Watched cspans washington journal. Live at 7 00 eastern this morning. Join the discussion. Good evening. The world past a grim milestone today with more than one million confirmed cases of coronavirus across the globe. It is thursday, april 2 and this is a prime time edition of the washington journal. One person and every 1000 americans are infected. We speak to the author of the deadliest enemy. And the dramatic increase in those applying for jobless benefits. We want to hear from you. If you are a medical professional, we want to hear from you. Tweet andso send us a we are on facebook at facebook. Com spaceman. Facebook. Com cspan. We begin with the numbers tonight courtesy of Johns Hopkins university. Now, more than one million cases worldwide and nearly 52,000 deaths. Rapidly. S. , we are approaching a quarter of a million americans infected with this disease as we outpace every country including china. The death toll in the u. S. 6000. s 6000 nearly and the Unemployment Rate as the continues to spike. Six point 6 million americans are filing for unemployment and if its come at doubling what we saw nearly a week ago. The economy collapsed. Heather long writes the following the past two weeks have a race nearly all of the jobs created in the last five years come a sign of how fast and deep and painful the shutdown has been on Many American families. Job losses have skyrocketed as Restaurants Hotels and gyms have travel have shut down across the nation but layoffs are also rising in manufacturing, warehousing, underscoring how painful this is. Heather long is economic the washingtonor post and she joins us via skype from her home. These numbers go back to the Great Depression. Heather it is job dropping. Would Great Recession, we see and some of the worst months of the Great Recession about 800,000 job losses and month and we all thought that was terrible and historic. Last week, we saw eight times that amount. Six point 6 million job losses. And that is probably not a human losses andion job that is probably not an accurate count. Some people did not even realize they were eligible like the hairdressers. The only now have gotten ability to apply for these benefits so we expect these numbers to continue to grow and it is just unbelievable how quickly this has come about. Host and you break it down state by state. Hawaii, michigan, pennsylvania, kentucky, louisiana, and rhode island. Heather i think we all know given what we are dealing, sheltering in place and trying not to go out a lot, we expected to see the Hotel Industry be hardhit and the travel industry, the bakeries and restaurants. I think what surprised me and many economists could watch these numbers closely is how widespread, it nearly every part of the economy has been impacted by the coronavirus. We are seeing manufacturing layoffs and even transportation and warehouse layoffs. We think we are ordering groceries and these products but still there are layoffs going on even in places like warehouses and trucking companies. That tells you how deep and widespread this really is. Host one of the accompanying photographs to your piece available on Washington Post. Com , the food banks across the experiencing a surge. Hundreds of drivers were make were waiting to get into a food bank this week. Heather people need help right now and they are not getting it vast enough given how quickly this has all come out. The u. S. Safety net has not been adequate to address this pandemic. Congress did pass that massive bill last week, that 2 trillion bill which includes a lot more money for Unemployment Insurance which is why we want more people to be applying for this. The usual benefit before the 400 ac was just shy of week. That will go up i another 600. People can get close to 1000 in many states if they apply for these benefits. That money come of federal government has not released it yet to the state so there is a backlog, a bureaucracy of trying to get this money into the hands of people and i talked to so many workers who have been calling. I spoke to a poor taxi driver in new york city who cannot drive anymore and he has a coronavirus. He and his wife have been calling every night to try to get through to the unemployment and if it office in the state of new york and they have not been able to finish the application for a week. We heard from Steven Mnuchin and earlier today saying that the checks would be going out in the next two weeks but to underscore your point, not soon enough. Heather and that is separate. People in this country are being ways. In two key one way is the 1200 check the secretary is talking about and hopefully, as the Washington Post reported, that they will begin going out on april 9. The direct deposits will begin which is good news if they can get it out that quickly. Not everyone will get it that quickly. The separate issue is the Unemployment Benefits that we hope these 10 Million People or more who have been laid off in the last two weeks, that they will begin to access those benefits. Right now, a lot of those people have yet to see any money from that unemployment claim. Host and the charts are sobering because we had a steady Unemployment Rate and then a huge spike in the last two weeks. What will april look like . Heather it will probably get worse and that is why people are very scared about what is coming. Bese estimates seem to getting bigger and bigger whether it is from Goldman Sachs or groups like the Economic Policy institute. You know when groups as disparate as that agree on something and that it will be big, it will probably be very ugly. Moment issus at the unemployment will jump above 10 . That means it will be worse than the Great Recession. Potential he worse than the 19811982 recession. To we could possibly see up 20 million americans without jobs, laid off or severely for urloughed. And just one final point, how quickly this has all happened which is also stunning. Unfathomable and that is why our safety net has not been able to reply quickly. Getting this money out fast enough. In two weeks, we saw more unemployment jobless claims than we did in the First Six Months of the Great Recession. Quicklyhappening so that