Transcripts For CSPAN Washington Journal 04052020 20240713

Pacific and mountain, 202 7488001. We have a line for medical professionals, we would love to hear from you. Its 202 7488002. We are also on twitter and facebook. We are taking your text messages. That number is 202 7488003. Tell us your first name and where you are texting from. We begin as we always do with a look at the sobering numbers courtesy of Johns Hopkins university. More than 1. 2 million confirmed cases. The number ofs. Cases are approaching 330,000. 65,000 deaths around the country. Around the world, i should say. The u. S. Is leading the world in cases of coronavirus. That from Johns Hopkins university, which has been keeping track of this since the beginning in january. The president says a lot of death is coming. It will be the toughest week in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, and he said this on saturday. He said this as the total number of coronavirus cases rose to over 300,000, with the number of deaths host at the Daily Briefing yesterday, deborah birx, one of the medical professionals, heading up the tax force, had this [video clip] numbers are the numbers. They seem to be checking out, unfortunately. In some cases they are in the low side, which makes us happy. The very low side is why think we are headed. I would like to ask you and tony, where is, what is wheres the week of greatest attack . What will be the worst day, if thats possible to determine. I think thats what youre asking . And how many deaths are you expecting . Placesou can look in the that are most difficult hit, weoit, new york, louisiana are doing it by the counties in those states. It is metro areas and the bedroom communities around those metro areas. Because people went to work and got exposed and came home and exposed other people. If you look in new york now you can see it is in long island, suffolk county, and nassau county. , wayne,hose counties oakland, they are on the upside of their curve of mortality. So, you know when you get to the peak you come down the other side. So by the protections that are in that health data. Org, they are predicting that in those three hotspots all of them are hitting together in the next six to seven days. [inaudible]. Ou can go to the website its variable. Each one of those communities is different. You know where new york is, how much their mortality has been, and you know that what we are seeing today are the people infected two or three weeks ago. Yorktigation in new worked, and we believe it is working, the cases are going to start to come down. Will be a lag behind that because of the comorbidity and other conditions. That is why all of the protections are that this next week, and i think we said this last sunday when we talked about ,he charts, and it is difficult we tried to prepare the American People to understand that, as much as you grow up, you have to come down the other side. From before. I would rather not say a number, but they are available if you go to the website. You can see that there are several hundred per day in new york. I think Governor Cuomo has talked about that increasing still into the 5, 6, 700 range a day. Know, thats very concerning to us. Yesterdays from Daily Briefing. By the way, we have covered all of them and they are on our website at cspan. Org coronavirus. Here is a tweet from lizzie, who says host thank you for that. Here are the numbers of those recovered, 200 and 52,000 johnside according to Hopkins University with 1. 2 million confirmed cases. Wasvery first one discovered in wuhan, china, new years eve. Dan is in pennsylvania. A medical professional. Whats your job, then caller family practitioner. Guest thank you for joining us. Host thank you for joining us. Just listening 15 minutes ago about the president s meeting from yesterday. Medicine is about absolutely 100 wrong. Its detrimental to anyone who listens to him. He doesnt know anything about what he is talking about, medically. He gives things like insinuations about well you know what happens if you have to go on a ventilator. Recommendations are not only wrong, but very dangerous. You know, thats kind of it. From a medical perspective hes doing much more harm than good. Host are you still practicing . I have been in practice for 33 years. Familya Community Medicine in solo practice. Host still seeing patients . Caller absolutely, thats my primary job. Host thank you for the call, we appreciate it. Diane is next. Caller i would like to know if i can complete my comment before i get hung up on. Host certainly. Caller i speak for myself and most americans i have spoken with on the situation and we believe that this was a planned pandemic. In other words a wellplanned pandemic. We also believe that most mainstream media, including yourself, have been bought off by globalist. You are here to take the economy to destroy from trump and the country. We also think it is a bio weapon. We are not stupid. We stand behind the president no matter what happens. Host planned by whom . Caller the president. Pleasant trump. We stand by President Trump. Host no, who was this planned by . Caller i cant say exactly who. I would say globalists. I believe it was made in a bio lab, this virus. Its not normal. Nothing is normal about the whole situation going on. Host i have to fervently disagree, we are not bought off by anybody. Caller you are very biased and you do a good job of trying to hide it, but it very much shows. Host i could not disagree more, but you have your full comment, so thank you