Full transcript of "Face the Nation" on December 20, 2020
On this "Face the Nation" broadcast moderated by Margaret Brennan:
- Dr. Jerome Adams U.S. Surgeon General
- Ron Klain, Incoming White House Chief of Staff to President-elect Biden
- Kevin Mandia, FireEye CEO
- David Ricks, Chairman and CEO of Eli Lilly and Company
- Mary Daly, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
- Dr. Scott Gottlieb, Former FDA Commissioner
Click here to browse full transcripts of "Face the Nation."
MARGARET BRENNAN: I'm Margaret Brennan in Washington. This week on FACE THE NATION, there is breaking news this morning as the second coronavirus vaccine ships out, and overnight Congress moves closer to getting billions of dollars of COVID economic relief to Americans right before Christmas.
The vaccines are here, and more are on the way. Across the U.S., health care workers and the elderly are rolling up their sleeves. We'll have the latest on the supply and the demand as American hospitals and ICUs continue to struggle with a flood of coronavirus cases.
MIKE PENCE: Make no mistake about it, it's a medical miracle.
MARGARET BRENNAN: A miracle, yes, but it's also a complicated process.
PRESIDENT-ELECT JOE BIDEN (The Late Show with Stephen Colbert): It's one thing to get the vaccine delivered to X number of spots around the country. It's a very different thing to get the vaccine out of that tube, into a syringe, into somebody's arm.
MARGARET BRENNAN: As predicted, there are hiccups with the distribution process, leaving some states confused about just how many doses they'll get and when. One message that is clear from doctors and government officials: Get vaccinated.
SENATOR JOHN KENNEDY (Fox News): Some of my people back home have called me and said we're scared to take the shot because we don't know what's in it. And I tell them-- I asked them, do you eat hot dogs? You don't know what's in a hot dog either. But you got to trust somebody.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Surgeon General Jerome Adams and Former FDA Commissioner Doctor Scott Gottlieb will join us, as well as the head of Eli Lilly, David Ricks. We'll ask him why the company's therapeutic drugs aren't getting used as hoped. Then, as President-elect Biden puts the finishing touches on his cabinet, we will talk to incoming White House chief of staff Ron Klain about the staggering challenges facing the new administration. As if a coronavirus pandemic and a recession aren't enough, the U.S. is also under a massive cyberattack. We'll talk to the CEO of FireEye, the cybersecurity company who discovered the hack, Kevin Mandia. Plus, the economy: What's the prognosis for recovery in 2021? The head of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, Mary Daly, joins us.
It's all just ahead on FACE THE NATION.
Good morning, and welcome to FACE THE NATION. The typically joyful season comes in one of the country's darkest moments. Seventeen and a half million people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with COVID-19. One in two hundred and fifty were diagnosed with the disease just last week. More than three hundred thousand have died over the course of this pandemic, and experts are predicting that cases have not yet peaked. The health care system may be overwhelmed in the next few weeks, pushing hospitals and medical professionals to their own breaking points. Additionally, a major cyberattack is underway, posing what government officials call a grave danger to both government and private entities. But as we come on the air this morning, there is hope: A second vaccine manufactured by Moderna is being shipped to all fifty states. Congress has also resolved a major sticking point with that long-delayed COVID relief bill, that would provide more than nine hundred billion dollars in badly needed economic aid. We begin today with CBS News senior national correspondent Mark Strassmann reporting from Atlanta.
(Begin VT)
CROWD (in unison): Three, two, one. Vaccinate.
MARK STRASSMANN (CBS News Senior National Correspondent): Vaccination illation. Drive-through lines in Reno, rolled up sleeves across America, to millions, it's the most coveted Christmas gift.
WOMAN: This is the beginning of the end for COVID.
MARK STRASSMANN: As the Pfizer vaccine arrives in places like Austin, more help is on the way. Early this morning, Moderna began distributing its newly approved vaccine. Vice President Pence promoted these shots as safe and effective, but this is 2020, they're also divisive, griping from governors about deliveries.
GOVERNOR CHARLIE BAKER (R-Massachusetts): We're certainly frustrated that we won't be receiving the amount that we expected in the first wave.
MARK STRASSMANN: The head of Operation Warp Speed apologized for what he called a miscommunication.
GENERAL GUSTAVE PERNA (Operation Warp Speed): There is no problem with the process. It was a planning error, and I am responsible.
MARK STRASSMANN: And pushback from anti-vaxxers. In one survey, forty-two percent of Republicans don't want one. And talk about the vaccine's timing, COVID is on a record rampage. America had one million new cases in five days. More than thirty-six hundred deaths in a single day, and more than one hundred thirteen thousand COVID patients are in hospitals. In Los Angeles, someone dies of COVID every half hour. Overwhelmed hospitals create ICU wards in parking lots and gift shops. For those jobless Americans who need a pandemic lifeline, Congress could vote later today on a nine-hundred-billion-dollar relief bill. It includes three hundred dollars more a week in unemployment benefits, and six-hundred-dollar stimulus checks for families making less than seventy-five thousand dollars a year, close to eight million Americans have fallen below the poverty line since June.
