Dr. Birx Says, U.S. in New Phase of pandemic with More Widespread Cases; Tropical Storm Isaias Strengthens Overnight, Taking Aim at Carolinas
JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is New Day. Erica Hill in this morning for Alisyn, good morning to you.</s>ERICA HILL, CNN NEW DAY: Good morning.</s>BERMAN: So, Dr. Deborah Birx tells CNN that we're in a new phase of the pandemic, a phase that's different from March and April, and she doesn't necessarily mean better, not at all. She says we're in this new phase, because the virus is so widespread. California just became the first state to reach a half million cases. Florida will likely hit that milestone this week. The daily death rate rising in 30 states now. The CDC predicts 19,000 more Americans will die in the next 20 days. And do the math, that could be a conservative estimate. For millions of Americans, enhanced unemployment benefits have expired. Extra money that so many have depended on is gone. Washington leaders have failed to reach a new deal on the measure. Negotiations will continue this morning, but they're pretty far apart. And with more than 150,000 Americans dead in this pandemic and an unprecedented health crisis, the president missed his own self-imposed deadline to announce a new healthcare plan he promised one more than two weeks ago. Yesterday was the deadline, deadline missed, unless he was lying about announcing a new plans in the first place.</s>HILL: Well, meantime this morning, we are also watching a strong tropical storm bearing down on the Carolinas. It's forecast to become a hurricane today before making landfall tonight. Isaias has already brought powerful wind and drenching rain to Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, and Florida. There are tropical storm watches and warnings that stretch all the way up the east coast into Maine. We'll have the latest on Isaias' track in just a moment.</s>BERMAN: All right. Joining us now is Andy Slavitt. He's the former Acting Administrator for the Center of Medicare and Medicaid Services for President Obama. Andy, great to have you with us this morning. Just so people can hear it, I want to play Dr. Deborah Birx in this really interesting interview with Dana Bash, explaining that we are in a new and not good phase of this pandemic.</s>DR. DEBORAH BIRX, WHITE HOUSE CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE COORDINATOR: We are in a new phase. And that's why I really wanted to make it clear to the American people, it's why we started putting out governor reports, directly to the health officials and the governors in every single state, because we could see that each thing had to be tailored. This epidemic right now is different and it's more widespread and it's both rural and urban.</s>BERMAN: It's interesting, Andy, because she suggested that five or six weeks ago, the administration pivoted and formulated a new plan given this new phase. What do you make of the quality of that new plan, if it, in fact, exists?</s>ANDY SLAVITT, FORMER ACTING ADMINISTRATOR, CENTER FOR MEDICARE AND MEDICAID SERVICES: We should be grateful that they now acknowledge that we have a problem in the country in the White House, because they should be working on it, but, you know, welcome to the rest of the country. States around the country has been worried about this and working on this for May, June and July. And it feels like the White House took those three months off. Five or six weeks ago, when she said they started working on this is when Vice President Pence published an op-ed that said that things were well under control, the media was blowing things up too much. So, this is a White House that clearly, politically, does not want to acknowledge this problem. You know, I understand that Deborah Birx is a scientist, is actually trying to make an effort here, but she's not making an effort to the point where she's willing to make any of the important steps. So in terms of the plan that they've put forward, they're not closing bars, they have not withdrawn President Trump's statement that every school in the nation has to open. And so I don't know how they're going to make things better when they're stuck in the reality that everyone else was a few months ago.</s>HILL: It's interesting you bring up bars, because it makes me think of, as we heard from Dr. Birx saying over the weekend, emphasizing to Dana that rural areas are at risk. But we heard last week as we learned more about these tailored responses that the task force is putting out for different states, giving them to governors, a lot of them did include recommendations to close bars, and she talked about it. And two of the states that stick out, Tennessee and Kentucky, taking those recommendations very differently, which I think, to your point, Andy, really underscores that the lack of a national plan means there is no follow-through, necessarily, on even those scientific recommendations.</s>SLAVITT: And I think it's going to be an interesting case study to see what happens between Tennessee and Kentucky. I think, you know, they're being very careful to say, we have a pandemic, but don't do anything that harms economic activity. So they will not call for things that will hurt, what is perceived to be a better jobs report for the president. So they have not made this the most important thing, in my opinion. So, the fact that she says wear masks at home tells us that she knows this is serious. The fact that she says, wear masks at home, which means she knows it's very widespread, but won't suggest that people question whether or not they have enough data to open their schools on time, tells us that they are really not optimizing for public health yet. They are still trying to focus on the things that Trump says are important to his election.</s>BERMAN: I'm so glad you brought up the wear masks at home recommendation, Andy, because that jumped out at me. It did seem to me in that interview, and I'm sure you listened to it even more closely than I did, and doing a forensic analysis, her level of concern was higher than I've ever heard it. It really was. You don't say wear masks at home, unless you're very worried about something. Yet, yet, she seems limited also in her recommendations.