for that. Caller i am very scared. Doctor, her wife is a doctor. Its the frontline they are on. Donald trump should take that responsibility. The scientists, the professionals, they should consult with him. I am very scared. The medical professionals are in trouble. Donald trump is responsible, 100 . Thank you so much. Call. Think you for the beth on facebook said pointthat is our starting this first hour of the washington journal. George . Caller i him believe that other caller with that conspiracy theory. Whatever, since then these things have happened, i guess they were all some type of conspiracy . That cannot possibly be true. I never heard anything like that. The president , getting up there in the face of these things, this horrible thing thats going on, talking about how bad adam schiff was, pelosi. What is he afraid of . Afraid people will quit believing his lies . My jesus. Host thank you for the call. Front page of the new york , after the disclosure in wuhan, 430,000 flew to the u. S. Host next up is melvin, shreveport, louisiana. Good morning. I will be brief. I have an trying to reach people all over the world. Government and what have you. A solution for this problem is aerial spraying. Host going to stop you there because we are getting a delay. If you call in, turn the volume down and we will get your actions in just a moment. James, manhattan, kansas. Good morning. Caller good morning. How are you . Host fine, sir. Caller trump is doing a lot and he should be much more responsible towards the people. Seems that he is more concerned with compliments then he is for protecting the people. You, froms, thank kansas. Front page of the Washington Post. Full story is Available Online. Joe from dupont, washington, good morning. Caller i want to take issue with the comments that family practitioner made about ventilators. The statistics are in the of patients on5 ventilators die. Chinese statistics are about 90 . We are trying to avoid putting patients on ventilators. They linger for a long time by using high flow oxygen. That was one issue. I dont know where he is getting those statistics. Thing andicizing this making nonspecific comments about trump. The other thing is this reference with the hydroxychloroquine, i dont even know if that works or doesnt work. Studiesare some small that say it works, but that has been approved for 50, 60 years, used to treat people with rheumatoid diseases, malaria, etc. All the trump is saying is why not give it a chance . The call. K you for anthony has this point host npr has again, quoting the president , one of the toughest weeks ahead of us. Is next from jonesboro, georgia, good morning. Morning, steve. On the question of president , he has zero credibility. I say that because if he could get through one briefing, just one, without asking people to without ring and blaming somebody else for the problems that we have. We all know that this is new. We all know that we have to change the way we do a lot of things. But to constantly blame other people to me is really just asinine. And as far as diane from florida who says the people she speaks with all say this was something trumped up as a conspiracy, guess what, diane, it doesnt matter, people are dying. It doesnt matter. We have to do what we can do to mitigate. Same that send that fake check back and you get it, diane, you and your family. Text message tweet from mike in florida, saying that mr. Know it all trump said it was a hoax and would go away like a miracle that the deaths would soon be down to zero, finally has admitted to the reality. Now to samuel from waukesha, wisconsin. Good morning. Caller hello. I think that donald trump and Senate Republicans need to take more responsibility for their act in this pandemic and how it spread so wide in the United States. Facts of thed virus itself from us. When it got to the United States donald trump should have done his job, acted like the president , not lie about it like he did and stuff could have gotten done and we could have prevented these thousands of deaths that have already taken place. Host sam, thank you for the call. Victoria is next from everett, washington, good morning. Caller hey, good morning. The u. S. Has always been a trendsetter for the rest of the world. I definitely think that we could have mirrored china in doing a better job and maybe even bought some supplies from china. They have stops where people are , where temperatures are being taken. They have all the supplies that they need. Why cant we order supplies from them . We need a president who is going to back us up. I cant say it is a oneman job. Its an all of us job. They are not adequately testing everybody. People are Walking Around as super carriers and are asymptomatic. The problem is, we dont have the true numbers of how many people are truly infected and we dont have enough tests to go around. Theres no reason we cannot afford those supplies. Host victoria, thank you for the call. This is from john with a text message, saying tom, jacksonville, north carolina, good morning. I have a connection at a precinct in brooklyn. Three of the officers were asked veterans and havent gotten the vaccine. Host thank you. Tomorrow we will be talking to the head of the Police Chiefs to discuss how all of this is impacting Police Departments across the country. Most notably in large cities like detroit, chicago, and of course new york city tomorrow morning on washington journal. A medical professional hear from frisco city, good morning, welcome to the conversation. Hello . Youre on the air. How aregood morning, you doing . I just have a quick question comment about the socalled 17 intelligence agencies. My question is, where were they six months ago . What was congress doing six months ago . We are talking about what, blaming President Trump . Come on, now, america. Good morning. Host they give for the call. Yesterdays white house Daily Briefing, the president warned about the threat ahead in the next week or two. [video clip] week,sll be the toughest between this and next week, with a lot of death, unfortunately, but less if this had been done. But there will be death. We will be looking at the hardest hit regions. Some are obvious, some are not so obvious. They spring up. They come in they hit you like you have gotten hit by a club. That wasnt at all bothered, like in new jersey, where the governor is doing an excellent job at that just sprang up. Every decision that was made is made to save lives. Its really our soul consideration, we want as few lives lost as possible. That from the president , yesterday. This from the Washington Post host cheryl joins us from west virginia. Good morning. Are you with us . Joe in westo bobby terre haute, indiana. Good morning. I think that donald trump is doing the best he can, the best he knows how. Secondly, i was wondering what other people think of this. Conspiracy theorist at all, but i know that they are blaming the animal market or the virus being started. But my husband says that there is a germ warfare place there in china, like six miles away from that market and was thinking that maybe something got away from their. What otherwondering people think of that. You for the call. This is from george, who says that now it is being reported that as early as january President Trump host next is a caller from tupelo, mississippi. Bobby, good morning. Caller i keep hearing the president say wash her hands and stay six feet away from everybody, but one thing that we put to our face all the time is cell phones and i want america to know, clean your cell phones, to. Dont touch something and then touch her cell phones and then sam want to wash my hands. Clean your cell phone. You may be giving up yourself by not cleaning it. Host good advice. Thank you for that. And has this comment from the Facebook Page host james from buffalo, kentucky, good morning. Morning, thank you for having me on your show. The way i feel about it, you know that a lot of these deaths are more in your liberal states. They want to bring in everybody from all over the world and what have you. Personally, i dont feel like were really, i dont really care of the whole state goes out in a blast, the way i feel about it is they get what they so. They get what they reap. And then they want to put, they want to set there and put that on the rest of the country. They are getting what they so. Thats how i feel about it. Thank you, have a nice day. From buffalo, kentucky. Bloomberg news has this headline a letter did so in sent to her colleagues. Reporting the following host we should report that Speaker Pelosi has scaled back or ambitions dealing with coronavirus and that the focus on a direct payment to individuals with expanded loans to businesses possibly leaves an eight hundred billion dollar infrastructure plan and other democratic priorities for a later build. Full story is Available Online at bloomberg news. Com. Kevin is joining us from denver, colorado. Good morning. By the way, i really love the regional approach to this. It is a more accurate bellwether of how we are all feeling, rather than otherwise. So, thank you for that. Really looking forward to your hosting of a guest. Perhaps some reporters, a couple of reporters, the timeline here. Its purposely being obfuscated. We have been following it. We were watching the things in china. Korea and italy. So, we have an indication of what was coming our way. Your kentucky caller just hit the nail on the head. Thats a fox news viewer. Its a liberal problem, we are getting what we deserve. Fox has to be regulated. Bring back the fairness doctrine. They are a threat to Public Health and thats my comment. Host kevin, thank you. This from larry with a text message from reuters news, this is the headline from mainland china, a new rising coronavirus cases, 30 reported yesterday, up ,rom 19 per day earlier highlighting the difficulty in stamping out the outbreak. 25 of the latest cases involved people that entered from abroad compared to the 18 per day prior, with five new locally transmitted infections on saturday on the southern coastal provinces up from one day earlier. The full story is at writers. Com. Mina, florida, good morning. I wanted to comment on President Trump has a task worse and people are forgetting that when he downed the china flight, everyone condemned him for that and called him a racist for that. And now you are saying 400 and 30,000 flights came in before that was even done and it looks like they all flew into these cities that are affected. Yorkame with the new flights coming into florida. Our governor didnt stop the flights and now he has to deal with it. So, its palm sunday. I wish everyone would unite and quit playing politics and we would get together to support the country and get everyone well again to support our leaders. Thank you. Thank you. This from anna in texas, host to the callers point, this is the headline from inside of the New York Times. Host next up is randy, from hager city, wisconsin. Good morning. Those last couple of comments leave right into what i was