China Closes Top Tourist Destinations
BERMAN: Breaking news. More than 30 million people are now under lockdown in ten cities in China as the coronavirus crisis grows. Dozens are dead and another 900 have been affected around the world. Parts of the Great Wall and Disney in Shanghai are now closed. China is also increasing its containment efforts by building a hospital in the next week near the epicenter. Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us now. I want to start Sanjay, I guess where we are in the United States. Any sign that it's coming here yet any more than we've seen already?</s>DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we do have this obviously this patient in Seattle. There are two more patients in Texas and Tennessee that are currently being tested and we don't have the confirmation yet but there's enough of a concern there that those patients were in that area, they had symptoms. So they're being tested and my guess John, just fast forwarding a little bit, there's probably hundreds of people who will get tested over the next several weeks, most of them will come back negative but we're going to keep hearing about this. That patient in Seattle, John, you remember that in addition to him having the confirmed virus, they were monitoring 16 close contacts. Overnight they increase that number to 43 people that they're now keeping an eye on in Seattle as well because they think that they had enough close contact with this person. So these numbers will continue to grow here in the United States but the - at least the testing is coming back very quickly.</s>BERMAN: I have to say one of the things that concerns a lot of people is that the Chinese government isn't exactly a bastion of transparency and if their public actions, the ones we've seen if they're doing this, maybe they're really concerned even more than we know. How effective are the measures they taking, generally speaking in curbing an outbreak?</s>GUPTA: You're making an excellent point and I think it's an important nuance point. These containment, these lockdown policies are aggressive. There's no question. They're disruptive politically, socially. You're - you're - we're seeing what's happening in terms of the chaos in Wuhan. When you talk to people about these types of containment facilities, the answer is they can be effective, they can have some effect. They're not going to stop the problem but they can lessen it. But here's the thing, they're usually used as a measure of last resort not early resort and it is raising the question John, that I think you're raising. Is China jumping the gun a little bit and being very hyper aggressive or is there data that they have, that is making them more concerned because when the World Health Organization looks at this, they say obviously this is a concerning situation. But they have not yet declared it an international emergency and yet, China's acting very aggressively so is there something else going on? We obviously don't know the answer to that right now but these containment policies can be effective but usually later in the game.</s>BERMAN: OK, Sanjay Gupta, thanks very much for talking about this. I expect we'll see a lot of you over the next days and weeks.</s>GUPTA: I'll be here. Thank you.</s>BERMAN: Alisyn.</s>CAMEROTA: All right John, partisan media helped start the impeachment and now it's controlling what people think and even what they get to see on the impeachment trial. So can we ever agree on a basic set of facts? Only one man knows. It's John Avlon. Here's his reality check. Hi John.</s>JOHN AVLON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Hey guys, look, the Trump presidency isn't the only thing on trial in the Senate. Our ability to reason together is on trial as well and that's the more serious test. Louisiana Senator John Kennedy raised a lot of eyebrows when he admitted that senators were hearing the prosecution's case for the first time and you might ask how is this possible. The answer is a toxic combination of polarization and partisan media because we are self-segregating into separate political realities. Remember this woman from Justin Amash's Town hall before he left the GOP to become an independent?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was surprised anything negative in the Mueller report at all and I mainly listened to conservative news.