60 Minutes - 10/18/2020: Putin’s Public Enemy, Dr. Fauci, Hell Flight

Episode Date: October 19, 2020

Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the leading voices on the coronavirus pandemic, favors public health measures over a national lockdown. He sits down with CBS News Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook. In his first American television interview since nearly losing his life after being poisoned, Alexey Navalny tells Lesley Stahl he is sure Vladimir Putin is responsible and that President Trump needs to come out against those types of attacks. Sharyn Alfonsi reports on the March COVID-19 outbreak on a cruise ship and the passengers’ flight back to the U.S. that had the ingredients for a super-spreader event -- one the CDC knew about and did not stop. Those stories on this week's "60 Minutes." To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Meet Tim's new Oreo Mocha Ice Caps with Oreo in every sip. Perfect for listening to the A-side, or B-side, or Bull-side. Order yours on the Tim's app today at participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner. The Grady Mustard Exclusions and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. Vladimir Putin's main political rival is recovering from an assassination attempt by poisoning. We travel to Germany, where he is under state protection, to find out who he thinks did it and why.

I think for Putin, why he's using this chemical weapon to do both, kill me and, you know, terrify others. And Putin is enjoying it. You have said you think that Mr. Putin's responsible. I don't think I'm sure that he's responsible. Dr. Anthony Fauci has received death threats and is now under the protection of federal agents. We talked to him about that, the recent spike in coronavirus cases, prospects for a vaccine, and pandemic politics. How bad would things have to get for you to advocate a national lockdown? They'd have to get really, really bad.

First of all, the country is fatigued with restrictions. Someone described it as a flight from hell. He's talking about the evacuation of sick Americans after a COVID outbreak on a European cruise. It was the beginning of the pandemic. And as you'll hear tonight, passengers on that flight from hell were surprised how their own government responded. And all of a sudden, this man comes walking up.

He's heading like he's going to the bathroom. And he just starts like a weeble wobble. And he just hits his head on the wall. And he falls to the ground. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi.

I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. You've got unlimited access to music, time now that's limited the pc insiders world's elite mastercard gets you unlimited pc optimum points free grocery delivery and time back for what matters save time and earn eleven hundred dollars in average value each year the pc insiders world's elite mastercard the card for living unlimited. Conditions apply to all benefits. Visit PCFinancial.ca for details. Value is for illustrative purposes only. Alexei Navalny is the leader of the opposition in Russia who has survived an assassination attempt by poisoning. He's one in a long list of Vladimir Putin's critics who have been victims of unsolved shootings, suspicious suicides,

and poisonings. We first met Alexei Navalny three years ago when he was running for president against Putin. Now Navalny is recuperating in Berlin, where we went this past week after Germany granted us special permission to travel there despite COVID restrictions. When we sat down with Navalny, he told us he was on an airplane on August 20th when he began to feel strange and then very, very sick. I said to the flight attendant, and I kind of shocked him with my statement, well, I was poisoned, and I'm going to die. And I immediately lay down under his feet.

Alexei Navalny was on a flight to Moscow from Siberia where he'd been campaigning against Putin's party in a local election when he collapsed with no pain but knowing he was dying. Actually, every cell of your body just telling you, that's body, we are done. One of the other passengers turned on his phone and captured Navalny moaning in anguish. The pilot made an emergency landing in Omsk, where medics, thinking Navalny must be a drug addict, administered the usual treatment for an overdose, and rushed him to a

local hospital, where they said he wasn't poisoned, but wouldn't let him leave for days. Well, it was a big fight, and they thought that after 48 hours, this poison would be untraceable. And they just keep me there until these 48 hours will be gone. Navalny is under constant surveillance. His wife, Yulia, says government agents were at the hospital controlling access to her husband, and she believes calling the shots. At the time, Navalny was in a coma, unaware that his wife, Yulia, was waging a public campaign to encourage Western

diplomatic pressure and... Did you write a letter to Putin? Yeah, I did it. Dear Mr. Free my husband. I wrote, like, I insist that he should do it. I demand you free my husband. Yeah. It was an online campaign, let him out. And Putin thought it would be safe for him,