our system cannot respond and is not capable of handling this volume of people. Host the story available tonight at Washington Post. Com and in tomorrows newspaper. Heather long, economic correspondent for the Washington Post. The book is titled deadliest enemy our war against germs. Joining us from minneapolis is dr. Michael osterholm, director of the center for Infectious Disease research and policy at the university of minnesota and we thank you for being with us. Dr. Osterholm thank you. Host let me begin with something you have been saying repeatedly we need a unified National Approach to combat coronavirus. Why are we not seeing that . Dr. Osterholm i dont know. It is unfortunate we are not because i think it is what is needed in this very dark spot. There are several aspects to it. First of all, what are we doing right now . What is happening in those cities which are in a sense on fire with this virus . This virus is going to stay around potentially for many months. If you recall in 1918 when it was first introduced in the spring, it took almost until 1920 before all of the people around the world were largely exposed to it and either recovered, were immune, or died. I dont think we have a sense at all that it is happening. I could see activity maintaining itself at a very high level for many more months to come. , you quotee book bill gates who essentially predicted where we are today five years ago. He said if anything kills over 10 Million People in the next few decades, it is most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war. Not missiles, but microbes. Beensterholm we have concerned about this for many years. I wrote pieces in 2005 published in the new england journal of medicine all living out that we were not prepared for a pandemic and laying out many of the things happening today. I wish it was 2005 again because we were better prepared back then than we are today because of the fact we have so decimated any kind of elasticity or Surge Capacity to our Health Care Systems. We have gone to justintime deliveries from supply chains. If you look at it, the world is much more primed for having this kind of impact. In my book in chapter 19 i wrote and i cant say i take any comfort in this but it reads like what is happening here. The virus is playing out as we proposed it would. Host when did you first hear of covid19 and when did you know it would be a pandemic . Dr. Osterholm that is one of the big challenges because today we are having a lot of discussions about who knew what, where . We began to keep track of it in december. Me as working at the Infectious Disease research and policy center at the university of minnesota. We pretty much know from our own intelligence what is going on. In that last week, we noted that in wuhan, china there appeared ersbe a sars or m like outbreak. By the end of january, it was clear it was not either of these. This one looked much more like an influenza like outbreak where transmission was very robust well before one may have got sick and many more people were getting infected just by breathing the air of being around someone. On january 20, a put out a statement to a group of organizations we consult with and said this would be a worldwide pandemic. It is coming. Get ready. On february 3 we put out a subsequent document saying because of the time it would take other countries to have the multiplication of the case it has an incubation period of on average,ays it looked like people were transmitting to about two, or 2. 5 people. By day 15 come you had a cases. We said it would take a month before we have enough cases in one area that we would know it was happening. So by the end of february, cases were popping around the world. Where the virus was introduced early and there was more transmission, we were going from 1000 up to 2000 of to 4000 and then to 8000. Like new york and like italy. Everything unfolded as it was. Ais outbreak has not then surprise to us. I am surprised when i hear the leadership of this country saying they were not warned or that china withheld information or that the cdc did not give them adequate information. There was more than enough adequate information out there that had nothing to do with intelligence sources. Host let me ask you about the numbers that came out earlier this week from the cdc, nih and the white house with the next dictation we could have between 100,000 up to 240,000 deaths in the u. S. Is that feasible in your mind . Dr. Osterholm it is quite the opposite. I think that is not a good representation of what is likely to happen. You have to understand these statistical manipulations of the numbers to try to understand what might be happening. The old line goes all models are wrong but some give you helpful information. The model they are using came from the university of washington assuming we had virtual wuhan like lockdown in place and it would last 45 months. You are talking about people that could not leave their homes for many weeks. Virtually no public transportation. No working. No nothing. That was the assumption with those but that is not realistic and wont happen in this country. If you look at the other side of it, you have the Imperial College of london and Harvard University which set it at between 1 million and two maya. The problem for a lot of people in the public is they dont understand models. Even those that work in the business dont understand those models. A lot of black box. I go back to my iowa roots. I say forget about the models. Let us do some quick math. You can see it in front of you. 320 Million People in the u. S. Let us say half of them will get infected. That is what we expect in the first eight months. When it is 60 Million People. 160 Million People. If we look at them and you look at what happened in china, europe and here, 80 of the cases will have mild or moderate disease to the point they will not even seek medical care. You have 20 that will be severe enough that they will seek some kind of medical care. 10 will be hospitalized. Go intoneed to intensive Care Medicine and 1 will die. Million is a large number. We are talking about 1. 