On Thursday’s New Day, CNN co-hosts John Berman and Alisyn Camerota brought on medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner and the former Obama National Security Council official Beth Cameron to exploit the coronavirus pandemic for the benefit of the Democrats. Throughout the segment, the panel bashed President Trump for his response to COVID and Cameron spouted Democratic propaganda praising Obama’s response to the Zika virus. She even called on governors to create a "shadow task force" to handle the public health crisis.
Berman began by making an outrageous claim about the coronavirus:
You can see this graph. This is the people in the hospital. This isn't tests. This is people in beds in hospitals around the country. And you can see, we are right back where we were at the worst of it.
Saying that “we are at the worst of it” is pure fearmongering for the benefit of the left. The national death rate for COVID has dropped by over 90 percent since its peak in April, when so many died due to disastrous policies implemented by Democratic governors, like sending recovering coronavirus patients to nursing homes. But, Berman needs to maintain the illusion that things are just as bad as they were then because Joe Biden is running on being able to handle the virus better than Trump.
Reiner continued the assault on Trump and also indulged in fearmongering (click "expand"):
Alright, so the explosive rise in test positivity over the last month with a predictable lag corresponds with an increase in hospitalization. The horrifying next step is a substantial rise in mortality, and that will come. And we're already starting to -- to see that, so positive tests equals more hospitalizations, more sick people, which then sadly translates into more deaths. It doesn't have to be this way. There are straightforward things. It requires leadership, but there are straightforward things we could do. The -- the hottest spots in the United States must shut down. There's just no other way about it. We need a national mandate on wearing masks. Those two initiatives, closing down the hottest parts of the United States and a national mandate for wearing masks will go a long way to put the -- this fire out. But there are no shortcuts now....So we're seeing a massive number of new cases, and yet, you know, you hear, you know, the governor of Texas saying, you know, we don't want to shut down. We hear the governor of Florida, not only saying that he refuses to shut down, but that it's full speed ahead with schools.
If Reiner didn't just want to bash Republican governors, he would have noted that California had more deaths than Texas and Florida yesterday, despite that its Democratic governor shut the state back down and implemented a mask mandate.
Cameron then chimed in to hype Obama’s response to the Zika virus:
Honestly, it's what the White House should’ve been doing in April. Right now, in order to understand all of the gaps, we need to have a really comprehensive understanding of the barrier from each governor. So, an example, in -- in right before the Zika crisis got worse in -- in -- in the Obama administration, the White House worked with the National Governors' Association, worked with the CDC to bring governors together in a summit in order to address the Zika crisis and to put together plans for how to get prepared, how to make sure that we had testing in place, how to make sure that people understood what the risks were and what the -- what kinds of things they could do to protect themselves from that virus.
Never mind that the Zika virus was much less severe. Obama is a Democrat, so of course he handled a virus better!
Reiner ended by calling for governors to disobey Trump:
Yet the number one priority in the White House is getting the president re-elected and it's an irresolvable conflict, which is why I completely agree that we need the governors to come together and do this. Not only would I -- I completely agree on -- on -- on a conference with the governors, I think the governors should convene a shadow task force with national experts to -- to move us forward. It's time to take this out of the federal hands because the -- we're getting no leadership from the White House.
CNN has an election to win for Biden, and that means it must do whatever it can to make the Republican response to COVID look bad.
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Read the full July 16th transcript here:
CNN's New Day
07/16/20
7:07:16 a.m. EasternJOHN BERMAN: Joining us now, CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner, he's a Professor of Medicine at George Washington University and the cardiologist for former Vice President Dick Cheney. Also with us, Beth Cameron, she's the former Senior Director for Global Security and Biodefense in the White House National Security Council under President Obama, and now Vice President for Global Biological Policy and Programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative. Dr. Reiner, the chart that I woke up to that alarmed me the most was the national hospitalization chart. You can see this graph. This is the people in the hospital. This isn't tests. This is people in beds in hospitals around the country. And you can see, we are right back where we were at the worst of it. And in a state like Ohio, we heard from Governor Mike DeWine, Ohio is not a state we've been talking about lately. Mike DeWine, the governor of Ohio, went on T.V. last night to warn the people in the state, we might be in trouble again. Why? Because hospitalizations there, even in Ohio, back near that record number. So what does that mean, Dr. Reiner? When we're talking about hospitals filling up, when we're talking about Miami-Dade County now having to add ICU capacity because they're at the limit, what does that mean?
DR. JONATHAN REINER (CNN MEDICAL ANALYST): Well, it's proof that the rise in the number of -- of cases is just not an artifact of testing. Alright, so the explosive rise in test positivity over the last month with a predictable lag corresponds with an increase in hospitalization. The horrifying next step is a substantial rise in mortality, and that will come. And we're already starting to -- to see that, so positive tests equals more hospitalizations, more sick people, which then sadly translates into more deaths. It doesn't have to be this way. There are straightforward things. It requires leadership, but there are straight forward things we could do. The -- the hottest spots in the United States must shut down. There's just no other way about it. We need a national mandate on wearing masks. Those two initiatives, closing down the hottest parts of the United States and a national mandate for wearing masks will go a long way to put the -- this fire out. But there are no shortcuts now. And as Dr. Fauci said, everyone has skin in this game. Everyone needs to contribute.
ALISYN CAMEROTA: And -- and Dr. Reiner, just to put a finer point on what you're saying, how many states do you think need to shut down today?
