A slogan that one of the problems of course. Counting the cost on aljazeera. Hi im Steve Clements and i have a question is the coronavirus morphing from a Public Health epidemic into a full blown social and financial pandemic lets get to the bottom line. Around the world factories have gone off line schools have been suspended and entire cities have been locked down in italy the entire country is now under quarantine and in america critics of President Donald Trump say his administration has been slow to deal with the outbreak and focused on dealing with a Health Crisis as a Public Relations battle more recently however and with 700 cases of Coronavirus Infection in the u. S. The administration has shifted to high gear in fact in the past few days the government set aside more than 8000000000. 00 in emergency funding and started to talk about an economic stimulus package so where is the fear of the unknown taking us now fortunately we have people around the country who have the answers with me here in washington d. C. Our dr ali khan a former u. S. Assistant Surgeon General who led the centers for Disease Control office of Public Health preparedness and response claudius saw many economists with the Washington Center for equitable growth who has worked at the Federal Reserve board and also the u. S. President s council of economic advisors and in boston we have john gruber an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of technology and a former president of the American Society of Health Economists and in denver we have a very full boat today Kathleen Tierney a professor of sociology at the university of colorado and author of a must read book disasters a sociological approach its so good to have you all with us dr come in we start with you for a minute can you give us a quick snapshot of what the benchmarks on this Health Crisis is from a Health Dimension absolutely so in the midst of a pandemic 10120000 cases worldwide over 100 countries 4000 deaths the majority of cases have been in china 80000 cases they seem to have been able to push back from 5000 cases a day down to 20. Currently however this were seeing flare ups in places like italy south korea and iran right now so between those 4 countries that conference 97 percent of all cases worldwide so all of this is happening about 13 weeks what is the next 13 weeks likely to look like wish i had that crystal ball i would not be in the market right now so my expectation is that my hope is that many countries will follow the model china and south korea has were now seeing the u. S. Ramp up its Public Health measures but we cant exclude the fact that this is going to ping pong across the u. S. I mean china now is reporting cases returning back to their own country with our other guests i want to get to this question of where the right equilibrium point is but i want to read something that is already shut down many of our schools crashed our stock market increased social conflict and seen a phobia reshuffled our my migration patterns and its working to contain us in homogenous spaces where it can keep spreading and so i just want to put that out there thats a fascinating way to look at what the pandemic is it takes it out of just the health and biological dimension and john i want you i know youve been thinking a little bit about both the economics of this but how we are to kind of encapsulate the question of what this virus is doing and how to respond to it how much of this pandemic is social and economic as opposed to just a Health Problem to contain. I think its become a huge social and economic issue and i think we need to respond aggressively much more across alou been doing both in the short term in the long term i think in the short term we need. To respond by things like a will guarantee in sick pay for workers you cant come to work massively investing in our Public Health infrastructure look the basic view is that it seems likely that many of us will get this virus the issue is going to be how soon we get it and how overwhelmed our Public Health infrastructure becomes the key is to then work jointly to both spread out the distribution the virus to slow it spread so our Health Infrastructure and get overwhelmed but also to massively invest our Health Infrastructures workers in health care in the Health Care Sector and to get paid more to compensate them for the risk theyre taking we to massively invest in testing in treating opportunities and in the long run we to use this situation to recognize that we invest much too little in Public Health in the us in Vaccine Development etc john youve argued that our pharmaceutical companies are not incentivized in the line to respond to something that is emerge like the corona virus what do you mean by that when i mean thats the following if youre Pharmaceutical Company you have investors you need to please and the highest rate of return right now is inventing a new cancer drug will keep people lie for one more week that you can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars not a vaccine which will which may or may not matter and which you cant sell very much and so right we need to recognise the private sector is under investing in the development of drugs like that seems its a well known problem and we need the Public Sector to lead in helping to implement structures both rewards for the private sector as well as Public Investment in r. And d. To actually allow the creation of drugs that are important for Public Health. Do you think that the number of victims that were going to have are those that become infected with the coronavirus is going to be fairly contained weve seen some estimates that look at 20 to 40 percent of the global population eventually becoming infected with a crown of ice i think theres a very different sense of scale when i get to the question of what level of panic we should be seeing i mean do those numbers and do those models that modeling matter john. And matters enormously and its very important and we need to recognize the uncertainty i mean its amazing how much the stock market is crash based on 700 cases but its all about the uncertainty its all about these tail outcomes and that uncertainty is all about the fact that if it spreads rapidly may have to shut down a few sectors of the economy and we need to recognize that the federal government needs to respond in a major way President Trump talked about stimulus some of what he said made a lot of sense like providing sick leave pay for workers who can come to work some make no sense like a payroll tax cut that doesnt really do want to go when people cant work we really need to think about more pressing responses like overtime pay for Health Care