</s>SLAVITT: You're exactly right, John. I talked to some White House aides over the last few days, in fact, longer than I have in a long, long time. So, they're clearly worried about this. And from what I understand, Dr. Birx has spent a lot of time looking at this most recent JAMA study, which shows that kids carry just as much viral load. And she knows that kids, when they sneeze and they cough, are efficient spreaders. And so we know that she's very worried about this. What puzzles me is -- and I assume she's expressed those words to the president, and I assume that's one of the reasons why Trump hasn't renewed his calls for every school in the country to open no matter what. Having said that, they think it's a victory, his political aides do, if he doesn't tweet something bad in a given day as opposed to going back and correcting what he tweeted earlier, which is that this ought to be, perhaps, driven by local decisions. And so he gets it both ways. He gets to kind of wink at his supporters with his tweets and have his public health officials out there trying to be more careful and it's confusing to the public.</s>HILL: There is a lot of confusion. Let's talk for a little bit about vaccines, if we could. A fascinating piece in The New York Times talking about vaccines and the politicization of it, right, and the political pressure. And they specifically note that Jared Kushner has been a regular participant in these meetings, and that there are questions asked about October, a date that hanging over -- that hangs over the effort. Trump campaign advisers privately calling this a pre-election vaccine, the, quote, Holy Grail. And the article also goes on to say that there are some questions about whether it would be unethical to withhold a vaccine, which is just fascinating to me. I mean, is that unethical to withhold a vaccine if you don't know if it's safe and effective?</s>SLAVITT: Well, the president was quoted as saying that the FDA has been great at my instruction, which is really concerning. Because right now, the thing we want the most is the FDA to be walled off from any political pressure, particularly with what happened with hydroxychloroquine, where that got an emergency use authorization, because of the president's push, when the scientists and the FDA clearly didn't believe it. For Americans to have a vaccine, they have to be able to trust it, they have to be able to trust that it's safe and effective. And with all due respect to the president, we need to hear from scientists who have reviewed the data and they need to put the data out very transparently, saying this vaccine is safe and here is why, this vaccine is safe and here is why, or here are the risks. And that can't appear come with any political pressure to it, or people won't trust it. It will set us back so far. And I don't care about the election. I want the vaccine to come when it is ready, whether it's September, October, November, December, January, February. When we have a safe and effective vaccine, let's put it out there. If we rush it a month or two because we're in the middle of a phase three trial, we don't have the data that the FDA said we're going to have. I do think there's going to be a lot of concern about the vaccine.</s>BERMAN: Very quickly, Andy, because we have to let you go. Dr. Deborah Birx, again, and my forensic analysis also raised the issue of travel in a way that I haven't quite heard her say before. She said if you go -- first of all, she said, we're moving around too much, that there's a lot of travel in the country right now. And she said, if you go to any one of these states where there are concerns right now, you have to assume you are coming home with the virus and act accordingly. How concerned are you about travel?</s>SLAVITT: Well, you're getting on an airplane with people from all over, including high-spread states. I have a particular interest in Las Vegas because there are a lot of people going in and out of Las Vegas for just a couple of days. It's very hard to control the spread inside a casino. I think they're probably making efforts, and their economy is completely dependent on one industry, so I have a lot of sympathy. But we have hot spots. And what happens when people go to Las Vegas, those hot spots don't emerge in Las Vegas. They'll emerge when they get back home and interact with other people. So I think we should be very careful at this time.</s>BERMAN: Andy Slavitt, terrific having you on this morning. Thanks very much for being with us.</s>SLAVITT: Thank you.</s>BERMAN: All right. Breaking overnight, Tropical Storm Isaias expected to strengthen into a hurricane as it makes landfall near the Carolinas. That could happen tonight. Chad Myers tracking the system for us. Chad, what do you see?</s>CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: It better hurry up and strengthen if it's going to be a hurricane, because right now, I don't see it. Hurricane hunter now in the storm, pressure didn't get any lower, the winds did not go up and the satellite presentation doesn't look as good as it did six hours ago. That's the good news. Now, if you look at the Jacksonville radar, the storm has tried to form an eye a couple of times overnight and it has been squashed by this wind we talk about, by this wind from the southwest, we call it sheer, but it won't allow the circulation to be a circle. It wants to be a football and footballs don't get bigger. Circles get bigger and deeper. Still forecast to be a category one, making landfall in about 13 hours. Now, this thing is going to scream to the north as well, all the way up even into New York State and New England. But the big surge will be from above Pauley's Island on up to about North Carolina. And the rain onshore about four to six inches could, with that wind, bring down quite a few trees and power lines, so power outages could be fairly widespread. John?</s>BERMAN: Yes, I'm very concerned about trees around where I live. Chad Myers, thanks so much for being with us this morning. So how are cities preparing for this storm in the middle of a pandemic? One mayor tells us what the situation is, next.