going to say. January and february, what was the congress doing . Trying to impeach the president over a phone call. The news media, thats all he ever talk about. Soon it was over with and the president was exonerated. President trump stopped the flight. He knew that there was something bad coming here and he stopped them flight. The news media went all over for that. Now, once in the same time, mardi gras is coming on, spring break is coming on. Didntmp administration know how bad it was. No one knew how bad it was. But the word was out that it was possible that it could be bad. Even though we got a task force together, they were coming out with what they were saying, it was not as strong as it is today, but look what its come to. The main places where all the planes flew into, new york, the new york population is huge. Close proximity to each other, very easy to spread the virus. Orleans, mardi gras, it was passed around. Spread of those people out all over the United States with all of these spring breakers from down in florida, eyesng it out a lot, in my , to the rest of the country. This is how the pandemic started a. President trump, did he say the right words all the time . Im sure he was given the information as his medical advisers were giving him. He did want to put this country in panic. He brought it up and does it more all the time now. As he said, we are in for a rough week. Randy, thank you for the call. This from stephen of firing, the president today defending the firing of michael atkinson. This is a headline from open the Washington Post, the president continues undermining watchdogs. Here it is from saturday. [video clip] each of this terrible, inaccurate whistleblower report to congress. It was all about the conversation, by the way, the whole thing was about the conversation, right . And then after he saw it he mustve said wow, as ive said many times and it drives you people crazy, it was a perfect conversation. So instead of going and saying gee, this is a terrible thing that he said about the president s conversation, it was a fraud. I didnt say that. By the way, you have the whistleblower. Where is the informer, right . Heres the other question. Remember before i gave the transcript . The realreveal conversation, wheres the second whistleblower . Wait, wait, wait, wait. There was going to be a second whistleblower. After i gave the conversation he just went away. He miraculously went away. Where is the informer . There was going to be this informer. Maybe schiff was the informer. Hes a corrupt guy, corrupt politician. Listen, i say this. Where was the informer. Remember . The informer was coming forward. But i gave. The one thing that surprised everybody, this gentleman right here said it was a shocker. I revealed the conversation. I got approval. I didnt want to do it without approval. They said absolutely you did nothing wrong. President of ukraine said that he did nothing wrong. That, with the vote from the republicans, not one dissenting vote, dishonest thecrats impeached president of the United States. That man is a disgrace. Lets go next, please. Hes a total disgrace. It you run by your decision to dismiss the Inspector General want toff this, people talk about what we are talking about. But let me tell you, its my decision, i have the absolute right. Even the fake news said he has the right to do it. Ask them, why didnt you go see the actual conversation . Said it was politically biased. He actually said that. The report could have been you know who the whistleblower is, so to you, so does everyone in the room and said why. Everybody knows. But they give the whistleblower status that he doesnt deserve. Hes a fake whistleblower. Frankly, somebody ought to sue ishis ass off. Host from inside of the Washington Post, the president defending his decision to fire the in the Inspector General. Burner is joining us from kentucky. Good morning. A question and a comment. People all over the world depend on so much, depend so much on the hand sanitizers with alcohol. Technicianical lab in the late 50s and 60s. Later on i became a nurse, working in hospitals and clinics. Before this became the norm, doctors and technicians with soap instruments and alcohol to sterilize them. Including needles and syringes. Nothing was disposable then. Well, we found out that alcohol did not destroy the hepatitis virus. Alcohol does not kill all viruses. Tested against the coronavirus . Reallyoesnt, handwashing would be the best. Thank you, thank you for your work as a nurse, all on the flip frontline dealing with the coronavirus. We appreciate that. This from ghost eagle host inside of the New York Times, tom joins us. Good morning. Im at a loss to understand the president appointing his soninlaw, Jared Kushner, to a task force that im not quite sure i mean i dont know much about this young man and his background, but it seems to me that in our country there should be someone much more qualified to had a task force that is so with thisaffecting pandemic that is so seriously affecting our country. As toa complete loss understand his thinking behind that. I do believe that years from now, when historians and sociologists and psychologists and political scientists are a writing about this time in our its not just going to be President Trump that they focus on. Its the mindset of the people that support this man. Im just at a loss. Thank you. Host thank you. Rich, you are next. Caller i want to start off by thanking cspan for the expanded coverage and watching you at night, it has been