Conversation. The phone lines are open. The death toll is now at 143,000 around the world. Total confirmed cases, 2. 1 one million. Over 675,000 cases in the death toll is over 34,000. We want to introduce you to dr. Peter li from the university of houston. He is an expert on east asian politics and wet markets, which is one of the reasons we invited you one. Thank you for joining us. We appreciate the photos you sent us. You have been to the socalled wet markets, believed to be the source. What are they . They are a small section likee regular marketplace, the Seafood Market. It is a 5 of the business space. Live where you can find chickens on live ducks and they slaughter them for you. It is where you get warm meat. Traditionally, these are everywhere but in the last 40 years, they have been going down. Arisen,w wet market has which is water wet market. In china in the 1980s i never saw these. It is new. , the Seafood Market has a huge marketplace where you can but one corner is called water life wet market. And in0 of the space different you see water animals, legally allowed snakes and also endangered species and animals caught in the wild. It is not a place most people would find enjoyable. That is a place where you can get live animals and they slaughter them for you. Ordinary consumers do not go and the majority of Chinese People do not eat these animals at home. So who goes to these markets . Go to get owners snakes. In the wet markets, you only see 10 of the wild animals consumed. From the warehouse or Breeding Farm to the restaurant. So the wet markets only display for sporadic consumers. Host so based on what china has dealt with in the past with ebola and sars and others, why does the government continue to allow these wet markets to operate . They are clearly one of the primary sources of these viruses. Dr. Li good question. Biggests the worlds wildlife farm in operation. [indiscernible] generated a revenue 70 billion. Is an exotic food market that has been shut down. Of 18oduced a revenue billion. [indiscernible] this is also for Laboratory Use like for monkeys. Is because continue of the alleged economic use. Ibution and medical that is why it is still operating. Host there have been a number of reports that the virus might have been engineered in a lab. This is a headline from u. S. News world report. T came up today on nbc they were asked about reports that this might have come from a lab and the secretary of state is basically telling the Chinese Government to come clean on the source of the virus. What is your reaction . To tell you about the News Headlines on the origin. The Washington Post is reporting the state department sent at least two official warnings about experiments being ,onducted in chinese labs inadequate security, research studying coronavirus. Do you have a view that the likelihood of the virus could have come from a chinese lab . We have been watching this for some time and results are inconclusive. Chinese party had been more transparent earlier, it would have helped us stay ahead of the virus and being to understand the dna and develop vaccines quicker. They need to be more forthright. Do you think the chinese have misled about the origins of the virus . I cannot speak to Intelligence Matters but i find it hard to trust anything that comes out of the Chinese Communist party. They have been misleading us and opaque from the early days of the virus so i do not have much faith they are being truthful now. Host that was from the defense secretary on nbc today. Dr. , can you explain . Forli we had to wait Scientific Community to make a determination and according to scientists,rts from early early reports but of the first group people,e infected, 41 27 had been exposed to the wildlife wet market and a third of the people who died were people who worked in the market. I am not a medical science expert but i have read from different accounts that this is how the virus could jump to a human. Research was the virus started by collecting samples in a cave in china and that is where the host of coronavirus but for that to jump to humans there has to be an intermediate host. Another group of wildlife viruss who can get the through the and intermediate, then jump to humans. The virus could have escaped the wuhan lab then the virus would have to go to a Wildlife Animal to jump to humans. So we have to wait for the Scientific Community to make a determination and it is an interest of all countries to pandemic hasthe arisen. Pandemic is hitting hardest in the u. S. , across asia, and northern and central europe. Li, aest is dr. Peter china policy specialist for Human Society international. Robin is our first caller from new jersey. Questioning what he was talking about, did the virus originate in a lab in china and then got to the people. Host do you want to elaborate on the point, dr. . Wait for thelf to Scientific Community to make a determination but initial show Wildlife Animals sold on the wuhan market. The Chinese Government at the beginning shut down the market and based on scientific input, not because the government wanted to do it. Sars, the look at outbreak in 2002. That epidemic was connected to. Ildlife animals host lets go to sal next in new jersey. Good evening. Believe thatd to this has come just from a wet market. Inant to remind people november 2018, a year before the first case was identified in wuhan, customs and Border Patrol agents at Detroit Metro airport stopped a chinese biologist with three vials labeled antibodies in his luggage and these files contained a middle east respiratory syndrome and a severe respiratory syndrome sars and mers. I had the virus and survived. My wife had it and survived. But the fact is it is