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grim milestone. >> let me express our sadness for the loss of the patient in state of washington. >> that was the first known covid-19 death in the united states. coming up -- >> anybody that wants a test can get a test. >> and that was a surprise to people at the cdc. tart... oh, do you want to go first? no, no i don't...you go. i was just going to say on slide 7, talking about bundling and saving...umm... jamie, you're cutting out. sorry i'm late! hey, whoever's doing that, can you go on mute? oh, my bad! i was just saying there's a typo on slide 7. bundle home & auto for big discosnouts. i think that's supposed to say discounts. you sure about that? hey, can you guys see me? little things can become your big moment. that's why there's otezla. otezla is not a cream. it's a pill that treats plaque psoriasis differently. with otezla, 75% clearer skin is achievable. don't use if you're allergic to otezla. it may cause severe diarrhea, nausea or vomiting. otezla is associated with an increased risk of depression. tell your doctor if you have a history of depression or suicidal thoughts or if these feelings develop. some people taking otezla reported weight loss. your doctor should monitor your weight and may stop treatment. upper respiratory tract infection and headache may occur. tell your doctor about your medicines, and if you're pregnant or planning to be. otezla. show more of you. so are we. prudential helps 1 in 7 americans with their financial needs. that's over 25 million people. with over 90 years of investment experience, our thousands of financial professionals can help with secure video chat or on the phone. we make it easy for you with online tools, e-signatures, and no-medical-exam life insurance. plan for better days. go to prudential.com or talk to an advisor. plan for better days. iredefined the wordng th'school' this year. it's why, at xfinity, we're committed to helping kids keep learning through the summer. and help college students studying at home stay connected through our university program. we're providing affordable internet access to low income families through our internet essentials program. and this summer, xfinity is creating a virtual summer camp for kids at home- all on xfinity x1. we're committed to helping all families stay connected. learn more at xfinity.com/education. two months after the trump administration first learned of the contagion taking over the globe, there were 72 known cases in the u.s. and 1 known death. but that was about to change. >> march was an explosive month for this virus in the united states. >> new evidence confirmed that the virus after entering washington state and california was now spreading on the east coast with the first reported infection in new york. and two days later, a second. >> we're seeing what we expected, what we anticipated, which is a continuing spread. >> in a few short weeks, new york state's second case of covid multiplied into hundreds forming the nation's newest cluster. >> we will continue to do exactly what we're doing. >> but back in washington, d.c., the president had yet to publicly admit the enormity of the unfolding crisis. >> a lot of very exciting things are happening and they're happening very rapidly. >> the month before in february, a team inside trump's own administration had developed an aggressive plan to try to slow the spread of the virus through social distancing, a plan that would effectively shut down a big chunk of the nation's economy. but president trump was still resisting. >> so this is a critical period of time where the coronavirus continues to spread and no real federal action is taken. >> states begin competing for critical medical supplies and equipment. come mid-march, supplies would become so scarce the cdc would issue guidelines to health care workers to reuse masks or even use bandannas, if necessary. >> that was unthinkable before that point. no one in a million years would ever have thought that in the united states of america that we would tell doctors and nurses, reuse your mask. >> part of the problem in terms of the ppe is there's been a total lack of clarity about process here. mike pence took over the task force. jared kushner, the president's son-in-law and senior adviser, has been running what some have described as a shadow task force. that has left a lot of confusion as to who exactly is responsible for helping procure ppe. >> confusion that would continue to plague the administration behind closed doors. and in front of the cameras. >> we're considering -- we're also considering the fact that you got practically 36,000 deaths due to what's called the flu. >> so the president visits the cdc and famously says, anybody who wants a -- >> wants a test can get a test. >> and that was a surprise to people at the cdc who were working on this issue. they didn't know the president was going to say that. testing was certainly not at a point where anybody who wants a test can get a test. >> and the tests are perfect. like, the letter is perfect. the transcription is perfect. >> the tests were flawed. the tests didn't work. and as a result, we lost valuable time. more people became infected. there were people walking around without any symptoms. no test. and they were continuing to spread the virus. >> it will go away. just stay calm. >> but the day after president trump said the virus would, quote, go away, the country was wrestling with a new reality. hollywood legend tom hanks and his wife tested positive for covid. the nba announced it was suspending its season. >> all of a sudden, everybody was saying, what's going on here? what's the deal with this virus? >> and the world health organization officially named covid-19 a pandemic. >> the president was still contradicting what was actually happening. >> some of the experts i talked to said that was because the stock market was really driving the president's decision-making and he didn't want to do the kinds of things you needed to do to mitigate the spread of this virus because it would further hurt the economy. >> pushed by democrats to more than triple his original request for funding -- >> i asked for $2.5 billion and i got $8.3 billion. and i'll take it. >> trump signed $8.3 billion in emergency spending for the virus yet even then he continued to insist, falsely, no one saw this virus coming. >> very well, but it's an unforeseen problem. what a problem. came out of nowhere. >> every epidemiologist has been predicting, cajoling, warning, government officials for the last 20 years that a pandemic of this size and magnitude was inevitable, but when our leader denies or refuses to admit the problem, it's confusing at best and it is disastrous at worst. >> chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine. >> but perhaps the most confounding comments by the president in march surrounded his touting of an untested treatment for the virus. >> hydroxychloroquine. a lot of good things are happening with it. >> which the fda would later warn could cause serious heart issues. >> we're going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately. that would be a big game changer. >> the "washington post" reported president trump was so enamored with the drug he asked an acquaintance from mar-a-lago to call the california governor, gavin newsom, on his cell phone, to try to broker a deal for the state to buy millions of tablets of hydroxychloroquine from india. a source tells cnn that after newsom got the call, he told staffers he thought he might have been punked by a shock jock. such a deal never happened. >> is there any evidence to suggest as with malaria it might be used as a prophylaxis against covid-19? >> the answer is no. >> but the president wasn't the only one that month contradicting the experts. some of his political allies joined in, too, such as congressman matt gaetz from florida who seemed to mock those taking the virus seriously when he wore a gas mask before a vote on the house floor. >> it's a great time to just go out, go to a local restaurant. >> also devin nunes, one of his closest allies going on fox news and telling people they should still feel comfortable going out to eat at restaurants when health advisers were saying the exact opposite. >> on the other side of the political aisle, andrew cuomo and new york city mayor bill de blasio did not initially grasp the full gravity of the crisis, either. >> excuse our arrogance as new yorkers. we don't even think it's going to be as bad as it was in other countries. >> why is everyone panicking? >> then there was the pro-trump media that turned the pandemic into a -- conspiracy. >> they're looking for every way to bash trump. >> accusing them of fear mongering, democrats and the media are blowing this up -- because they want to create more chaos for the president. >> i'm far more concerned of stepping on a used heroin needle than i am getting the coronavirus. >> this disinformation took such a hold on a segment of the public, new polling data began to worry leaders in the president's party. >> what the polling showed was republicans were taking this virus far less seriously than democrats were and what was circulated to republicans is their tone and message had to change on coronavirus because denial was not going to be a tool for survival. >> but strict social distancing measures were, and as infections spread, some state leaders would begin to enforce them without the help of the federal government. >> to reduce the social interactions that are not necessary in our lives. >> in a moment, dr. acton will be signing an order banning the gathering together of people over 100 people. >> on march 13th, 2 days after the president announced travel restrictions on europe, the president made his strongest stance against the virus yet. >> today i am officially declaring a national emergency. to very big words. the europe travel ban went into effect. >> we will be suspending off travel from europe to the united states for 30 days. >> the president misstated his own plan to the nation. the restrictions didn't apply to cargo or u.s. citizens traveling h home. >> when you compare what we've done to other areas of the world, it's pretty incredible. it was already too late. the virus has been spreading wildly throughout europe for months. and the travel ban immediately triggered an up tick of travel into the united states. >> considering what this is. >> chaos erupted in airports filled with american passengers desperately fleeing for home. many of the them bringing the virus with them. this critical misstep among others might have been avoided had the trump administration kept the white house pandemic office. which it reorganized in 2018. fully in tact. those seasoned pandemic experts according to former senior director could have made a difference. >> i didn't do it. >> a pandemic office would have been able to understand exactly what needed to happen more quickly. >> we'd much rather be ahead of the curve than behind it. >> march 16. 70 days after the trump administration learned of the virus the president implemented what had become the nations best tool to slow the spread. >> my administration is recommending all americans including the young and healthy enga engage in schooling from home when possible. >> what is so stunning is realize this was on march 16. it was the end of february that his health advisers talked about putting these measures in place. >> this is war zone. a medical war zone. >> there's patients building up. >> we're running out of medication and equipment. >> i started receiving texts from doctors and nurses who i have known for decades. brave people. saying i'm scared. one of them said what i'm seeing is armageddon. >> on march 26th the u.s. reached a somber milestone, becoming the new global leader in confirmed infections. the following day president trump approved a historic $2 trillion stimulus bill and he finally pledged to authorize the defense production act which would allow him to force the manufacturing of ventilators. >> for weeks, we've already had doctors, we've already had nurses, publicly and on television pleading, saying, we don't -- we don't have what we need to protect ourselves from the virus. >> i've been asked by the tennessee department of health to velcro a diaper around my face because i don't have an n-95 mask to be able to wear to see patients. >> it was really perplexing and it still is perplexing why the administration took until march 27th to invoke the defense production act. >> the defense production act it is a failure of the trump administration and is one of the most colossal mistakes i have ever witnessed and unfortunately, it will cause thousands and thousands of lives to be lost. next -- >> so what happened? >> we're not an ordering clerk. we're a backup. >> it became an unholy mess. narrator: here are aarp top tips on caregiver preparedness during coronavirus. form a team that can help with caregiving tasks. take an inventory of essential supplies in your loved one's home. make a list of the care recipient's medications. schedule regular calls to fight isolation. finally, take care of yourself too. follow the centers for disease control's guidelines for coronavirus safety. for more caregiving tips, go to aarp.org/caregiving america now the deadliest nation in confirmed coronavirus cases. >> a record-shattering 6.6 million americans filed for unemployment last week. >> "usns comfort," hundreds of hospital beds on that ship, they're going to provide relief to new york hospitals overwhelmed with coronavirus. >> the city's system for burials is completely overwhelmed. the remains were loaded into trailers and brought to hard island for a temporary burial. >> we're going into a war without protection. >> bring us the ppe, we need it. >> the doctor took the home, he said, i'm sorry, but there's no more pulse. >> on the last day of march, president trump was more serious than he had ever seemed to be discussing the pandemic as he addressed the nation. >> i want every american to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead. we're going do go through a very tough few weeks. >> of all the briefings he'd done, that was the best one. he was telling the truth to the public. he was doing what elected officials are supposed to do which is prepare their citizens and the general public for what's to come. >> our country is in the midst of a great national trial unlike any we've faced before. shocking numbers. see 100,000, 120,000, 200,000 people, over potentially a very short period of time. >> one of the ways in which he realized it was toward the end of march, watching elmhurst hospital, i think brought home the reality of this for him in a way that few other things it id. >> five. five ventilators. oh, my god. >> i grew up right next to it. to see the scenes of trailers out there, they're freezers. nobody could even believe it. >> along with the images of devastation, the president heard cries for help. >> really just feels like it's too little/too late. like, we knew, we knew it was coming. >> it's like military people going into battle. i would say you people are just incredible. >> yet, just two days before the president was hurling insults at the caregivers. >> where are the masks going? are they going out the back door? how do you go from 10,000 to 300,000? >> it comes in this period of time when the president seems to want to lash out to a new enemy every day. one day, he's blaming the, quote, invisible enemy. the coronavirus. another day, he's blaming the chinese. and then he finds this bizarre line of attack against health care workers. then becomes this attack on individual governors. >> it was the governors who president trump had been attacking with a vengeance. >> you need that ventilator. >> the president officially pushed back against their requests for more medical gear saying they were asking for too much and dismissed democratic governors, in particular, such as new york governor andrew cuomo who had been steadfast in his appeal to the federal government to provide more ventilators and supplies to the hardest-hit state. >> here. >> on april 2nd, the situation grew urgent as new york surged to 84,000 cases. of the then-216,000 cases nationwide. >> at the current burn rate, we have about six days of ventilators in our stockpile. >> startling sign of the economic pain. >> this was also the day we learned 6.6 million workers filed for unemployment in the u.s. for the first time. a historic high. and a 3,000% increase since early march. the president lashed out at governors on twitter calling them, quote, the complainers. >> the states should have been building their stockpile. we have almost 10,000 in our stockpile. we've been building it. we've been supplying it. but the states should be building. we're a backup. we're not an ordering clerk. we're a backup. >> the president had a phone call with governors and he said it was up to them to go look for their own supplies. so what happened? one state began bidding against another and in some cases, there were reports of states bringing in supplies, arranging to buy them, only to have the federal government seize them for their own stockpile. so it became an unholy mess. >> that's what happened to massachusetts republican governor charlie baker. his step's shipment of respiratory masks never made it. >> we had our 3 million masks we had ordered confiscated in the port of new york. >> look at the bizarre situation we wind up in. it's like being on ebay with 50 other states bidding on a ventilator. >> a bizarre situation complicated by the president's son-in-law, also an adviser to the president. >> the federal stockpile was supposed to be our stockpile, not supposed to be states' stockpiles they then use. >> when jared kushner made his first and only appearance in the briefing room, it did his father-in-law some damage when he described the stockpile as "our stockpile" because the federal government is supposed to be there to help the rest of the country. not to be in a fight with states. >> on april 2nd, the president expanded the defense production act to force six medical device companies to produce protective masks and ventilators. the administration was finally taking steps to help states. yet, it continued to be criticized for not pulley unleashing the might of the act. >> the president has continued to see criticism he's not used the dpa, while treating it as a bat in his toolbox to hit people with. the latest issue with that is swabs and the facts he's not trying to force companies to ramp up production. >> there were unquestionably examples of the federal government stepping up. the u.s. army corps of engineers built field hospitals including this at the javitz center in new york city. the u.s. navy deployed ships to new york and california. on april 3nd, the cdc put out a recommendation urging the public to wear cloth face masks. president trump, however, said he would rather not. >> i don't know. somehow, i don't see it for myself. >> it was hardly the first time he ignored public health advice. >> you're shaking a lot of hands today. taking a lot of pictures. are you protecting yourself? >> not at all. >> how are you staying away from germs? >> by april 10th, there were half a million confirmed covid-19 cases in the u.s. and the death toll catapulted to nearly 19,000, yet widespread testing remained elusive. >> we're leading the world now in testing, by far, and we're going to keep it that way. >> the country had ramped up testing, but according to health experts, the u.s. was still testing far fewer people per capita than countries such as south korea or italy. but by this time, governors with the help of the trump administration and sometimes on their own had received the much-needed ventilators and many had received enough medical supplies. >> compared to how we have been operating on this new dire circumstances, we are relatively comfortable with ventilators and ppe if the hospitalization rate stays down. >> on april 11th "the new york times" ran an extensive investigation detailing trump's mistakes during the crisis. two days later -- >> the president of the united states calls the shots. >> -- trump played a video during a press briefing that seemed to be blaming the press for downplaying the crisis. >> coronavirus is not going to cause a major illness in the united states. >> the same press he'd been attacking for overhyping the crisis in february. >> something that was noticeably missing from that video that the white house put out was the president's own comments where he also downplayed and dismissed the outbreak in the month of february and the beginning of march. >> mr. president -- >> white house reporters did not back down. >> you bought yourself some time. you didn't prepare hospitals. you didn't use it to ramp up testing. right now -- >> you're so disgraceful. we have done a great job. >> what we've seen in these daily briefings, that one in particular, is a president trying to rewrite history. trying to say he was the one who was warning all along about the coronavirus. >> there was also this. >> when somebody's the president of the united states, the authority is total and that's the way it's got to be. >> total? your authority's total? >> it's total. >> has any governor agreed you have the authority to decide when their state -- >> i haven't asked anybody because you know why, because i don't have to. >> of course, that is not the case. no one would agree with that, including the president's conservative allies. >> the next day, april 14th, as coronavirus cases in the u.s. climbed to nearly 600,000, president trump made another controversial decision. >> today i'm instructing my administration to halt funding of the world health organization. so much death has been caused by their mistakes. >> the fight with the w.h.o. is in part just another element of looking to blame someone besides himself. >> there are some medical experts who believe the world health organization could have and should have acted sooner. >> i worked for w.h.o. for ten years. i think w.h.o. was late in calling this a pandemic. i think the w.h.o. having lost a lot of its general financial support over the years and got a lot of support financially from china, i do think that w.h.o. was generous in its acceptance of the chinese reports about when the epidemic began. >> people do have very real concerns with the way the w.h.o. is dealing with china early on in this outbreak, but i haven't talked to any public health expert who thinks that the right way to remedy that is to try to strip w.h.o. of funding. >> there was plenty of finger pointing. in late april governor andrew cuomo admitted he wished he had raised flags earlier. >> i would feel better sitting here today saying i blew the bugle about wuhan province in january. i can't say that. >> in early may we learned that not even the white house, itself, was immune from the virus. three top health officials, all members of the administration's coronavirus task force, entered either full or partial quarantine. after one of trump's valets and the vice president's press secretary tested positive for covid-19. the following week, on may 11th, the white house directed west wing staffers to begin wearing face masks at work which reminded everyone of that recent day when vice president mike pence had been chastised for not following hospital policy at the mayo clinic in minnesota. pence, who leads the white house task force on the virus, wore no mask during his tour. even though all the officials around him did. the vice president later said he regretted that. and two days later he had one on while visiting a ventilator factory in indiana. but the president had no regrets in may when he was maskless touring a plant in arizona that manufactures medical masks. >> they said you didn't need it, so i didn't need it, and by the way, if you noticed, nobody else had it on that was in the group. and they were the people -- >> you saw the workers wearing them. >> the workers had them on, yeah. >> president, this is where -- >> by the middle of may, the president still didn't have one on as he toured a ppe plant in pennsylvania. perhaps, sending a message to the public that he did not think masks were necessary. on may 12th during, at times, a combative senate hearing, the nation's most prominent health experts testified that the pandemic was far from contained. dr. anthony fauci, speaking remotely, warned that states and stays faced serious consequences if they opened up too quickly. >> there is a real risk that you will trigger an outbreak that you might not be able to control, which in effect would set you back not only leading to some suffering and death that could be avoided but could even set you back on the road to trying to get economic recovery. you can almost turn the clock back rather than going forward. >> i was surprised by his answer, actually. >> president trump who had been rallying for a swift re-opening and had just considered phasing out the coronavirus pacific force before reversing course, criticized dr. fauci the next day. >> look, he wants to play all sides of the equation. i think we're going to have a tremendous fourth quarter. i think we're going to have a transitional third quarter. and i think we're going to have a phenomenal next year. >> contradictions, conflicting messages. >> usa! coming up -- where do we go now? >> we can't keep our country closed for the next five years. >> open our state! >> the people aren't going to accept it. they won't accept it. and they shouldn't accept it. if you have moderate to severe psoriasis or psoriatic arthritis, little things can become your big moment. that's why there's otezla. otezla is not an injection or a cream. it's a pill