6 Million People. I think that is a fair number which is not that far off from what the Imperial College and harvard have said. I would not count on the 80,000 i think that is an underestimate by a longshot. And the assumptions getting us there are not valid at all and yet we continue to use it. And i am surprised that the media has not challenged that. Host we appreciate you being with us, dr. Mike are dr. Michael osterholm. The book youf write the ability to transmit a micro by breathing into our lungs is the most dangerous. We call this airborne transmission. In real estate they call it location, location, location. In Public Health it is airborne, airborne, airborne. Your comment . Dr. Osterholm that is absolutely the case and that is what is happening. The National Academy of sciences just put out a Statement Last night to the white house in response to questions asked that basically said air airborne transmission, even just talking is part of this whole transmission. This is one again that confuses people because there is a lot of debate out in the Science Community that is not based on good information. What any by that is if you talk to the people that really study transmission of viruses in the air, they all agree that these aerosol particles that can float for sometime around a person are part of the transmission. Why is that important . The only protection against respiratorse n95 and we wont have nearly enough for our Health Workers let alone for the public. Host good evening. Caller hello. Thank you, steve. I am really concerned that we were not told earlier that this is airborne and it is not touching it is not the glove we had to worry about, it is really the fact that you are breathing air that someone else has breathed out from their lungs and i dont understand why we were not told that earlier. I think people would have been able to understand that separation was really an important thing to do if they had been told. Host we will get a response. Dr. Osterholm thank you. I think you raise a legitimate point. Within the world of science, this has been a point of debate. The World Health Organization still says airborne transmission does not exist. Even though experts around the world no longer hold that to be a credible statement. I dont want to ever say that handwashing is not important. It is really important. Continue to do that. I think though that people were given the message over and over about that being an important mechanism of transmission. It comes out of the nature of giving someone something to do to protect themselves. It is much harder when you are in a room with 10 other people and you dont know if someone is infected and potentially blowing this out just talking, that makes it much more uncomfortable. We have to tell people the truth. One of the things i have had a hard time with is if you tell someone that, they will panic. I have not seen anyone panic. No riots. No one pulling guns or knives. Being veryee people frightened and confused in terms of why you werent told. The air is very important and that is why we talk about sheltering in place and separating yourselves from others in the public. It is very important. Do not misunderstand that. At the same time, the mere fact that you have touched things has really overextended the risk there and unfortunately, we have a lot of people taking extreme measures to literally scrub down everything with bleach frequently every day and it is unnecessary. When you see these pictures in asia and particular of people in their white suits spraying down roads and buildings, it has no real impact on transmission. It is separating yourself from others breathing the same air you are breathing. ,ost from provincetown massachusetts, peter. Good evening to you. Caller after 9 11 there was a lot of work done on incident command coming unified structures for command in emergency situations. We saw the creation of the incident management system. This particular show opened with a comment by the doctor about the fragmentation that has been so prevalent throughout the response to this particular pandemic. System came out of all that in 2006. It was revised in 2014. We just had the contagion exercise where there was mention of seeds coming in from that work. I want to ask the doctor out of this particular very strong instilled withou some optimism that we will get back to a more unified system . The Hospital System will come back into its own . Or will we continue to stumble along . I saw the move i saw the news this morning about the role of mr. Kushner as a new coordinator in the pandemic, i was struck that it wont happen. I am hoping you will say obvious. Dr. Osterholm thank you, peter. You are well informed. I could not be a more strong supporter of incident command then you are. It is very important. It is how we need to get through this. First of all, even though we have an incident command structure here, many of us from the Public Health have been very concerned about the absence of cdc prevention. These are epidemiologists. Things that the people on the task force do not understand. Anytime you have a command structure, bringing all of the senior decisionmakers, the people who have some part of this response, all around one table, it is very important to have the cdc there. Right now, most of the Public Health decisions in this country are being made by 50 governors and their state health commissioners. While i am applauding the governors for what i think has effort, wen a heroic need a unified National Plan that takes the best of Public Health. I want to say that now and i think its important. The second thing i would say is there is not going to be another normal. I get asked all the time when will things returned to normal . I tell them that there will not be the same normal. Just like after 9 11, there was a new normal. What you were saying about incident command and bringing it back israeli really important. Why do we have a Strategic National stockpile that was so inadequate . Why do we spell why do we spend so little on Public Health . Think we are going to ask ourselves this question over and the again even about costbenefit. Every one of these numbers is a loved one, a family member. We