Saw a briefing yesterday by the White House Task force and a number of news outlets have reported a ramping up, this turn from the president. What did you hear in terms of extra measures that came out of the briefing that caught your ear . Host many countries have been aggressively getting guest many countries have been aggressively doing social distancing. The u. S. Has been very slow to that. Particularly the federal government has not been urging it. Just two days ago for the first time cdc recommended that there should be no gatherings of 50 people or more, which is way too many. The president yesterday said that we should try to avoid gatherings of 10 people or more. Thats probably too many also. But this indicates to me that we are in whole new territory. I have been working on and globaldiseases health through my life and i have never seen anything like this and i think americans should expect in the coming weeks to have extraordinarily strict measures of social distancing. Even before this disease, when you look at what the federal government could do, based on the fact that we are 50 states and all of them have their own Health Protocols and challenges,re the the roadblocks for the federal government acting . Guest its actually a really good question. We often think the president is thatowerful and it is true with International Travel bans he has extraordinarily broad powers. , its the the country states, the cities and the that have the primary what we call police power. The president s power is quite narrow. To protect the people coming into the country and prevent state to state transmission. But it is actually quite a limited and narrow power. The this gets into argument of executive power versus other powers in the federal government. Clearly that is happening now with the congress trying to pass what are not Emergency Health measures but eight measures. Thats right, yeah. There are two things. One, even apart from the constitution, the president has the legislative powers that are delegated to him to be able to kind of shut down or lockdowns something with an estate. Its very unlikely constitutionally problematic. That, the president has been pretty much a bystander in a lot of whats going on with the coronavirus because congress is the one that did the emergency aid package and now Families First act. Yesterdays briefing, the latest one, the new guidelines , they aretalked about hampered, these are really just recommendations. Theres no enforcement mechanism. Guest no, theres no enforcement mechanism. Tonys hinted, and even fauci, who has been an absolute national treasure, this idea that the federal government could order a lockdown. But its unlikely that would because of constitutional reasons. I think we are likely to just see it as a recommendation by the government. Host our guest, Lawrence Gostin , director of the institute of national and Global Health at Georgetown University law center. The lines are regional, 202 7488000 four folks in the eastern town zone time zones. 202 7488002 for set for mountain and pacific. Cspan0 eastern, live on and on cspan radio, if you look worldwide it but other nations are doing or have implemented so far anyway, who is doing a good job . Guest it depends on what you mean by good job. If you mean just controlling the virus, one would have to include china, but there were many Human Rights Concerns in china. But there were big democracies that have done a very good job. Places like south korea for example have managed to really bring the epidemic well down. Guest what are they doing right . Host what they are doing right host what are they doing right . Sadly america is right behind the curve, way behind, the drivethrough testing. Going to homes and communities, a better handle on that. They did very aggressive social separation. Closing of public spaces, public gatherings. Restaurants, things like that. We have been, we are still way behind the curve on testing. And america has been way beyond the curve on being aggressive with social distancing. A large lack of consistency in the United States about social distancing. Host i may be giving away my age here and i remember being a kid, that i seen i cant remember at the time, polio . They said show up at the Elementary School and you were given a shirt. Everyone in the neighborhood, the town, everybody showed up. Guest exactly. Attitude, how, is the among americans different, say, then it was back then in terms of the federal government implementing the program . How receptive you think americans are to a nationally instituted vaccine or whatever program, a Health Effort that the government made . Host when week guest when we get a vaccine, and very sadly we probably wont see it for at least a year, maybe 18 months, i clamorhink people will for the vaccine, thats protective. The real question is whether americans are going to listen and just stay in their homes and not go out, not go to restaurants, ours, clubs, book clubs, all kinds of things that they want to do. That has yet to be seen. I think there is a lot of civic responsibility, but also we have to recapture the idea of the common good and when we go to our neighbors, we need to look in on them, particularly the vulnerable and the elderly. We need to come together. Maybe the biggest problem we have is a nation, and its sad to me see it unfold, the kind of divisiveness, social, demographic and political divisiveness that we have right now. If we cant all come together as americans in what is literally an Unprecedented Health crisis, it would make me very sad. We have calls waiting for you but i wanted to ask you at the stafford act and its implementation to empower fema, the federal Emergency Management agency to declare major and emergencies to coordinate national response. Only the president can declare a major disaster under the