(End VT)
MARK STRASSMANN: Here in Georgia, as we reach Christmas week, the virus is both in a surge and a siege. Ask local hospitals and food banks. Margaret.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mark Strassmann, thanks.
We want to go now to the surgeon general, Vice Admiral Doctor Jerome Adams. Good morning to you.
JEROME ADAMS, M.D. (Surgeon General/@JeromeAdamsMD): Good morning, Margaret.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Before we get to what's happening here in the U.S., I want to ask you about this news overnight that a number of European countries are now shutting down travel from the U.K. because of a new strain of the coronavirus. What do we know about the threat it poses? And do our current vaccines work against it?
JEROME ADAMS: Well, very important for people to know that viruses mutate all the time, and that does not mean that this virus is any more dangerous. We don't even know if it's really more contagious yet or not or if it just happened to be a strain that was involved in a superspreader event. Right now we have no indications that it is going to hurt our ability to continue vaccinating people or that it is any more dangerous or deadly than the strains that are currently out there and that we know about.
MARGARET BRENNAN: When people hear shutdowns elsewhere, they worry about things happening here. Are you just saying we don't really know yet the details of this latest strain and-- and how lethal it could be?
JEROME ADAMS: Exactly. The most relevant point is that it doesn't change anything we've been telling you. It just further reinforces the fact that we need to wash our hands, wear our mask, watch our distances, keep our household gatherings small, because if this is a mutation that is more contagious, then that just means that we need to be that much more vigilant while we wait to get vac-- vaccinated.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to ask you about the current vaccine distribution. Pfizer, which has its vaccine already out there, shipped out about three million doses last week. But according to Bloomberg's data and The New York Times, there were about a hundred and seventy thousand inoculations. The CDC has that number a little bit higher at two hundred and seventy-two thousand actual shots in the arm. Do you expect the pace to pick up?
JEROME ADAMS: I absolutely expect the pace to pick up. Something I've said all along to people is that this is going to be the most technically, logistically difficult vaccination project of all time. And it's why we have career officials like General Perna, very good man, the best in the world working on this. And we-- we started slow. We're going to continue to increase. So the American people should be hopeful about vaccines, but we also need to remain vigilant.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But General Perna, who you just mentioned there, runs a logistics and he somewhat apologized, taking responsibility for the problems in the past week with the rollout of vaccine to the states. Should there have been more hands-on role played by health professionals like yourself in the logistics? I mean was this just poor planning by the federal government?
JEROME ADAMS: It absolutely was not poor planning. And I want the American people, again, to know that the numbers are going to go up and down. There's what we plan. There's what we actually allocate. There's what's delivered, and then there's what's actually put in people's arms.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You've been outspoken about your concern regarding communities of color in particular. COVID says black Americans are dying at nearly two times the rate of white Americans. It's the COVID-19 Tracking Project. The Kaiser Foundation says thirty-five percent of black adults say they definitely or probably would not get vaccinated. How are you going to persuade the black community in the throes of this crisis to overcome that?
JEROME ADAMS: Well, I'm the United States surgeon general, but make no mistake about it, I'm a African-American, I grew up poor, Black, rural. I know that long before COVID there were many diseases: hypertension, cancer, diabetes that were plaguing communities of color. And COVID just unveiled those disparities that have been around for a long time. I've talked previously about the-- the history of-- of mistreatment of communities of color, the Tuskegee experiments, the terrible treatment of Henrietta Lacks and her family, and how they just took her cells without her permission. We need to understand that that distrust comes from a real place. It actually comes from my office. Several surgeons general oversaw for forty years the Tuskegee studies, where a treatment was denied to black men. And I walked past their pictures every single day when I go into my office. So believe you me, this legacy is important to me and-- and helping restore that trust is important. We've had many people involved in the review and actually study participants of color. And what-- what I want to tell people most of all is I walk the talk. I got vaccinated on Friday.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-Hm.
JEROME ADAMS: I actually feel great. You know my mother-in-law and my mother are watching and they've been asking me all weekend, how are you feeling? I feel great. And I hope people will get the vaccine based on information that they get from trusted resources because it's okay to have questions.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.
JEROME ADAMS: What's not okay is to make poor health decisions based on misinformation.
MARGARET BRENNAN: That same study from the Kaiser Foundation shows that this vaccine hesitancy cuts across racial lines. It also cuts across political ones. But I want to drill in here because the highest amount of hesitancy about taking the shot is from Republicans, forty-two percent accord-- according to Kaiser. Rural residents, thirty-five percent. Wouldn't it help to persuade those Republicans if the Republican president himself came out to try to persuade them to take the vaccine he says he's so proud he fast tracked. Do you have plans to have President Trump get a shot in the arm on camera?
JEROME ADAMS: From a scientific point of view, I will remind people that the President has had COVID within the last ninety days. He received the monoclonal antibodies. And that is actually one scenario where we tell people maybe you should hold off on getting the vaccine, talk to your health provider to find out the right time. So politics aside--
MARGARET BRENNAN: But that doesn't make you immune.