that treats differently. for 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and to other agencies. built with and for first responders. firstnet. the only officially authorized wireless network for first responders. because putting you first is our job. for 37 years we have been fighting for survivors of child sex abuse. even in these uniquely challenging times we're still fighting with dedication and devotion. california law gives survivors a chance to take legal action, but only for a limited time. if you were sexually abused by a priest, scout leader, coach or teacher contact us confidentially today. it's time. april 2020. >> the death toll as of this morning has doubled in just the last three days. >> america was hurting. >> new unemployment filings. >> record unemployment. >> 6 million people last week filed for unemployment. >> ballooning debt. an economic recession. >> current reality is beyond painful. >> not a good equation for a president running for re-election. >> he's frustrated by what we've seen happen in the stock market. the numbers he knows of job losses and people who have filed for unemployment are through the roof and they are going to potentially be incredibly damaging to him in november and that's his fear. >> so the president wanted to push governors to restart the economy. at least in part to resuscitate his re-election campaign. and the only way to do both, re-open the country as soon as possible. but that seemed unrealistic when models were predicting 100,000 or 200,000 deaths. according to the "washington post," an impatient president trump sought different data which some white house economic advisers delivered. >> the "washington post" is reporting that the white house led by economic adviser kevin hassett built a different coronavirus model which aides interpreted to show deaths would have already peaked and there would be far fewer fatalities than initially foreseen. the "washington post" is reporting this presentation affirmed skepticism within the west wing about what people like dr. fauci and dr. redfield and dr. birx were saying, health experts were saying, about the severity. of the crisis. is that true? >> as kevin hassett, himself, said in the story, it was absolutely not true. what he was doing was taking the model from the university of washington and basically smoothing it out to show what is actually happening. there's a difference between a forecast trend and what has actually happened. we didn't change anything based on that. >> we want to have our country opened. won't to return to normal life. our country is going to be open. >> on april 16th the administration announced a plan. >> our team of experts now agrees that we can begin the next front in our war. >> with no vaccine yet on the horizon, the country had to increase testing and contact tracing capability. decreasing cases over 14 days. >> test and then isolate the person who is infected, trace all the contacts, quarantine them, but we didn't do the first part of this well enough and that's affected everything else downstream. >> i think one of the striking things is there doesn't seem to be kind of an effort to get if front of that. it's always like the u.s. has been a couple of steps behind. >> but the country has struggled with testing since the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic. testing was initially limited to small groups. health care workers. people who had known contact with a sick patient. or, this is crucial, people with symptoms. but now in order to re-open the country and prevent further outbreaks, the country needs lots of tests. because, as scientists announced in mid-april, people might be most contagious two to three days before they develop symptoms. when they're asymptomatic. >> what's really critical is this constant surveillance for asymptomatic individuals. >> constant surveillance and widespread testing. so those with the virus can be quickly identified and immediately isolated from the rest of us to stop the spread. and according to one study by harvard's center for ethics, the united states needs at least 500,000 tests to be conducted every day in order to safely re-open. maybe even more than that. >> we probably in this country need -- to be testing one to two million people a day. >> we have to have 500 million tests to get out of this. sufficient quantity. a good test. with high quality. easily available to anyone who wants one. >> we're testing more than anybody -- >> and listening to president trump speak about testing in mid-april, it sounded as though the u.s. had both quantity and quality. >> we have a great testing system. we have the best right now, the best testing system in the world. >> but that claim does not square with the facts and what the experts were saying. >> dr. anthony fauci is raising questions about the nation's readiness. telling the associated press more coronavirus testing is needed, saying, "we have to have something in place that is efficient and that we can rely on and we're not there yet." >> excuse me. excuse me. i know your question. the governors are supposed to do testing. >> get back -- >> quiet. quiet. >> the president also continued to clash with the governors who the president felt should be in charge of testing but the governors argued as they did with ventilators and ppe that they don't have the power of the defense production act. >> we're going to need testing, more testing, faster testing, than we now have. >> only the president has that power to force companies to get testing up to speed. only he has the power to force companies to make tests. testing reagents and swabs. to hire lab workers. and to manufacture lab equipment. >> more help is needed from the federal government on testing. >> this is probably the number-one problem in america and has been from the beginning of this crisis. >> this tension between state government and federal government, that has always existed since the founding of our country, but this is now life and death, and this question of who should i rely on to keep me alive. >> we actually spoke with several of the president's political advisers who say that they believe the reason the president is pushing the responsibility for testing off on states is that then the president won't be the one to deal with the fallout if there is any. >> thank you. >> on testing, how -- >> mr. president -- >> this was a back and forth between the president and the governors that created gridlock and confusion. >> it's hard to argue that there hasn't been lost time in this fight over who should be responsible and who's to blame. >> it's frustrating. in some ways it's disheartening because we can do this. >> tens of thousands of protesters are promising to show up to the capitol here to protest the stay-at-home order. >> what happened on april 17th certainly didn't help. >> those protests encouraged by the president, himself. >> when president trump took to twitter. >> tweeting, all in caps, "liberate minnesota, liberate michigan, liberate virginia." >> these are great people. they've got cabin fever. they want to get back. they want their life back. >> he sees some benefit in bolstering this anti-government message. he is encouraging people to go against what their own governors have said. >> even encouraging protesters to go against the white house's own guidelines. >> to encourage people to go protest the plan that you just made recommendations on, it just doesn't make any sense. we're sending completely conflicting messages out. we're working hard request governors now on testing. >> the president and governor seem to unite around testing a few days later. >> the defense production act to increase. >> the president planned to use the dpa to force production of swabs for testing. federal testing labs offered for some states to use. and the latest economic relief bill allocated $25 billion for testing. by the end of april, diagnostic testing was progressing. nowhere where it needed to be. >> we are working with more than 400 test developers, 220 labs around the country. >> we're doing more testing than probably any of the governors want. >> four days later the white house announced a blueprint. putting the responsibility back in the hands of the states. >> we have enough testing to begin reopening and the are opening process. we want to get the country open. >> plan that had the administration taking a victory lap. >> we have achieved all the different milestones needed. the federal government rose to the challenge. this is great success story. >> the federal government has done a spectacular job. >> but the plan had medical experts reacting quite differently. >> the white house plan calls for around 7 million a month. we're talking about a million a day. you can see the delta. four times off in terms of testing we need to be doing. >> it's not perfect. we're not there yet. we'll get there soon. i hope. >> and they'll need to. because the only true end to the pandemic the holy grail. a vaccine. is still on the horizon. >> there's no question that the speed at which the vaccine trials have been going is unprecedented. >> vaccines can take decades to make. hiv aids 40 years and still don't have a vaccine. that's an idea of how challenging it can be. >> all of this is race against time. to reopen. to get back to some normal. and most importantly to save lives. it will be a marathon. not a sprint. and so far, with every step there have been serious communication failures that took and continue to take the country off track. such as. >> the disinfectant situation. >> the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. one minute. and there a way we can do something like that by >> to think that bleach could cure someone of coronavirus is ludicro ludicrous. >> the month of may continued down the same path. >> a lot of good things have come out about the hydroxy. >> including an announcement from the president he was taking hydroxchloroquine to ward off the virus, despite mounting evidence it doesn't work against covid-19 and could be harmful. >> hydroxchloroquine. hydroxchloroquine. right now, yeah. couple of weeks ago started taking it. >> it is terribly irresponsible and sets a bad example and it may be dangerous. >> dangerous and distracting. >> with a majority of americans, the president spent may looking to divert attention to a range of other topics. >> who does? sleepy joe biden. >> attacking joe biden. focusing on michael flynn. >> he was targeted by the obama administration and targeted in order to try to take down a president. >> there seemed to be a concerted effort from the white house in the month of may to focus on other things than the virus. >> as the coronavirus death toll neared and past 100,000 americans on may 27th, the president was silent about the deaths. >> the president did a remarkable number of other things and went to cape canaveral florida twice to watch a rocket launch of space x. first day it was bad weather. he flew down again on saturday. he spent several days stoking a theory that a morning tv host had committed murder. >> the president pushed a decade old false conspiracy theory about joe scarborough and a dead young woman. >> on the 28th he tweeted we just reached a very sad milestone with the coronavirus pandemic, deaths reaching 100,000 and the extended heart felt sympathy and love to the families and the friends of the people that passed. we wanted to interview someone from the white house for the program but they declined to participate in the documentary. getting answers from the trump administration is getting more difficult as news continues to come out that the president has been weeding out and replacing truth tellers and government watch dogs like the woman that was running the office of the inspector general of the department of health and human services. >> president trump's pick -- >> if confirmed. >> then the reassignment of a former whistle bower. rick bright. >> time is running out because the virus is spreading everywhere. >> administration officials claiming they were telling truths that apparently president trump did not want told. >> i will never forget the e-mail that i received indicating that our mask supplier was completely decimated and said we are in -- the world is. we need to act. i pushed that forward to the highest levels that i could in hhs and i got no response. >> i watched him and he looks like an angry, disgruntled employee that didn't do a good job. >> a contradictory back and forth. so for now americans need to keep their eyes looking straight ahead to the finish line and listening to the experts and not getting distracted by confusing and unfounded messages. >> i don't think there is only one path to defeat covid. we need our leaders to be focused, serious and honest and deal with new fast-moving scientist information. that is the path to defeat covid. >> why now, in the middle of the pandemic are we investigating the record? well, since the documentary originally aired the united states hit two grim milestones, more than 2 million americans diagnosed with covid-19 and more than 100,000 dead. startling numbers that remind us every day how lives are literally at stake. that is the reason that we are investigating now. not because we want to point the finger or blame the chinese government or president trump. the reason that we look back now so the same mistakes are not repeated as the numbers continue to rise in case there is another outbreak this year or next. we want to get the facts on the record. the time to do that is when people can recall what was done and could have been done faster or better or at all. ♪ [slow piano music] mom, you are my pride... [vo]: because you live your truth. you are my pride... [vo]: by simply being you. you are my pride. [vo]: when the world presents a path, and you seek to forge your own. when you feel you're not enough, and it feels like you're alone. you are my pride. [vo]: when you feel you cannot breathe. when it's hard to see the light, but still you choose to fight, although it hurts, because it's right, and when it's dark, you still shine bright. just call my name. i'll hold you tight. together we will find our might, because... aiden. bryan. my son. my mom. this is my sawyer. raquel willis. my grandson. my parents. miller coffey. [vo]: you are my pride. bats throughout human history have some image as evil, dark, and dangerous. they seem to have gotten this bad impression in our conscious. there is definitely something odd about them. just because they are odd does not mean they are bad. bats are fascinating animals. the more you get to know them the more social creatures that you see them become. it is actually really beautiful. but unfortunately here, right now it is very strange with the bat virus that is killing people. when covid-19 first surfaced in 2019 scientists around the world wanted to know where it came from and how the deadly virus ended up in humans. the answers are not certain but it seems likely coronavirus originated in bats. bats are a diverse and ancient creature and have been on earth longer than we have. but still there is a lot we don't know. we look at this animal and dig into the mystery of covid-19. in the last 20 years some of the deadliest virus outbreaks came from bats. sars. marburg. ebola. what is it about the way they spread pathogens and how they are so dangerous. >> every animal has it normal suite of viruses and bacteria it normally carries and people do as well. we carry viruses and bacteria. some of which cause disease. it is the fact that bats tend to carry a higher proportion of viruses that have the ability to affect people. the question is why we see some of the incredibly bad viruses coming out of bats. >> it was 7:00 p.m. on december 30th, 2019 when a package arrived at the wuhan constitute of virology. local samples from an infectious disease hospital. several patients there were suffering from atypical pneumon pneumonia. >> she got a call from the boss saying drop whatever you are doing and come back to the lab right now. >> she is known as the bat woman, one of the world's leading experts on bat borne diseases. >> it is a biological level 4 facility. that is certainly the highest level of containment that exists for studying pathogenic viruses. >> doctors feared the cluster in wuhan might be infected with the same family of viruses that caused the 2003 outbreak of sars. severe acute respiratory syndrome. >> more and more people were getting infected. we started to see that the concern was growing. >> in new york eco health alliance a nonprofit organization began to take notice. >> we started to get our first inkling by looking on to social media in china. i remember talking to peter about the potential that it might be another sars-like event. >> the president of ecohealth alliance worked closely with the wuhan constitute. their collaboration was crucial in discovering the origin of the 2003 sars outbreak. the world health organization assembled a team to find the source of the deadly outbreak. these virus hunters were pursuing a theory that bats could be the origin of sars. the team headed to southern china to try to solve the mystery of sars. >> she and a team of researchers started to explore caves in southern china looking for bats that could have been the origin of the first sars outbreak. >> dr. john epstein was a researcher on that expedition. >> when we go into an environment like a bat cave to catch bats, we have to protect ourselves. gloves. we will wear a respirator and eye protection. >> we walk into caves that could carry the next pandemic. we go in during the day to scope out where the bats are and look at what species are in there and we set up our nets outside and catch bats as they fly out in the evening and go back in the morning. >> we do everything we can to ensure the safety and the well-being of the animals. oral swabs, fecal pellets, we collect blood and take measurements. >> they sampled caves all over southern china and took all of the samples back to the lab. >> it took the better part of eight years of consistent and persistent sampling and testing different populations around until we finally found the missing link that we were looking for. >> that link was a bat virus connected to sars and capable of jumping directly from bats to humans. >> that was the nail in the coffin for us. >> he said it will cause more outbreaks. we need to find them before they find us. >> that original sars coronavirus in 2003 started in guandong province, spread to hong kong, taiwan and the rest of the world causing 8,000 cases and 800 deaths. >> the same year the chinese government approved construction of the level 4 lab, first in china. it opened in 2015 and is rated to study the world's deadliest viruses. >> this will be used for research on highly pathogenic infectious diseases for which there are currently no medicines or vaccines. >> flash forward to the end of 2019 when the team in wuhan began to investigate the strange new virus. the genetic sequence of the virus was mapped quickly and compared it to a database of 500 new coronavirus previously identified by ecohealth alliance and there was a match. the official name became sars cov-2. it emerged in 2019. the new coronavirus was 96.2% similar to a sample taken from a horseshoe bat in 2013. so, what does that mean exactly? >> well, 96% is a different virus. the difference between us and chimps. it means sars cov-2 probably came from bats. >> wuhan is a thousand miles away from the southern subtropical regions where the coronaviruss have the greatest risk of jumping from animals to humans. >> most she had studied were in southern china and wuhan is in central china. when she first found out there was a coronavirus outbreak in wuhan she did initially wonder is there some chance that it could have come from her lab. >> the wuhan institute of virology was just a few miles from where the first institute was reported. >> they isolated the virus, sequenced it, tested the behavior and she was very relieved to see it did not come from the laboratory and the virus was never seen anywhere in the world. >> as her team raced to find answers the disease was spreading fast. >> when the chinese minister of health announced that community spread was rampant in wuhan and asymptomatic spread was occurring that meant the disease was out of control. >> the chinese government said they traced the source of the new virus to the western edge of a seafood market in wuhan where wild animals were sold and slaughtered for food and medicine. >> i can't think of a better place for a virus than a wet market. >> 16 years before animal traders caught the original sars virus in a wildlife market. >> the virus takes hold, swaps around and then people come and breathe it in and get exposed to it. that is how viruses spill over. >> in wuhan the initial cluster of 41 cases of severe pneumonia, half of the patients had been to the market or worked in the market or had a degree of contact with it. >> the chinese government shut down the market and early on tried to keep information from spreading. communicating little about the early cases. >> not only was it shut down but it was covered with police at every corner r. the chinese announced while the new virus was found in several locations at the wuhan market all of the animals they sampled tested negative. since then other sourtheories emerged. >> one theory is that it came from a wildlife trapper. someone that brought it in for sale. >> only information we have from the investigation of the market is that environmental samples were collected and of about 580 samples that were collected about 37 of them came back positive for sars cov-2 for this virus. >> dr. epstein said that the jury is still out on whether the wuhan market is ground zero for covid-19. but he agrees wildlife markets are breeding grounds for the next biodisaster waiting to happen. why wouldn't china just shut down markets that are selling exotic species of animals? >> the population of southern china has been doing this for 5,000 years. they don't just close it down overnight. make me show up too early... or too late. or make me feel like i'm not really "there." talk to 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(combative yelling) therabreath, it's a better mouthwash. at walmart, target and other fine stores. scientists believe that covid-19 may have hads it roots in a community of horseshoe bats in southeastern china. all named for the shape of their noses. there are dozens of varieties of horseshoe bats living in a number of places. in fact there is incredible diversity among bat species. bats can be found all around the world on every continent expect antarctica. but the diversity and the unique abilities of bats make them tough to contend with when it comes to disease. they are the only mammal capable of actually flying so they can spread to other communities. >> some actually migrate thousands of miles and the viruses they carry travel along those routes. >> some of the pathogens bats play host to can make them sick, they have the unique ability to host and withstand some without getting sick. >> understanding how bats co-exist with disease is very critical. they have a unique relationship with pathogens generally. they have a unique biology and it allows them to co-exist with pathogens in different ways. >> various theories about why that is and it might have to do with how long bats have been around. >> they have been on planet earth for a long time, and that means they have had a long history of being exposed and adapting to viruses in nature. >> another theory involves their body temperatures. >> a lot of people came up with the arm chair solutions like maybe because they fly and when they fly their body temperatures get higher so it is a fever and that allows them to handle more than other types of animals would. >> when the virus gets into a human and a human responds by producing a fever which is effective against a lot of viruses, it does not work on the bat ones because they are used to the warmer temperatures anyways. >> so that rising of the fever in a human may not be effective to kill off the virus? >> exactly. >> some bats have the ability to drop their body temperatures low in the winter. perhaps that also helps their unique immune systems. normally the pathogens stay hidden in bats bodies and they don't make the jump to humans. so how do humans get infected? that is what is zone as zoonotiz spillover. sometimes it occurs between an animal and a human and transmission going forward is human to human. that is called community spread. >> perhaps the best example of that would be hiv, the transmission happened from primates to humans many years ago and now transmits in human to human transmission. >> covid-19 is another example. you can also have a disease that stays in a particular type of animal then acting as a reservoir. humans are usually affected by an animal. >> sometimes they are carried by mosquitos. >> no matter how a disease makes a transition, there has to be contact. >> oftentimes it is through indirect or accidental exposure. an animal may contaminate food or water. >> there are a lot of people. it is a very conductive environment. >> it is an opportunity for animals that might not have contact with each other naturally in the wild to be brought into a that situation. >> it probably varies from any one case to another. >> typically bats shed viruses the same way that humans do, saliva, urine and feces. >> that is one of the issues with the wet markets. for bats they have coronavirus they have adapted to. but you put them in a wet market they are sick and stressed. just like if you worked too hard and suddenly came down with the flu. the bats get overworked. >> sometimes there