Transcripts For CSPAN Washington Journal 03182020 20240713

Healths on the States Harris ofthen drew Thomas Jefferson university. Washington journal is next. Is next. Sweep for joe biden in tuesdays primaries in florida, illinois, and arizona. It raises the question of when Bernie Sanders might withdraw. Washington journal this is this is washington journal for march 18. We will talk about that and the latest in the coronavirus responds with a near trillion dollar package likely. For those in the eastern and central time zones, the line is 2027488000. The mountain and pacific region, 2027488001. If you are a medical professional, really appreciate on yourfrom you experience. That line, 2027488002. Tell us where you are texting from in your name and the line is 2027488003. At c on twitter it is cspanwj. And on facebook it is facebook. Com cspan. The president this morning saying for the people who are now out of work because of the important and necessary containment policies, the shutting down of hotels, bars, and restaurants, money will be coming to you. The onslaught of the chinese virus is not your fault. We will be stronger than ever. This is reporting on the potential package from the white house. Wall street journal with their headline, u. S. Seeks to send checks to americans writing the Trump Administration back to plan to send checks directly to americans as part of a stimulus package to help households and businesses designed to cushion the impact of the economic slowdown triggered by the coronavirus pandemic. Steven mnuchin was part of that briefing yesterday and here is what he said. [video clip] you mean direct payments to americans or are you talking about a payroll tax . Although the president likes the idea of the payroll tax holiday, what we have heard from many people in the president said we can consider this, it would get people money over 6 to 8 months. We are looking at sending checks to americans immediately and what we have heard, Many Companies have shut down. Americans need cash now and the president wants to get cash now and i mean in the next two weeks. How much . I will preview that with republicans. They the numbers may be a bit bigger than approximated. Host the results of yesterdays primaries in florida, arizona, and illinois. Ohio canceling postponing their primary until june 2. Here are the results from florida. Joe biden winning 61 point 9 of the vote, over one million votes. 23 ,e sanders with near 395,000. Joe biden getting 43. 6 of the vote with 231,000 voting for him. Bernie sanders with nearly 32 1049. Vote, 168,000 in illinois, joe biden, nearly 60 of the vote and Bernie Sanders, 36. 1 . E note from the trumppenc campaign. Florida puts President Trump over the top as presumptive 2020 nominee. The president ial preference primary in his home state of florida put him above the delegate threshold to become the presumed 2020 republican nominee for president in a primary season that saw him shatter records for vote totals and vote percentages with 122 delegates awarded to the president. He has 1330 above the 1276 needed to win the republican nomination. Greenville, South Carolina to hear from jeannie. Good morning. Caller good morning. How are you doing . Host doing just fine, thank you. Caller of course we are listening to all the programs that will happen because of this virus. I am wondering. I know they said they were going to give a check and help every american and companies i am wondering about the homeless, the people that have addresses, that moved. How are they going to contact and get in touch with these people . Is there going to be a program in each state where these funds are going to be available to you . That is my first question. Degree thatevery ,ou can name doctors, phds and i am wondering why we dont have any idea about this virus. Host what do you mean we dont have any idea . Caller we dont have any idea how to get rid of it or what to do. It says we need to isolate ourselves and stay away so we wont spread it. I dont understand. Host one of the reasons is it is new, novel coronavirus, a type of virus, this covid19. We will go to michael and hear from new jersey. Caller good morning and thank you for cspan. Going to what the previous caller was saying as far as homeless residents or poor residents, there is an article in the New York Times about how famous people and celebrities and professional athletes, ymptomatic areas easily able to get tests while the rest of us have to wait until we are symptomatic. I think this crisis will highlight the wealth gap increasing in this country for the last 40 years and even the low end numbers the cdc is projecting, it will be scary in a couple months. Host this may be the article you are referring to, thanks for pointing that out from the New York Times, u. S. Lags in testing and gaps in the data are not helping, not specifically on the socioeconomic aspect, but the report says testing data has ,een not easily available especially in the United States based on government sources. Here is how testing efforts compare with italy and south korea. Delays in testing have set back the response to the pandemic even though the first case was discovered around the same time south koreas was. Part of the problem has been gaps created by the ways states and federal agencies report the data. Lucius in South Carolina, hello. Lucius in greenville, South Carolina. Go ahead. Greenville, are you on the air . 2027488000 is the line for those of you in the eastern and central time zones. 2027488001 mountain and pacific and medical professionals, 2027488002. Isk to the primaries, this the reporting of the miami herald with their headline joe biden romps in florida delivering damaging blow to Bernie Sanders writing nothing was protectable about the Florida Democratic primary accept the results. Joe biden beat Bernie Sanders soundly in the largest swing state affirming his standing as the front runner in the primary and pulling him closer to the president ial nomination. At the former Vice President was poised to beat the vermont senator by 40 points. A crushing blow delivered in one of the biggest prizes left in the primary map. Steve in connecticut, good morning. Go ahead. Just reported on msnbc the army corps of engineers have received orders to build hospitals and they were trying to help the cruise lines that try to avoid paying taxes in our country. Why are we helping these out . Ordereduntries ventilators on hand and we are behind the eight ball. That is my comment for today. Host some comments on twitter. We are cspanwj. This one talking about the potential of a thousand dollars for every american. What good would 1000 check do for a family where the wage earner is without a job . I would like to discuss the 1 trillion stimulus and hear from those who support the idea. Will it be the people who scream socialism and what about the debt during the obama administration. The Airline Industry spent 90 stop reaks on buybacks. Most big cruise lines are not even domicile in the u. S. Biden florida saying joe won every county in florida. I dont have a socialist in the fight, but it seems time for bernie to bow. The briefing at the white house mid afternoon with the president and his Coronavirus Task force, the president said this calling for medicare to expand the use of telehealth. [video clip] medicare patients can visit any doctor at no additional cost including with commonly used Services Like skype and facetime. In addition, states have the authority to Cover Telehealth Services for medical patients and by doing this, the patient is not seeing the doctor, per se, but there is no getting close. Enforce applicable. Ipaa penalties they will not be enforced. We encourage everyone to maximize either telehealth to limit exposure to the virus. It has been a successful method of communication, but never used on a scale like we are going to use telehealth. Host taking a look at the reporting on the coronavirus, the reporting from Johns Hopkins center for systems science and engineering, the total cases worldwide, nearly 200,000 specifically in the u. S. And the worldwide, 7955. In the u. S. , cases rising by 1700, 1800 from yesterday. In theth 114 deaths u. S. Lets hear from sherry in st. Louis, missouri. Your volume and go ahead with your comments. Hit the mute button and go ahead. Sherry in st. Louis, go ahead. In chattanooga, tennessee, good morning. Trump can take pride in the fact he has exceeded obama and several areas, playing more golf, putting us in deeper debt, and this virus. Exceed 12,000 like he said the swine flu did . He has exceeded obama in every area. Maryland. Rd in how are you . I want to enlighten all of our viewers and listeners that barack obama had a program installed to prepare us for these kind of things that are going to happen right now. One of the reasons why the United States is behind other countries in the testing is the technology. Barack obama already installed in office these kind of things to prepare the United States for testing. For example, china and south korea is ahead of the United States in testing. They are testing to the tune of thousands every day. The United States does not even have the people in place to do the testing. I wish cspan would enlighten our viewers. The reason the United States is behind is because this president acquitted or it he has been impeached. We are in a constitutional crisis. We will talk more about the testing later on. There is data from the centers for Disease Control and convention. We go up a little bit on this to the chart. It is near the top of the page between the United States, south korea, and italy. I dont have china, but the ones we know, the numbers we know through march 16th. Through monday, the United States through monday and you can see the rise of the numbers. 25,000 specimens tested. 4400 cases confirmed. Italy, 134,000 tests. 8,000 confirmed cases in south korea, they have the jump on testing from early february, south korea has tested nearly 300,000 people. 8300 confirmed cases. There is more data and more charts and i assume that is online as well. Lets hear from ron in california. Go ahead, ron. Actions have consequences. Lack of actions also have consequents. I happened to do a Little Research on the comparison between what the United States has done and what europe has done. Denmark,country like for example, made this conclusion, lets close down the borders. No one in, no one out and as a result, they let commerce continue. What we have done by the lack of action or in this case, action, is cutting all of our economic engine to. Fullwill take to a stop. That will take a tremendous amount of time to recover. It will cost a lot of time, almost a year to recover. The bottom line is we should have tested early. We should continue to test now. The sampling the data sampling should be selfevident and it should be broken down. Here in california, we have a state senator who broke it down who was causing it and it is a lot coming in from other countries. Just want you to know how much we appreciate what you do and thanks for being cspan. Host george in mount olive, welcome. Noter one thing i have heard anyone talk about is people in prison. We all know prisons are overcrowded and filthy and i think we ought to consider the prisoners that are nonviolent and let them out. When it hits a prison, it will cost us. Host you are on topic of what the Washington Post one of the things they are writing about. The headline says covid19 will not stay behind bars and part reads like a cruise ship like cruiseship passengers, inmates in jails and prisons are at heightened risk of contracting and transmitting the coronavirus. Prisoners at two dozen institutions in italy rioted after the government, seeking to contain the virus, imposed a countrywide lockdown that curtailed prison visits. It is critical u. S. Officials focus right now on how to limit the effects in federal and state facilities. To north carolina, beverly. Caller good morning. Over this virus and i am upset over the united president s lies. He knew about this back in november. It was called fake, fake, fake until a couple of weeks ago. All the other countries have just about taken over everything we need now. We are not able to get anything and he is going to give us now 1000 a person or family or whatever . He is not telling you how much he is giving to the top people he just bailed out. It is notabout money, about our health. It is not about the people suffering here. I am totally disgusted with him and i wish he would realize he is not equipped and just resign. You have a good day. Host President Trump meeting today with a group of nurses. We may see a briefing later this afternoon. Our text line is 2027488003. Here is bill in new jersey saying one thing is clear, how they handle this Coronavirus Crisis will make or break President Trump being elected to a second term. So glad our government balanced the budget and pay down the 23 23 trillion in debt so we were use to financial crisis. Front page of the Washington Times this morning, going big to rescue the economy. With reporting saying President Trump said tuesday his administration is going big with a 1. 2 trillion rescue package planned including a proposal for direct payments of 1000 or more to most americans for an economy rocked by the pandemic. The white house announced the Steven Mnuchin said after an urgent afternoon meeting with Senate Republicans, the white house proposal had grown from 850 billion earlier in the day. The senate is in session coming back at 10 00 a. M. Eastern and that will be live on cspan 2, returning to finish work on the original house bill, the legislation the house passed. Senate coverage on cspan 2. Next is wisconsin, good morning to bill. Caller good morning and thank you for taking my call. I would like to make a recommendation to the white house that during the press conferences, they add a couple microphones and start leading by example saying keep your six foot distance. American see the president surrounded by people including president , who should be distancing himself, and the governor from the state of wisconsin sat elbow to elbow at a conference yesterday, shutting restaurants. S and our leaders have to set by example. We need more microphones to separate these extra witnesses. I think they are doing a great job. I think President Trump is doing a great job. Democrats if the democrats were making this decision, nothing would have been done by now. I am proud of our president , but more concerned about setting an example with the six foot distance, protecting our president. That isthis money getting sent out will be free. We will pay for it in taxes down it is necessary and needed, so everybody should be working together. Keep your distance. Host are you concerned at all you said protecting the president , are you concerned in some of these briefings where they have a number of people very close behind the president , do youriefing stage think you talked about leaders setting an example, do you think that sets an example . Think we need to have more microphones. Your picture you are showing, we need a microphone on both sides of the president , he needs to be up in the middle and when he needs to defer a question to an expert, that expert should be off to one side or another. Move that press Conference Room however it needs to be to show leadership this is what we need to do. Host in the Briefing Room for the reporters anyway, they have they have insisted, they have made it so reporters are at least one seat apart. They have reduced the number of reporters in that room. We will see what next step they take because the number of people on the stage seemed to be fewer than the past couple days. Three primaries yesterday. Keep in mind ohios governor postponing theirs until june 2. The illinois primary, the lead story at the chicago tribune. Com, former Vice President wins illinois, dealing another blow to Bernie Sanders. Here are the results, nearly all the results 99 with joe biden winning 59. 