Economy. Thats where well begin this morning. First things first with money correspondent jill schlesinger. And then at a time when all of us are using the internet, we ask our david pogue if the internet can handle all of us logging on at the same time. Thats our cover story. Reporter as more and more americans do their work and take their classes at home, over video, more of them are having problems with the internet. It is almost as though it were buffering, and i hear every third or fourth word, then it would freeze completely, and that would be it. There are a lot of signs that traffic is increasing pretty dramatically, especially during working hours. Reporter as we move our entire lives online, can the internet hold up . Ahead on sunday morning. Pauley and then it is on to the toll all of this is taking on our emotional health. Susan spencer is on the case. The stress, the anxiety, the emotions that are provoked by this crisis are truly significant. As new York Governor Andrew Cuomo recently made clear, Mental Health is one more casualty of this pandemic. Where do you think you would be if they had discontinued therapy all together . I dont epwant to think eveno think about it. Reporter therapy in the age of coronavirus on sunday morning. Pauley they say laughter is the best medicine. Ben is in conversation with comedy legends mel brook and carl reiner. Marie antoinette. What a cutie. Reporter theyre comic legends, best friends, and world war ii veterans. When things are bad, we rally for the country. Reporter mel brooks and carl reiner. I hope you live as long as i do. Reporter with laugh and lessons for us all. Carl, stop talking for one minute. Okay. Reporter ahead on sunday morning. Pauley tracy smith looks at the return of the Victory Garden. Mo rocca asks, what is the deal with toilet paper . Once again, jim gaffigan recaps his familys week. And more on this sunday morning, the 5th of april, 2020, when we return. Bubbles at this price . Is this for real . Oh. Its real. Believe me. I mean, this is unexpected. You would say, remarkable . Absolutely. A remarkable deal thanks, i get that all the time. Wait what . grocrey outlet jingle wow. I think ill take two. For the love oh. Pauley first things first, this past week we took a double hit. Terrible numbers, both on the medical and economic front. Here is money correspondent jill schlesinger. Reporter lets be honest, there wasnt a lot of good news this past week. Coronavirus has now killed more than 7,000 americans. And the government came out with the stunning prediction that there could eventually be 100,000 to 240,000 deaths in the country. Meanwhile, the economic casualties are starting to add up. The march jobs report was a disaster. In the last full week of that month, more than 6. 6 million americans filed for unemployment benefits, thats on top of more than 3 three million the week before. Keep in mind the previous high was in 1982, when just under 700,000 people filed. Reporter what was your reaction to now having two weeks of initial claims coming in at nearly 10 million . The numbers are just shocking. Reporter kenneth is an economic professor at harvard, who has written about the last eight centuries of economic crises. We have been hit by what is almost an alien invasion, a catastrophe. Reporter it has spread to retailers like macys, the gap, and victorias secret. Who are side lining hundreds of thousands of people. People are going to look at these numbers, and theyre going to wake up and pour through the newspapers and realize were going to talk about this as the worst since the depression. And theyll imagine that soon well be lining up for bread. Can you really help take some of the anxiety out of that conjuring of im images for us . First, were much richer than we were in the great depression. We can afford to do things we couldnt afford to do. I think the government is moving in that direction. I think the Financial Markets still sort of believe it will be back to normal by the end of the year, early next year. And if theyre right, thats very different from the great depression, which lasted 10 years. Reporter about those Financial Markets, the numbers from the first three months of the year are in, and it is not pretty. The dow had its worst quarter since 1987, falling 23 . Crude oil saw its biggest quarterly price drop in history, down 66 . But maybe this is a sign of the times. The commodity was the biggest gain, orange juice, up 23 . So keep drinking plenty of fluids, wash your hands, and lets keep each other safe. Pauley money correspondent jill schlesinger, our thanks. As most of us have figured out, the internet keeps us together when were supposed to stay apart. But what if were all going online at once . A question for our david pogue. David like almost everyone else in america, Corporate Events producer mark felix has been working from home lately. It hasnt exactly been smooth sailing. Three, although it seems like week 33. The last week, my internet has been crapping out on me big time. Reporter what form does that take . It keeps cutting out. My zoom meetings, i get dropped. When i need to open up a particular website, it is slower than usual. It is acting like quite the belligerent child. Were definitely seeing really dramatic rises in the use of internet traffic, especially during the workday, especially on these residential networks. Anywhere from 20 increases two weeks ago, to closer to 40 or 50 now. Reporter Internet ExpertJosephine Wolff is a professor at tusts university. How much should we worry about the internet getting overloaded . So far weve been doing pretty well in urban areas of the united states. I think it is very reasonable to be concerned that some of this realtime video chatting and communication that were relying on could very soon, if not already, start to experience a certain amount of lag, a certain amount of jitter in the delivery to our homes. Reporter according to wolff, the internets past year has basically three parts the servers, like the