Transcripts For CSPAN Washington Journal 3292020 20240713

Ahead we will be covering all aspects of this health crisis. We want to begin in the first hour with the Financial Impact it is having on you, your family, your loved ones. If you are recently unemployed as a result of the coronavirus, 202 7488000. For all others, 202 7488001. You can join us on social media, we will read your tweets at cspanwj. We are also taking her text messages, tell us your first name and where you are texting from. 202 7488003. A lot to talk about in the next hour. The Johns Hopkins sobering numbers across the years across the world now, 670,000 confirmed cases, approaching 31,000 deaths around the world. Here in the u. S. , close to 125,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the United States. We want to get your phone calls. Again, if you are recently unemployed, tell us your situation. That number is 202 7488000. The headline from cnbc, the u. S. Economy has come to a. Ndstill host yesterday on fox news, this conversation with Vice President pence on when the u. S. Economy will reopen. [video clip] a tough decision, there are risks if he opens the economy up too soon there is a risk. If he doesnt open it soon enough, there is another risk. What are you specifically looking at and basing your decision on and then formulating a recommendation to the president on. Right question. Short answer, we are following the data. The president secured with massive commercial labs around the country we are literally doing tens of thousands of tests today and we have gotten a great deal more understanding about, about where people have contracted the coronavirus, who has recovered, who is the most at risk, and the regions of the country most impacted. While the president has said he would like to open the country up in weeks not months, we are going to be bringing that data forward to the advice of not the best Health Care Experts in the country, but the best in the world are working on the task force and ultimately the president will make a decision that he thinks is in the best interest of all the American People. The full interview is available at cnbc. Com. Joining us on the phone is jeff basin, White House Reporter for reuters. Thank you for being with us. Want to begin with some of the backandforth yesterday with the president , the governors of new york and new jersey in terms of a quarantine. The administration seem to back away late in the day. Explain how this unfolded. Guest they certainly did that late in the day. The longterm answer to your question, not putting in place a president dide dabble in the possibility. When he was leaving the white house yesterday he went to virginia, his first outing outside the white house in about two and a half weeks, speaking to reporters on his way to virginia, saying it was something he was looking at and , receiving in generating quite a bit of criticism from those governors. He ended up tweeting last night that there would be a travel warning. But that a quarantine itself was not necessary. Bottom line, does the president himself have that authority . Guest thats a terrific question. There was back and forth about that, some believed that he did but others on the state level who believed he did not. It raises a broader question, honestly, about what the federal government and president can do on things like this. Some of it was referred to in the clip that you just played over when the president will reopen the economy. Last week he said prominently that he would like to do so by easter, but it is worth noting as we studied the debate and watch what he decides that the guidelines of the federal government, these 15 days that Vice President pratt right Vice President pence and others have in talking about, those are just recommendations. Its really a local level discussion where they have been discussing keeping places, businesses closed. That is not to undermine or downplay what the president can do, but i think it is important to note that a lot of those aings are recommendations at federal, local, and state level. Host is that another example of the met mixed messages coming from the white house . Absolutely. The president has wanted to take thatt and has been saying the task force is doing a terrific job, but there is a lot of criticism about his response specifically from the beginning. He did downplay this at the very beginning of the outbreak. A came around to showing great deal of seriousness about the problem, but then sort of went back to downplaying it early last week by comparing it again to just the seasonal flu. At the end of the week, to the question the Vice President was , saying theng decision to reopen the economy would be based first on lives, safety, and then economic health. He himself has gone back and forth publicly in his own response to this and there have been. Mixed messages. Talking with the White House Correspondent for reuters and former president for the White House Correspondents association. Jonathan karl has that position with a lot ofling changes inside the white house in the Briefing Rooms. What have you seen in recent days, recent weeks, what can we expect more, if anything . Guest we have seen a determined attempt by the reporters to practice social distancing. There was a time when i walked into the Briefing Room one morning and there had been new seating assignments made basically for fewer journalists to be able to sit in the Briefing Room. That was changed up a few days later to make it an even smaller number, so that there were greater numbers of seats in between the reporters who were sitting there and to have become almost in what had become almost Daily Briefings. They reduced the size and virginia of the normal 13 member press pool of reporters and journalists that travel with them. These are all temporary measures. They are measures to increase social distancing and to protect reporters as well as the staff. And the president himself. Mason, his work is available at reuters. Com. Thank you so much for being with us. Want to share this headline with you from the New York Times co. Testing blunders costing the a month. Th a vital largescale testing did not happen because of technical flaws, business as usual bureaucracy, lack of leadership. T multiple levels that according to interviews with 50 current and former Public Health officials, lost months when the worlds richest Country Armed with some of the best specialist squander their best chance of containing the spread of the virus here in the u. S. We want to focus on the impact it is having on your finances. Victor joins us from silver spring, maryland. Good morning. Guest good morning. I have been buying into the stock market and while others freak out, i have been buying in. I did this in 2001 and 2009. I know im going to come out of this ahead in the long run. But i would like to take a couple of minutes here to salute the truckers out there. Wen i cant sleep, i call w l in cincinnati and they have a show called the American Trucking network with Steve Sommers and riding the wave with son of the truckers i have spoken with personally on the ande, he hauls woodchips horsefeathers, propane to various places. There are others. , spaceman. Grunt my handle on there is known as blind man. Alex, good morning. Caller good morning. Im actually not really affected by this economically at all. Reason for this is that i am actually an essential employee. Thettle over a week ago website fortune. Com posted a short article with about 14 points of who is considered an essential employee, according to the United States government. Couple of the usual suspects are on there. People Like Health Care workers, police, fire department, people who work at grocery stores. Some media companies. I imagine you guys are such. Ered the last bullet point at the bottom, number 14, department of defense contractors. Im not going to mention which company i work for, for security reasons, but i actually wound up being under one of those categories of working for the inartment of defense manufacturing, working for a company that produces military equipment. The militaryart of industrial. Its ironic to me in a sense, i go into work every day and i even come off work just now, taking overtime hours, keeping of production. Its kind of ironic that the department of defense contractors are still going into work producing military equipment for who knows what we will use it for in the future, but we keep in touch, myself and. Ther employees core veterans we keep in touch with colleagues who are still serving in the u. S. Armed forces and because of everything going on there, like in the navy and army and such, they are all getting, contracting the virus in stuff, shutting down. They are not really Running Missions or doing anything along those lines. The actual armed forces is shutdown by the virus, but the militaryindustrial complex roles on. Thank you for the call. An example of how quickly this is spreading in nursing homes, hogan, mountlarry airy, maryland, with 66 residents it tested positive, the governor saying it took three weeks for the National Capital region to go from zero , three days for the region to go to 1000 to 2000 in washington, d. C. , maryland, and virginia, adding the is is a rapidly evolving emergency surrounding the. Ions capital we have a new primetime edition. The washington journal we hope that you tune in, phone in with your questions or comments for Governor Hogan on tuesday night, 8 00 p. M. Evening edition. Jamie is joining us, recently unemployed from hialeah, florida. Good morning. Good morning, sir. Thank you for letting me speak. I will give you a perfect example of smalltown america. Hialeah, florida, i happen to fall into the first category. I got recently hurt on the job, im ok because i got a steady check it coming in for right now, i dont have to worry about how im going to feed my family, but the people next to me they will only get a mere 2500 check and they have to worry about what they are going to do from then on. But the people across, stiffing them, hes got a Small Business and hes got everything, hes up to his neck on credit. Hes got a Small Business with three little trucks. So, now hes going to go and get out of his credit to be able to buy inventory, to be able to sell the inventory and get his money back. Who is going to regulate the Small Business owner . Change it out to his employees, sure, 600, but no one is talking about how much money the Small Business owner is able to get. Im not worried about big business. They are going to keep getting what they are getting. Im not worried about the small guy. Hes not getting nothing. The Small Business guy, we are letting them get ahead. No ones talking about regulating. I keep hearing about free money in america. Keep on going, guys. Host we appreciate that. Steve, next, roberts will, maryland, good morning. Caller appreciate you taking my call, steve. I have been watching you in the evenings there. I like the show in the evenings. Im a kind of semi retired truck driver. I think we need to prioritize where we are giving this money that they are putting out. We have got to have the front my workers, the hospital workers, the Truck Drivers hauling and prioritizing food, keeping the shelves filled up. The unemployment, we need to beef up the unemployment. They spent about double the amount of money they needed to. If you are going to give a bunch to businesses and say it will trickle down, thats just stupid, because that dont work. Fewbig arrogant tax cut a years ago, why dont they repeal that . That will at least pay for the money they are spending now. They are already talking about another 2 trillion three months from now. I think our priorities are wrong and we need to start putting first things first. Especially the frontend. I will close with this, all the people that are sick, you know, it and areng for hoping for a steve speedy recovery. Host we have this statement lines,ell, along those this is the headline from nbc followingrting the host norman is joining us this morning from glenn hope. Tell us your situation. On youri called him unemployment thing. Im a contractor, we do get laid off. I have all the information i need to work on my claim, my pin thaty cant even get , they are so down and out. You know, i try to open my claim, which took a long time. Its open. This is the first week we are and theto sign up Computer System was to open at 6 00 and it crashed at 6 05. The people that never did this before, what they are going through, not knowing what to do or how to devise it. Host thank you for the call. We will go to joanne, next, joining us from schenectady, new york. Good morning. Im a Service Clerk from shoprite supermarkets. Good, doing pretty keeping the customers as much as we can. I have a pension from the government to supplement my pension. So far we are hanging in there. I think trumps trying. The only thing, the thing with the dmv, my husband, it was too late for him to get his identification, his license, he doesnt have a current one. The state ise providing an extension, is that not the case . Caller we were waiting for the decision to be male back, we never got it. Host whats it like at the shop right where you are working . Have food. Its just a Paper Products and cleaning products sometimes we get a load, sometimes not a big one. Sometimes get a few of this or that. Tissues. Host joanne, thank you for the call from schenectady. Mike on the text message line saying host this from the associated press, one of the headlines in the boston herald, off the charts, virus hotspots growing. N Middle America are next, goodou morning, from caspian, michigan. Caller good morning. I feel for everybody around the entire world that has been affected by this, the inaction affects everybody. The anxiety thats out there when you get met mixed messages from world leaders, they dont know which way to turn. You just dont know whats right and whats wrong. I know that forethought is tough to handle. I just thought about this last night or yesterday, but if it ever comes down to where we have to stay in our homes and theres people directing us, i would like to see us, you know, everybody get respirators. Theres nothing wrong with passing out, passing out respirators should have been done to her three weeks ago to every person in this country. Think, you know, i mean i wish i wouldve brought that up maybe earlier, but you know, really that is the wise solution. Totead of telling people stay in their homes, along with that passing out respirators for everybody. Get respirators to everybody, every human being in this country. Thats all i have to say. Thank you. Host thank you. Coming up at the top of the hour, the founder and ceo of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals will be joining us from westchester, new york. Tell us your