JEROME ADAMS: --there is a medical reason--
MARGARET BRENNAN: That doesn't make you immune.
JEROME ADAMS: Yes, but politics aside-- it-- it, well, it does not. But we know that monoclonal antibodies, if you've been administered them, actually are a potential reason why medically we would tell you to hold off on the vaccination.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay. So, if he can't take the shot, which you're saying is for medical reasons, you think, why doesn't he at least come out and do the public service announcements to the people who voted for him, who trust him and the vaccine he says he's so proud of?
JEROME ADAMS: Well, I appreciate the question and I would refer you to the White House. I can only speak for me. I got vaccinated. The vice president got vaccinated, and plenty of Republicans look at him and see him getting vaccinated. And I hope that people will talk to their trusted health providers and get the information they need to make an appropriate choice to help us reopen our economy and to get back to normal and to save lives.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And, lastly, in other communities of color, I-- I want to ask you in particular, there's concern about undocumented residents in this country. If people aren't legal citizens, what is the guidance? Do governors have to make the call on whether or not to vaccinate them?
JEROME ADAMS: I-- I want everyone to hear me. No one in this country should be denied a vaccine because of their documentation status, because it's not ethically right to deny those individuals.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But is it ultimately up to the governors to figure out how to do that, how to get people to feel comfortable to come out of the shadows, to get a shot in the arm?
JEROME ADAMS: I want to reassure people that your information when collected to get your second shot, if you get the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, will not be used in any way, shape or form to harm you legally. That is something that I have been assured of. And we tell people that all the time when they need to come in for emergency care or public health care. So, we're going to work with states and local officials and trusted organizations to make sure everyone gets the information they need and feels safe coming in to get vaccinated, because that's how we end this pandemic. That's the good news. There is a light at the end of this dark tunnel and we just need to keep running to it.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Thank you very much and have a great holiday.
JEROME ADAMS: Thank you, Margaret. I appreciate it.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We turn now to the incoming White House chief of staff for President-elect Joe Biden, and that is Ron Klain. Good morning to you.
RON KLAIN: Good morning, Margaret. Thanks for having me.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Do you intend to keep Operation Warp Speed intact when you take office? What changes will you make to vaccine distribution?
RON KLAIN (Incoming White House Chief of Staff/@RonaldKlain): You know we are reviewing the progress of Operation Warp Speed and the ways in which we can structure the vaccine distribution most effectively. We'll have something to say about that shortly after the first of the year. We're going to-- certainly going to build on the good things about Operation Warp Speed, but also try to be more effective in managing this vaccine distribution program. I agree with something Doctor Adams just said. The program that's before the country to try to vaccinate hundreds of millions of Americans in a few months is one of unprecedented complexity, unprecedented expense, unprecedented technical challenges. We're going to put in place the right people and the right process to do that. It's great that about two hundred thousand Americans have been vaccinated in this first week, but two hundred thousand is a long, long way from hundreds of millions of people. That's where we need to get to, Margaret.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And we will-- we will follow up with you on those details when you make those calls. I want to ask you about the near term, and that is Christmas. The president-elect says he will have a small family gathering because of COVID.
RON KLAIN: Yeah.
MARGARET BRENNAN: He still attends mass indoors in person. What is his guidance to Americans who want to worship that way?
RON KLAIN: Margaret, I'm sorry I have lost you. I can't hear you anymore.
MARGARET BRENNAN: All right.
RON KLAIN: I'm very sorry.
MARGARET BRENNAN: It sounds like we are having some audio problems there.
RON KLAIN: I just-- I can't hear what you're saying. I'm sorry.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We will take a commercial break and continue the conversation on the other side.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: We go now to former FDA Commissioner Doctor Scott Gottlieb-- Gottlieb, he's also on the board at Pfizer. He joins us from Westport, Connecticut. Good morning to you, Doctor. As you know, COVID presents many challenges, many of them also technical for live television. So, we hope to continue that conversation in a moment. But I'm really glad you're here to answer some of these outstanding questions. On-- on the sheer numbers alone, the CDC is predicting about seventy-five thousand more deaths during the first week of January. How much are Christmas gatherings going to add to the strain we are seeing on the system right now?
SCOTT GOTTLIEB, M.D. (Former FDA Commissioner/@ScottGottliebMD): We saw a spike coming out of Thanksgiving. If you look at the analysis done on a state-by-state basis, there was anywhere between a ten-percent to a forty-percent increase in cases off of the baseline going into the holidays. Now, some of that was just the sheer magnitude of the virus building, but some of that was a consequence of the gatherings as well, which potentiated more spread. We'll see it coming out of this holiday. It does seem to be the case that we're on track probably to peak in terms of the number of infections somewhere around the first week in January. So we have three more weeks of increasing infections. We'll see a peak in infections. We'll start to see a decline. But once again the health care system is going to continue to see a burden well past the peak and infections because of the delay in time to hospitalization and also a delay in time to death from COVID. So after those infections peak we'll continue to see deaths start to continue to increase for another three weeks.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Another three weeks. When we spoke to the surgeon general he indicated the CDC is still trying to get information about this new strain of the coronavirus that's been detected in Europe. And it's just prudent planning to act like it's already here in the United States. What do we know about the lethality of this strain?
