibly to prevent panic. >> it is people acting out of desperation to really get whatever they can for their loved ones. fred: and with both equipment and skills in short supply, they've had to train non-medical family members to provide care. >> so i was like, you know, just use a glove to tie a tourniquet. your left hand to stabilize it, right hand to rotate and pull it back. these were the steps and he did all of it. fred: and the vast indian medical and tech diaspora are trying to coordinate a ramp up in assistance, with fundraising, sending equipment, and this website by the main indian american doctors group. it has a list of available volunteer providers, time slots for virtual appointments, even

language options. amid a vast rumor mill and medical misinformation, some are doing the rounds in india's media. >> so, usa, the first wave, second wave, no difference. fred: dr. sampathkumar has been on tv in her native tamil language, spoken extensively in the south. >> i just have these pangs about being here and not being in india. but right now in for the first time, i'm actually glad that i'm here. because i can do so much more from here than there. if i were in india, yes, i could take care of a few patients, and definitely make a difference. that i can't impact policy. i can't impact care of large numbers of patients as an individual physician. fred: how are you feeling right about now? >> i guess when i left india, i never thought this is something

that could happen and this is what i might be living behind. so a question best not asked. just keep doing. fred: and while there are strong ties to india, stanford emergency medicine professor s. v. mahadevan says the sheer scale here is driving the response. >> obviously, the emotional and family ties are there with india, but it wouldn't matter, really. we're also thinking about who's going to be next and how we can take the lessons that we learn now and apply them to the next country that suffers this humanitarian crisis. fred: and with the danger of new, deadlier mutations of this conavirus, he says, that could by any country, including the u.s. >> we can never be complacent. even though we're doing really well now, in terms of the number of people vaccinated and the trends of covid positive patients are trending down, until the world is vaccinated, this problem is going to stay with us in some form or other.

and though it may not be in our backyard now, it has the potential to return to our backyard in the future, unless we vaccinate the rest of the world. fred: that's not likely anytime soon. in just india, about two percent of its 1.3 billion people have been fully vaccinated. for the pbs newshour, i'm fred de sam lazaro. judy: such an important story. fred's reporting is a partnership with the under told stories project at the university of st. thomas in minnesota. ♪ judy: thanks to the u.s. domestic vaccine campaign, cases here continue to drop. but this success trumps further reflection on why more than 500,000 americans died and why the initial response failed to contain the virus more effectively. a new book tells the story of a few people who tried to steer

this country on a different path. william brangham is back for the latest from our newshour bookshelf. william: that's right. there were a handful of researchers, scientists, and public health officials who seemed to have an early, pressing and understanding of how this pandemic would hit and what we could do to avert it. michael lewis's new book, "the premonition," tells the story of this unusual group and how they tried their very best to get those in positions of power to listen and to respond. michael lewis, great to have you back on the newshour. as i mentioned, this book focuses on this small, unusual, secretive group in some ways, who, as your title suggests, were able to see what seemingly many in the government were not able to see. tell us a little bit who were these people and what is it that they were seeing? michael: at the center of it is is a local public health officer named charity dean, and it's the

ignored characters othis pandemic because they're the ones who have been fighting disease on the ground forever. and she had seen firsthand that we were ill equipped. in particular, the cdc was ill equipped to actually engage when the shooting started. and another one of the other characters, carter mescher, actually is one of the authors of the u.s. pandemic plan that was written during the bush administration. and in the course of his work, developed a kind of preternatural ability to track pandemic disease, to anticipate it. and both of these characters, by late january, mid january, knew what we were dealing with. ey knew the severity and they knew the transmissility and they knew what was coming. and they had some trouble getting people to listen to it. william: there are all of these remarkable scenes in the book where these people through these different back channels trying to convince members of the cdc or hhs or the or the white house covid task force to act. what is your sense?

