Experts Shoot Down Trump's Suggestion of Exposing COVID-19 Victims to Sunlight Heat to Treat Virus; Some U.S. States Race to Develop Reopening Strategies Despite Warnings
JIM SCIUTTO, CO-ANCHOR, NEWSROOM: Remarkable, alarming, disturbing, choose your word. This morning, widespread condemnation after President Trump makes frankly dangerous suggestions as to possible treatments for coronavirus. Have a listen.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: A question that probably some of you are thinking of, if you're totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said that hasn't been checked, but you're going to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you're going to test that too. Sounds interesting.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When we get to the right books, we could --</s>TRUMP: Right, and then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it'd be interesting to check that. So that, you're going to have to use medical doctors with -- but it sounds interesting to me, so we'll see. But the whole concept of the light and the way it kills it in one minute, that's pretty powerful.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, after the presentation we just saw about the heat and the humidity, is it dangerous for you to make people think they would be safe by going outside in the heat considering that so many people are dying in Florida, considering that this virus has had an outbreak in Singapore, places that are hot and not humid --</s>TRUMP: Yes, here we go. The new headline is Trump asks people to go outside, that's dangerous, here we go. Same old group. Are you ready? I hope people enjoy the sun, and if it has an impact, that's great. I'm just hearing this, not really for the first time, I mean, there's been a rumor that, you know, very nice rumor that you go outside in the sun, you have heat and it does have an effect on other viruses. But now we get it from one of the great laboratories of the world, I have to say, covers a lot more territory than just this. This is probably an easy thing relatively speaking for you. I would like you to speak to the medical doctors to see if there is any way that you can apply light and heat to cure. You know, that if you could, and maybe you can, maybe you can't. Again, I say maybe you can, maybe you can't. I'm not a doctor. But I'm like a person that has a good, you know what?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But sir, you are the president --</s>TRUMP: Deborah, have you ever heard of that?</s>DEBORAH BIRX, CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE COORDINATOR: Yes --</s>TRUMP: The heat and the light relative to certain viruses, yes, but relative to this virus?</s>BIRX: Not as a treatment. I mean, certainly fever --</s>TRUMP: Yes --</s>BIRX: Is a good thing when you have a fever, it helps your body respond. But not as -- I've not seen heat or light as --</s>TRUMP: I think it's a great thing to look at, I mean, you know, OK?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Respectfully sir, you're the president and people tuning into these briefings they want to get information and guidance and want to know what to do --</s>TRUMP: Hey --</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're not looking for rumor --</s>TRUMP: Phil, I'm the president and you're fake news. And you know what I'll say to you, I'll say it very nicely, I know you well, I know you well, because I know the guy, I see what he writes, he's a total faker, so are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? It's just a suggestion from a brilliant lab by a very smart, perhaps brilliant man. He's talking about sun, he's talking about heat, and you see the numbers. So that's it. That's all I have. I'm just here to present talent. I'm here to present ideas because we want ideas to get rid of this thing. And if heat is good and if sunlight is good, that's a great thing as far as I'm concerned.</s>SCIUTTO: Yes, Dr. Birx, of course, said there very clearly, not as a treatment. Well, the company that makes Lysol released a statement this morning saying, quote, "we must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body through injection, ingestion or any other route." The Washington State Emergency Management Department also felt the need to respond, tweeting, quote, "please don't eat tide pods or inject yourself with any kind of disinfectant. Just don't make a bad situation worse." These are not fake tweets or statements. They are real. Let's bring in Dr. Mark McClellan; the director of the Health Policy Center at Duke University and a former FDA Commissioner, he also served in the George W. Bush administration as a member of the president's Council of Economic Advisors. Dr, McClellan, good to have you on today. Just in the simplest terms, how dangerous is it to have a sitting president raise medical treatments that have no basis, and in fact might be dangerous?