law. Could the stafford act be used, for example, to declare a National Health emergency . Guest actually, the president has already declared it. Under the stafford act. There have actually been three health emergencies, National Health emergencies that have been declared. One of the Public Health service act by the secretary for health and human services, alex a czar, andanother the stafford act the other the emergencies act. Living inwe are now uncharted territory. Three national emergencies. All 50 states have declared state emergencies. What does the stafford act give the president the flexibility to do . It creates surge funding, enables him to weigh technical wave Technical Rules and legal requirements around laboratories and testing. They can waive certain medicaid or medicare requirements. It gives a lot more flexibility and funding to the president. Host does it also clear people or protect them from liabilities . Yes, it can do, depending what the president decides. It does have those possibilities. Host focusing on the coronavirus epidemic pandemic, we go to lawrence. Myler thanks for taking call. You answered my original question earlier about the permission, the mandate from the government versus recommendations for going out. I was also curious, with the news organizations considering two things, doom and gloom cells so much, so they can over, not overreact but overly sensitize people or make them afraid of various things. Other side of the spectrum, where they say they are spreading false information, that can be a huge detriment. Is there a certain president where the government is able to penalize them for any kind of act like that . Guest thats a good question. The answer is probably not. But there are two really important points. The news is that all over the place. Not just the traditional media, but the social media. Facebook and other social media organizations, about how to get out accurate and evidencebased messages. But right now it is all over the place, the exaggeration, the underestimation. And theres all kinds of rumors floating out there about what might or might not be true. The truth is, if you want to know, you need to use reliable sources. Probably the most reliable source is the cdc website. Its highly evidencebased, i trust it. But the second point you make has to do with the press. We do have a First Amendment and freedom of the press. Theres very limited room for the president for governors to actually try to interfere with the press. Of course, they can try to take patently if they can, false information, but they need cooperation from the media outlet. Do still have across this country, television and radio outlets have the emergency system,otification which is tested on a regular basis. You are watching a cable system, a cable system, radio station, you hear them. When would something, could Something Like that be used in an emergency like this . Guest yes, it absolutely could. Wes intended for times when dont, that we want to literally just capture the whole countrys attention. It would be made on a highlevel decision. It could not be used as a routine way of informing people. Dan, bridgewater, new jersey, good morning. Caller as a physician im really outraged at the impact the president has had on how we roll out these procedures. Keep in mind that we have the experience of china, dubious as it might be, as they did misrepresent things from the beginning. We have the experience of south korea and a number of countries to go by. The issue was always testing. At theressional hearings end of last week, fauci was saying that the policy is as. Ollows testing is free if you feel symptomatic, you go to your doctor. If your doctor feels that you have suspicious symptoms, you can then go get tested. A week before fauci said that you can go almost a month asymptomatic shedding the virus, which is very possible and understandable. There is this contradiction with no sense of responsibility for it. Fauci is what, 87, now . Guest hes not that old. [laughter] caller the main thing, this process that you are not doing testing and thinking that a tested person is valuable only if you know when he was negative and when he turned positive. Guest yeah. I mean, certainly the rollout of testing in the United States was highly faulty, to put it mildly. On a per capita basis we have done far, far less testing them other countries have done, like south korea or china. Italy. So, we really are way behind the curve. In fact, sadly the major benefit of testing, the real sweet spot ofm an epidemiological point view would have been weeks ago. Yes, we want to get that number there has notut been an approved test. Our allies are using tests. The fact that we decided we were going to use our own tests that ended up faulty, there were bureaucratic mistakes. Theres no excuse for that. We should have done better. Lets try not to look back. Lets try now to really seek the virusunity to bring this and at least slow it down and get it under control. This from facebook host do you feel like the federal response was a month behind schedule . Guest it absolutely was. There were countries doing aggressive social distancing a long time ago. We saw this coming. The drip drip of what, first of all, every time there is a specific case here were there, thats not the point. We knew that there was largescale transmission many weeks ago. We should have been acting. And now for the first time yesterday i thought the president s tone was sufficiently somber in showing that we are facing a serious crisis. But gosh, we have been through this for many weeks and we really should have been much more aggressive. We really need to ramp up. Governor cuomo of new york saying that he was calling on the corps of engineers and was asked about joes comment in the debate the other night, that the military could play