comments. You can also text them. We are approaching the bottom of the hour and if you are just tuning in, or listening on cspan radio or potus, channel 100 24, which carries this every sunday morning, or the Parliament Channel in Great Britain on the bbc. We are asking that the impact this is having on you, your finances, and we have one line set aside for the recently unemployed. Ed, indiana, you are one of the hot spots. How are you doing . Caller thank you for taking my call, thank you to cspan. Theres one thing, the unemployment that im getting is 247 a week. My rent around rent alone is 1280 a month. Thats not even close. Why cant they give a little bit more to the people . Also, i would like to say that when i see those chem trails in the sky, like the next day theres a large spike in cases. Im wondering if thats connected to it. I would also like to say that there is a depopulation agenda for 2025. People need to look at that, too. Thank you for taking my call, have a good day. Host ernest, are you with us . From massachusetts, good morning. Yes, this has impacted us a lot. We are retired, ok . My wife and i. It has impacted our family. We cant see our grandkids. I was just in the hospital almost three weeks. I see how dedicated these Health Care Workers are, the doctors, the nurses, the aides and everybody else associated with the hospital. Hospitals should be considered strategic. Nurses and doctors should be and their tuition should be paid. To our very strategic country and we are seeing the results of that. We have to have doctors, nurses, and aids. If we had more doctors and more nurses and more material safety equipment, maybe the spike in this virus wouldnt be here. This is just as important as our military. I have seen this. I seen how hard these doctors, nurses, student nurses by the way, they work in a hospitals also. We have to spend money there. I have seen this firsthand. They are very, very hard workers. They are very dedicated. They put their lives on the line. I think we have to look at that. Host ernest, i would agree. My wife is a nurse, she is on the line with so many others. As she points out, you need the ventilators but also the medical staff to operate it. Yes, i think, i think this has to be looked at. This is something where you cant really blame politicians for this. This is something that just developed over time. We have to look at things differently now and consider this part of our infrastructure, just as important as the military. Thank you for weighing in, ernest, i completely agree. This is from carolyn. Ost susan is next tampa, florida, good morning. Taking myank you for call. First and foremost, i just want to express my my extreme medicale for these nurses, these doctors that are in frontheir own lives of all of the other people, nationally, in our lives. Im a retired schoolteacher, 35 years. My heart goes out to the people that are unemployed right now. Most of all, its gratitude. I think this is a wakeup call for the country. I hope that when things get better we dont forget what has happened. I feel as though this is a time when we are so grateful for the. Eople that we have and need to help the homeless, the people without insurance, the people that are desperate, the desolate. All of the people that we have, quite frankly, ignored for decades. My call is mainly for gratitude for all the people who are putting their lives to help others. Thank io like to would also like to thank, my daughter is autistic, mentally handicapped. She is under sunrise and they are taking very good care of her. How old is your daughter, susan . Around 31, but socially a 13yearold. We are all impacted, its not just me, its not only me. Ahead and comment politically, but i dont think thats necessary right now. I just, my heart just is so saddened. Its just gratitude. Gratitude. I do feel that this is an to where we can stop the divisiveness between republicans and democrats. This, this, this is the American People who are suffering. Globally as well. Good luck to you, good luck to your daughter, thank you for adding your voice, we appreciate it. Caller thank you so much. Host this is from barbara host this headline this morning from the New York Times, wrenching decisions for oll in. S as the bills role i ann is on the phone from oxnard. From the lastng caller about gratitude, i want to give a shout out to the ucla medical center. My husband and i were there a few days ago for him to get his chemotherapy. They are fabulous there. Host how is your husband doing . You know, hes about six months into a twoyear chemotherapy treatment. So, hes all right. Hes not doing well because he just got chemotherapy. But anyway, they do iv chemotherapy in the hospital. But my husband is actually a hospital pharmacist but hasnt been able to work because of the leukemia and he was forced into retirement because he was supposed to get near a logical last monday. He had an appointment. We got a call from the no rolla just saw office saying that they were got a call from the s office saying they were closed because of coronavirus. His employer said he had to make a decision by the end of the week about retirement and he was going to use the data from the test to help him make the decision and they basically said sorry, we cant do that. So, my husband, i think he was leaning towards retirement he retired. It did affect our finances and now he is technically unemployed, but he retired earlier than he was planning to. Luck to you, the luck to him, hope he is free and clear soon. We appreciate it. Caller thank you. Host this is from kathy in indiana roberta. T from carl, you are next. Go ahead. Caller good morning, steve. This has not affected me, personally. Im retired. In theread an article New York Times a few minutes ago about wasting time on this virus thing. Correctly,u remember when President Trump issued the travel ban, the people coming from china, what was congress doing at the time . The whole congress was shutdown impeaching President Trump. Thats the way i see this thing. Everybody wants to point their fingers at President Trump. Host we should point to this times,m the new york they are looking at the problems in the cdc and the bureaucracy that delayed the testing, pointing their finger at different people. Caller do you really think that this is the president s of fault that we are suffering from this virus . Host what do you say . Caller a lot of people are. Morning joe, he says trump is trying to kill all the veterans. I served six years in the marine corps. I dont think hes trying to kill me. You know, thats the crazy stuff they are spouting on the different programs. It is crazy. I just wish people would be a little more conscience about whats going on. Thank you there from berkeley springs, west virginia. This is the headline from yahoo topping 10,000 despite lockdown. Barbara harris, dr. For the world health organization, thank you for being with us on this sunday. Can you give us a sense of what we can expect across europe as the death toll continues to rise in germany, italy, spain, the u. K. , and elsewhere . We are seeing at the moment are some very, very large risesaks with exponential and accelerations, essentially heard, imu have sure, about the famous curve. At the moment we are at the outside of the curve and its going straight up. What we want to see is reduction of cases and a flattening of the curve so that the hospitals have the chance to cope with the number of people who have severe illness that need intensive care and high dependency nursing. When you are seeing the terrible, terrible death toll, quite a percentage of that is due to the hospital being overwhelmed by such a rapid surge in cases. The lessons in europe they can be applied to the u. S. As we move ahead india with this endemic here in the states . Aret the lessons really that you may be thinking it is too late that it is not too late in many parts of the united. Tates to get ready so, do all the things that we know can slow down the rise in new cases. Who hasryone potentially got it so that you know where your viruses are in your community. You are very, very large country and have many different places could stillrus arise. Test everyone, no who has got it , no who has been exposed. Find everybody who has been exposed. Help them to cite selfisolate. If they are in difficult circumstances, think about having places where they can be quarantined and looked after. Make sure that you have got enough capacity for your Health Workers. Understand that when people get severe illness it takes three weeks of intensive care to get them through it. It takes a lot of nurses, daughters, hygienists, paramedics. You need extra staff, you need to have trained them and got them ready to be able to look after each other because Health Workers, if you put them through 12 hour shifts day after day per dealing with horrendous things, losing their patients, losing, losing, losing the people they care for, they will get exhausted and be at risk and then you will start see this problem among your Health Workers and you will lose the very people standing between you and disaster. There were a handful of cases a month ago and now we are approaching 125,000 cases in the United States. Why is this spreading so quickly . What is it about the virus that makes it insidious . Guest its very good at spreading between us. Asmelts the way that we are humans, we love to be together and do things together. We get a lot of our happiness from being together. To beat it, we have to understand that we can be together in spirit but not in body at the moment. This virus, generally one person will infect between two to three other people and they may in fact the person before they are aware that they are ill because most people have a mild illness. They dont even recognize that they are ill. That is why i was saying that it is so important to test, to understand who has the virus and find all the people that person has been in contact with, a lot of that may not feel ill at all. They need to be followed carefully to see whether or not they are developing the illness in case a transfer it to other people. Headline here from inside of time magazine, across the , how long can we expect this to be the new norm . Were looking at a lot of new norms. Shutdowns are not the only way. What it really takes is every society, every community thinking how are we going to make this work . We know the writ the basics. We have to find the virus, stop at spreading amongst the people who have been exposed to others. How do we in our community make it work . Lockdowns are one method, sometimes when the virus is so spread in the community, authorities feel the only way to stop it is to stop everybody moving. But it isnt the only way. As we said, when you ramp up testing and are really able to isolate people who are likely to be transmitting the virus, you can slow down the spread in your community. It is not simply about lockdown. Is a dr. Margaret harris spokesperson from the who, joining us from geneva, switzerland. Thank you for being with us. Its been a pleasure. You all be well, stay safe. We are asking you about the Financial Impact that the virus is having on you in your family. Eugene is on the phone from clinton, maryland. Good morning. Caller good morning. I want to speak of gratitude. Im an evolutionary elder. My granddaughter came to visit afterthe way to our home she was let out of college. I need money to get my applications in for graduate school. I look at her and i said baby, you can make money. I said i have a way that you can make money and help me, a senior citizen. She said what is it . I said i want you to help me sell a product that i designed. She said tell me about it, im good with computers. With thed a tshirt black National Anthem on it. She uploaded it for me on red and she said to me we can and iome money from this said thank you, honey. I said, now you see how you can get money also get your applications in. Say to the people out there listening, you can make some money, too. Com, ifgo to bedbubble. You have a design, put it on and go forth. Thank you, eugene. This is from jason, new jersey. Host here is some of the recording from the washington post. In chicago they are preparing to open patient quarters in three of the cavernous halls of mccormick place, the Largest Convention center in north america. Detroit host mark is next, hollywood, florida. Good morning. Caller how are you doing . Host fine, thank you. Caller i just wanted to say, putting myself in as unemployed. Theres nothing out here in broward. We cant find work. The pandemic has become an epidemic, socially, mentally, physically. Others. Ration from it has taken more of a cold more of a toll, a mental toll. Thanks for the call. Derek is next in naples, florida. Good morning, derek. Caller i have to say, im a registered nurse. Im actually just driving home. Rom a 12 hour shift i am gainfully employed, but something that is interesting , obviously ining work in southwest florida and the governor here about a week all elective surgeries. The unit that i work on is at least 50 of elective surgeries. What we have seen in the last week is a fair number of staff are actually being canceled because we dont have all of those elective surgeries. Registered nurses are in high demand right now, so its a weird thing, especially if you work in the icu or the emergency , but its an odd thing we are seeing where because we are going downpatients so dramatically with the loss of elective surgeries, and a lot of like the outpatient doctors offices, that sort of thing, they have closed down. Yet the system i work for, they have to find work for the staff. Particularly if they are assistance the cannot work in the facilities at the time. It is a kind of a weird thing, right . We are thinking my god, the nurses are really busy. And we are really busy. , a lot of same time us, like in the last week or in the next couple of weeks we are fighting our shifts getting canceled, people running out of paid time off soon enough. I wanted to throw that out there and give thanks to the woman who spoke about gratitude. Reallyve had some wonderful patients, including last night. I have been really, really proud to be a nurse right now and be able to help people who are in need. I wanted to thank the public for acknowledging the work that we do, that doctors do, that nurses assistants do day in and day out, showing up to do our best for the American Public host . Public. You and we appreciate what do, thank you for the call, go get some sleep after that long shift. Should have focused on the coronavirus rather than if thement, a badge and media had focused on the serious issues. The media fiddled while rome burned. Margaret is next from clinton park, new york. Good morning. I would like to see if there is some value in clarifying whether handwashing