just let me out after 48 hours. So after 48 hours, the Russian government allowed him to be flown by air ambulance to a hospital in Berlin known for its experience with victims of poison attacks. And I gather they suspected poison right away? Yes, of course. Meanwhile, his team in Siberia searched his hotel room, collecting things Navalny may have touched, like this water bottle, which the doctors in Berlin sent along with a blood sample to a German military lab

to see exactly what the poison was. And the answer was Novichok. They discovered Novichok, this nerve agent, in my blood, inside of body, on my body, and all this bottle from the hotel. So that's why we now we know that I was poisoned in the hotel, because I, well, it's again, it's just a pure speculation because no one knows what happened exactly. But I think that when I was maybe put some clothes with this poison on me, I touch it with the hand and then I seep from the bottle. So this nerve agent was not inside of a bottle, but on the bottle. Novichok is a highly toxic nerve agent said to be 10 times more potent than sarin gas. Labs in France and Sweden corroborated the finding.

There's no doubt it was military-grade Novichok. Maybe it's the most toxic agent invented by the humans. So it's a new type of Novichok, which proves that, unfortunately, Putin has a developing new program of this chemical weapon, which is forbidden. The Russians have said that they destroyed all these chemical weapons. That's why, actually, they deny everything,

because it means that they still have this Novichok. So it means they're not just violating with the keeping it. They continue to improve it. And there's no doubt that Russia is the only place where that could have come from. This is absolutely correct. It's a banned substance. It's a banned substance. I think for Putin, why he's using this chemical weapon to do both, kill me and, you know, terrify others.

It's something really scary with the people just drop dead without, there are no gun, there are no shots. And in a couple of hours, you will be dead and without any traces on your body. It's something terrifying. and Putin is enjoying it. You have said you think that Mr. Putin's responsible. I don't think I'm sure that he's responsible. Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says the charge is completely baseless and unacceptable. But Angela Merkel of Germany and Emmanuel Macron of France have persuaded the European Union to impose sanctions over this. Well, all these leaders have signed on except

Donald Trump. Yes, I have noticed it. Is it important to you that he condemned this action? So I think it's extremely important that everyone, of course, including and maybe in the first row president of United States, to be very against using chemical weapon in the 21st century. But why would Putin want to poison Alexei Navalny? When we first met Navalny three years ago, he was running against Putin for president. He had made a name for himself by getting his hands on incriminating internal financial documents related to high-level officials and posting them on a blog. Did these documents that you got prove corruption? Absolutely. I work as a whistleblower, and I'm not afraid to announce the names. He says he found that the Kremlin's inner circle was accumulating vast amounts of wealth and published pictures of multiple homes and yachts. He moved on to airing

documentaries on YouTube with video of the officials' lavish lifestyle. And it's something very special about Mr Putin, that he's crazy about money, personal money, about his family being rich, his friends, like all his people who were served with him in the KGB. All of them, they are billionaires. That's why fighting corruption means for him that he's fighting me. You know, I'm smiling because here you are. You have survived the most potent nerve agent there is.

And you are as fiery and worked up about Putin and what's going on in this country as you were when I met you a couple of years ago. Well, I'm glad. I'm glad that I survived. His blog inflamed so much outrage in 2017 that tens of thousands of Russians took to the streets against Putin. When Navalny called for a second round of protests three months later, he was arrested before he even left his apartment building. He's been jailed so many times, he's lost count. He's been beaten, had green dye with acid splashed in his face.

And now he can add poisoning to his resume and blame President Putin. How can you say that? Why wouldn't it be one of the oligarchs whom you've embarrassed by, as you say, exposing their corruption? Even for oligarchs, it's impossible to get this Novichok. It's not something you can buy in the store, even if you have millions or billions of dollars. Maybe more important, you cannot use it. You will kill yourself and everyone around because it's very difficult to, you know, contain it. Yes. And then this huge cover up operation. There is no criminal investigation so far. If Putin is not responsible, why there is no investigation? And look what they're doing right now. Like Putin with the conversation with

the French President Macron, he said, well, Navalny poisoned himself. Seriously. Mr Putin told the president of France that you poisoned yourself? Yes, it was just to, you know, annoy him. Putin is contending with rounds of protests in the far eastern part of the country, with people taking to the streets for the past three months. Navalny thinks the attempt on his life is connected.