SCOTT GOTTLIEB: Well, it's probably not more lethal, but we don't fully understand its contours. There was a question of whether or not this-- there is a new variant and there's a question of whether or not it's become the predominant strain in London because of what we call founders' effect. It just got into London and got into some early super-spreading events, or whether or not it's the result of what we call selective pressure, it's being selected for because it has qualities that make it more likely to spread. Increasingly, it does seem to be the latter. It seems like this new strain is more contagious. It doesn't seem to be anymore virulent, anymore dangerous than run of the mill COVID. The next question is will it obviate our natural immunity? So, will people who had COVID from the old strain be able to get this new strain or will it obviate our vaccines? And the answer is probably not. This virus mutates like all viruses. Flu vaccine mutates-- flu mutates the most. And what viruses do is they change their surface proteins. And once they do that, the antibodies that we've developed against the-- those surface proteins no longer work. Now, flu mutates very rapidly, changes its surface proteins very rapidly. So, we constantly need to get a new flu shot. Some viruses like measles don't change their surface proteins. And so the measles shot we got twenty years ago still works. Coronavirus seems somewhere in the middle. It's going to mutate--
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.
SCOTT GOTTLIEB: --and change its surface proteins, but probably slow enough that we can develop new vaccines.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, for the vaccines we have, as I know, you've been watching this closely, there was a bumpy rollout this week to be generous here. General Perna, who is the logistics head of Operation Warp Speed, said it was his fault. But there's a lot of finger pointing that happened over the course of the week between the Health and Human Services secretary blaming Pfizer. Pfizer saying that it's not their fault. What exactly happened, and is the bottom line that it is fixed or can it be fixed?
SCOTT GOTTLIEB: Well, I'm on the board of Pfizer, as you know, they're running a careful process, and so what they're doing is they're calling up the companies on, let's say, Tuesday, and I believe it is a Tuesday. And they're saying, how many doses do you have available for shipment next week? And they're doing that because they want to give the states maximal visibility into what they're going to get. And the companies do what's called lot release. So at any one time, they have a certain amount of vaccine available. But as vaccine comes off the manufacturing line it's constantly getting released. And so what they'll do is they'll let a vaccine sit for a period of time and then they'll do testing on it to make sure it's stable, to make sure it's sterile. And so on Tuesday, companies will have a certain amount of vaccine available and they'll report that to the government. But then on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, more vaccine becomes available. But the amount that they'll ship will be based on that Tuesday total. So, there is vaccine that's in the warehouse. Now, that vaccine is not going to be lost. It's going to be shipped the subsequent week. You know, my view has been from a public health standpoint, we're at the peak of this pandemic right now. Protective immunity is important to get out there. A vaccine that's delivered next week is going to probably have a bigger public health impact than a vaccine delivered five weeks from now. So, we should be leaning forward and trying to get as much vaccine out as possible. What they're trying to do is give maximal visibility to the states so the states have predictability. But the consequence of that is that there is vaccine that's in the warehouse that won't be shipped next week but will be shipped the subsequent week.
MARGARET BRENNAN: All right. So it's coming. Doctor Gottlieb, thank you very much for-- for-- for jumping into the breach and giving us your great analysis.
We'll be right back. We've got Ron Klain back, and, hopefully, able to hear when we return.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: We want to pick up where we left off with incoming White House Chief of staff Ron Klain, and thank you for sticking us-- sticking with us there. I hope--
RON KLAIN: Of course.
MARGARET BRENNAN: --in the New Year, we can have a conversation in person. But-- but--
RON KLAIN: Indeed.
MARGARET BRENNAN: --in-- in the-- in the COVID world, I want to ask you to finish your thought. And that was about Christmas. And the vice-- the president-elect still attends mass indoors in person. What is his guidance to Americans who want to worship that way?
RON KLAIN: Look, I think the guidance is to do it very carefully. I think that the mass he attends is sparsely attended. They control the number of people who go. He wears a mask. I think it's important for people to be careful. I mean, look, the most important thing he can say to everyone right now, while we're waiting for this vaccine to be available, is for people to mask up, to practice social distancing, to be careful, to wash their hands, to do all the things Doctor Adams was talking about. People need to celebrate the holiday. They need to mark these important events, but we need to do it in the most careful way possible, as responsibly as possible. That's what he's been doing and that's what he encourages others to do.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Have you been briefed yet on this new strain of COVID?
RON KLAIN: We have not yet been briefed on it. We're supposed to get briefed next-- early next week on this. Obviously, we're going to respond to this with expertise--
MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay.