can also be an animal where bats transmit to and they transmit to humans. as for covid-19 nobody can say for sure how it ended up in people. >> all of the evidence says it mads it way to people through a natural process. >> at this point the greatest risk of getting covid-19 is from other humans, not bats. >> really what matters is the way that we interact with bats. most epidemics are driven by human behavior. it does not matter that the viruses are happily existing in a wild animal in the middle of the forest. when people encroach on the environment we are creating an opportunity for a bat virus to get in to people. to severe psoriasis, little things can become your big moment. that's why there's otezla. otezla is not a cream. it's a pill that treats plaque psoriasis differently. with otezla, 75% clearer skin is achievable. don't use if you're allergic to otezla. it may cause severe diarrhea, nausea or vomiting. otezla is associated with an increased risk of depression. tell your doctor if you have a history of depression or suicidal thoughts or if these feelings develop. some people taking otezla reported weight loss. your doctor should monitor your weight and may stop treatment. upper respiratory tract infection and headache may occur. tell your doctor about your medicines, and if you're pregnant or planning to be. otezla. show more of you. and if you're pregnant or planning to be. over time, you go noseblind to the odors in your home. (background music) but others smell this... (upbeat music) that's why febreze plug has two alternating scents and eliminate odors for 1200 hours. ♪breathe happy febreze... ♪la la la la la. throughout our history any time something bad has happened to us ...we've recovered. we fall, we rise. we come together. we work together. we innovate and create. we find our way forward. every time. this has been the key to our growth that whenever we hurt the most, we became the strongest and found our way home. together. masimo. together in hospital. together at home. together in hospital. just between us, cleaning with a mop and bucket is such a hassle. well i switched to swiffer wet jet and it's awesome. it's an all-in-one that absorbs dirt and grime deep inside. and it helps prevent streaks and haze. stop cleaning. start swiffering they count for 20% of all of the world's mammal species. >> how many species of bats are there. >> 1,421 is the latest count but we add at least 20 every year. >> there are still species of bats that never have been discovered? >> yeah. absolutely. >> nancy simmons is in charge at the american museum of natural history. why are bats nocturnal? >> well, the thought is that actually the ancestors of all mammals are probably nocturnal. small mammals scurrying around in the age of dinosaurs. it gave them access to resources others like dinosaurs couldn't use and bats never gave up the lifestyle where the ancestors of the primates gave up the nocturnal lifestyle. >> working at night, helps the bats how? >> if you think about what the animals are that are active in the air during the day it is bitters. by being active at night they fulfill all of the same roles that birds do, only they do it at night. >> bats are unique mammals and in some ways are similar to human. >> bats have four limbs. >> two of them are the wings. they have all of the same bones that humans do in the upper arms. and then the bones that support the end of the wing are long finger and hand bones. >> bats living and eating habits vary widely. there are some that roost in trees and others under leaves and some in caves. some bats eat insects. others fruit, fish, frogs. >> some of them are living next to each other. >> one square mile of rain forest like in the brazilian amazon could have 100 species of bats. >> the smallest bat in the world, this tiny thing in thailand that weighs less than a penny. a bat in the cloud forest of ecuador that has the longest tongue of any mammal. it is one and a half times the length of its body. you stick your arm out in front of you, it is three times that long and so big it can get into a flower topol nate it. >> if my tongue goes to the end of my arm this bat's tongue would go two more arms? >> that's right. >> there are a number of cute bats including the panda bat. and another, the two-nosed bat discovered in 2017 making news fors it resemblence to the former hair style of lance bass. >> there is the honduran white bat that looks like a cotton ball. then you have really weirdly ugly bats like wrinkle faced bats. i like the ugly bats more than the cute bats. >> blood feeding bats or vampire bats exist but only about.2% of all bat species. they live in central and south america and prey on birds, pigs and cattle. >> vampire bats sneak up on a cow and put their face against the cow and has heat sensors on their nose. they shave the area with their teeth. they lick the area to clean it. they make a little divot with their front teeth and they lick and they drink and they pee. it is completely creepy. >> a serial killer does that. >> vampire bats don't kill their victims but act like a mammal-sized parasite. >> i heard you say the weirdness of bats is interesting to you? >> it is a perfect example of that. take a bat with a weird flap ones it nose and you think that is just a strange looking adornment, a lot of bats have food in their mouths when they echo locate. they hum their echo location and that nose leaf, the weird flap points it where they want it to go. >> most bats navigate and hunt for food in

Transcripts For CNNW CNN Special Report 20201225

bats are actually quite fascinating animals. the more you get to know them, the more fascinating they are. the more social creatures you see them become. and some of them are actually really beautiful. but bats do carry the viruses they carry and unfortunately, right now, it is very strange, we've probably got a bat virus that's killing people. ♪ ♪ good evening. i'm anderson cooper. when covid-19 first surfaced at the end of 2019, scientists around the world wanted to know where it came from and how this deadly virus ended up in humans. although the answers are not certain, it seems likely the coronavirus originated in bats. bats are diverse and ancient creatures and they've been on earth longer than we have. despite that, there is still a lot we don't know. tonight we take a look at this enigmatic animal and dig into the mystery of covid-19. in the last 20 years some of the deadliest virus outbreaks have come from bats. sars, marburg, ebola. so what is it about these creatures and the way they spread pathogens that can be so dangerous? >> the fact that bats are carrying viruses is not in and of itself extraordinary. every animal has its normal suite of viruses and bacteria that it normally carries. i mean, people do as well. we carry viruses. we carry bacteria. the majority of which are benign or beneficial, some of which cause disease. it is the fact that bats do tend to carry a higher proportion of viruses that have the ability to infect people. the question is really, why do we see some of these incredibly bad viruses coming out of bats? >> it was 7:00 p.m. on december 30th, 2019, when a package arrived at the wuhan institute of virology. in it, medical samples from an infectious disease hospital. several patients there were suffering from atypical pneumonia. doctors suspected a possible novel coronavirus. dr. xi zhengli's cell phone rang shortly thereafter. >> she got a call from her boss who said drop whatever you're doing and come back to the lab right now. >> dr. shi is known in china as the bat woman. she's one of the world's leading experts on bat-borne diseases. >> she's the director of the center for emerging diseases at the wuhan institute of virology. >> it is a biological level 4 facility. biological four safety research is the highest level of containment that exists for studying pathogenic viruses. >> doctors feared the cluster of atypical pneumonia patients in wuhan might be infected with the same family of viruses that caused the 2003 outbreak of sars, severe acute respiratory syndrome. >> more and more people were getting infected. we started to see on chinese social media in particular, the concern was growing. >> in new york, ecohealth alliance, a nonprofit organization devoted to tracking emerging diseases, began to take notice. >> we started to get our first inkling that something unusual was happening by looking on to social media in china. they mentioned there was an unusual cluster of respiratory disease going on. and i remember talking to peter about the potential this might be another sars-like event. >> peter daszak is the president of ecohealth alliance. he has worked closely with the wuhan institute of virology and dr. shi. their collaboration was crucial in discovering the origin of the 2003 sars outbreak. the world health organization assembled a team. including daszak, shi, and wang, considered one of the world's top emerging disease experts to find the source of the deadly outbreak. these virus hunters were pursuing a theory that bats could be the origin of sars. the team headed to the region in southern china, yunan, to try and solve the mystery of sars. >> shi and other researchers started exploring caves in southern china, looking for bats that could have been the origin of that first sars outbreak. >> dr. jon epstein was a researcher on that expedition. >> when we go into an environment like a bat cave to catch bats, we have to protect ourselves. that includes gloves, we wear a respirator, like a mask. and we'll wear eye protection. >> we're walking into caves that could carry the next pandemic. i mean, that's a risky thing. we go in during the day to scope out where the bats are and try and work out what species are in there. then we set up nets outside and catch them when they fly out in the evening and go back in the morning. >> we do everything we can to ensure the safety and well being of the animals and we have a basic set of samples we collect. oral swabs, fecal pellets, blood. and we take measurements. >> over the course of eight months, they sampled caves all over southern china and then they took all these samples back to the lab. >> it really took the better part of eight years of consistent and persistent sampling, testing different horseshoe bat populations around, until we finally found the missing link we were looking for. >> that link was a bat virus genetically connected to sars. capable of jumping directly from bats to humans. >> that really was the nail in the coffin for us in terms of this coming from bats. >> dr. shi told us bat-borne viruses will cause more outbreaks. we need to find them before they find us. >> that original sars coronavirus in 2003 started in guangdong province, china, spread to hong kong, taiwan, and then the rest of the world, causing 8,000 cases and 800 deaths. >> that same year, the chinese government approved the construction of the level four lab. the first in china. it opened in 2015 and is rated to study the world's deadliest viruses. >> this p-4 laboratory will mainly be used for research on highly pathogenic infectious diseases for which there are currently no medicines or vaccines. >> flash forward to the end of 2019, that's when the team in wuhan began to investigate the strange new virus. the genetic sequence of the virus was mapped fairly quickly. dr. shi compared it to a database of 500 new coronaviruses previously identified by ecohealth alliances. there was a match. its official name became sars cov-2. the virus that calls covid-19. called covid-19 because it emerged in 2019. the new coronavirus was 96.2% similar to a sample taken from a horseshoe bat in 2013. so what does that mean exactly? >> well, 96% is a different virus. so it's a bit like the difference between us and chimpanzees. it's a different species of virus. but what it tells us is where the virus probably came from, it means sars covid 2 probably came from bats and probably southern china. >> wuhan is 1,000 miles away from the southern subtropical regions of yunan province, where dr. shi says the coronaviruses have the greatest risk of jumping from animals to humans. >> most of the coronaviruses shi had studied had been in southern china and wuhan is in central china. when she first found out there was a coronavirus outbreak in wuhan, she did initially wonder, is there some chance that it could have come from her lab? >> the wuhan institute of virology is just a few miles from where many of the first cases were reported. >> dr. shi was facing this mounting pressure. that's very alarming, particularly for those who work within that lab. >> shi and her colleagues immediately isolated the virus, sequenced it, tested its behavior, and she was very relieved when she discovered that it didn't come from their laboratory. this virus has never been seen anywhere in the world. >> as her team raced to find answers, the disease was spreading fast. >> when the chinese minister of health announced that community spread was rampant in wuhan, and that asymptomatic spread was occurring, that meant the disease was out of control. >> the chinese government said they traced the source of the new virus to the western edge of a seafood market in wuhan where wild animals were being sold and slaughtered for food and medicine. >> i can't think of a better place to be a virus than a wet market. >> 16 years before the wuhan outbreak, animal traders at guangdong caught the original sars virus also in a wildlife market. >> the viruses take hold, they swap around, and then people come and breathe it in and get exposed to it. that's how viruses spill over. >> in wuhan, the initial cluster of 41 cases of severe pneumonia, about half those patients had been to that market or worked in that market or had some degree of contact with it. >> the chinese government shut down the market. and early on tried to keep information from spreading. communicating little about the early cases. >> not only was it shut down, it was also cordoned off. you had police at nearly every corner. >> months later, the chinese centers for disease control and prevention announced that while the new virus was found in several locations at the wuhan market, all of the animals they sampled tested negative. since then other theories about the possible source of the virus have emerged. >> one of the theories that has circulated is that this originated from a wildlife trapper. somebody who has brought in one of these wild creatures into the market for sale. >> the only information we have from the investigation of the market was that environmental samples were collected and of about 580 samples collected, about 37 of them came back positive for sars cov-2, for this virus. >> dr. epstein says the jury is still out on whether the wuhan market is ground zero for covid-19. but he agrees that wildlife markets are breeding grounds for the next biodisaster waiting to happen. why wouldn't china just shut down markets that are selling exotic species of animals? >> the population of southern china has been doing this for 5,000 years. you don't just close it down overnight. ♪ may your holidays glow bright and all your dreams take flight. visit your local mercedes-benz dealer today for exceptional lease and financing offers at the mercedes-benz winter event. if you have postmenopausal and a high risk for fracture, now might not be the best time to ask yourself, 'are my bones strong?' life is full of make or break 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pantene's nutrient-rich buformulas.s immunity to damage, it's like superfood for your hair, preventing up to 90% of future damage. for hair that can take it all. pantene scientists believe covid-19 may have had its roots in a community of horseshoe bats in southeastern china. these particular bats represent a very small subset of horseshoe bats, all named for the shape of their noses. there are actually dozens of varieties of horseshoe bats living in a number places, including the temperate and tropical regions ever southern europe, africa and asia. in fact, there's incredible variety among bat species. bats can be found living all around the world and every continent except antarctica. however, the diversity and unique abilities of bats is also what makes them tough to contend with when it comes to disease. they're the only mammal capable of actually flying, so they can easily spread viruses to other animals and communities. >> some bat species actually migrate thousands of miles, and hence the viruses that they carry traffic along those migratory routes. >> and though some of the pathogens bats play host to can make them sick, like rabies, they also have the unique ability to host and withstand some viruses without getting sick. >> understanding how bats co-exist with diseases is very critical. bats have a very unique relationship with pathogens generally. they have a unique biology and it allows them to co-exist with pathogens in different ways. >> there are various theories about why that is. it might have to do with how long bats have been around. >> bats are an ancient species. they have been on planet earth a long time and that means they've had a long history of being exposed and adapting to viruses in nature. >> another theory involves their body temperatures. >> a lot of people have come up with these sort of armchair solutions. like maybe it's because they fly and when they fly, their body temperature gets a little higher and that's like a fever and that gives them the ability to handle more kinds of viruses than other animals would. >> dan riskin is a biologist and tv host who did his ph.d. work on bats. >> when the virus gets into a human and a human responds by producing a fever, which is really effective against a lot of viruses, it just doesn't work on those bat ones because they're used to warm temperatures anyway. >> so if a virus is already used to a high temperature because of bats, that rising of the fever in a human may not be effective to kill off this virus. >> exactly. >> some bats also have the ability to drop their body temperatures very low in the winter. so perhaps that also helps their unique immune systems. normally, the pathogens stay hidden in bats' bodies and they don't make the jump to humans. so how do humans get infected? that's what's known as zoonotic spillover, when diseases cross from animals to people. sometimes that spillover occurs between an animal and a human, and then transmission going forward is human to human. that's called community spread. >> perhaps the best example of that would be hiv. the transmission happened from primates to humans many years ago and now it transmits in human to human transmission. >> covid-19 is another example. but you can also have a disease that stays in a particular type of animal which then acts as a reservoir. in that case humans are usually infected by an animal, not another person, like with rabies. >> sometimes viruses are carried by mosquitos. a mosquito might bite an animal that carries that virus and then bite a person and transmit it. they're like flying syringes. >> no matter how a disease makes the transition from wildlife to humans, one thing is consistent. there has to be contact. >> oftentimes it's through indirect or accidental exposure. an animal that's infected may contaminate food or water people are eating and that's how they get exposed. >> and with these big open markets there's a lot of people. so it's a very conductive environment for virus cross-species transmission events. >> it's an opportunity for animals that might have never have contact with each other in the wild, being artificially being brought into a highly dense, congested and unhygienic situation. >> how do things spread from bats to either humans or other animals? just through droppings or -- >> it probably varies from one case to another. >> typically, bats shed viruses the same way humans do. in saliva, urine and feces. if a bat is highly stressed and sick, does it shed more virus? >> yeah, absolutely. that's one of the issues with these wet markets. for bats, they have coronaviruses that they've adapted to and they're totally fine. but you put them in a wet market situation, they get sick, they get stressed, they succumb just like if you work too hard and you suddenly come down with that flu. the bats get overworked. >> sometimes with zoonotic spillover, there can also be an intermediary animal. so bats transmit to another species and then that species transmits to humans. in the case of covid-19, as of now, no one can say for sure how it ended up in people. >> all the evidence we have suggests this was a virus that originated in bats and made its way into people through a natural process. >> but at this point, the greatest risk of getting covid-19 is from other humans. not bats. >> really, what matters is the way that we interact with bats. most epidemics are driven by human behavior. it doesn't matter that these viruses are happily existing in a wild animal in the middle of a forest. when people encroach on that environment, we're creating opportunity for a bat virus to get into people. ♪ come on! ♪ over here! ♪ over here! ♪ ♪ be it discovering talent in different continents... and entirely different sports, or discovering a smoother whisky by double-aging, sometimes, it's just better to stay curious. dewar's we'rewelcome to a -wbetter way to live.s. ♪ welcome to my house the croods are coming home. kinda big, isn't it? that's the mirror. -sorry. and the world will never be the same. what is this? uh, we call that a window. window. dun, dun, dun. make it a croods family movie night with "the croods: a new age". go to watchcroods.com. they account for approximately 20% of all the world's mammal species. how many species of bats are there? >> 1,421 is the latest count, but we add at least 20 new species every year. >> so there are still species of bats that have never been -- >> oh, yeah. >> -- discovered? >> absolutely. >> nancy simmons is the curator in charge of mammalogy at the american museum of natural history. >> why are bats nocturnal? >> well, the thought is that actually, the ancestors of all mammals were probably nocturnal. small animals sort of scurrying around in the age of dinosaurs. it gave them access to resources that other animals like dinosaurs couldn't use. so bats basically never gave up that lifestyle. whereas the ancestors of us, primates, at some point gave up the nocturnal lifestyle to be diurnal. >> but working at night, i mean, it helps the bats how? >> if you think about what the animals are that are active in the air during the day, it's birds. and by being active at night, bats are not competing directly with birds. so the bats basically fulfill all the same ecological roles that birds do, only they do it at night. >> bats are unique mammals. though structurally in some ways they're similar to humans. so bats have four limbs. two of them are attached to the wings. >> two of them are the wings. >> okay. >> yes. they have all the same bones that humans do. the upper arm, the forearm there's two bones, the wrist bones, and then the bones that support the end of the wing are long finger and hand bones. >> bats' living and eating habits vary widely across the 1,421 species that exist. there are some that roost in trees, others under leaves, some in caves. some bats eat insects, others fruit or even fish and frogs. these species, some of them are living right next on each other. >> absolutely. one square mile of rain forest in for instance the brazilian amazon could have 100 species of bat. >> the smallest bat in the world, it is this tiny thing in thailand that weighs less than a penny. and the biggest bat in the world has more than a six-foot wing span. there is a bat that lives in the cloud forests of ecuador that has the longest tongue of any mammal. this thing has a tongue that is 1 1/2 times the length of its body. if you stick your arm straight out in front of and you imagine your tongue could touch your fingers, it's three times that long so it can get into a flower to pollinate it. >> so relative to its body size, if i stick my arm out, if my tongue could go to the end of my arm, this bat's tongue would go two more arms? >> that's right. >> there are a number of cute bats including one dubbed the panda bat. and another the kakaborosi, the tube-nosed bat, discovered in 2017, which made news for its resemblance to the former hairstyle of 'n sync's lance bass. >> there's the honduran white bat which looks like a cotton ball. you have your flying foxes that look like puppies. but then you've got some really weirdly ugly bats like wrinkle-faced bats. i like the ugly bats more than i like the cute bats. >> it's a bat only a mother and dan riskin can love. >> blood feeding bats, or vampire bats, do exist. but they're only about .2% of all bat species. they live in central and south america and prey on the blood of birds, pigs and cattle. >> vampire bats are super weird among bats. they sneak up on a cow. they put their face up against the cow. they've got heat sensors on their nose to tell where the blood is close to the skin. they shave the area with their teeth before they cut. they lick the area to clean it. then they make a little divot with their front teeth, and they put their jaw up against that hole and they lick and drink and they pee. it's completely creepy. who else does that? >> i'll tell you who else does that. a serial killer does that. however, vampire bats don't kill their victims. they just act like a mammal-sized parasite. i've heard you say that the weirdness of bats was scientifically interesting to you. >> the faces of bats is a perfect example of that. if you take a bat that has a weird flap on its nose, you think that's a strange-looking adornment, it turns out a lot