or colde with hot water water. Im a retired High School Teacher and we were told it could be hot or cold at the time it was working. Host we talked to a infectious who said at least 20 seconds of warm water or soap, preferably longer. That was her recommendation. Said sing happy birthday twice, that should be enough time repeatedly throughout the day. Caller well, that sounds joyful. Host lucas, next, near the Cleveland Clinic. Good morning, luke. Actually a former employee there at the Cleveland Clinic. Officeonsultant in safety and my wife in the Health Care Industry has been working 12 hour days. Im very grateful for them having the opportunity to work. It doesnt affect my business, im one of those essential construction positions. Formerg is that as a federal compliance officer, back in the 90s when we had, yeah, i we had a90s,emocratic president in office dont ask, dont tell kind of thing. We had a pandemic issue we dealt with them. Towas that we had to prepare look at it and start educating employers and employees on the pandemic potential to prepare for it. From the health care perspective, it is more than apparent in northern ohio, with the Rapid Response from the Cleveland Clinic and the university hospitals, they jumped on board to do this in a rapid manner. , we havent dropped the ball since we didnt prepare during the clinton administration. Host thank you for the call. Franklin, texting this message well, this from afp news, credited in yahoo news. Com, italy copping topping 10,000 despite long lockdown, a precursor of what we may face in the u. S. The coronavirus toll shooting past 10,000 on saturday in showing little sign of slowing down despite the 16 day lockdown. Theyd hundred 89 new fatalities reporting in the worst hit nation in the world came one day reconciled the i host next is cliff, essex, maryland. Good morning. You were talking about Financial Impact. , i live on a retired Social Security disability. My sister is also disabled. She works for over and hasnt been driving much in the last couple of weeks. The main thing i wanted to talk rates,as u. S. Infection no 121,000. The deaths of 2046. When the infection rate reaches 3 million, that will be normal. Every year. Reaches 600,h rate excuse me, 60,000, thats normal every year. This is a bunch of hysteria. People are nuts. Int that is from cliff essex, maryland. A lack of previous imine ready driving up high infection rates. Police trying to attack the public while battling the spread. Their own ranks this from carol double check that, i think it is 600 every two weeks but you can check with the unemployment office. Is on the phone. Good morning. Caller i have a question that is a little out of the ordinary as it relates to the coronavirus. I understand the countries like cuba and venezuela have sent medical personnel to help out , which is going to the terrible coronavirus problem. Is that true . The reason i am asking that is that feel that the American People are censored by our national media. I havent seen it in our media, so im asking cspan, who has pretty good context. Is it true that countries that we are trying to starve economically with sanctions, haveuba and venezuela sent medical people to assist the ravaged coronavirus country of italy . Host where did you see or hear that . I saw that, youre probably going to smile when i since i have a lot of free time, on my computer, i go to different websites. One of which is rt. Com, russian television. Host well, i cant confirm that. We can certainly look into that. We are focusing on the coronavirus every single morning and it is something we will look into. Reminder, we have a primetime edition of the washington tomorrow friday as the virus continues. Steve, who says i only have one Family Member that. Nt physically going to work it i worked there are a lot of cars on the road and i dont think that these guidelines will flatten the curve. As ever in washington, we are the hot spot for the virus. Good morning. You are recently unemployed . Caller i worked as a mechanic. There were eight of us in the shop. We basically had to shut down. I havent up with unemployment issues again. It has been tough, i have a lot of gratitude like others to. My question in my mind is appear we have casinos. Lise like las vegas and reno, what are those people doing . Are they shutting down . I dont have an answer. I know that the casinos are shut down and las vegas. I know that with seattle being the original hotspot, there are limits to who can gather in a single location. That. i understand i just see that as being another hot spot and spreading quite likely all over. I would suspect they are closed, dan. Dorothy, indiana, another area hit hard by the virus. Good morning. Is why arecomplaint so many people . Stop the blame, it is no to blame and hate now. Everyone is impacted by this thing. Now because they told me i cant come to the doctors, the nurses, the Health Care People of the ones we should be looking up to now. We dont blame the president , we dont blame the democrats, we dont lane the republicans we dont blame the republicans. Stop it. This is the time we need to come together like we did during 9 11. Host . Has this on our twitter page. Beingrisk purse can at risk person, i am on unpaid leave with saving so i am ok but cabin fever is settling in. Trish in seattle, washington. Caller good morning, thanks for taking my call. I am a nurse, a nurse case manager for an Insurance Company that primarily helps the medicare and the medicaid population. I am lucky, i get to work from home. I am glad i can do it. By finances are not being impacted. The company was gracious enough to give us 500. Here in seattle, nobody is working, nobody is moving. Thesegest worry is all of people that are not going to have food. Everybody that is in one of these hotspots, if you dime,d you can spare a otherwiseyour food the richest country in the worlds people are not eating. I have a big problem with that when i hear every day how members are food insecure and it even scarier part of that is they cant get to the grocery store. Stores that deliver are canceling because they dont have enough drivers. Fear that ireal have for this country because hungry people do desperate things and i dont want to go down that road. Thank you. Host thank you for the call. Times, an york obituary for a former senator who was 72 years old, called the doctor know of congress because of his fiscal conservative beliefs. He was battling cancer for a number of years. He forged a close relationship with then senator barack obama. He was 72 years old. Coming up in just a moment we will have a conversation with the founder and ceo of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. He is joining us from westchester, new york. Also, newsmakers which follows andwashington journal, our guest is congressman greg walden. He commented on the rescue package and the role of congressman tom massey. s objections about the rules for the bill on friday, causing more than 200 lawmakers getting on planes to come back to washington to vote in person rather than doing it by unanimous consent. The first part of that conversation with congressman walden. [video clip] it was unfortunate and unfair and unnecessary but we all get a voting card, we all have our rights and privileges. He exercised his, it just wasnt necessary. We had the votes, we have the quorum in the house. We moved on. In the end it did not have any delay. It did discomfort some members. 435 members and there are a lot of members that have certain illnesses or they are dealing with things that make them more vulnerable to this virus. It was a ways. It wasnt for it was a waste. It was unfortunate. Host did that put members at risk . Guest it did. Otherwise members would have stayed more isolated. They would up they would have not gotten in their cars and flown in. Im sure they would have rather stayed where they were and that was the medical guidance we were given. Dont move around, stay isolated, stay home. We were not able to maintain those protocols because of this. Mr. Massey believed strongly in what he believes and his voters will have a say in how they interpret that or not. The president was pretty forthcoming. The big news is we passed this bill unanimously in the senate, overwhelmingly in the house. Im not sure there were many objectors. It moves forward to the president. Now we will get relief to the american citizens. Weve got people falling through the cracks. You see the economy doing the deep dive off the cliff. We are trying to build a bridge across this ravine to the other side and have a safety net to catch people falling. The the Ranking Member of energy and commerce committee, our guest on newsmakers, representative greg walden, stepping down at the end of this year. You can listen to newsmakers on the free cspan radio app or watch it after washington atrnal or online anytime cspan. Org. Joining us from new york is dr. Leonard schleifer. He is the founder and ceo of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. Guest thank you for having me. Host you are working on covid19 treatment and a possible vaccine for this. Explain what your company is doing and the breakthroughs you would the breakthroughs you hope to achieve. Guest i think of it in three parts. First you have the office shelf solutions. Is there anything here and now that we have, approved drugs that might be repurposed to try and attack this virus . A lot of them are being tried. I dont think all of them are going to work but it is worth trying. In that vein we have something that blocks the inflammation. It is a drug that we have developed in partner with santa fe and it blocks big inflammation wherever it is released in the body. Massive inflammation in the lungs is part of the response to the virus that we hope this drug would help control. It was exciting data from drug out ofwith a china early on in this pandemic which suggests that this might be a reasonable approach. We are pursuing that. That is what we call the office shelf solution. The chances are lower than something specifically designed to attack the virus and that is to Maker Technology human antibodies, actual human. Roteins, we make them in mice my partner drifted up when he was a young graduate student. These mice can be immunized with the piece of a virus and they can make something that will kill that virus and we can take that out of the mice, using fancy Dna Technology to give it to people in the hope that it will either protect them in the short term or actually treat them if they are infected. I should point out that the exact technology we use to tackle ebola worked great. It was a lifesaving treatment. Antibodies were made in these mice and they were given peak given to people and it was really gratifying to see that we could save lives. Host typically, how long does the testing take for Something Like this . Guest it is not so much the testing that is long, it is how long it normally takes people to do this. This is normally an effort that takes years because of these mice and our end to end keep abilities, we are able to and to end capabilities end to end capabilities, we are trying to shorten that even further and we just learned about this in january. We expect to be testing people in june. That is an unprecedented timeline to be able to go from a new virus to a drug that actually could prevent you from getting infected or help you if you are infected. Host bottom line, what does that mean for the virus, for those suffering it or could potentially get covid19 . Guest regenerons cocktail could do two things. Given to people in the intensive care unit, it might help their body overcome this virus the way it did with ebola. The other thing you could do is give it to people who are very early on in their infection, just beginning to have some symptoms so they dont get worse, so they dont go to the hospitals and use up icu beds and ventilators which are in short supply, or even better, you might be able to give this cocktail to First Responders or people at risk to get it so we can protect them so they can do their work, so that these heroes on the front line in hospitals literally risking their lives, our First Responders, police, emts, firefighters, we need to protect them and we need to protect more and more people so we can get people doing to back will back to doing what they have to do. Host when did you first hear about the coronavirus and at what point did you realize this was going to be a Global Pandemic . Surveillanceam has and they are always keeping in i out on medical literature and follow these sorts of things for new viruses because we have had a longstanding relationship with the assistant secretary of who worksss response for the secretary of hhs. We have had a longstanding relationship with them. Constantly be ready to properly respond to any threat and our scientists identified this threat in january. Virus,ught was a new they recognized it was related to sars which caused significant problems. It was in the same class as mers, which we already worked on and we knew we could come up with a cocktail. We got started in january. Host a headline from todays New York Times. I will read it to ask but we can learn from this. The headline says the testing blunders costing a vital month in the u. S. Virus effort. Leadership failures blinded the nation to the threat. What are the lessons we can take away from that lost month . Me that weeems to are going to have all the time in the world to sort of learn what is going on. I am focused on how do we deal with what is going on but i can say this. This is a very unique catastrophe. Most catastrophes whether they be hurricanes or floods, waradoes or even acts of are something that governments are really best prepared to deal and at the federal level they are set up to do this extremely well. When you are dealing with a pandemic, it is a whole new system of problems you have to deal with. It cant just be the federal government, they cant just be State Governments, it has to be federal and state working with our resources in the private sector who are going to come up with solutions. This is a very complex interface of all of these various critical aspects of response. Of the private sector, we have been killing ourselves to try and come up with something and we have worked very well with the fda. They have been incredibly responsive. We were on a call with them tryingn until midnight to test this antiinflammatory. We have been working regularly, night and day, weekends. We barter. I have been in contact with people at the white house. A senator called me and wanted to know what wouldnt what do we need to what do we need to make sure is in the bill that could help the country be ready to deploy this promising cocktail . Local governments. We are at the epicenter in westchester county. It is terrible. Managed toiend who get in and out of the hospital. I have another friend who has been on a ventilator for several weeks. Cuomoadership governor has been showing has been amazing. s health department. Everybody has been pulling together his health department, everybody has been pulling together. Of course there have been issues in friction but we are unprecedented times and we have to make sure we dont bicker and point fingers down point fingers now. But we have to do now is get the job done. Everyone needs to be rowing in the same direction. That includes people in my industry. There has been unprecedented cooperation. We know we are all very competitive, trying to outfox the competition. That is what capitalism does but we have used that power of innovation and that spirit of wanting to compete. But we are competing against is this virus. We are all competing against this virus and we have to win and i think we will. Host we are talking with dr. Leonard schleifer, the founder and ceo of regeneron, based in new york. Zoom froming us via westchester, new york. We will get to your phone calls and we have a phone line set aside for medical professionals. That number is 202 7488002. Maria in washington, d. C. , good morning. Caller good morning. My question has to deal with those who consider this hysteria or that we are just making things up because it is a regular flu. Correct me if i am wrong and maybe expand on it, it is about the rate, especially of mortality. 