People staying in their homes, no restaurants, no bars, no congregation. The United States has been very slow to that. Particularly, the federal government has not been urging it. Just two days ago for the first time, the cdc recommended that there should be no gatherings of 50 people or more, which is way too many. The president yesterday said that we should try to avoid gatherings of 10 people or more. That is probably too many also. But this indicates to me that we are in whole new territory. I have been working on Infectious Diseases and Global Health through my life and i have never seen anything like it. And i think americans should expect with the coming weeks to have extraordinarily strict measures of social distancing. Host even before this disease, if you look at what the federal government can do, based on our Federalist Society and based on the fact that we are 50 states and all of them have their own Health Protocols and etc. , what are the challenges, the roadblocks for the federal government acting . Guest its actually a really good question. We often think the president is allpowerful and it is true that with International Travel bans he has extraordinarily broad powers. Mo within the country, it is the states and the cities and the localities that have the primary of what we call police power. It is like a publichealth power. President s power is quite narrow and it is really to protect the American People, and to prevent to state a to state transmission. Host this gets into the argument of executive power versus other powers in the federal government. Clearly that is happening now with the congress trying to pass what are not Emergency Health measures but aid measures. Guest thats right, yeah. There are two things. One, even apart from the constitution, the president has the legislative powers that are delegated to him to be able to kind of shut down or lockdowns lockdown something with an within a state. It is very unlikely constitutionally problematic. Beyond that, the president has been pretty much a bystander in a lot of whats going on with the coronavirus because congress is the one that did the emergency aid package and now the Families First act. Host yesterdays briefing, the latest one, the new guidelines that they talked about was 10 people or less, they are hampered. These are really just recommendations. Host they are recommendations. Caller there is no enforcement recommendations. He has hinted, and even tony fauci, who i know as well and has been an absolute national treasure, this idea that the federal government could order a lockdown. But its unlikely that would happen because of constitutional reasons. I think we are likely to just see it as a recommendation by the government. Host our guest, lawrence gostin, director of the institute of national and Global Health at Georgetown University law center. The lines are regional, 202 7488000, for folks in the eastern time zones. 202 7488002 for mountain and pacific. At 10 30 eastern, live on cspan and on cspan radio, if you look worldwide it but other nations worldwide at other nations and what they have been implanting so far, anyway, who is doing a good job . Guest it depends on what you mean by good job. If you mean just controlling the virus, one would have to include china, but there were many Human Rights Concerns in china. But there were big democracies that have done a very good job. Places like south korea for example have managed to really bring the epidemic well down. Host what are they doing right . Caller what they are doing right and sadly, america is right behind the curve, they started massive testing. Drive through, peoples homes and communities, so they got a better handle on it. They did very aggressive social separation. Closing of public spaces, public gatherings. Restaurants, things like that. We have been, we are still way behind the curve on testing. And america is still way beyond the curve on being aggressive with social distancing. There is a large lack of consistency in the United States about social distancing. Host i may be giving away my age here and i remember being a kid and the vaccines, it was probably polio, i cannot remember at the time. They said show up at the Elementary School and you were given a shirt. Everybody in the neighborhood, the town, everybody showed up. Caller guest that was the same exact anger. Host how, how, is the attitude among americans different, say, then it was back then in terms of the federal government implementing the program . How receptive you think americans are to a nationally instituted vaccine or whatever program, a Health Effort that the government made . , when we getk that a vaccine, and very sadly, we probably will not see it for at least a year, probably for 18 months, i think people will clamor and lineup for the vaccine, because that is protective. The real question is whether americans are going to listen and just stay in their homes and not go out, not go to restaurants, bars, clubs, book clubs, all kinds of things that they want to do. That has yet to be seen. I think there is a lot of civic responsibility, but also we have to recapture the idea of the common good and when we go to what we owe to our neighbors, we need to look in on our neighbors, particularly those that are vulnerable and elderly, we need to come together, and maybe the biggest problem we have as a nation, and it is very sad to see unfold, is the kind of politics and divisiveness. Social, demographic and political divisiveness that we have right now. If we cant all come together as americans and what is literally an Unprecedented Health crisis, it would make me very sad. Host we have calls waiting for you but i wanted to ask you at the stafford act and its implementation to empower fema, the federal Emergency Management agency to assist state and local governments declared major disasters and emergency to coordinate national response. Only the president can declare a major disaster under the law. Could the stafford act be used, for example, to declare a National Health