of bats have food in their mouths when they're trying to echo locate and it is hard to shout when you have food in your mouth. so they hum their echo-location. that weird flap actually points echo location sound where they want it to go. >> most bats navigate and hunt for food in the dark using echo location in which they emit sound from their nose or mouth and then listen for the echo that bounces back to create a mind map of their surroundings. their often oversize ears also help. some have such sensitive hearing, they can detect the sound of an insect landing on a leaf. are bats social animals? >> it depends on the species. some bats spend their whole lives pretty much alone. other bats will mate for life. you have some species where there is a male and a harem of females. where he gets to mate with all of them. but they have their own sort of likings in 3450i7bd. so they'll sometimes cheat with nearby males from other colonies. there's a whole soap opera going on with bats when it comes to mating. by the way, bat mothers are excellent mothers. imagine having a baby that weighed a quarter of what you weighed, and then the baby holds on to the mother's nipple with its teeth while she flies around. so like i weigh about 200 pounds. and the equivalent would be if i took a 50-pound weight and put it on my nipple with a jumper cable and just went for a run. it's incredible what these mothers do. >> that's a visual that will be with me for a while, dan. my husband and my water broke. at only 23 weeks. andrew: we had to stay in the hospital for 10 weeks, 1000s of miles from family. our driver kristin came along in our most desperate hour. suzanne: bringing us home-cooked meals and gifts. andrew: day after day. we wanted to show you something. kristin: oh my god! andrew: kristin is the most uncommonly kind person that we've met. suzanne: thank you so much. it inspired me to become a doctor. then covid hit. no one has ever seen anything like covid. you feel hopeless. my best friend's father died of covid-19. then my father caught it. wearing a mask, washing your hands. sacrifice those things now. you have the power to protect the ones you love. - [narrator] as many of the nation's most trusted hospitals, we all know this. the science has not changed. masks slow the spread of covid-19. every one of our healthcare professionals is asking you to do one very simple thing. let's keep it up. let's mask up. (solemn orchestral music ends) in north america alone there are 46 different species of bats. most of which are small insect-eating varieties like the big brown bat and the little brown bat. but in the southeastern parts of the united states, in particular in texas, there's an abundance of one species. the mexican free-tailed bat. in fact, bracken cave just outside san antonio is believed to be home to the single largest colony of bats in the world. >> every year during the spring and summer, i think there are something like 30 million bats in this case. >> in the cave? >> in the cave. in the summer. there are so many bats that the local weather stations use their doppler radar. they can see the cloud of bats coming out and spreading out over the landscape to catch insects. >> really? >> it takes hours for them, there are so many of them commuting basically from wherever they're sleeping during the day to where their food is. >> they go the same way each time usually? >> yes. >> in an ecosystem what role do bats have? >> yes. they're a really critical, key component. for instance, insect-eating bats, because they consume so many insects, they play a large role in controlling insect populations. >> a normal size bat can eat up to 500 to 1,000 mosquitos in an hour. mosquitos that might be carrying diseases like zika, dengue or malaria. if you're in an area where there are a lot of mosquitoes and you see bats at night, you should be thankful for those bats. >> absolutely. >> and all that insect eating translates into big money saved for agriculture. the mexican free-tailed bat of texas, for example, eat huge numbers of moths, protecting the corn crops of the region. >> people have estimated that the financial impact of bats on the u.s. economy is that they're worth well over $1 billion a year every single year. >> really? >> yes. in terms of how many pesticides we don't need to use. and how much food we get. >> but pest control isn't bats' only contribution to the ecosystem. the droppings of fruit-eating bats, particularly in rainforests, help disperse seeds and regenerate trees and plants previously cut down. and that's not the only benefit. >> bat droppings are full of nitrogen so they're really good for crops and there are all kinds of stories about these caves in the united states being harvested for fertilizer and then for explosive for the civil war. >> there are also bats that serve as the only pollinators of particular types of bananas, mangos and even cacti. the muzzles on these long-nose bats are designed to fit perfectly inside these cactus blossoms. blossoms that only open at night. >> agave, which is used for tequila, that is pollinated by bats. >> exactly. i mean, who doesn't love tequila, right? just right there, that should be reason enough for people to love bats. >> despite the millions of bats in bracken cave, in north america, over the last decade and a half, bat populations have been plummeting, all because of an outbreak they've been fighting of a disease called white nose syndrome. >> it's a cold-loving fungus that grows on the bat when the bats are hibernating in the wintertime. and unfortunately, this has affected something on the order of a dozen different species of north american bats. in some cases populations have declined over 90%. >> really? that's huge. >> it's huge. yes. it's a terrible threat to bats. and ironically, it's a disease that we brought to bats. the fungus that causes this disease is identical to fungus that naturally occurs in europe. so the thought is that it was simply brought over by people, was accidentally introduced into bat caves. >> so while we're fighting a virus that potentially came to us from bats, bats are fighting a disease that potentially came to them from us. in fact, no north american bats are known to have covid-19. among bat researchers there is a concern that humans will give covid-19 to bats. >> emerging infectious diseases can go both ways. right? we do know that some other animals can get covid-19. for instance, the tigers at the bronx zoo. >> for now, most research involving handling of bats across the u.s. has been put on hold because currently humans are potentially the bigger threat to bats. introducing...stocks by the slice from fidelity now you can trade stocks and etfs... for any amount you choose... instead of buying by the share. and fidelity allows you to trade fractional shares of stocks and etf's for as little as one dollar. that's more choice and more flexibility than you'll find at schwab all with no commissions, no account fees and no minimums. stocks by the slice from fidelity. get your slice today. for many of us, when we think of bats, we think of one thing. rabies. the threat of that virus is often misunderstood. >> it's not very common for americans to get rabies. >> dylan george is a former white house adviser for biological threat defense. >> in any given year there's anywhere from zero to one to two people might get infected from rabies in bats or potentially from foxes or raccoons or skunks. >> rabies has actually been around for 2,000 years. for most of that time if you got it it was a death sentence. without treatment it's 99.99% deadly. one of the big problems in europe and the u.s. used to be wild rabid dogs. >> ancient, you know, medical experts developed a lot of odd ideas about how you would cure rabies. they used to believe that one way to stop rabies from killing you was to take a hair from the tail of the rabid dog and insert it into the bite wound, and this is the origin of the phrase "hair of the dog" which we talk about in the context of hangover treatment. >> then along came louis pasteur in the mid 19th century. he'd been working on a vaccine for years and eventual lly decid to try it out on a young boy who had been bitten by a rapid dog. the vaccine worked. >> most of the cases in the united states do come from bats. but the risk is low. so unless you see a bat behaving very strangely, moving around during the day in a funny way, more than likely the bat won't be a risk to an individual. >> okay. i'm coming. i'm coming. i'm coming, guys. >> joseph d'angeli spends a lot of time answering questions about rabies. because he spends every day around bats. >> there you go. oliver. oliver is more fascinated with you all. come on, are you going to take what you want? go ahead. they all have their favorites, of course. >> known as new jersey's batman, d'angeli became fascinated with bats as a young boy. >> my father was a nightclub and restaurant and bar owner. so i was destined to be nocturnal. and i used to very often accompany my father to work. every so often i would go outside right before sundown and i would see these animals flying around the street lights. and my father pointed them out to me and he said those are bats. >> he quickly became obsessed he passed many childhood days in the bronx zoo ogling these often feared and reviled creatures. >> the stigma attached to bats was just horrible and i just felt like the animals that i was seeing in person was not matching the description that people were giving me. around the world bats are a sign of good luck, fertility, growth, everything you can think of. bats are usually the opposite of what they're considered here in america. >> as an adult, the batman became the showman as the lead singer of the '80s glam metal band rocks. >> it was a very different world. although it definitely paralleled the bat world. because we were pretty much active at night and sleeping during the day. >> but then in the early '90s after attending a lecture on bats d'angeli decided to change careers. >> i just started getting more and more into the idea of doing something for something else other than myself. the rock star thing is a little megalomaniacal. but the bat thing was these guys need help. >> d'angeli decided to leave the rock world behind and start working as an advocate for bats. >> so when a baby bat is born he goes to the side and cleans underneath the mama's wing. >> he became a licensed karuptologist, a person who studies bats, and opened up the wildlife and education center in new jersey. >> this is claudia. claudia is usually pretty tolerant of being handled. each bat has a different personality, different behavior, sometimes even a different look to them. >> over the last 25 years as an educator, one of his goals has been to make people less afraid of bats. because of that, he purposefully chose to feature fruit bats, native to africa, asia and australia. they're commonly known as the flying foxes. >> they are more attractive and more appealing to people. they look like my little flying chihuahuas i call them. they just really are much easier to use as educational subjects and to get people's fears reversed. >> when the wing is around the face like that, they're using their wings as built-in blanket. >> d'angeli is part of a larger movement that's been taking place for the last three decades in the united states, teaching people why these creatures should be protected, not feared. >> we're all here for one purpose and for one target, one direction. and that's to help these animals and to help people understand why these animals need our assistan assistance. they're so much like us. they are different-looking, different colors, different sizes, different shapes, different importances, different jobs that they do and i keep going back to that is really what i think at the end of the day makes me love them so much. they are like people. when life gets back to normal, go outside and look up and go and find some bats. ♪ ♪ ♪ be it discovering talent in different continents... and entirely different sports, or discovering a smoother whisky by double-aging, sometimes, it's just better to stay curious. dewar's ♪ these are difficult times. hey. stop! little girl is lost. friend. she needs taken home. i am taking her to her surviving family. word is she's that captive out of wichita falls. how much you want for her? she's not for sale. don't hurt her! she ain't worth dying for. you can't have her! captain. i'm taking her home! every year we as a species encroach deeper and deeper into bat habitat and those of other wild creatures, exposing ourselves to new and dangerous viruses. with the dramatic increase in travel, rise in global trade, we're now capable of spreading those viruses far and wide. scientists warn that what we've created is the perfect storm for a new pandemic. >> we are, without a doubt, going to see more epidemics like covid-19, or perhaps worse, unless we really change the way that we're interacting with our environment. >> the first major epidemic of the 21st century was sars in 2003. other outbreaks quickly followed. 2009, it was h1n1 or swine flu. 2002, hers. zika virus in 2015 and now covid-19. >> they're increasing in frequency. they're coming quicker. they're going to spread quicker. they're going to infect more people and they're going to cause more economic damage because we rely on the globalized economy more and more each year. >> in a lab more than 6,400 miles from wuhan, researchers in berkeley california are looking to bats to find clues to help fight coronaviruses like covid-19. >> in a way there's a lot we can learn from bats. this group of animals has been around for millions of years. how can we look at their history with viruses and take that knowledge and think about therapeutics and treatments for ourselves? >> what is it about bats that allows some of them to host these viruses without showing any illness? >> that's the question that kara brook is trying to answer. brook is a disease ecology who began studying bats in madagascar in 2012. she and her colleagues are investigating how the bats' immunity keeps them safe from harm. zb >> i've always been fascinated by bats as host sources of infectious diseases that transmit to humans. in the case of certain bat species, they appear to be perpetually prime to fight viral infection. >> scientists believe that understanding a bat's immune system can help develop a human battle plan for fighting these diseases on a global scale. >> it's an opportunity. what is it about the bats' metabolism, immunity that they've got that we could use. >> that might hold the answer for treating virus? >> if bats can handle viruses at a much higher level than humans can, let's find out why and use that. >> brook and her team infected the cells of two bat species with different viruses. then they watched as the viruses spread and the bat cells mounted a strong defense, different than what would happen with humans. >> when a virus infects a cell, your immune response will recruit immune cells to the site to try to clear that infection. >> and the signal to all sorts of cells that have not become infected, a virus is here. turn on your defense system. >> and typically this manifests in inflammation. >> the in humans inflammation helps fight fever. too long, it can do more harm than good. it can even cause death. >> typically more than half the damage that results in disease tends to be the damage of the immune system attacking the disease itself. >> that's how the disease stops. >> but bats' immune systems don't respond the same way as humans. >> it seems that bats are able to mount robust immune responses but not experience that inflammation. >> some bat species are actually missing the genes that we and other mammals have that trigger the inflammatory process. >> the same adaptation also carries virus. >> it doesn't appear to get sick or very sick when they're carrying viruses that can be deadly in other people and animals. >> so, could studying bat immunology help us humans create possible treatments to fight this current and future pandemic? >> what do you think is the greatest challenge in term of finding a treatment or cure for these virus? >> to my mind, the greatest challenge, the number of unknown viruses that are out there. we think there are about 1.7 million unknown viruses of the type that can get into people. and we've got to get ready for these. find out what there are out there, get vaccines and drugs for not just the ones we know about, but the ones we're discovering right now. >> bats already contribute enormously to research that could one day be helpful to humans. they're being studied to see how they combat aging because they tend to live longer than other mammals their size. research in bats is also helping the fight against cancer. scientists are trying to understand why bats don't develop tumors like other mammals. and now the possibility they could help us fight current and future coronaviruses. >> people are working on vaccines, they're working on drugs. that's what we're looking for. and i see it as an opportunity. >> many people are surprised by the physiological similarities between bats and humans and the information we may be able to extract from that. in addition to the antiaging and cancer research studies, scientists have also looked to the saliva of bats. it's got a blood thinning agent that helps them siphon off their victims' blood. scientists are looking to see if that could be helpful to humans. researchers agree it's our job to protect these extraordinary creatures and their habitats, because as we learned from the covid-19 pandemic, if we don't protect them we're putting ourselves at risk. thanks for watching. thanks for watching. good night. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com ♪ it's a time of enormous turmoil. >> the '60s are over, dad. >> here's michael at the foul line. good! >> we intend to cover all the news all the time. we won't be signing off until the world ends. >> isn't that special? >> any tool for human expression will bring out both the best and the worst in us, and television has been there. >> they don't pay me enough to deal with animals like this. >> people are no longer embarrassed to admit they watch television. >> we have seen the news, and it is us. ♪

Transcripts For CNNW CNN Special Report 20201227

they carry, and unfortunately, right now, it's very strange. we've probably got a bat virus that's killing people. ♪ good evening. i'm anderson cooper. when covid-19 first surfaced at the end of 2019, scientists around the world wanted to know where it came from and how this deadly virus ended up in humans. although answers are not certain, it seems likely the coronavirus originated in bats. bats are diverse and ancient creatures, and they've been on earth longer than we have. despite that, there is still a lot we don't know. tonight we take a look at this enigmatic animal and dig into the mystery of covid-19. in the last 20 years, some of the deadliest virus outbreaks have come from bats. sars, marburg, ebola. so what is it about these creatures and the way they spread pathogens that can be so dangerous? >> the fact that bats are carrying viruses is not in and of itself extraordinary. every animal has its normal suite of viruses and bacteria that it normally carries. people do as well. we carry viruses, we carry bacteria, the majority of which are benign or beneficial, some of which cause disease. it's the fact that bats do tend to carry a higher proportion of viruses that have the ability to infect people. the question is really why we see some of these incredibly bad viruses coming out of bats? >> it was 7:00 p.m. on december 30th, 2019, when a package arrived at the wuhan institute of virology. in it, medical samples from a local infectious disease hospital. several patients were suffering from atypical pneumonia. doctors suspected a possible novel coronavirus. dr. shi zhengli's cell phone rang shortly after. >> she got a call from her boss who said, drop whatever you're doing and come back to the lab right now. >> dr. shi is known in china as the bat woman. she's one of the leading experts on bat-borne diseases. >> she's the director at the center for emerging diseases at the wuhan institute of virology. >> it as biological level 4 facility. biological safety 4 refusal research is the highest level of containment that exists for studying pat ining path conveni viruses. >> doctors feared the cluster of atypical pneumonia patients in wuhan might be infected with the same family of viruses that caused the outbreak of sars acute respiratory syndrome. >> more and more people were getting infected. we started to see on chinese social media in particular, the concern was growing. >> in new york, ecohealth alliance, a nonprofit organization devoted to tracking emerging diseases, began to take notice. >> we started to get our first inkling that something unusual was happening by looking to social media in china. they mentioned there was an unusual cluster of respiratory disease going on. and i remember talking to peter daszak that this might be another sars-like event. >> peter daszak is the president of ecohealth alliance. he has worked closely with the wuhan institute of virology and dr. shi. their collaboration was crucial in discovering the origin of the 2003 sars outbreak. the world health organization assembled a team including daszak, shi, and wang, considered one of the world's top emerging disease experts, to find the source of the deadly outbreak. these virus hunters were pursuing a theory that bats could be the origin of sars. the team headed to the hunan region of southern china to try to solve the mystery of sars. >> shi and other researchers started exploring caves in southern china, looking for bats that could have been the origin of that first sars outbreak. >> dr. john epstein was a researcher on that expedition. >> when we go into an environment like a bat cave to catch bats, we have to protect ourselves. that includes gloves, we wear a respirator, like a mask. and we'll wear eye protection. >> we're walking into caves that could carry the next pandemic. that's a risky thing. what we do is we go in during the day to scope out where the bats are and try and work out what species are in there. then what we do is set up nets outside and catch bats as they fly out in the evening and go back in the morning. >> we do everything we can to ensure the safety and well-being of the animals and we have a basic set of samples we collect. oral swabs, fecal pellets, blood. and we take measurements. >> over the course of eight months, they sampled caves all over southern china and then they took all these samples back to the lab. >> it really took the better part of eight years of consistent and persistent sampling, testing, different horseshoe bat populations around until we finally found the missing link we were looking for. >> that link was a bat virus genetically connected to sars and capable of jumping directly from bats to humans. >> that was the nail in the coffin for us in terms of this coming from bats. >> dr. shi told us bat-borne coronaviruses will cause more outbreaks. we need to find them before they find us. >> that original sars coronavirus in 2003 started in guandong province, china. spread to hong kong, taiwan, and then the rest of the world, causing 8,000 cases and 800 deaths. >> that same year, the chinese government approved construction of the level 4 lab, the first in china. it opened in 2015 and is rated to study the world's deadliest viruses. >> translator: this p-4 laboratory will mainly be used for research on highly pathgenic infectious diseases and for which there are currently no medicines or vaccines. >> flash forward to the end of 2019, that's when the team in wuhan began to investigate the strange new virus. the genetic sequence of the virus was mapped fairly quickly. dr. shi compared it to a database of 500 new coronaviruses previously identified by ecohealth alliance. there was a match. its official name became sars cov 2. the virus that calls covid-19. called covid-19 because it emerged in 2019. the new coronavirus was 96.2% similar to a virus taken from a horseshoe bat in 2013. so what does that mean exactly? >> well, 96% is a different virus. so it's a bit like the difference between us and chimpanzees. a different species of virus. but what it tells us, where the virus probably came from. it means that sars covid 2 probably came from bats, and probably in southern china. >> wuhan is 1,000 miles away from the southern subtropical regions of hunan province, where dr. shi says the coronaviruses have the greatest risk of jumping from animals to humans. >> most of the coronaviruses shi had studied had been in southern china, and wuhan is in central china. when shi first found out there was a coronavirus outbreak in wuhan, she did firmly wonder, is there some chance that it could have come from her lab? >> the wuhan institute of virology is just a few miles from where many of the first cases were reported. >> dr. shi was facing this mounting pressure. that's very alarming, particularly for those who work within that lab. >> shi and her colleagues immediately isolated the virus, sequenced it, tested its behavior, and she was very relieved when she discovered that it didn't come from their laboratory. this virus has never been seen anywhere in the world. >> as her team raced to find answers, the disease was spreading fast. >> when the chinese minister of health announced that community spread was rampant in wuhan, and that asymptomatic spread was occurring, that meant the disease was out of control. >> the chinese government said they traced the source of the new virus to the western edge of a seafood market in wuhan where wild animals were being sold and slaughtered for food and medicine. >> i can't think of a better place to be a virus than a wet market. >> 16 years before the wuhan outbreak, animal traders at guangdong caught the original sars virus also in a wildlife market. >> the viruses take hold, they swap around, and then people come and breathe it in and get exposed to it. that's how viruses spill over. >> in wuhan, the initial cluster of 41 cases of severe pneumonia, about half those patients had been to that market or worked in that market or had some degree of contact with it. >> the chinese government shut down the market. and early on tried to keep information from spreading, communicating little about the early cases. >> not only was it shut down, it was also cordoned off. you had police at nearly every corner. >> months later, the chinese centers for disease control and prevention announced that while the new virus was found in several locations in the wuhan market, all the animals they sampled tested negative. since then, other theories about the possible source of the virus have emerged. >> one of the theories that circulated was that this originated from a wildlife trapper. somebody that has brought in one of these wild creatures into the market for sale. >> the only information we have from the investigation of the market was that environmental samples were collected, and of about 580 samples collected, about 37 of them came back positive for sars cov-2, this virus. >> dr. epstein says the jury is still out on whether the wuhan market is ground zero for covid-19. but he agrees that wildlife markets are breeding grounds for the next bio disaster waiting to happen. >> why wouldn't china just shut down markets that are selling exotic species of animals? >> the population of southern china has been doing this 5,000 years. you don't just close it down overnight. 