Down to 0. Hi im Steve Clemons and i have a question as coronavirus challenges society and spreads across america whats the domino effect of keeping millions of students at home lets get to the bottom line. Across the u. S. So far about 5000 cases of coronavirus have been recorded and restrictions are going into effect one of the biggest decisions has been shutting down schools from coast to coast people more than happy to do what it takes to protect themselves and their families but no one knows how the School Shutdown will affect this generation of students and their parents what happens if the School Closures go beyond a few weeks does the entire term get written off what happens if it least one parent cant stay at home with the kids what happens to folks who depend on the free lunches and the breakfasts offered by the Public Schools and with all the talk about Distance Learning is america competent at scale to pull off such a feat so many questions today and fortunately were joined by people who have the answers or at least i hope they do from Atlanta Georgia dr marcus plush of the chief medical officer of the association of state and Territorial Health officials from vancouver canada mckinnon a Science Writer focused on natural disasters and a learning orosz as she calls herself the master of disaster and in washington d. C. Mark mcghee the founder of the 50 state campaign for achievement now a nonprofit Education Advocacy group but before we start take a look at the sign of the times normally the studio would be bustling with all of our distinguished guests but now that were in a time of coronavirus our shows are virtual and i appreciate my panel for going through this with us today in a new venture thank you all for being with us i want to start with you dr plesch i know that youre in atlanta and that you interact you know much more frequent basis with the center for Disease Control than i do what is the latest how would you describe the dashboard of coronavirus and the social impacts today. Well the concern today is that we are continuing to see increases in cases of coronavirus across the United States and what Everybody Knows has happened in the last couple days is weve moved to this approach called Community Mitigation and thats social distancing thats what were all talking about thats were going to be talking about on the on the show this morning. Thats really about trying to find ways to keep people from coming into contact with each other this is an Infectious Disease thats thats passed from person to person and we need to we need to shut that passage down we need to find ways to really slow the increase in the number of cases that were seeing and thats thats what all the focus is on now thats what the federal government is putting out guidance on and and i work with state Public Health departments and were seeing an increasing number of states now taking measures to try to keep their population safe and try to get people to do that social distancing how behind the curve were we on this you know when you look at issues like testing and you look at what south korea has achieved you know with was upwards of about 300000 test china upwards of 100 few 100000 more than that and that testing seems to be such a key piece of responding to this challenge where are we right now we hear about 2000000 tests coming online or test kits coming online do you find i mean are you confident right now as we look at this that were solving that part of the problem. Yeah i mean we have we have enough tests right now to begin to test people who need to be tested i think one of things thats very important for the public to understand is not Everybody Needs to be tested where were focused right now on Testing Health care workers and Emergency Responders were focused on testing people who are at high risk to have severe illness those are people who are older than 60 those are people who have Underlying Health conditions and then were testing anybody whos doctor feels they really need to be tested but most people outside of those at high risk are not at risk for a severe illness from this right now and whether theyre tested or not is not as important whats important right now is the social distancing and im looking forward to talk a little more about how we make that happen well i mean let me lets get into that and let me bring in mark for a moment to also address the fact that whats happening with our nations schools mark i know that you have been focused in your career and work on trying to make sure that kids have an equal chance at school that we have quality education for all students and as we look at whats happening in new york whats happening in texas whats happening in california here in washington d. C. We see lots of students going out and being told were going to have Home Learning were going to have Distance Learning were going to distance education but we all know that thats an uneven Playing Field and so id love to hear your concerns and guidance about the stay at home for kids challenge you know well you know our focus has been how do we make schools work better for kids and now were in a situation where or 3 out of 4 kids in america 37000000 out of 50000000 this week they dont have a school to go to 37 states out of 50 have completely shut down their Public Education system and so were in a situation where ideas around Home Learning on line education that might have taken months or years to put in place schools are now trying to put that in place in a matter of days. And when you look at that i mean i just ask you i mean i was asking this question about whether america could pull off such a feat at scale just moments ago i can tell just in the tone of your voice a great degree of doubt it is a very challenging time in education in america and were having to tackle hierarchy of needs so yes we want to figure out how to get learning you know we want to make sure the kids dont lose a full half year of education but we also need to worry about how kids are going to get fed so many kids in america who count on the meals that schools provide we dont have that infrastructure and how were going to keep kids safe theres so many kids who need that safe protective environment of school and if parents have to leave the home are they leaving the home and leaving the kids there alone you know. Youve been a early adopter an early teacher if you will on Online Education ive just read the 10 points that you recommend to people and how to make it work how to make it a fulfilling engaging experience and i have to admit that i know people from from you know kindergarten now through universities that