are also talking about economic implications. What if we had invested in the kind of Vaccine Research we should invest in that might have given us a platform vaccine or one for a coronavirus that could quickly be adapted so it could be used by this specific coronavirus . What if we had a major Strategic National stockpile with so many ventilators and so many n95 respirators and other support materials that could have minimized the impact on our health community. I hope from all of this, if nothing else, for every one that will lose their life in this pandemic event that we dedicate ourselves to making sure this never happens again. That is what i think is going to be an important point. And the point you are making about the questions we have to ask and the answers we will need so our grandchildren and greatgrandchildren dont have to go through this. Osterholm, Vice President mike pence blaming china but also saying the cdc was responsible for the administrations slow start. Dr. Osterholm let us call a spade a spade. I dont know what happened at the white house but that was on them. Minnesota,ersity of if we can know on generate 20th that this was going to be a worldwide pandemic and publicize that and that information was shared with this administration, i dont know why the white house was not more fully aware. The cdc is not to blame for this at all. There was a problem with testing and they know it. The cdc brings so many skill sets to the table that we need right now. The men and women of the cdc are who we need in the middle of this Pandemic Response and they are not there. China as far as them hiding their information, all i can say is that they did not hide it from us. I dont know what they hit. Host from minneapolis, where dr. Osterholm is located right now. Good evening. Caller hello. In the third week of january i was ill. I had a High Temperature for a couple of days. A horrible cough. I blew out my back. I went into the doctor and they did testing with the nasal and with the blood work. Is it possible that it was in minnesota at that time . Host thank you, sue. Dr. Osterholm it is possible. We knew it was in seattle. In new york in retrospect and probably other cities. We have not seen the escalation of cases here suggesting it has been here for the last two months circulating but it is surely here now. It could have been. And that is one of the issues about this virus that people are realizing you cannot know how many stories we are hearing right now about Rural America where some place quite isolated, someone had to go to a funeral that someone else went to and they came from this city or this city and then four weeks later, there is an outbreak and a little town of 700 people. This does not have to be new york city for it to impact every town and village in this country. Over the course of the next eight15 months, that is going to happen. Every place will be impacted. This virus will find you. Largely if you are not infected yet. That is something that we have to keep remembering. We are talking with dr. Michael osterholm, the director of the center for Infectious Disease research and policy. Part of the university of minnesota. Phyllis is joining us from lafayette, indiana. Volumecould turn the down on your set. Please go ahead. Caller ok. You are speaking to phyllis, correct . Host i am. Go ahead please. Caller my concern is that someone from tennessee mentioned they had a bar and then that they had closed the bars. They were not sure if that was the best thing to do because alcohol has impact also. If theern was wondering is the bestred wine wine. I used to know the name of it but for some reason, i cannot come up with the name of it. I was just wondering i have the feeling that some people got into this might try the red wine and it might be that it would help if they got it quick. The time they get to where host i think we have the essence of it. I will ask to the doctor if there is any medicinal benefit to that. Dr. Osterholm we are hearing a lot about what i would call Home Remedies anything with out call or cold medications. Unfortunately, the way the virus grows in your throat and upper respiratory system, none of this has any hope of providing the kind of treatment that we need. There are a number of drugs right now being evaluated and i everyone to use caution in interpreting which drugs might work. We have seen a couple of statements made by leaders of this country thinking this drug will do it and then people go people aresee certain they have had evidence of an impact. We have to be very careful. Thatve seen too many drugs were promises that would surely change a disease only to fail miserably. The studies we are doing and doing quickly, and i think this is where the nih, companies and universities are to be congratulated for going to town quickly to get this information. I think we will have answers. I wish i could tell you there is some home remedy that would do it but that is not the cards for this one. Host there are daily briefings from the president. Some lasting two, two and half hours. You wrote in your book if you dont know what you are talking about, dont talk or say you dont know. Like Abraham Lincoln if the people are given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any National Crisis the point is to bring them the facts. Your response. Dr. Osterholm i wrote it then and i believe it now. It is absolutely the case. I have been involved with many major outbreaks of the course of my 45 year career where there is scary information. But people did not panic. We keep saying they will panic. What they will do is they will not follow you. They will not do what you are asking them to do it they what you are asking them to do if they dont follow you. If you plan out the next six months and you need ask thousands and thousands and thousands of them, are you going to get them . And if not, what you going to do . We need to level with the public. As bad as it is right now in , andit, new york elsewhere, they may be the lucky ones. Right now, they have what is left of this very limited precious supply of ventilators, and n95 respirators. I would not want to be a city in 46 