RON KLAIN: --from science and medicine. We're going to take whatever changes we need to take in the-- in the approach if there need to be changes based on what the experts, the medical experts advise us.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay, we're going to take a very quick break and continue our conversation on the other side of it.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: We'll be right back with more from Ron Klain and David Ricks, the head of pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. Be sure to stay with us.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: Welcome back to FACE THE NATION. We're continuing our conversation with Ron Klain. I want to switch gears to talk about this massive hacking of the federal government and private entities. The transition team has had some level of briefing on this. Is there any doubt that Russia was behind it?
RON KLAIN: (AUDIO CUT) --to disclose this information in terms of who gets the blame. We should be hearing a clear and unambiguous allocation of responsibility from the White House, from the intelligence community. They are the people in charge. They are the ones who should be making those messages and delivering the ascertainment of responsibility. Instead, what we've heard is one message from the secretary of state, a different message from the White House, a different message from the President's Twitter feed. We have been briefed on this. But, again, I think in terms of publicly communicating the position--
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm.
RON KLAIN: --of our government that has to come from the current government and it should be coming in a clear and unambiguous voice.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, the president-elect was pretty clear when he spoke to my colleague Stephen Colbert on CBS earlier this week, and he was asked about Russia and he said they'll be held accountable. He said they'll face financial re-- repercussions for what they did. Is that no longer the case? He no longer believes its Russia.
RON KLAIN: No, what I'm saying is that the official statements about who's responsible for this particular attack needs to come from--
MARGARET BRENNAN: Gotcha.
RON KLAIN: --the administration in a clear and unambiguous way.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay.
RON KLAIN: What the president-elect has also said clearly, Margaret, is that those who are responsible are going to face consequences for it. And he is going to take steps as president to degrade the capacity of foreign actors to launch these kinds of attacks on our country.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So Senator Mitt Romney said this morning the Russians potentially have the ability to target U.S. utilities and cripple the U.S. economy. Is that your understanding of what these hackers have the ability to do right now and are sanctions as far as the president-elect is willing to go?
RON KLAIN: Well, so I think there's a lot of uncertainty still about what the purpose of these attacks were. Were they espionage oriented? Were they designed to inflict damage on us? I agree with Senator Romney about the capacity of foreign actors. I think there's still a lot of unanswered questions about the purpose, nature, and extent of these specific attacks. And we're looking-- looking forward to learn more about them. I think in terms of the measures that a Biden administration would take in response to an attack like this, I think-- I want to be very clear it's not just sanctions. It's also steps and things we could do to degrade the capacity of foreign actors to repeat this sort of attack or we're still engaged in even more dangerous attacks.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay. Have the two-- I'm hoping you can still--
RON KLAIN: And now, Margaret, I've lost you again. I'm sorry, but the connection has been--
MARGARET BRENNAN: All right.
RON KLAIN: --severed once again.
MARGARET BRENNAN: All right. Just when we were-- I was-- I was going to ask you a follow-up there. But, Ron Klain, thank you very much for joining us.
I'm sorry to our viewers for the continued technical problems on that. But we are lucky because we do have our next guest here. And that is on the topic of COVID-19. You all may remember that when President Trump was diagnosed with COVID-19 back in the fall, he was treated with a therapeutic antibody made by a company, Regeneron. Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly makes a similar drug that has been distributed to states across this country through Operation Warp Speed. This morning we're joined by their chairman and CEO David Ricks. He is in Indianapolis. Good morning to you.
DAVID RICKS (Chairman & CEO OF Eli Lilly and Company): Good morning, Margaret.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We wanted to talk to you about your treatment with monoclonal antibodies because we learned this week that while taxpayers have purchased about a billion dollars of it to treat patients only a fraction of it is actually being used and we're in the throes of a crisis. Why isn't this being prescribed more?
DAVID RICKS: Well, it's-- it's disappointing news that we heard as well. I can tell you that across the country we've shipped and distributed broadly the monoclonal antibody from Lilly. And then in our clinical studies, it reduces the risk of hos-- hospitalization by about seventy percent. So, it's very important that those eligible talk to their doctor about getting this therapy. What we have seen, though, is differences in how different states and different hospital systems have chosen to act. Some really good cases where it's quite easy when your doctor recommends us to get the infusion. It's an infusion. It takes about two hours. And we've seen cases where there's been little or no action. So it's important people know to ask their doctor if they're a candidate for this therapy.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And when you say infusion, you mean someone has to go and get hooked up to an IV to treat it?
DAVID RICKS: Correct, yeah.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But I want to follow up on something you just said, because it's similar to what the Trump administration has said over the course of this week, which seems to put the onus on the patient to tell their doctor what to prescribe them. That's not usually the doctor-patient relationship. If we accept that's the premise and it's our job to tell the doctor to prescribe us, how soon are they supposed to ask for it?