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with an increased risk of depression. tell your doctor if you have a history of depression or suicidal thoughts or if these feelings develop. some people taking otezla reported weight loss. your doctor should monitor your weight and may stop treatment. upper respiratory tract infection and headache may occur. tell your doctor about your medicines and if you're pregnant or planning to be. otezla. show more of you. save for being a new customer. save more for adding drivewise. save even more for driving safely. take another look at allstate -and start saving. visit allstate.com or contact your local agent today. stop your cough from interrupting, visit allstate.com with dq cough and congestion. it's max strength formula coats your throat and provides powerful relief. new dayquil cough and congestion. the maxcoat daytime power through your cough medicine. scientists believe covid-19 may have had its roots in a community of horseshoe bats in southeastern china. these particular bats represent a very small subset of horseshoe bats all named for the shape of their noses. there are actually dozens of varieties of horseshoe bats living in a number places, including the temperate and tropical regions of central europe, africa and asia. in fact, there's incredible diversity among bat species. bats can be found living all around the world, on every continent except antarctica. however, the diversity and unique abilities of bats is also what makes them tough to contend with when it comes to disease. they're the only mammal capable of actually flying, so they can easily spread viruss to other animals and communities. >> some migrate thousands of miles, and hence the viruses that they carry traffic along those migratory routes. >> and though some of the pathogens bats play host to can make them sick, like rabies, they also have the unique ability to host and withstand some viruses without getting sick. >> understanding how bats co-exist with diseases is very critical. bats have a very unique relationship with pathogens generally. they have a unique biology, and it allows them to coexist with pathogens in different ways. >> there are various theories about why that is. it might have to do with how long bats have been around. >> bats are ancient species. they have been on planet earth a long time, and that means they've had a long history of being exposed and adapting to viruses in nature. >> another theory involves their body temperatures. >> a lot of people have come up with these sort of armchair solutions. like maybe it's because they fly, and when they fly their body temperature gets a little higher, so it's like a fever and that gives them the ability to handle more viruses than other kinds of animals would. >> dan riskin is an evolutionary biologist and tv host who did his ph.d. work on bats. >> when a virus gets into a human and a human responds by getting a fever which is effective against a lot of viruses, it doesn't work on the bat ones because they're used to these warm temperatures anyway. >> so if a virus is already used to a high temperature because of bats, that rising of the fever in the human may not be effective to kill off this virus? >> exactly. >> some bats have the ability to drop their body temperatures very low in the winter. so perhaps that also helps their unique immune systems. normally, the pathogens stay hidden in bats' bodies and they don't make the jump to humans. so how do humans get infected? that's what is known as zoonotic spillover, when diseases cross from animals to people. sometimes that spillover occurs between an animal and a human, and then transmission going forward is human to human. that's called community spread. >> perhaps the best example of that would be hiv. the transmission happened from primates to humans many years ago, and now it transmits in human-to-human transmission. >> covid-19 is another example. but you can also have a disease that stays in a particular type of animal which then acts as a reservoir. in that case, humans are usually infected by an animal, not another person, like with rabies. >> sometimes viruses are carried by mosquitos. a mosquito might bite an animal that carries that virus and then bite a person and transmit it. they're like flying syringes. >> no matter how a disease makes the transition from wildlife to humans, one thing is consistent. there has to be contact. >> oftentimes it's through indirect or accidental exposure. an animal that's infected may contaminate food or water people are eating and that's how they get exposed. >> with these big open markets, there's a lot of people, so there's a -- it's a very conductive environment for virus cross-species transmission events. >> it's an opportunity for animals that might have never have contact with each other in the wild, being artificially being brought into a highly dense, congested, and highly unhygienic situation. >> how do things spread from bats to either humans or other animals? just through droppings or -- >> it probably varies from any one case to another. >> typically, bats shed viruses the same way humans do. in saliva, urine and feces. if a bat is highly stressed and sick, does it shed more virus? >> yeah, absolutely. that's one of the issues with these wet markets. for bats, they have coronaviruses that they've adapted to, and they're totally fine. but you put them in a wet market situation, they get sick, they get stressed. they succumb, just like if you've worked too hard and you suddenly come down with that flu, the bats get overworked. >> sometimes with zoonotic spillover, there can also be an intermediary animal. so bats transmit to another species, then that species transmits to humans. in the case of covid-19, as of now, no one can say for sure how it ended up in people. >> all the evidence we have suggests this was a virus that originated in bats and made its way into people through a natural process. >> but at this point, the greatest risk of getting covid-19 is from other humans, not bats. >> really, what matters is the way that we interact with bats. most epidemics are driven by human behavior. it doesn't matter that these viruses are happily existing in a wild animal in the middle of a forest. when people encroach on that environment, we're creating opportunity for a bat virus to get into people. ♪ ♪ be it discovering talent in different continents... and entirely different sports, or discovering a smoother whisky by double-aging, sometimes, it's just better to stay curious. dewar's the only thing a disaster can't destroy is hope. donate now at redcross.org when you're camping with friends and you get the biggest spot, and you're sitting on logs like you've never needed chairs, ♪ and you swam in the river all day in the warm afternoon sun... ♪ that's pure gold. 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(burke) sure. your parents have maintained a farmers home policy for twelve consecutive months, right? ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪ (burke) start with a quote at 1-800-farmers. they account for approximately 20% of all the world's mammal species. how many species of bats are there? >> 1,421 is the latest count, but we add at least 20 new species every year. >> so there are still species of bats that have never been -- >> oh, yeah. >> -- discovered? >> oh, yeah, absolutely. >> nancy simmons is the curator in charge of mammalogy at the american museum of natural history. >> why are bats nocturnal? >> well, the thought is that actually, the ancestors of all mammals were probably nocturnal. small animals sort of scurrying around in the age of dinosaurs. it gave them access to resources that other animals like dinosaurs couldn't use. so bats basically never gave up that lifestyle. whereas the ancestors of us, primates, at some point gave up the nocturnal lifestyle to be diurnal. >> but working at night, it helps the bats how? >> if you think about what the animals are that are active in the air during the day, it's birds. and by being active at night, bats are not competing directly with birds. so the bats basically fulfill all the same ecological roles that birds do, only they do it at night. >> bats are unique mammals. though structurally in some ways they're similar to humans. so bats have four limbs, two of them are attached to the wings. >> two of them are the wings. >> are the wings, okay. >> yes. they have all the same bones that humans do. in the upper arm, the forearm, there's two bones, wrist bones. then the bones that support the end of the wing are long finger and hand bones. >> bats' living and eating habits vary widely across the 1,421 species that exist. there's some that roost in trees, others under leaves, some in caves. some bats eat insects, others fruit, or even fish and frogs. these species, some of them are living right next to each other. >> oh, absolutely. one square mile of rain forest in, for instance, the brazilian amazon, could have 100 species of bat. >> the smallest bat in the world, it's this tiny thing in thailand that weighs less than a penny. the biggest bat in the world has more than a six-foot wing span. there's a bat that lives in the cloud forests of ecuador that has the longest tongue of any mammal. this thing has a tongue that is 1 1/2 times the length of its body. if you stick your arm straight out in front of you and imagine your tongue could touch your fingers, it's three times that long, so it can get into a flower to pollinate. >> wait a minute. so relative to its body size, if i stick my arm out, if my tongue could go to the end of my arm this bat's tongue would go two more arms? >> that's right. >> there are a number of cute bats including one dubbed the panda bat. and another, the tube-nosed bat, discovered in 2017 which made news for its resemblance to the former hairstyle of nsync's lance bass. >> there's the honduran white bat which looks like a cotton ball. you have your flying foxes that look like puppies but then you have some really ugly bats like wrinkle face bats. i like the ugly bats more than the cute bats. >> a bat that only a mother and dan riskin can love. >> blood-feeding bats, or vampire bats, do exist. but they're only about .2% of all bat species. they live in central and south america and prey on the blood of birds, pigs and cattle. >> vampire bats are super weird among bats. they sneak up on a cow. they put their face up against the cow. they've got heat sensors on their nose to tell where the blood is close to the skin. they shave the area with their teeth before they cut. they lick the area to clean it, then they make a little divot with their front teeth, and they put their jaw up against that hole, and they lick and they drink and they bee. it's completely creepy. who else does that? >> i'll tell you who else. a serial killer does that. however, vampire bats don't kill their victims. they just act like a mammal-sized parasite. i've heard you say that the weirdness of bats was scientifically interesting to you. >> the faces of bats is a perfect example of that. if you take a bat that has a weird flap on its nose, you think that's a strange-looking adornment, it turns out a lot of bats have food in their mouths when they're trying to echolocate and it is hard to shout when you have food in your mouth. so they hum that echolocation. that weird flap actually points echolocation sound where they want it to go. >> most bats navigate and hunt for food in the dark using echolocation in which they emit sound from their nose or mouth and then listen for the echo that bounces back to create a mind map of their surroundings. their often oversize ears also help. some species of bats have such sensitive hearing, they can detect the sound of an insect landing on a leaf. are bats social animals? >> it depends on the species. some bats spend their whole lives pretty much alone. other bats will mate for life. you have some species where there's a male and a harem of females, where he gets to mate with all of them. but they have their own likings in mind, so they'll sometimes cheat with nearby males from other colonies. there's like a whole soap opera going on with bats when it comes to mating. by the way, bat mothers are excellent mothers. imagine having a baby that weighed a quarter of what you weighed, and then the baby holds on to the mother's nipple with its teeth while she flies around. so i weigh about 200 pounds. the equivalent would be if i took a 50-pound weight and put it on my nipple with a jumper cable and just went for a run. it's just incredible what these mothers do. >> wow. uh -- that's a visual that's going to be with me for a while, dan. ongest lasting aa battery... 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>> in the cave in the summer. there are so many bats that the local weather stations use their doppler radar. they can see the cloud of bats coming out and spreading out over the landscape to catch insects. >> really? >> it takes hours for them, because there's so many of them commuting, basically, from wherever they're sleeping during the day to where their food is. >> and they go the same way each time, usually? >> yes. >> in an ecosystem, what role do bats have? >> yes. they're really a critical, key component. for instance, insect-eating bats, because they consume so many insects, they play a large role in controlling insect populations. >> a normal-size bat can eat up to 500 to 1,000 mosquitos in an hour. mosquitos that might be carrying diseases like zika, dengue, or malaria. if you're in an area where there are a lot of mosquitoes and you see bats at night, you should be thankful for those bats. >> absolutely. >> and all that insect eating translates into big money saved for agriculture. the mexican free-tailed bat of texas, for example, eat huge numbers of moths, protecting the corn crops of the region. >> people have estimated the financial impact of bats on the u.s. economy is that they're worth well over $1 billion every single year. >> really? >> yes. in terms of how many pesticides we don't need to use. >> but pest control isn't the only contribution to the ecosyst ecosystem. the droppings of fruit-eating bats, particularly in rain forests, help disperse seeds and regenerate trees and plants previously cut down. and that's not the only benefit. >> bat droppings are full of nitrogen so they're good for crops. and there are all kinds of stories about these caves in the united states being harvested for fertilizer, then for explosive for the civil war. >> there are also bats that serve as the only pollinators of particular types of bananas, mangos, and even cacti. the muzzles on these long-nose bats are designed to fit perfectly inside these cactus blossoms, blossoms that only open at night. >> agave which is used for tequila, that is pollinated by bats. >> exactly. who doesn't love tequila, right? just right there, that should be reason enough for people to love bats. >> despite the millions of bats in bracken cave, in north america, over the last decade and a half, bat populations have been plummeting all because of an outbreak they've been fighting of a disease called white nose syndrome. >> it's a cold-loving fungus that grows on the bat when the bats are hibernating in the wintertime. and unfortunately, this has affected something on the order of a dozen different species of north american bats. in some cases, populations have declined over 90%. >> really? that's huge. >> it's huge, yes. it's a terrible threat to bats. and ironically, it's a disease that we brought to bats. the fungus that causes this disease is identical to fungus that naturally occurs in europe. the thought is it was simply brought over by people, it was accidentally introduced into bat caves. >> so while we're fighting a virus that potentially came to us from bats, bats are fighting a disease that potentially came to them from us. in fact, no north american bats are known to have covid-19. among bat researchers, there is a concern that humans will give covid-19 to bats. >> emerging infectious diseases can go both ways. right? we do know that some other animals can get covid-19. for instance, the tigers at the bronx zoo. >> for now, most research involving handling of bats across the u.s. has been put on hold, because currently humans are potentially the bigger threat to bats. want to sell the best burger in every zip code? add an employee. or ten... then easily and automatically pay your team and file payroll taxes. that means... world domination! or just the west side. run payroll in less than five minutes with intuit quickbooks. or psoriatic arthritis, little things can become your big moment. that's why there's otezla. otezla is not an injection or a cream. it's a pill that treats differently. for psoriasis, 75% clearer skin is achievable, with reduced redness, thickness, and scaliness of plaques. for psoriatic arthritis, otezla is proven to reduce joint swelling, tenderness, and pain. and the otezla prescribing information has no requirement for routine lab monitoring. don't use if you're allergic to otezla. it may cause severe diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting. otezla is associated with an increased risk of depression. tell your doctor if you have a history of depression or suicidal thoughts or if these feelings develop. some people taking otezla reported weight loss. your doctor should monitor your weight and may stop treatment. upper respiratory tract infection and headache may occur. tell your doctor about your medicines and if you're pregnant or planning to be. otezla. show more of you. been there, done that. twice your cousin. from boston. karen, i'm just gonna say what everyone here is thinking. you look smokin. total smokeshow. and they never did find his finger. they had to close the pool for like an hour. ♪ i brought a date. name's sam. dig in. love is like boston lager. rich, complex and it's over too soon. right, chrissy? oh my god. ♪ as there are cars. save for being a new customer, for adding drivewise, and for driving safely. whatever you drive, start driving down the cost of insurance. visit allstate.com or contact your local agent today. for many of us, when we think of bats, we think of one thing. rabies. the threat of that virus is often misunderstood. >> it's not very common for americans to get rabies. >> dylan george is a former white house adviser for biological threat defense. >> in any given year there's anywhere from zero to one to two people might get infected from rabies in bats or potentially from foxes or raccoons or skunks. >> rabies has actually been around for 2,000 years. for most of that time, if you got it, it was a death sentence. without treatment, it's 99.9% deadly. one of the big problems in europe and the u.s. used to be wild rabid dogs. >> ancient medical experts developed a lot of odd ideas about how you would cure rabies. they used to believe that one way to stop rabies from killing you was to take a hair from the tail of the rabid dog and insert it into the bite wound, and this is the origin of the phrase "hair of the dog" which we talk about in the context of hangover treatment. >> then along came louis pasteur in the mid-19th century. he'd been working on a vaccine for years and eventually decided to try it out on a young boy who had been bitten by a rabid dog. the vaccine worked. >> most of the cases in the united states do come from bats. but the risk is low. so unless you see a bat behaving very strangely, moving around during the day in a funny way, more than likely, the bat won't be a risk to an individual. >> okay. i'm coming. i'm coming. i'm coming, guys. >> joseph d'angeli spends a lot of time answering questions about rabies. because he spends every day around bats. >> there you go. oliver, oliver is more fascinated with you all. come on, are you going to take what you want? go ahead. they all have their favorites, of course. >> known as new jersey's batman, he became fascinated with bats as a young boy. >> my father was a nightclub and restaurant and bar owner. so i was destined to be nocturnal. and i used to very often accompany my father to work. every so often i'd go outside right before sundown, and i would see these animals flying around the street lights. and my father pointed them out to me and he said, those are bats. >> he quickly became obsessed he passed many childhood days in the bronx zoo ogling these often feared and reviled creatures. >> the stigma attached to bats was horrible and i felt like the animal that i was seeing in person was not matching the description that people were giving me. around the world, bats are a sign of good luck, fertility, growth, everything you can think of. bats are usually the opposite of what they're considered here in america. >> as an adult, the batman became the showman as the lead singer of the '80s glam metal band rocks. >> it was a very different world. although it definitely paralleled the bat world. because we were pretty much active at night and sleeping during the day. >> then in the early '90s after attending a lecture on bats, he decided to change careers. >> i just started getting more and more into the idea of doing something for something else other than myself. the rock star thing is a little megalomaniacal. but the bat thing was, these guys need help. >> he decided to leave the rock world behind and start working as an advocate for bats. >> so when a baby bat is born, he goes to the side and clings underneath the mama's wing. >> he became a licensed -- a person who studies bats, and opened up the wildlife conservation center in new jersey. >> this is claudia. claudia is usually pretty tolerant of being handled. each bat has a different personality, different behavior, sometimes even a different look to them. >> over the last 25 years as an educator, one of his goals has been to make people less afraid of bats. because of that, he purposefully chose to feature fruit bats, native to africa, asia and australia. they're commonly known as the flying foxes. >> they are more attractive and more appealing to people. they look like my little flying chihuahuas, i call them. they just really are much easier to use as educational subjects and to get people's fears reversed. >> when the wing is around the face like that, they're using their wings as built-in blanket. >> he's part of a larger movement that's been taking place for the last three decades in the united states, teaching people why these creatures should be protected, not feared. >> we're all here for one purpose and for one target and one direction, and that's to help these animals and to help people understand why these animals need our assistance. they're so much like us. they are different looking, different colors, different sizes, different shapes, different importances, different jobs that they do. and i keep going back to, that is really what i think, at the end of the day, makes me love them so much that they are like people. when life gets back to normal, go outside and look up and go and find some bats. 