are all of a sudden having to do what mark just said and find a way through Education Online which are new habits and there are lots of doubts about it but tell us what your Early Experiences have shown you about what society can do to make this challenge easier than it would otherwise be. Theres a huge difference between doing Remote Learning with advanced planning and what were facing now which is this reaction to a catastrophe there is on all types of disasters if you can think about it and plan and prepare in advance youre always going to have an easier time thats everything from having your bookshelves attached to the walls for an earthquake through to having a bit of a flexible learning plan for your classroom everywhere that doesnt have it is having to slam their classes up online as quickly as possible and that means that youre not trying to replicate that teaching experience youre just trying to get through it has to be a very different set of expectations is not about can we make a perfect learning environment perfect is the enemy of good on this one we just need something functional for my classes even though they happen to be very well suited to be going online im still reducing my expectations for my students for the next week at least while we go into this transition i know a lot of them are not necessarily they didnt sign up to be taking an online class so they dont necessarily have the technology or the Internet Access at home i actually ran a survey of my students to find out how many even had desktop or Laptop Computers versus how many are going to be accessing all of our Course Materials on their cell phones and some who dont even have that sort of access and mobility to being able to continue their education but what is the answer there i mean i think you know one of things i was in ohio recently in ohio the state of ohio for instance has about 20 percent of its students do not have regular Broadband Access at home a big part of appalachia is there when you look across the country you know depending on your zip code again it comes down to zip code you have very Different Levels of access to to broadband into internet to make this real and so im wondering whether this notion of going online this is far down the road as we have or whether we end up with at least for the time being an incredibly unfair and very uneven educational experience for 4 children. One of the 1st things we can do is go away from this idea of having synchronous education of everybody in class at the same time and move it to being a synchronous so if ringback youre providing say a video to go along with your Course Materials instead of Live Streaming that video which runs into problems if you have Older Technology or you have a more unreliable Internet Connection or even if your household just has a lot of logistical challenges that are making it difficult to keep to a very strict and regular schedule if you instead move asynchronously you record those videos you make them shorter so you do a series of 5 minute videos instead of an hour long video then that just by itself makes it a little bit easier to be able to say set all the videos to download overnight its also you know when i think that a great is going on going to be a one size fits all well thats a good thing yeah i think that maybe because really right about this i mean we we have to realize this is not going to be a seamless response no parts of it the medical and Public Health part has certainly not been seamless and its not going to be Going Forward and some of these other pieces were just going to have to figure it out as we go along and i think we can do that i think we were a very creative and Ingenious Society of people and were going to figure out a way to get through this dr pleshette youve been somewhat i would say critical but raising questions that i found fascinating about whether the steps were taking on closing schools actually solves the problem whether this increases social stress and tension and that the efforts now to deep clean schools are you know i think to use your words you know sort of wrongheaded at the moment it sort of hits the wrong priorities and id love to have to understand how you think we should be taking this challenge as opposed to just bandwagon a little shut down the schools what would you say is perhaps given what the science is a more appropriate response for the times. Well you know 1st of all it is really disruptive to shut down the schools and thats what were here talking about this morning is how to how to deal with that how to deal with the educational pieces but im very concerned about the disparities were creating and also about the access to basic things like food is as mark said earlier many kids get their meals at school you know what i think we did in the end i think we did the right thing in the places where were starting to see the schools closed the question is can we close them for a little while try to get a sense of how well were controlling this this outbreak right and then maybe we can get to a place where we can open them back up and we can open them back up doing some of the social distancing types of things but i dont know how long thats going to take i mean 2 weeks thats a little optimistic. Mark what are you hearing now from. You know so i think its really important be listening to parents right now because we havent planned this were rolling it out it has huge effects that we need to better understand for example getting food to parents a lot of cities like atlanta have created spaces around the city where parents can go and pick up food but i talked to a mom who said she doesnt have a way to get to those places she cant access the transportation she cant get in a car so how are we going to track what the implications of this are we have kids coming home from you know different schools and parents are saying one kid came home with 4 weeks of perfectly spaced out work and one kid came home with nothing and so these huge inequities that were starting to see emerge and we need to creatively problem solve around those and were seeing some Companies Step up and say will provide Free Internet weve seen districts like Loudoun County and virginia that just made an emergency order for 15000 chrome books to ship those off to parents and we really need to approach it with this attitude of constantly listening to parents and solving problems you are about to commit. I had so this idea of wait and see about reopening the schools theres a problem with having too much uncertainty with my students i work with a University Age students one of the things that they needed was to know