weeks when it hits my city and these things are largely exhausted. Announced the last of the items in the Strategic National stockpile the thing that is supposed to be the safe haven for when we need these things is empty. It is gone. We come back and say also, i think the former secretary of defense said when you go to war, you cannot go to war with what you want. You have to go to war with what you have. We need an honest assessment. Every governor, every state health commissioner, what am i going to get or not get . I think this is horrible where we make every governor go to ebay and compete for every ventilator or respirator. That is not the way to run a National Crisis. I dont want to hear again the accomplishments. I want to hear the problem. I want to hear the solutions. If you dont have a solution, say it but say what you are going to do to solve it. We talk about the Great Recession and the we talk about the Great Depression. Why did fdr get us through so many of these things . Why did the country hang with him through a Great Depression and a war . It was because he told them the truth and they believed him and they stayed. We need the moral equivalent of fireside chats to share with us straight, honest information and that is not happening. We welcome our listeners on cspan radio. And a reminder that all of our coverage is available on cspan. Org coronavirus. Blake is joining us from conway, arkansas. Thank you for waiting period thank you for waiting. Caller hello. My question is, shouldnt they build a mass unit in the desert to keep the public from getting the viruses . I dont know if i asked the question right or not. For the folks that have the virus. Make a little mass unit in the desert. Dr. Osterholm frankly, we are all struggling how to handle the Health Care Needs right now. Let me just say again what i said earlier. Is that we basically have so constricted our Health Care Capacity in this country to save money. Why does no hospital have stocked away necessary equipment to protect their workers . They did not have enough money to do it. We are down in beds. We run 95 occupancy in hospitals today. Even a slight increase in the number of bed needs changes that situation to one of being busy to one of being almost a crisis. What we need to understand is that we are living in that environment. We cannot change that. Again that statement we cannot go to war with what we want but with what we have. What are the other ways we can take care of people . For example, if you can, take the people that do not have the covid19 infection including your heart patients, your cancer patients, those in automobile can we handle them in a different part of the hospital so we dont expose them to the infection . How do we use our intensive care unit most effectively . , the intensiveay care unit, are at about 45 days. It is not like having one patient but three patients. Occupancy wise, we are stressing the system might lay. The other thing that is happening is fema is good at responding to a crisis but they are used to responding to a hurricane, a tsunami, some kind of storm or earthquake. That is all regional. One place. That is not across the country at once. Ora is not going to be able the corps of engineers is not going to be able to build hundreds of hospitals and every major city that needs them. While they have done some remarkable thing so far in this Pandemic Response, even that will get stretched. We have to make do with what we have. Say one last thing. If you want to talk about the real heroes right now, it is the Health Care Workers on the front lines. People that do not have adequate equipment. People going through emotional hard times. Watching death every day. Is one ofo often, it their own colleagues who has been infected and has died while trying to give care. And then they have to go home to their families. Dayn after 14 our work days after day. Worried about bringing the virus him under clothing. These people are as brave and as absolutely critical to what we need to do right now as any soldier could ever be in war. My hat is off to them and i hope every american today does whatever they can to support Health Care Workers on the front lines. I cannot emphasize enough how important they are to what we are going to experience in the coming days and weeks. And to our viewers and listeners, if you are interested in this New York Times piece that our guest wrote. There are still things we can do adding our leaders need to speak hard truths in developing a strategy to prevent the worst. Kay is joining us from ocala, florida. Good evening. Im going to read. I appreciated the gentlemans statement. That we have had too much happy talk. We have. All along it has been slow the spread. Lower the curve. Back in early to mid march, i governorovernor cuomo, ron desantis. And recently, i have been the mayor in orange county, florida. I emailed the Surgeon General and President Trump on several occasions. Wuhan set the example. They shut down the country. Wearing masks is the first point of transfer. The first point of transfer. If we stop the first point of searfer, where he mask a wear a mask. The gloves and social distancing work but if we stop the first point of transfer, wear a mask. Host the president talked about that today at the White House Daily briefing. Dr. Osterholm, we will get your comment. [indiscernible] wear masks around other people. Are you considering that recommendation at a federal level . President trump i think they will be coming out with regulations on that and if them, iant to abide by dont think they will be mandatory because some people will not want to do that. Them,ple wanted to wear they can. If people wanted to use scarves, they can. In many cases, the scarf is better. It is thicker. They can do that if they want. A recommendation is coming out and we will see what it is. I will say this they can decide for themselves. Host and that from the white house earlier today and the president. Dr. Osterholm, what is your response . Dr. Osterholm first of all, i agree that the air and the mosthing of the air is the important point. I am one of those people that have spent my entire career in afraidks where i was not to take extreme measures in extreme danger. We have to look at the downsides to those and do they hurt us more than what we are trying to do to solve the problem. When we get into the discussion about breathing and protecting our air, it is not as simple as it appears. 