're camping s 're camping s and you get the biggest spot, and you swam in the river all day in the warm afternoon sun... that's pure gold. ♪ ♪ be it discovering talent in different continents... and entirely different sports, or discovering a smoother whisky by double-aging, sometimes, it's just better to stay curious. dewar's t-moat a record pace. its network we were the first to bring 5g nationwide. and now that sprint is a part of t-mobile we're turning up the speed. upgrading over a thousand towers a month with ultra capacity 5g. to bring speeds as fast as wifi to cities and towns across america. and we're adding more every week. coverage and speed. who says you can't have it all? are my smile can't compete. on for this? anyone? mmm. nope! for a smile that's always camera -ready. crest 3d white removes 95% of stains in just 3 days. stop your cough from interrupting, with dq cough and congestion. it's max strength formula coats your throat and provides powerful relief. new dayquil cough and congestion. the maxcoat daytime power through your cough medicine. [what's this?] oh, are we kicking karly out? we live with at&t. it was a lapse in judgment. at&t, we called this house meeting because you advertise gig-speed internet, but we can't sign up for that here. yeah, but i'm just like warming up to those speeds. you've lived here two years. the personal attacks aren't helping, karly. don't you have like a hot pilates class to get to or something? [ muffled scream ] stop living with at&t. xfinity can deliver gig to the most homes. every year, we, as a species, deeper and deeper into bat habitat and those of other wild creatures. exposing ourselves to new, and dangerous, viruses. with the dramatic increase in travel, a rise in global trade, we're now capable of spreading those viruses, far and wide. scientists warn that what we've created is the perfect storm for a new pandemic. >> we are, without a doubt, going to see more epidemics, like covid-19, or perhaps worse, unless we really change the way that we're interacting with our environment. >> the first, major epidemic of the 21st century was sars, in 2003. other outbreaks, quickly, followed. 2009, it was h1n1 or swine flu. 2012, mers, middle east respiratory syndrome. then, the large, ebola outbreak in 2014. zika virus in 2015. and now, covid-19. >> they're increasing, in frequency. they're coming quicker, they're going to spread quicker, they are going to infect more people. and they're going to cause more economic damage, because we rely on that globalized economy, more and machi and more each year. >> in a lab, researchers in berkeley, california, are looking for clues on how to help humans fight viruses like covid-19. >> there is actually a lot we can learn from bats. this group of animals that's been around for millions of years. how can we look at their history with viruses and take that knowledge, and think about therapeutics and treatments for ourselves? >> what is it about bats that allows some of them to host these viruses, without showing any illness? >> that's the question that cara brooke is trying to answer. brooke is a disease ecologist who began studying bats in madagascar, in 2012. she and her colleagues are investigating how the bats' immunity keeps them safe from harm. >> i have always been fascinated by bats, as host sources of infectious diseases that transmit to humans. in the case of certain bat species, they appear to be perpetually primed to fight viral infection. >> reporter: scientists believe that, understanding a bat's immune system can help develop a human battle plan for fighting these diseases, on a global scale. >> it's an opportunity. what is it about the bats' metabolism, immunity, or physiology, that they've got that we could use? >> that might actually hold an answer for treating virus? >> if bats can handle thousands of different viruses at a much higher load than humans can, let's find out why and use that. >> brooke and her team infected the cells of two bat species with different viruses. then, they watched as the virus is spread and the bat cells mounted a strong defense. different than what would happen with humans. >> when a virus infects a cell, your immune response will recruit immune cells to the site to try and clear that infection. >> and the signal to all sorts of cells that have not become infected. a virus is here. turn on your defense system. >> and typically, this manifests as inflammation. >> in humans, inflammation, oftentimes in the form of fever or swelling, helps fight infection. but too much, or inflammation that goes on for too long, can do more harm than good. it can even cause death. >> typically, more than half of the damage that results in disease tends to be the damage of the immune system attacking the host, itself. and we call that immunopathology. >> that's actually how the disease starts. >> but, bats' immune systems don't respond the same way as humans. >> it seems that bats are able to mount robust, immune responses, but not experience that inflammation. >> some bat species are actually missing the genes that we, and other mammals, have that trigger the inflammatory process. >> the same adaptation, also, favor them to carry virus. >> it doesn't appear that they get sick, or very sick, when they are carrying viruses that can be deadly in other people and animals. >> so, could studying bat immunology help us, humans, create possible treatments to fight this current and future pandemics? what do you think is the greatest challenge in terms of finding a treatment or cure for these viruses? >> well, to my mind, the greatest challenge is the number of unknown viruses that are out there. i mean, we think there are about 1.7 million unknown viruses of the type that can get into people. and we got to get ready for these. find out what they are out there, get vaccines, not just the ones we know about, but the ones we are discovering right now. >> bats already contribute enormously to research that could, one day, be helpful to humans. they are being studied to see how they combat aging because they tend to live longer than other mammals their size. research on bats is, also, helping the fight against cancer. scientists are trying to understand why bats don't develop tumors, like other mammals. and now, the possibility that they could help us fight current and future coronaviruses. >> people are working on vaccines. they're working on drugs. that's the -- that's what we're looking for. and i see it as an opportunity. >> many people are surprised by the physiological similarities between bats and humans and the information we may be able to extract from that. in addition to the anti-aging and cancer-research studies, scientists have also been looking into the saliva of vampire bats. it's got special, blood-thinning agents, which helps them syphon off their victim's blood. to see if there could be blood-thinning insights that could be helpful for humans. in the meantime, researchers agree it's our job to protect these extraordinary creatures and their habitats because as we learned from the covid-19 pandemic, if we don't protect them, we're actually putting ourselves at risk. thanks for watching. good night. hello and welcome to our viewers in the united states and all around the world. i'm michael holmes. appreciate your company. coming up, here on cnn "newsroom." major developments on the christmas-day bombing in nashville. investigators focus on a new theory behind the cause of the explosion. with more americans dying from covid-19 this month than any other, president trump let the clock strike midnight on that relief package. and that means millions could now be without unemployment benefits. plus, the rush

Transcripts For CNNW CNN Special Report 20200627

♪ good evening. i'm anderson cooper. when covid-19 first surfaced at the end of 2019, scientists around the world wanted to know where it came from and how this deadly virus ended up in humans. although answers are not certain, it seems likely the coronavirus originated in bats. bats are diverse and ancient creatures and they've been on earth longer than we have. despite that, there is still a lot we don't know. tonight we take a look at this enigmatic animal and dig into the mystery of covid-19. in the last 20 years, some of the deadliest virus outbreaks have come from bats. sars, marburg, ebola. so what is it about these creatures and the way they spread pathogens that can be so dangerous? >> the fact bats are carrying viruses is not in and of itself extraordinary. every animal has its normal suite of viruses and bacteria that it normally carries. people do as well. we carry viruses, bacteria, the majority are benign or beneficial, some of which cause disease. it is the fact that bats do tend to carry a higher proportion of viruses that have the ability to infect people. the question is really, why do we see some of these incredibly bad viruses coming out of bats? >> it was 7:00 p.m. on december 30th, 2019. when a package arrived at the wuhan institute of virology. in it, medical samples from an infectious disease hospital. several patients were suffering from atypical pneumonia. doctors suspected a possible novel coronavirus. dr. xi jung-li's cell phone rang shortly thereafter. >> she got a call from her boss who said drop whatever you're doing and come back to the lab right now. >> dr. xi is known in china as the bat woman. she's one of the leading experts on bat-borne diseases. >> she is at the central of emerging diseases in wuhan. >> the biological four safety research is the highest level of containment that exists for studying pathogenic viruses. >> doctors feared the cluster of atypical pneumonia patients in wuhan might be infected with the same family of viruses that caused the outbreak of sars in 2003. severe acute respiratory syndrome. >> more and more people were getting infected. we started to see on chinese social media in particular, the concern was growing. >> in new york, ecohealth alliance, a nonprofit organization devoted to tracking emerging diseases, began to take notice. >> we started to get our first inkling that something unusual was happening by looking to social media in china. they mentioned there was an unusual cluster of respiratory disease going on. and i remember talking to peter about the potential this might be another sars-like event. peter dar shack is the president of ecohealth alliance. he has worked closely with the wuhan institute of virology and dr. xi. their collaboration was crucial in discovering the origin of the 2003 sars outbreak. the world health organization assembled a team. including dash dar shack, xi, and wong, considered one of the world's top emerging disease experts to find the source of the deadly outbreak. these virus hunters were pursuing a theory that bats could be the origin of sars. the team headed to the region in southern china, hunan, to try and solve the mystery of sars. xi and other researchers started exploring caves in southern china, looking for bats that could have been the origin of that first sars outbreak. >> dr. john epstein was a researcher on that expedition. >> when we go into an environment like a bat cave to catch bats, we have to protect ourselves. that includes gloves, we wear a respirator, like a mask. and we'll wear eye protection. >> we're walking into caves that could carry the next pandemic. that's a risky thing. we go in during the day to scope out where the bats are and try to work out what species are in there. then we set up nets outside and catch them when they fly out in the evening and go back in the morning. >> we do everything we can to ensure the safety and well being of the animals and we have a basic set of samples we correct. oral swabs, fecal pellets, blood. and we take measurements. >> over the course of eight months, they sampled caves all over southern china and then took them back to the lab. >> it really took better part of eight years of consistent and persistent sampling, testing different horseshoe bat populations around, until we finally found the missing link we were looking for. >> that link was a bat virus genetically connected to sars. capable of jumping directly from bats to humans. >> that was the nail in the coffin for us in terms of this coming from bats. >> dr. xi told us bat-borne viruses will cause more outbreaks. we need to find them before they find us. >> that original sars coronavirus in 2003 started in china. it spread to hong kong, taiwan and then the rest of the world causing 8,000 cases and 800 deaths. >> that same year, the chinese government approved the construction of the level four lab. the first in china. it opened in 2015 and is rated to study the world's deadliest viruses. >> this p-4 laboratory will mainly be used for research on highly pathogenic infectious diseases for which there are currently no medicines or vaccines. >> flash forward to the end of 2019, that's when the team in wuhan began to investigate the strange new virus. the genetic sequence of the virus was mapped fairly quickly. she compared it to a database of 500 new coronaviruses previously identified by ecohealth alliances. there was an official match, it became sars kv 2. the virus that calls covid-19. called covid-19 because it emerged in 2019. the new coronavirus was 96.2% similar to a virus taken from a horseshoe bat in 2013. so what does that mean exactly? >> well, 96% is a different virus. so it's a bit like the difference between us and chimpanzees. what it tells us is where the virus probably came from, it means sars covid 2 probably came from bats and probably southern china. >> wuhan is 1,000 miles away from the southern sub tropical regions of hunan province, where dr. xi says the coronaviruses have the greatest risk of jumping from animals to humans. >> most of the viruses had been in southern china and wuhan is in central china. when she first found out there was a coronavirus outbreak in wuhan, she did initially wonder, is there some chance that it could have come from her lab? >> the wuhan institute of virology is just a few miles from where many of the first cases were reported. >> dr. xi was facing this mounting pressure. that's very alarming, particularly for those who work within that lab. >> she and her colleagues immediately isolated the virus, sequenced it, tested its behavior, and she was very relieved when she discovered that it didn't come from their laboratory. this virus had never been seen anywhere in the world. >> as her team raced to find answers, the disease was spreading fast. >> when the chinese minister of health announced that community spread was rampant in wuhan, and that asymptomatic spread was occurring, that meant the disease was out of control. >> the chinese government said they traced the source of the new virus to the western edge of a seafood market in wuhan where wild animals were being sold and slaughtered for food and medicine. >> i can't think of a better place to be a virus than a wet market. >> 16 years before the wuhan outbreak, animal traders at guangdong caught the original sars virus also in a wildlife market. >> the viruses take hold, they swap around, and then people come and breathe it in and get exposed to it. that's how viruses spill over. >> in wuhan, the initial cluster of 41 cases of severe pneumonia, about half those patients had been to that market or worked in that market or had some degree of contact with it. >> the chinese government shut down the market. early on, tried to keep information from spreading. communicating little about the early cases. >> not only was it shut down, it was also cordoned off. you had police at nearly every corner. >> months later, the chinese centers for disease control and prevention announced that while the new virus was found in several locations in the wuhan market, all the animals they sampled tested negative. since then other theories about the possible source of the virus have emerged. >> one of the theories that circulated was that this originated from a wildlife trapper. somebody who has brought in one of these wild creatures into the market for sale. >> the only information we have from the investigation of the market was that environmental samples were collected and of about 580 samples collected, about 37 of them came back positive for sars cov-2, this virus. >> dr. epstein says the jury is still out on whether the wuhan market is ground zero for covid-19. but he agrees that wildlife markets are breeding grounds for the next disaster waiting to happen. >> why wouldn't china just shut down markets that are selling exotic species of animals? >> the population of southern china has been doing this 5,000 years. you don't just close it down overnight. here's another cleaning tip from mr. clean. cleaning tough bathroom and kitchen messes with sprays and wipes can be a struggle. there's an easier way. try mr. clean magic eraser. just wet, squeeze and erase tough messes like bathtub soap scum... and caked-on grease from oven doors. now mr. clean magic eraser comes in disposable sheets. they're perfect for icky messes on stovetops... in microwaves... and all over the house. for an amazing clean, try mr. clean magic eraser, and mr. clean magic eraser sheets. i was drowning in credit card debt. sofi helped me pay off twenty-three thousand dollars of credit card debt. they helped me consolidate all of that into one low monthly payment. they make you feel like it's an honor for them to help you out. i went from sleepless nights to getting my money right. so thank you. ♪ scientists believe covid-19 may have had its roots in a community of horseshoe bats in southeastern china. these particular bats represent a very small subset of horseshoe bats all named for the shape of their noses. there are actually dozens of varieties of horseshoe bats living in a number places, including the temperate and tropical regions of central europe, africa and asia. in fact there's incredible variety among bat species. they can be found all around the world and every continent except antarctica. however, the diversity and unique abilities of bats is also what makes them tough to contend with when it comes to disease. they're the only mammal capable of actually flying, so they can easily fly and spread viruses to other animals in other communities. >> some migrate thousands of miles, and hence the viruses that they carry travel along those migratory routes. >> and though some of the pathogens bats play host to can make them sick, like rabies, they have the unique ability to host and withstand some viruses without getting sick. >> understanding how bats co-exist with diseases is very critical. they have a very unique relationship with pathogens generally. they have a unique biology and it allows them to co-exist in different ways. >> there are various theories about why that is. it might have to do with how long bats have been around. >> bats are an ancient species. they have been on planet earth a long time and that means they've had a long history of being exposed and adapting to viruses in nature. >> another theory involves their body temperatures. >> a lot of people have come up with these sort of armchair solutions. like maybe it is because they fly and when they fly, their body temperature gets higher and that's like a fever and that gives them the ability to handle viruses more than other animals would. >> he is a biologist and tv host who did his ph.d. work on bats. >> when a virus gets into a human and a human responds by getting a fever which is effective against a lot of viruses, it doesn't work on the bats because they're used to warm temperatures. >> so if a virus is already used to a high temperature because of bats, that rising of the fever in a human may not be effective to kill off this virus. >> exactly. >> some bats have the ability to drop their body temperatures very low in the winter. so perhaps that also helps their unique immune systems. normally, the pathogens stay hidden in bats' bodies and they don't make the jump to humans. so how do humans get infected? that's what is known as zoonotic spillover when diseases cross from animals to people. sometimes thoo spillover occurs between an animal and a human, and then transmission going forward is human to human. that's called community spread. >> perhaps the best example of that would be hiv. the transmission happened from primates to humans many years ago and now it transmits in human/human transmission. >> covid-19 is another example. but you can also have a disease that stays in a particular type of animal which then acts as a reservoir. in that case, humans are usually infected by an animal, not another person, like with rabies. >> sometimes viruses are carried by mosquitos. a mosquito might bite an animal which carries that virus and then bite a person and transmit it like flying syringes. >> no matter how a disease makes the transition from wildlife to humans, one thing is consistent. there has to be contact. >> oftentimes it is through indirect or accidental exposure. an animal that is infected may contaminate food or water people are eating and that's how they get exposed. >> with these big open markets, there is a lot of people so there is -- it's a very conductive environment for virus cross-species transmission events. >> it is a opportunity for animals that might have never have contact with each other in the wild, being artificially being brought into a highly dense, congested and highly unhygienic situation. >> how do things spread from bats to either humans or other animals? through droppings or -- >> it probably varies from one case to another. >> typically, bats shed viruses the same way humans do. in saliva, urine and feces. if a bat is highly stressed and sick, does it shed more virus? >> absolutely. that's one of the issues with these wet markets. for bats, they have coronavirus that they've adapted to and they're totally fine. you put them in a wet market situation. they get sick, they get stressed, they succumb. just like you if you work too hard and you come down with that flu. the bats get overworked. >> sometimes with zoonotic spillover, there can also be an intermediary animal. so bats transmit to another species and then species transmits to humans. in the case of covid-19, as of now, no one can say for sure how it ended up in people. >> all the evidence we have suggests this was a virus that originated in bats and made its way into people through a natural process. >> but at this point, the greatest risk getting covid-19 is from other humans. not bats. >> really, what matters is the way that we interact with bats. most epidemics are driven by human behavior. it doesn't matter that these viruses are happily existing in a wild animal in the middle of a forest. when people encroach on that environment, we're creating opportunity for a bat virus to get into people. dust mite droppings! eeeeeww! dead skin cells! gross! so now, i grab my swiffer sweeper and heavy-duty dusters. duster extends to three feet to get all that gross stuff gotcha! and for that nasty dust on my floors, my sweeper's on it. the textured cloths grab and hold dirt and hair no matter where dust bunnies hide. no more heebie jeebies. phew. glad i stopped cleaning and started swiffering. a lot goes through your mind. with fidelity wealth management, your dedicated adviser can give you straightforward advice and tailored recommendations. that's the clarity you get with fidelity wealth management. they account for approximately 20% of all the world's mammal species. how many species of bats are there? >> 1,421 is the latest count, but we add at least 20 new species every year. >> so there are still species of bats that have never been -- >> oh, yeah. >> discovered? >> absolutely. >> nancy simmons is the curator in charge of mammology, at the museum of natural history. >> why are bats nocturnal? >> well, the thought is that actually, the ancestors of all mammals are all nocturnal. small animals scurrying around in the age of dinosaurs. it gave them access to resources that other animals like dinosaurs couldn't use. so bats basically never gave up that lifestyle. whereas the ancestors of us, primates, gave up the nocturnal lifestyle to be diurnal. >> but working at night it helps the bats how? >> if you think about what the animals are that are active in the air, during the day, it's birds. and by being active at night, bats are not competing directly with birds. so the bats basically fulfill all the same ecological roles that birds do, only they do it at night. >> bats are unique mammals. though structurally in some ways they're similar to humans. so bats have four limbs, two of them are attached to the wings. >> two of them are the wings. >> okay. >> yes. they have all the same bones that humans do. the upper arm, the forearms, the wrist bones, and then the bones that support the end of the wing are long finger and hand bones. >> bats' living and eating habits vary widely across the 1,421 species that exist. there are some that roost in trees, others in leaves, leaves, some in caves. some bats eat insects, others, fruit or even fish and frogs. these species, some of them are living right next on each other. >> absolutely. one square mile of rain forest in for instance the brazilian amazon could have 100 species of bat. >> the smallest bat in the world, it is this tiny thing in thailand that weighs less than a penny. the biggest bat in the world has more than a six-foot wing span. there is a bat that lives in the cloud forests of ecuador that has the longest tongue of any mammal. this thing has a tongue that is 1 1/2 times the length of its body. if you stick your arm straight out in front of and you imagine your tongue could touch your fingers, it is three times that long so it can get into a flower to pollinate. >> so relative to its body size, if i stick my arm out, if my tongue could be to the end of my arm, this bat's tongue would go two more arms? >> that's right. >> there are a number of cute bats including one dubbed the panda bat. and another, cocobo rossi, tube-nosed bat, discovered in 2017 which made news for its resemblance to the former hairstyle of 'n sync's lance bass. >> there's the honduran white bat which looks like a cotton ball. you have your flying foxes that look like puppies but then you have some really ugly bats like wrinkle face bats. i like the ugly bats more than the cute bats. >> a bat that only a mother and dan riskin can love. >> blood feeding bats, or vampire bats do exist. but they're only about .2% of all bat species. they live in central and south america and prey on the blood of birds, pigs and cattle. >> vampire bats are super weird among bats. they sneak up on a cow. they