</s>AVLON: Well, it turns out the senators can be just as trapped in partisan news bubbles as that woman in Michigan. It's no surprise perhaps that the President's legal team is loaded with folks who've made the more than 350 appearances on Fox news over the past year. We see it as a feedback loop. President mentions Fox news on Twitter more than anything else according to Factbase. Meanwhile, a Fox coverage of the impeachment trials is often reduced to silent B-roll while conservatives opine over it and during prime time impeachment's been pre-empted as their opinion host pair at the party line with chyrons like Dems push hysterical talking points to trial and attack House Manager Adam Schiff as a corrupt lunatic, a congenital liar who would had "not a single friend in high school." None of which of course comes even close to addressing the evidence. Now perhaps not coincidentally, the network's Senior Legal Analyst has largely been MIA from prime time possibly because he said Trump should be removed from office and the larger irony is that the President was impeached in large part because of hyper partisan echo chamber. With conservative reporter John Solomon accused of working hand in glove with Rudy Giuliani and Lev Parnas, writing stories for the Hill about the Bidens in Ukraine as well as the CrowdStrike conspiracy theory, all to feed partisan narratives and justify partisan actions. And now Solomon's articles for the Hill on Ukraine are notably not cited in the Trump legal brief. While the Hill's promised review of Solomon's articles, won't be completed until well after the impeachment is over. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign is taking advantage of Facebook's fact free as A-OK rule, pushing noun salads like this, Democrats committed the crime, crooked Hillary, dirty cops. They try to fundraise off impeachment. And if you wonder whether the weaponization of partisan media is really that sinister, we recently found out that Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos had his phone hacked by Saudi crown Prince, MBS. A man, the Trump administration refused to condemn after he ordered the murder of a Washington Post columnist and that information from that phone ended up being trying to use to blackmail Bezos by the Trump friendly 'National Enquirer.' So yes, this is all deadly serious. Beyond the question of removing a president, still high bar, never achieved, this is a test of whether facts and evidence still matter to members of what was formerly known as the world's greatest deliberative body. Or whether they will try to ignore it all, despite overwhelming public opinion as they hide behind the narcotic of groupthink. That would be a dereliction of duty because as a legendary senator once said, everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts and that's your reality check.</s>BERMAN: The narcotic of groupthink is truly dangerous, John and one that is hard to kick, I have to say. When you're talking about addiction of partisan media, President Trump, the President of United States is railing, I think at the TV guide this morning. He is upset with some of the TV listings. He says just now, "Looks like my lawyers will be forced - forced to start on Saturday which is called Death Valley in</s>T.V. AVLON: Like Death Valley days or he hasn't known the schedule?</s>BERMAN: I think he's just learning to schedule this morning and he's upset that he has to start on Saturday.</s>CAMEROTA: Those are not big rating - numbers. John, thank you very much.</s>BERMAN: All right so an upset down under. Serena Williams has lost in the third round of the Australian Open. Andy Scholes has more in the Bleacher report. Good morning Andy.</s>ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: Yes, good morning John. Yes, so Serena's quest for grand slam title number 24, it continues, that's the number she needs to tie Margaret Court for the most all time and Serena, she just really didn't have it in this match against China's Wang Qiang. She had 56 unforced errors. Serena would force a third set and in this she ended up losing 6-4, 6-7, 7-5. Serena now hasn't won a grand slam title since winning the Australian Open back in 2017.</s>SERENA WILLIAMS, TENNIS PLAYER: I was optimistic that I would be able to win. I thought OK, now - now I'll finish this off. I honestly didn't think I was going to lose that match. Honestly, it was just - if we were just honest with ourselves, it's all on my shoulders. I lost that match. I can't play like that and like, I literally can't do that again. That's unprofessional and it's not cool.</s>SCHOLES: All right, now the main event of the day at the tournament was defending champion Naomi Osaka taking on 15-year old Coco Gauff. This a rematch from last year's U.S. Open but a different result this time. Coco dominating the match, winning 6-3, 6-4. She's the youngest player ever to beat a defending champ at the tournament. Coco now moves on to the fourth round and even she can't believe how far she's come.</s>COCO GAUFF, TENNIS PLAYER: Oh my gosh. I couldn't - if I - like last year - no, two years ago I lost first round in juniors and now I'm here, like this is crazy.</s>SCHOLES: Yes, you could just hear the youth in that giggle, guys and get this, most of the entrants in that junior tournament she was referencing, this year in the Australian Open are older than Coco. That's how impressive she is right now.</s>CAMEROTA: She is a phenom. OK, thank you very much Andy. So House prosecutors have 8:00 hours to wrap up their case today. Have they convinced any Republican senators to say yes to witnesses? We have an impeachment manager here next.