</s>MARK MCCLELLAN, FORMER FDA COMMISSIONER: Yes, disinfection is not a treatment for people with the coronavirus. Disinfection is very effective, which was the point of the study's release yesterday -- very effective in freeing surfaces of the virus and see a very important part of our steps to reopening frequent disinfection of any surfaces in public. But as Dr. Birx said yesterday, that's very different than treatment for people who have COVID-19. There are a lot of treatments in development, but not disinfection.</s>SCIUTTO: This is of course not the first time the president has pushed an unproven treatment. I mean, in this case, it's not just an unproven treatment, it is one that is demonstrably dangerous, injecting a disinfectant. But of course, he pushed hydroxychloroquine before there was any proof that it had an effect. Is this something that health experts need to stand up and say, because Dr. Birx had to stand up and say, no, Mr. President, this is not --</s>MCCLELLAN: Every doctor --</s>SCIUTTO: Safe for the American people.</s>MCCLELLAN: And Jim, Dr. Birx, I think was very clear yesterday about the distinction between the treatments that people are working on to hopefully help us get better outcomes for COVID-19 as soon as possible. We don't have any effective treatments now. There are a lot of good ideas being researched, very promising ideas --</s>SCIUTTO: Yes --</s>MCCLELLAN: And that's different from the importance of disinfection of surfaces. And that's something else that Americans do need to remember. So, this is, you know, don't use Lysol internally or anything like that. But we do need to pay a lot of attention to disinfection of surfaces and frequent cleaning if we move forward with reopening the country.</s>SCIUTTO: Yes, and of course, different to say disinfect your hands, you know, as opposed to --</s>MCCLELLAN: Exactly --</s>SCIUTTO: Injecting it into your body --</s>MCCLELLAN: A hand sanitizer, exactly --</s>SCIUTTO: Yes, don't drink the stuff. Let's talk about reopening now because it's interesting that, of course, there were a number of Republican-led states that have been most aggressive in opening up, Georgia being an example. But we're also seeing Democratic-led states taking more tentative steps. What steps forward towards reopening in California and Minnesota, a discussion of a possible announcement today from Michigan. As you watch states begin to do this, who is doing it right in your view?</s>MCCLELLAN: Well, Jim, we've done several reports on this at Duke and with some of our colleagues like Scott Gottlieb and other former FDA commissioner. And in those reports, we highlight the importance of doing this incrementally. So, we are not reopening back to what the situation was before. States should take gradual steps, and that includes a lot of distancing in businesses, a lot of disinfection of surfaces, and the things that people would touch as we've talked about before. And also increased testing and a lot of attention across the public to symptoms. If you have symptoms, you need to stay home. If workers have --</s>SCIUTTO: Yes --</s>MCCLELLAN: Symptoms, they need to stay home. And there also needs to be testing because many times people can spread the virus without showing any symptoms at all.</s>SCIUTTO: On the testing question, you see that's the thing because every elected official I've talked to, and every health expert like yourself has said, to open safely, you need broad-based testing. But really, there's not a single state in the union that's able to do that today, that has the capacity to do that today. You look at a state like New York, when they have done some testing, it seems to show that the prevalence of this is greater than we imagined. So how can -- how can these states be doing it safely, even if gradually if they don't really know how many people are infected today?</s>MCCLELLAN: I think, Jim, your point about the testing that New York has done, that's testing for whether people were previously exposed to COVID-19, not for whether they have the infection now. And it's true that there has probably been substantially more exposure to the virus across the country than we've been able to measure. That is why increased testing for whether or not people have the virus right now and are infectious is important as a part of this reopening. And the testing capacity in the United States is going up, and our recommendations, we suggested testing on the order of 2 million, 3 million tests per week is what we'd like to get to with the level of activity of the virus in the country right now, many states are headed significantly in that direction. And I think that's a key part of opening up. And until we get more testing in place, we need to be extra cautious and very specialized about the reopening.</s>SCIUTTO: We'll be watching the rates of testing, Mark McClellan, good to have you on this morning.</s>MCCLELLAN: Good to be with you.</s>POPPY HARLOW, CO-ANCHOR, NEWSROOM: Nearly two dozen people who voted in person in Wisconsin earlier this month are now infected with coronavirus. The lieutenant governor of the state is with us next.