9 . No coverage because there were with the candidates. Either Bernie Sanders or joe biden. Joe biden did release a video. [video clip] senator sanders and his supporters have brought remarkable compassion and tenacity to the issues and they have shifted the fun a metal conversation. Fundamental conversation. Let me say to the young voters, i hear you. I know what is at stake and i know what we have to do. Our goal has a campaign and my goal as a president is to unify this party and for them to unify the nation. We realize we need to put politics aside and Work Together as americans. Coronavirus does not care if you. Re democrat or republican it will touch people in positions of power as well as the most Vulnerable People in our society. We are all in this together. This is a moment for each of us to see and believe each and every one of us, to look out for our neighbor and understand the fear and stress so many are feeling to fear care for the. Lderly in one another. When we do that, when we see the best in each of us, we lift this nation and we will get through this together. Host joe biden winning the democratic primaries in florida, illinois, and arizona. Tweets the ap calls dannois third, defeating lipinski in an election rematch. 2145 inted newman by 2018. Loses primary rematch to marie newman in illinois. Outside groups mobilize to oust one of the last remaining members opposed to abortion rights and among the democrats against dan lipinski or at least supporting marie newman were present of alexandria ocasiocortez. It is 2027488000 for those of you in the eastern and central time zones. For mountain and pacific and for medical. Rofessionals, 2027488002 next is cindy in washington. Good morning. Caller hi. Job. O a great i really want to thank the president. He has been fabulous, doing everything he needs to do. I want to comment on something somebody said earlier about obama because i think all the red tape he put in place and put the federal government and in charge and all that what was the problem. Trump has taken care of the problem and has the private sector working with the government and everything is be is flowing so we will get rid of this disease and back to normal. In connecticut. Caller good morning. I want to let everyone know in my own personal situation, i have been selfquarantine for 14 days. My primary Health Care Physician has been away for two weeks. I saw someone else who told me to go home and drink chicken soup. Host how is that working . Caller it is not. Okayed me to get a test. I have been through the numbers i have been given and i am hearing contradictory things, we will call you back, and so on. Are you in selfquarantine to begin with . Caller i started out with fever , chest congestion, sneezing, all the classic symptoms. Beenevers have intermittent and have now passed, but i am still i am dehydrated, i have all sorts of issues, plus, it is keeping me from going to see my other doctors for some lifethreatening issues that need to be addressed. Host how old are you, gary . Caller 71. Host so you have not been tested yet . Caller i have been trying to get tested for two weeks. Host who have you been trying to get tested with . Who are you directing efforts toward . Caller initially the physician covering for my doctor and then i was given a state number and i was on hold for an hour and a half and finally got through. She gave me another number to and she said they would get back to me. A couple of times i have been promised i would get a call. A 14day said quarantine. What day is it for you . Caller this is day 15. Host okay. Caller i have been trying to be responsible. I am supposed to get physical therapy, i cannot do that because they will not have me come back until i am cleared. It is a catch 22. Host who is looking in on you . Who is getting you basics, groceries, whatever else you need . Caller i have been stocked up and i have a neighbor that has done Grocery Shopping for me. Voice is almost gone and i am feeling awful and i want to get this thing over with and find out one way or another do i have this or not i dont the system is so messed up. Host can you recall anything were you on a cruiser or overseas . I was taking a class at a local Community College in a Foreign Language and there were a lot of young. Eople who had been traveling i suspect that might be the origin. You if it would be ok with if i could ask our producer to put you on hold and we could take your phone number and may be followup with you in a day or two, maybe friday to see if you have gotten at least a date for the test and see how you are doing. With that be ok . Caller that is fine. I will give you a better number. Host dont give it online now. I will ask our Production Assistant if they can put you on hold or is that something i have to do . Can you guys do that . Gary in connecticut, hang on the line. We will get your phone number to check in because you said it has been over 15 days. Really appreciate your story. We will try to check back in with you friday or south. Lets go to jana in maryland. Go ahead, janet. Caller i just wanted to say people need to calm down and give the president and his people to do what they are going brothand to let gary know does help. You have to feed the fever. Stayathome, get plenty of rest, exercise, try to eat and take care of yourself. The reason these places turn you away is telling me they are not the ones that have testing for that yet. He tookry mentioned this class with a Foreign Language class with younger people there. Part of the message from the administration particularly from dr. Deborah brooks, part of the coronavirus team, she said this yesterday about the obligations of various generations to fight the virus. [video clip] we are asking every single american, no matter what your generation and millenials in between two ensure you are following the guidelines. We hear every night of people thatre not in work, moving time into bars and other areas of large gatherings. If we continue with the process, we will fail at containing the virus. Every single generation has a role to play. We are asking our older generations can stay in their home and asking the younger erations to support them we are asking the Younger Generation to stop going out in Public Places to bars and restaurants and spreading a asymptomatic. Y i want to applaud the private sector now creating senior only read i think that is extraordinary and shows what america brings and i think other countries will learn from us about how to protect seniors in this way. I am hoping it carries through to next year when we have our when we can have a profile about the amount of mortality we have that we never talk about. Well learn how to do this and sustain core changes, we can change the way respiratory viruses affect americans. Host the caller mentioned the earlier andployment on marriott in particular, the Worlds Largest Hotel Company begins furloughing workers and they will furlough tens of thousands of employees amid the coronavirus pandemic. The Largest Company in the world experiencing significant drops in demand at hotels during the outbreak. We are adjusting Global Operations accordingly. That reporting from the hill on that story. Good news or at least progress, the head of nih tweeting this yesterday saying nih launched a phase i Clinical Trial evaluating a vaccine candidate covid19. Virus, it is enrolling 45 healthy Adult Volunteers and the first of multiple steps for evaluating the potential benefit of the vaccine. We hear from susan in seattle. Go ahead. Caller hello. Thank you. I have three points i would like to make and questions as well. Going through the seattle area, i am sure there are larger cities, you see the unserved Homeless People and it is pretty scary in normal, good times, but you see them out in the open and and it is aualor crisis already, but i am afraid it will only get worse if we do not pay more attention to that and will they get a 1000 check . That is one thing i would like to mention. The other thing is we talk about the front being doctors and you just referred to hour. Nior grocery our workingut the people there . What about the people at work as delivery drivers and all the drivers having to go out in the community. What protection are they getting . If we are in a shortage in hospitals, what kind of shortage of protective equipment do these people face . Finally, i would like to request that President Donald Trump apologize to our governor, jay inslee, for calling him a snake because he wanted the president to stick to the science. It seems he has finally taken his advice and is starting to Pay Attention to science, which has brought us to a more proactive stance today. Host she asked about Grocery Stores. There is a report kroger, among others, is in need of workers because of the demand on Grocery Stores, kroger one of many stores that is looking for additional workers to meet the demand. Susan in massachusetts, next, welcome. You. R thank can you hear me . Host i can. Caller thank you to you and cspan for the superior coronavirus coverage. Observations for the clip you just played of National Hero in my mind, dr. Burks, as well as that whole team. Love them or hate them. I am in the second camp, but i believe this coronavirus is gear andcking into being effective and i think the world of dr. Fauci and his associate. I had some observations regarding dr. Burks about the congregating,tion partying like it is 1999. They are completely being selfish and oblivious to the damage they are doing to the society. I notice the coverage in the wall street journal talking specifically about what is happening in florida with spring break raging on and the party culture, no restaurants and bars have been shut down. I fear for the whole nation because all these spring breakers and tourists are going to fan back out across the nation and i guess other countries and if you are in a asymptomatic person, that doesnt mean you are not a killer of the elderly and immune compromised. It upsets me end this sunday i drove by it was early in the morning, i thought i would try to beat the crowds, i went to a local Grocery Store in boston in riviera and it was something. Ut of it it was a mob scene they had Police Patrols out front. I kept driving. I was like, no way. Faster thanof there lightning. What i observed, which broke my were all these frail, elderly people walking into that mass of humanity, that german germ factoryop to shop. I could not believe so many people were exposing themselves to crowds, especially the frail and elderly and we have a severe shortage. Our Health System is not built bornspitalization, it is on build on in and out. Our model is different because it is profit driven, not a government run system. I thought the coverage in the wall street journal yesterday was extraordinary in highlighting this generational war that may be drilling of the young partiers and the bar goers and in boston, mayor walsh witnessed this behavior over the weekend and on monday, he shut down every restaurant and bar in the city. He was so alarmed by what he saw of just the failure to keep social distance and i guess, applaud thisally team. I am in the pharmaceutical industry. I most recently worked for the vaccines division. One of our ceos has gone down to the white house twice. He is a very close protege of dr. Faucher. My company has been extraordinary. We are on our second week of work from home. Covid19 briefings, videos from senior leaders, china, japanese, singapore, and korean colleagues have been on lockdown. Our european colleagues have been on lockdown. We also have a lot of inside information because we have colleagues or former colleagues who are italian citizens who live in italy and they are reporting the situation that was. Aused by denial little too late because people would not accept the fact this illness there is you concerned a similar attitude in the United States . Caller absolutely and florida is the epicenter right now. I sent an email to the white house yesterday and i called the Governors Office in florida. I know it sounds lame, but i feel like the optics of the as usual. His news i heard in florida at the the massive Senior Housing city, they are playing shuffleboard and socializing like normal. Your loved like when being aourself ands up serious case and doctors and nurses are going to have to make life decisions at the moment as to who gets to live and doesnt, then maybe people will realize this is far more serious and my last comment is i hope this whole crisis madonna maderna is right down from where i work and they are the first ones in Clinical Trials for a vaccine. I hope if and when the vaccine becomes available in 2021 and the efficacy and safety is start, that we can challenging this and tiebacks er, antivaccine movement. Go vaccines and i am grateful we have our best and brightest working on a covid19 vaccine. I final comment. Host one quick one, go ahead. Caller high father used to say america always gets it wrong until they get it right. I always think of him and he was a guinea pig in world war ii. They were giving soldiers and airmen they were giving them all kinds of experimental vaccines. Host thanks for your input. Back to the legislative front, to the response the federal response, this is the headline at politico. Republicans find a bailout they can back. Lawmakers are moving quickly to inject as much as 1 trillion into the economy to save a slew of industries and millions of jobs from the devastation of the coronavirus. They are even talking about handing out 1000 checks to americans, an idea first pushed by a democratic president ial candidate. The senate coming in today to consider the house legislation. They are likely to finish work on that. Talkednuchin yesterday about what steps the administration has taken to respond to the financial end of this. [video clip] earlier today, i sent a letter to fed chairman powell approving his request to use 13 three and what that will do is the fed will set up a special purpose vehicle. Tot will enable the fed a 1ntee the purchase of trillion market and credible to american critical to American Workers and business and critical to american savers who have a lot of that money in money market funds. We heard loud and clear there were utility issues. This is significant and we have the ability to have the fed purchase up to 1 trillion of commercial paper as needed. That has created significant stability in the market today. The second thing i would say is we previously talked about deferring irs payments. The president early this morning authorized me to announce this program. I announced we would defer to hundred billion dollars. Specificsclear on the. We encourage americans who can file taxes to continue to file taxes april 15 because for many americans, you will get a tax refund and we do not want you to lose out. Many people do this electronically, which is easy for them and for the irs. To the irs, payment you can defer up to 1 million. That covers passthroughs and Small Businesses and 10 million to corporations interest free and penalty free for 90 days. All you have to do is file your taxes, you automatically will not get charged interest and penalties. Any american has the right to extend their taxes. The president has asked us to go up to 300 billion. That is an enormous amount of liquidity in the system. Host the treasury secretary saying about taxes in particular, urging people to file by april 15, especially if you are owed a refund. In his comments, saying they are extending for 90 days people who will owe payments up to 1 million. That covers a lot of people and 10 million for businesses, 90 day extension for those of you and those businesses which will owe taxes. We talked about florida, illinois, arizona primary. Joe biden defeats Bernie Sanders to win president ial primary and here are the results. Voteiden with 43. 