0. 2 versus it is a a 0. 01 for a regular flu out of 1000 people . One would die from a regular flu versus 20 from the coronavirus or Something Like that. That soake the point many more people will need andnded care like icu care that is why we worry so much. If you can clarify about that. Host thank you for the call. Guest great question. You probably have the figures right although frankly it is hard to know how to make these calculations because we dont know how many people have infections but it looks like this virus could be five to 10 times more lethal, more likely to kill somebody who gets it then the flu virus. Than the flu virus. Outt of all, it is spread over a longer period of time. It goes for six months. Second of all, there are loads of americans who have had related flus and might be protected by their own immunity or have been vaccinated. I encourage everybody to get their flu vaccine. It is still not too late to get it now if you can get to a place where they are giving it. The flu vaccine protects so many people. With the coronavirus or covid19 , the problem is that none of us have seen this virus before. None of us have been vaccinated. Now we have 300 billion americans who potentially could all get sick around the same americans0 million who could potentially get sick around the same time. I trained in new york hospitals. It is hard for me to imagine what is going on. Friends,ecked in with there are doctors sitting in the icu taking care of patients, there are patients overflowing. It seems we have enough resources but this virus could get ahead of us. It is really a question of it happening all at once with none of us having any immunity to this virus. Host carolyn is next in nebraska. Caller good morning. I have a question and a comment. The question is, do you have any information on the virus being on our money and our mail and our newspapers . My comment is, i think a law should be made to penalize those people who are obviously irresponsible and not following the guidelines like the people playing and swimming on the beaches. Hundreds of people were just totally irresponsible. Host thank you for the call. Guest thank you for the question. I will leave the policy aspects to the government officials. They are better suited for that. I certainly encourage people to follow the guidelines because we really do we have to slow this down or we will overwhelm this system completely. As far as whether or not the othercan live on surfaces than human surfaces, it can live on countertops, doorknobs. To livee it is possible for some period of time on paper and cardboard. Perhaps the best thing is when you handle it if you must, wash your hands very carefully immediately after. Trying to delay handling things. Let the mail sit for a couple of days. Host in arizona, scott, good morning. Caller good morning. Dr. Schleifer, i have a background in technological sciences. As a machines specialist working for Companies Like motorola and intel. I had a couple ideas. They taught me to think outside of the box. Ago or multiple years ago, i saw some experiments with hyper oxygenated liquids where they took lab rats and they submerge these rats into this fluid and at first it looked like they were drowning but after a while they just started moving around like everything was normal. Since pneumonia is the act of the lungs filling with fluid, it seems to me like you could take fluid and put it to a practical use. My second idea, in manufacturing integrated circuits, a lot of deionized water is required. They is they use semi permeable membranes for reverse osmosis and i was wondering if something might develop for a long prophylactic that could be inhaled and would form a semi permeable barrier that would allow oxygen to pass through but would screen out the larger viruses . I was wondering what your thoughts are on these sort of outside the box types of ideas. Host thanks for the call. Guest i will say this. Those are really outside of my areas of expertise but i would never bet against the injured bet against the ingenuity of the American People. Exactlyhebox ideas are what these sorts of moments will bring forward. I know our company is looking at every single day, how do we come up with a way to shorten that drug intot our patients, how we can shorten the time that we can stale up scale up manufacturing. Those ideas are beyond my expertise. Never say it again, i am going to bet against american ingenuity. Host i want to get your reaction to dr. Anthony fauci and what he said about the vaccine and treatment outline in a white house briefing. [video clip] one of the most important things is one that i mentioned several times from this podium and that is to clarify about the timeline for vaccines and would that have any impact on what we would call the rebound or a cycling in the season. Certainly for sure, a vaccine is are in a phase one trial and i keep referring to one vaccine, but there are a couple handfuls of vaccines at different stages of development but they are all following the same course in the course is, you first go into a phase one trial to see if it is safe. Very few people within a certain age group, all healthy, none at great risk of getting infected. The reason you do that, you want to make sure that it is safe. The next thing you do, that takes about three months, usually more. That brings us into the middle of summer. Then you have the phase two trial. We will put a lot of people in. We hope there are not a lot of people getting infected but it is likely there will be somewhere in the world where that is going on. It is likely we will get what is called an efficacy single. Efficacy signal and we will know whether or not it works. If in fact it does, we hope to rush it to have some impact on recycling in the next season and that could be a year to a year and a half. I am not changing any of the dates i mentioned but one of the things that we are going to do that has been a stumbling block from previous developments of vaccines is even before you know something works, at risk, you have to start producing it because once you know it works, you cant say great, it works mema it works, now give another six months to produce it. We did not take the risk with zika. That is why we have a nice zika vaccine but not enough to do it because there is no zika around. That is one of the things we are going to push on is to have it ready if in fact it works. Host that was dr. Anthony fauci and dr. Leonard schleifer, as you hear that, your reaction or thoughts . Guest first of all, kudos to tony. He has been amazing, working his tail off. I dont even know if the man sleeps but he has been doing everything he can to move forward on things like a vaccine. When i was in the white house meeting with the president , dr. Fauci was part of that group and i echoed his sentiment that a vaccine takes some time. There are some vaccines you develop that make people worse. You cant just say youve got it. What he said very carefully is we can try half a dozen of these , start scaling up a half dozen of these and then if one or two work, we will already have the material. That is something only on a scale that the federal government can do. Private industry and these Smaller Companies cannot afford to manufacture something less they know there was a customer likely to be there and that is why you stage these things. He is saying to do these things in parallel. It makes perfect sense to me. Our antibody cocktail is something that wont have the same limitations. Once you get this cocktail, you will know very quickly whether you are Getting Better if you already have the disease and we should be able to tell fairly quickly if we can prevent people from getting it. The safety of giving antibody antibodies,man these mice have been the source of several approved drugs already. Drug anticipate the the technology itself provides any special risk. We are optimistic. We think we can do this on a shorter timeframe. Host our guest is the founder and ceo of regeneron. This is what the website looks like as we listen to robert in maryland. Caller good morning. Doctor, as we know there are few coincidences in life. If you draw a big circle around the epicenters, you will notice that the center of that is the port of new york and new jersey. None of you have mentioned this. Nobody is saying anything about this. That just a possibility this disease is coming in from all of the chinese cargo ships and all of these cargo ships are shipping the goods out from this point and as they ship those goods out to our stores, we have , is that not aed possibility . If you look at the bullseye, it is that port but nobody wants to say that. Get on this tv last year and mention the 50,000 people that died from the flu. Thetice you are bumping up numbers but not mentioning the obvious facts that are staring you in the face. All the hotspots are the ports. Host we will stop it there. Guest thanks for your question. I dont think your expertise in epidemiology is what i am going to rely on. If you look at what is going on, there is what we Call Community transmission. That means it is going from persontoperson. That is the way this virus is being transmitted in the United States. It is not a matter of importing these goods and distribute in goods and that is sending the virus around. It is human to human. Of course in cities like new york or densely pop lidded areas where people are coming and going, that is going to naturally come out where there are more cases, there are more people, that is just a fact of epidemiology. That the materials being shipped in have had anything to do with the spread of this virus. This is a human to human spread. Host out last call is jim from North Carolina our last call is jim from North Carolina. Caller good morning and thank you for taking my call. Tor, i have a son going to Medical College and i talked to him about how doctors need to be going ahead and think differently and what i asked him tracking, is there any study going on or trying to come up with something to track as far as how far the disease is through blood, saliva, other ways . Thatmebody working on some could put you on the downside of this . Some kind of project like that . Host thank you. Guest that is a fabulous question. Congratulations on your grandson. We need more doctors, we need more people on the front line. In terms of asking a great question which i have been raising, there are two aspects of testing we have to get done. First of all we have to be able to test people to see when they have symptoms, do they have the virus and unfortunately that has not gone as smoothly as any of us would like. We are the most advanced nation in the world. We could learn some lessons from this but we have to have done a better job. The next part of testing is spot on what you are suggesting. We have to be able to tell by looking at somebodys blood, esther whether or not you have recovered from the nots as to whether or you have recovered from the virus. We need to know how many people and that test is coming. There were loads of Companies Working on it. That is called the antibody chest antibody test. The test now will tell you whether or not the virus is in your nose. The next test will tell you if you already have the virus and it is really important and we have to deploy that in largescale because people who already had the virus, the belief is that they will be protected so they would feel more comfortable getting back to work or being on the front lines. We need to know who has already had the virus and that test is coming. Host a graduate of Cornell University and the university of virginia, our guest, dr. Leonard schleifer he is the founder and ceo of regeneron joining us from his home in westchester, new york. We thank you for being with us and we hope we can check in with you again as this virus continues to dominate our coverage in the weeks ahead. Guest i hope you wont need to but i will be here. Host this photograph from the American Airlines plane in oklahoma, parked on the runway, emblematic of the situation we are facing around the country as airlines basically dealing with a significant drop off, 95 in sales and customers. We will be taking your calls in just a moment and later John Auerbach is going to join us healthust for americas with some of the responses to this coronavirus pandemic. You are watching and listening to cspans washington journal on this sunday morning. We are back in a moment. Coolidge president ial Foundation Share an economic torian through the coronavirus. The crash of the great gatsby was the crash of the early 20s not the crash of 1929. People thought america would never come back from the big a bigle big up people upheaval. We were getting through the flu, spanish influenza. At that time, the government took a policy, the policy was lets pull out of the way. The government response was so counterintuitive it is almost impossible to utter it now. Host tonight tonight at 8 00 eastern on cspans q a. Monday night on the communicators, yelps Public Policy Vice President on digital competition and why he thinks google has betrayed the internet. He is interviewed by an antitrust reporter for politico. Google is steering all of traffic to itself and therefore in a sense deoxygenated the entire World Wide Web and stifling innovation and ultimately harming consumers because they are not getting access to the best information from across the whole internet. Watch the communicators on cspan2. [video clip] washington journal continues. Host we are back with your calls and comments. If you are recently unemployed, we want to hear from you. 202 7488000. For all others, 202 7488001. From cnbc, the Coronavirus Crisis is bringing the American Economy to a screeching halt with every sector feeling the countrys most of the workforce staying home. Airplanes are parked on unused runways. The busiest highways are empty. Resorts have become ghost towns. Ports are seeing a sharp drop in activity. The u. S. Has more coronavirus cases than any other nation in the world. The u. S. Labor department reporting that a staggering 3. 