hard to believe that even isolated communities like the amish in pennsylvania, that the virus that comes from a wet market spread that rapidly. I find it hard to believe that there is not more to this than what is being said. I do not think it is just from a wet market. Be biologicalld agents being brought into the country. I am just looking at the facts. It is not impossible. I am still recovering. I have a lot of pain. My wifes sons girlfriend died. My wife almost died. When you hear Something Like this and first they said it was a bat or some sort of species from a bat but there is ample evidence. Host good luck to you. Thank you for adding your voice to the conversation. I hope your family is on the mend. Dr. Li i understand the concern and there has been a lot of speculation. We need to stick to the bottom chinesessue but if the government [indiscernible] everything in china is in some way controlled by the government, especially the wildlife reading operation. Wildlife breeding operation. It could not exist without government support. Is hundred percent identified to be connected to the wet market, that is part of the Chinese Government effort to push for modernization so it is still the government. 2010 a top medical scientist attended Chinese Congress and warned the Chinese Government and said this wildlife must be shut down because of sars. Foundntified and marketsrus in two wet in china 10 years ago. In wuhan and hong kong. He said if we allow markets to continue, we are headed toward another pandemic. Host what can you tell us about wuhan and the geographic significance to china . Dr. Li it is in the middle of china. It has been hungry for International Attention but never got it because attention was a long the coast. But it is one of the most developed cities in china. Huge market with 11 Million People. The wethe markets had markets and they store animals from different provinces. The wet market from south china over a great distance. If we focus too much attention theet markets, but actually animals only account for 10 . A large number of Wildlife Animals spend days in a hoarding the breedon farms and snakes. A lot of them are wild. They are in the facility. Wildlife into the breeding and then transporting spendkets in wuhan, they a day on the road in a truck mixed with wild animals and in the market they are all mixed with different wild animals so all of those pieces combined can be a hotbed for cross infection of viruses. Host it is by all accounts a major metropolitan area. The universityom of houston. Dennis is the next caller from illinois. Disagreell respect, i with the doctor on his wet market theory. Book sentinele nyl, inc. , there are a vast number of illicit whoists across the world send illicit drugs to other countries for profits. They are known for that and the reputation is that and i do not think the doctor has mentioned that. If the virus escape lab, it still has to go to Wildlife Animals to be before and those animals getting to humans. Market, you have to have Wildlife Animals for the virus to jump to humans. Host kimberly is next from virginia. Good evening. Isirst question for you china doing anything to make the , and my seconder question is i hear the markets are killing cats and dogs to sell us food. Hateful. Ruel and care,nd cats give love, affection, and compassion to people and i feel they should stop being killed. Dr. Li the Chinese Government market forwn the wet wild animals but i believe this this market should be shut down forever. Are also seen in wet markets for livestock across the country. I sent people to different wet markets in the last two weeks and have seen dogs and cats on the market. The Chinese Government has Just Announced a couple days ago that dogs and cats are companion animals. They cannot be listed as livestock because the industry has been trying to force the government to include them in the livestock where they can be slaughtered for food. Some positive developments in outlined have outlawed wildlife consumption catsonsumption of dogs and and said they are companion animals. So this is the most positive step that has happened. Host our focus is on u. S. China relations, the wet markets, and covid19. Our next caller is danielle from washington. Question is, is this germ warfare . There are a lot of conspiracies going around in the United States and china. There are similar accusations and speculations in china and i , ild say the best we can do am sure scientist will continue to look into the source of the pandemic. Host a headline from the london the chinesells government to come clean over the spread of coronavirus. What does the u. S. Government want when they say, come clean. What did they say china might be hiding . This is awould say new pandemic. It took time for the Chinese Government to make the determination that this was serious. Markethut down the wuhan january 1 and shut down wuhan. Ompletely on the 21st there were International Connections by flights. When china shut down wuhan on the 23rd, china sent a signal to the rest of the world to be ready. Hard for chinais to cover up anything, especially when you have a major pandemic. We are following the situation. Was one of the first countries to shut down the border with china and there was sayingf anger in china what can you expect from north korea . It is a poured country and the poor country and the regime would have collapsed. I have talked with medical staff at the border with north korea if they have seen hundreds of trucks every day and every night going into north korea. , did any of the trucks carry medical supplies into north korea . They had nots heard of medical supplies. Restrict travel and shut down your country and promote