6 of the. Bernie sanders, 31. 6. Lets get to calls on hear from debbie in kansas. Welcome. Caller i just want to share my experience in kansas. I wasnt feeling well a couple weeks ago and went home with the flu. Went and saw my doctor. I have a slight fever, shortness of breath and they tested me and no flu. He said, you are sick, but i dont know what it is, so try to take care of myself. Still wasthursday and not feeling well and saw another doctor and he said the same thing. Slight fever, shortness of breath, we dont know what it is. Can i get tested for covid19 . I was asked if i had been in contact with anyone. I am in kansas, no one has been tested, how would i know . He said i cannot order it. He said to try the state department and friday they said we will let you get tested and i went and got tested friday at 4 30. I was supposed to be starting a new job yesterday. I have not gotten my test results yet. When i try to call over the weekend, their offices were closed. When i called Kansas University, their phone lines, their network was down three hours on saturday, 3, 4 hours yesterday and i called state epidemiology and they say they will get back to me. We have knock on your results yet, we dont know when we will get there. Now i probably will not have my new job and i dont know if i have the virus were not. Host who is doing the test . Caller it was Kansas University and they had me go to a place i had to drive up. At that time they said they would have results within 24 hours, may be longer and now it is wednesday morning. I am told we probably cannot go forward with this new job because you do not know if you are positive or not and i cannot get a hold of the i got a hold of the state and they confirmed they do not know when they will get the results. Host they do not know when they will get the results . Caller they absolutely do not know. Anything. Tell me host i will ask our folks in the control room to put you on hold. If you are okay, we will check back with you on friday given that that will be the week mark. You have been tested. Gary in connecticut has not been able to get tested. If you are ok with it, we will give you a call back on friday. Are you ok with that . Caller that would be fine. Host put her on hold and we will take her number and call back on friday if we can. Not too early, hopefully, and see where things stand. I know it must be frustrating, so hopefully they get back to you with the results. Brian next in Washington State. Go ahead. Caller good morning, washington journal. Regards to the coronavirus i am up by canada listening to canadian radio and there was a Prime Minister representative of British Columbia yesterday that and the comment that canada ,he United States could team up drop all International Tariffs toregard to tear trading get the economy going globally. This canadian suggested donald and setmove all tariffs an example for the rest of the ld and he was sure true to would follownada trump and remove canadian tariffs to promote the Global Economy. Host remove them from where . Caller the comment was made for remove trading tariffs. To get our Global Economy back on its feet. The canadian suggested trump set an example for the rest of the world and remove all trading tariffs to entice the Global Economy to get back on its feet and i dont understand the scenario, but apparently to make a level Playing Field and get everybody to square one in the interest of the Global Economy to get back in the game. I thought it was a good suggestion. I have a comment about the super tuesday. Host absolutely. Proud to caucus in 2016. I felt like i was part of the election process. At the same time, i was relieved we did not have to go through the scenario this time. I was amazed that how many people had come out to caucus in 2016 had not been active in any politics since the vietnam war era and these people were so enticed and captured by Bernie Sanders message that they came out of the shadows. When it comes to this primary, i would like to people to know working in this primary and active in it that when we go to have our republicandemocrat debate for the 2020 election, the main thing the republican is going to throw in the democrats burisma andhe has hunter and if democrats think biden can overcome this accusation in this scenario being supported by all republicans in the nation and republicans in congress, i think they have a long way to go. Declaring joe biden the winner in the primary from last week. From west virginia, this is the. West virginia reports first virus case. Mandated all bars, restaurants, shut down. The case in the eastern panhandle, adding that only take out will be available. It is a serious, serious time. We have prepared for this and we should not panic. That is from governor jim justice, west virginia. To tennessee, terry. Caller how are you doing this morning . Host fine, thanks. Caller i believe a lot of people are overreacting about this coronavirus. I believe the best way to beat it is massive doses of vitamin c , chicken soup, same thing you would do if you caught the flu. I also haveote, concern about prison inmates. I have been locked up before. I know what it is like on the inside, it is filthy. I do believe most prisons and jails around the country are not really doing anything to curtail this. If you want to send a text, it is 2027488003. Tom in cincinnati, i live on a small Social Security check. Are we going to be included in this stimulus or forgotten like we always are . From bob in missouri, this president knew we had a pandemic a long time ago. Why did he sit on his hands . I have not heard anything about the people most vulnerable to the virus. Elderly and disabled people on social media barely making ends meet. What is this bailout going to do for them . Tom is next in fort lauderdale, florida. Caller high live in florida, i am 73 and i plan to play golf today. Conundrum of what is going on with the press and people talking reminds me of my relatives calling me when there is a hurricane near. This huge hurricane map and the exterior is beginning to touch the area i live and they are concerned about me. Today isto them is nice, i dont know what you are talking about and that is what is going on. If you listen to what the government is saying, only the people in the eye of the if you take the precautions that are being recommended, the chances of you contracting the coronavirus are greatly diminished. That is the one point. The other thing is the political side of this. You quoted the newspapers saying a democrat had proposed the 1000 being mailed to people. That is a lie. What was proposed was 1000 being mailed to people every month. That is a big difference but take the chance miss a chance to slant what is slight donald trump. Donald trump right off the bat stopped travel from china. Do not tell me that the democrats would have done the same thing because they criticized him for stopping travel from china. Donald trapp donald trump cut red tape that democrats would have never cut and as a result, we have several measures being tested today from the vaccine and treatment standpoint. There is a medicine that has a lot of hope and is cheap. Quine. It is aloro malaria drug being used in australia. It is cheap and they have small control tests where 40 people 30 placebos and they all got it. Host we will let you go there. Enjoy your round of golf. We will continue here on washington journal discussing federal and state responses to the coronavirus with Michael Greenberger from the university of marylands center for homeland security. Later we will be joined by drew harris from Thomas Jefferson university talking about what it means to flat in the curve and it comes to curbing the spread of the coronavirus. Yesterday Senate Republicans tot romney and soon spoke thune spoke and to the press. We will give help to the people who need it. We will give help to Small Businesses and big as messes that have been impacted by the virus. We will give help to the American Family and workers. Youre not going to leave this building until we get the job done. It may take us a few days or weeks, but we will get the job done. [no audio] had a good meeting. Heard from the secretary about some of the ideas the administration has and we are working around on phase three. We know we have to move on phase two and to do it quickly. We recognize there is time sensitivity to everything we are working on right now. Our members will be working as aggressively as possible to put together a plan we think not only deals with the Health Care Crisis but the economic crisis that a lot of the American People, families, and Small Businesses are dealing with as well. You have members who have strong reservations about how the house bill is a structured structured the paid leave and how it is delivered and to think there is a better way to do it. The question is whether that can be amended in the senate. I do not think the leaders made any final decisions about that just yet but we also know that getting phase two done is a predicate to getting phase three done. I think we have a high level of interest as does the white house in moving forward with a bill that addresses the concerns, the very real needs of Small Businesses. I deals with Industries Like aviation, which is burning cash quickly. Daytoday needs that the American People have. These are things that washington journal continues. Host we are joined by Michael Greenberger who is the director of university of marylands center for health and homeland security, a title which ties in both of the issues facing the u. S. And the world when it comes to the covid19 coronavirus. Broadly, what does your organization focus on . Our organization was founded by the university of maryland president in the wake deal in 11 attacks to the first instance in those days with principally counterterrorism issues. We are about to celebrate our 18th anniversary on may 15, 2002. We still do counterterrorism, but we also do controlling emerging Infectious Diseases, responding to superstorms like superstorm stood sandy and also dealing with cybersecurity issues like ransomware. And since 9 11 the nation the world has not seen a epidemic like this. In your organizations experience in dealing with other viruses and health concerns, and even the tabletop exercises your group may have done, what is your appraisal so far of how the u. S. Has responded, the federal government, to the coronavirus outbreak . Guest let me say this virus is more serious than anything we face going all the way back to 2001. We have had anthrax, sars, mers, h1n1, ebola, zika. This virus resents the worst Public Health emergency that we are had and i am afraid as other experts that it will be very much like the 1918 spanish flu where somewhere between 20 million and 50 million people. Orldwide died from the flu i do not know that that is going to happen, but this is a much more serious problem then we have ever seen before. In terms of the federal response, i like many other people wish it had started earlier. We are still having difficulty finding testing kits to determine who has the flu. Without those testing kits and moving as slowly as the u. S. Is, it is very hard to develop a response. Take for example medical personnel in hospitals. They could look at somebody, they could be dealing with somebody who has a bad allergy attack, a bad cold, the seasonal flu, or covid19. Until we get a handle on what we are dealing with and who we have to deal with in terms of therapeutics, we are really behind the eight ball. I must to say south korea, which handled this, was testing tens of thousands of people a day. The u. S. , even though we have now ramped up and made it easier to develop testing kits, we are now still in the position of doing hundreds a day. Until we get a handle on precisely what we are dealing with, it makes responding that much more difficult. Host i saw the headline this week that says the coronavirus a good significant challenge disaster agencies a significant challenge to disaster agencies. Do you see a clear line of command on who is taking the lead in response to the coronavirus . Chain of command on who is taking the lead and response to the coronavirus . Talk usually when you about the emergency federal federalnt Agency Emergency management agency, youre talking about something that is mostly a state response. For example, wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes. When you have a Public Health emergency it calls into play not just Emergency Management, but also the Public Health side of government. Those two aspects of government have to work in harness. I am comfortable that as we speak now, the federal government has got the chain of command in order. The other thing i would emphasize the president declared a National Emergency on march 4. That is an unusual thing to do. Usually what happens is urgencys sees our declared state by state. That may still happen the in fact, it will still happen. The fact that the federal government has declared this a National Emergency makes it easier for states to get the president to agree with their assessment that they are dealing with an emergency or disaster within the state. Whatever the federal government does, and what the federal government does is important, but it is a supporting role. As we are seeing all over the country, it is the state governors 50 state governors and the mayor of the District Of Columbia who have the lead on all of this. States dealing with this problem. Hass not every state, declared a state emergency and that is an important process because it frees the governor to take extraordinary actions the state. Estate in new york,eeing california, or maryland, is governors are