emergency . Guest actually, the president has already declared it. Under the stafford act. There have actually been three health emergencies, National Health emergencies that have been declared. One under the Public Health service act by the secretary for health and human services, alex azar, and then to buy the president. One is the stafford act and the other, the emergencies act. Basically we are now living in chartered territory. In unchartered territory. Three national emergencies. All 50 states have declared state emergencies. Host what does the stafford act give the president the flexibility to do . Guest it creates surge funding, enables him to waive Technical Rules and legal requirements, for example, around laboratories and testing. It can waive certain medicaid or medicare requirements. It gives a lot more flexibility and funding to the president. Host does it also clear people or protect them from liabilities . Guest yes, it can do, depending on what the president decides. It does have some of those flexibilities. Host focusing on the federal response of the coronavirus pandemic, we go to lawrence in sterling, virginia. Caller thanks for taking my call. You answered my original question earlier about the permission, the mandate from the government versus recommendations for going out. I was also curious, with the news organizations considering two things, doom and gloom cells much, so they can over, not overreact but overly sensitize people or make them afraid of various things. Other side of the spectrum, where they say that spreading false information, that can be a huge detriment. Dent where therece government is able to penalize them for any kind of act like that . Guest thats a good question. The answer is probably not. But you are raising two really important points. The first is that the news is all over the place. Not just the traditional media, but the social media. I have been advising facebook and other social media organizations about how to get out accurate and evidencebased messages. But right now it is all over the place. The exaggeration, the underestimation. And theres all kinds of rumors floating out there about what might or might not be true. The truth is, if you want to know, you need to use reliable sources. Probably the most reliable source is the cdc website. It is highly evidencebased, i trust it. But the second point you make has to do with the press. We do have a First Amendment and freedom of the press. There is very limited room for the president for governors to actually try to interfere with the press. Of course, they can try to take down if they can, patently false information, but they need cooperation from the media outlet. Host we do still have across this country, television and radio outlets have the Emergency Action notification system, which is tested on a regular basis. You are watching a cable system, or radio station, you hear them. When would something, could Something Like that be used in an emergency like this . Guest yes, it absolutely could. It is intended for times when we dont, that we want to literally just capture the whole countrys attention. It would be made on a highlevel decision. Yes, we could. We would not use the emergency system as a routine way of informing people. Host dan, bridgewater, new jersey, good morning. Caller as a physician im really outraged at the impact the president has had on how we roll out these procedures. Keep in mind that we have the experience of china, dubious as it might be, as they did misrepresent things from the beginning. We have the experience of south korea and a number of countries to go by. The issue was always testing. In congressional hearings at the end of last week, fauci was saying that the policy this follows, testing is free. If you feel symptomatic, you go to your doctor, and if your doctor feels that you have suspicious symptoms, they pretended they had a test procedure. A week before fauci said that you can go almost a month asymptomatic shedding the virus, which is very possible and understandable. There is this contradiction with no sense of responsibility for it. Fauci is what, 87, now . Guest hes not that old. [laughter] caller the main thing, this process that you are not doing testing and thinking that a tested person is valuable only if you know when he was negative and when he turned positive. Guest yeah. I mean, certainly the rollout of testing in the United States was highly faulty, to put it mildly. On a per capita basis we have done far, far less testing them other countries have done, like south korea or china. Italy. So, we really are way behind the curve. In fact, sadly the major benefit of testing, the real sweet spot from an epidemiological point of view would have been weeks ago. Yes, we want to get that number running now, but there has not but who has an approved test. Our allies are using tests. The fact that we decided we were going to use our own tests that ended up faulty, there were bureaucratic mistakes. Theres no excuse for that. We should have done better. Lets try not to look back. Lets try not to really seize the opportunity to bring this virus to slow it down and that leads to get under control. Online, cindy says this, we are a month behind schedule. Do you feel like the federal response was a month behind schedule . Guest that certainly was many weeks behind schedule, absolutely was. There were countries doing aggressive social distancing a long time ago. We saw this coming. The drip drip of what, first of all, every time there is a specific case, there is a casey or, and there is a case there, we knew that there was largescale transmission many weeks ago. We should have been acting. And now for the first time yesterday, i thought the president s tone was sufficiently somber in showing that we are facing a serious crisis. But gosh, we have been through this now for many weeks and we really should have been much more aggressive. We really need to ramp up. Host i want to ask you about the roletial for of the u. S. Military. Governor cuomo of new york saying