what is their sense of why that message didn't get through? michael: or for that matter, the state of california. charity dean is working for them. it was forbidden from using the word pandemic in january or february. and i think there's a couple of things going on. one is that it's the nature of the threats, that it is an invisible threat. and until it's you actually you -- and until you actually see people sickening around you, you don't believe it. it's a kind of theoretical thing. they all point out, with this particular threat, you have to be almost clairvoyant because by the time you see the illness, you're way behind the disease. the other part of it is, i think generally the tools we have to manage existential risks have been allowed to corrode, that we have become kind of complacent. so that when you have a sense that your tools might not work, maybe you are slower to use them. william: the cdc in particular

comes under a good deal of criticism in this book. what is your sense? what is the main assessment of how the cdc stumbled in this pandemic? michael: you know, it's not my criticism. you just follow these characters in the story. when there's a risk of being wrong, the cdc stands back, doesn't engage in the battle. and the problem is it is a battle and the decisions that get made in the course of disease are ones that happen under conditions of uncertainty, if they're going to be effective. and the institution has been politicized. it is to the point where charity dean, a santa barbara county health official, bans them from her investigations. it slows her down. i think the bigger message is how we manage ourselves, that we have allowed that institution to drift over the course of a couple generations from a really well run, proud institution filled with public servants and

run by public servants to one that is managed at the top by political appointees who are there for short periods of time and who are on a very short leash from the political process. and the way we punish people for being wng, even if the process that got them to the decision is right, has led us to a situation where the people at the top are terried of being wrong. william: the characters in your book clearly do believe that if some of their warnings and their actions had been heeded that this pandemic would have looked very different for the united states. i wonder, though, do you think that american society, writ large, would have accepted some of their recommendations? because some of them are fairly extreme and severe. do you think they could have implemented what they wanted to do, if they'd been given the power to do so? michael: this is a great question. is the society willing to be led and unified? because that is what would have been required. and it's hard to know, right?

my feeling is that it was possible, and the reason i think it was possible is if it had been led properly, it would have only taken six weeks or so before the country saw, oh, my god, we dodged that bullet. now, even if that's not true, even if her strange, bizarre cultural reasons, we were incapable of containing the virus, if we just mitigated it better, if we had just been as good as the average g7 country, there'd be 200,000 americans alive today that are not. so that that's the sin. it is sort of like, maybe was not possible to do what australia did and really stamp it out and control it. maybe that's not possible for us. but it was possible to do a lot better and we did not do it. we didn't do ourselves proud here. it really should be a gut check moment for the culture. fred: do you think, when when this is all said and done, that we will heed some of the lessons of the missteps that we made, or do you think that we'll be so eager to put this behind us that we'll put those lessons behind us, too? michael: i think the trauma that

society has suffered is enough that people will have had enough. i am hopeful. i think that there is a talented team that has had a really crappy season. and the question is why? it isn't the talent of the players. we have the capacity. if we didn't have the capacity, i'd say maybe we're in trouble the next time. but i do think that no one wants to relive this, and certainly no one wants to relive this maybe worse. you replay this with it, killing children or being more lethal. nobody wants that. and so i think that it will be messy because we're a polarized country and people want to like -- it is like a losing team. people want to point fingers rather than fix the problem. but i think at bottom, america doesn't want to lose. you know, i think at bottom, we want to win, and i think we'll figure out a way to do it. fred: all right, the book is called "the premonition: a pandemic story." michael lewis, always great to see you. thank

you very much. judy: this kind of journalism matters so much. thank you. we have a sad update to tuesday's report by jane ferguson from yemen. many of you wrote us and jane about how to help a young man who had intestinal surgery and his father could not afford to pay for his care. we are so sorry to report that he died yesterday morning. he was just 13 years old. and you can watch all of jane's remarkable reporting from yemen on our website, pbs.com/newshour. and that's the newshour for tonight. i'm judy woodruff. join us online and here tomorrow evening. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you. please stay safe, and we will see you soon. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by -- >> architect. beekeeper.

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and friends of the newshour. this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> this is pbs newshour west, from weta studios in washington and from our bureau at the walter cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university.

[music plays] i spent alyear waiting to bite into the first tomato still warm from the sun. and i spent the next four months gorging myself on what i would go out on a limb and call my favorite ingredient. i'm vivian and i'm a chef. my husband ben and i were working for some of the best chefs in new york city when my parents offered to help us open our own restaurant. of course, there was a cah. we had to open this restaurant in eastern north carolina, where i grew up and said i would never return. the avett brothers perform "will you return"