a role. Lets show that to you in a minute. What do you think the possible role of not just the National Guard but the u. S. Military could be . Very helpful, but not as a policing force. That would guest very helpful, but not as a policing force. That would be a very bad idea to see them out on the streets with weapons and, you know, making sure people dont leave or come out. That would be just wholly against american values. But could they help us to build hospitals . To getth logistics protective equipment to the right places . Get medicine to people in their homes . Absolutely. In fact one of the greatest things president obama did was send the military to liberia during the west african imola outbreak. It really turned things around. But it was all about the just six. The military is the best in the world on logistics and we should use them. Of president case trump, he has used the military in the past at the border, logistically. That requires only a president ial order, not congress . Yes, exactly. Host all right, here we go to peter guest but not on a partisan basis. Host i got it. Peter . New york. Your comment . Caller it appears that the federal governments are failing short. There could be a Silver Lining to this whole thing, the sense that this virus is serious, not killing millions of people very quickly. Why theunderstand federal government hasnt coordinated with State Government and had a contingency deal with theto situation. Hollywood has been making movies about pandemics for years. Its almost as if our government has their head in the sand and are shooting from the hip now trying to put together some type of a program to deal with this. We should already have a contingency plan. The cdc and other health organizations, why dont we do, allowed the American People to outsource all our to aaceutical products communist country . This is insanity. Host well get a response, peter. Thank you. Guest the government has been late, no question about it. And our vital Public Health agencies, state and local departments on the front line, the cdc have really been starved for funds. In his budgetp tried to cut them even further, though that never went through. Capacity ofealth the National Security council was stripped by the president. Thats all bad. But its not all bad. One should point out that the president did assemble through the Vice President a really worldclass Public Health task force. I know that most of the people on that task force are really good. We need to give the white house credit for that. And they also have been liaising with individual governors, National Governors associations and the mayors of this country. Government been and a wonderful leader . No. Steps theyve taken that we need to congratulate them for. We can ask you this question, see if the answer is changed at all could or should the government oppose a mass quarantine on an American City . At the can read that website. Guest my view is the same. As some of your viewers may know, San Francisco cordoned off parts of neighborhoods. My answer is no. In aggressive social distancing with strong recommendations. I dont think we want to see the same kinds of lockdowns that we saw in china. The United States is not china. The values of americans wouldnt tolerate that degree of social. Ontrol in surveillance people in china have apps on their phones that told the government where they were. There were citizen informers. Were not going to want an armed police or military on the streets guarding the borders. But i think we can get highly substantial performance with the American Public. I believe its like a social compact. We tell people to separate yourself for the good of humanity and in return the government will make sure that you get your food, your medicines, your health care, your sick pay. Up government needs to live to its part of the social bargain. Host its a very new thing for americans to separate themselves , they are used to gathering in bars and restaurants. Its unprecedented in the history of america. Perhaps the great flu pandemic of 1918. But nothing and over 100 years, none of us have ever seen anything like it. And its not going to get easier, its what you harder. Any lessons host from them that are applicable today question mark guest today . Guest things like School Closures involve social separation, affecting some of the evidence that we have now. The great influenza pandemic. But you know that swept through america and the world. Its possible that it could abate in the summer. Many of us are expecting that by june, july, august, it could abate. Unfortunately with the 1918 pandemic, it did come back into most people died in the second wave. Im not suggesting that would happen now, but the future is unknown. Lets go back. Host missouri, jim, welcome. Caller good morning. Lets see, one thing that i have heard is that in china, when they had people quarantined they actually isolated them instead of sending them home to infect the rest of their family. , china having had such a head start, i am sure that they are working on a vaccine. They have got a head start on us. Im sure germany, the rest of the world is doing the same thing. Will we again can insist on doing our own vaccine and ignore the rest of the world . Guest unlike scenes, the news is much better than it has been, thank you. There is a lot of Global Cooperation on the race for a , being, including china coordinated by the World Health Organization. But more than that the u. S. National institutes of health are second to none in the world in their technical capacity for vaccine development. We will be in the vanguard. I also know that tony fauci and others at nih, they are not going to just go it alone. They are working in partnership and in collaboration around the world. Solidarityt global around a vaccine is there. My only worry is