Election Day Approaches as U.S. Case Count Spikes; Washington Post: Birx Went to Pence's Office to Push for Scott Atlas' Removal from Task Force
JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everybody. I'm John King in Washington thank you so much for sharing a very, very busy news day with us. The coronavirus is making an aggressive fall surge just as the clock ticks us ever closer to Election Day. 15 days until America's choice and the president plans a full week of battleground travel to Arizona, to Pennsylvania and to North Carolina. All that before Thursday's final debate. The final sprint overlaps with what scientists warn will likely be the darkest weeks of this entire pandemic. The numbers on the right side of your screen there, a daily reminder of just how bad things are. And they are getting worse. Look globally. The case count tops 40 million now. The United States responsible for a world worst 8 million recorded COVID-19 infections. The end is not near no matter what the president says. Look, 48,000 new cases recorded on Sunday. That is the second highest COVID tally on a Sunday since July 26th. The numbers also missing new case totals from six states so it's actually higher. The weekend total of new cases from Friday through Sunday, just under 175,000. The United States now growing its case number on average by 56,000 cases per day. The spring spike was driven by the northeast, the summer surge was centered on the south, but this fall tsunami is not regional. It is everywhere. Take a look. 27 states across the United States, 27 of the 50 right now trending in the wrong direction. 21 treading water. Only two - only two of the 50 pushing down their case curves right now. The president blames more testing for more cases. Experts blame reckless behavior and pandemic fatigue. Either way, the numbers tell us worse is coming before better. Look at this map. 14 states with a positivity rate north of 10 percent. That means 14 states with what scientists consider uncontrolled coronavirus spread right now. 2020, of course, is the pandemic campaign. Thursday night's final debate will remind us the choice is Trump versus Biden. Everyday reminds us it might just as well be Trump versus science.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If I listened totally to the scientists, we would right now have a country that would be in a massive depression.</s>DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: You know, I think deep down he believes in science if he didn't he wouldn't have entrusted his health to the very confident physicians at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. But he sometimes equates wearing a mask with weakness.</s>DR. JONATHAN LAPOOK, CBS CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Does that make sense to you?</s>FAUCI: No, it doesn't. Of course, not.</s>KING: Joining our conversation to begin the hour, CNN medical analyst Dr. Celine Gounder and Toluse Olorunnipa of "The Washington Post." Toluse, I want to start with you because of this new reporting by several of your colleagues. Dr. Scott Atlas, the doctor who has the president's ear most of all right now when it comes to the coronavirus, tweeting out over the weekend, no, when it comes to masks. Again, saying masks don't work in his view, when all the scientists say they are. And "The Post" is now reporting that Dr. Deborah Birx, a member of that task force, went to the vice president's office said this is bad advice. He should not be giving this advice. I'm not comfortable with this advice and I wish that he would be removed from the task force. Startling development when you consider not only the case surge but the fact that we are two weeks from an election.</s>TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Yes. It's absolutely startling that there's infighting in the task force that's supposed to be managing the national response to this pandemic. Somewhat unsurprising is the fact that there would be disagreement between career epidemiologist, people who have expertise in infectious diseases and someone who President Trump recruited to the White House because he appeared on Fox News, not because he has any expertise in this area. Not because he has been shown as someone who studies this very closely. He's a radiologist. He's someone who the president got to know because he was on Fox News, you know essentially repeating what the president wanted to hear about this virus not being as bad as it should be, herd immunity, allowing the virus to spread, allowing people to get back to their normal lives. While the experts, the scientists who studied this, including Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci have been saying we need to take this seriously, we need to put in all kinds of mitigation efforts in order to make sure the virus does not spread and we don't have all of these spikes that we're currently seeing. So, it's somewhat unsurprising that there would be disagreement but the fact that this is now spilling out into the public and the fact that the president has elevated Dr. Atlas over the experts, the people who you would expect to be leading the charge and he has downplayed and sort of downsized their role is somewhat surprising ahead of an election which is going to be all about the coronavirus and the president's failed response to it.</s>KING: Right. And Dr. Gounder, that's where it gets -- I don't know what the right word is for it, but it gets frustrating in the sense that at a moment Americans need to be extra vigilant, at a moment, we're going up a third peak, at a moment we're heading up that peak starting from a baseline of above 40,000 new infections a day. So, all the projections tell you it's going to go higher than the summer surge unless it is stopped and stopped quickly. You have Dr. Atlas saying don't wear a mask. They're not effective even though we know they are. And you have the president in this campaign travels saying nothing to worry about, we're almost done. Listen.</s>TRUMP: It's rounding the turn. You'll see that. Normal life, that's all we want. We want normal life.</s>KING: Yes, we want to be where we were seven months ago, but the president is not announcing any new steps, encouraging governors to do anything new and the doctor he listens to most is telling Americans be reckless.