5hat may just say that the n9 respirators which are very tightfitting and seals around your face, you breathe through the material called a matrix. Ands formed as a liquid solidifies and it allows the air through but not the virus. The only way for the virus to get in there is to go through that matrix. That is why these are so valuable to Health Care Workers. They are literally in wards swimming in this virus in the air. We are not going to have enough. The next line is a surgical mask. It is not meant to prevent the kind of Infectious Diseases from view of acquiring it but rather the surgeon literally dripping their nasal fluids, their droplets in a surgical wound or any other kind of wont area. Area. Linound known asthey became being able to protect you from a large Infectious Disease. Now, youre talking about the public and what we can do there. The data there does not show that they are that effective at all. If you go back to 1918, i can give you a lot of data on this, but one of the cities that mandated wearing these kinds of was San Francisco and it had one of the highest rates of disease in the country. They did everything else. I can also tell you that we look at a lot of the studies and has been involved with studies that if you have the loose surgical masks, everything seeps around the sides. The large particles stay inside the mask. What is being suggested now is that someone wear them. If you are a symptomatically out,ted, when you breathe it will catch in the mask and slow down the disease progression. That kind of does not make sense. The large particles come with coughing and sneezing. You should not be out in public if youre sick. If you are well, all of the air will be going out the side of the mask. The bottom line message is that what we are very concerned about is if we tell the public to start using surgical masks, people will find ways to get those masks and Health Care Workers will not get them. Is we have left to give them surgical masks once we run out masks. We will do such a disservice to those Health Care Workers who are on the front lines rave lay there. I for one do not support routine use of these masks. If we want to save the most lives and have the most impact, maybe it does not sound good and people wont like this, but i am willing to do that to get them to the Health Care Workers. If you want to make up your own homemade mask, a scarf it will not be effective. Go ahead and do it. Right now, we have to concentrate on saving these medical masks for our Health Care Workers. Host you mention the 1918 pandemic. A note, monday evening, john berry, the author will bereat influenza joining us for the full hour of cspans primetime edition of washington journal. Joanne from sarasota, florida, you are next. Caller i think most of my answers have already been spoken but i will give it a shot to see if he can add any more to this. Knew aboutus i what was going on from listening to the news as the author had said. And written about. I changed plans to go abroad in january for a may trip. How is the information from these Research Agencies and institutions available or how is it transmitted to the administration and those making the decisions about these life and death decisions . If i know about it and your other callers knew about it and were making lifechanging actions to protect themselves, how is this information not available to the administration . Choose whichck and agencies are worthy of listening to . Host thank you. Dr. Osterholm joanne come ive think you answered that question for me. We had it. I dont know why they did not. Our center for Infectious Disease and policy has a news team that operates every day covering this in depth. It is free of charge. No cost. You dont have to sign up for anything. I would just urge you we have people from around the world getting their information about this pandemic from that website. P. Unm. Edu. Cidre are free to get news every day. We just published a number of new news stories about this. We should all be aware of what is going on right now. I dont understand if someone is not, why youre not. Host in the book you write the following if we know how to greatly reduce the risk of these Public Health problems and we do not, we become an accomplice to the morbidity they cause. We need a new generation of Public Health experts to address these things in areas where not right now. The book is called deadliest enemy. Caller am i allowed to make a comment and then a question . Host yes. Caller we have been encouraged to get out and walk. I can see everyone that goes down my road and avoid being out there when someone is there. It is what we found out today breathing o keep doing it. It is the best thing you can do. Caller i just wanted to thank you that pointing out statistics are human beings. And i wonder how they are projecting the state projections . I thought missouri has been screwed for the last week and half when they said they would put the equipment where the need is the most and then roll it out. And we are not that sophisticated here. We probably have one hospital here that has any kind of icu. And if you have someone, you air lift them. Host thank you. Dr. Osterholm deborah, thank you for remembering the fact that these are real people. I have already had three colleagues die in Public Health working on this issue. Andits home very hard to me i realize were just getting it started. Many of us will have family members, loved ones and friends and colleagues and neighbors and i think again, that is why we have to have confidence in what we are doing and how we are doing it. When it gets really tough, and it hasnt gotten tough for the whole country. Hardcities are getting hit but for the rest of the country, we still have some very tough days ahead of us. We will get through it but how we get through it will be dependent on how much people trust and what