Putnam and benton county. Ive seen plus fires but theres nothing quite like seeing what a tornado can do. I cant imagine what it must be like for that to have an atomic clock in the morning when no one knows it is coming. I will be visiting those areas in our office has been in touch with all of the counties and communities affected to make certain we get full f federal support to the governor and as a result of that call the white house put out a statement indicating the president may be in tennessee on friday that would be welcome as well. The country was transfixed by the impeachment process by about a month and now they are transfixed by the coronavirus i want to speak this morning about a hearing we had in the Senate Health committee that was reassuring to me and the democrats as well as the republicans there. It was reassuring because we had respected professionals from the government with broad experience dealing with epidemics with its anthrax, ebola twice, other coronavirus is and weve dealt with that. At the end of the hearing senator murray and i are democrats are not bashful and republicans are not special but i can speak for them saying those professionals who have worked for 25 or 30 years continue to earn our respect and they promised to tell us the truth and when i saw the Vice President earlier today i said im glad that youve been placed this. As a former governor i think it makes sense to place a Vice President and former governor, someone whoste accustomed to working on states and local governments in charge of a problem thats going to be sold primarily by our exceptional state and local Public Health system. My advice is what the people do the talking because if the president and Vice President to give their view they are entitled tonto do it but someone will think that they are justifying what they are doing thabut if doctor fauci who for 5 years working for president s reagan and h. W. Bush and president clinton and george w. Bush and president obama is President Trump answers the question until this something i think we believe it. Its where we stand for this crisis. Id like to talk about what we heard this morning and we complement those professionals who were there. Doctor Anne Schuchat at the center for Disease Control said 30 years working with infectious diseases. I believe she is virtual respect here for truth telling and confidence. For preparedness and response at the department of health and Human Services advised the fbi and the department of defense to write the legislation that set up the agency. He is the newest one of the four in terms of coming to the government that he has been ahead of the Cancer Center in in texas one of the most respected institutions in the world so those are the professionals that they heard this morning. Whats happened at home here in the United States is we had slightly more than 100 cases detected and about half of those are americans wh were travelingd had to be brought home and were repatriated as we say and the other half detected here and unfortunatelyna we have had six deaths. Fair to say that citizens in the United States are at low risk from infections from the coronavirus if you dont have to take my word for it. For the Health Education labor and pensions committee. Or take the words of the New York Times said a couple of days ago on its front page in the sunday newspaper in describing the situation in the days ago. Tes two its far from certain and affects many regions that ones. Continuing the New York Times. The top scientists and infrastructure most experts agree the United States is among the countries best prepared to prevent or manage such an epidemic as the New York Times front page assessment two days ago. We areng not just talking about medicines or masks but parts for cars. It can cause our economy to slow down and the rest of the world to slow down on the data that we have and that has been received in the last couple of days from China Children are mostly not infected by the coronavirus. The people who get the sickest are the people that are already sick. What can we do about the coronavirus and keep from getting it, wash your hands. I find myself doing it a few times a day. What we do as individuals is our hands pick up from our cell phones and from the rails we touch and shake with the seats in front of us. Then we put our hands on our face many more times anr hour then most people are aware. And that is the single biggest way. But fellow workinthe fellow wore epidemics for decades is Something Else we learned to put into context this is just past the peak of the flu season. Most of us know about the flu. We have a vaccine for the flu and most of us take it into the tens of millions of us who have the flu right now many die from the flu each year. That is a lot of people dying from the flu. It is a respiratory disease just like the coronavirus is and in fact the symptoms are much the same. Fever and a cough. We also heard this morning from the professionals who told us this for 80 of the people who are in fact did with the coronavirus it is a fairly mild experience. 20 , mainly older people are really sick and the ones that needed theth attention. What should we do about it . Starting with congress. This isnt our first rodeo so to speak. We face publichealth threats fores the last 20 years. Members of congress and staff were here with the anthrax attack in 2001. Then we saw sars that was another type of coronavirus. In 2009 flu pandemic killed more than 150,000 people and then the outbreaks in 2014 and after every one ofaf those incidents, Congress Working with democratic and republican president s prepare the federal government to be better prepared for the next problem. To develop and stockpile treatments and vaccines after the sars outbreak congress created a pandemic it guides the government on how to respond to Public Health emergencies and it creates funds the government could usepo to respond quickly o problems that come up. Last Year Congress provided more than 2 billion for Public Health and preparedness programs and the crisis occurs like this ieone. The agencies can take money from them and one of them is the Rapid Response fund theyve taken funds from that for this Health Care Issue and weve given the authority to take another 136 million then congress with many suggestions having been made iske likely ths week to enact additional funding to do whatever our professionals tell us needs to be done to keep us safe and help protect our economy. In addition, what congress has done on various president s d hae done even more. That was quite an extreme reaction president george w. Bush sent to cdc scientists for Disease Control around the world to help with the sars epidemic and at the same with President Trump on the nationals to travel to china in the last 14 days and warned americans not to travel to china or to italy or south dorea and those that travel in the last 14 days cannot reenter the United States. The president added to this, doctor fauci, the National Institute of Health Professionals they heard from this morning said without those executive actions, we would have many more cases right now. The third thing the administration has done is to develop a test to diagnose whether youve got the coronavirus. We didnt have that before because this is new. Rs far as i can tell and the fda is working with 65 privatesector developers in addition to the 46 labs in 38 states who are developing tests. There will be a million tests to be made shortly. It still takes more than a year. The president met with many vectors to see existing treatments might be used earlier laboratories involved in as well. So when we look at if we think mostly about our own health, but we also see other issues and that the effect on the economy. We need to take a look at a play would like to conclude where i started. Its as simple as wash your hands or drink a lot of water, isolate yourself if you feel sick. If you have a fever and a cough, call your dr. Stay home and dont impact your neighbors. Are we going to be able to contain the virus in the Unitedd States . I go back to what the New York Times said on the front page on sunday. Theyve been successful in doing that. Theyve taken strong executive action including this one to help protect the American People and in short while this is an alarming problem around p the world, more americans will become more infected and most experts agree we are fortunate that the United States is the country in the world where the sciences and resources and experience to do the best possible jobs containing the spread of the good morning everyone. Earlier today the fomc announced a reduction in target range for the fed funds rate with