a tough chore for you all to continue. But we deeply appreciate it. We are happy to do it and share the information with all of you. Appreciate the unbiased coverage, despite what a few naysayers say, we deeply appreciate you. What i was calling about was the making things so political, both of the citizenry and particularly those in government, from President Trump on down. I think there is so much blame to go around. Ofly on there was a lot misinformation coming out and we were woefully unprepared. State governors and legislatures need to, just need to take care of their own citizens. Not wait for the federal government to issue edicts and a national law national lockdown. There is one thing if i can get it in quickly, along the same line of making things political, we have a Field Hospital in central park now. There was a new york state ator who was opposed to not necessarily to being there, but calling them bigots because of their views on samesex marriage, for instance. Other groups. I dont know how widely that was. Eported nationally, in the Charlotte Observer and other places, im very familiar with samaritan purse. My wife, a volunteer, has gone on mission trips. The Franklin Graham group, is it not . Yes, serbia can understand their opposition to the view, but to share some information, the volunteers are under very strict guidelines according to where they go. They are not allowed to proselytize. Unless to leave bibles the people request or wanted. The local policies are followed strictly. Even when they would like to share the gospel, if thats not what the local authorities want and have asked them not to, they are very good about following those guidelines. I think it is very insulting to tell volunteers who are risking their own health and their lives and they are volunteers, this is not paid for most of the people. Totell them that they have sign an agreement saying they wont discriminate, that is not what they are there for. And are there to save lives help people. I want to put that plugin. I have firsthand knowledge of that. Rich, we appreciate that from kingsport. Have a good day. This is from rebecca, saying host this headline from People Magazine, the Kennedy Family read grieving and. Nimaginable loss they had gone missing after a canoe accident, the husband saying that it was tragic news on twitter and facebook and it was clear that they had passed away. A close family source telling People Magazine that gathering news will be difficult because of covid19 and difficult for everyone together together and that they are self quarantined right now in an empty host empty house on the chesapeake bay, hoping to give the kids. Ore space they were playing kickball behind a code and one of them got into a canoe to retrieve the pushed intod were the chesapeake bay, spotted 30 minutes later by an onlooker. Now presumed dead. Tim joining us from las vegas. Good morning. Caller as for this week being the toughest, i think that this weekend next week is going to be the toughest. Part of the problem was the politicking going around. I agree with them. It starts at the top and it goes to the bottom. Onfar as blaming everything what did nancy pelosi do with holding up the funds for the workers now . Now we are looking at doing another double trillion dollar job on infrastructure . Thats great. But we have got to get through do, pandemic before we can even think of doing that infrastructure. I just wanted to say that i watch all Different Things and the best thing is to read and watch cspan so that you get a balance of news and you are not foxite or not, a whatever type of ite you want to be. I appreciate cspan being fair out there, putting it in and saying it like it is. I appreciate that. Host thank you for that. Stay healthy and las vegas. This is from the Washington Post. Pariahs out ofg city. Eeing new york thathas this tweet, saying host duncans next from columbus, georgia. Good morning. Thank you for taking my call. As many other viewers have called in, i appreciate cspan and its wide coverage of different news from around the nation. I have a couple of comments. I told my wife the other day as i was looking at some news conference, at the news trump speaking pandemic, i was telling her it was like we were in a movie or something. Its unreal whats going on and how people are reacting to whats really happening in this world. How they put the politics into this thing here. You know . There is blame to go around throughout all administrations, you know . Its not even about that right now. You know, its about the lives of the people, you know, who are dying. People are still playing politics, you know, with this thing here. Youve got people that literally dont believe whats happening and that people are dying, you know . I put things out with my family on facebook from time to time. I followed the news conferences that are going on, when they was talking about this thing happening in china. 30 Million People being locked down. You know . This is real. Its no, its not even, you have to be insane not to believe that it wouldnt come to our country. Thank you for the call. We have this one from roughy host the number from around the world, 1. 