Workers and massive investments in Public Health but i want to get to the 2nd amik side with quality and Kathleen Claudia how do you look at the financial and economic dimensions of this pathogen and in are we framing this correctly to sort of look at this is something that has a behavior and a set of consequences that are for larger in a way than just our Health Problems so i think thats absolutely the case right now i mean this is primary and this is an illness this is about Public Health but this is now about the economy and not just about the economy overall its about these individuals who get ill the ones who have to stay home to take care of their kids and everybody else that doesnt know whats coming like right now we dont know whos going to get ill we dont know whos going to die we know that this illness is coming we have something of an advantage in this did not start in the United States we have seen what this looks like in terms of the health weve seen it only shut the entire country down they give Something Like that happens United States even if its local its even if its what we are feeling United States we are seeing entire schools being shut down we see essentially the city of seattle shutting itself down you see lots of Economic Activity being suspended meetings and flying its been suspended so you know and again this is just after 13 weeks and most of what i just described in the last 2 weeks. So it raises the question of how what will the next month look like what will the next weeks look like so unless policymakers act and act now and act big this this is a recession and before the end of the year i mean the United States is fundamentally not in a place where they can have massive shutdowns people not being able to go to work the sad reality in our country is that there are millions and millions of households that have no financial buffer 25 percent of u. S. Households do not have 400. 00 in accessible assets at any point in time were not you know there are some call ready there they just make it right so there and theres an even larger number of households that they are one paycheck even cut hours away from serious financial distress and thats and we dont have a safety net we dont right now have the kind of paid sick leave the family leave and whats going to happen is that people arent going to go get the medical care because if they go in and they test positive theyre going to be put in quarantine theyre going to be told you cant go to work and they need to go to work that they cant lose their jobs theyve got to feed their kids and so this is where the dynamic becomes very ugly and once it gets going and people are afraid right now and theyre pulling back this is how we take an economy that is an amazing decade long branch and turn it into a very sad situation i would extend that i would extend that so i its and i think youre spot on that people can afford to be in quarantine but i would extend that to say can they afford to get health care what about all the people in the United States who dont have health care and id rather they take care of that you know expand medicare for example for everybody during the course of the epidemic or every state that had are there any longer were able like that right now im not im aware but that i think thats what we need to do because if somebody sick i dont want him or her to think you know what im going to sort of hang out at home and infect other people at home and in my neighborhood i want to been a hospital right and i think you know we are going to have these other side. I want to jump in here and. You know really emphasize the importance of whats being said this disease this pandemic is really. It is laying bare. Many of the issues we have in this country around social inequality and the great gulf that exists between the people who are doing well and the people who are living paycheck to paycheck the people who are in the gig economy the people who absolutely have to show up for work they have to get paid because they have to pay the rent and feed their kids and the policy response is being suggested here the policy response really needs to be one that takes into account these great disparities that we have in this country with respect to things like Insurance Coverage and access to health care and peoples day to day circumstances as they struggle in this economy when i listen to the president of the United States just a week and a half ago say there are 15 cases in the United States and maybe theyll go down to 0 and maybe the one sick person its such a staggering different picture today then we heard from the president that i have to tell you that i sort of understand why people would be panicking but how should we think about panic when it comes to these people that youve just said are going to be incredible victims of this. Well sociologists really hate the word panic because of the images that it conjures up of sort of herd like an irrational behavior and you know we dont really think about behavior under conditions of uncertainty that way we think of people doing the best they can trying to be responsible trying to protect their families people are going out and buying things and thats referred to as panic well actually people have been told to prepare right theyve been told to think about what might happen if they have to. Stay in their homes and engage in social distancing. We see on the media from various media sources even from different sources in the administration different messages coming out is that any wonder that people are confused is it any wonder that people. Want to engage in better safe than sorry behavior. Were hearing all kinds of different messages from this is the common cold to. You know this is deadly and youre going to die from it if you get it and so under these under these kinds of conditions people engage in various sorts of behavior including intensified information seeking. Talking to people in their social networks going online to find out information and going out under a precautionary principle to try to get supplies for themselves and maybe their friends and neighbors and family as well john you were going to make a comment but im also interested in whether or not kathleens framing of the social network and other sort of implicit strengths in our system are enough buffer for this and we saw in the Financial Markets just this week certain mechanisms kind of clicked in to kind of keep panic from taking over but this reminds me a lot of the financial crisis and yet i dont see the response there so im just wondering how bad can things get. Well things can get really bad and much like the financial crisis who responded too late and too little i