social distancing, you are in a better position. So china might have motivation to hide anything but they cannot hide a pandemic. Host lets go to june in sacramento. Thank you for taking my question. You indicated earlier in the that there needed to be an intermediary animal to transfer coronavirus from a bat to a human. Are you aware of any information or have an opinion about whether that intermediate species could be bypassed by biological engineering . Dr. Li i have not read anything about the intermarried very host but if wediary host , the virus passed snakes, nothrough directly from that. Ats. Rom back b people around the world say people in china eat bats but it is false information. By do not get the virus eating wildlife because they are cooked. Through cuts in your finger or hand. Host what are the lessons learned, when we get beyond this and look back at this in terms of where this originated and how to address this better in the future, what are those lessons . Dr. Li four china, the lesson wildlife wet market and wildlife trade must be shut down. To hough it is close even though it is a lot of money, it is a drop in the bucket. They successfully shut down thousands of polluting factories and moved millions of workers to different livelihoods. If china could do that, they can and the wildlife trade end the wildlife trade. The wildlife trade happened in many countries. Any country with a concentrated animal operation where you put a large amount close in artificial settings, it could lead to a pandemic like this. Li is from the university of houston and is joining us from texas. Winky for your time and expertise. Dr. Li thank you very much. Host the president has outlined a plan for states to reopen amid the pandemic. Joining us from cleveland is dr. Kristin england, an Infectious Disease physician from the Cleveland Clinic. Thank you for joining us. When we checked in with you a month ago, i put on the screen where we were with covid and compare it to where we are now. In march, 410,000 cases worldwide and more than 21,000 deaths. Approaching 100 43,000 deaths. What does that tell you about this illness, this disease, this virus . Beenngland the growth has clearly exponential. We are seeing so many more cases. I think they anticipated that it would grow this large, but now we are seeing it come to fruition. This is spreading very rapidly and we are going to see it continue to climb over the next number of weeks to months. Steve we heard from Governor Mike Dewine that he wants to begin to open parts of the economy as early as may 1. For i went to get there and other states to follow, from your standpoint, what has to happen . Dr. England what the president set for today is that there have to be a couple of points that are met, that the number of symptoms have to go down, the number of positive cases have to have a clear trend down over a two week time course, and we have to have our hospitals ready in case the surge does come. Any state has to meet those three points before we can consider expanding or moving into phase one, where we can start to loosen up some of the restrictions. Governor dewine has done an exceptional job of leading ohio of to this point in time. I dont think hes going to do anything too early. He certainly kept us from being on a very severe exponential trend and getting a lot more ohioans killed. So i dont think hes going to lighten up in our state to early. Steve what have you seen in northeastern ohio . Dr. England thankfully we are starting to see a bit of a plateau, so we are flattening the curve here in at least northeast ohio. The number of cases we are seeing admitted to the intensive care unit and being sent to the hospital staying roughly even, so that is certainly good news for all of us. Steve there has been talk of trying to resume some sort of normalcy, whatever that is, after all we have been going through. But theres the worry that there could be a second wave. If a second wave were to gone, when were to come, when could we expect that potentially . It depends on the social distancing and opening up a his nieces. It clearly does have to be done in phases, but that certainly doesnt mean that any of us can decrease all the things we have done that have gotten us to this good point so far. Cough etiquette, social distancing, making sure that those who are most at risk for getting ill or being taken care of and we are not risking their lives by introducing the virus into their lives. So i think its going to have to be done in a very prolonged, phased process, so that we make sure that if we start to see uptrends in the disease again, we can nip it in the bud and bring it back down to where we are currently. Steve let me put a couple of things on the table, baseball at progressive feel, family weddings, political conventions in august. Will we see this in the summer . Dr. Englund i dont think we will. We are certainly going to need to do these phases very slowly. Large, mass groups such as sporting events, large weddings, other events where youre bringing together 50 or more people, thats going to be in phase three, and i just think those will be pushed back probably until the fall and even into the wintertime. Steve what do you tell people who are planning weddings or graduation parties or other large family gatherings . Dr. Englund i think you need to make sure you are taking insurance out on all these plans you are making. That would be a smart thing to do, so that you dont lose all of your money. It is not anything that anybody can fully predict. Ive got plans with my family to take a trip in august, and the longer it goes, the more im realizing that may not happen. Your phones get to calls. Mike from massachusetts, good