taking action, closing restaurants, limiting the assemblage of people. They got support from the experts in the federal government, but this is going to be viewed principally as a state response problem. The good news there is as we work closely with governors and state Health Agencies and state Emergency Management agencies, the states are pretty well briefed to deal with this problem effectively. Host give us an idea of what your center at the university of maryland, the types of tasks or things you have been asked by state governors to assist with . Byst we have been asked state governors and agencies and localities also localities can on their own declare emergencies we have been advising a lot of large counties for example in maryland. Montgomery and prince georges, which are just on the border with the d. C. And are very populous. Very well written run governments. We are advising them on date them responses as issue on day today responses as issues arise. Howard county, which is between bc and baltimore and is a prosperous well between d. C. And baltimore is a prosperous wellrun government. We ran a tabletop exercise going through what a coronavirus would call upon the Public Schools to do and testing Public School officers on how they would respond. We have other exercises we happen asked to do that are being lined up. I must tell you we have a lot of existing contracts with counties and state governments into andthat have asked us cities that have asked us to do projects that now you not have the immediacy that coronavirus has. We have essentially been told, put the other things aside, throw your full weight behind working on the coronavirus, we will that back to those other issues when we can afford to do it. We are dealing with departments of health, hospitals, nonprofits, and it trying to give them advice on how to respond within the confines of the emergencies that have been declared and the powers or discretion they have to pursue Public Health ends. Until 9 00ng us up eastern is Michael Greenberger. He is the director of the university of Maryland Department of health and homeland security. Your statesear what are doing. Number for000 is the those of you in the eastern and central time zones. Mountain and1 pacific time zones. For medical professionals, your. Ine is 202 7488002 it invokes the stafford act and allows fema to tap into nearly 43 billion in funds directing aid to the states hit by crises. It instructs state governments to set up Emergency Operations centers. It directs hospitals nationwide to activate Emergency Preparedness contingency plans. It allows the health and Human Services secretary to hinder lift regulations that could hinder capabilities. That relief how quickly does not typically get to the states and localities . Way Public Health nonprofits may be entitled to a portion of that money. This,ly and all of even though it is a National Emergency, every state that has a serious problem will declare a state emergency, which is very important. Put will then go to fema to themselves in a situation to have additional funds sent into the state to cover work they do in responding to the coronavirus. Whenhe powers of governors they declare these emergencies is extraordinary. It is important to the president did it. He did it under the socalled National Emergencies act. And also something called a Public Health services act, it was put into motion on january 31 when we began to see people were returning from china possibly infected. All of those things allow the federal government to waive requirements that may normally be in place in normal times. For example, a medical licensed person can perform services outside of the area in which they are licensed under that waiver. The critical thing and we are seeing this when we see the press conferences with the governor of new york, the governor of california, into the governor of maryland this allows the states, it paves the to tapthe states, one, the resources of federal funding available. Requirement t the expenses you have, so when you turn around to seek federal relief you have the appropriate evidence to show, but also what thepresident did sets groundwork for states to declare their emergencies and recover further moneys from fema for work they do. These declarations of emergency at the federal level and state level are very important, extraordinary powers on the state level are wrought into play. Brought into play. I might add quickly that Public Health emergencies in the states have been declared for other emerging Infectious Diseases, n1 or thecommon was h1 swine that became a serious problem in 2009. Swine flu virus that became a serious problem in 2009. I think we will see people taking more extreme actions then we have seen in the past. I want totate and be careful how i use these terms set up a quarantine around. Ero new rochelle bars are closed, restaurants are closed, state workers are beings debt sent home, state universities are closing, all dealings with students are being done remotely, exams are remote. There are going to be as the days go on extraordinary powers the powers have been there, but they have never been needed except as we looked down the road to the future of this virus. They will be called into play in every state across the country. Host we have calls waiting. We want to remind our callers and listeners, 202 7488002 is the line is aligned to use for medical professionals. Julie is calling from hot springs, virginia. Tell us about what you do. Nurse i am a registered currently working in fairfax county. Definitely understand the goal of flattening the curve of the on this, working in the er, and we want to make sure we do not overload the system. One thing though that i think we need to be careful with is also flattening the curve of immunity. With such tight restrictions on movement, only time will tell. I say that without having a better solution. Of course if we flatten the curve of the illness and we come up with a solution, whether that be a vaccine or a treatment, that doctors are willing to use or provide more hospital beds and two nurses, which are hard to come by. That is my hospital beds and nurses, which are hard to come by. That is basically my comment. I do not have a solution for it. It is something to think about. Guest first of all, i say to all medical personnel who are dealing with directly the patients, thank you for your , thank youpatients for your service. The best medical Scientific Minds are looking at this and the biggest problem they worry about is the danger of covid19 is that it is highly infectious and unless restraints are put on the population, the outbreak could just soar to a point where we would not have hospital resources, medical resources, medical equipment, to take care of all of the patients at one time. There is no therapeutic vaccine yet, but in the absence of that, it is very important to limit exposures and limit infections so that the health community, Health Services can deal with people on a rational basis. If everybody presents at a hospital at one time we are sunk. From hhs to state Health Authorities to medical personnel who are looking at this feel right now the most important thing is to limit the spread and that is why you hear about thead importance of social distancing, with washing your hands. Limit thehopefully infection to ais degree where it can be handled in our medical facilities. Host you mentioned possible extraordinary measures that have not been used to get. Front page on the New York Times a shelterinplace order may be next as new yorker grinds to an, new york city and economic engine of the Country Grown to a halt on tuesday because of the coronavirus act break and restrictions on public life put in place to stem its spread. The citys mayor signaled the shutdown could go further with the possibility of an order to shelterinplace, a decision he said it should be made in the next 48 hours. If that moment came, there are tremendously substantial isions that would half to , mayor de blasio said. Guest shelterinplace is basically do not go out into the public, stayathome as much as you can. There is an ability when we look at these dramatic actions to place and quarantine those people who may be infected. They would have to stay in a certain spot. There are a few exceptions to the quarantine process. When you look carefully at what mayor de blasio is talking about or seeing other shelterinplace orders, they are not as restrictive as you might think. It is more in urging then mandating. There is a recognition that people will have to go to the pharmacy to get medications, they will have to go to Grocery Stores to get food, they will have to go outside with their pets, they will need to exercise. It is not a dictatorial instruction. Look at thispeople especially in the vulnerable population, those who are 60 or older and have other medical problems that may make the infection more dramatic, i think they welcome the response. Military enforced quarantine, it is and i think sensible quarantine. I think sensible quarantine. It is not a radical solution. Worried about shelterinplace orders. Most doctors are now telling ifple over 60, especially they have other medical conditions, to shelterinplace, stayathome. That does not mean you cannot go out, that does not mean you cannot exercise, that does not mean you cannot walk your dog. The general thing is to limit your exposure to other people who might present the infection your way. Host getting back to calls with a quick check of the data the number of cases worldwide now topping two hundred thousand from Johns Hopkins diversity. Total confirmed cases worldwide 201,000. Worldwide. Eaths President Trump tweeted minutes ago i will be holding a News Conference day to discuss their Important News from the fda on the chinese virus. Our next caller is from missouri. Theer im calling about trillion dollar stimulus trump was talking about. Trillion has 12 zeros behind the one. Dore that is if you the math, everybody in the u. S. Should get over 3000 a piece and we are talking they are talking about giving 1000 to each employee. If you have three people in your house, working or not, that would be 9,000. Who do who is the money really going to . As a sideline, i am very interested in Financial Market distress. I teach a course on it. I was very active in the response to the 2008 financial crisis. When you total up what happened in 2008. The country put on the table 23 trillion to save the banks. And a lot of this going directly to those affected, who have lost their jobs or have to stay home and not get salary, the secretary of treasury said if the federal government does not aggressively deal with the economic consequences of this virus, we could have 20 unemployed. 20 unemployed is approaching the unemployment in the great depression. The country, and i have been quoted on this, has gone come to a dead stop commercially. Airlines are not working, cruise lines are not working, airports are shutting down, people cannot get supplies. Everywhere you look there is a stop, stop, stop. The only solution is to stimulate the economy. Secretary mnuchin, donald trump trumps secretary of the treasury, is at the forefront of sounding the alarm of the necessity of getting money into the hands of not only corporations but of people. The possibility there is one possibility and that is not dealing with the health crisis. A lot of illness and a lot of death. We also have a fierce economic crisis that looks to me that if it is not stanched could be 2008,than what we saw in 2009. These things may seem dramatic, but the options for keeping the economy flowing are not great. My view is, there is no option forto spend this money example for people who are sitting at home not working, not getting their hourly wage, they do not have sick leave, they probably do not have health insurance, to provide help. It is true that this will go to whoever i think the limit is 1 million a year income that will hopefully stimulate the of thatand keep us out which is an active threat not only outlined by the secretary of the treasury, but every respectable economist i know is worried about not just to the recession but a fiscal calamity that might exceed that of 2008. Host our guest Michael Greenberger. We hear next from new jersey. This is harry. Caller the flu of 1918 1919 with non vaccine ever discovered. Wondering, could this happen with the coronavirus . Could it disappear within a year with no vaccine ever discovered . Thank you. Guest the answer to that question is yes, it could, and i think the medical scientific hope is that it will. The spanish flu, when you said it lasted a year and then went away, there were more deaths from the spanish flu worldwide than from world war i. When you deal with an infectious emerging disease that strong, you are declaring a war. You are not using the military, you are using medical personnel. We cannot afford really to take the chance that we are dealing with the spanish flu here. Frankly there is debate about this. We do not know for a fact because we are not testing regularly. We do not know the circle of the infection, but where i am sitting today, i am worried that this may be worse than the spanish flu. I say this because yesterday the Imperial College in london today very careful study of worstcase scenarios and the infections and the death from infections were alarming. In fact, they were so alarming that it is said in the press that when donald trump saw this he overcame his reluctance to throwing everything the federal at the had against coronavirus. ,e cannot ignore, as you said spanish flu, no therapeutic, no vaccine. We will not have a vaccine for a year at the very earliest, but there could be a therapeutic, which is Something Like tamiflu, which people take to prevent or mitigate the response to a seasonal flu. There are many Clinical Trials going on right now testing medical countermeasures that were approved for other reasons but there is reason to believe it might be effective in either preventing or mitigating the symptoms of the coronavirus. There is one developed by a , which was a countermeasure for ebola, but there is intelligent thinking not completely decided that that therapeutic could mitigate or even prevent coronavirus. It is being used today compassionately to people in the seattle nursing home that are on deaths door. To use aan ability drug for a purpose not yet approved by the fda. Finical trials are underway right now and we may know within the month Clinical Trials are underway right now and we may know within the month if that therapeutic works. My own sign unscientific hunch hope is out of all the drugs and it is not vaccines, it takes too long to approve a vaccine there may be an antiviral that would be effective against the coronavirus. We will know within the month if we have a hope there. If this drug that is being tested does not work, there are others in the pipeline. The hope out there is unlike the spanish flu for which there was no adequate medical response and they had to resort to social distancing and all the kinds of things we are seeing today, that we will hopefully again, i cannot promise this but i have hope that we will have an