Point of view you take. Focus is on marketbased ideas that expand economic opportunities. We were founded in 2016. Enhance or advance both progressive values and conservative values at the same time. That means things that actually increase social mobility, help those on the bottom half of the deployedladder, but techniques like marketbased policy to achieve that. Host along the relative those ideas that states and the white house and the federal government are dealing with is the reopening of states. What do you think about the general approach being taken . There is a loty, of diversity and how states are approaching this. In our view, in general, we are more on the reopening end of the spectrum. If you actually look at what we inrted doing inmate midtolate march and look at the evidence piled up about how the Novel Coronavirus is 19 is, whatw covid it actually does in people and how it transmits itself, we have a lot more evidence. Before, we were operating on old playbooks we derived from battling the flu. But covid19 is a very different disease. That means we can approach reopening in a more targeted way. Now, that cov that means we can approach reopening in a more targeted way. We realize, now, that covid19 is a disease that disproportionately, much more so than influenza, affects the elderly, which means younger children and workers are able to go back to school and work with the right precautions. And, in that way, reopen the economy in a graduated fashion. Our approach is lets not compromise Public Health. Its not an either or. There is a sweet spot where you can maximize the ability to reopen the economy while still ensuring that as few people as possible are hospitalized and die from this terrible disease. Host there are those that argue that to find that sweet spot it depends on the testing being done. Then, looking at other data there. Do you need that kind of information before you can make these decisions, in your mind . Guest our argument and we talk about this at length, is the conventional wisdom about testing is somewhat wrong. First of all, not all tests are equally accurate or measure the same thing. There are certain tests that measure active infections from viral rna, the viral genetic material. Those tests are very accurate at testing who has active infections, but they are cumbersome to administer. The standard pcr test is involves a six inch nasal swab that goes up your nostril and gets to the back of your head, and then they pull it out and wait two days, and you get a result. That is a very accurate test, but the idea that 2 million americans a day will submit themselves to that kind of test is unrealistic. On the other hand, you have antibody tests, which are much easier to administer in a home setting, as opposed to a hospital or doctors office, but they do not actually measure active infections. Often, you get infected with the coronavirus, and it takes three weeks to four weeks for your body to develop antibodies against that virus. You may be running around and infecting a lot of people but test negative in the antibody test. I could go on and on about this topic, but the point i am trying to make is that purely the number of tests we have this many tests available that does not mean anything. What really matters is the kind and accuracy of the tests. It is our view that testing, widespread, population level testing, is unrealistic. What we have to focus on is the much more accurate pcr intrusive tests for the most at risk populations. At my responders, people working in Emergency Rooms, and people in Nursing Homes. We just published a paper on this a couple days ago that 40 of all people in the u. S. Who have died of covid19 live in Nursing Homes or Residential Care homes that are about caring for seniors. 40 . Only 1. 6 that even if percent of americans live in those facilities. That is an area we need to do a lot more. That is a tragedy that we have allowed that problems have fester and get worse. The silver live in lining is the rest of that 90 of the population, we can do more to reopen the economy, because they are at relatively lower list risk. Host you can guess ask our guest questions by calling 202 7488000 for those in eastern and central time zones. Guest in2 7488001 for those mountain and pacific time zones. What is the necessity of a vaccine before we can return things to normal . Guest there is a good chance we never succeed at developing an effective vaccine for sarscov2. You hear this it is like making a cake to develop a vaccine for a new virus of the fact is there is no guarantee we can develop a vaccine. Their brightest minds around the world have been trying to develop a vaccine for hiv, the virus that causes aids, for over 35 years and we still do not have one. We do not have a vaccine for hepatitis c. Antivirale effective drugs to treat those once you have been infected, but we do not have a vaccine that prevents you from getting infected. We cannot assume that we will for sars cov 2. Even if, in the near term, we cannot develop a truly effective treatment of the disease. From avik roy, our guest the foundation for research on equal opportunity. You can find the work of the organization at freopp. Org. He is here to take your questions and comments. One of the things we have seen as far as other countries have handle this is swedens approach. Withou familiarize those the approach that country takes and what is right or wrong about it . Guest it is an interesting case study. Did a basically never total lockdown the way that we have gotten used to in the u. S. That is not to say they did nothing. They shut down sporting events, prohibited bars where you have ,ig crowds in front of the bar prohibited that. They primitive crowded gatherings. But they did not prevent restaurants from continuing to serve customers, did not close down retail shops or businesses. Part of their theory was we might be with this disease, or this