DAVID RICKS: Well, I'm not suggesting it's only the patient's responsibility. So, let me come back to that. But the drug is indicated in the first ten days after a positive PCR-test, a-- a confirmation you have COVID-19. And within that ten-day period, you could receive the infusion. And it's been shown to reduce symptoms, reduce the viral load and keep people out of the hospital. But we're also communicating with-- with hospital systems and states because this is an emergency use authorization, unlike other approvals for drugs as a manufacturer, it's-- it's not our role to go promote this.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
DAVID RICKS: So we're working through government channels to do that. And as I said, it's quite variable. There's some great examples, but there's also some areas of the country where it doesn't seem to be available when it actually is.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right. And it's sitting on the shelves we know because--
DAVID RICKS: Yeah.
MARGARET BRENNAN: --Operation Warp Speed has said there are about sixty-five thousand doses that go out each week, five to twenty percent of it's actually being used.
DAVID RICKS: Mm-Hm.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And this is-- these are therapeutics that American taxpayers already bought. So--
DAVID RICKS: Correct.
MARGARET BRENNAN: --if the states aren't using it, or certain states aren't using it, should the federal government claw it back and give it to those who are actually using it?
DAVID RICKS: Well, every week we're shipping more. So, the way it's working now is we're being directed by the Warp Speed team to distribute through a third-party distributor to those facilities that are using it. And so we're replenishing those supplies now. And there's many good examples in Houston. In the state of Maryland, they've done a great job. In South Dakota, even after their very difficult fall, they've distributed enormous quantity of what they've received. So, we're acting at the government's direction here and supplies are being replenished. I don't think there's an attempt to bring the supplies back from hospitals. Rather, what we'd like hospitals to do is use what they were sent.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
DAVID RICKS: Set up an infusion clinic where patients with COVID-19 can receive this. And I think we all know, coast to coast, this is not a time to leave-- leave that important tool on the shelf.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
DAVID RICKS: This is the time to put it to work against the patients who are suffering.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right. But what-- but what you're hinting at there is one of these challenges we're seeing again and again is the disconnect between what the federal government is delivering and what the states do when they receive it. And we know hospitals are overwhelmed. So, this is a big public health policy issue that needs to be addressed. I'm wondering if you think what you're seeing happen with therapeutics is an indicator of what's going to happen with the vaccine. Are states also not going to be able to distribute it?
DAVID RICKS: Well, I'm-- I'm not an expert in that, but I can say this is a complicated problem that needs focus and attention from governors and hospital system executives. That seems similar to the vaccination challenge. Here we'll have-- we have about a million doses we'll have produced this year, getting those into the hands of hospitals by mid-January. On the vaccine side, we need hundreds of millions administered. So, those operational challenges, we're doing something new for the first time.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
DAVID RICKS: It's not simple. It needs focus and attention. And-- and from the hospital on up.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Absolutely. And-- and at the time of a crisis, quick action. Are you going to require your own workforce to get a vaccination?
DAVID RICKS: We've discussed this. I don't think there's going to be a problem at a science-based company like Eli Lilly to convince people to get vaccinated. In fact, I think there'll be quite a line. It's not our turn yet. It's important that front-line health care workers and the elderly receive the vaccine first. We totally support that. We do have manufacturing sites that make unique pharmaceuticals that if they can't operate, patients can't receive those medicines. So, we're working with the states we operate in to see where in the priority we fall. And then we'll do a strong internal communication about the benefits, that's already started actually, of vaccination. And I suspect most people who work at Eli Lilly will get vaccinated, but it will be their choice. One of the considerations--
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-Hm.
DAVID RICKS: --here, Margaret, is it's an emergency use authorization.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay.
DAVID RICKS: We don't have the normal, full--
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
DAVID RICKS: --set of data. And if an employee of ours is concerned, we'll respect that concern.
MARGARET BRENNAN: All right. Well, good luck to you. Thank you for your time.
DAVID RICKS: Thank you.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And we'll be right back to talk about that massive cyberattack.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: And we are learning more about what may be the worst cyberattack in history. It's affected many organizations, including federal agencies. Kevin Mandia is the CEO of FireEye, a cybersecurity company that protects clients against malicious software and investigates hacks. His company was the first one to discover that this massive breach happened. Good morning to you.
KEVIN MANDIA (FireEye CEO): Margaret, good morning to you.
MARGARET BRENNAN: The Trump administration has described this as an ongoing attack and poses--
KEVIN MANDIA: Mm-Hm.
MARGARET BRENNAN: --grave risk to the federal government, to state governments, to private institutions, critical infrastructure.
KEVIN MANDIA: Hmm.
MARGARET BRENNAN: It went undetected for nearly nine months. How should the public understand this? How significant is it?
KEVIN MANDIA: Right. Well, there's a lot of ways to look at this intrusion, and first and foremost, it's different than other ones that we commonly respond to. We respond to over a thousand breaches a year. And what separates this is who did it, how they did it, and what they did when they got in. And I'll get to the who probably last. But when you look at the how, Margaret, that's what makes this totally unique. This was not a drive-by shooting on the information highway. This was a sniper round from somebody a mile away from your house. This was special operations. And it was going to take special operations to detect this breach. So, the how they did it was in a way that was utterly clandestine, very difficult to tell. And quite frankly, it was a backdoor into the American supply chain that separates this from thousands of other cases that we've worked throughout our careers.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Does it go back further than March? How long have hackers been inside the system?