evening. Evening. Ood thank you for being on here. I just have a few points to make. As a pharmacological biochemist up here in boston, our research or ecology primarily, but pharmacology distrust is a lot of in scientific figures at a time like this, and i think we need to trust people like yourself and professionals on this issue as to how fast we open up. I have been listening the last half hour and i just want to mention to the callers who have been calling in and talking laboratory conspiracy, Something Like that. There was a paper released in bych in nature medicine Christian Anderson and a few other authors. Viralound out the backbone differed substantially from already known coronavirus is. Determined that it haswithout a doubt not been bioengineered in a laboratory. Data we can the firmly determine that the virus originated through natural processes. So if anyone wants to look that up, theres a lot of articles on that paper out there. I dont know, i feel like the politicians and everyone out there, and i dont blame people for thinking about conspiracy theories, but it really kind of adds on to an old issue that affects everything from how we live our lives to reasonings as to why we need to start the economy up sooner, to calling for dr. Fauci to be fired, all this crazy stuff. I think this is really a time when we need to listen to professionals who know what they are talking about. World, Infectious Disease too much, but i think it is really dangerous, the amount of misinformation that is going on. I have to tell my own parents every day, dont get their news from facebook. I really thank cspan for everything they do because i think it is a really reliable source of news, so thanks a lot, and take care. Steve thank you for the call. Your response . Dr. Englund i think your points are very well made. The more we get scientific Accurate Information out, the better it is, and the more calming for the country, too. Theyve got to be able to understand that we are passing on information as quickly as as quickly and accurately as we can get it. As far as the origin of this virus, nature is amazingly impressive, and it is not always good. It can create things that are very dangerous, and this virus is one of them, just like ebola, just like the spanish flu back in 1918. So this is something that is created naturally, unfortunately. I dont believe there is any conspiracy whatsoever and all the data points us in the direction that this is a natural mutation. Steve you are an Infectious Disease expert, so with rules in maryland and a number of other states to where face mask in public, how does that reduce the risk of getting this virus . Dr. Englund it doesnt really reduce the risk of getting the virus. Its not personal protective equipment or ppe, which is a term he thrown around a lot. The ppe is something i wear in the hospital to keep from getting the virus from somebody else, from a patient that i know has the infection. Those are made very specifically, the n95 mass, surgical shields and face mask, all of those protecting. When i wear my cloth mask out in public or when im walking into the hospital, im trying to protect the rest of the Community Around me. So it is actually encouraging people with her cough etiquette. If i have a little bit of a call for maybe a sneeze or something where i might be producing some droplets that could get onto a grocery cart or onto somebody else, the cloth mask is helping me from spreading it to anybody else. This is all part of the social distancing, making sure we are protecting those all around us. It also keeps me from touching my face, so if im holding onto a doorknob and grab a doorknob, hopefully it will keep me from touching my mouth or my nose if i have a mask there, so im less likely to be able to spread the virus to myself. So dont think of it as protecting yourself as much come except for touching your face. You are also protecting those around you. Hello, thanks for having me on with my call and my comments. Sadly, i lost a member of my family to covid last week. It doesnt mean that i understand how to reason anything and im not a conspiracy theorist. That being said, i dont think it is wrong to come to a conclusion that maybe there was a mistake made in a lab in wuhan, china. Im not accusing, it could happen anywhere. It could have happened here in maryland. Said, i question the wet market conversation people have been having on that. Im leaning more to the lab, because i have read stories from about concerns about their lab protocol. My question to you is, your gut instinct, what do you feel is the likely source, and to be think chinai dont wants war with the u. S. They export goods to our country. So none of that makes sense. I think it is really important for us to think things through and be reasonable, and thank you very much for answering my question. Im so sorry for the loss that your family sustained from this. We see this in a number of other viruses, with very small mutations they are able to move from the Animal Kingdom into humans. Again, ebola virus is one that we have seen, hiv, many other viruses with a small mutation can move over to humans. I dont think we need to put out a theory of some sort that this was created in a lab when we know very much that this happens in nature. I firmly believe that this is a natural environment, a natural made this happen. Until we have proof that it is anything else, i think we should go with the proven scientific natural cause. Thee in your world of medical community, could one of the silverlinings from all of this be that americans are much more attuned to what a pandemic is all about, and also the whole issue of our Health Care System in this country and where there