2 8 million americans filing front implement benefits, that number shattering the alltime weekly record of 695,000, set in october 1982. The president traveling to norfolk, virginia yesterday as the usns comfort makes its way to new york to serve as a hospital. The comfort will arrive on monday to help new york city which is the epicenter of this virus at the moment. Here is more with the president. [video clip] after being rushed out of maintenance with historic speed. It was supposed to be here for four weeks and they did it in four days, the comfort will arrive in manhattan on monday, three weeks ahead of schedule. Its crew will begin treating patients on tuesday. It will be met in new york harbor by Governor Cuomo who i just spoke with. He is very excited, and they need the help. Civilianailors in mariners aboard this ship will provide critical Surge Capacity for the new york metropolitan area. Their mission will be to care for new yorkers who do not have the virus but require urgent care. In other words, they will be using this, people will be coming out of hospitals who dont have the virus and they will be on the ship where they have great operating rooms and at the places inbound on land will be where people who have the virus will be. The people with the virus will not be on ship. The ship will be used for people having operations and other things other than that. By serving these emergency patients away from the hospital, beds will be opened up all over the city for those who are infected. This ship cannot handle a lot of people so it will open capacity all over the city. It will be ready to address any lifethreatening medical emergency. It is stocked to the brim with equipment and medicine and everything you can think of. Importantly, by treating noninfected patients remotely on the ship, it will help to halt the transmission of the virus. Host that is from the president in norfolk, virginia. The comfort will arrive in new york tomorrow. This headline from the new york the, trump nixes coronavirus quarantine in new york city. President trump backing away from earlier comments on saturday that he was considering enforcing a quarantine into the new york, new jersey and connecticut area. After state officials questioned if he could implement a quarantine and accused him of of creating confusion. Instead the centers for Disease Control and prevention issuing a travel advisory, asking residents to refrain from nonessential travel for 14 days effective immediately. The advisory does not apply to people who work for Critical Infrastructure Industries Including trucking, Public Health, financial services, food supply. Governors and mayors, not the federal government have the broadest quarantine and Isolation Authority as the constitution leaves that kind of power in the hands of the states. Are question is the impact all of this has had for you, your family, your loved ones. Vicki is next in austin, texas. Caller good morning, i am retired on a state pension and i am unclear on whether or not people on retirement from state pensions are participating in the Financial Assistance that is going out. I think our state pension is the stock market, so it may be affected. I am unclear about that. Host thank you for the call. Last night on fox news, this question by jesse waters to Vice President pence on the u. S. Economy. [video clip] it is a very tough decision, maybe even tougher than slapping the travel ban on china because there is risk. If he opens the economy up too soon, there is a risk and if he doesnt open it up soon enough there is another risk. What are you specifically looking at and basing your decision on and then formulate and a recommendation to the president on . It is the right question. Short answer, we are following the data. With the Public Private partnership that the president secured with massive commercial around the country, we are doing tens of thousands of tests a day and we have gotten a great deal more understanding about where people are cant have contracted the coronavirus, who has recovered, who is most at risk in the regions of the country most impacted. While the president has said he would like to open up the country in weeks, not months, we are going to be bringing that data forward to him, the advice of not the best Health Care Experts in the country but in the world working on our task force and ultimately the president will make a decision he believes is in the best interest of all the American People. Host that for the interview is available on foxnews. Com. You can check out all of our coverage of the Coronavirus Crisis on our website, cspan. Org coronavirus. Aom the New York Times, wrenching decision looming for americans as the bills begin to roll in. Chris is on the phone from tennessee. How is this impacting you and your family . Caller it is pretty hard. Groceries and supplies. It has been pretty tough going to the grocery store. Think the United States needs to come up with an emergency recovery act so we can prepare for the future. We can take a dollar a week out of every paycheck and put it in the future in case anything happens like this again. Even for things like hurricanes. That we the money would be there and we wouldnt be in this problem. Some people dont have a way to take care of their family. This would be a way we stock up on money for the American People. We are the People United together and this would help each family and we wouldnt have the hardship we are having right now. Host good luck to you. Scandinavia is locked down but sweden is wide open. Old town in stockholm where the country has stayed open to other nations including neighboring norway and denmark have essentially locked down. George from alabama, good morning. Caller good morning. Host go ahead you are on the air. That i am notsay really affected by the corona situation. We have been told to stay in. I may be feeling guilty but i receive that is what the government wants to do. Am thankful for the aid situation. Host we have a line set aside if you are recently unemployed. 202 7488000. For all others, 202 7488001. Washington post, maryland is turning to closed hospitals for more beds as one health care and nursing facility in mount area now confirming with 60 cases of coronavirus. Our next caller is from virginia. Good morning. Also share another story from inside the washington post. A major new york City Hospital at a tipping point. Hospitals in the epicenter dealing with all of this. A good hard look at the enemy before it made it to the hospital. The white round shaped spots clinging to the edges of peoples lungs forming a pattern unlike any seen in patients suffering from tuberculosis or any other respiratory disease. This was back in january. A radiologist studying cat scans from china. That from inside the New York Times. We will try to get a call up from dan in tennessee. Welcome to the program. Caller host hello . Host go ahead caller hello . Host go ahead. Caller i worked in health care for 45 years and the people in health care who are not being talked about are the ones that are actually trained and qualified to operate ventilators and that is respiratory therapists. Doctors and nurses dont operate ventilators, respiratory therapists do and many hospital rapidncies whether it is response, code blue, you have to have a doctor, a nurse and a respiratory therapist. The first two steps are airway and breathing and that is what respiratory therapists do. Host thank you for the call. Where you calling from . Caller new jersey. Host go ahead. Ir i am calling about am an unemployed musician. This has really impacted me because of this coronavirus and i am a jazz musician so i was not working that much anyway. One of the things that is not talked about too much is how this is impacting marriages. Worker is a fulltime but now she cant go to work. She is sleeping right now so i am talking quietly because she is kind of freaking out about this whole thing. When i go out shopping i have to wear gloves, i have to wear the mask. There are other people doing it as well but i think this is really affecting couples. We have been married 30 years. We sleep in separate rooms anyway because i have sleep apnea issues. It hasnt been an issue in that ,espect but i think in the end divorce lawyers are going to do well if anybody is going to capitalize on this crisis in the end. What is retirement going to be like when we are both home consistently with no recourse . I had a neighbor who passed away a few months ago and he did not have many relatives and i had a key to his home in case there were any issues. I have gone to his house just to be alone. Host we wish you the best to you and your wife. We hope you can get back to playing jazz pretty soon. From Johns Hopkins university, a look at the virus by the numbers and they continue to increase on a minute by minute basis. Nearly 680,000 confirmed cases around the world. Over 31,000 deaths. Nearlyu. S. We are now at 125,000 cases. Teresa is joining us from ohio. Caller good morning. I have a question. If you didnt work last year but you got a job this year, will you still be eligible . Host eligible for unemployment . Caller no, for the 1200 they are giving. The year before, i was in school. Host how much do you make on an annual basis . Basis, welln annual we just started working in december. 75,000,you are under do you have children . Caller they are gone they are grown. Host so you are married. Caller husband is going. Host you should qualify for the 1200 check because you meet that threshold. My recommendation is to reach out to your member of congress. We are told that unless you have direct deposit through completing your tax forms with the irs, the check will be mailed to you but i think you would qualify. I cant speak with certainty. You should check with your congressman. Caller thank you. Host we will go to jordan next in wisconsin. Are you with us . We will try edith in florida. Good morning. Caller good morning. Let go from my job last monday. Host what did you do . Cars for aransported Car Rental Service from branch to branch and also sold then to dealerships around the tampa area sold them to dealerships around the tampa area. Host nobody is renting cars these days. Caller unfortunately no. There is no tourism. I am in a better position than some people because my husband is one of these essential so hes that they need and is working and he is not allowed to be home. Host what does your husband do . Forer he is a data person a medical facility. He is still working full time and getting paid but i am still concerned because my daughter is on ssi and i have to care for her as well as work. Will this affect ssi recipients . Not. It should i cant speak with certainty based on your situation but if you have any questions or issues, we have been reaching out to congress as part of our prime time washington journal. You should check with your state representative or your senators. Bernie in everett, washington. Caller good morning. Motherern is my elderly and aunt. I take care of their finances and the only reason that they are able to pay for their because theyis have annuities and dividends and income from various rentals. Now if the young families that are renters in the homes they ,wn are unable to pay the rent it is a small time three or four homes they rent out but at the same time, this unbalances the 15,000 a month for their care, that is going to start a cascading effect. I dont feel like i can have those young families move out anytime soon but at the same time, it is going to affect their being able to be cared for. This cascading effect as the months roll on our concerning me. Host good luck to you. One area that is thriving in washington, no surprising the New York Times, Companies Seeking federal virus money, business is booming for the lobbyists. Next up is wanda joining us from west virginia. Caller yes. My husband draws disability and Social Security and we havent had the money we need to buy we havent had the money to buy the things we need with the coronavirus. Host i would ask you to check with your member of congress. I dont have a definitive answer. Each situation is different. Reach out to your lawmakers either in the house or the senate and they can answer that for you. This is from a viewer in virginia saying our family is on a complete financial lockdown. We are both teachers with four kids and unsure of our future income. Cash is king and we will not pay bills until there was clarity. Food security is of the utmost importance. Janet is next from cincinnati, ohio. Caller good morning. I am a School Bus Driver and we were recently laid off. Moneyue is i do save so we have money on hand but we are having a hard time getting into unemployment. It shuts down or says you have an error and we never had problems before because we file every spring break and we also file during the summer months. Host this is another viewer saying our health is still ok but our Retirement Savings have been decimated. My wife is immunosuppressed and we are nervous. This crisis has been made much worse in the u. S. By trumps astounding arrogance, emotional instability and incompetence. There is much to answer for now. You can send us a text message at 202 7488003. We welcome our viewers on the bbc Parliament Channel on this monday. Todd is next in florida. Caller good morning. Host go ahead. Unemployed, recently unemployed this past tuesday. Host what did you do before you lost your job . Caller i sold advertising for different magazines throughout the country and of course everything is frozen right now. We were doing very well until just recently in the company decided to shut things down and they are paying our Health Insurance through next month which helps. However, being able to pay my rent and the rent is due on april 1 and i only have one more paycheck coming and this stimulus check that is coming. 