</s>DR. CELINE GOUNDER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Well, first of all, Dr. Atlas really has no place speaking about this. He is a neuroradiologist. He has no training or experience in public health or epidemiology or infectious diseases. It would be like seeing a podiatrist for your heart attack or calling up a plumber when you need an electrician. He's completely unqualified. And this anti-mask rhetoric is really the equivalent of a herd immunity approach. The only time we've ever achieved herd immunity is through vaccination. We have centuries of experience, millennia of experience with other respiratory viral infections like smallpox and measles. Smallpox we had spikes over centuries, epidemics over centuries, and same thing with measles. And only with vaccination have we been able to control that.</s>KING: And Toluse, again back to the moment. The White House Coronavirus Task Force at the beginning was quite helpful. The initial guidelines to stop the spread. If you go back and read the reopening guidelines, they're actually quite good. The president then just said days later, never mind, please blow through them. go through my redline, get the company back open. Now, we have this remarkable moment. Dr. Birx has become waldo. There are no more briefings. She's traveling the country talking to governors but where in the world is Dr. Birx is a daily question. There are no more - Dr. Atlas has the president's ear. And Dr. Fauci seems to be almost daring the president to fire him or to pick a fight with him. Listen to more of this conversation last night on "60 Minutes."</s>LAPOOK: Were you surprised that President Trump got sick?</s>FAUCI: Absolutely not. I was worried that he was going to get sick when I saw him in a completely precarious situation of crowded, no separation between people, and almost nobody wearing a mask. I do not, and nor will I ever, publicly endorse any political candidate. And here I am, they're sticking me right in the middle of a campaign ad, which I thought was outrageous.</s>KING: He is being public with a purpose right now. Number one, the president shouldn't have me in his campaign ads and number two, let me translate what he said at the beginning of that. I thought the president might get sick because the president is routinely behaving in a reckless way.</s>OLORUNNIPA: Yes. That's exactly right and it happens to be the truth. And it may sound political because he's saying it in a way that is so, you know, public and straightforward and a way that we don't normally hear from people who are close to power. But he is essentially just speaking the truth. The president has been reckless. He has been holding these massive events which are superspreader events and do increase the risk of the virus spreading among high ranking officials within the White House, which in essence is reckless. But I think Dr. Fauci said something on "60 Minutes" which I thought was really interesting, which is that the White House has been limiting his media appearances. They have not been allowing him to go out and speak publicly. And that's part of the reason. They don't like the fact that he is willing to speak the truth. He's willing to give a public health message that's accurate and sometimes in discordance with what the president is saying, which is that everything is going to be fine, we're rounding the corner, everyone should go back to their lives. Dr. Fauci is saying everything is not fine. We're losing hundreds of Americans every day. This case count is spiking. We are ahead of what could be a really bad third wave as people go indoors for the winter. And instead of having the White House have someone who is trusted by the American people giving that message, they are muzzling him and not allowing him to speak as much as he would like to.</s>KING: And again, Dr. Gounder, it is the moment. You're a doctor, not a political analyst, but campaigns routinely -- there's a lot of shay between taxes and spending. There's a lot of missed truths. There's a lot of hyperbole. There's a lot of generally accepted if you will political wandering from the facts. But at this moment with the case count up, the president of the United States is on the road saying we're rounding the corner. I'm not wearing a mask. My chief adviser says you don't have to wear a mask. That's one message. Dr. Scott Gottlieb says something very different. Listen.</s>MARGARET BRENNAN, CBS NEWS HOST, "FACE OF THE NATION": Where are we headed as a country?</s>DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB, FORMER FDA COMMISSIONER: Probably the most difficult phase of this epidemic. I think the next three months are going to be very challenging. There's really no backstop against the spread that we're seeing. We're probably two or three weeks behind Europe. And Europe is in a very difficult position right now. So, I think as we enter the winter, we're going to see continued spread.</s>KING: Help people understand that because it is well put by Dr. Gottlieb. If we go back to March and April, we were a couple of weeks behind Europe, climbing the hill. Europe is climbing the hill pretty steeply. Now, guess that, we are following behind again. We don't hear that from our president. What must the American people hear from the experts?</s>GOUNDER: I think we need to end the war on science. I think we need to listen to the scientists. And understand what is facts -- fact-based in terms of public health recommendations. We should all be wearing masks when we're outside of our household bubble. We should be trying to spend as much time outdoors versus indoors when we're around people outside of our household bubble. We should be washing our hands. We should be social distancing. We should be doing all of these things that we know work. And masks are number one, two, and three in terms of what would prevent transmission of coronavirus. If we don't take this seriously now, we are going to find ourselves in a very difficult position in just weeks to maybe a month or so. And many of us in the health field are really stealing ourselves because we know what it was like back in March and April. Many of us have frankly PTSD from that experience and are very nervous about what we're about to face again not having learned the lessons of that.</s>KING: Dr. Gounder, Toluse, grateful for your time time and your important insights today. We will continue this conversation including up next, we'll dig in deeper on this mask question. The doctor the president trusts most about coronavirus reups his dangerous take on masks. Dr. Atlas says just say no.