are discrepancies . Dr. Englund without a doubt. He looked at things like the ebola crisis from a number of years ago and we started to prepare for Something Like this, and then the ebola crisis was able to be contained. We started to glimpse it and look at it, but we never took it to the next step, where we really were starting to plan widespread across the United States for this potential. Is certainly a silverlining, looking at this as an opportunity for us to be able to shore up all the things that we need to be doing in every single hospital system, every single Public Health system, to be able to get prepared, if not for another virus, at least being better prepared for the second wave of this current virus that is ongoing. It also points out a lot of different things, certainly the holes in our Public Health system. Unfortunately, financially Public Health system has been gutted. Need to be able to find people who have this infection and then be able to trace who they have been in contact with. With that, then we can start to contain the spread of this virus. That is usually accomplished by Public Health departments. Our Public Health departments just dont have the manpower or the money to be able to do that. Figures,d not to point to point fingers, but if we knew back in january what we know now, what would you have done differently . Dr. Englund i think the best thing we could have done would be to have tested widespread. We see in other countries where they were able to do widespread testing, south korea for example, they were testing up to 10,000 people a day, to be able to try and determine who was infected and then be able to isolate those people away so that those who were not infected would not get infected. That is really the best way to be able to contain this dude and keepis infected, them isolated contain this, to know whos infected and keep them isolated. Caller thank you for having me on the show. Is great. I have a question for the guest here, i want to know about information and conclusions. I am a conspiracy theorist, im not afraid or ashamed to say it. Justt to know, productively thinking, similar to never forget, what would you societyreminder for our to have increased alertness, because im of the mindset that this is a medical war. Steve thank you, we will get a response, chris. Dr. Englund this is a medical war . I would say we have to treat it like a war. Not at sure the enemy is natural product, but we do need to treat this in a very aggressive kind of way, in that we need to approach this very firmly, very methodically, to be able to get this under control and keep our population and the entire worlds population safe. Ilike the war mentality, but think we need to keep in mind who the enemy is, and the enemy is this virus. Steve from columbus ohio, michael is next. Turn the volume down on your set and go ahead with your question. Is, can myquestion animals give me this virus simply by touching his head . Dr. Englund thats a great question, michael. No, there is no proof we have at this point in time that you can get this hours from your animals. I have two wonderful dogs at home, and i go home and cuddle with them every single night. There have been isolated stories. I know there is a tiger in the bronx zoo that was tested positive for the virus, but my understanding is that the tiger was not having symptoms, and the actually think the tiger required it somebody who was a caregiver for that tiger. On we weretially trying to be a little cautious about contact with animals, but it this point, we have not seen anything pan out as far as being able to acquire this from household pets. Steve gail is next from virginia. Go ahead. Caller thanks for taking my call. I have a multipart question. Could i color, hair color, or blood type have any type of protection against this disease . And the people that are more immune, could they be harnessed to make plaza to treat people to make plasma to treat people . Dr. Englund those are all great questions. We have heard comments about whether blood types are more at risk for this. We are not seeing that in the data. We are certainly seeing this across everybody everyone is susceptible equally except for those people who may have more risk factors on board. It doesnt seem to be anything that we know at this point in time that there is a genetic marker or genetic barrier that keeps people from getting infected from this. Going back to the point about the plasma, absolutely. We are looking at people who have had an infection with the coronavirus up to this point in time who have recovered and they there are studies ongoing where we are getting those peoples plasma and concentrating the anybodys coming from that plasma and looking to then infuse that into patients that are sick with coronavirus. Though studies are underway, you are right on target, and hopefully we will find some good response from that. Steve dr. Anthony pouch you joined us earlier this week and he said he believes that if you get covid19, you would be immune from getting it in the future, but again, the data will reveal that as this crisis continues. What is your opinion on that . Dr. Englund i certainly would never say anything against dr. Fauci. One of the things we have seen recently is that in south korea, they had about 140 patients that were positive for coronavirus, had symptoms, tested negative, and then later on tested positive again. The data i saw from the paper did not report whether they were having symptoms again, so we are not sure whether that interim negative test really was that they had cleared it and then got reinfected, or if that negative test was a false negative and they were still shedding the virus the entire