Despite his controlling police, judges, courts, media, and everything, still he's like, he understands that he's surrounded by protests, and it's increasing. So that's why they decided to, you know, for extreme measures. This is what he looked like just a month ago, soon after his doctors brought him out of an induced coma, rail thin, with a sickly pallor. This photo was taken the first day he saw his children after being taken off a ventilator.

So you were in a coma, and then you woke up. And what happened? After this coma I just jumped to the long period of kind of crazy hallucinations and several you know steps of realizing where I am, who I am and I could not speak and I could not write. How has this affected your family? Well, it was a difficult situation, but they stand it and did great. Including your children. Including children. Your son is 12 and your daughter is in college. Right. Those are tough ages to realize that your father came close to being assassinated. Did they say to you, Pop, Dad, you have to stop? Absolutely not. No, absolutely not. I'm a very lucky man because I have all support from my family.

You'd almost have to at this point. Yeah. Navalny, his wife, his bodyguard, and I went out for a walk in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, and a phalanx of police showed up. So you certainly travel with a lot of protection. Yes, I have a lot of security. He's under the protection of the German government because there's concern he could be the target of another poisoning. And yet he said he's determined to return to Moscow in a couple of months, as soon as he's 100 percent, and resume his work where he left off, campaigning against Vladimir Putin.

You know, you used to be known as the man who had no fear. But what about your family? Do you ever think that you are putting them in danger? That is the toughest part, yes. I don't feel any fear, but children, what is kind of really horrible thought, if they will try to use this Novichok somewhere around my apartment where my children is coming, like, you know, this door or something.

Everyone can touch it. But anyway, we should fight these people because they will never stop. They will poison someone else. They will poison more people. Well, how do you feel now? Are you back, totally back? You seem to be.

I still need some time to recover, and I'm working on it. But you do go to rehab. Do you go every day? Yes. To learn from the scratch how to move, how to do some things. They are interesting that I feel kind of a bit a wooden or a tin man, like from the Wizard of Oz, because the body lost all flexibility at all. Interesting how it's worked. I have no idea. Now it's difficult movies for me, for example, pick something from the ground. What about the psychological effect of having, knowing that somebody tried to kill you, came that close?

You know, I think it's a good thing. It's very useful for politicians maybe facing death once because it changes you a bit. So maybe, ironically, I became kind of more human after these facing deaths. Sometimes historic events suck.

But what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling. History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping history-telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck, available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Now, Dr. John LaPook on assignment for 60 minutes. This weekend, Americans face another surge in the COVID-19 pandemic. Infections have passed the 8 million mark and are rising rapidly.

There are more than 218,000 dead. During the course of the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci has been the physician most Americans have relied upon for their information. But now, instead of worrying solely about developing vaccines or therapeutics, Dr. Fauci finds himself unhappily caught up in presidential politics, under protection from death threats, and forced to defend science itself. With 16 days until the election, we began our conversation with a question many have been asking. Are you planning to vote in person? I'm going to try to vote in person. I like the atmosphere of going and voting. I think a lot of people want to vote in person, but they're afraid.

If someone asked me, I'm 75 years old, I have hypertension, and I'm a little bit concerned, alleviate your anxiety, do an absentee ballot, no problem. But they could vote in person if they were careful. Right. Yes. Dr. Anthony Fauci has been a voice of logic and stability since the pandemic began. And right now, he's worried we're heading in the wrong direction. Worldwide, the number of new cases is surging at an alarming rate, as seen in this map by Johns Hopkins University. This week, Russia reported a record number of infections, and cases are spiking in the U.K., France, and Italy. When you have a million deaths and over 30 million infections globally, you cannot say that we're on the road to essentially getting out of this. So quite frankly,

I don't know where we are. It's impossible to say. What Dr. Fauci knows for sure is here in the United States, infections are beginning to rise as the weather gets colder and people congregate indoors. Over the last two weeks, new cases have gone up in at least 38 states. How bad would things have to get for you to advocate a national lockdown? They'd have to get really, really bad. First of all, the country is fatigued with restrictions. So we want to use public health measures not to get in the way of opening the economy, but to being a safe gateway to opening the economy.