put their face up against the cow. they have heat sensors on their nose to tell where the blood is close to the skin. they shave the area with their teeth before they cut. they lick the area to clean it, then they make a little divot with their front teeth, and they put their jaw up against that hole and they lick and drink and pee. it is completely creepy. who else does that? >> i'll tell you who else. a serial killer does that. however, vampire bats don't kill their victims. they just act like a mammal sized parasite. i've heard you say that the weirdness of bats was scientifically interesting to you. >> the faces of bats is a perfect example of that. if you take a bat that has a weird flap on its nose, you think that's a strange looking adornment, it turns out a lot of bats have food in their mouth when they're trying to echo locate and it is hard to shout when you have food in your mouth so they hum. that weird flap actually points echo location sound where they want it to go. >> most bats navigate and hunt for food in the dark using echo location in which they emit sound from their nose and mouth and then listen for the echo that bounces back to create a mind map of their surroundings. their often oversize ears also help. some have such sensitive hearing, they can detect the sound of an insect landing on a leaf. are bats social animals? >> it depends on the species. some spend their whole lives pretty much alone. other bats will mate for life. you have some species where there is a male and a harem of females. he gets to mate with all of them but they have their own likings in mind so they'll sometimes cheat with nearby males from other colonies. there's a whole soap opera going on with bats when it comes to mating. by the way, bat mothers are excellent mothers. imagine having a baby that weighed a quarter of what you weighed, and then the baby holds on to the mother's nipple with its teeth while she flies around. i weigh about 200 pounds. the equivalent would be if i took a 50-pound weight and put it on my nipple with a jumper cable and just went for a run. it's incredible what these mothers do. >> that's a visual that will be with me for a while, dan. for people living with h-i-v, keep being you. and ask your doctor about biktarvy. biktarvy is a complete, one-pill, once-a-day treatment used for h-i-v in certain adults. it's not a cure, but with one small pill, biktarvy fights h-i-v to help you get to and stay undetectable. that's when the amount of virus is so low it cannot be measured by a lab test. research shows people who take h-i-v treatment every day and get to and stay undetectable can no longer transmit h-i-v through sex. serious side effects can occur, including kidney problems and kidney failure. rare, life-threatening side effects include a buildup of lactic acid and liver problems. do not take biktarvy if you take dofetilide or rifampin. tell your doctor about all the medicines and supplements you take, if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, or if you have kidney or liver problems, including hepatitis. if you have hepatitis b, do not stop taking biktarvy without talking to your doctor. common side effects were diarrhea, nausea, and headache. if you're living with hiv, keep loving who you are. and ask your doctor if biktarvy is right for you. in north america alone there are 46 different species of bats. most of which are small insect eating varieties like the big brown bat and the little brown bat. but in the southeastern parts of the united states, in particular, texas, there's an abundance of one species. the mexican free tail bat. that bracken cave outside san antonio is believed to be home to the single largest colony of bats in the world. >> every year during the spring and summer, i think there are something like 30 million bats in the cave. >> in the cave? >> in the cave. in the summer. there are so many bats that the local weather stations use their doppler radar. they can see the cloud of bats coming out and spreading over the landscape to catch insects. >> really? >> it takes hours for them, there are so many commuting basically from wherever they're sleeping during the day to where their food is. >> they go the same way each time? >> yes. >> in an ecosystem, what role do bats have? >> yes. they're a really critical, key component. for instance, insect eating bats, because they consume so many insects, they play a large role in controlling insect populations. >> a normal size bat can eat up to 500 to 1,000 mosquitos in an hour that might be carrying diseases like zika or malaria. if you're in an area where there are a lot of mosquitoes and you see bats at night, you should be thankful for those bats. >> exactly. >> and that translates into big money for agriculture. the mexican free tail bat eat huge numbers of moths, protecting the corn crops of the region. >> people have estimated the financial impact of bats on the u.s. economy is that they're worth well over $1 billion a year every single year. >> really! >> yes. in terms of how many pesticides we don't need to use. >> but pest control isn't the only contribution to the ecosystem, they are fruit eating bats help disperse seeds and regenerate trees and plants previously cut down. and that's not the only benefit. >> bat droppings are full of nitrogen so they're good for crops and there are all kinds of stories about these caves in the united states being harvested for fertilizer and then for explosive for the civil war. >> there are also bats that serve as the only pollinators of particular types of bananas, mangos and even cacti. the muzzles of these are designed to fit perfectly in these cactus blossoms, blossoms that only open at night. >> agave which is used for tequila, that is pollinated by bats. >> exactly. who doesn't love tequila, right? just right there, that should be reason enough for people to love bats. >> despite the millions of bats in bracken cave, in north america, over the last decade and a half, bat populations have been plummeting all because of an outbreak they've been fighting of a disease called white nose syndrome. >> it is a cold loving fungus that grows on the bat when the bats are hibernating in the wintertime. unfortunately this has affected in the order of of a dozen different species of north american bats. in some cases, populations have declined over 90%. >> that's huge. >> yes. it is a terrible let the to bats and ironically, it is a disease that we brought to bats. the fungus that causes this disease is identical to fungus that naturally occurs in europe. the thought is it was accidentally brought over by people. it was accidentally introduced into bat caves. >> so while fighting a virus that potentially came to us from bats, bats are fighting a disease that potentially came from us. in fact no north american bats are known to have covid-19. among bat researchers, there is a concern that humans will give covid-19 to bats. >> emerging infectious diseases can go both ways. we do know that some other animals can get covid-19. for instance, the tigers at the bronx zoo. >> for now, most research involving handling of bats across the u.s. has been put on hold because humans are currently potentially the bigger threat to bats. there's a bridge. between ideas and inspiration, trauma and treatment. gained a couple of more pounds. that's good for the babies. between the moments that make us who we are, and keeping them safe, private and secure, there's webex. ♪ ♪ beautiful. for many of us, when we think of bats, we think of one thing. rabies. the threat of that virus is often misunderstood. >> it is not very common for americans to get rabies. >> dylan george is a former white house adviser for biological threat defense. >> in any given year there's anywhere from zero to one to two people might get infected from rabies in bats or potentially from foxes or raccoons or skunks. >> rabies has actually been around 2,000 years. for most of that time, if you got it, it was a death sentence. without treatment it is 99.99% deadly. one of the big problems in europe and the u.s. used to be wild rabid dogs. >> ancient medical experts developed a lot of odd ideas about how you would cure rabies. they used to believe that one way to stop rabies from killing you was to take a hair from the tail of the rabid dog and insert it into the bite wound, and this is the origin of the phrase "hair of the dog" which we talk about as hangover treatment. >> then along came louis pasteur, he had been working on a vaccine for years and eventually tried to try on it a young boy who had been bitten by a rabid dog. the vaccine worked. >> most of the cases in the united states do come from bats. but the risk is low. so unless you see a bat behaving very strangely, moving around during the day in a funny way, more than likely, the bat won't be a risk to an individual. >> okay. i'm coming. i'm coming. i'm coming, guys. >> joseph de anguli spends a lot of time answering questions about rabies. because he spends every day around bats. >> there you go. oliver, oliver is more fascinated with you all. come on, are you going to take what you want? go ahead. >> they all have their favorites, of course. >> known as new jersey's batman, he became fascinated with bats as a young boy. >> my father was a nightclub and restaurant and bar owner. so i was destined to be nocturnal. and i used to very often accompany my father to work. every so often i would go outside right before sundown and i would see these animals flying around the street lights. and my father pointed them out to me and he said those are bats. >> he quickly became obsessed he passed many childhood days in the bronx zoo ogling these feared and revered creatures. >> the stigma attached to bats was horrible and i felt like the animal that i was seeing in person was not matching the description of what people were giving me. around the world, bats are a sign of good luck, fertility, growth, everything you can think of. bats are usually the opposite of what they're considered here in america. >> as an adult, the batman became the showman as the lead singer of the '80s metal band rocks. >> it was a very different world. although it definitely paralleled the bat world. we were pretty much active at night and sleeping during the day. >> then in the early '90s after attending a lecture on bats, he decided to change careers. >> i just started getting more and more into the idea of doing something for something else other than myself. the rock star thing is a little meggal omaniacal. >> he decided to leave the rock world behind and start working with bats. >> when the baby bat is born -- >> he became a licensed -- a person who studies bats, and opened you the wildlife conservation center in new jersey. >> this is claudia. claudia is usually pretty tolerant of being handled. each bat has a different personality, different behavior, sometimes even a different look to them. >> over the last 25 years as an educator, one of his goals has been to make people less afraid of bats. because of that, he purposefully chose to feature fruit bats, native to africa, asia and australia. they're commonly known as the flying foxes. >> they are more attractive and more appealing to people. they look like my little flying chihuahuas i call them. they are much easier to use as educational subjects, and to get people's fears reversed. >> when the wing is around the face like that, they're using their wings as built-in blanket. >> he is part of a larger movement that has been taking place in the last three decades in the united states, teaching people why these creatures should be protected, not feared. >> we're all here for one purpose and one target and one direction. that's to help these animals. to help people understand why they need our assistance. they're so much like us. they are different looking, different colors, different sizes, different shapes, different importances, different jobs that they do and i keep going back to, that is really what i think at the end of the day, makes me love them so much. they are like people. when life gets back to normal, go outside and look up and go and find some bats. now, simparica trio simplifies protection. ticks and fleas? see ya! heartworm disease? no way! simparica trio is the first chewable that delivers all this protection. and simparica trio is demonstrated safe for puppies. it's simple: go with simparica trio. this drug class has been associated with neurologic adverse reactions, including seizures; use with caution in dogs with a history of these disorders. protect him with all your heart. simparica trio. that go out today get delivered. there are people who can only get food from amazon. when you come into work, that's what drives you. my little one, i would say he's definitely proud of me. every time he sees the blue prime trucks, he says, "daddy, there's your people!" i know every single one of us is here busting as hard as we can go every day to make sure these packages get delivered. as hard as we can go i geh. common bird.e. ooh look! over here! something much better. there it is. peacock, included with xfinity x1. remarkable. fascinating. -very. it streams tons of your favorite shows and movies, plus the latest in sports news and... huh - run! the newest streaming app has landed on xfinity x1. now that's... simple. easy. awesome. xfinity x1 just got even better with peacock premium included at no additional cost. no strings attached. just say "peacock" into your voice remote to start watching today. every year, we, as a species, encroach deeper and deeper into bat habitat. and those of other wild creatures. exposing ourselves to new and dangerous viruses. with the dramatic increase in travel, rise in global trade, we're now capable of spreading those viruses, far and wide. scientists warn that what we have created is the perfect storm for a new pandemic. >> we are, without a doubt, going to see more epidemics, like covid-19 or, perhaps, worse, unless we really change the way that we're interacting with our environment. >> the first major epidemic of the 21st century was sars, in 2003. other outbreaks, quickly, followed. in 2009, it was h1n1 or swine flu. 2012, mers. middle east respiratory syndrome. then, the large ebola outbreak in 2014. zika virus in 2015. and now, covid-19. >> they're increasing in frequency. they're coming quicker. they're going to spread quicker. they're going to infect for people. and they are going to cause more economic damage because we rely on that globalized economy, more and more each year. >> in a lab, nearly 6,500 miles from wuhan, researchers in berkeley, california, are looking to bats to find clues on how to help humans fight coronaviruses, like covid-19. >> i think, in a way, there is actually a lot we can learn from bats. you know, this group of animals that's been around for millions of years. how can we look at their history with viruses and take that knowledge, and think about therapeutics and treatments, for ourselves? >> what is it about bats that allows some of them to host these viruses, without showing any illness? >> that's the question that cara brook is trying to answer. she began studying bats in madagascar in 2012. she and her colleagues are investigating how the bats' immunity keeps them safe from harm. >> i have always been fascinated by bats as host sources of infectious diseases that transmit to humans. in the case of certain bat species, they appear to be perpetually primed to fight viral infection. >> scientists believe that understanding a bat's immune system can help develop a human battle plan for fighting these diseases, on a global scale. >> it's an opportunity. what is it about the bats' metabolism, or physiology? >> that might actually hold the answer for treating virus. >> if bats can handle thousands of different viruses, at a much higher load than humans can, let's find out why and use that. >> brook and her team infected the cells of two bat species with different viruses. then, they watched as the viruses spread and the bat cells mounted a strong defense. different than what would happen with humans. >> when a virus infects a cell, your immune response will recruit immune cells to the site to try and clear that infection. >> and the signal to all sorts of cells that have not become affected, a virus is here, turn on your defense system. >> and typically, this manifests as inflammation. >> in humans, inflammation, oftentimes in the form of fever or swelling, helps fight infection. but too much or inflammation that goes on for too long can do more harm than good. it can even cause death. >> typically, more than half of the damage that results in disease tends to be the damage of the immune system attacking the host itself. and we call that immunopathology. >> that is actually how the disease starts. >> but bats' immune systems don't respond the same way as humans. >> it seems that bats are able to mount robust immune responses, but not experience that inflammation. >> some bat species are actually missing the genes that we, and other mammals, have that trigger the inflammatory process. >> the adaptation. >> it doesn't appear that they get sick or very sick when they are carrying viruses that can be deadly in other people and animals. >> so could studying bat immunology help us, humans, create possible treatments to fight this current and future pandemic? what do you think is the greatest challenge, in terms of finding a treatment or cure? >> to my mind, the number of unknown viruses that are out there. i mean, we think there are about 1.7 million unknown viruses, of the type that can get into people. and we've got to get ready for these. find out what they are out there. get vaccines and drugs that affect, not just the one we know about but, the ones we're discovering right now. >> bats already contribute enormously to research that could one day be helpful to humans. they're being studied to see how they combat aging because they tend to live longer than other mammals their size. research on bats is also helping the fight against cancer. scientists are trying to understand why bats don't develop tumors like other mammals. and now, the possibility that they could help us fight current and future coronaviruses. >> people are working on vaccines. they're working on drugs. that's what we're looking for. and i see it as an opportunity. >> many people are surprised by the physiological similarities between bats and humans, and the information that we may be able to extract from that. in addition to the antiaging and cancer research studies, scientists have also been looking into saliva of bats. it's got blood-thinning agents. scientists are looking to see if there could be blood-thinning insights that would be helpful for humans. in the meantime, researchers agree that it's our job to protect these extraordinary creatures and their habitats. because, as we learned from the covid-19 pandemic, if we don't protect them, we're actually putting ourselves at risk. thanks for watching. good night. it is, admittedly, hard to say good evening at the end of a week that saw the worst day, yet, in terms of new coronavirus cases in this country. or the worst day ever, by far, in the state of florida. with nearly 9,000 new infections there. it is tough to end the day with 32 states now showing rising case counts. and just seven with declining numbers. harder, still. to look at that green line there for new cases in this country, and compare it to the european union, in pink. late today, diplomats told us that american travelers are unlikely to be allowed into member countries when

Transcripts For CNNW CNN Special Report 20200615

they seem to have got this bad impression in our cultures. there is definitely something odd about them. but just because they're odd doesn't mean they're bad. they are quite fascinating animals. the more you get to know them, the more fascinating they are. the more social creatures you see them become. and some of them are really beautiful. but bats do carry the viruses they carry and unfortunately, right now, it is very strange, we've probably got a bat virus that's killing people. good evening. i'm anderson cooper. when covid-19 first surfaced at the end of 2019, scientists wanted to know where it came from and how this deadly virus ended up in humans. although answers are not certain, it seems likely the coronavirus originated in bats. bats are diverse and ancient creatures and they've been on earth longer than we have. despite that, there is still a lot we don't know. tonight we take a look at this enigmatic animal and dig into the mystery of covid-19. in the last 20 years, some of the deadliest virus outbreaks have come from bats. sars, ebola, so what is it about these creatures and the way they spread pathogens that can be so dangerous. >> the fact bats are carrying viruses is not in and of itself extraordinary. every animal has its normal suite of viruses and bacteria that it normally carries. people do as well. we carry viruses, bacteria, the majority are benign or beneficial, some of which cause disease. it is the fact bats do tends to carry a higher proportion of virus that's have the ability to infect people. the question is really, why do we see some of these incredibly bad viruses coming out of bats? >> it was 7:00 p.m. on december 30th, 2019. when a package arrived at the wu han institute of virology. in it, medical samples from an infectious disease hospital. several patients were suffering from atypical pneumonia. doctors suspected a novel cyrus. the doctor's cell phone rang shortly there after. >> she got a call from her boss who said drop whatever you're doing and come back to the lab right now. >> dr. xi is known in china as the bat woman. she's one of the leading experts on bat-borne diseases. >> she is at the central of e-merlinging diseases in wuhan. >> the biological four safety research is the highest level that exists. >> doctors feared the cluster of atypical pneumonia patients in wuhan might be infwektd the same family. viruses that caused the outbreak of sars in 2003. severe acute respiratory syndrome. >> more and more people were getting infected. we started to see on chinese social media in particular, the disease was growing. >> in new york, ecohealth alliance, a nonprofit organization devoted to tracking emerging diseases, began to take notice. >> we started to get our first inkling that something unusual was happening by looking to social media in china. they mentioned there was an unusual cluster of respiratory disease going. on i remember talking on peter about the potential this might be another sars-like event. >> peter is the president of ecohealth alliance. he has worked closely with the wuhan institute of virology and dr. xi. their collaboration was crucial in skorg the origin of the 2003 sars outbreak. the world health organization assembled a team. with one of the world's top emerging disease experts to find the source of the deadly outbreak. these virus hunters were pursuing a theory that bats could be the origin of sars. the team headed to the region in southern china to try to solve the mystery of sars. >> xi and a take. researchers started exploring caves in southern china, looking for bats that could have been the origin of that first sars outbreak. >> dr. john epstein was a researcher on that expedition. >> when we go into an environment like a bat cave to catch bats, we have to protect ourselves. that includes gloves, we wear a respirator, like a mask. and then we wear eye protection. >> we walk into a place that could carry the next pandemic. that's a risky thing. we go in during the day to scope out where the bats are and try to work out what species are in there. then we set up nets outside and catch them when they fly out in the evening and go back in the morning. >> we do everything we can to ensure the safety and well being of the animals and we have a basic set of samples we correct. oral swaks, fecal pellets, blood. >> over the course of eight months, they samples caves all over southern china and then them back to the lab. >> it really took better part of eight years of consistent and persistent sampling, testing different populations around until we finally found the missing link we were looking for. >> that link was a bat virus gent genetically connected to sars. >> that was the nail in the coffin. >> the doctor told us bat-borne coronavirus there's cause more outbreaks. we need to find them before they find us. >> that original sars coronavirus in 2003 started in china. it spread to hong kong, taiwan and then the rest of the world causing 8,000 cases and 800 deaths. >> that same year, the chinese government approved the construction of the level four lab. the first in china. it opened in 2015 and is rated to study the world's deadliest viruses. >> this p-4 laboratory will majorly be used for research on highly pathogenic diseases for which there are currently no vaccines. >> flash forward to 2019 when the team in wuhan began to investigate the strange new virus. the genetic sequence of the virus was mapped fairly quickly. she compared it to a database of 500 coronaviruses previously identified by ecohealth alliances. there was a max. it became sars kv 2. the virus that calls covid-19. called covid-19 because it emerge in the 2019. it was 92% similar from a virus taken from a horseshoe bat in 2013. >> so what does that mean exactly? >> well, 96% is a different virus. so it's a bit like the difference between us and chimpanzees. what it tells us is where the virus probably came from, it means sars covid 2 probably came from bats and probably southern china. >> wuhan is 1,000 miles away from the southern sub tropical regions of w the province where they have the greatest risk of jumping from animals to humans. >> most of the viruses had been in southern china and wuhan is in central china. when she first found out there was a coronavirus outbreak in wuhan, she did initially wonder, is there some chance that it could have come from her lab? >> the wuhan institute of virology is just a few miles from where many of the first cases were reported. >> the doctor was facing this mounding pressure. that's very alarming, particularly for those who work within that lab. >> she and her colleagues immediately isolated the virus, sequentialed it, tested its behavior, and she was very relieved when she discovered that it didn't come from their laboratory. this virus had never been seen anywhere in the world. >> as her team raced to find answers, the disease was spreading fast. >> when the chinese minister of health announced that community spread was rampant in wuhan, and that asymptomatic spread was during, that meant the disease was out of control. >> the chinese government. they traced the source of the new virus to the western edge of a seafood market in wuhan where wild animals were being sold and slaughtered for food and medicine. >> i can't think of a better place to be a virus than a wet market. >> 16 years before the wuhan outbreak, animal traders caught the original sars virus also in a wildlife market. >> the viruses take hold, they swap around, and then people come and breathe it in and get exposed to it. that's how viruses spill over. >> in wuhan, the initial cluster of 41 cases of severe pneumonia, about half those patients had been to that market or worked in that market or had some degree of contact with it. >> the chinese government shut down the market. early on, tried to keep information from spreading. communicating little about the early cases. >> not only was it shut down, it was also cord onlied off. you had police at nearly every corner. >> months later, the chinese centers for disease control and prevention announce that had while the new virus was found in several locations in the wuhan market, all the animals they sampled tested negative. since then other theories about the possible source of the virus have emerged. >> one of the their business circulated baltimore this originated from a wildlife trammer. somebody who has brought in one of these wild creatures of the market for sale. >> the only information we have from the investigation of the market was that environmental samples were collected and of about 580 samples collected, about 37 of them came back positive for sars covid 2. >> dr. epstein says the jury is still out on whether the wuhan market is ground zero for covid-19. but he agrees, they are the breeding grounds for the next disaster waiting to happen. >> why wouldn't china just shut down markets that are selling exotic species of animals? 