2 million confirmed approaching 66,000 deaths across the globe. The Washington Post putting up a comparison between what the republicans had during ebola and for the of obama white house. This is courtesy of Washington Post. Com. [video clip] Work Together, like we did when we were in the majority of president obama to make sure that with ebola or any other disease we were working to combat it and not trying to divide the country. He wont hold him accountable for protecting our country. I commend them for taking decisive action. Approach of the Obama Administration has been like its approach to so many other things, fundamentally unserious. The administration did the right thing, halting commercial Airline Flights into and out of china. This Health Concern is more real than it would be if there wasnt a sense that the governments just not being managed in a way that people would want it to be managed. We dont know everything there is to know, but i think there is truly an all hands on deck measure. They need to Show Confidence in this president in general. The agencies have not shown the ability to run competent ministries and. Anyone playing partisan games with this one of the president is in a foreign country should be ashamed of themselves. Whether it is ebola or the areers themselves, people flocking in and we are doing nothing. Because of all we have done, the risk to the American People remains low. This is a much different problem than ebola. Host that courtesy of the Washington Post. From the New York Times, a new reality for college students, a class divide. Anthony joins us from south river, new jersey. Caller i want to offer solutions instead of being so critical. I dont think that being critical is very helpful because, you know, it just doesnt really do a lot. It really is up to us, america. Every inch, we have to do our own part. We cannot wait for the government to bail us out. Its all right to conduct press conferences, they are very informative. I want to see whats going on. I think we have to get away from this. This Bumper Sticker mentality and these gotcha moments. Like if we have this thing where we had Chuck Schumer saying well, the president was caught flexing. Of course he saw that on every news station and in my local newspaper editorial and in the star ledger of newark they had that he was flatfooted. Havecomparison, we didnt a test for the new virus, its a test and we got a test for it invented and manufactured within a month, ok . Heres the comparison, the peoples house from miss pelosi, they are in charge of their Constitutional Responsibilities they are in and charge of the first rings. So, if they are in charge of the purse strings, if it took them a month to manufacture a brandnew test that was never invented before, how come it will take eight weeks to get a paper check mailed to me . We already have the printing for the check making machines. We already have the envelopes. We could just send everybody a check by mail tomorrow. Why is it going to take eight weeks . I dont feel comfortable giving the government my banking information because they always get hacked and then you have your banking information, your date of birth and your Social Security number in any package when they get hacked and the government hasnt done anything about it. I dont want to be overly critical, so heres my suggestion, you know, just let everybody do our part, wash hands, stay across from each other, follow the guidance. Lets stop the attitude of the resistance, like in my state we have senator booker and senator menendez and my representative, coleman, i think shes the number two or number one voting record against voting against trump. We need to Work Together and stop the resistance. Call,thank you for the anthony. This from arlington, texas to join us is going tomorrow from the Temple University center for public washington journal, tomorrow morning at 7 a. M. Eastern time and during the primetime edition tomorrow, john the is the author of great influenza the story of the greatest pandemic in history. He will be our guest tomorrow evening on a primetime edition. Washington journal omaha, nebraska, good morning. Caller that should be a good show about the epidemic. Host its an interesting book, we hope you tune in. I have watched a couple of documentaries on it. But what i wanted to point out trump raided the fema budget to build the wall before this. So im not sure how that fits into everything, but if you decide you want to your , the fact that a lot of these republicans say that we report we so . We put these people in death camps, we are isolating them. Kind of just waiting to watch them die. Kind of like whats happening to us. Thank you for the call. Clinton has this. You join us we hope on facebook, facebook. Com, cspan, send us a text message or come to twitter. Will a pandemic come back in the fall and winter . That was one of the questions for dr. Anthony fauci yesterday. [video clip] one of the things that is parallel regarding mitigation allowing us to turn the corner on the front burner, what happens when we do . The risk of resurgence is real. What we need to do, and i think i said this before but it is worth repeating, what we need to have in place, and we will have that in place, as you hold back you need to have the capability wayn a pristine and precise , do the containment when you see it. Containment takes a backseat when you are just struggling to mitigate. But when you get it down, you need to make sure it doesnt research. Tot will require the ability test, to identify, isolate, and do contact tracing. That is what we have to have in place and hopefully we will at the time that we pull back. Host this is from nbc news, look at the zero in january shooting up to 200 and 50,000 right now in this graph, courtesy of nbc news. Mark is joining us from north hollywood. Good morning. We are what