So instead of having an opposition, open up the economy, get jobs back, or shut down. No, put shutdown away and say, we're going to use public health measures to help us safely get to where we want to go. Those measures were not in place last month in the Rose Garden when President Trump announced the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Were you surprised that President Trump got sick? Absolutely not. I was worried that he was going to

get sick when I saw him in a completely precarious situation of crowded, no separation between people, and almost nobody wearing a mask. When I saw that on TV, I said, oh my goodness, nothing good can come out of that. That's got to be a problem. And then sure enough, it turned out to be a super spreader event. After three days in the hospital with COVID-19, President Trump returned to the White House and soon started holding political rallies. I'm in such great shape. Earlier this month, the Trump campaign released this television ad. It features what appears to be a glowing remark from Dr. Fauci

on President Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. I can't imagine that anybody could be doing more. Stunning. Fauci says his words were taken out of context, but this week the ad continued to run in key battleground states. I do not and nor will I ever publicly endorse any political candidate, and here I am, they're sticking me right in the middle of a campaign ad, which I thought was outrageous.

I was referring to something entirely different. I was referring to the grueling work of the task force, that, God, we were knocking ourselves out seven days a week. I don't think we could possibly have done any more than that. Did the steam start to come out of your ears? No, it did. Quite frankly, I got really ticked off. Dr. Fauci has become the most visible doctor in America. Yet he says his ability to communicate with the public is not always under his control. During this pandemic, has the White House been controlling when you can speak with

the media? You know, I think you'd have to be honest to say yes. I certainly have not been allowed to go on many, many, many shows that have asked for me. One of the most trusted voices in America, and yet you're not there. You're not allowed to talk with us. So can you understand the frustration that maybe there's been a restriction on the flow of information, on transparency? You know, I think there has been a restriction, John, but it doesn't, it isn't consistent. Another point of contention between Dr. Fauci and the White House has to do with masks. Dr. Fauci said the opposite. He said very strongly masks are not good. Then he changed his mind. He said masks are good. I'm okay with masks. At the beginning of the outbreak, Dr. Fauci recommended against routinely wearing masks, partly because he was concerned there

would be a shortage of surgical masks for health care workers. But a month later, Fauci reversed course after, he says, it turned out people without symptoms were a significant source of spread. And masks, even homemade ones, could help stop transmission. So let's see if we could put this to rest once and for all. It became clear that cloth coverings, things like this here, and not necessarily a surgical mask or an N95, cloth coverings work.

So now there's no longer a shortage of masks. Number two, meta-analysis studies show that, contrary to what we thought, masks really do work in preventing infection. No doubt. So no doubt. So when you find out you were wrong, you don't double down. No, when you find out you're wrong, it's a manifestation of your honesty to say, hey, I was wrong, I did subsequent experiments, and now it's this way. The benefit of masks has been supported by evidence that under certain conditions, the virus can travel more than the six feet suggested by social distancing guidelines. As seen in this video, tiny aerosolized droplets can float,

like cigarette smoke, across a room. Over time, without good ventilation, they can build up and pose a risk of infection. Research shows a mask can reduce that risk. Dr. Fauci says he's optimistic about the early use of experimental therapies like remdesivir and the monoclonal antibodies given to President Trump. Do you find it at all ironic that the president, who has not always consistently followed the advice of public health officials and scientists,

seems to have been made better by science? Well, I don't think it's ironic. I think it's fortunate that the president of the United States benefited from science. You know, I think deep down he believes in science. If he didn't, he would not have entrusted his health to the very competent physicians at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. But at the same time, he hasn't worn masks consistently. He's pushed back against things you've said. See, I think that's less an anti-science than it's more a statement.

What kind of a statement? You know, a statement of strength, like we're strong, we don't need a mask, that kind of thing. He sometimes equates wearing a mask with weakness. Does that make sense to you? No, it doesn't, of course not. Do you have a feeling that there is sometimes an all-out war against science? Oh, yeah. I mean, particularly over the last few years. There's an anti-authority feeling in the world. And science has an air of authority to it. So people who want to push back on authority tend to, as a sidebar, push back on science. Tell me about them.