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that's what is known as zoonotic spillover when diseases cross from animals to people. sometimes it goes from an animal to a human and then transmission going forward is human to human. that's called community spread. >> perhaps the best exam of that would be hiv. the transmission happened from primates to humans many years ago and now it is transmitted human to human. >> covid-19 is another example. but you can also have a disease that stays in a particular type of animal which then acts as a reservoir. in that case, humans are usually infected by an animal, not another person, like with rabies. >> sometimes viruss are carried by mosquitos. a mosquito might bite an animal which carries that virus and then bite a person and transmit it like flying syringes. >> no matter how a disease makes the transition from wildlife to humans, one thing is consistent. there has to be contact. >> oftentimes it is through indirect or accidental exposure. an animal that is infected may contaminate food or water people are eating and that's how they get exposed. >> with these big open markets, there is a lot of people so there is is a very conductive environment. >> it is a opportunity for animals that might have never have contact with each other in the wild, being artificially being brought into a highly dense and unhygienic situation. >> how do things spread from bats to either humans or other animals? through droppings or -- >> it probably varies from one case to another. >> typically, bats shed viruss the same way humans do. in saliva, urine and feces. if a bat is highly stressed and sick, does it shed more virus? >> absolutely. that's one of the issues with these wet markets. for bats, they have coronavirus that's they've adapted to and they're totally fine. you put them in a wet market situation. they get sick, they get stressed, they succumb. just like you if you work too hard and you come down with that flu. the bats get overworked. >> sometimes with the spillover there can be an intermediary animal. so bats transmit to another species and then species transmits to humans. in the case of covid-19, as of now, no one can say for sure how it ended up in people. >> all the evidence we have suggests this was a virus that originated in bats and made its way into people through a natural process. >> but at this point, the greatest risk getting covid-19 is from other humans. not bats. >> really, what matters is the way that we interact with bats. most epidemics are driven by human behavior. it doesn't matter that these viruses are happily existing in a wild animal in the middle of a forest. when people enkroex only environment, we're creating opportunity for a bat virus to get into people. hey picked the wrong getaway driver. they're going to be paying for this for a long time. they will, but with accident forgiveness allstate won't raise your rates just because of an accident, even if it's your fault. cut! sonny. was that good? 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>> if you think about what the animals are that are active in the air, during the day, it's birds. and by being active at night, bats are not competing directly with birds. so the bats basically fulfill all the same ecological roles that birds do, only they do it at night. >> bats are unique mammals. though structurally in some ways they're similar to humans. >> so bats have four limbs. two of them are taxed to the wings. >> two of them are the wings. yes. they have all the same bones. the upper article, the forearms, the wrist bones, and then the bones that support the end of the wing are long finger and hand bones. >> bats' living and eating habits vary widely across the 4121 species that exist. there are some that ooms roost in trees, others you understand leaves, some in caves. some bats eat insects, others, fruit or even fish and frogs. these species, some of them are living right next on each other. >> absolutely. one square mile of rain forest in for instance the brazilian amazon, would have 100 species of bat. >> the smallest bat in the world, it is this tiny thing that thailand that weighs less than a penny. the biggest bat in the world has more than a six-foot wing span. there is a bat that lives in the cloud forests of ecuador that has the longest tongue of any mammal. it has a tongue that is one and a half times the length of its body. if you stick your arm straight out in front of and you imagine your tongue could touch your fingers, it is three times that long so it can get into a flower to pollinate. >> so relative to its body size, if i stick my arm out, if my tongue could be to the end of my arm, this bat's tongue would go two more arms? >> that's right. >> there are a number of cute bats including one dubbed the panda bat. and another, tube nosed bat, discovered in 2017 which made news for its resemblance to the former hair style of in sync's lance bass. >> there's the honduran white bat which looks like a cotton ball. you have your flying foxes that look like puppies but then you have some really ugly bats like wrinkle face bats. i like the ugly bats more than the cute bats. >> a bat that only a mother and dan can love. >> blood feeding bats, or vampire bats do exist. but they're only about .2% of all bat species. they live in central and south america and prey on the blood of birds, pigs and cattle. >> vampire bats are super weird among bats. they sneak up on a cow. they put their face up against the cow. they have heat sensors on their nose to tell where the blood is close to the consistent. they shave the area with their teeth before they cut. they lick the area to clean and it then they make a divot and they put their jaw in and they lick and drink and pee. it is completely creamy. who else does that? >> i'll tell you who else. a serial killer does that. however, vampire bats don't kill their victims. they just act like a mammal sized parasite. i've heard you say that the weirdness of bats was scientifically interesting to you. the faces of bats is a case of it. if you take a bat that has a weird animal on its nose. you think that's a strange looking adornment, it turns out a lot of bats have food in their mouth when's they're trying to echo locate and it is hard to shout when you have food in your mouth so they hum. that weird animal points the echo location sound where they want it to go. >> most bats navigate and hundred for food in the dark using echo location in which they emit sound from their nose and mouth and then listen for the echo that comes back to create a mind ma'am of their surroundings. their often oversize ears also help. some have such sensitive hearing, they can detect the sound of an insect landing on a leaf. are bats social animals? >> it depends on the species. some spend their whole lives pretty much alone. other bats will mate for life. you have some species where there is a male and a harem of females. he gets to mate with all of them but they have their own likings in mind so they'll sometimes cheat with nearby males from other colonies. there's a whole soap opera going on when it comes to mating. by the way, bat mothers are excellent mothers. imagine having a baby that weighed a quarter of what you weighed, and then the baby holds on to the mother's nipple with its teeth while she flies around. i weigh about 200 pounds. the egi quiquivalent would be i took a 50-pound weight and looked it on and went for a run. it is incredible. >> that's a visual that will be with me for a while, dan. ther. get fructis sleek & shine with moroccan argan oil. hair is super sleek even in 97% humidity. no parabens. fructis sleek & shine. by garnier, naturally! is now more important than ever. at sprint, we understand saving money for your family that's why we're offering our best unlimited deal. switch and get four lines of unlimited for just $100 a month. that's right - four lines, for $100 bucks! if that's not enough, we're throwing in four samsung galaxy phones...on us. and now, sprint customers enjoy access to expanded coverage on the t-mobile network. shop from the comfort of your home at sprint.com or come see us in our stores. for people with hearing loss, visit sprintrelay.com. why are we doing this? 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>> in the cave. there are so many bats that the local weather stations use their doppler radar. they can see the cloud of bats coming out and spreading over the landscape to catch insects. it takes hours for them. there are so many commuting basically from wherever they're sleeping during the day. >> they go the same way each time? >> yes. >> in an ecosystem, what role do bats have? >> yes. they're a really critical, key component. for instance, insect eating bats, because they consume so many insects, they play a large role in controlling insect bomb lagss. >> a normal size bat can eat up to 500 to 1,000 mosquitos in an hour that might be carrying diseases like zika or malaria. if you're in an area where there are a lot of bats at night, you should be thankful for those bats. >> exactly. >> and that trags lats into big money for agriculture. the mexican free tail bat eat huge numbers of moths, protecting the corn crops of the region. >> people have estimated the financial impact of bats on the u.s. economy is that they're worth well over $1 billion a year every single year. >> really! >> yes. in terms of how many pesticides we don't need to use. >> but pest control isn't the only value. they are fruit eating bats help disperse seeds and regenerate trees and plants previously cut down. and that's not the only benefit. >> bat droppings are full of nitrogen so they're good for crops and there are all kinds of stories about these caves in the united states being harvested for fertilizer and then for explosive for the civil war. >> there are also bats that serve as the only pollinators of particular bananas, mangos and even cactii. the muzzles of these are designed to fit perfectly in these blossom that's only open at night. >> agave which is used for tequila, that is pollinated by bats. >> exactly. who doesn't love tequila, right? just right there, that should be reason enough for people to love bats. >> despite the millions of bats in bracken cave, in north america, over the last decade and a half, bat populations have been plummeting all because of an outbreak they've been fighting of a disease called white nose syndrome. >> it is a cold loving fungus when they're hibernating in the winter time. this has affected in the order of a dozen different species of north american bats. in some cases, populations have declined over 90%. >> that's huge. >> yes. it is a terrible let the to bats and ironically, it is a disease that we brought to bats. the fungus that cause this is disease is identical to fungus that naturally occurs in europe. the thought is it was simply brought over by people. it was accidentally introduced into bat caves. >> so while fighting a virus that potentially came to us from bats, bats are fighting a disease that potentially came from us. in fact no north american bats are known to have covid-19. among bat researchers, there is a concern that humans will give covid-19 to bats. >> emerging infectious diseases can go both ways. we do know that some other animals can get covid-19. for instance, the tigers at the bronx zoo. >> for now, most research involving handling of bats across the u.s. has been put on hold because humans are potentially the bigger threat to bats. that's why td ameritrade designed a first-of-its-kind, personalized education center. their award-winning content is tailored to fit your investing goals and interests. and it learns with you, so as you become smarter, so do its recommendations. so it's like my streaming service. well except now, you're binge learning. for a limited time, get up to $800 when you open and fund an account. call 866-300-9417 or visit tdameritrade.com/learn. ♪ hey it's me, lily from at&t. i'm back working from home and here to help. hey lily, i'm hearing a lot about 5g. should i be getting excited? 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(how strong you can be.) and remember this; there's a crack in everything for a reason. how else can the light get in? ♪ tomorrow starts today. a book that you're ready to share with the world? get published now, call for your free publisher kit today! for many of us, when we think of bats, we think of one thing. rabies. the threat of. virus is often misunderstood. >> it is not very common for americans to get rabies. >> dylan george is a former white house adviser for biological threat defense. >> in any gix year there's anywhere from zero to one to two people might get infected from rabies in bats or potentially from foxes or raccoons or skunks. >> if you got rabies, it was death sentence. without treatment it is 99.99% deadly. one of the big problems in europe and the u.s. used to be wild rabid dogs. >> ancient medical experts developed a lot of odd ideas about how you would cure rabies. they used to believe that one way to stop rabies from killing you was to take a hair from the tail of the rabbid dog and inset it into the bite wound which this was where the term hair of the dog came from. >> then along came louis pasture. he had been working on a vaccine for years and eventually tried to try on it a young boy who had been bitten by a rabid dog. the vaccine worked. >> most of the cases in the united states do come from bats. but the risk is low. so unless you see a bat behaving very strangely, moving around during the day in a funny way, more than likely, the bat won't be a risk to an individual. >> okay. i'm coming. i'm coming. >> joseph spends a lot of time answering questions about rabies. because he spends every day around bats. >> there you go. oliver, oliver is more fascinated with you all. are you going to take what you want? go ahead. >> they all have their favorites, of course. >> known as new jersey's batman, he became fascinated with bats as a young boy. >> my father was a nightclub and restaurant and bar owner. so i was destined to be nocturnal. every so often i would go outside right before sundown and i would see these animals flying around the street lights. and my father pointed them out to me and he said those are bats. >> he quickly became obsessed and passedle childhood days in the bronx zoo ogling these feared and revered creatures. >> i felt like what i was seeing was not matching the description of what people were giving me. around the world, bats are a sign of good luck, fertility, growth, everything you can think of. bats are usually the opposite of what they're considered here in america. >> as an adult, the batman game showman as the lead singer of the 80s metal band rocks. >> it was a very different world. although it definitely paralleled the bat world. we were pretty much active at night and sleeping during the day. >> then in the early '90s after danieling a lecture on bats, he decided to change careers. >> i just started getting more and more into the idea of doing something for something else other than myself. the rock star thing is a little meg lo -- >> he decided to leave the rock world behind and start working with bats. >> when the baby bat is born -- >> he became licensed person who studies bat. and opened you the wildlife conservation central in new jersey. >> this is claudia. claudia is you shally pretty tolerant of being handled. each bat has a different personality, different behavior, sometimes even a different look to them. >> over the last 25 years as an educator, one of his goals has been to make people less afraid of bats. because of. he chose to feature fruit bats, native to africa, asia and australia. they're commonly known as the flying foxes. >> they are more attractive and more appealing to people. they look like my little flying chihuahuas, i call they will. they are much easier to use as educational subjects, and to get people's fears reversed. >> when the wing is around the face like that, they're using their wings as ability-in blanket. >> he is part of a larger ools movement that has been taking place in the last three decades teaching people why they should be protected. not feared. >> we're all here for one purpose and one target and one direction. that's to help these animals. to help people understand why they need our assistance. they're so much like us. they are different looking, different colors, different sizes, different shapes, different importances, different jobs that they do and i keep going back to, that is really what i think at the end of the day, makes me love them so much. they are like people. when life gets back to normal, go outside and look up and go and find some bats. an entirely new feeling, the difference between excellence and mastery is all the difference in the world. the lexus es. a product of mastery. experience amazing at your lexus dealer. let's be honest. quitting smoking is hard. like, quitting every monday hard. quitting feels so big. so try making it smaller, and you'll be surprised at how easily 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haven't held. all the dinners you didn't share with friends. the trips you haven't taken. keep track of them. each one means one less person vulnerable, one less person exposed, and one step closer to a healthier community. so for now, keep your distance. but don't lose count. we'll have some catching up to do. every year we as a species enkroe encroach deeper and deeper into bat habitat. exposing ourselves to new viruses. with the dramatic increase in travel, rising trade, we're now capable of spreading those viruses far and wide. scientists warn that what we have created is the perfect storm for a new pandemic. >> we are, without a doubt, going to see more epidemics like covid-19 or worse unless we change the way that we're interacting with our environment. >> the first major epidemic of the 21st century was sars in 2003. others quickly followed. 2001, h1n1. mers. then the large ebola outbreak in 2014, zika in 2015 and now covid-19. >> they're increasing in frequency. they're coming quicker. they're going to spread quicker. they're going to infect more people and they're going to cause more economic damage because we rely on a globalized economy more and more each year. >> in a lab, researchers in berkeley, california are looking to bats to find clues on how to help humans fight coronaviruses like covid-19. >> i think in a way there is actually a lot we can learn from bats. these group of animals has been around for millions of years. how can we look at their history with viruses and think about therapeutics for ourselves. >> what is it about bats that allows some of them to host these viruses without showing any illness? >> that's the question that kara brook is trying to answer. brook is a disease e kcologist. she and her colleagues are investigating how the bats immunity keeps them safe from harm. >> i've always been fascinated by bats as host sources of infectious diseases that transmit to humans. in the case of certain bat species, they appear to be per pel actually primed to fight viral infection. >> scientists believe that understanding a bat's immune system can help develop a human battle plan for fighting these diseases on a global scale. >> it's an opportunity. what is it about the bats' metabolism that they've got that we could use? >> that might actually hold an answer for treating the virus? >> if bats can handle thousands of different viruses, let's find out why and use that. >> brook and her team infected the cells of two bat species with two different viruses. then they watched as the viruses spread and the bat cells mounted a strong defense, different than what would happen with humans. >> when a virus infects a cell, your immune response will recruit immune cells to the site to try to clear that infection. >> and the signal to all sorts of cells that have not become infected, a virus is here. turn on your defense system. >> and typically, this manifests as inflammation. >> in humans, inflammation, oftentimes in the form of fever or swelling, helps fight infection. too much or inflammation that goes on for too long can do more harm than good. it can even cause death. >> typically, more than half of the damage that results in disease tends to be the damage of the immune system attacking the host itself, and we call that immunopathology. >> that's actually how the disease starts. >> but bats' immune systems don't respond the same way as humans. >> it seems that bats are able to mount robust immune responses but not experience that inflammation. >> some bats species are actually missing the genes that trigger the inflammatory process that we and other ma malls have. >> the same adaptation favor them to carry virus. >> it doesn't appear they get sick or very sick when carrying viruses that could deadly in people or animals. >> so could it help us human recite possible treatments to help us fight this current and future pandemic? >> what do you think is the greatest challenge in terms of finding a treatment or cure? >> well, to my mind, the greatest challenge is the number of unknown viruses that are out there. we think there are about 1.7 million of the type that can get into people. we've got to get ready for these, get vaccines and drugs that affect not just the ones we know about, but the ones we're discovering right now. >> bats already contribute enormously to research that could one day be helpful to humans. they tend to live longer than other mammals their size. they're also fighting in the help against cancer. scientists are trying to understand why bats don't develop tumors. and the possibility they could help fight current and future coronavirus. >> people are working on vaccines. they're working on drugs. that's what we're looking for. i see it as an opportunity. >> many people are surprised by the physiological similarities between bats and humans and the information that we may be able to extract from that. in addition to antiaging and cancer research, scientists have been looking into the saliva of bats. scientists are looking to see if there could be blood thinning insides that would be helpful for humans. in the meantime, researchers agree it is our job to protect these extraordinary creatures and their habitats. if we don't protect them, we're actually putting ourselves at risk. thanks for watching. good night. hello. i'm jake tapper in washington where the state of our union is demanding change. we begin with breaking news out of atlanta. violence and protesters and dozens arrested after another black man was killed by a white policeman. the facts of the case are under investigation right now. but we know that rayshard brooks, 27, was shot and killed outside a wendy's drive-thru after a struggle with police. the head of the georgia bureau of investigation has said that brooks fired one of the officers' tasers at them, then turned presumably to flee after

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