1200 when you almost pay that in rent with your water and everything, that is not going to last one paycheck. Our apartment complexes have not said theyre going to help us in any way. They are going to take our information down and get back to us. There is really no answer to this right now. I have been through it, back in 2008, was laid off and lost my vehicle and my job. Hopehave a little bit of that we will make it through this but it is very scary, just to get laid off when you are working for a business that was doing well. Host can i ask you a question . When this pandemic is over, do you think your business will come back . Will your employer hire you back . Caller they are telling us they will. They are hoping. That is all there is right now is hope. They dont know if theyre going to come back or not. It is hard to say whether they are going to get money to help bring us back, the money theyre getting from the government. The stimulus package for Small Businesses is to help companies not layoff companies. Who is to say whether they are. Oing to start up again this is something that we all just dont know. It is all up in the air right now. Andould be several months one more paycheck and then i am going to be on the street and homeless. Because of this. It is really difficult. And i think the government needs , our wonderful stupid governor in florida will not shut anything down and is it is ridiculous. If they would just do it, if the president would just be a leader in shut things down, that is what we need. Host hang in there and dont go homeless. There is assistance but we appreciate the call and wish you the very best. Caller . Thank you. Caller thank you. Host rick says he lost his Retirement Savings 50 times faster than the crashback in 2008. Our next caller joining us from maine. Caller good morning and thank you very much for the program. I am on ssi and i did speak with an aarp expert. We read the bill on friday. 1200,red me that the people on ssi are included. Thank you for that clarification. I advise anyone to check with their member if there is any issue so they can get the information. Every persons circumstance is different. Darrell in michigan. Caller good morning. I am one of the few lucky people who gets Social Security and fixed retirement. I want to give a shout out to for my family. To my two daughters, my soninlaw, they are all working in detroit hotspots. They are my personal heroes. To understand how the virus is working, there is a movie out called virus empires. From that you can get two takeaways and one i want to mention is that when sars came , our cdc did studies and stop it really quick. The question i have for our government is since we saw what could happen but didnt happen, why dont we have masks built up . Why dont we have ventilators saved up . Every year the cdc does drills on this very thing. The government let us down from clinton to trump. This is a viewer in california saying im an independent contractor in sale. I do not qualify for unemployment. I have lost all sales for three weeks. Bills are still coming. What helped we have . Independent workers or contractors are not considered employees. You can also send us a tweet cspanwj. Pandemic andre, a relief mission, finding common purpose in a share threat. Morning caller good morning. Is my main concern right now is my daughter. She lost her job a couple weeks ago. She was a yoga instructor. They shut down her whole facility, the coming that owns it. She is concerned. She is worried. Host has she filed for unemployment . Caller yes, she did. Host she is among the 3. 2 8 million who did so 3. 2 8 million who did so. Caller she is waiting for that to come through. Host good luck to you. Good luck your daughter. This is from another viewer in lawrence, kansas, saying, i am fortunate work in the healthcare industry. My prayers go to all who are negatively affected by the coronavirus. We are all in this together. Deborah is next from spring hill, florida. Caller good morning. Host go ahead with your comment. , can i question is had corona in 2012 and im wondering if i have built up an immune system for not getting it. , with thisuestion is virus, can you get it a second time . Host i cannot speak specifically to your situation. What we do know, based on the experts we have been talking to, is this is a different strain. If you have had a different covid virus, this is a very different one. Once you do have it, you could be immune in the future according to some epidemiologists we talked to, including dr. Fauci, who has been asked that question. You should check with your doctor. Caller ok. Host because i am not a doctor. Thank you. Again, a reminder. If you want to go to our website at cspan. Org coronavirus, all of the briefings and events and links to other places you can go to. Go to coronavirus. Org to also answer some questions. From North Carolina, michelle. You are now out of work . Caller i am out of work. I am now living in a car. I was a mobile application and , and i am director now living in a car. My circumstances prior to this is i paid in a normas amount of child support. Enormous amount of child support. Child support has not stopped anywhere. They persist. There are certain things. People on parole or probation, there are parts of government that persist in being extremely aggressive to people or parents and other parts are failing. Im calling because the website for most of the state unemployment, as the other caller indicated, are broken. The unemployment website and the app that came out friday, if you read it carefully, it is about 900 pages. Go to the unemployment section. If you review that carefully, you have so many hoops to go through in order to get your unemployment money if you are a covid19, been laid off, or caring for someone. Website is not even handling the volume coming in and field offices are closed. They are supposed to be hiring Software Developers because there is no way to process any of the questions that they are going to need to ask. Either they are going to have to let everyone get unemployment because we will not develop the Software Fast enough. We ask questions like, are you or a loved one have covid19 in your home . Every state has independent on Appointment Software systems. There is no federal software system. Field offices are closed. Have 52ns 52 States Development softwares pushing secure websites and build up scalability. Right now, websites cannot handle the amount of increase inquiries coming in. Host good luck to you. I hope you can move from your car and stay safe. We are going to continue our conversation on the coronavirus in a couple minutes. Joining us is the ceo and president of trust america health. John auerbach is going to join us. First, from the Daily Briefing in albany, new york, Governor Andrew Cuomo on the necessity for ventilators and why that is such a critical issue for one of the hotspots, new york city and the tristate area. [video clip] in this situation, it is about a ventilator. Why . Because the majority of these patients are not coming in needing surgery. It is all the same. It is a respiratory illness. Are damaged. They are having trouble breathing. They have a cough. They all need a ventilator. That is the peculiarity of this situation. Is, usually, when system, a Health Care People are usually on a ventilator for three or four days. , they are ontients for 11 to 21 days. That compounds the ventilator issue. , butnly do you need more people are on them longer. You need even more. That increases the problem. I think the president was right to use the defense production act. I am not goingys to ask private companies to help out, and it is great we have volunteerism, but the defense production act gives the federal government leverage to actually say, i need these produced and i need these produced by x date. The federal government pays an increased cost for the , but itted production gives the federal government the ability to do that. When it comes to ventilators, they are the necessity in this situation. What do i do as governor . Basically, i ask people who know. I ask the experts a lot questions. Just staying on the ventilators, what if, what if we cannot get the ventilators . What do we do if we do not have enough ventilators . Then you use bags bag valve masks. What is a bag valve mask . Bag valve mask. You havehat you do if a person who needs a ventilator and you do not have a ventilator. It isy this works is basically a manual ventilator. Squeezes the ventilator, the back, continuously. This looks easy. This foree if you do any length of time you see how difficult it winds up being. This is the alternative if you do not have a ventilator. Washington journal continues. Host joining us via zoom is the president and ceo of trust for Americas Health. John auerbach, thank you for being with us. I want to refer to your website and look at how states were prepared or not prepared for this pandemic. As you look across all 50 states and u. S. Territories, where were the missteps . Guest i would start by saying that federal funds have decreased. Those are the funds that provide states resources they need. , we saw a dramatic increase in Emergency Preparedness funds made available to states and local centers in the country. Over the years, those funds have been significant lead decreased. The Public Health Emergency Preparedness fund from the cdc that went to the states decreased by a third. The hospital preparedness money that helped Hospital Systems prepare for an emergency like the one we are facing has been cut over the years by 50 . A starting point in terms of assessing how well states are doing is knighting that they have lost some valuable resources recognizing that they have lost some valuable resources they need to be prepared. Host im going to refer to a piece this morning in the washington post. He makes a simple but important point. That is the pandemic is making us realize health is not just an individual issue. Guest absolutely. What we have learned very dramatically is we have a responsibility to each other as a society. People need to not just be but recognize that particularly with highly infectious illness like coronavirus that we need to take a communitywide approach and think about protecting each other. We are seeing that playing itself out around the country as we go into social isolation and social distancing and begin to think about how they can protect their own health but also protect others. Host another story getting attention is available online, front page of the newspaper. Blunders costing a vital month in the fight against this pandemic, blaming not only flawed kits but lack of leadership at many levels and bureaucracy and red tape. Why did this happen . Why so many missteps leading to where we are today . Guest it is a complicated story. Part of what we were facing was a new virus, one that has not been seen. There were a lot of complications and becoming familiar with the virus. Problems atre were the cdc with the test has developed. Used, and able to be the normal Public Health Laboratory System in the normal Public Health Laboratory System. When it needed to be adjusted and fixed, it took weeks before that happened. When you are fighting an epidemic like this, losing weeks is very serious. You lose the ability to control the epidemic by initially cases,ying early containing them, keeping the virus from spreading. Those lost weeks associated with and too narrows a definition of who should be testing. Initially, there was a recommendation that only people that had returned from china or had been exposed to someone who was already sick should be tested. That is too narrow of a recommendation and meant we were not able to get a clear enough picture of how the virus was spreading through the country. Ast what are the lessons you see what is happening and how can they be applied to other states . Clear that you need to get ahead of the virus as much as possible. In those parts of the country where they have not seen many cases, it is important to do what is known as containment. Possibleas quickly as where the people are who are infected. Then do contact tracing. That involves figuring out who they might have exposed. Contact those people. Get those people in isolation. In places where there are relatively few cases, you want to aggressively address that containment approach. However, in places where we are already seeing large numbers of chicago,ke detroit, containment is not enough. You have to focus on mitigation. To have in place ordersies or shutdown that keep businesses closed and encourage all people to stand their homes for a few weeks. You need to have different approaches depending on where infection rates and where you are in the number of cases. Host this is a headline from the ap. Virus hotspots growing in Middle America. Here are some of the details. The coronavirus continues as unrelenting spread across the u. S. With fatalities doubling in two days. Authorities say saturday that infant who tested positive had died. It pummeled cities like new york, new orleans, and chicago and made its way into rural america. As hotspots erupted in small midwestern towns and Rocky Mountain ski havens, a cluster of three counties in rural indiana has had a surging rate of confirmed cases. Cases with one confirms death. In idaho, a scenic ski haven now has around 100 confirmed cases of covid19, the highest rate per capita outside the new york city area. Two people have died. You, what weprise are seeing not only in hotspots but in every state . Guest it is not surprising. We knew this was a highly infectious virus. Spread rapidly in china, in europe. It is not surprising that it is spreading quickly around the United States. We are a big country. It is important to do an analysis of where each unity is and get ahead of the infection if possible. In places where they have not seen many cases yet, it is important they take aggressive action in terms of testing, isolation, contact tracing. Has spreadhere it already to the public, they have to focus on more aggressive efforts to control the spread to try to bring down the number of the number often cases spreading quickly. Our guest is the president and ceo of that organization, which is what . How do you trust for Americas Health . ,uest we are a nonprofit Nonpartisan Organization focused on prevention and Public Health. Thate an independent voice works with policymakers and educates the public so they have a sense about what they can do to improve the health and wellbeing of the American Public. Host lets get your phone calls. Bob is joining us from texas. Go ahead. Caller good morning. Thank you so much. Let me explain to you why we are at this point. Ships khrushchev and russia said years ago, we will destroy the United States without ever firing a shot. They were not smart enough, but the chinese were. All of our chambers in congress worshiping out jobs overseas and telling manufacturers it will cost you pennies on the dollar to have slave labor do this. We shipped out. I know about this. I wish i would have saved the paperwork on it. Anyway, then