they think about. In that regard, i would say that as we go forward, each state is working specifically on their own needs. Most state Health Departments have quite a bit of material on their websites about what is happening. Handled. Nts will be in some areas, there are just a few patients and they are wondering what this is all about . Why we are going through what we are going through . But with time, that will change. The number i shared with you earlier i hope is wrong. Hope is not a strategy. I put the numbers out there how we got them. When. 6 Million People could die in this country from this disease in the next 810 months. That is substantial. We have to understand that we will have Health Care Systems that are literally rusting at the seams. When that happens, it is not thatthe covid19 patients will suffer but all patients that need health care and that is why keeping our Healthcare System strong and supporting our Health Care Workers i cannot emphasize how important that is. Host our last call is from berkeley, michigan. Lisa. Caller my question for you from here in michigan, africanamericans disproportionately have suffered from covid19 and passed away. Is there a potential relationship between those that carry the sickle cell trait and for moresed propensity difficult symptoms . Dr. Osterholm thank you, lisa. That is a good question. The sickle cell trait has been a among theechanism black Community Living in africa. If you only had one of the two genes for the sickle cell, you are protected against malaria. The question you ask is a good one and a valid one. In this case, we dont know of any relationship at this time between sicklecell and this disease. I dont think there is one but again, we will learn that with time but that is a great question. It is something that Infectious Disease experts study all the time. Host people at home wondering how long this day at home orders will be in place. You say we are living with this 69 months. T our economy cannot survive that. What will this be like moving into the summer and fall . Dr. Osterholm the oped piece i wrote for the New York Times last weekend tried to lay out that either we can try to these infections for 18 months and then bring our economy to a screeching halt and over the edge of a cliff or we can say we are going to do nothing different and flood our hospitals and there will be many many thousands of people needing health care. Chaos and really losing faith in our government. Somewhere in between. I like to call it threading the rope into the needle. That is where we are going to have to figure out for the younger people who are largely not as susceptible to having a serious illness or a death how do we help them use back into society knowing many will get infected but not spread it to those that are older or immunocompromised or have Underlying Health problems. And try to thread that needle until we get a vaccine. I dont think either one is anything ort doing locking ourselves down and that is why i keep coming back to the plan that we need that we dont have. Entitled the is war against the deadliest enemy. Dr. Michael osterholm, to buy for being with us. Each evening, we check in with members of congress to find a how they are dealing with covid19. Oining us is Michael Burgess congressman, thank you for being with us. I am the 26th district but who is counting. Host i apologize. Near dallas. How are you dealing with this . The Office Buildings in washington, d. C. Are closed. And washington, virginia, and maryland have shut everything down. My staff in washington is working from home. Tends tongton office have people in closer contact so it makes a lot of sense to disperse that part of the working staff. The District Office is a little different. And that is where i am now. My District Office near dallas, texas. We have individual offices. Is easier distancing to accomplish than it would be in the big office in washington. The downside and this is the difficult part of all of this is you cannot have the congressional hearings that we should be having. And quite honestly, there were congressional there were several congressional hearings we shouldve had in february and in march that we did not and now we are in the middle of this and it is even harder. Under house rules, we cannot do hearings remotely. We cannot do hearings on zoom or skype and as a consequence, it makes it difficult for us to have our congressional oversight. One of the most frightening things ive heard all along is that the Speakers Office wants to take over that function and put it in their office. I do not think that is a good idea. We have had so many process bowels while we went through the three bills developed to help people. We have all heard stories about how things got in there that should not have gotten in there. We could have avoided that had we gone through the regular order but now regular order becomes extremely difficult because of the remoteness we have had to enforce on ourselves andeep our staffs healthy protect constituents. Host do have an idea on remote . Oning do you have an idea remote voting . It is a top one. I dont think we can phone it in. I recognize that there were i know there were people that stayed away from the floor because they felt it was too risky to assemble there. Illad two members that were that had been identified the week before. It is a problem but i did not run for office to phone it in. That wetitution says assemble and vote in person and i think that is what we do. Here is the iron age. In order to do something different, in order to do an electronic or mailed in ballot or whatever someone has in mind, we would have to change the house rules. How do you change the house rules . Vote inres a two thirds person. Personally, how are you dealing with this new routine of stayathome . It is extremely difficult. My life has become one long conference call. Not something i prefer. I prefer meeting people. I prefer oneonone meetings. Larger meetings. Human contact. I am a physician by trade and that is how i ran my practice. Oneonone interaction. This is difficult. I will take a something it is nowhere near the amount of difficulty that