[John Berman, Cnn Anchor:] So, a new report out of Columbia University this morning estimates that at least 130,000 deaths and perhaps as many as 210,000 could have been avoided with earlier policy interventions and more robust federal coordination and leadership. Joining us now, CNN chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Also with us is Dr. Zeke Emanuel. He's a former Obama White House health adviser and currently the provost of global initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of "Which Country Has the World's Best Health Care." And, Zeke, I want to start with you because we have this study out of Columbia that was published a few hours ago, but you also are in this study, or this letter inside the Journal of the American Medical Association which says largely the same thing. So what did you see here?
[Zeke Emanuel, Former Obama White House Health Policy Adviser:] Well, if you compare the U.S. response to other countries, especially other countries that had been hit hard like Italy or Spain, France, the Netherlands in March and April, and you say, after the first wave, when we were just figuring out how to handle this virus, how different was the response of the United States versus these other countries? You begin in May or you begin in June and basically you do see, you see tens of thousands of more deaths in the United States per person per capita than you do in Italy, for example. 90,000 more deaths in the United States, that's 90,000 people who would have been alive had we just followed the policies that Italy followed. And basically, the Columbia study confirms what we found which is that many Americans have died unnecessarily. If you compare the U.S. to, say, Australia which did phenomenally well, you are up in the 180,000, 190,000 excess deaths in the United States.
[Alisyn Camerota, Cnn Anchor:] Zeke, the numbers are just so staggering that I want to ask you a couple more questions about this. When you say in the JAMA letter as well as what the Columbia study says, that it leadership had been different, does that mean that we had the know- how and the technical wherewithal to do the kind of contract tracing that South Korea was able to do, to do the rapid test that go South Korea was able to do? Because the suggestion from the Trump White House during that time was that we didn't.
[Emanuel:] They're wrong. If we had had a proper response, coordinated at the White House, we could have done it. We have the CDC, they have excellent people down below, but it was politicized. We know that. We have a president who had made fun of wearing masks, who made fun of social distancing, who didn't do it himself, who didn't let the scientists run this process and the task force, and that has been the problem. We never got our testing up and running and we made multiple mistakes on that. We never got our contact tracing up and running. We had some governors doing a lockdown, enforcing the public health measures, but we had a lot of other governors like in Florida and Georgia flaunting them and you can't have a good response nationwide. Every public health person said this, it can't be haphazard patchwork because people travel. And so, if someone is infected in Florida and they go to New York, you're going to spread the virus. We can see that. You know, why are so many people affected in Wisconsin? Well, they travel from Florida and Arizona and other places that were having outbreaks. And that's the problem, that you haven't have leadership at the top to coordinate the states to put in the infrastructure necessary and all of that infrastructure, all of the proper response would have been outlined in March if not before.
[Berman:] And the real question is as we sit here this morning is what now? How can we make sure we don't make the same mistakes we made before? How can we mix this with more than 60,000 new cases, more than 1,100 new deaths reported overnight? Sanjay, to that end, this is a date that I know you've circled on the calendar for a long time. This is when this FDA advisory panel is meeting all day, I guess, to talk about vaccines and where we are. Now, today may be different than what it might have been or what the Trump administration wanted it to be a few weeks ago, but talk about the significance of this day, how it's going to happen and what you are looking for.
[Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Cnn Chief Medical Correspondent:] Yeah, so this is a really important vaccine advisory committee meeting that's happening today. Typically a pretty obscure meeting but you can actually watch it, they're going to stream this on YouTube which is the first indication of what this meeting is really all about. They want to let people in. Anybody in the public can watch this, they want to let people in to see how this vaccine advisory committee, how they sort of deliberate some of these decisions regarding safety, regarding efficacy, how effective the vaccine is. They're going to talk about, you know, the manufacturing, the distribution, you've got immunologists, infectious disease doctors, statisticians, they're all going to be talking about this and they're going to allow the public to comment on this. So, this is an unusual situation in that they really want to let people in on the whole process. You are not going to hear about an authorization today. What we're hearing on that is that Pfizer is likely to apply for an authorization sometimes third week of November, we don't know for sure, but that's what it's looking like, Moderna probably November 25th. If that authorization application happens, within a week this committee will meet again and possibly actually put this forth to the larger FDA for authorization. So this could happen quickly over the next couple of months. Let me just show you really quick if I can what the distribution might look like. We're talking about one of the largest vaccine distributions historically in the world. We know that this vaccine may need to be stored at super cold temperatures, but look at the number, 15,000 flights, 200,000 movements by pallet shippers, up to 10 billion doses ultimately, people may need more than one doze of this vaccine, that's likely what's going to happen if one of these vaccines gets authorized within the next few months.
[Camerota:] And so, Sanjay, you're basically saying what we're going to be seeing today is an attempt to nullify the public anxiety about this. It's going to require 95 percent of the public to buy if for it to be really successful?
[Gupta:] Yeah, I mean, you know, right now we know about half the country says they're willing to take the vaccine. You know, the number needs to be, you know, closer 70 percent. It depends a little bit on how effective the vaccine is. If it's a super effective vaccine, you may not need as large a percentage of the country, but a lot more than what we have now. You know, how do you determine how safe something is? How do you determine how effective something is? People are well within their right to ask those questions. And today and we'll report on your show tomorrow about this, but today if they want to watch this, they're going to get insights into how those things are determined and maybe, like you say, Alisyn, maybe it will help assuage some of those anxieties.
[Berman:] I like how Sanjay just booked himself tomorrow.
[Camerota:] I like it, too. I like just out of time. Let's do that.
[Berman:] We'll see you tomorrow, Sanjay. Dr. Emanuel, thank you
[Gupta:] We are all family here, come on.
[Camerota:] I like it, too.
[Berman:] Thanks, Sanjay. And, Dr. Emanuel, we thank you for being with us this morning. Terrific to see.
[Emanuel:] Thank you.
[Camerota:] OK. Tonight is the final debate of the 2020 race, last time that we will see President Trump and Joe Biden square off. So we get the bottom line on what both candidates need to do and what we can expect, next.