How are they? Any good? Dr. Fauci is married to Dr. Christine Grady, a bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health. We first met her back in 2016 during a rare, relaxed evening of homemade rigatoni with Italian sausage. Salute. She prefers to stay out of the spotlight,

but agreed to sit down with us. This pandemic has been rough on families all across America. What about yours? Yeah, it's been rough on ours in a way that I think is similar to many other families. We haven't been able to see our children very often. I can't see my mom very often. How old is your mom? She's 96. And she got COVID. And she got COVID. Really? And she's in

an assisted living facility. And so they understandably have very restricted visiting. And so all of those kinds of things are really have been hard for us, just like they have been for many, many families. You get to see a Tony Fauci that the rest of us don't see. What frustrates him? The fact that, you know, the same message has to sort of be reiterated over and over again because either people don't hear it or they don't believe it or they don't adopt it. Once an avid runner, at 79, Dr. Fauci now power walks, flanked by federal agents. What's that all about? That's sad.

The very fact that a public health message to save lives triggers such venom and animosity to me that it results in real incredible threats to my life and my safety. But it bothers me less than the hassling of my wife and my children. They've been threatened. Yeah. I mean, like, give me a break. Have there been death threats against you and your family? All of you, your daughters? Not just me, but harassment, harassment against the rest of the family. As the director of infectious disease research for the government, Dr. Fauci told us not one pathogen he studied, from HIV

to H1N1 to Ebola, has been as puzzling as SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. He says we need to figure out how common it is for people who have had the virus to be reinfected and study the long-term effects of the disease. If you talk to a significant number of people, they will tell you that for anywhere from weeks to months and possibly longer, that they have symptoms that are characterized by fatigue and a thing that they refer to as brain fog, which really means a difficulty concentrating.

The other thing that we're seeing that's a bit disturbing is that the degree of cardiovascular abnormalities by scans and by other diagnostic tests, it may be insignificant, but I don't know that now. All right, busy, busy. In 2016, during an outbreak of the Zika virus, Dr. Fauci showed us around the vaccine research center he helped create, where for 20 years, he has led a team of scientists developing vaccines for emerging

viruses. A full four years before COVID-19 caused worldwide devastation, Dr. Fauci told us his greatest fear. An influenza-like respiratory-borne virus that's easily transmittable, to which the population of the world has very little, if any, immunity against, and that has a high degree of morbidity and mortality. Something similar to the very tragic pandemic flu of 1918. Not only did Dr. Fauci foresee this kind of pandemic, scientists at the NIH have spent years preparing for it. In January, before a single case of COVID-19 was confirmed in the U.S., Chinese scientists posted the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus. Based on their prior work on other coronaviruses, NIH researchers edited that code so it could be used to make a vaccine. They sent the modifications to

the biotech company Moderna, which was able to manufacture the vaccine and start a phase one clinical trial within two months, a process that used to take years. That vaccine and three others in the U.S. are now in phase three clinical trials to see if they are safe and effective. If the FDA says it's okay to take the vaccine, are you going to take it? I'm going to look at the data upon which the FDA makes that decision. I trust the permanent professionals in the FDA. The director, the commissioner of the FDA has been very public that he will not let politics interfere. We have an advisory committee to the FDA.

We're made up of independent people who I trust. Put all those things together. If the final outcome is that the FDA approves it, I will take it. Last March, 235 Americans boarded the coastal Luminosa cruise ship headed for Europe. They left Fort Lauderdale on March 5th. At that time, there were only about 200 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the United States. But as they were crossing the Atlantic, word spread that three passengers who left the ship during port calls in the Caribbean tested positive for COVID and one had died. This is the story of what happened next,

a flight back home that had all the ingredients of a super-spreading event, and how the agency tasked with controlling such outbreaks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, knew about it and did not stop it. By the time the Costa Luminosa was halfway across the Atlantic, passengers we spoke to say it seemed like everyone was coughing. It was supposed to be a 20-day cruise from Florida to Italy. Bob and Sue Anderson were traveling to visit family in Europe. Those early days in March, you know, COVID was starting, but you made a decision that you

were going to go on a cruise. We wanted to travel to see our granddaughter. We didn't really worry about it. And it wasn't until we got on the ship and two or three days into the cruise where everything then blew up. At what point did you start feeling sick? Oh, probably a week into the trip. It was fatigue. I just didn't feel like doing anything. And then I got a tightness in the chest, lost my sense of taste, my sense of smell. I told Bob, I said, I feel like I'm in the petri dish of the COVID. Kelly Edge had been traveling with her husband, Woody. He'd been sick in bed for five days when everyone on board was ordered to quarantine in their cabins. We are captive, captive. You can't come in with a helicopter. We're in the middle of the ocean