regular people are having, people that have been laid off from their jobs and those on the front lines in our hospitals and Emergency Centers and care centers. And the people where i do my shopping like walmart are under stress as well. Host asking about your background as a physician and we just spoke to dr. Michael osterholm. From your standpoint, what is ahead for the u. S. And the residence in your district . First first of all, go back to the latter part ofian and people would ask what my opinion was of this illness. When i first heard about this, this new pneumonia they were encountering in china, i was concerned about it. When i heard that china shut down a city of 10 Million People, a city that quite honestly i had never heard of before and the Chinese Government shut it down they didnt do it far trivial reason. They did that for a serious reason. I knew we should take this illness very, very seriously. Now even some of the best Public Health people in some of those early briefings that we had, the latter part of january, were reassuring. They said 20 years ago, we beat sars. With ebeat sars without a vaccine. Without a good antiviral agent and we beat it with standard Public Health measures. Quarantine and contact tracing. But heres the difference. This virus can be transmitted, it appears, up to two weeks before someone becomes symptomatic. So if you stop and think how are you going to quarantine someone when you dont know that theyre sick . And how are you going to do the contact tracing, tell me everyone youve come in contact with for the last two weeks . It becomes an impossibility. So the Public Health aspects of this are much more difficult than some of the other illnesses that we faced. Ive been in congress for a few years. I started when the sars epidemic first hit. I was there through bird flu one, bird flu two, swine flu, zika and ebola. This is the most this is the most desperate of all those illnesses i have seen. Host based on that, whats your biggest worry, your biggest concern, as a member of congress, a public official and a doctor . Mr. Burgess clearly no one knows exactly what to make of the models but even the models with the most optimistic projections still have an astonishingly high rate of loss of human life. And theres a tremendous amount of human suffering condensed in that. On the other hand we saw unemployment numbers today the likes of which no one has seen in my generation probably. And where is that going to go . What is the effect that thats going to have . I worry about the effect of the virus. I worry about the effect on the health of constituents. But ive got to tell you, i think were going to see were going to see significant increases in problems like suicide rates. And we do have to be mindful of that as well. Some countries have not been as aggressive as ours as far as the shutting down of things and the social distancing. Other countries have been more aggressive. The aftermath of all of this, there will be significant time spent analyzing which functions, which approaches were preferable. But again, i go back to january. Chinese communist government shut down the city of wuhan. Can you ever imagine having seen Something Like that before . It was important to take that seriously. I do regret that during the month of february, i asked our committee, the committee on energy and commerce, we need to do hearings on. This we need to have the experts in. Have it on the record. So people can see for themselves what congress is thinking about this, what congress is doing about this. Weeks ago i suggested we have an oversight hearing. Thats been one of the biggest problems that we have ncountered, the inability to have people test when they want it. I have my own opinions, not everyone agrees with me. I look back to when the food and Drug Administration increased the difficulty with get wharg called Laboratory Test aproved. That hurt the amount of Investment Companies were willing to make in that type of testing. Clearly as we see today, that type of testing is exactly what we need. When you have the companies coming forward with point of care testing that can give you a result in a short period of time, thats absolutely critical. And more important than testing is going to be, i think it was just today that the story broke that there was some progress made on identifying the antibody in a small amount of blood from a person, maybe a person who is not even ill. Is there any latent immunity that exists in this country and is it perhaps possible to not have to quarantine every, not have to seclude everyone . But there are some parts of the country where you could think about opening things back up because they do have a the population has a significant amount of native immunity. Society would be noled be as easy for the virus to tear through communities. As this month progresses we would love to check in with you from time to time to see how youre doing. Congressman my alburgess joining us from his office in the 26th Congressional District in texas. Congressman, we thank you for being with us. Mr. Burgess thank you. Host joining us via skype. Were back tomorrow morning with c spans washington journal at 7 00 a. M. Eastern time, 4 00 for those on the west coast. Back here tomorrow evening for another primetime edition of washington journal, 8 00 eastern time, 5 00 for those on the west coast. Thanks for joining us on this thursday. All our coverage available on the web at cspan. Org coronavirus. Enjoy the rest of your evening. [captions Copyright National ca journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Aming up this morning, professor of epidemiology and medicine at Columbia University discusses the latest in the u. S. Response to the coronavirus pandemic. Federal agencies like fema and the army corps of engineers andonse to the pandemic howressman danny davis on the coronavirus has affected chicago and illinois. Eastern this 7 00 morning. Join the discussion. Cspan has aroundtheclock coverage of the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic and it is all available on demand at cspan. Org coronavirus. 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