think the key thing is that we need to recognize this is different the financial crisis financial crisis was a demand side based crisis this is a supply side and it means like crisis is supply side crisis because how do you produce goods when half your workers arent coming to work and its a demand side crisis because people cant buy goods if theyre getting their paycheck thats why we need to do 2 things one is for the workers in not essential industries who are going to have to stay home we have to make sure they have comprehensive sick leave paid for by the federal government so companies that have to go bankrupt on a short term basis and for workers in essential industries of particular health care we need to pay them more we to reward them for actually taking the risk of going to work if youre a Health Care Worker right now maybe youd rather stay home than take the risk we need to reward the risk theyre taking and we to invest in building the Health Care Infrastructure we need to handle the crisis thats coming you know when you think about supply chains and you think about the stress in the Financial Markets but also the production markets in the health care so many of the active ingredients in the u. S. Pharmaceutical industry are based in china i guess the big question just comes to mind is is globalization as weve known it over its africa. So youre asking the physician as opposed to the economists what im going to get on with the over the job. I think what i do and why around the world are youve done so globalization is not over the exchange of ideas will always occur and we will always want to visit different parts of the world and supply i dont think what i do know though is we will be rethinking supply chains for clear Critical Materials body. Parts will be thinking supply chains for Critical Materials right im not sure i want all of my mask production in one country may i want it in 4 countries right stead same thing for the redundancies active promise to tickle you know they did pharmaceutical and greedy and said my drugs i dont think i want that all tied up in one crazy anymore ill ask you the same question is is globalization as we knew it done no its not i do better now that it can be done for you the same thing that if you dont know why it was you know were rightly talking a lot about how this time is different like their own virus what this means frankly this time is not that different when you think about the Economic Impact the tailspin that we could go into every recession has a different cause even to any financial contraction has a different cause we saw with the japanese earthquake there were disruptions of supply chains thats less than you know a decade ago and so we understood then theyd just in time and this causes problems but we got through it its not like this disruption is going to have people take all of their production domestically this is not going to happen but i do think one thing thats really important is that john of them talked about is a supply is this demand i think at this point on some level Like Fighting a back against a recession really doesnt matter right and we know you see this recession is definitely coming no i we do not have to have a recession and if we end up in one before the end of this year or early next year it is our fault it is policy makers fault for not responding right. Now because we have we have the notice we can do this and i think to bring it back to the recession we have all the tools like the so many different tools were brought out in the Great Recession whether its giving money to households whether its giving it to state and local governments we have all of these tools we have research and evidence on what works and what doesnt we should be talking about a payroll tax cut today that was the least effective of the stimulus to households we have legislation already drafted so it is not about the economics we know how to fight a recession we need we know how to get people to come that we just got half a point about the good worker about the truck driver about people who you know patched together you know different jobs to sort of make it work i just wonder you know to the women single head of household with children who go off to daycare that now cant take them to daycare theyre all these sort of unseen ripple effects that i just wonder about she makes a very strong point i mean do you think that the measures that were talking about will even touch those phones so i think we have to try many different angles one of the proposals i had that i think would be really good right out of the start would be to get 500. 00 to every man woman and child in the country the problem one of the issues i have when you talk about a payroll tax cut or a chance to temporary change in withholdings to boost paychecks that could happen pretty fast but you have to have people inside of the tax system and so whats complicated is it actually is really hard for the federal government to put 500 dollars in everybodys pocket but i think thats where i think right now you need a very targeted you need to help healthcare workers you need to get hospital beds ready but you also just need to help everybody so to your point they have enough money to even go to the doctor and get checked so i think theres we know what to do about the pain so we so we talk about the economy here we know what to do from a Public Health standpoint we know what those measures are we know what china has done we know what south korea has done we can do the same thing john but i think you know if you have that this is kathleen i think its the same thats coming out here is the same about prompt action and the need for solutions to be. Rolled out as quickly as possible whether were talking about containing the spread of coronavirus or were talking about containing the ripple effects through our economy there needs to be leadership and Decisive Action and in this political context im worried that that isnt going to happen and john yeah i agree a recession is a recession we prompt action but theres also a saying dont let a good crisis go to waste and we have to recognize that this highlights fundamental problems with our economy when it comes to Public Health preparedness in dealing with the long run solutions these problems for example the fact that 90 percent of the inputs to go into our Generic Drug Development come from other countries we need to recognize that were still going to globalize we do recognize we may want more Domestic Production of active pharmaceutical agreements the fact that we dont invest in Development New facts scenes so were not prepared for the next and we need more publicly let investment that area so i agree