netflix computers that send out our movies. Then there are the fat highspeed connections run by Service Providers like comcast and verizon. And the third part are going to be the lower capacity residential networks, what we sometimes call the last mile of the network, that actually gets out to your homes. Thats the part that most people are concerned about. The good news is that the internet was really built from the beginning to deal with crisis. The original specifications from the 1960s were how do you build a Communications Network that could live through actually much worst crisis, literally a nuclear war. Reporter matthew prince is the c. E. O. Of cloudflare, which provides security and other services for big websites. It is like if you have a map and youve got lots of different roads you can drive between two points, then traffic can spread out and you wont have as much congestion on any one of them. Reporter that sounds great. And yet in the european union, netflix and youtube have degraded their picture quality to avoid overloading the internet. Prince says thats because the internets wiring is different in europe. They rely on older technology, which is basically d. S. L. , which is basically internet over the telephone lines. Where in the u. S. , most of the Internet Connectivity is over the cable system. Reporter and if you have cable, you get much faster Internet Speed into your house than out of it. The cable system was really built originally to be able to take lots of tv programs and bring them into your house. It was never built so well to take content from your house and send it back out. And so i think what people in the u. S. Are seeing those problems, by and large the problems are coming because theyre trying to have multiple people in the household trying to do multiple video conferences. If i am experiencing jitters or hiccups, is there anything i could do at home . The quickest way to do that is to turn off your video, so youre just trying to get your audio. Reporter would you do that, so i can see what it looks like, turn off your video . If i do that, the capacity i have can be reserved just for the audio. So at least i can hear what is going on. And then there are people, even in this country, who dont have highspeed internet at all. Right. And thats a huge problem right now. It has always been a huge problem. I hope one of the lessons well take away from this is the importance of investing in that infrastructure and upgrading that infrastructure for everybody. Reporter for everybody, cloudflares c. E. O. Matthew prince says the internet wont slow to a stop. I think there is a lot of things we need to worry about during this crisis, but i think the internet is holding up very, very well. Reporter eventually, presumably, our lives and our internet patterns will return to normal. Mark felix, for one, cant wait. I hate to admit it, but i look forward to my lengthy commute into new york city and working in a real office. I will miss being home, but not all of the trips to the refrigerator. But not all of the trips to the refrigerator. [laughter] pauley Victory Gardens played a big role on the homefront during the dark days of world war ii. Now tracy smith tells us theyre back. Reporter this week the flowers at rogers gardens in newport beach, california, are in full, dazzling bloom. It is as if to remind us that even in the middle of our upended lives, spring somehow arrived on time. But these days, its only the bees that seem to be interested in flowers. Right now nurseries like this one are selling out of vegetables. What have you got there . Im got tomato plants, heirlooms. Reporter after weeks of seeing empty Grocery Store shelves, home gardeners are snapping up everything, from lettuce to lemon trees, says rogers general manager, ron vanderhoff. What are people buying . Things that relate to food. They dont want to go out in public, but they want nutritious food. No better way than to grow your own. Maybe try unions, if you can find them, from seed. Reporter and now it seems gardening howto videos are, forgive me, sprouting up everywhere. Stop panicking, and get out and grow a garden tonight. Reporter grow in yourself food is suddenly just the thing. People here say seed sales have doubled, maybe even tripled. And it might surprise you that tomato plants are going at the rate of 800 a day. What is not so surprising and certainly not new, is the notion of growing your own food when times get tough. It all started back in 1917, when the government called on people to grow war gardens to free up food for soldiers fighting overseas in world war i. Reporter and by the 1940s, same idea, different name. Victory garden thats the answer. We can grow food for victory in our own backyards. Reporter and grow, they did. In every available patch of land, even in the shadow of new yorks chrysler building. All told, an estimated 20 million world war ii Victory Gardens produced nearly 40 of the nations fruits and vegetables. The goals today arent quite as ambitious. But having a home garden still beats another trip to the Grocery Store. Are you guys spending more time out here in the garden . We definitely have a lot more time to be in the garden. Reporter Kristina Nylander is a pediatrician who thought planting veggies might get her two kids to eat more of them. But in the end, it is not just about the food. With all of the watering and weeding, your covid19 Victory Garden might produce what could be the most valuable commodity of all today escape. This could be one of the positives to come out of it. We want to be a happy place, where were providing food and a little bit of distraction. And we want a persons garden to be their happy place, where they could do the same. Happy places are really the same. Happy places are really important right now. I t this is totally customizable, so you focus only on what you want. Okay, its got screeners and watchlists. And you can even see how your predicti the value of the stocks youre interested in. Now this is