antiviral coming within weeks that will be available to stem the tide. Virginia calling us from waldorf, maryland. Listening to everything being said here. And grocerypen stores are open and pharmacies are open. Our coat counters are less than three feet apart and people are coming in sick as a result of them coming in and sneezing and coughing on me. Pumps are open 20 47. You can order bursaries online. Asvice workers are just valuable as a state workers. There is no reason to keep us open. Host what type of store you do not have to tell us the company . Whatever store you work at . Cstore. T is a discretionary, may be mandatory with a lot of exceptions first of all, youre doing a very valuable job. Second of all, the exceptions usually are to be able to let people get food and medicine, which will beat your point is well taken. You can order online. Maybe we will have to resort to that. I can tell you right now, we a pharmaceutical pharmaceuticals available for people. We have to keep the food available to people and other socalled necessities. Right now they are keeping stores open. I know a lot of stores, the major stores like target for example are going to have hours only for senior citizens, forcing people to go online to order, especially elderly people, that is not as easy as it sounds. Everything. Ose down that is why i was saying earlier, a quarantine sounds scary, but there are going to have they are going to have exceptions. People need to have access to these commercial facilities. I think if we resorted to completely online some people do not have access to the internet. Elderly citizens do not know how to use the internet. We are going through a stage of ting but i can say this the availability to buy food, to buy pharmaceuticals, and other necessities is important. Yes, if you go when you may be you will use hand , iansers, wipe down surfaces can assure you at pharmacies those services are being wiped down regularly. Anybody who comes in and is a sick, i believe can be thwarted through the use of these nonpharmaceutical responses. The federal response, particularly military and more specific on the corps of engineers, this is a story in the New York Post of this morning. The core ofl apply engineers according to mark esper in a phone conversation with the yorkie governor pledging to deploy the army corps of engineers to new york to help them combat the coronavirus. Yesterday at the briefing President Trump and Vice President pence were asked about the role of the corps of engineers and the dod more broadly in terms of potentially building mobile hospitals are providing more respirators. Here is what they said, Michael Greenberger, and then i will get your thoughts on that. How many facilities could the army corps of engineers build . We have ordered massive numbers of ventilators. We have by any normal standards a lot of respirators, ventilators. We have massive amounts of equipment. Compared to what we are doing here this has never been done before. Yesterday i gave governors the right to order directly. If they feel they can do it faster than going through the federal government. We have knocked out all of the bureaucracy, but it is always directly. Order that was misinterpreted by the New York Times unfortunately. The president directed us to work with the department of defense. There are two ways dod can be helpful in terms of expanding medical capacity. The governor of new york has asked us to look at the army corps of engineers that could possibly renovate existing buildings, but the president also has as inventorying mash hospitals that can be deployed quickly. With Washington State. We have resources in that part of the country that we can move. As governors make these requests we will bring them to the president , but there are two different lanes that dod can provide in addition to medical supplies to augment our National Reserves and to the president has tasked us to evaluate, make available, and consider every request governors for either expanding facilities, or the army corps of engineers could retrofit existing fillings. T what are you hearing retrofit existing buildings. Host what are you hearing from the Vice President . Ventilators of all, which assist people and breathing are going to be very important because the infection makestacks the lungs and breathing very difficult, especially in the over 60 population who have other complicating medical problems. Of military just freed up 5000 ventilators, but we need multiples of that in the u. S. Military has been helpful there. There are two Major Hospital ships that may be deployed and repurposed. Now they are focused on trauma for people who returned with serious war wounds but they can be repurposed to house people who are suffering and create more hospital beds. The hospital bed situation i am told is not as bad as might be feared, but as the governor as ,ew york of new york Governor Cuomo said, in china and korea the military they are built additional hospital capacities. It is not just renovating buildings it is building new buildings. The army corps would be terrific at that, but i think a lot of state National Guards could be very helpful in that regard as well. We are going to see in the next atk a very big effort creating facilities that will be worstcasese scenario patients. Toill tell you, a hospital, be licensed, must demonstrate that it can handle a surge patient capacity over 20 of their full capacity. How is that done . Temporary quarters are set up in parking lots, in garages. That can be done, but i am hopeful that with the use of military knowhow, we will have more permanent facilities built. We need to have that done. One further point. We have been talking about flattening the curve. If we flatten the curve, not everyone gets sick at the same time and it moves out over time. Instance, that each we are dealing with fewer and fewer patients so that our supply chain can meet the challenge. Ofhink with the addition military supplies by the way, there is something called the National Stockpile that is set aside for emergencies and with all of the emergencies being declared, that stockpile will become available. That has personal protective equipment and other things. We are now bringing the resources of all those institutions that can help. The military has a very Important Role to play and they will be helpful. There are many medical personnel in the military that can be brought to bear on this. The one thing that is troublesome when you hear about the military is in the past 1800s,ould say late early 20th century when did the state National Guard was used to keep people in their houses when a quarantine was declared. Earlier, you are worried earlier about sheltering in place and i said it wouldnt be that your medic. We do not want to the army involved in Law Enforcement policies. If they are, that triggers a whole other set of statutory problems, which can be overcome, what i hope should not be raised. Host our next caller is from bell buckle, tennessee. I am having treatments. I had a fever. They set i had to go and be tested. It makes perfect sense. Mike dr. To get that test i also my doctor to get that test, i found out a man came down with a confirmed case in my area. Possiblealso had contact. I still have had no word whatsoever about the outcome of that. The problem is my physician called yesterday and says she has problems already rescinded from lab to lab to lab three times. Labs keep promising yes, we can process it, but then when they get it, we wait for days and then they go actually, we cant do it we dont know how. I am not alone in having a test done. Host thanks for that. I will tie in a question from karen who texted us in karen in washington says how can korea have so many test kits . What is the delay . Up in getting the testing running has been shocking in the u. S. The World Health Organization offered test kits and test kits by countries all over the world, probably by south korea but im not sure exactly. Our initial response was, we are not going to use the World Health Organization and we are going to center the development of the test kits in cdc and fda laboratories. Days agoout about 10 that some of the cdc laboratories that were developing test kits were contaminated. As a result of that the logical answer has been presented, which is letting all of the institutions in the u. S. That are fully capable of developing these test kits to go ahead. There are joint ventures between public and private to develop test kits. The testing i think was the most serious problem we confronted. We do not know now when we hear there are 100,000 people who have had the virus, 100 have died, we do not have the data we need to have an intelligent response to this. That being said, this problem is well on its way, i hope, to being corrected. The experience of the caller is not unusual. The testing has been completely inadequate. They have been problem solving that issue. Tests are being developed all over the country in many states in many health institutions. We are promised that a lot of tests it will be available. Some people are saying, we may not have the personnel to do the test. That may be a problem, but we are as we should be now looking at this seriously. I hope in the next week or two there will be more tests available, results will be get back and faster. We talk about nurses and doctors going into the hospital there is a shortage of protective equipment they are using. They are confronting patients who can present anything from a common cold to the coronavirus and they do not know what they are dealing with. Ofth korea was testing tens thousands of people a day when we were testing hundreds. We are way behind the rest of the world in testing. It does not do a lot of good tuesday to cry over spilt milk. United states and state governments into state researchers are being put to work on this. Host we go next to hawaii to hear from jared. Good morning. Caller good morning. Host go ahead, you are on the air. Caller i was wondering, how are we supposed to deal with this year in hawaii since we had two cases two weeks ago and now we have 10 the presumed positive. We are still allowing air travel and everything pretty much from anywhere and nothing has shut down. Andave a small island here tens of thousands of visitors every day. How can we combat this . Host Michael Greenberger from Johns Hopkins, the number of cases confirmed in hawaii is now 14. Caller guest if youre looking at Washington State or new york state, the cases are double that. If you look at heat maps of where the virus is a presenting itself, there are big red circles around new york state and the immediate states there. It is a real problem. Doit has not happened yet, i believe that there will be controls put in place about who can fly in and out of hawaii. You have a special problem you are off mainland. People need to get the United States and elsewhere in the world. Appropriatet the controls will be put in place. When you cite to those numbers that they are troubling, but they are not as troubling as what you see in the state of new york. I think with the social distancing and other measures put into place, that can be brought under control. Next to amherst, massachusetts. Hello there. Hi. Er i was just looking on the website for the Eastern Caribbean states and they said the island of st. Vincent, the first patient has tested positive for the virus and they immediately ordered the treatment from cuba. Cuba into the organization of Eastern Caribbean states, in the rest of the caribbean, there are 70 patients and to have them have died. Of them have died. I believe there are 60 Clinical Trials going on right now guest i believe there are 60 Clinical Trials going on right now to determine what therapeutic is safe. I am a most 100 certain that those beings one of tested. Host where do we know that drug name from . Guest i believe it is an anticancer drug but i am not 100 sure. On that front, every conceivable possibility of bringing relief as i said, vaccines would be the best, because we have been very successful with vaccines that fight these emerging infectious viruses but there is not get a vaccine for the coronavirus. There is one that is started in text testing. You may have seen that there are patients being brought into the test trial, but the soonest we will have a vaccine would be a year and under normal circumstances that would be lightening speed. On the other hand, the real help here is therapeutics. Those are medical measures short of a vaccine that have been used successfully to fight other viruses or critical medical conditions. I talked about the jillian Sciences Test which is being administered to patients in seattle as a Compassionate Service right now under fda leadership that they are in trials. Within a month we should know the results of those trials. Fda on the front of trying to find a medical countermeasure are moving as fast as they can. I might just add, the problem is the spread of an emerging virus is not novel in the u. S. Had a bola. We had ebola. All of this infrastructure was put into play. By the way, the white house was to have a pandemic expert who was sent away in 2018 by the Trump Administration, but we have finally got to learn at we must do more advanced planning. Survive thelly coronavirus episode, i can guarantee in a year, a year and a half, there will be Something Else coming down the pike and we can set in place and infrastructure that gives us in advance ability to deal with these things and not wait until people in seattle are on deaths door. Host this is the Baltimore Sun on one of the moves made by larry hogan. Voters election is moved to june. Michael greenberger, was your organization involved in consulting the state of maryland or other states who have delayed their elections due to the coronavirus . Guest we do give advice to the state of maryland and we have a close working relationship with Maryland Emergency Agency , which is headed by a former staff member of mine. We were not consulted on that. The importance of what youre saying is that is an example of the extraordinary powers a governor can use when an emergency is declared. I was called by the Baltimore Sun yesterday because they are allowing people who are in default on their leases, they are not letting them be evicted during the emergency. Personnel are saying, you are taking our property away how can thesaid, governor do that . That is a minor thing the governor can do, stop evictions during the outbreak of the coronavirus and not putting people on the street when infections are rampant if there is no social distancing. That is an example of power the governor has. If you go down the list of powers, the powers are much more extraordinary than that. I will be quick to say that there is all also available in maryland for complainants to at to complain if countermeasure is arbitrary and capricious. We saw that with ebola, a nurse coming back from a western african country, she was treating ebola patients and was quarantined in a tent outside of the new jersey Newark Airport for three days. There can be abuses, but so far, i have seen governors across the country respond intelligently and in measure