crazy times living in. I wanted to comment on the guy like three calls ago. So ironic that hes saying we shouldnt be critical and then was talking about nancy pelosi and the Resistance Movement on the other side of his mouth. He probably thinks like many people that he will claim that his check is in their quick enough but was the same person a week ago calling in calling the democrats socialists. Really curious to hear from those that support the briefings. A couple of things, how can they support this man when how many bragging he tell us, that there are zero cases in the United States, but all the while there were no test kits. How could there be zero cases when we dont even know who is positive . Ofry day he is telling all us, social distance, social distance, but boy oh boy they are all two inches apart from each other. We are watching these briefings and he brings out the mypillow guy . Just, elect as clown, expect a circus. Thank you. Sabrina, you are next from eastpointe, michigan. Good morning. Good to see you doing well. I had a comment and a question. No one asked for this, but now that it is here the president is doing the best he can with what he has. He has asked for help from other nations we have helped in the past. They are resisting our requests. Thats no surprise there. My question is this, we have been reading this air all this time. Who is to say that this wasnt already here and we just discovered that it was here when the first person got sick. Who is patient zero . I havent heard anybody referencing patient zero as truck as far as trying to find out how they got the disease. That was my comment. Page this from our twitter host the headline here, america unprepared for major virus again. The federal bureaucracy bungled rapid production of test with stockpiles of crucial medical materials becoming limited and supply lines were cumbersome. The headline, american unprepared for major crisis again. Good morning from vallejo, california. Rory. high, my name is the president has done nothing ande january except lie send us facts that are not facts. He has the power to help the governors if you wanted to. The governors are doing the best they can. They need to help with the president and he is refusing to help and refusing to tell all the states to stay home. Its the president s fault and he has blood on his hands. Host from california and randy to be for young people. They do not get to have their roms, thiss, their p to save people who do not believe the virus exists. Calling it total insanity. Freddie is next. You are a medical professional. What is your job . Caller i am a physician. Host good morning to you. Can you turn your volume down can you turn your volume down . . A lot better. Go ahead. Not createmp did this virus host you are on the air. Go ahead. Create trump did not this virus, but he definitely did not lead people right. He is not the cause of it, but he definitely contributed to what is going on now. Host thank you for the call, from monrovia, california. Effect willwhat this have on the remaining primaries and coming up in novembers election . Coming up, we will speak with iowa secretary of state paul pate. Later, we will speak with thelette louissaint about Pandemic Response and what more is needed. Here is governor andrew cuomo, talking about when the peak is expected to hit his state of new york. [video clip] the peak, when the numbers of infections as of the high point, and that is the ozment challenge for the health care system. Can we handle that number of cases at the high point of the curve . Thell it the battle of mountaintop, because that is what it is going to be. That is going to be the number one point of engagement of the enemy. By the numbers, we are not yet at the apex. We are getting closer. Depending on whose model you are looking at, it will take 4, 5, 6, 7 days, some people go out 14 days, but our reading of the projection is we are somewhere , 4, 5, 6, 7,range 8day range. No one can give you a specific number, which makes it frustrating the plan, when they cannot give you a specific number or a specific date, but we are in that range. So we are not yet at the apex. Be atf me would like to the apex and just, lets do it, but theres part of me that says it is good that we are not at the apex, because we are not yet ready for the apex, either. We are not yet ready for the high point. We are still working on the capacity of the system. The more time we have to improve the capacity of the system, the better, and the capacity of the health care system, the beds, staff, equipment. Host there are so many aspects to this story, and joining us from des moines, iowa is paul pate, the iowa secretary of state and the president of the National Association of , and ofies of state course one area is politics, both at the state level and president ial levels. Mr. Pate, thank you for being with us. Guest it is a pleasure to be here. Host you have a primary and iowa slated for june 2. For iowa in particular, will that go on as scheduled, or will you delay that even further . No, that will be as scheduled. We have already started preparing for it, getting voters comfortable with the new processes and procedures, and we are set for it. Host and those new procedures include what . Guest well, we have had to adapt them of course, with the safe distancing, to protect our voters and our poll workers. We have extended our early voting, our absentee voting from also,s to 40 days, and we ill what will have a no excuse absentee, which means you can just request