KEVIN MANDIA: Well, so right now, what we've observed with this latest campaign, first, I think this threat actor wasn't a one and done. What I mean by that is I think these are folks that we've responded to in the '90s, in the early 2000s. It's a continuing game in cyberspace. You know there's a time in our lives where the domains that we had espionage in or the domains that we had combat in or differences in were land, sea, air, then space. And now we have cyber. This is just one campaign in a long battle in cyberspace. But this campaign specifically has the earliest evidences of being designed. In October of 2019 when code was changed in the SolarWinds Orion platform, but it was innocuous code. It was not a backdoor. Then sometime in March, the operators behind this attack did put malicious code into the supply chain, injected it in there--
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-Hm.
KEVIN MANDIA: --and that is the-- the backdoor that impacted everybody. I think, Margaret, it's important to note everybody says this is potentially the biggest intrusion in our history. The reality is the blast radius for this, I kind of explain it with a-- a funnel. It's true that over three hundred thousand companies use SolarWinds--
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-Hm.
KEVIN MANDIA: --but you come down from that total number down to about eighteen thousand or so companies that actually had--
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.
KEVIN MANDIA: --the backdoor or malicious code in a network. And then you come down to the next part. It's probably only about fifty organizations or companies, somewhere in that zone--
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
KEVIN MANDIA: --that's genuinely impacted by the threat actor.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to come back to that in a moment, but attribution.
KEVIN MANDIA: Mm-Hm.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Secretary of state said it's Russia.
KEVIN MANDIA: Sure.
MARGARET BRENNAN: A Republican senator who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee said it's increasingly clear this was Russian intelligence. Do you agree that this was Russia? And what evidence do you base that on?
KEVIN MANDIA: Well, I think that is definitely a nation behind this. You just heard me say the attack started with a dry run in October of 2019. This wasn't a ransomware attack, not a drive-by shooting where somebody breaks in--
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
KEVIN MANDIA: --and it's kind of like a brick through your window. And it's pretty obvious, hey, they broke in with a brick through the window and then they stole your jewels. This is more like a case where somebody came in through a trapdoor in your basement that you never knew about, put on an invisibility cloak and you just got the sense there in your networks, but you weren't even sure how. You were like there's something different--
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
KEVIN MANDIA: --right now. Something's been moved. And it took--
MARGARET BRENNAN: But you know better than anyone--
KEVIN MANDIA: Yeah.
MARGARET BRENNAN: --that there are only a very few number of nation states capable--
KEVIN MANDIA: Mm-Hm.
MARGARET BRENNAN: --of what you are describing in terms of skill. Russian intelligence--
KEVIN MANDIA: Right.
MARGARET BRENNAN: --specifically the SVR, has repeatedly been pointed to by officials. Is that who you believe did this?
KEVIN MANDIA: Right. I think this is an attack very consistent with that, I also believe this: We're going to get attribution right. The amount of resources inside the government, inside the private sector and the reach that we have, we can speculate it or we can do some more work and put a neon sign on the building of the folks that did this. And I'm very confident as we continue the investigation, as it gets broader, as more people learn the tools, tactics and procedures of this attack, we're going to bring it back and we're going to get attribution.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.
KEVIN MANDIA: Not ninety-two percent right, not consistent with, but a hundred percent. Let's just get it right--
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
KEVIN MANDIA: --so that we can proportionately respond, period.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right. And-- and it may take time to do that. But, I-- I press you on attribution because, obviously, if-- if you want to stop it from happening again--
KEVIN MANDIA: Mm-Hm.
MARGARET BRENNAN: --you actually have to identify who did it in the first place. And the President kind of muddied those--
KEVIN MANDIA: Right, absolutely.
MARGARET BRENNAN: --muddied those waters yesterday when he said it may be China, the media's overplaying it--
KEVIN MANDIA: Mm-Hm.
MARGARET BRENNAN: --downplayed the idea it was Russia. I'm not asking you to weigh in on politics, but how do you stop this from happening again and was it--
KEVIN MANDIA: Right. Well, clearly-- yeah.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Do you have to specifically target one country? How do you do this?
KEVIN MANDIA: Well, I think you have doctrine. That's why we have doctrine for things like the use of chemical weapons. You saw what happened when somebody used chemical weapons in Syria. There was retaliation. Folks have to know the rules of the game. And the problem in cyber is we're not doing the work to come up with the doctrine. If you publish your doctrine-- we're uniquely vulnerable in cyberspace. We're the ones in the glasshouse. These attacks will continue to escalate, and get worse if we do nothing. So, you know, just as a cybersecurity professional, I recognize if you don't communicate the rules of the game, here's the doctrine and here's the penalty when you violate it. We're going to see the borders continue to be pushed outward in cyber attacks--
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-Hm.
KEVIN MANDIA: --to the point where, when do we finally do the work--
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.