we have people like beto, tear the walls down, let everybody in this country no matter who they are, where they come from, or nothing else. All you have to do is think about it. We need to know what started it. That is the problem with this country. California burns up every year because they do not prevent forest fires. Host thanks for the call. John auerbach . Guest i think what we have learned over the last few decades is we are going to see what we refer to as novel viruses, or illnesses we have not seen before. What we do have in Public Health is the tools to be able to prevent widespread infection if we use those tools aggressively. I would say the most important thing we can do in terms of like theg new viruses coronavirus is strengthen our Public Health system so it is able to detect infection early and contain it. From next is jennifer california, maryland. Good morning, jennifer. You are on the air. Becausei am calling most of my friends and former colleagues are talking about a believe revolts they is going to occur in the u. S. Because most people only have one month of actual liquid savings or anything they can turn to. Most people i know have already run out of money who have either been wiped out from their stocks or from job loss because unemployment is not reacting quick enough. A lot of people said the middle class will not be wiped out because the government is not reacting quick enough economically and nobody has buffers. Thoughtsto get your about the fact that the crime thatis going to go up and there will be no more middleclass. We believe there will not be a revolt and there will be extremely rich people and then everyone else. Everyone i know around here works for the federal government and State Government in maryland. They are sitting at home acting like their internet is not working or like they cannot get secure connections from home. Nobody in government is actually working. Please respond to this. People are saying the government can you respond to the idea that there will be no more middleclass and then there will be a revolt of everyone who has lost everything . Thank you. Host jennifer, thanks for the call. John, that may be offtopic, but if you do want to respond feel free to do so. Guest we have to acknowledge that there has been an alarmist Economic Impact enormous Economic Impact of the pandemic. That is hurting many people. It is uncovering the fact that many people inr the country, a limited amount of resources. People do live paychecktopaycheck. In areas of the country where we have concentrations of poverty, we will see a greater impact of the coronavirus. People are already living on the edge, paychecktopaycheck. We need to be incredibly sensitive about that. Congress has passed three different coronavirus acts that thathad a lot of money have been included in each one, that have been intended to not only fight the epidemic but also try to help ease economic and social pain that people are experiencing. I think what youre caller indicates is that may not be enough or may not be enough to get to people quickly. That is important to Pay Attention to. We know in Public Health that poverty is highly correlated poor health. To Pay Attention to the economic and social impact while fighting against the infection. Quotingis is a headline the british prime minister, boris johnson, who confirmed he is battling covid19, saying we know things will get worse before they get better. Is that the same situation here in the u. S. . Guest it certainly appears that way. In new york and other hotspots around the country, that the pressure is dramatically increasing on the Health Care System as more people become ill. Cases going to be insufficient number of hospital beds. There are not enough ventilators. It is a lot of pressure now for those hotspots to get ahead of the increase in terms of cases. We want to make sure everyone in the country that gets it gets the care they need. That is going to take a tremendous amount of effort. We have seen a survey that just came out this week from the u. S. Conference of mayors that surveyed 200 mayors across the country. For tenstified a need of thousands more ventilators than are currently available. And millions more facemasks and other personal protective equipment. If we are going to get ahead of the curve, if we are going to make sure that as people get sick they get the care necessary and that we are protecting Health Care Providers who are on the front lines, we have to Pay Attention to making sure ventilators are available, making sure personal protective equipment is available. Creative approaches to increase the number of hospital beds are also going to be necessary. Host nath you, you are next matthew, you are next. Caller speaking of missteps, the worst was the economist communist Chinese Government refusing to tell the world about this until it was too late. Number oneork is with the cases, has the highest amount of cases, because mr. Cuomo and blahs zero delayed shutting down schools and delayed de blasio shutting down schools and subways. Credit to cspan for showing Daily Briefings with experts and President Trump, whose Approval Ratings happen to be i believe 60 in this crisis because he has taken charge in an effective way by consulting experts and following their advice. Cnn is rated fake news now refusing to show the Daily Briefings because they are like a child having a tantrum because the president happens to be doing the best he can under. Hese circumstances with the military, with medical People Consulting and making decisions on those basis. It is sad. I give cspan credit for showing the briefings. The they are all posted on website of people want to check it out or go back to previous briefings. That is cspan. Org coronavirus. Please go ahead. Caller thank you. Fortunate. Ay we are President Trump is not a perfect asan being, but he is doing good a job as could be expected under these circumstances. We are praying also and doing what we can to help our neighbors, help our neighbors. Host thanks for the call. Let me pick up on his point and go back to something the president has said and ask you, mr. Auerbach, what is the role of the federal government compared to states when it comes to emergency like this . This is the headline from the washington post, trump pushing to open parts of the country as governors worn more needs to be done to combat the pandemic. Where is the line between the response from the federal government, direction of the federal government, and resources by the federal government . The federal government has an essential role in our response. Preparednessgency crises and Infectious Disease outbreaks, it has been the centers for Disease Control that has been the key organization. You want an organization that is filled with scientists and experts and those who have been through Infectious Disease outbreaks before. Relying onpossible, an organization like cdc for expert guidance and for resources the grants i was mentioning earlier that the centers for Disease Control have given to states have been critical in terms of building capacity at the state and local level. As new funding is available, that is going through the cdc and to the states and locals so they have resources they need to respond. At the local level and state level are on the frontline. They know their communities. The are able to look at capacity of the Public Health system, of the Health Care System, and understand also the cases in their community and who is at greatest risk. You want your frontline people to be sensitive to the particular tease of their communities and take action. States and locals have come as parts of their authority, the ability to put in place a variety of advisories herein they play a critical role. Federal government can look at the information coming from the state and local level, look at it with a global picture, provide guidance, provide resources. It is a partnership. You need people working at all those levels. Guest richard, good morning. John auerbach is joining us via zoom from his home in washington, d. C. Im 82was talking years old. A lot of people are dying. Do we know for sure the virus is killing old folks . Are they computing numbers that everybody is dying . It makes me wonder. Every year, there were days somebody dies. It has since the beginning of time. A respiratory illness and can contract the lungs and cause people with other issues, especially if youre older or have previous existing conditions, make them more susceptible to death. I have a sisterinlaw do to pass away any time but there is no virus around here. We talk a lot about socialism. Socialism will save this country for a little while, but the government might be thinking about how we are going to feed everybody of things do not get better. That may be the next big disaster. We will go to joe next in charleston, south carolina. Caller good morning. I did not know until this morning that your wife is a nurse. I have said a prayer for her. Host thank you. She has been for 30 years. All the nurses and doctors on the front lines. They do a great job. Caller just a Quick Response to the last caller. I think there is been a misinterpretation across this country and maybe john could speak to this. I think if you develop pneumonia, that might be what it says on the death certificate. I think that sows confusion. As far as the response, im happy the cares act passed. I was disappointed in my senators standing up against Unemployment Benefits along with cruise and tim scott. And tim scott. Im concerned about the future. I am 72. I grew up standing in line for the polio vaccine. We finally eradicated polio, like smallpox. My concern is that after we develop a vaccine that some people will not take the thing. If we are going to be in a mass again, and im not sure from an Economic Perspective or medical perspective we can into our endure much of this down the road. Isst i think the caller correct in pointing out that when we have a vaccine, which at fort lee seems to be at least a year from now, but whenever we have that vaccine, we are going to want to have widespread vaccination through the country. We are going to want enough people to get that vaccine that we develop what we call herd immunity, which is enough people are protected that there is not much spreading of the disease. Some good lessons about 10 years ago after we were. Ighting the h1n1 pandemic at that point, people may remember we did have a vaccine developed several months or a year after we began to see cases. I was a state Health Commissioner in massachusetts. We were responsible for making sure that vaccine was available to as many people as possible, helping to organize vaccination sites. To beded extra people able to vaccinate so we passed emergency regulations that allowed pharmacists, emts, and paramedics, even Doctoral Students medical students and nursing students to vaccinate. We had to put in place and emergency system to make sure that very quickly as many people as possible could be vaccinated. At the point that we have a vaccine, we will need to have that kind of widespread vaccination effort. We will have to do education of the public so they understand the importance of getting a vaccine. Host this comment from one of our viewers. Pointing out the following. An infant died of coronavirus in illinois. Several young and middleaged have died also. Previous caller believing the Fake News Media claiming it only kills 95yearold is wrong. From governor larry hogan, pointing out over the weekend that at one nursing facility 66 confirmed cases of coronavirus among senior citizens. 11 are hospitalized. Your thoughts . Guest i think what this callers is the earlier and more recent caller, we have to Pay Attention to the data about who is getting very ill, who is dying. This is a novel virus. We have heard a lot from china and italy, but we have to see what the experience is in the United States. It appears from those who have died already in the United States that it is true that the majority of people who die are older adults and that the older they are the more vulnerable they appear to be from the symptoms that are caused by the onus. It is illness. It is true that we are seeing not only older adults die. We are seeing those that are younger, middleaged, and even people in their 30s. A lot of those are not the largest numbers. They exist. Attention toy everyone in the nation and the potential that they could become infected and ill. It does appear that children at mild illness or may have no symptoms at all. People are still studying that to get a better understanding of whether children are getting ill and are able to transmit the illness even if they do not have serious symptoms. That is being studied. There is a lot we need to learn. To our earlier comment, this reflects the need for us to take a collective view of our joint responsibility as a community. We have to protect each other. We have to Pay Attention to protecting older adults. We need to think about this as something that could affect anyone and assume responsibility of trying to minimize infections by paying attention to the physical isolation and physical distancing and doing the daytoday activities that we have been talking about, using hand sanitizer, washing, being careful about not touching surfaces if you leave your house. If you are leaving your house, fromng six feet distance others, avoiding large groups. Those things are important not just for older adults but for all members. John r bock,est is president and ceo of trust for Americas Health. He mentioned serving as commissioner of Public Health for the commonwealth of massachusetts and as Health Commissioner in boston. Thisboston globe has headline. Against a stealthy virus, a majority of residents are united in support of the severe restrictions. We are seeing that coasttocoast. Guest we are. I think at first people were not sure what to expect. This is an unprecedented situation. Call to take aggressive action and close essential businesses in many locations i think was somewhat confusing at first. I think many people in the public now have come to realize that this is a very serious threat to the health and wellbeing of the public and that we have to take collective action. We have seen in massachusetts is the governor has done a good job of educating the public, taking appropriate, evidencebased , relying heavily on Public Health leadership in that state. The public has come to realize those are the right steps and they are appreciative of having a governor getting ahead of the virus. Host renee is next. You are on the air with John Auerbach, who is joining us via zoom. Caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. My question is, with the experience of china and them shutting down early and people , one atng the virus that be an appropriate step in the United States wouldnt that be appropriate in the United States . Do we know the situation with ventilators in china . Where they needing as many . Are the chinese out of the woods yet . Those are three questions i have. Host thank you for the call from texas. We thought that when countries acted quickly, as the first few cases were identified in places like singapore and taiwan, and south korea, they were able to bring down the infection rate lower than any other place. They took swift action with ,egard to physical distancing Rapid Testing of many members of the public. Find outct tracing to who might have been exposed that might not be aware of this or not have symptoms yet. Those steps worked for those countries. Once you get to the point that he virus is widespread throughout the country, like is the case in italy, it is too late to do some of those early steps that worked so effectively in places like south korea, singapore, and taiwan. There is discussion now about whether you want to have a national action, whether you across take a stance of the country closing businesses for a few weeks. I think that is being debated and considered. That will be effective versus a more localized segment of where people are. There are a number of considerations still being made about how what we can do in the u. S. To best contain the threat nationally. With regards to your question about ventilators, im not aware of the situation in china with regards to availability of ventilators. Informationere which suggests we do not have a sufficient number of ventilators , as i mentioned earlier. 