that he was calling on the corps of engineers and was asked about joes comment in the debate the other night, that the military could play a role. We will show that to you in a minute. What do you think the possible role of not just the National Guard but the u. S. Military could be . Host very helpful, but not as a policing force. I think it would be a very, very bad idea to see the military or National Guards on city streets weapons and making sure people did not leave our come out. That would be just wholly against american values. But could they help us to build hospitals . Work with logistics to get protective equipment to the right places . Get medicine to people in their homes . Or food . Absolutely. In fact, one of the greatest things president obama did was send the military to liberia during the west african ebola outbreak. It really turned things around. But it was all about logistics. The military is the best in the world on logistics and we should use them. Host in the case of president trump, he has used the military in the past at the border, has Logistical Support for border patrol. That does not require an act from congress. That is a president ial order that can do that, correct . Guest i think it is, i did the president could do that and does not need congress. Sure, Consulting Congress intimately and closely and not on a bipartisan basis. In valleyo to peter park. Guest i meant not on a partisan basis. Host i got it. Peter . New york. Your comment . Caller it appears that the federal government is a day late and a dollar short. There could be a Silver Lining to this whole thing, the sense that this virus is serious, not but it is not killing millions of people very quickly. I do not understand why the federal government has not coordinated with state governments and had a contingency plan in place to deal with the situation. Hollywood has been making movies about pandemics for years. It is almost as if our government has their head in the sand and they are shooting from the hip now trying to put together some type of a program to deal with this. We should already have a contingency plan. We get billions of dollars from the cdc and other health organizations. Why dont we do . Why have we allowed the American People to outsource all our pharmaceutical products to a communist country . This is insanity. Host we will get a response, peter. Thank you. Guest the government has been late, there is no question about it. No excuse. And our vital Public Health agencies, state and local Health Departments on the front line, the cdc have really been starved for funds. President trump in his budget tried to cut them even further, though that never went through. The Global Health capacity of capacities were stripped by the president. Thats all bad. But its not all bad. One should point out that the president did assemble through the Vice President a really worldclass Public Health task force. I know that most of the people on that task force are really good. We need to give the white house credit for that. And they also have been liaising with individual governors, National Governors associations and the mayors of this country. Has the federal government been wholly present and a wonderful leader . No. But they have made some Important Group steps that we need to congratulate them for that. Ago, you publish an article on healthaffairs. Com that poses the question could or should the government oppose a mass quarantine on an American City . Viewers can read that healthaffairs. Org. Guest my view is the same. As some of your viewers may know, San Francisco cordoned off a part of its neighborhoods. We are begin to see those kinds of things. My answer is no. Seeink we do want to aggressive social distancing, we want to see strong recommendations, but i do not think we want to see the same kinds of lockdowns that we saw in china. The United States is not china. The values of americans would not tolerate that degree of control, intrusive surveillance. People in china have apps on their phones that told the government where they were. There were citizen informers. We are not going to want an armed police or military on the streets guarding our borders. But i think we can get highly conformance with the american public. I believe it is like a social compact. We tell people to separate yourself for the good of humanity, and in return, the government will make sure that you get your food, your medicines, your health care, your sick pay. The government needs to live up to its part of the social bargain. Host its a very new thing for americans to separate used fores, gathering at sports stadiums and bars. Unprecedented in the history of america. Perhaps the great flu pandemic of 1918. But nothing in over 100 years, none of us have ever seen anything like it. And its not going to get easier, it is going to get harder. Host any lessons from them that applicable today . Guest things like School Closures involve social separation, affecting some of the evidence that we have now. The great influenza pandemic. But you know that swept through america and the world. Remember this a lot of people have been talking about, will it go away in the summer . It is possible that it could abate in the summer. By june, july,ct august, that it could abate. The question is whether it could come reaching back. Unfortunately with the 1918 pandemic, it did come back into it did come back and most people died in the second wave. Im not suggesting that would happen now, but the future is unknown. Host missouri, jim, welcome. Caller good morning. Lets see, one thing that i have heard in china, when they had people quarantined, they actually isolated them instead of sending them home to infect the rest of their family. Moving on, china having had such a head start, i am sure that they are working on a vaccine. They have got a head start on us. Im sure germany, the rest of the world is doing the same thing. Will we again insist on doing our own vaccine and ignore the rest of the world . Guest on vaccines, the news is much