time. Coronaviruss can call the common cold, so we dont necessarily get longterm immunity against that. We are hopeful that we will be able to see some immunity from this and that when people recover, they will have a long period of time when they are free from being exposed to this again. But it is too early to tell. Steve bob from massachusetts, good evening. Theer im interested in testing which has been mentioned as a major process for opening up the economy, according to our administration. Im somewhat conflicted about all the tests going on, anesi negative diagnosis and someone who thought they had symptoms, and the Antibody Test. These are all talked about as being readily available, and the administration has been strong to point out that we do more test than anyone else in the world. Im just wondering whether this will be do we have enough money to do this . Its not for everyone, but its just for people that i imagine will show up once we start opening up, either in emergency or them not being able to get a test because of some symptoms they might have. How is this going to work out . It sounds like opening up the economy is going to take a look at using mitigation steel and social distancing for at least a couple of weeks while they look at these tests. Is this going to be a reliable way to do it in states that have had their peak just past . I was even surprised at the peak being early, someone told me that the virus is 12 weeks ahead of what we see in our hospitals, which was a surprise to me. That has not been mentioned before. Steve we will get a response. Dr. Englund certainly testing is very important part of trying to identify how widespread the virus is, how we can respond to the virus, and then ultimately when we can get back to work. Testing up to this point in time has been very limited, as you said, we have been testing only andle who are symptomatic, each hospital, each organization has their own set of testing criteria, but here at the Cleveland Clinic we have patients who would be tested if they had a temperature over 100. 4, if they had a cough and shortness of breath. With everything we have learned about this virus, we have expanded it to diarrheal illnesses, and other symptoms. We have been testing a lot here at the clinic but overall in the country, we have tested about 5 Million People. Of about 370 Million People here in the country itself. While it sounds like a lot, we need to do a lot more testing at this point in time. The testing that is currently being done is really just to see if the virus is present. We do a swab in the very back part of the nose and look to see if there is virus present. Antibody testing is very different. As you said a properly, there has been a lot of information out there about it, but i dont know that at this point in time Antibody Testing is the beall and endall that we hoped it would be. The current tests are not necessarily as accurate as we need them to be. Unfortunately, some of the tests, as i mentioned before, we have numbers of different coronavirus is out there. Some just because the common cold. If you have an anybody to that one, because i had a common cold year ago, and im looking for the coronavirus that is currently the sars to coronavirus, the Antibody Test maybe picking up my antibody to the old virus and not necessarily to this novel new coronavirus. So the Antibody Tests are not Accurate Enough for us to really be able to determine if i am safe, because if i just had the old rhinovirus or coronavirus and not the new one, and i get sent out to work and then get exposed to the new coronavirus, and certainly we could have our workers getting sick when they dont need to be. Steve a quick followup in our remaining minutes. For some people come the symptoms are quite severe, and sadly, for many, deadly. What is it about this virus that makes it so deadly for so many people . Dr. Englund this is definitely a virus that predominantly attacks the lungs and weakens the lungs. Although we certainly see people who are getting neurologic symptoms from it, it is attacking kidneys, liver, a number of different organs that we called multiorgan system failures and some of these folks. It is attacking people who have a lot of underlying diseases. Certainly folks who already have underlying lung disease like copd, emphysema, asthma, those with diabetes, those folks tend to really have a much worse outcome. Probably the folks ive seen having the worst episodes in our intensive care units so those who are older, those over the age of 60 or 65 team to have a much worse outcome. Steve dr. Kristin england is an Infectious Disease physician at the Cleveland Clinic. Thank you for coming back. Dr. Englund thank you so much. Steve every evening were checking in with members of congress to find out how they are dealing with the pandemic in their district and their own lives. Let me begin with that question, how are you doing . I am hanging in there. This is very different, and this being at home is very different and being on the phone all day and into the night, Conference Call after Conference Call, hour after hour, its just very, very different, but i am inside, trying to stay safe and follow what the docs and government say to do, and trying to at the same time speak to as many of my constituent groups as possible. Steve how are you able to do that . Teleconferences . I did a general one with about 6000 people on. I have done two for small businesses. Today i did my school superintendents, ive done my first responders, ive done pastors, im going to do i with,n lgbtq group i work so i will do one next week with m, and then im doing actually im the chair of the congressional black caucus, so im doing 40 under 40. Done