200 mayors across the country were indicating their communitys did not have sufficient numbers of ventilators. Illnesses rose dramatically, as they are in new york. Andng attention to that taking appropriate action steps makes sense. For example, the president utilized the defense production motorsencourage general to switch over to rapid production of ventilators. That may help. We are hearing around the country that the demand for sufficient ventilators is at a high level and supply is insufficient. Host this is a tweet pointing out the statistics people already are raising questions on chinese data, especially comparing it to what comes out from the rest of the world. You can send us a tweet. We will read it. Also, join us on facebook. Our guest is John Auerbach. Tonya is next from North Carolina. Caller good morning. I have a comment and then a question. Much misinformation on the news whenever our president comes on. I wish they would just let the doctor speak, no one else, and we will get the proper information. People should the blame him for the virus, definitely not. I want to ask john also. Organizationlth stated this morning that they need that Everyone Needs to be tested. I know we do not have enough test kits to do that, but is it we willat people not know who has the virus, but can people have that virus and not have symptoms . Host thanks for the call. Guest thank you for raising that issue. Yes, we now know that you can transmit the virus even if you do not have symptoms. A period of time before you develop symptoms you can still be infectious. Why this is so dangerous. People can unwittingly be transmitting at even if they feel fine. They can be transmitting it. We need to be take a lot of precautions. I do also appreciate your comment that it would be great if we have widespread available testing. We are as a nation ramping up the amount of testing now. Way too low at the beginning. Now it is becoming more widespread. It is still not easily available in many locations. There still is the prioritization of testing those people who have serious symptoms or are being hospitalized. Hopefully, over time, there will be enough tests for more members of the public to have access to tests. I do not thing we are there yet. Wasfinal thing i would say who should be giving us the most Accurate Information about the virus out incur with her that the scientists, the Infectious Disease experts are the ones best equipped to give us the most Accurate Information. That is why we need to rely on people like dr. Fauci and like the leadership at the center for Disease Control. These are the experts. You want the experts to be guiding us and protecting us i would say as much as possible. You want to focus on what we need to protect the public. Host this from one of our regular viewers and tweeters, who is making the following point, saying south korea and japan have a lower mortality rate from the by outbreak. Japan has no social distancing, few cases. We know President Trumps quick action did save lives. Your thoughts about what we are seeing in the u. S. . Locations where at the beginning of the outbreak they were able to take what are called standard Public Health containment approaches, which involved Rapid Testing of large numbers of people, the identification of cases as a result of that testing, and then the interview that would take place with someone who was positive about who did they see in the last few days, then Public Health folks will be contacting people they saw and saying to them, you need to go into isolation for a certain amount of time because you have been exposed. They took the aggressive step early on and south korea, singapore, and taiwan. That meant cases did not explode the way they did in parts of the italyy the world like and like the United States. We just did not have that quick, Rapid Testing of the population and ability to identify cases and get people in isolation fast enough. They did do an attempt to do that in Washington State with those First Community transmission cases. That was helpful in containing the spread in Washington State. Once the virus spreads through the country, then you cannot take those steps anymore. We are not of that containment stage as a nation. We are at a mitigation stage. It is already here. In placeo put approaches like citywide or statewide shutdowns of nonessential businesses and encourage people to stay indoors for two weeks or longer. Testing is the difference. They did. We did not. Loretta in cleveland, ohio. Caller good morning. I do not blame trump for the virus. I blame trump for his slow response to the virus. Commissionedeport last year called contagion. Own staffrumps report, and he is acting as if you never heard of it, never read it, does not care. If you were on fire and someone is standing there with the water hose and refuses to turn it on, what would you think . Host thank you for the call. Guest i think the caller points out that not enough has been from thisotect us kind of outbreak. Manynk that is true for years now. That there earlier were specialized federal funds made available to states and locals through the cdc after 9 11, when we were very aware of our vulnerability for a major emergency. Over the years, congress forgot about the importance of those them down socheted they were significant lower than they had been in previous years. That meant our Public Health system and hospitals had one hand tied behind their back when the emergency occurred. Weould also point out that are seeing more and more Public Health emergencies. The truth is we have been seeing of a wide variety of emergencies. We have seen a Record Number of weather related emergencies in the last 18 months, floods and hurricanes and wildfires. Public health has to respond to those. Seen the opioid epidemic, the increase in suicides. Last year, we were seeing vaping related deaths. The Public Health system responds to those. We have to make sure we do not treat this as an isolated incident where we spent a lot of money now and then forget about it. The key to protecting ourselves on an ongoing basis is to build up strength in the Public Health system, make sure it is prepared to protect us and make sure the Health Care System and Health Care Providers have the resources they need so when an emergency occurs they can respond quickly. Host lets go to alan in hawaii. Caller good morning. I decided i would call in. In hawaii, we have some issues. We are seeing a rapid directory trajectory even though it was slow. We are under pretty much a statewide lockdown, though there are people who are not compliant. I was going to bring up a few things. Irst, the testing i did get a test and was told negative but a single nasal swab only gives you a 75 accuracy. Negative, 25 false which was in yesterday or todays washington post. You are not off the hook just because they tell you youre negative. Abbott labs is getting approval for a test that will have a Rapid Response instead of a day to a week. It is new equipment and has to be transferred to places that need to have it. It gives you five to 10 minutes activity. Guestr previous discussed, was the testing for identifying antibodies. Directory the trajectory and velocity we are seeing should be indicative. I am hoping the administration will not open the doors to more expansion of infection by letting everyone think we are over the hump when certain communities have not really been identified. In my community, very few people of gotten testing. As you said, south korea and taiwan and singapore for Different Reasons have been able to control it much more effectively. I would like to hear more about strategies that could be utilized for different communities across the u. S. Host thanks for the call. This is a related tweet from harriet, who says what early containment and quarantine and states Like Washington have been beneficial . In terms of the point your caller was making, i agree that we need more testing the possibility of having a rapid test would be a great improvement. People have to wait three to five days for test results. Hat can be confusing you should assume, if you have flulike symptoms, that you could have the coronavirus. Take the appropriate steps. If you are feeling sick, call your physician. Stayathome. If weuld not be acting as take a different approach to exposing people if we have seasonal flu versus the coronavirus. Assuming any Infectious Disease should be taken seriously, we should take measures to contain it. Whatuld be good to know those numbers are in the country and hopefully we will have a better sense of that as testing increases and becomes more available. Guest this is host this is the New York Times map. The coronavirus impacting all 50 states and spreading quickly in metropolitan areas including cleveland, miami, new orleans. Is next. Caller could i remind people president and his group their office to mantra was they were going to deconstruct the Administrative State. Science is the ministry of state of the Administrative State of the cree creator of the universe. Statements like without diagnostics science is blind do not come out of the mouth of our president. With hisot align of anive, his ability appeal aiding. A motion. His need manipulating emotion. His need is to deconstruct science so we did not get testing done. Any response or comment . Say, as you have heard me i believe it is important that inviting an Infectious Disease like this we rely on experts. Diseaseare infectious physicians and Public Health experts at the cdc or nih. Let them guide us. Will be the best in terms of protecting our health. Host just a couple minutes left with our guest. Ren in alabama, good morning. Caller thank you for taking my call. People were talking about we need more testing and the Trump Administration is not doing enough. If people would take responsibility for themselves, wash your hands, stay away from people, do not touch your face, we would not have to be quarantined. You compare korea to new york city. They were told to quarantine, they stayed inside. New york had coronavirus parties. If you want to comment on that, that would be great. Host we will go to chuck. Question or comment . Caller a couple items. The first is the temperature scan procedure. I am sure you have seen on tv that there is a person in all the garb and a bunch of people in line. They put together a remote unit up to these up to the forehead. In some cases, they are actually touching the forehead. They get as close as they can so they can get an accurate reading. If you have 50 people in line, the first person has the virus and is not showing symptoms at all, no fever, anything, it is conceivable that that person could pass it to the next 50 people behind them and wind up cross contaminating 1500 the three toou use one ratio. After they bring it up to the forehead, the unit, wether they touch the fort whether they touch the forehead or not, they will bring it down to their side, look at the reading, and then clear it. Host as you pointed out earlier, that has been one of the challenges of this illness, this virus. Initially, there were screenings at the airport. I think that is what the caller was referring to, with an attempt to determine whether were already showing symptoms, whether they had fever or other obvious symptoms of illness and then differentiating based upon that. Unfortunately, we discovered people have had the virus and spread it before they had symptoms. Recognize that, if we are only ping attention to protecting ourselves against those who already have symptoms, we are not doing a sufficient job of the public. We have to assume people can transmit it regardless of whether they seem fine and take appropriate steps. To that point, i mentioned earlier i appreciate what that earlier caller said about everybody having a role here. There is a role for each individual person to take personal responsibility to do washing their hands. Ms of staying away from large crowds. Keep a sixfoot distance. Each has an Important Role to play. The government does, the Health Care System does, but we all have a role to play if we are going to be reducing illness and death. Host what is the next month going to look like from your standpoint . Guest we are going to see cases continue to rise dramatically. This has now taken hold in the country. We are going to see increases in the number of cases. I think we are going to see more communities that begin to see large numbers of very sick people who are putting pressure on the Health Care System. We have to Pay Attention, focusing on making sure weve got the Health Care System with the support it needs, personal protective equipment, ventilators, and we have got to Pay Attention to testing as many people as possible, guided by the guidance based upon the availability of tests and the spread of the virus. It will get worse before it gets better. We have to take aggressive steps to make sure. Flattening the curve and decreasing the number of people who are going to be exposed in the coming weeks. Host john our back is joining us via zoom from his home in washington as we practice social distancing. Thank you for being with us. We will continue the conversation tomorrow morning. The latest on the coronavirus. We will check in with stephen