what im talking about. Yeah, itll free up more time for your. Uh, true crime shows . British baking competitions. Hm. Didnt peg you for a crumpet guy. Focus on what matters to you with thinkorswim. Pauley the anxiety and stress of these times are a lot for any of us to handle. So where and how to turn for help. Susan spencer has an answer. Reporter teresa brown has had a life without luxuries or much security or any peace of mind. Talk to me a little bit about this feeling of stress, that basically has been with you since you were a child . In order for me to kind of talk about it, i have to think about the traumas that ive been through. Traumas like not just growing up poor, but growing up where we lived in apartments that didnt have heat. Or grew up in neighborhoods that had high crimes. Or went to school where you were bullied. Those things. Reporter she spent years trying to process those traumas, all the while raising her three nieces in new york city. Finally she found help from a therapist. What kind of things do you talk to the therapist about . Pretty much what is it that i could do to either relieve my stress or find tools to help me deal with the situations that i have been going through. Reporter but three weeks ago, she wasnt sure she would ever see that therapist again. New york state has become the epicenter of the outbreak. 6 of all cases in the world are there. Reporter the pandemic meant that mosaic, the notforprofit Mental Health center in the bronx where teresa goes, had no choice but to close its doors to inamerican visit. No oneonone therapy, no counselling. When you realized the magnitude of this pandemic, was there a time when you werent sure you would be able to continue to serve your clients . Yes, and that frightens me. Reporter donna demetri friedman is the director of the clinic. We filmed her working outside. She says she could not imagine leaving more than a thousand desperate, lowincome clients with nowhere to turn in the midst of a terrifying pandemic. The stakes are very high. Some people have anxiety, some have major depressive illness, and that is all heightened, of course, in this crisis. So we would be seeing people really begin to decompensate. Reporter so three weeks ago, her staff of 100 took dramatic measures, switching all Mental Health counselling to teletherapy, a fancy name for using the phone. They werent authorized to do so until the pandemic hit and new york state waived its regulations. We mobilized immediately, actually before we even had guidance. Reporter what about the challenges in terms of actually helping anybody this way . So there was some resistance from the clients, and some resistance from the staff. How are we going to do this . Is this really going to work . But pretty quickly people kind of have pulled together and are doing their part and responding. Reporter for what were dealing with now, is teletherapy pretty much the ideal tool . Teletherapy is ideally suited to providing Mental Health care under the current circumstances. And its being used more now than ever in history. Reporter and its a long history, says dr. Jeffrey lieberman, chair of the Psychiatry Department at Columbia University college of physicians and surgeons. Back in 1959, the Nebraska Psychiatric Institute first used video conferencing. A decade later, teletherapy consultations were available to troubled travelers at bostons logan airport. And about 30 years ago, telepsychiatry became a subject of serious study. Do you think it is as affective as it is to have a oneonone conversation . Well, there is actually substantial data from systematic studies which show that it is affective. Reporter it better be. Now, more than ever. New Research Shows that living in quarantine can have grave, longterm Mental Health effects. As new York Governor Andrew Cuomo recently recognized. Governor im asking psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists who are willing to volunteer their time to contact the state. Reporter more than 6,000 people responded. No surprise to dr. Lieberman. This is going to have a populationwide effect of ptsd proportions. It is almost apocalyptic in its nature. Reporter what are the challenges that the teletherapy supposes in itself . What is lacking is the ability to see someones face, to, you know, feel what someone brings into a room. But i dont know where wed be without it right now, frankly. Reporter what do you mean . I dont know where wed be without that connection right now. Reporter Katie Riordan is a Mental Health counsellor. She is offering therapy six days a week, about 10 hours a day. What have these weeks been like for you . It has been exhausting. It has been exhausting. It is a strain. Reporter one of katies clients is teresa brown, who she knows as teri. Teri is the garde guardian of a family and balancing so many challenges, financial and educational space. This pandemic didnt get rid of problems that existed prior to it coming along, right . So all these stressors that have led people to feeling the helplessness and hopelessness and anxiety and powerlessness before this emerged, now theyre just compounded with the world as we knew it being shaken up. Reporter thats your challenge, isnt it . It is teri browns challenge. Its my challenge. Yes, i have a lot of anxiety. But i am trying so hard to be positive about this because it is not just for me. It is for my children. And i want them to understand it. Dont panic. Things will get better. Reporter for now, at least, that may be the best advice of all. Limu emu doug [ siren ] give me your hand i can save you. Lots of money with Liberty Mutual we customize your Car Insurance so you only pay for what you need only pay for what you need. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Pauley as youre about to see this morning, our mo rocca is on a roll. They buy it for me and put it on the shelves. I saw it, because if there was going to be a shortage, i was going to stock up, but i see someone beat me to the punch. Reporter yes, it hap