very much under control in this country. how wrong he was. joining us now is dr. anthony fauci, president biden s chief medical adviser. dr. fauci, always great to see you. same here. thank you, alisyn. dr. fauci, i know that you have been personally analyzing, i guess, how we got here, half a million people dead in the space of one year. and as you look back over this year, have you concluded that it was our political positions and political division that led to this death toll? i certainly think that s part of it. it was very complicated situation, one we re dealing with a very formidable virus to begin with. so, anything that is not at its top peak in addressing it in the most appropriate way is going to lead to the kinds of things that we experienced. so i have said, i believe it s the case when you have a common enemy you ve got to pull together in the same way. it s like people on a crew team rowing in the same direction. you can t have disparate responses. and un
the virus virtue signaling is a very real and is not going away. it s getting worse. every day because no one is pushing back. this cannot and should not be our new normal. there is no normal until every business, bar, and school are fully opened and we are free to attend them without masks. we will get there eventually with herd immunity, widespread action and mitigation techniques, and we should not accept anything at less. but there are plenty of people, many of them running our schools and teacher unions who have no problem with this. they are totally satisfied staying home and teaching a virtual zumba class. to some of them admitting that out loud that they do not want to go back to business as usual ever. there really is so much that i feel like we do virtually, but perhaps the focus right now should be on reimagining what education looks like in the future instead of wasting time trying to force us all back to normal. when we all know that normal never really worked
that flight. cnn s dan simon live at denver international airport. dan, good morning. good morning, erica. in the wake of this uncontained engine failure, regulators really have two primary goals here. to figure out how this happened and to prevent something like this from occurring again. after united airlines flight 328 experienced engine failure shortly after takeoff saturday, the company is temporarily removing all 24 of its boeing 777 airlines with pratt & whitney p-24 engines from service out of an abundance of caution. 32 heavy mayday, just experienced engine failure, need to return immediately. a united pilot making a mayday call on the flight headed from denver to honolulu, as passengered watched the right engine fire off flames and pieces of the plane falling off. i could see some smoke coming. and you just know something s wrong, something s not right. all of a sudden, there s a big explosion out my window. my wife and i held hands and just wished our kid
congress to move as soon as possible on this big package. i think it comes in a really interesting time. first of all, it s the president s first trip outside washington really to meet with voters of this entire presidency. that s always significant. and then jeff zeleny, it s obviously president biden s first chance to speak to the american people since the impeachment trial of his predecessor. this really does come at a key moment. he has a spotlight in a different way than he s had it over the last few weeks. john, no doubt about it. look, after the impeachment trial is over, it s more than that. this really is the beginning of the second month of his presidency but in many respects it s the first month of him having the spotlight to himself. and as the impeachment trial was going on last week, the white house wise doing a lot of work, having republican governors in, democratic governors in, mayors in talking about this relief bill. and there is no doubt about that the
stimulus relief package cleared yet another critical hurdle in the house with a full floor vote expected later this week. we re also following a key confirmation hearing up on capitol hill. president biden s attorney general nominee, judge merrick garland, just wrapped up his first day of testimony, making clear that if confirmed, he s, quote, not the president s lawyer. first let s get the very latest on this truly heart-wrenching pandemic news. our national correspondent ryan young is working the story for us. ryan, half a million americans killed by the coronavirus just this past year. tell us the latest, tell us what s going on where you are. reporter: well, so devastating, the news about this. of course, all of us heartbroken by the news that so many americans have lost their lives. of course, right now you can see the number of cars here that are lined up for the vaccine. people want this desperately. they want to get away from the devastation they faced over the last