we need important responses we also need to be using this an opportunity to think about our long run preparedness in our in our last couple of minutes here i want to ask each of you youve each put on the table interesting things that we should that americans should be doing or to respond to this crisis i just want to flex our global audience that this kind of drama is playing out all over the world right now and many hard choices are being met and i think being made and many people are feeling you know very directly the cause the you know suffering from the coronavirus spreading whats going on id like to ask you if you think about the policy initiatives you put on the table that is that important as a storyteller as someone who writes as a journalist im interested in who the villains are that will keep you from getting where you think America Needs to go and who the heroes could be but just real short form kathleen the heroes in this scenario are 1st of all the Health Care Workers. The Public Health institutions. Health departments local government. That are close to the problems and and that can act in a timely way i think that. I dont want to talk about villains but i would say that this is not the time for certain groups within congress to say that they dont want to spend money on something. That that spending is unnecessary. I think that that the Coronavirus Task force right needs to really get out in front and get ahead of this this problem. Timely action again as i said is needed and we need to be thinking about the unanticipated consequences of some of the actions that we might take if you dont mitigate those yeah i mean i think the good guys are exactly kathleen laid out our Health Care Workers the people nursing home or person particular who are making the sacrifices every day to kill for these care for these foldable populations the bad guys are the people who might exploit this situation to do things which are related like a payroll tax cut much like the Bush Administration exploited 911. 00 to force through a bunch of tax cuts we didnt need and didnt really help the economy i think we need to use an opportunity to do the right thing moving forward as excuse to do the wrong thing thank you claudia so i think the heroes here are going to be the American People that figure out a way to get through this i mean we are creative were scrappy as we talked about a lot of people dont have a lot right now to make ends meet let alone when theyre sick so we need the health care but we also need people to you know get through this health wise i mean that that said that thats what i you know hanging their hat on here in terms of villains i guess even a step back from that agency of policymakers and i mean all policymakers dont step up and do something and really fight back and in a credible ways of that they can tell their constituents we have got your back and we will keep working until we have done enough to get us through this if that doesnt happen that i dont have and i can sense a venue right now that you dont think thats happening it hasnt happened yet but we can still do the. This like we have time time the sooner we get it done and the bigger we go at it were not going to be talking about villains are going to be talking about oh yeah there is this corona virus and the next thing is come dr ali khan im going to give you the last word the villains the virus ok what were trying to do is protect our parents and grandparents who are risk of dying from this disease and im going to go with claudia we have the opportunity each and every one of us to be the hero of our own story in terms of our own personal protection actions what we do for our society to put this devil virus back in the box china came back from 5000 cases a day to 20 if they can do it americans can do it this was an important conversation im very grateful to all of you id like to thank you all for being with us in boston mit economist john gruber in Denver University of colorado sociologist kathleen tyranny and here in washington d. C. Former u. S. Assistant Surgeon General dr ali khan and economist claudio thank you all very much for being with us today so whats the bottom line the Novel Coronavirus is tricky the un even this of its physical attack on your friends your coworkers your family and on you makes this a high fear pandemic where the winners and losers are just uncertain and its making our society our schools our businesses our vacations and our weddings freeze up in crisis as kathleen said even in times of panic people dont abandon one another they band together they ultimately create order out of chaos and fear and everyone agrees that no crisis should go to waste and that we should take this opportunity to shore up americas social contract and support those in need across the board these are sensible suggestions but theres no Straight Path through this Current Crisis which is world wide and thats the bottom line. Perception is validation we believe want to be seen but in one lifetime we cannot see everything that we would lie if experiences of others and the legacies of previous generations. Ahead testimony we let you know very little. With this documentaries that open your eyes. Just 0. With a plummeting birthrate and families moving to the cities south koreas rule schools are shutting down one on one east meets the grandmas who is saving these schools while finally getting an education on aljazeera. The un published the most comprehensive study of life on. They found 1000000 species face extinction thats more than 12 percent of known life on. One truck to destroy the much Oil Infrastructure of which all world had the report identifies the 5 main drivers of this ecological crisis 1st the way we use and abuse all politics was always says 75 percent of the lad and to a Marine Environment have been severely altered by human activity exploitation a species true over fishing and hunting Climate Change caused by a Greenhouse Gas emissions pollution and finally the house a creek told local ecosystems by invasive species. The reports authors say the decline can be slowed even stopped in some cases but to do that we must transform our relationship with. The. This is al jazeera. Santa maria and this is the news hour from al jazeera desperate times and drastic measures european leaders of unveil their plans to tackle the devastating impact of the corona Virus Outbreak but the contagion continues to spread on wall street the markets are still nervous about the outbreak in the u. S. In other news a teenage protester was killed after Israeli Forces on the tear gas and live fire to disperse palestinians fending off illegal settlers in the occupied west bank. Its a comeback