what to make plans for final exams and thats a month away for my particular university but making the decision of you know what were staying closed no matter what happens next allows everybody to prepare to plan to be able to figure out where do i need to be and what technology do i need access to in order to succeed in this class as that is. Yes we need to be flexible along the way but we also have to make some decisions instead of delaying them in delaying them in delaying them and say 2 more weeks out of classes 2 more weeks 2 more weeks 2 more weeks because the more time we give people to plan and prepare the better this is going to be executed. I think thats exactly right and uncertainty right now for teachers and parents is really typical if we dont think schools can actually open in 2 weeks then we need to say that and we need to start planning for the longer term and that its starting to feel like across states that this is not going to be a problem that goes away in a couple weeks its going to be months of disruptions per School System im interested in all 3 of you but me has something i will describe you because i cant show it to you online right now but its a its a hand written hand drawn. Sign that basically says to her neighbors and folks in her community do you need a pandemic power and its as if youre high risk in limiting outdoor exposure we can help we have grocery does livery dog walking medical pick up were low risk and work from home with a big heart for me im interested in how this is being taken up and im interested in the creative side because theres a lot of talk about people pulling away from each other social distancing but we are communities and im interested in the guard the the unusual the innovative things that people are doing to hold society together and this is one of them ive seen what are you seeing out there whats the response been. Theres a huge difference between social distancing and social isolation one of the common factors in disasters is how well a community recovers has to do with this Community Resilience if you think about all the good times youve ever had with your neighbors if youve thrown block parties if you have a neighborhood mailing list and are all on the next door app together if you go out to the volunteer firefighters picnic and have a giant fundraising festival each year all of these things are like adding piggy banks into our coins into a piggy bank of good will and then when you have a major social disruption some sort of disaster coming through our hurricane an earthquake a pandemic you can smash that piggy back open and the have all that goodwill to spend out and that trust and social connection that youve built up right now were not in a situation where we can have a party because were trying to have the social distancing but i wanted to make sure to reach out to my neighbors to the people who are geographically close to me and see if theres anybody who needs extra assistance it is easier to offer help than it is to ask for help i did this on my Community Social media group but i also know the highest risk populations are also those who are least likely to have secure access to technology the elderly are not necessarily all online all of the time the older you are the less likely you are to have connections into the Community Facebook group or anything like that if youre poor and the have less access to extra resources youre not going to necessarily have a strong Internet Connection some of these things so i made a couple of handwritten notes and i pinned them up in the high traffic areas of my community and once i did it a few other people also joined in and said you know what this is something i can also offer which means we now have that backup resiliency if i get sick i can see. Im staying home im not doing this anymore but diane is going to step up and everybody who i was helping support shes now going to do and that we can have that we can all Work Together and we can all help each other out dr put think you dr plesch are very tricks of the trade from your arena i think back to epidemics that i that i know youve also. Been been near sars and other big reactions a society had deal with i know that the reaction now in the United States is larger in this particular case but what lessons came out of other experiences like sars when it comes to how society can Work Together what the Building Blocks of kind of knocking back the fear and uncertainty are. Well you know its challenging because i dont know that weve ever really faced anything quite like this we i dont know that weve faced this level of adversity in our country in our society because you know this is a new as we call it is Novel Coronavirus is new its not like the pandemic flu the pandemic flu is a form of influenza we we have experience dealing with that maybe with sars some of the some of the things are the same you know one thing that weve got to make sure that people do is is remain calm and i think what make it was just talking about it you know weve weve got to continue to be human and reach out and help each other out and we can do that while still practicing social distancing i mean theres lots of ways to do that you can check in with somebody on the phone you can talk to them through the window you know and weve got to look out for people who are you know who who are older or who may be at much greater risk of getting through this. You know though and you know we have to take faith in the fact that social distancing does work i mean we use this in the past in epidemics like sars and right pandemic influenza weve seen other countries use this so you know we will get through this and the other thing is we need to really make sure you know need be very very clear people who are at risk people who are sick or older than 60 we need to really be looking out for those people but everybody else needs to stay calm and realize the chances of having severe illness from coronavirus are very very low and i think we can keep that calmness will do much better dr question when are we going to know that this is peak. Well were what we do to manage. A situation like this once were really in it we start monitoring what were seeing in the Health Care System thats the thing we are the most concerned about is how many people are getting severely ill and requiring hospitalization and more intensive care and we can monitor that right now i mean we have we call that surveillance its not testing everybody its its testing very specific populations so we can get a sense of is this getting worse or is it Getting Better thats what were starting to watch now were going to see more