that it may become in short supply. If so, will rich countries like the United States, germany, and others poured the vaccine and lethe vaccine others die in subsaharan countries, like africa. These are hard questions. Just happen when the virus gets embedded in places like syria, yemen, and other fragile states. We have got a lot of challenges ahead of us globally, not just nationally. Gostin, i have a question for you on text, text a question for you. Does the president have the power to order u. S. Cruise Ship Companies to make some of their vessels available for converging to hospital ships for converting to hospital ships . Last first of all, the place on earth i would want to ship. Al is on a cruise i dont know why people are going on. Ofhave seen lots transmission on cruise ships, so i would be deficient in terms of commandeering close down their support of domestic travel. Nathans next up from las vegas, nevada, go ahead. Good morning. A couple of points. The federal government should use powers in the first power like to see them used use this to clamp down on this corrupt media reporting and the whole affair. The swine flu killed 120,000 eight teenxcuse me, thousand people and 1000 people before obama even did anything. As far as other things go, 20 years ago i used to kid, the first thing i would do is board up all day care centers, all fast blow up all restaurants and burn down all Nursing Homes. That might sound like a pretty good idea right now. We have lost our way as far as how to do with our family. The median not reporting about the conditions in china and undernourished people, you know what, we will all be ok. We talked about the members in china yesterday. Total confirmed in china. There are a total of 85 deaths across the country. We have to keep our heads about this i think it is very unwise in america to call all media corrupt. Yes, are there in accuracies . Of course. We know that. It is a problem and we need to work on it. Can be aalists if they to a democracy are responsible. I do not want to see the or the citizens demeaning hardworking journalists. We do need to get more Accurate Information out there. Also burning down Nursing Homes and all of that, we do need to keep our heads. We can defeat the virus and do so in accordance with our constitutional values. We need to come together as americans and say ok, we share some values and we also share a common goal of our own health, safety, and security. Lets put our heads together, stop fighting, and focus entirely on a National Health crisis that has no precedent in the United States. Next up is dale in deer park, texas. Good morning. Caller good morning. Can you hear me . Host yes, we can. Caller i am calling about Civil Service workers that work for the federal judiciary. They pay into the retirement fund, and right now they are losing thousands of dollars because the stock market is going down, down, down. What people do not realize is, when they call in to stop that, they are told it would take two weeks to go into effect. In the meantime, they are losing thousands and thousands of more dollars. I would like to see the government take steps to stop that practice. I dont know how it works in the private sector, if they have that ability, the individuals to stop that if they are contributing some plan like that. That is about it. Somebody that retires in four or five years, when it becomes time for retirement, they find out that they lost thousands of dollars they were not even a part of. Host that is dale in texas. Lawrence gostin . Guest i am not a financial expert. Clearly we are in a health pandemic, but we are also in a economic pandemic. With the pain not just at the Civil Services are feeling, but what people are feeling all over the country is real and palpable. We need to have much more of an economic and social safety net than we do. And while the rich will probably be able to withstand this, the lower income working class, middle classes of america of americans are suffering, and there is just no denying it. Host we go back to your article about potential mass quarantine. You used the term what is that . Guest people in the United States colloquially, including the press, have been calling these things mass quarantines lockdowns. It is really not the technical correct term from a Public Health point. A quarantine is literally, i know you have been exposed to a dangerous infection and i quarantine you for a period of time of incubation, in this case 14 days. But when we are doing it en masse, it is a guarded area where nobody can leave. Host they did Something Like that in new york. In new rochelle, correct . Guest that is the problem because Governor Cuomo in articulately called it a lockdown, and the press really has been referring to it as a lockdown. It is actually not. It is actually School Closures, closures of banks, calling in the National Guard or the army corps of engineers to help with logistics. If you look at the headlines, you would think it was very direct county and and you might be very concerned come as i was. When you look at the details of what Governor Cuomo did, it was not only reasonable but host more broadly, you have experience with the World Health Organization the president yesterday talked about speaking with leaders of the g7, and this group with the g7 statement yesterday, weve leaders of the group of seven acknowledge that they pandemic is a human tragedy in Global Health crisis, which also poses major risks for the world economy. We are committed to doing whatever is necessary to ensure strong Global Response through closer cooperation and enhanced coop enhanced corporation. We remain committed to the stability of the global economy. We express our conviction that current challenges related to the covid19 pandemic be a strongly coordinated international approach based on