Researcher: Accuracy of Antibody Tests 'Really Terrible'; NYPD Disperses Crowd at Rabbi's Funeral in Brooklyn.
BERMAN: New scrutiny this morning for one key component of the testing in this country: the antibody test which helped determine if you have had coronavirus. Real questions this morning about whether they work. One researcher says the accuracy is, quote, "really terrible." CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen has the latest.</s>ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Antibody testing to check for past infection. Officials have said these tests are critical to reopening the economy. But there are concerns many of them don't work very well.</s>FAUCI: The problem is that these are tests that need to be validated and calibrated. And many of the tests out there don't do that.</s>COHEN: So scientists in California, including at the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, decided to see how are they working. Out of the 12 tests they looked at, several had frequent false positives. One got false positives more than 15 percent of the time. Three others, false positives more than 10 percent of the time or more. One of the researchers calling these results really terrible. Last month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration relaxed their standards for these tests, allowing them to be sold without submitting any data showing that they work. For weeks, the FDA and other federal agencies have been saying they'll figure out which tests work best. But the FDA telling CNN they have nothing to share on this effort. While government scientists try to work this out, doctors at Texas A&M announcing they're going to start a clinical trial of a 100-year-old tuberculosis vaccine. It can help boost the immune system, and they hope it will work for COVID-19.</s>DR. WILLIAM SCHAFFNER, INFECTIOUS DISEASE SPECIALIST: Sometimes we have found that an old drug, one that we've used for years, can serve a new purpose.</s>COHEN: An advantage of old drugs for new purposes: they've been used before, so doctors know a lot about their safety profile. Hundreds of millions of doses of the BCG vaccine are given every year, mostly in developing countries. A disadvantage: since it wasn't designed specifically for COVID-19, it might not work for COVID-19, and it could be harmful to some.</s>SCHAFFNER: Seems a bit of a stretch. But it's very novel. And desperate times demand desperate measures. It's worth a clinical trial.</s>COHEN: In the end, it could be a combination of old and new drugs that get us out of this pandemic.</s>SCHAFFNER: We need a multipronged approach, because we need help here; and we need to go down every trail, investigate every possibility.</s>COHEN: Elizabeth Cohen, CNN, reporting.</s>BERMAN: All right. Thank you very much for that update. Back with us, Dr. Vivek Murthy and Dr. Colleen Kraft. Doctors, I want to show you a picture from last night that caused quite a stir here in New York City. This was at a funeral in Brooklyn for a rabbi. You can see many, many people there, Hasidic Jews, largely, showing up for this funeral, not social distancing. I mean, that's just crystal-clear from this picture. The New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio, went to help break the gathering up, and he said things in response that offended many people, over generalizing about the Jewish community in general. We'll talk about that later. What I want to tell you, Dr. Kraft, though, again, we're talking about this tension between what people want to do and really should do. A gathering like that in the epicenter of this pandemic right now in the United States, that has to be dangerous.</s>KRAFT: Yes, I agree with you. I think one of our concerns is that we are getting such mixed messages, and we are sort of making our own choices that it's really difficult to know how this is really going to be controlled as we continue to sort of ebb and flow on some of these gatherings that happen and events that are happening. And so I think it just brings us back to the same message, which is we really have to work ourselves, and it's within our own control, to prevent this transmission for ourselves and our loved ones. So hand hygiene, face hygiene, you know, doing physical distancing when you're in public, don't trusting surfaces -- don't trust any surfaces you haven't cleaned. And if you can't kind of create that scenario for yourself, then you may want to avoid this interaction. There are lots of things that are important to many of us. We want to -- all of us want to get back to doing what we were doing before. But it's going to be very difficult to get there if we continue to practice kind of sort of haphazard infection prevention practices.</s>BERMAN: You know, Dr. Murthy, I put this in same category as the vice president not wearing a mask at the Mayo Clinic. We all want an exception. We all want to find someplace where maybe we can do something that's not necessarily advised, but it's OK, because I think I'm doing it responsibly. Or it's OK, because I really want to do it or need to do it. Mourning is very difficult. Right? We all want to mourn. We all want to go to funerals. I get that. But still, it's hard to know what is right when there is so much mixed messaging around the country.</s>MURTHY: Well, this is why communication is so essential during pandemics like this. And there are some core principles in how you communicate during a pandemic, which it's essential that we observe. For example, you always have to be transparent and truthful. You always have to lead with science and with scientists. But you also have to be empathic in your communication. And that might seem like a soft thing, that's not important, but it actually is. Because people need to know that you understand the challenges that they're facing, that you feel the pain and the struggle that they're enduring. And right now there are millions of people around America who are not able to say goodbye to their loved ones who can't go to ICUs and nursing homes to visit their elderly relatives. This is extremely painful. And if people don't think that their leaders understand that, they're not getting clear, consistent messages from them, then you run into situations where they're not -- they feel they don't need to observe their rules or they just can't anymore. We've got to be able -- to be able to support people, empathize with them but communicate clearly about what needs to be done.</s>BERMAN: One other key piece of news overnight, Dr. Kraft, was that Simon Properties, which owns shopping malls around the country, has now said it's going to reopen 49 of them, largely in states that are beginning to reopen themselves. Now, again, that's an economic story. But where it concerns you and public health, it's something you raised before that's fascinating to me. They may open, but are people going to go? That's what we don't know yet. Some stores in the malls won't reopen. Right now, Gap, which owns Banana Republic and a ton of stuff, says it's not reopening its individual stores. But the other question is, what will people do and how do people need to feel in order to reopen?</s>KRAFT: Yes. And I think Dr. Murthy really said it really eloquently. That, you know, we -- our messaging is becoming -- is mixed. It's unclear what -- what is the appropriate course of action or not. And so I do think it comes back to, again, us taking within ourselves the -- the control to prevent the transmission. And so I will be very interested, as well, to see if people actually attend -- attend events and go to malls if they're -- if they're really concerned about their health, if they have a medically fragile family member, if they themselves have medical, you know, diseases. We want to prevent this transmission, because we want to save lives. And so I think it will -- it will -- unfortunately, we'll be seeing how we're going to balance that with some of these openings.</s>BERMAN: Dr. Kraft, Dr. Murthy, thank you both very much for being with us. Dr. Murthy, you're going to be back to talk much more about a subject that I think is of paramount importance that you just wrote a book on. And that's loneliness during this crisis. So thank you very much for being with us. President Trump ordering meat-processing plants to stay open, but workers are getting sick. So what's the answer here, so that we can get the food we need and keep workers safe?