severe cases going into the hospitals right now thats thats a given given that this is starting to ramp up but the question is will that start to level out where theres sort of a constant a constant number and then hopefully start to go back down when it starts to go back down that means were were in a very good place and thank you i think in the last couple of minutes here i want to ask each of you to talk to people out there that are in their homes with their children their suspect you know out of their schools you know what are the things that they should hear and think about about making this a more productive and constructive experience not one that counts against their lives but may give them opportunities that they might not otherwise have i love to hear from mark on this and id like to say to this isnt just happening in the United States this is happening all over the world where youve got now in france in england in you know places in asia of course you know complete systemic shutdowns of meeting places of schools of events and so a lot of people in the social distancing process are engaged in something and they are all spending time with children with Different Levels of access and Different Levels of resources so i just love the cab you talk to those people out there mark what what can help. So i think the most important thing to remember right now is that kids need structure so you dont need to make the perfect the enemy of the good we want to help create a safe and protective environment for kids at a time when they might be scared we want to figure out some ways where we can keep some learning going knowing that its not going to be perfect in the 1st couple of weeks and theres a social aspect to this too so kids are going to miss their teachers theyre going to miss their friends and so we need to think of some ways while respecting social distance that we can keep those connections going and then hopefully we can find some things in some Silver Linings here where were learning things about Online Learning were going to shift into these new ways that that maybe we can carry forward. Would let me let me get your snapshot of the so Perfect Timing because i was this a was a really nice things about this idea of having schedule is there are so many people right now who are stepping up and providing extra resources online for students and parents to access so you can do drawing a long live streams with a Childrens Book illustrator at 1 pm eastern time on mondays or theres an entire series of the scientists classroom events where you as a family can book in to say hey we want to talk to a biologist when are they going to be Live Streaming and that we can ask questions that theres things like Monterey Bay Aquarium theyve shut down to the public but they still to care for their animals so theyve got feeding times for the authors on their web cam at 103130 and 3 30 pm pacific every day and you can tune in to watch that and have that ready im out of it im going to try and still get that extra idea thank you dr push im going to give you the last word. Yeah well you know i am a physician im a Public Health guy so one thing i have to say is this is very important that if youre sick its very important to stay home that is probably the most important thing you can do stay home stay away from other people as well as you can thats going to be hard but the thing i want to say is and i think this is consistent with what were talking about right now you know were all in this together were doing everything we can in the Public Health system to beat this thing down the medical system is ready to act to take care of people who get sick but were all in this together now i mean this people have to take the social distancing thing seriously thats how were going to really get through this thats where how were going to really mitigate the the potential bad consequences that can come from this well thank you for that i want to thank you all for what youre doing and thank you for being with us today from Atlanta GeorgiaPublic Health expert dr marcus pleasure and from vancouver canada Science Writer check out our movies Mika Mackinnon and in washington d. C. Education at education advocate mark mcghee thank you all so much for being with us today thank you so whats the bottom line everyone is hoping for the best the kids will be ok parents will be ok grandparents will be ok the food will always be on the table but there are major challenges ahead its easy to say that American Students can get their Education Online but look at the debacle of rolling out coronavirus test kids doing anything at huge scale is political and often problematic and there are real victims from government incompetence out there today the bright side is that communities are banding together and social innovators are coming up with creative ways to help us with our well being there is hope and thats the bottom line. Odd. Little. Frank assessments the one thing about these bushfires usage really wiping out the. Climate churn informed opinions economy i think is actually whats keeping donald trump afloat right now critical debate sequel on those through School Improvement the work of lawyers on a boat beside him and his astonishingly patronize a indepth analysis of the days headlines this is the beginning of a new iraq of a new conscious and aware views about still against an ethnic sectarian culture the inside story on aljazeera. Young women with a passion for the space i used to dream about working in a dusty will come of it you know like not sound and i saw that as a small step of the science a giant leap for womankind in kind of astonished me if i dont place it inside and at the scheduled time the satellite could be sent into space women make science kind of stunt space school at the so 5 on aljazeera. Women programming for an International Film made hands. Out just to rest sets the stage digitally to appear will be the life of the lives a life in the ninetys dead everybody is there global expats you get it were going to let the planet go to ruin because were not doing obvious things open your eyes to an alternative view of the world today on aljazeera. The on. This is aljazeera. Hello im still rahman and this is the aljazeera news our live from our headquarters here in doha coming up in the next 60 minutes corona virus infections worldwide exceed 200000 and more people have now died in europe than china also the u. S. And canada agreed to partially close that border President Trump says trade wont be affected. Also chile declares a pandemic state of emergency allowing soldiers to patrol the streets to limit public gatherings