better, thank you, than it has been in testing. There is a lot of Global Cooperation on the race for a vaccine, including china, being coordinated by the world health organization. But more than that, the u. S. National institutes of health are second to none in the world and its capacity for vaccine development. We will be in the vanguard but nih fauci and others at the will not go it alone. They are working in partnership and collaboration around the world, so Global Solidarity around the vaccine is there. My only worry is that if it comes in short supply, which countries like the United States , germany, and others, will they hoard the vaccinations and let potentially millions of people poor areas like Subsaharan Africa or the middle east . These are hard questions. Just imagine what will happen when the virus gets embedded in places like syria, yemen, and other fragile state. We have a lot of challenges ahead of us globally. Question from the audience. Does the power does president have the power to order cruise make theiries to vessels available for conversion into hostile at all ships . Hospital ships . The last place on earth i would want a hospital is a cruise ship. It is a petri dish and i dont know why people are going on. We have seen rapid covid transmission on cruise ships. Transfer to private facilities, we have had that in our constitutional tradition, but it depends on the National Emergency and depends upon whether the legislature has delegated that authority to the president. He has been able to shut down flights from various nations. Can he order flight, no flights between cities . That would be much more constitutionally problematic. He has broad power restrict travel into the United States. Restricting travel into the United States. Restrictingw power travel within the United States. The only time before now that has even advised people not to cdc has even advised people not to travel was pregnant women going to florida for zika virus. The flights were closed by the faa . The faa shut down domestic travel. Nathan, las vegas, nevada. Just a couple of points. The federal government should use powers and the first power i would like them to use is to clamp down on this corrupt media that is under reporting the whole affair. Swine fluke killed 18,000 peoplelu killed 18,000 before obama did anything. , 20ar as other things go years ago i used to kid is the first thing i would do as czar close day care centers, blow up all restaurants, and burn down Nursing Homes. We have lost our way in america as far as how we are supposed to deal with our family, and the media not reporting about the conditions in china, about the undernourished people, we are all going to be ok. We did talk about the numbers in china, yesterday and today. 81,000 58 total confirmed in china, over 3000 deaths. Today, 4660 one cases, 85 deaths. We have to keep our heads about this. First of all, i think it is very unwise in america to call all media corrupt. Are there yes, inaccuracies, is there skewed reporting . Of course there is and we have to work on that. Be aournalists can lifeline to a democracy i micro c and are a lifeline to a andcracy to a democracy are a lifeline to a democracy. I do not want to see our president demeaning hardworking journalists. Do we need to fix it . Of course. We need to get more accurate information. Burning down Nursing Homes and that kind of thing, we need to keep our head. This is very serious, but we can defeat this virus in accordance with our constitutional, social, and civic values. We really need to come together as americans and say, we share some values. We also share a common goal of our own health, safety, and security, so lets put our heads together, stop fighting, and focus entirely on our National Health crisis that has no precedent in the United States. Dale in deer park, texas, good morning. How are you doing . Doing fine, thank you. I am calling about Civil Service workers who work for the judiciary. They pay into the Retirement Fund and right now they are losing thousands of dollars because stock market is going down. Ist people dont realize when they come in to stop that, they are told it would take two weeks to go into effect. In the meantime, they are losing thousands and thousands of more dollars. I would like to see the government stop that practice. I dont know how it works in the private sector, if they have that ability, individuals to stop that if they have some plan like that. That is about it. If somebody is gonna retire in four or five years and when it comes time for retirement they found out they lost thousands of dollars. Dale in texas. I am not a financial expert, but clearly we are in a Health Pandemic and an economic pandemic. The falls in the stock market and the pain, not just let the Civil Service is feeling, but hardworking americans all over the country are feeling, is real and palpable. The government does not need to try to question it. We need question it. Cushion it. We need a safety net. While the rich will probably be able to withstand this, lower and middleclass americans are suffering. There is just no denying it. Article atto your health care. Org about potential mass quarantine. Term i have never heard. What is it . People in the United States colloquially have been calling these things mass quarantines or lockdowns. That is not the correct term. Literally when you have been exposed to a dangerous infection and i quarantine you for the period of time of incubation. ,hen we are doing it en masse it is literally a guarded area where nobody can leave or enter and that is what they are talking about. They did Something Like that in new york, new rochelle, correct . That was a problem because ernor cuomo particularly articulately called it a lock down and the press were really pres. Trump thank you very much, everyone, thank you. Progress being made and i appreciate you all joining us. Last night, the fda announced groundbreaking policies to increase testing substantially. All states can authorize test developed and use within their borders