disease may be with us, for a long time, and we have to do things that the population of sweden is willing to accept for a longerterm, so lets do this more graduated or careful or limited approach. Yes, the virus will spread to more people in sweden, but not and diesgets sick from covid19, and if we can allow the younger people to reenter the workforce or stay employed, we will have less economic destruction. We may have more infections but not this apocalyptic scenario. That is what has happened. The one thing where sweden has not done as well or i should say have done as badly as other people is the nursing home question. Across europe and australia and new zealand come a lot of countries are having this problem where 40 to 50 from debts of covid19 are taking place in Nursing Homes. That is one area where you could look to sweden and say they have more room for improvement. But, overall, of the western countries we look at, sweden appears to have found the sweet spot in terms of not shutting down the economy but having an acceptable Public Health outcome. Host is there a connection for swedens approach and the type of health care that country provides . Guest i think the answer is no. Sweden has a singlepayer Health Care System, but that is something people may point to and say that is the reason sweden is doing so well. Italy also has a singlepayer Health Care System, and they are the country that has than the worst in the western world. The u. K. Has a singlepayer Health Care System, and they have not done that great. Also hashouse so a singlepayer Health Care System and have done reasonably well. Markets like germany with a multipayer Health Care System have done reasonably well. So we have not seen the correlation. What we have found is that the countries that have really done the best job of responding to covid19 are the ones that had direct experience with the original size coronavirus in coronavirus in 2003. That virus is similar to the one we have now, which is called sarscov2. The countries that dealt with the original sars epidemic like hong kong, taiwan, south korea, other pacific rim countries, they were the ones, in terms of the everyday people and their response and the governments response, they took this very seriously from the start, as soon as the new started coming out of wuhan, china. They started to aggressively act. The everyday citizens wore masks on the subway. They tried to be careful they took care to wash hands and engage in social distancing. That early response and those asian countries, gardens of a kind of Healthcare Systems they have, really matters. Singapore has one of the most freemarket Health Care Systems in the world, one of the most freemarket countries in the world, and they have done pretty well. South korea has a singlepayer Health Care System and they have done pretty well. It is more about prior experience. Host our first call is from kansas city, kansas. Good morning. Caller yes, good morning. What i was wanting to ask is, if our government does not start doing something with people coming into our you cannotegally, vet them or see if they have been vaccinated for anything. We still have measles pop up in spots. We have tuberculosis. Nobody knows who is bringing it in. Alwaysuntry has almost done away with stuff like that. Host you want to take that . Sure thatten, making people are not bringing chemical diseases into the United States is important. It is also important to remember a lot of how this sarscov2 virus got into the United States was not through illegal immigration. It was through legal travel between china and the United States and between europe and the United States. Some of the strains on the west coast came from people traveling back and forth to china, whether it was chinese nationals or americans who had business in china. On the east coast, it appears that most of the way the virus came here was europe, where of course, also came from china, but whether americans or europeans or chinese nationals were traveling through europe to the United States got here, that is how the disease got to the United States. To the degree that illegal immigration or immigration in general is relevant to this situation, and it may be, to a degree, it is also true that legitimate or illegal immigration or Business Travel among americans is also a big part of how these pandemics spread, particularly these days. Host from florida, this is david. Caller good morning. I have a Family Member in an assisted care living facility. They have been in lockdown since the end of january, i want to say, where they were not allowed to leave the rooms or anything. The people that work in those facilities are from our community. As we open back up, how will this affect the people who work and those facilities and keep them from infecting our loved ones . Guest a great question and a very important question. About what he percent of all the people who have died of covid19 in the United States live in assisted living facilities or work there. Outside of new york state, which has some quirks to the way they report the data, it is actually 50 . About half the people outside of new york state who have died of covid19 are living in these assisted of ink facilities. Florida is one of the states that has action performed relatively well on this metric compared to other states. What are the reason why is that Governor Desantis did not lock down the whole state the way a lot of people asked or demanded aggressivehe was about restricting visitation to Nursing Homes. That appears to have made a difference in the performance of florida on some of these health outcomes. One of the key things with assisted living facilities is, as you have suggested, the workers, the staff who work at these facilities, often live offsite. Sometimes, they work and multiple Nursing Homes or multiple facilities. In onee is an outbreak facility and a staffer works there, and then