science, evidence, and using the strengths of private enterprise. What is your appraisal of the international, the coordination that they use several times. Guest i am the director for the World Health Organization center on Global Health law. I work with them and i helped draft the g7 summit on Global Health. That statement is admirable. We do want mutual solidarity. We want Global Cooperation. Unfortunately, we have seen anything but. Everybody is closing their borders to everyone else. Each country is blaming each other. Even the Vice President called this the wuhan virus, the china, the foreign virus, as if it were a virus a virus is a virus, it does not belong to any country. Calling the influence of the spanish flu, it actually originated in the United States there is so we should not really be dividing as a global community. We should be uniting. Host what is the one concrete thing internationally that can be done . Guest one of the things, we should put our money where our mouth are and we should give financial support, not just now but in the future with the World Health Organization. We have been extraordinarily stingy with them. They have the budget about one quarter of the u. S. Cc, and they are responsible for the whole world. The who budget is less than a large hospital in america. Host we want to alert our cspan viewers and listeners. The World Health Organization we cover them as we can life if we are able, but certainly you can find them on our website. The website, cspan. Org coronavirus, all of the briefings we have covered in the past in conversations about the coronavirus are there. This is barbara in jensen beach, florida. Good morning. Caller good morning. My question is, can the virus be transmitted through the mail or fedex or any sort of organization . Guest it is a good question there there is so much we dont know about the virus, but let me tell you what we do know. It is not an aerosolized virus. It does not hang in the air like flu, but it is highly transmissible, and there are basically two routes that it can transmit. One is somebody sneezes on you and the droplets go on you. That is why we ask you to stay apart from everyone else. But the other reason is more common, that the droplets will go on a surface and you will touch the surface and then touch your face. That is the mechanism. That is why we are telling you to wash your hands, not touch your face. We do not know how long and on what surfaces the virus lasts. We are trying to find that information out. But lets say that you were going to get a fedex package or may be more pertinent, someone who is going to do a home food delivery, which a lot of us are doing now. I am telling my family, so i can tell the American Public i think it is ok to do that, but what you would do is have the delivery person leave it outside on your front step, and before you go get it, up, put the food on your plate, discard the packaging, and then wash your hands thoroughly before you eat. Without touching your face in between. That will keep you safe. Host good advice. We go to albert in lb on, maine. You are on the air. Go ahead. Caller kudos to cspan, the only objective network on the air today. The question i had not heard asked before, how specifically does all the testing really helped . Are we creating even a more bad situation by having everybody else trying to get tested when if you got it, you got it, you dont, you dont, and people are doing the same things anyway . Guest a lot of people will say that is not a good question. Actually, it is a very good question. The truth is that usually we do testing as a diagnostic tool. We want to know if you have a particular disease so we can treat the disease. In this case, we have no specific treatment for covid19. So until we do, we are just going to treat you symptomatically. Your clinician might want to rule out other things that might be useful, but the value of testing from a clinical point of view is it gives the doctor more information, it gives the patient more comfort. There is no value in the public there is more value in the Public Health side. If you are positive, we can isolate you, we can do contact testing to see you have been that who you have been in contact with and prevent the virus from spreading. That would have been much better had we rolled out mass testing weeks ago. But now that we are in the mitigation phase, we have missed the sweet spot where testing would be good. But when the president says they will have millions of tests available in the next couple of weeks, is that a good thing . Yes. Would it have been far better to have had it weeks ago . Absolutely. Host your best advice for someone who thinks they have some sort of symptoms like that. Who should they Contact First . Guest if they can cope at home, they should call their doctor and talk to their doctor and not going to a clinic or Emergency Department where they might spread the virus. If they cannot cope at home, if you are elderly, youre really sick, then you are going to need to get to a hospital and be safe, but dont go into a waiting room. Let people know that you may have covid like symptoms. So that they can prepare and not accept others in the hospital setting. Covid can spread quite rapidly in these kinds of congested settings. We have seen it in Nursing Homes, cruise ships, and absolutely in hospitals. Host Lawrence Gostin, you need to stay well. We will have you back here in a couple of weeks, im sure. With the Oneill Institute for national and Global Health law, thanks for being here this morning. Guest thanks for having me. Host we will continue the calls with you. If you are a medical is james. Us we spoke earlier about the role of the federal law. What sorts of authorities to the states have in terms of responding to the virus
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