to deal with these solutions. Int next up we go to ivan powderly texas powderly, texas. Caller i was wondering why the Mainstream Media is getting kind this they blame donald trump for everything. Is this just a coverup . Did our government come up with this to cover up for Hillary Clinton in joe biden . Host ivan mentioned the Mainstream Media how would you rate the media in general in terms of the reporting and covering of the virus . Guest there is a lot of thinking at their unfortunately, there is not a lot of it. This waswas proposing well, the president called it a democratic hoax a few weeks ago. I think there is a recognition now among the mainstream medical community, science community, and the media that this is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. I would say i do not survey the media in its entirety, but i would right now i think the media is performing a very valuable service in getting a lot of the medical, scientific information out there so that people are informed. At leastmedia the media i look at has been highly responsible. This is not a hoax. The medical and science experts are saying and we are seeing in terms of the growth of infections worldwide into the deaths worldwide that this is a serious problem. My own hope is that with Intelligence Response socialgent response like distancing, washing your hands, hopefully within a couple of weeks a therapeutic countermeasure, we will get over this. As we sit here today all levels of government are working in harness and effectively to respond to the problem we face. Host we appreciate you joining us. Michael greenberger is the director for the university of marylands center for health and homeland security. We appreciate your insight. Guest thank you. Host after the break we are joined by drew harris a Population Health analyst at Thomas Jefferson university about what it means to flatten the curve. We talked about that a little when it comes to curbing the spread of the coronavirus. Senate minority web dick durbin spoke to the press yesterday about legislative wit dick durbin spoke whip spoke to the press yesterday about ledges done norman have been available for us to vote on. It has physically arrived with all backup papers last night. There is no excuse anymore. We should pass it immediately. The provisions americans are waiting to hear about. Are we going to extend medical leave across america . Are we going to extend Unemployment Insurance coverage . Tose things mean a lot families that have to make decisions. There is talk of the second bill and a third bill as well. Mcconnell has said we want to get that done by the time you guys leave. I am open to that. If i came back to washington under these circumstances, lets get back to work. Lets pass the second bill and not wait longer. It should be done today. If we are going to move to a third bill, so be it. The American People want us to respond. One of the big issues you are dealing with is remote voting. Talk to me about that and where we are at with that. You have to consider the reality of the 21st century. There was a time physical presence was the only way to make sure a person was present and voting. Technology gives us Better Options and we better exercise them. The Public Health crisis is slowing travel and availability for people. Could be at terrorism threat. We have to think about the 21st Century Technology and voting requirements in the senate and house. , one of the ideas is you give each american 1000 to try to jumpstart the economy. I think we have to look at a much broader approach. Think about this for a moment. Changing the unemployment compensations of someone receiving thousands of dollars in the course of a year is preferable to a 1000 check. Lets think this through in terms of changes that families thecount on, not just charity of one congress one time. We ought to look at the whole system available for workers and families. Washington journal continues. Host joining us from philadelphia is drew harris, a Population Health analyst at the Thomas Jefferson university in philadelphia. Joining us to talk about the response to the coronavirus and a term a lot if you have heard , flattening the curve on the epidemic. Thanks for joining us this morning. Andnted to show our viewers tell our radio listeners about a february onate flattening the curve. You wrote it is important to that epidemic control measures may only delay cases, not prevent. This helps limit the surge and gives hospitals time to prepare and manage. It is the difference between finding an icu bed and ventilator or being treated in a parking lot. Theing at that flattening curve, extending the time of treating people, how do you think the u. S. Is doing so far . Guest i think time will tell. Good morning. Time will tell how well we do at this point. Right now, we are in a holding pattern, waiting for cases to roll in. We have not seen the surge that is happening in italy. The whole idea of flattening the curve is trying to reduce the peak number of cases, maybe not the total number but reduce the peak and spread that over a long period of time. In the a subway car middle of a rush hour. Everybody is trying to get into the car at once. As a result, not everyone can get in. ,f we spread out our rush hour make sure not Everyone Needs to get in at the same time, there is going to be enough capacity and resources to take care of all who need it. Unfortunately, at this point, we do not know. The virus has been spreading. Lag becauseunting people get infected with the virus. They do not know they have the symptoms. They can spread the virus for a period and then begin to show symptoms. It can be several days, if not weeks, before that occurs. As a result, they are out there spreading this virus. There may be cases that have not been tested. Host the course of your career has taken you from being a dr. Of podiatry, a masters in Public Health. Joining us as a Population Health analyst, give us an idea of what that role entails. In your work, have you ever seen anything in terms of the way previous curves may look on diseases that look like this . Guest i left my private practice in podiatry to work in Public Health. I was beginning that new career at about the time of 9 11. That was a massive event that seriously and directly a few communities in the country, yet it was incredibly disruptive. At that time and following it, we had the anthrax attacks and the spread of an Infectious Disease which became of real concern. There was a recognition that our public Health System was not prepared to respond to those kinds of events. So many people began to think about the other possible risks we are facing. Pandemics were part of them. Recognized in the Public Health community that we were going to see another flu pandemic like we saw in 1918. A lot of work went into preparing for pandemics. Unfortunately, it seems like we have sort of forgotten the lessons back then. To have not gone back planning and effort that went into preparing for a pandemic over a decade ago. Host lets talk about testing. We have had several people talk to us this morning who have tried to get tested or are getting tested and have not seen results. What is your take so far on the u. S. Effort on testing for coronavirus covid19 . Guest the u. S. Effort is behind the curve. We are able to see what was going on around the world before this virus reached our national shores. We did not use that time wisely. One of the things we should have been using that time for was development and deployment of more tests. What testing does is it gives you intelligence. It tells you what is going on in the real world. At the moment, many communities are flying blind through a cloud without any radar. We do not know the full extent of this outbreak. We do not know who has it. We have to limit our testing to only those who come into the hospital who may have this disease because there is a limited supply. If we had an unlimited supply of tests, we could test not only the people who have symptoms but also people they came in contact 2, 3 days in advance of them showing the symptoms so we could begin to do contract Contact Tracing and find folks who may be developing the disease, test them so we can then isolate them or quarantine them if we think they might be coming down with it in the future. That is the way you can control the outbreak. Because we are not doing testing, we have to go with a broadbased approach and basically assume everyone is at risk of spreading this disease. Lets lock it all down until we can sort things out. Host our guest, drew harris, joining us from philadelphia. He has a Population Health analyst. We would love to hear your calls and comments. 202 7488000 is the line to use for those of you in the Eastern Central time zones. In mountain and pacific time zones, 202 7488001. For medical professionals, your line is 202 7488002. Drew harris, assuming tests become more available, how concerned are you about having the medical staff and procedures and places to get these tests done . Guest i am very concerned. Here in philadelphia, you walk by local hospitals and see they are already intense and parking lots as a way of greeting people. We do not want people just walking into the emergency room with this virus and potentially coming in contact with our medical staff. As valuablestaff is a resource as a mask or ventilator. Without those people, we are not going to be able to provide care. We hear stories about nurses being taken offline. If one of them gets the virus and spreads it to others, we cannot let those people work in the hospital so that entire team is taken offline. We need to be careful about protecting our medical staff to make sure they are able to provide the care everyone will need. Host we have been hearing from Coronavirus Task force, including dr. Anthony fauci. Yesterday, he addressed the question of how long before they could determine that their bendingare helping in the curve of the coronavirus. [video clip] we do not know because this is unprecedented. Of all the outbreaks i have been involved with over the last 36 years, we have never had a situation where the mobilization of all the components, travel restrictions, internal containment, financial assistance, Public Health assistance, testing we do not really know. Modelsow if you look at the kinds of mitigations we are doing we see a hump instead of a peak. Instead ofys a hump a peak. Guest i certainly hope so. This prediction business in pandemics is like trying to predict a hurricane. The further out you go, the greater the zone of uncertainty. We have all seen those hurricane charts. The difference between a pandemic and a hurricane is the hurricane does not watch the weather channel. It does not know where it is supposed to go or where we think it is going to go. Whata pandemic, we know can happen. We can, through individual actions, social distancing, handwashing, prepare for and prevent the spread of this virus. We can actually change this trajectory of this event, this hurricane. We can turn it from a cap four to a cat three or two and hopefully a one. That requires all of us working together to make sure we do not spread the virus. Host our line for medical professionals is 202 7488002. We go to that now and hear from roger in cedar city, utah. Caller thanks for taking me on. Diagnostic test kit industry for a long time. I am curious whether our test kits are bloodbased, salivabased, or your and based. I am guessing in korea they have rapid diagnostic tests. It is like a pregnancy test kit. You can rapidly see if it turned blue or pink. In our case, the test kits are going to labs because we regulated most of our test gets have to go to labs. That creates more labor, more time, and we do not get the results as quickly and people have to wait. I was curious and i have some ,atents on reagent dispensing chemistries onto the membranes that can produce hundreds of thousands of strips in a few hours. Host drew harris . Guest i am not an expert in testing. My understanding is they are doing swabs, looking for the virus itself and running pretty pcr tests, which you can probably explain better than i can, to identify the actual virus. Tests that check for the antibodies that the body makes against the virus have been developed, which will tell you whether someone has been exposed but not necessarily right away. I believe the swabs we are dealing with now have been they have automated the process so they move more quickly. That can take 72 hours to get a result. That is going to be sped up. We want to find out a rapid test. If the koreans have a rapid test for the actual virus itself, we should be using that. The faster we can get a result back, the faster we can determine whether this person needs to be in isolation or not. If you presume someone has the virus, you need to put them into isolation until they are proven negative. That means youre using beds waiting for test results. Ralph ins hear from north carolina. Caller good morning. Mr. Harris, i have a couple statements. Being that we have all these diseases that come out and have viruses, we should have warehouses full of gloves and masks that we hold special just for that situation. Back in the 1970s, i caught a lung disease. I had to spend two weeks in a hospital to get it. To get it cured. Maybe they could go with that same situation. It might help out with the cdc and studying that situation. In regards to the infection, i do not know if it lunglated, but it infections require significant hospitalization. That is the concern we have. If each person who comes in with this virus needs to be hospitalized for a couple weeks, that is a bed that is occupied. We will run out. That is a significant issue. In terms of supplies, there is a National Stockpile. This was developed around 9 11 and was beefed up. It contains ventilators and masks and respirators and all kinds of equipment designed to deal with a variety of disasters. That stockpile is in various locations around the country, ready to be deployed as necessary. Certainly they should be tapping into that stockpile now. It is also my understanding that it has not been beefed up. This is where we have missed the opportunity to use that moment when things were spreading in china. We realized we could be china in a month or two in terms of the spread or we could be italy, where they were two weeks ago. That is the time was the time we needed to start moving quickly ramp up manufacturing. This is a war we are fighting. Harbor, thisarl nation within weeks turned our factories from building cars into building tanks. Majoruld be doing a mobilization of our industrial Manufacturing Sector to build to the equipment necessary to fight this virus. Karen asks this. Please ask your guest why chinas numbers have not changed very much in the past week. Can we expect our numbers to remain relatively low because we are being proactive . Are chinas numbers accurate . Guest we have to assume they are accurate. Initially, there were concerns they were not putting out correct information. What i have read recently seems to be consistent with what we expect. Lockingy did was everyone down in the affected areas, not allowing travel, not allowing people to leave their homes except for emergencies or for necessary supplies. They had a massive mobilization of people. They enforced those rules. We could do that in this country. It would be a very different country. It will be difficult for us to accept because we are used to certain liberties that they are maybe not as used to in their society. That is one of the ways they were able to lock it down. We talk about viruses in terms of their reproductive rate. If one person gets the virus, how many people catch it from that person . The reproductive rate at tops here is about two. One person gives it to two people. If that one person never leaves the house, the reproductive rate is effectively zero. Host how does that compare to the flu . Guest it is comparable, depending on which flu you are talking about. I believe the flu is 1. 