nine. ve for different mayors. Ive done state and county elected officials, also. Steve with all those people, what are the biggest concerns . What are they asking you about and telling you . Rep. Kelly it depends, some are very concerned about the loss of revenue, you can imagine the mayors and state senators and the county folks. People are concerned about are they going to have a business when all of this is over. People are concerned personally because they are not working. The bills are piling up, the rent. Then there is a concern between the groups about the amount of people of color that have the disease and are dying and that kind of thing. So it is a myriad of things. Steve this is a question that is getting a lot of attention, a disproportionate amount of minorities, africanamericans, hispanics, lower income americans are dying from this disease. Why . What is it about those socioeconomic conditions of those individuals . Rep. Kelly i just think that finally the spotlight is put on virus ise, that this really highlighting the Health Care Disparities in this country and perhaps in america since we have been here, and when you look at the social determinants of health and you look at the wealth gap, the job gap, education, environmental issues, its no wonder that we have the of obesity levels and diabetes because we also have food deserts and food insecurity. This disease has really brought this out. Steve and you are staying home for most of the time . Rep. Kelly yes, ive had to go to my office a couple of times just because of technical things that was easier to do their. My office is not that far away. But otherwise i have been in my house, i havent seen my kids in almost a month, and they live five minutes away, but yes, my husband it has been my husband and i. Steve what has your routine been like in the home . I speak withsually my chief of staff between 8 00 and 8 30 in the morning, then i have an all staff call. Either i have one of my town hall calls or something to do with the congressional black caucus, or something with the dem caucus. Imts an individual member dealing with around legislation, and then just people calling. Just for my own health, i committed to doing some type of exercise every day. I have kept that up for 20 days, and then try to relax a little bit, but it has been really hard, because as i said, we meet during the regular hours, but also we have phone calls at night because my colleagues in california, while it is 8 00 here, it is 6 00 there. They are still going strong when i am petering out. Steve there was a Conference Call today among House Democrats led by the by jim mcgovern, talking about remote voting. Were you on that call . Rep. Kelly yes, i was. Steve will we see remote voting during times like this . Rep. Kelly i dont think we are going to see remote voting yet. I dont even know if everybody on both sides of the aisle are comfortable with that. I might see some type of proxy type of voting were some of us wee in, and like last time, were told that one of my colleagues would interfere with that, so thats why so many of wanted to make sure if we had to do a voice vote, that we could do it. There are number of us that will fly in if we have to do that again, but it is tough with hawaii, alaska, california, seattle. To fly in and fly right back out the same day, that is tough. Manyow theres not even as planes to take to get us there. So they are looking at all kinds of things to see what the possibilities are. And then of course some of our colleagues cannot fly in because they are sick themselves. So we will see, nothing is definite yet. Steve a story that we will be following here on cspan. Represented of robin kelly from illinois second district, joining us on the phone from her home. We thank you for being with us. Rep. Kelly thank you, steve steve have a good night. Every day we cover the president s daily briefings and the White House Task force on coronavirus. Also we bring you news from governors around the country, all of this available on our website at cspan. Org coronavirus and what it means for the country in the health of our country. Thanks for joining us for this thursday edition of the washington journal. We are back tomorrow morning at 7 00 a. M. Eastern time and tomorrow night at 80 got eastern time. For the rest of the evening, stay safe, and stay healthy. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] cspans washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up friday morning, south Dakota Republican congressman dusty johnson will join us to talk about how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting his state, including the recent shutdown of the smithfield port factory in sioux falls, where more than 600 covid19 cases have been reported. , the latest on the u. S. Response to the pandemic. And Howard University president dr. Wayne frederick discusses racial and Health Disparities facing covid19. Watch live at 7 00 eastern friday morning. Be sure to watch washington journal sunday morning as we look back on the oklahoman city bombing 25 years later. The events from that morning, the investigation, arrest of the perpetrators and how the attack has been remembered over the years. Coming up tonight on cspan, the White House Coronavirus briefing. Then we will hear from the rhode island governor and West Virginia governor jim justice on the Coronavirus Response in their states. During the daily White House Coronavirus task force briefing, President Trump announced the release of his guidelines for reopening the u. S. Economy. His plan calls for a phased return, outlining specific steps for state and local officials to follow in tailoring their response. This is an hour and 15 minutes