and my husband's burning up. Passengers began to call home asking for help from members of Congress, reporters and family. There was conversations from people from the states that were contacting all government agencies. You know they had very sick family members on the ship and they knew that that they needed to get their family off ASAP. The State Department got involved and on day 13 of the cruise, passengers learned they would be allowed off the ship in Marseille. France had just started a nationwide lockdown. The Americans had to gather in this ship lounge to be checked by French medics before they were allowed to board buses for the airport. This is where, in my opinion, it became criminal.

Criminal, she says, because the passengers, many in their 70s and showing symptoms of COVID, waited in the locked buses for five hours while paperwork was sorted out by U.S. diplomats. It was midnight when they finally got on the jet hired by the cruise line. So as you can hear, everybody's coughing. This is Jenny Catron. She hoped the worst was behind them as she settled into seat 26D. Here we go. We are hoping that when we get back to the United States

that these people will be able to get some medical help, finally. The jet took off for Atlanta at 2 a.m. It wasn't lost on many that their destination, Atlanta, is the home of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Atlanta airport is also one of 20 quarantine stations the CDC has around the country to screen ill travelers. Did you expect that when that plane landed in Atlanta that you would be taken to quarantine? A hundred percent. While at sea, passengers saw news reports about COVID outbreaks on other cruise ships, including the Diamond Princess in Japan and the Grand Princess in California. In both cases, the CDC ordered hundreds of those passengers to quarantine

at U.S. military bases. What was the scene on the plane like? Someone described it as a flight from hell. Did it feel like that? Yes. I kept looking at the man and women to my left, coughing and coughing and coughing. It became nine and a half hours of misery. The Andersons were in row 32. Kelly and Woody Edge were in the middle of the plane. And then it happened. It was behind me about 10 rows, and a man started to collapse, and his wife was like, help, help, please help, we need a doctor. Jenny Catron was several rows behind her. The experienced Red Cross volunteer who attended nursing school

was already trying to help. He was glowing. He had so much sweat. He was pale, palish green. You didn't think, oh my gosh, this guy might have COVID right away? I was pretty sure that at that point that we all had COVID. Kelly Edge noticed Jenny was on her own and got up to help too. And then on the other side of me to the right and behind me about two rows, this man started going into some kind of respiratory distress.

So I say to Jenny, I think you need to go for this man. What's going on here, and I can do this. And she said, just hold his hand, just reassure him. And all of a sudden, this man comes walking up. He's heading like he's going to the bathroom, and he just starts like a weeble wobble, and he just hits his head on the wall, and he falls to the ground. So it's one, two, three, four. They're going like fast now.

We're laying them out. In the aisles? In the bulkheads, you know. Where are the flight attendants? In the back. They just didn't know what to do either. You know, they were very scared. Where are the flight attendants? In the back. They just didn't know what to do either. They were very scared.

The captain comes out, and we start discussing whether or not to divert the flight. We still had another four hours to Atlanta, and if we had landed in Bermuda, they could have still been sitting on the plane for another six hours where they debate whether or not they're going to let people into the hospitals there. So the flight continued to Atlanta. But when the plane carrying the sick and exhausted passengers landed at 6.43 in the morning, the doors stayed closed. And then we finally hear from the pilot that, well, apparently nobody knew we were coming. Nobody was prepared. Does that make any sense based on the calls you guys are making from the ship?

You guys are waving flags, calling the media. The Atlanta News was there at the airport to meet us. For them and Lori, you know, I can't even imagine what it must have been like to be on that plane. So where was the help? 60 Minutes spoke with the State Department, Customs and Border Protection, and the CDC on background. We were told the CDC knew the plane was coming, but didn't make plans to quarantine passengers. Instead, the decision was made to treat them like any other Americans returning from Europe in March by having them fill out a health questionnaire. But about an hour before the plane was to touch down, the CDC's plan blew up. Remember earlier when we told you about those

French medics who screened the passengers in the ship lounge? It turns out the French tested four Americans for COVID, and three were positive and on the plane. That news surprised the CDC. They had to scramble together a team to go to the jet. Jenny Catron got sick of waiting. And at that point, I just get on the phone and I call 911. You called 911 from the plane? Yes. Atlanta Airport 911. My name is Jennifer Catron. I am on a plane. We just came over from France. I had nine medical emergencies that I had to handle on this plane from France over to here. We're waiting for the CDC because we have possible coronavirus cases on board.