5. I am not a flu expert. Thees a difference between top reproductive rate and the effective one. But we need to do is lower the effective reproductive rate, to bring it below one. When it is below one, the virus will eventually die out. One of the challenges in china is going to be, as they let people go back to work and you may see an increase as a start to spread again. We will see the same thing in this country. The peak may not be reached as we are concerned about it reaching. It may be lower than expected, but maybe we get complacent and to start doing what we did before. The virus may spread again. This is a long game. When the Fire Department comes to put out your house fire, they do not stop pouring water on up the flames died down. They keep pouring water on until every hotspot is out. That is what we will have to do now is bring down the flames, bring down the fire, and then put water on the hotspots and attack them as necessary. Hopefully, once we have a vaccine, we can really put this out completely. Host just a quick check of the. Orldwide numbers over 8200 deaths worldwide. China, there are over 3200 deaths. Next we hear from carol in massachusetts. Caller good morning. I have three questions. Aboutre talking suppositories. Host make sure you mute your television. Go ahead with your question. Caller you are talking about supplies being stored all over the country from 9 11. Wondering what is the Expiration Date on some of these materials . In aou just stick them repository someplace . Host thanks for that call. Guest is a great question. Each item will have its own Expiration Date. If you think about this like your own house, you go out and you buy a lot of extra supplies, canned goods and things like that. When you go to use those items, you use the ones that are the oldest first to make sure the newer items do not expire. You want to rotate your stock. I believe that is what it is called an inventory management. That is what they should be doing with the National Stockpile. When things are getting your expiration, move them out and use them. These are items used by hospitals all the time. You are always keeping the supply fresh. Sure they are doing inventory management. Host we will hear from nancy in oklahoma. Caller i am a nurse and i have been trying to information from the state department of health, congressmen, senators. I am getting nothing. When i ask them questions about what is going on. The thing that is most important to me right now is ventilators. , i took care of kids on vence. Everyone of them had a backup. There are hundreds, if not thousands come out there in homes with children that have two of them. Informationet that to somebody that can do something with it, i would be more than grateful. I am 67. I am terrified. I am scared to go to work. Our masks are not adequate. We have nothing else. That is what i have to say. Thank you for doing this show. Thank you for your work. You are at the front of the response. You are the foot soldiers who are dealing with it. And concerned about nurses other Health Professionals and their exposures, for selfish reasons because we all want them to be there will we need them, but also because we need to provide them with resources. Ofy are at highest risk coming down the virus, which is why it is so important that we have personal protective equipment, which is why we do not want people to hoard masks. For healthm professionals who are responding to this. In terms of ventilators and homes, i would have trouble going to a family and saying, your child is dependent and im going to take your backup ventilator. I think that should be if they are willing to do that voluntarily. It is difficult to take away what could be an important device to save the life of a child and use it for someone else. I am sure i hope they are ramping up the production of ventilators. I hope they are identifying any supply out there to make sure they are available to hospitals. That is why we need a National Mobilization and developing of these devices. Host we will go to kyle from honolulu. Caller aloha. Mr. Harris, i was wondering if i textbook a more understandable definition of what isolation is, meaning the official definition and what it means to isolate. When do you know you half to isolate . You very much. Guest a how to you. Is textbook definition somebody who has tested positive for a particular disease is kept separated from other people so they do not transmit that disease to other individuals, as opposed to quarantine, where you have people who might have the you are not sure they are going to have it. You do not want to take chances, so you isolate those folks. The reason why we differentiate is you do not want to put the quarantined person with the isolated person. Even if they did not have the disease, they may catch it at that point. We want to keep those folks separated. Another term people ask about is social distancing, which is about the physical separation of people as well as a in terms of time. Virus estimating this comes out in droplets and spreads about six feet. There is more testing being done. Host that is a physical separation. Social distancing is a relatively new term for most of us. Where was that developed . Guest we were using that term 20 years ago. I do not know the original origin of the term. It really describes what we are trying to do here. The term social is a useful way to understand what is happening with this virus. Viruses take advantage of our social nature as human beings. They travel with us. They do not move by themselves. They need us to move them around. Touchingving around, and being with other people, spreading the virus. They are taking advantage of what makes us human to spread. ,y spreading ourselves apart distancing ourselves socially so we are not as physically connected to each other, we are not connected at the same times or there is a temporal difference, then we are stopping the virus from spreading, thwarting it and preventing it from being as successful as it can be. Host you and i are separated by 130 miles. You are in philadelphia. Butal distance between us, you say if someone sneezes, that sneeze could travel six feet am i correct . Current is the you are right. That is the current recommendation, six feet. Lets think of that as a minimum. Our protection for this virus has to be layered. People, noteparate even have them near each other. If they are near each other, lets make a six feet. If they are touching services, lets make sure those services get sanitized and cleaned. Lets make sure if you are touching those services you are washing your hands. It is a variety of measures to make sure the virus does not move from one person to another. That is an important part of how we are going to respond to this much a separate ourselves and not allow that virus to be transmitted. I want to make an important point. The term social distancing and even quarantine and isolation, these are terms that are harsh sounding. We do not want to distance people. We want people to connect. We do not want people to feel isolated, yet we are asking them to do exactly those things in order to prevent the spread of this. I encourage everyone to think of other ways to connect. You and i are connecting through this video link. People can connect through their computers, skype and other videoconferencing, calls on the phone. This is the time for us to reach out in ways the virus cannot spread. If you look at what happened in italy, what is happening now, people who are stuck behind closed doors opening the windows and singing as a way to connect with each other. The virus cannot travel on a song. This is not a time for us to distance ourselves totally from each other. We need to come together in different ways. We need to be together even more even though the virus forces us to separate physically. Host you will hear from james in mississippi. Caller good morning. And also thesk you anchor person. I know we are talking about human beings and things like that, but what about people who work in poultry plants and dairies . Not just the animals in our homes but look at the birds. I look at the insects. Im looking at other species. I am not hearing anything about the other species. I feel like they breathe air. Meaning forsense of us, eating them or just being in the car with them. Why is there not enough information about animals and insects . We had to think about the mosquitoes. Can a mosquito get it . Canon animal get it . Can and animal get it . We need to look at the whole picture. I am not hearing anything about animals. Great question. We believe this virus originated in animals. We will not know that until more work is done. Coronavirus,know, which is the word of the day, is only spread human to human, not through mosquitoes or other animal species. Those animals are not giving it to people. You raise an important point. There are other diseases that spread through other means. Coronavirus is human to human contact. West nile virus, mosquitoes. Other species are spreading diseases, too. We must be vigilant about other means of spreading disease, which is why we need a strong and robust public Health System. Past, recently, we have begun to test other animals to find out if they have viruses that could spread to humans. That is something that should go on all the time so we can get ahead of this. Lets identify viruses that might spread in humans so we can prepare for the eventuality or possibility that they could begin to spread. Host back to the coronavirus testing, a question for you from dick in oregon. Does mr. Harris know why the help World Health Organization offer for tests was rejected . Guest i do not know the answer to that. There should be investigation of that at some point, not so much to find someone to blame, but to find out how we can do this better. Clearly, we do not respond as quickly as we should have. We were not as prepared as we should have been. We need to look back at this and say, what did not work . What did work . And figure out how to do it better next time here and just as you play a game and come back and say, i did not do well in that game. How can . I improve my game how can i improve my game . We need to do that in the Health System. Caller thanks for taking my call. I have a question and strange idea. Eget is true that you canr can reget this virus, what if we immediately, not at the federal level, but at the state and local level, instituted a program where volunteer young people were coming in, getting the virus, and controlling in a controlled environment, recovering, and then staffing pinch points of supermarkets, pharmacies, other essential services where they could not be superspreader fears . No one is wearing gloves. It is dangerous. Strange thought. I would like your feedback. Out ofnot entirely conception here. We should be thinking and innovative ways to figure out how to best use the assets we have. People whobout using are hopefully immune to the virus and not capable of spreading the virus i think will actually be something we will look at going forward. Two caveats. One is we do not know whether you can get the virus a second time. That is an important issue. Do not knowat is we how long people can spread the virus. Some Research Says you can spread the virus for over a month after you have the disease. We have to be careful. Even though they are recovering, that they are not still spreading the virus. Once we have good testing available, we might be able to determine who is immune and use them more effectively. That is not something that is totally unreasonable. Drew harris joining us from philadelphia, the Thomas Jefferson university. He is a Population Health analyst. For medical professionals, the line is 202 7488002. Eastern and central time zones, 202 7488000. Mountain and pacific, 202 7488001. We go to santa ana, california. This is ted. Caller i have a comment to make. Everybody is trying to blame President Trump for a slow response to this, and they are not taking into account that when this was discovered, this coronavirus was discovered in china in december, we are in the midst of an impeachment sham that the democrats and house of representatives had instigated. It took all of december. The senate was paralyzed with not taking on new business in january. This whole thing could have been attacked sooner. Thank goodness President Trump was able to institute the travel ban from china and try to do some things proactively. We have to blame the mainstream c, and the, msnb democrats for screwing this up by not allowing our president to act as he should have when they were trying to remove him from office. Guest i tend to look at this issue from a Public Health perspective. Irrespective of who is in authority at any moment. It was a good idea to to ban travel. Every Public Health expert will tell you it was going to come here eventually. All the travel ban did was biased time. Then the question becomes what happened during that time . There is a governmental apparatus that is supposed to prepare and respond to Public Health emergencies. When we look back at this, we will have to determine whether we responded effectively. We have examples in terms of other countries that had a massive mobilization and response to the introduction of the virus in their communities and as a result have been able to suppress the virus spread, flatten that curve so systems are not as overwhelmed. Some countries are not doing as well. We will know in the next couple weeks, weather whether we are more like south korea or more like italy, with a slow response and seeing overwhelmed health care system. Texas. O rusty in caller i was wondering if you could speak to the different mentalities of the population. The virus seems to be impacting those over 60. Wood measures impacting those group be more beneficial . People going out to restaurants, bars. It does not seem to be impacting those under 60 as much as those over 60. Those over 60 are taking it a lot more seriously. Could you speak towards that and why it is so important that these restrictions are in place . And that the whole population needs to take the warning seriously . Great question and an important issue. This is a virus that adversely impacts people over the age of 60, people with chronic conditions, folks who smoke, people who are not as healthy. Those are the ones most affected