KEVIN MANDIA: --when it's already intolerable, when it already got so bad that we have no choice but to respond.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
KEVIN MANDIA: But like you said, it starts with doctrine. With doctrine, you have to get attribution right.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.
KEVIN MANDIA: And with attribution, then you have to do a proportional response to whoever the actors were.
MARGARET BRENNAN: All right. Kevin Mandia, thank you very much for your insight.
We will be back in a moment with a look at the economy.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: We go now to the president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Mary Daly. Good morning to you.
MARY DALY (President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco/@marydalyecon): Good morning, Margaret. And thank you so much for having me.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I would love for you to just give us the bottom line here. We know Congress has pumped in four trillion dollars into the economy to help with the pandemic. They're about to possibly pass about nine hundred billion in aid. Will all of this make a significant difference in propping up the economy?
MARY DALY: Absolutely. This support is unequivocally beneficial. If you think about where we started in March when COVID hit our shores and where we are now, it's really remarkable that the economy has done so well and that is-- speaks to the resiliency of the American people, but, of course, to the significant support that the Federal Reserve and Congress have taken to ensure that the bridge through coronavirus-- over coronavirus is both strong enough and long enough to get Americans fully through this.
MARGARET BRENNAN: In this nine-hundred-billion-dollar emerging deal, it looks like Congress will not provide help to state and local governments in terms of financial support. What impact do you think that will have on the jobs market going into 2021?
MARY DALY: When I think of state and local governments and state and local communities, these are just a community of people. And so the direct support to individuals, to households, to businesses in those communities really does help state and local governments because they don't have to provide as much for their citizens. Their citizens are getting the income support they need. And, importantly, businesses are getting the loans and funding that they need so that they can keep people employed. So I'm-- I'm bullish on the job market once we get fully through coronavirus, but we're not there yet. So, our future is bright, but we've got some challenging months ahead of us as we continue to battle coronavirus.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So it sounds like you are projecting job cuts at the state and local government level in the months to come.
MARY DALY: So far I'm not seeing evidence that there'll be job cuts. Remember that many of the services that state and localities provide are education and police services and social services. And right now we really need those services. So, what I'm feeling is that programmatic cuts are-- are being discussed. But right now we haven't heard of people cuts, yet.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yet.
MARY DALY: Not in the areas that I serve.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yet. Last-- last issue on politics, which I know you're an apolitical institution, but the Fed itself was at the heart of the standoff between Republicans and Democrats, and that hurdle seems to have been overcome late last night. It appears that the deal would allow for the Fed to retain its ability to set up emergency-lending programs without congressional approval, but block it from replicating programs like it set up in the spring. Is the bottom line here, for the American people at home, is the Fed affected by this? Can you still respond in an emergency or do you feel like your hands are still tied?
MARY DALY: So, I'm aware of those conversations. I'm not party to those conversations. But let me tell you what's really important. We have powerful tools and we're prepared to fully use those tools to support the American people. So, for all your listeners, we are prepared to conduct monetary policy to be the lender of last resort. And I feel ready and prepared to do just that.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And this new provision wouldn't change that?
MARY DALY: Again, I'm not aware of the specifics of that. I don't think--
MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay.
MARY DALY: --they've laid out the specifics yet, but I-- I'm-- I believe completely that Congress, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury secretary, the American people really want us to be able to deploy our full tools to the best of the benefit. Remember, these are emergency tools. We only bring them out in times of crisis--
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
MARY DALY: --and then we put them back away. And that's what we're continuing to do. That's what we're prepared to do in the future.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You're a labor economist. You know a lot about jobs. In this latest report we got, it looked like there was improvement. But then when you look inside the numbers, it shows that there are a lot of people who've simply given up looking for work, that seems particularly acute among women. Why do you think that is?
MARY DALY: Well, look, women are really in a bind. Many women still are the primary caregivers in their homes and we have homeschooling now. So, women are being forced to make this really hard trade off and return to home, give up their careers, give up their jobs in order to make sure that their children are-- are well cared for and can get the schooling and education they need. I mean parenting is also essential work, and these women are taking on that essential responsibility because they don't have the normal school child care, or child care more generally in the wake of COVID virus-- COVID and coronavirus. So, we really are going to have to, kind of, come together to get past COVID, think about how to get these women back in the workforce, and back contributing in a way that they really want to, to do both their child care, their pa-- parenting and their vital work.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Is this long-term damage to women?
MARY DALY: It could be if we don't get focused on what do we do to get out of this. I really think some-- this is a good time to think about national child care policies, the understanding that we shouldn't really force people to make tradeoffs between family and work.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-Hm.
MARY DALY: We should really think of work-life integration. How do we do both? How do we do all the things that are important to us?
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.
MARY DALY: That's really what our nation will demand.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And that's a conversation we will have to continue having. Thank you, Mary Daly. We'll leave it there for now.
We'll be right back.
MARY DALY: Thank you.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: That's it for us today. Thank you for watching. We all wish you a merry Christmas and happy and healthy holiday season. Until next week, for FACE THE NATION, I'm Margaret Brennan.