REINER: Well, I think, you know, certainly, large parts of Florida must shut down. You know, Florida yesterday had more -- and Texas, for that matter, each had more positive -- new positive cases than the entire European Union. You know, just to give you an example, so Florida had about 10,000 new cases yesterday. Germany, the country of Germany had 482, right? France had just a little bit over 400. So we're seeing a massive number of new cases, and yet, you know, you hear, you know, the governor of Texas saying, you know, we don't want to shut down. We hear the governor of Florida, not only saying that he refuses to shut down, but that it's full speed ahead with schools. And what I would urge the people in those states to understand is that our quickest way back to a more normal life, a life that includes having open schools, is to mask up now and let's -- let -- let’s take the pain now, let's shut down the hottest parts of the United States. Let's get Congress to give economic support to businesses in these communities and all around the country that have to shutdown, let's do it now. Let's do the hard work now. And we need -- I -- I -- I don't think we're going to see national leadership to do this. We need the governors to stand up. In Ohio, Governor DeWine, who is telling the public how dire circumstances are, still hasn't issued a statewide mask mandate.
BERMAN: Beth Cameron, we just put up a map on the screen, and this is -- is a group out of Harvard that's issuing guidelines for which states it thinks are in a position where they need to shut down. I think you're actually associated with this. I think you can see the ten states, I think it's up to 11 now. They may have added Ohio. It's not on this -- Idaho -- Idaho, it's not on that map for states that should be under mandatory shutdowns now. I -- I have a little bit of a different way of asking this to you, Beth, because you watch this every day. What are we doing at the national level to address this and address all these concerns that Dr. Reiner just brought up?
BETH CAMERON (FORMER SENIOR DIRECTOR, WHITE HOUSE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL): Yeah, it's a great question. I totally agree with everything that Dr. Reiner just said. And I -- I would like to add that testing and testing turnaround time is a huge issue that should be being handled at the national level. So what's happening at the national level is not enough. We ran an experiment over the last four months where we looked at how states -- state by state by state could manage this crisis. And they can't do it. They can't do it individually. And what we see is governors making different decisions about reopening and closing that have led us to this point. So what the federal government should be doing is they should be putting in place a unified plan. They're not doing that. And I've -- I’ve started really focusing as well on the governors and on state and local leaders. So that map, what it's showing you in red are the cases -- places in America where there are an incidence rate for COVID-19 of more than 25 cases out of 100,000 population. And that's an indication that you can't control the spread of the disease. And so the recommendation is that if you're in a location with that kind of incidence rate, that you should consider stay-at-home orders, to press that reset button. This morning in The New York Times, my colleagues, Jonathan Zittrain and Margaret Bordeaux at Harvard, put out a call for the governors to actually hold a summit, to come together to develop a unified plan, specifically to surge testing capability, to get rid of this seven to eight to ten day lag in testing time and really to agree on how to share resources, how to put in place more production capacity. If the federal government isn't going to implement and fully use the Defense Production Act, the governors need to figure out how to produce reagents and share testing capacity. They have to agree on metrics, they have to agree on when stay-at-homes go in place. And they have to do it really urgently.
CAMEROTA: Beth, that is a really fascinating plan. I mean, given the vacuum of leadership or any plan from the White House and the President, that it -- today is the day for governors to all band together and act. But I just want to stick with you for a second, because you were in the White House in a different administration. I mean, yesterday we saw the picture of the President posing with cans of beans at the resolute desk. That was his priority yesterday. But how hard would it be to do just what you're talking about, which is for the federal government, for the White House, to fill in the gaps that we see in testing and the delays of the results of testing? So how hard would that be for the White House to play that role?
CAMERON: Honestly, it's what the White House should’ve been doing in April. Right now, in order to understand all of the gaps, we need to have a really comprehensive understanding of the barrier from each governor. So, an example, in -- in right before the Zika crisis got worse in -- in -- in the Obama administration, the White House worked with the National Governors' Association, worked with the CDC to bring governors together in a summit in order to address the Zika crisis and to put together plans for how to get prepared, how to make sure that we had testing in place, how to make sure that people understood what the risks were and what the -- what kinds of things they could do to protect themselves from that virus. So it wouldn't be hard at all for the White House to do this. And it would have been much easier for them to fill the gaps in national testing capacity to make sure we had enough reagents back in March when we knew from the American Microbiology Association that we were going to run out back then. So they absolutely have tools at their disposal. If we have excess capacity in one state, it can be shared with another. But at this point, in order to overcome those delays, we need to act even more quickly. We should have been acting four months ago.
BERMAN: Dr. Reiner, I want to ask you about the strain this puts on hospitals and healthcare workers, specifically. But, first, to someone who has been in the White House and in the West Wing, walked the halls there, I just want your quick reaction to the picture of the President with the beans, smiling yesterday with 137,000 deaths in America.
REINER: I think the perfect response to that was something that Jake Tapper tweeted yesterday. He -- he tweeted a Yiddish word. It's called -- it’s bubkes. You know, bubkes literally means beans, but it's usually used to mean nothing, right? What was done? Bubkes, nothing, beans. So the president is -- is literally showing us bubkes. Look, the number one priority in -- in the United States should be extinguishing this once in a century, maybe once in a millennium pandemic. Yet the number one priority in the White House is getting the president re-elected and it's an irresolvable conflict, which is why I completely agree that we need the governors to come together and do this. Not only would I -- I completely agree on -- on -- on a conference with the governors, I think the governors should convene a shadow task force with national experts to -- to move us forward. It's time to take this out of the federal hands because the -- we're getting no leadership from the White House.
BERMAN: Wow, go around the back, basically, of the federal government, you both say, because they're just simply not doing the job. It's an interesting discussion.
REINER: Right.
BERMAN: A medical call to arms this morning.