I have people passing out. Three more hours passed before the doors finally opened. Who were the first people to board the plane? There were two or three different girls. They said that they were from the CDC. They were dressed in plastic. And they're like, OK, well, we need these three people that had tested positive in Marseille. So they get those three people off. And she goes, OK, now I need the people that have fevers and coughs. And the steward looks at him. She goes, honey, they're all sick. The three positive passengers were taken to a hotel. Everybody else went to a cargo building where they were checked

by the CDC for fever and filled out a short questionnaire. Nobody was given a COVID test. And some passengers told us they saw people with symptoms get through. There were people, get this, their temperature was too high. So the CDC had them sit in chairs and wait and see if it got lower. So I'm trying really hard not to like second guess. You're thinking this is the CDC, they've got this. That's what I'm trying to tell myself. And it's in their hands now. I'm trying to tell myself that. But your mind is saying what? You're not doing it right. Passengers were then loaded onto buses for a short drive to baggage claim.

And that was that. They were all free to go wherever they wanted. Like half of it was the walking wounded. And I watched them all leave. This plane comes in. People are sick. They're fainting. They're coughing.

And then they're let into the main terminal of one of the busiest airports in America. It was crazy. Was it lost on anybody? Or were you guys kind of looking at each other like, I can't believe they let us go? Exactly. Those are the exact feelings we had. Utter surprise and bewilderment. Some passengers removed their masks. Others hit the food court. Within hours, more than 200 of them, exposed to COVID or already sick with it, boarded commercial

flights to 17 states and Canada, including the Andersons. We felt guilty. We had our masks, we had our gloves, and we sat down and the seat next to me was empty. And I said, please don't let anybody sit next to me. Bob Anderson tested positive for COVID after he flew home to Utah. Kelly Edge's husband tested positive after he took a flight to Miami. Three people on the plane were put on ventilators days later, and two other passengers who flew home, Tom Sheehan, who was in seat 24J, and Herman Boehm, who was in 10A, both died nine days later. We wanted to know what the CDC was thinking, but they declined our request for an interview. We did obtain 160 pages of emails from the agency about the operation through the Freedom

of Information Act, but all the sections about decision-making were redacted. How does this happen? Undoubtedly, you know, I would say this sort of constitutes public health malpractice, that you have individuals who you know are exposed, potentially multiple people infected within that group, and then you put them in the busiest airport in the world. Dr. Ali Khan is the dean of the University of Nebraska School of Public Health. He is a former director of the CDC's Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response. Should any of those passengers been allowed to get on commercial flights at that point? So those individuals

definitely should have stayed in Atlanta and been appropriately isolated or quarantined based on their circumstances. We knew enough at that point to know that was a bad decision. Oh no, not only did we know enough at that point, we had already acted on that knowledge multiple times. We know that what was the right thing to do was with the Grand Princess and other cruise ships, that those individuals need to get off the ship, needed to be monitored separately in quarantine before they could go out and about their way. The cruise line would not share the passenger list with us, but we were able to track down 64 of the Americans.

And of those 64, 45 of them told us they tested positive for COVID soon after coming home. This is what the agency plans for day in and day out on how to do this. I mean, this should have been second nature of how to make this happen. The CDC alerted state health departments, but some passengers told us their states never followed up with them and didn't do any contact tracing. The lack of a unified response means nobody knows exactly how many passengers from that flight from hell brought home the coronavirus or how many unsuspecting people they infected with COVID along the way. Next Sunday on 60 Minutes, the candidates. In what has become a quadrennial tradition, we'll have revealing, provocative conversations with the two major party candidates for president.

As the campaign trail winds to its end, I'll be at the White House with questions for President Trump, and Nora O'Donnell interviews former Vice President Joe Biden in Delaware. We'll also have some time with their running mates, Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris. I'm Leslie Stahl. We'll be back next week with this election edition of 60 Minutes.