by it. Relativelye have had mild responses to the virus. They are not as sick. They do well. It is older people who are at highest risk. That is why we need to protect them. One of the ways we protect them is reverse quarantine, the idea that you protect the people who are most wonderful by vulnerable by keeping the virus from reaching them. , healthierf this people who are not at high risk are protecting them by not spreading the virus around. The more people who have the virus, the more likely it is to reach the more Vulnerable People in our society. Youou are a 22yearold and are saying, why do i need to social distance, why do i need to stay home and separate from other people . I am not as high risk. I am only going to get Something Like a flu or bad cold. The life you save may not be your own but it may be someone you care about, a grandparent, a relative, a neighbor who has been under treatment for cancer. These are the people we need to protect. This is number two and for all of us to come together as a community to protect the most opportunity for all of us to come together as a community to protect the most vulnerable. We need to take action precautions. Host we hear next to jeremy from texas. One caller said there is no leadership from the white house. People who believe that, are they not watching the president steps to the podium. All those people standing behind him. And they, dr. Fauci surgeon general, they are giving valuable information. That is leadership. Tweet and the question was, why have we rejected the whos test . That was covered in detail yesterday. You are showing a clip of dr. Fauci. That is what we need to hear. Mr. Harris, people like him. I was wondering why mr. Harris thenot replicate information on why we rejected the whos tests. Thank you. Thank you for the question. Birxsot see dr. Explanation on why we rejected the tests and what the concerns were at the time. I cannot comment specifically on what she said. In terms of leadership, leadership demonstrates itself in many ways. Certainly, standing in front of a camera is an important element to leadership, communicating to the people. We need to hear from our leaders clear and transparent information. What do you know . What are you doing to get the information that you do not know . What are you going to do about it . Leadership is also management of organizations to make sure they are being proactive, not just reactive to what is going on. Theership is planning for events that have been predicted to occur to make sure when they do happen we are prepared to respond. There are different elements of leadership. Going tos a society, have to take a look at response. We have to make sure we do not repeat the mistakes that have been made and that we do find out what really worked and highlight them so we can make sure we do them going forward. Host a comment saying the president s response is excellent. People have to adhere to the suggestions. People stop the spread, not the Trump Administration. People should behave as if everyone is infected and use caution. We will go to san diego. Know, ajust to let you country with less resources like all theses not have cases of coronavirus. They tackled the issue every morning by the mexican president with medical professionals. Trump is acting swiftly. He is doing the right thing a little bit late but doing the right thing. I am a democrat. Whatever he does, he is going to be criticized anyway. Assistance package to workers, you have to look at our voters, people who work in the and live ins mexico. What effect is that going to have on the economy to receive statesum in the united that does not help to create wealth in our country. Spend onnot going to my hamburger stand. They are not going to stand there. See thew could you Lessons Learned from the Coronavirus Response so far in reshaping our public Health System here in the United States. Guest i think we are going to look back at this as a major event. In my lifetime, i think this is the most significant global event that i have experienced, more so than 9 11. We need to not forget what is occurring right now. We need to learn lessons from this and appreciate the important value Public Health plays in our lives daytoday. Typically, people in Public Health are below the radar. They are like the pipes in the street. You do not worry about them until they break. This is what we are dealing with now, a public Health System that may not be to capacity to respond to this event. We need to look at Public Health and recognize some of the diseases we are dealing with have to be prevented or responded with basic measures. Make a greater investment. Over the past decade or two, we have not invested to get amounts in the public Health System in this country. We are seeing some of the harm that results from the lack of that investment and we are scrambling to make up for it. That should not be the case. We should have been ready for this. I have lots of reports that have the word pandemic in them going back to the early 2000, and yet these government reports seem to shelf collecting just as a peer as opposed to being used. This publicethink Health System and make sure it is able to respond in the future. Host this is erica. Go ahead. Caller good morning. I was wondering why no one talks about the fact that germany already developed a vaccine for this and they are using it. Guest great question about vaccines. It is important to understand the role of a vaccine in responding to this virus. Vaccine to Healthy People so they do not get the disease. ,hat we know about this disease 50 of the population make it the disease, but only 20 will get seriously ill as a result. Maybe 15 to 20 . That vaccine is only protecting a relatively small percentage. We are giving it to everybody. So the most important thing we can do with a vaccine is make , first,is safe because do no harm. We do not want to make people sick because of the vaccine. Lesson of the swine flu virus scene from the 1970s. Some of you may remember that vaccine. We were concerned the swine fluid was going to be the flu pandemic. That shows you how productions do not always pan out the way you think they will. The government put together a massive Vaccination Campaign and gave this rushed vaccine to the people. Some folks got sick from the vaccine itself. That undermined a lot of confidence in vaccines. We should only deploy it after we have done appropriate safety measures, which means you give , people beginning the safety test. We have to go through a number of levels of testing and wait to see whether those people receive come vocations from the vaccine and then deploy it to the population. There is no way to accelerate that process. That is why the vaccine is going to take a long time. There are things we can do in terms of treatment, which you can accelerate. Host you mentioned the phase one starting. This is the release from nih on monday, a Clinical Trial and evaluating a vaccine designed to protect against covid19 has begun at Kaiser Permanente in seattle. The National Institutes of health is funding the trial. The open label trial will enroll 45 healthy Adult Volunteers ages 18 to 55 over six weeks. Will bet participant monday. This is quite a thing to volunteer for her. How did they get people to do that . Guest you have some very brave people doing this. They are not even getting a high dose. It may not even provide them with protection. They are not doing it for themselves. They are doing it for all of us. These volunteers are heroes. They are like soldiers going into battle who risk their lives for everyone else. We should applaud them for that. There are people willing to do that, willing to who are all jewish sick all true mystic altruistic. Host we hear next from donna in missouri. Donna and iame is want to ask you a question. I want to know how we are going to get paid if this coronavirus lasts long. It is an important question. The virus itself affects us physically, our bodies, but economically, that is the secondary impact of the virus through jobs disappear no fault of their own. Congress is considering a 1 trillion spending package to provide support for people so they can meet their basic needs. Isirus like this that hitting the entire world is a shock to the Global Economy. It is not just the United States. The entire world will struggle with this. Drops across the world will disappear while people hunker down. That is a serious issue. Government is like an insurance policy that comes into protect us and allow us to survive. Virus like this and the economic harm it causes hits people at the margins of society. Many of us do not have enough money to get through a couple months without a paycheck. 400 inple only have their account to survive as a ready date rainy day fund. You are seeing preventing evictions, Credit Card Companies saying we will be giving you leeway on when you have to pay the bill. Hopefully the Business Community will step up. Many employers are saying do not come to work but we will keep paying you. All of them should be applauded for helping our economy and society survive through this time. This is nelson, hollywood, florida. Caller i am a retired firefighter paramedic. Rescue of the time the aids virus hit. I know the method of transmission from people to people regarding those viruses are different. I would like to play devils advocate. By doing what we are doing, are we not keeping the coronavirus from taking its natural course where people do become infected with the virus but as a result develop the antibody and by developing the antibody curb the population eliminate the virus quicker rather than doing what we are doing now, which may be preventing the virus from actually dying out, which may cause it to mutate and become worse . Onuldnt we be concentrating those individuals who are susceptible to severe illness from this and allowing the virus to take its natural course . I know my question sounds outrageous, but i think it is something that should be taken into account. What are we going to do with the next virus hits . Host nelson in florida. Guest that is a difficult question. Yes, if we let the virus take its natural course, people would get infected. Many people would develop immunity quickly. As a result, the virus may not spread as quickly. Viruses are going to mutate no matter what, even if they spread fast or slow. Viruses are always coming back in different forms. ,oronavirus is similar to sars which spread several years ago and caused intimate tremendous problem around the world. Too not think this is going eliminate coronavirus going forward. People society expect who are sick get care. We are not willing to just let people die and let nature take its course. When we have an overwhelmed Health System like they have in italy, for some people, they are saying essentially, let people take let nature take its course because we cannot provide treatment. We should decide we want to do everything we can to protect those who are most vulnerable, which means limit the spread of this virus because then we have the resources to care for those who need them when they need them. Healthou got into public from a medical career into a Public Health field following 9 11. You said this is a larger issue than 9 11. Two our callers point about the aid epidemic aids epidemic, is there any similarity in terms of the urgency and fear that was created by the epidemic in the early 1980s . Parallelsre are some more on the publicpolicy side between what happened with aids and what is happening now. Initially with the aids epidemic, because it struck a more marginalized unity first, community first, government ignored the problem. Theefore, it allowed epidemic to spread more widely because traditional Public Health measures were not implement it right away. Did a similar thing with coronavirus by not taking advantage of the Early Warning signs. Public officials need to recognize, to think ahead and prepare for what is coming. Is one of the interesting lessons we should have learned from aids. Do not hold back. Get ahead of these things rather than waiting for them to get worse. Host a couple more here. We will go to a doctor in delaware. Your comment or question. Caller good morning. I live about 100 miles south of dr. Harris. I have more of a comment than a question. One thing i tell my patients is good just to make sure you get good airflow, key fans running. Keep your central air running constantly. Things are not going to settle on services as much. And bend over. Ze when we cough, we tend to bring our arm up and coughed straight out. I tell my people to do a sneeze cough. Cough into her elbow but bend over. You will tend to prevent that long of a horizontal move. Finally, wash your hands. Keep your fingernails short and use a scrub brush to scrub under your fingernails to keep things clean. Unfortunately, our health care system, we tend to be more reactive than proactive. Ons stuff has been sitting shelves for many years. We have to get out of this thinking we have all the technology. We have to start being much more proactive than we are. Host thank you, dr. Guest yes, thank you for the reminder of the basic things we can do to protect prevent the spread of the virus. On aerosolxperts spread of a virus that can perhaps comments on weather how to cough and airflow issue. I cannot comment about that. We need to be moving towards a more proactive public Health System that tries to anticipate these issues. Harris joining us from philadelphia. Really appreciate you joining us this morning, dr. Harris. Guest it is my pleasure. Host that will do it for this mornings program. The u. S. Senate coming in today, taking up house legislation on the Coronavirus Response. That is getting underway shortly on cspan2. We will see you here tomorrow morning at 7 00 a. M. Eastern. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] we have some news for you this morning. President trump has just tweeted within the last 20 minutes, we will be, by mutual consent, potentially closing our normal border northern border with canada to nonessential traffic. Details to follow. E ministerrim Justin Trudeau will address the pandemic today. You onave that live for cspan again starting at 10 30 eastern. Also, the white house Coronavirus Task force has scheduled a briefing today set for 11 30 eastern. The start times have been a little bit fluid. Vice president pence has been leading the briefings, but President Trump been attending also. We will have that live for you when it starts on cspan. Also, following a clean sweep i rival joe biden on tuesdays primary, Bernie Sanders will reassess his campaign. Todaympaign manager said that senator sanders will take time in the coming weeks to assess his campaign after a slew of primary wins for former Vice President joe biden. The next primary contest is three weeks away. Senator sanders is going to be having conversations with his supporters to assess his campaign. In the meantime, he is focused on the government response to the coronavirus outbreak and ensuring we take care of working people. And the most vulnerable you can read more at thehill. Com. Both joe biden and Bernie Sanders addressed supporters via video link