that same staffer works in another facility, they are than the carrier of that virus to another facility. What will be important is to aggressively test the staff that work at these facilities. It will be really important that, wherever possible, staff are not working at multiple facilities but are sticking to a single facility. Ideally, staffers live at that facility or nearby at a hotel that the nursing home operators or the state can rent out. Hotels are pretty cheap these days because nobody is traveling, so there is a lot of empty hotel space, and that may be a way to kill two birds with one stone run. Hotel rooms for staffers, so they are not gett not actually going around getting exposed to thein virus o the community or transmitting it themselves. Host this is margie from newark, delaware. Caller i have a few questions. Because i am confused. I read the New York Post every day. There is two big articles that are saying, young babies are getting it. , 65 babies of fact that were verified. It is almost related to kawasakis, but it is through the virus. Said, in the age group 30 to 40, they get caught when they got the virus. They are getting strokes. So for him to just say it is elderly people mostly, it is too confusing. I can understand people are confused, because everybody is saying something different. So i would like him to clarify. Guest a great question, and a very important question. And the caller is right. There is a lot of confusion about this, because there are look, if you are younger, it is not that you are completely immune from covid19 or that it is not possible for you to get sick, it is possible for you to get sick. And there are cases of younger people who die of covid19. But, statistically speaking, if you actually look at numbers across the country and across the world, the percentage of people who are dying in their 30s or 20s or teens or children, is very, very low as a share of the population, as a share of those infected, whereas, among the elderly, it is very high. Of those infected, whereas, among the elderly, it is very high. If you are older than 65 particularly if youre older than 85 the chance that you die if you get infected of covid19 is very high. I do not have the numbers in front of me i can pull up the chart if you like lets call it 10 . Whereas for people who are under 40, particularly under 30 or 20, less. More like 0. 1 or it is not that nobody gets sick or dies from covid19 if you are younger. It is that the risk of dying from covid19 if you are younger is much, much lower. Comparable, in many cases, to your chances of getting sick from the flu if you are younger. Again, that is not true if you are older. That covid19 is less dangerous or equally dangerous to the flu. It is more dangerous, but it is particularly dangerous to the elderly. The risk of dying and of being hospitalized from covid19 is much lower if you are younger. Dr. Fauci, or at least he is reported to say for a Senate Committee today, that when it comes to opening the country prematurely, he has great concerns, saying if we skip over the checkpoints and guidelines, we risk the danger of multiple outbreaks occurring. When he says those kinds of messages, compared to what you have been expressing, how do you square those two . Guest a very important question. I think dr. Fauci is being overly cautious. That is understandable. He is a virologist, a Public Health official. His concern is about infection rates, which is very important. But it is not the only concern. There are other concerns that matter. The fact that 20 Million People are out of work right now because we have shut down the economy is incredibly important. The people who are not seeking every day care for heart attacks, the people who are not getting mammograms, war not getting checkups for a high Blood Pressure or cholesterol, those things have public how the facts as well. A lot of Research Shows when you have chronically high unemployment, there are increasing deaths of despair my people who die because of poverty. There are other issues. The fact that schools are closed means that people who even can work today lets say you are a single mom who works as a pharmacist, and you cannot go to work because you cannot leave your 3yearold at home alone, because normally your child is in school or think about the fact that, and a lot of low income communities, it is not just about childcare, it is about nutrition. A lot of low income families depend on the Federal SchoolLunch Program to feed their kids. And they do not have access to that right now because schools are closed. There are a lot of considerations that matter as well as infection rates. My concern, and where we disagree, me and my coauthors, with dr. Fauci is i think a singleminded focus purely on infection rates does not take into account the tradeoffs that come from the economic disruption and physical disruption we spent 4 trillion trying to resuscitate the economy or prop it up while all of this is going on. We would have to spend more if we keep the economy shut down for longer. What is really important is to find that sweet spot where we are careful about reopening the economy in the lower lowest risk possible way, similar to what sweden and florida have done. What we will see, as time goes those states that have gone carefully will not see the apocalypse that apocalypse the apocalyptic vision that dr. Fauci sees host go ahead with your comment. Toler in regards to sweden, my understanding, the finance minister said they were still looking at a possible 10 gdp 50 as well as 14 to unemployment, even with this structure of letting people go about their normal business lives. Including the exponential growth rate of this, considering germany has got it down to 1. 1 it closer to hours of 2. 0 , will they not be dealing with a surge of hospital stays over the long term, causing more disruption to their economy . Guest great question. A couple