an absentee ballot without any qualifications, if you will. And we are encouraging people to request an absentee ballot now, and we will be doing encouraging people to vote absentee. We have a high of 40 in a general election who might vote absentee, so we are hoping to move that successfully a little higher and keep everybody at home, voting from their homes, comfort of their, safety of their house. Host and does this come at a higher price tech for the state of iowa . Guest yes, it does. We have 2 million active voters, registered voters in the state of i look. Be price tag we will mailing them out an absentee ballot request form, and the form itself will also be postedpaid, so we have the mailing to get it to them and the court to send it back. Our local Election Officials will be sending them i ballot through the mail. That is where we are focusing our efforts right now, that says to be safeans in one hour poll workers to be safe. Not to be clear, this is the caucuses, caucuses which had a lot of problems. Even though they are separate entities, are there lessons from what happened in january . Guest well, again, we had nothing to do with the democratic and republican caucuses. They took a whole different approach than we normally do in our elections. I am very confident in our election professionals that we have in our 99 counties. Conference calls with all the counties, and we have been giving them templates on how they can recruit coworkers in these trying times and how they can prepare to staff for the absentee ballot counting, and a lot of other issues that we normally run into, so i am pretty comfortable that iowa will deal with the primary fairly successfully. Host and as you talk to your colleagues and the other 49 states, the secretaries of state, what are they telling you about the november election . What are they preparing for, in light of what we are dealing with today for coronavirus . Guest well, a good thing to know is that secretary of states are risk integers. Of course the scale is much bigger this time. But we deal with tornadoes, hurricanes, fires, and other disasters that might impact our communities and still have our elections conducted safely, and voters know that there will be an election. This virus is pretty significant, so we are having to New York Times dig a little to, you know, dig a little deeper. We meet conference calling every week, and we share best practices, we share resource ideas, because we are all in different instances. Some states are struggling with, you know, we have got to get enough envelopes, we have to have enough printing stock. If you are going to start shifting over from a traditional come to the polling place to a male and type campaign, you have to make that shift, and that does not happen overnight. We have been sharing ideas on how to get that done, and i think it has been successful, what we are doing. Host let me get your reaction to what the president said voting andt mailin whether he thinks that is feasible. Lets watch. [video clip] pres. Trump no, because i think a lot of people cheat with mailin voting. I think people cheat, and the reason they do not want voter id, is because they tend to cheat. When you buy something, you look at your credit cards, different parts, you have your picture on many of them, not all of them, but many of them, you should have a picture for voting. It should be called voter i. D. And it should not be mailin voting, it should be you go to a displaynd you proudly yourself. You do not send it in the mail, where people pick up all sorts of bad things can happen by the time they signed that, if they sign that. If they sign that. In and ise it gets tabulated, no, it should not be mailed in. You should be at the booth, and you should have voter i. D. That is the real deal. Host the president during his briefing on friday. Paul pate is the president of the National Association of secretaries of state. Your reaction guest . I know for myself, our goal is to make it easier to vote but hard to cheat. We do have forms of voter i. D. In iowa, and that i. D. Is also applicable to the mailin ballot process. We have safeguards in our state for folks who do mailin, so we can be assured we are getting verifiable source. But his point is taken. People want to make sure the voting a secure and we are getting legitimate votes, but i am pretty confident in that during this time of crisis, that 99 i say 99 because of our 99 counties in iowa, but our other secretaries of state across the country are taking every step and measure possible to make sure that i ones and americans have every chance to vote, so it is a balance, but trust me, from iowas perspective, we put their security, to make sure if you are eligible, you get one vote, and that is all. Host this is from a pupil that was conducted at the end of march, based on coronavirus, and in that survey, about twothirds, 66 saying they would not feel comfortable going to a polling place to vote. How do you deal with that issue . Guest well, it is a legitimate one. In fact, i would suspect a love americans are not even thinking about elections at this point. They are concerned about more, you know, when will this thing be over . When will i be able to leave with my family and my loved ones . When can i go back to work . So voting may not be at the top of the list, but when you start thinking about anything that forces you into a situation where you are not comfortable, for your health, i can respect that, and that is why in our state, we are asking people to vote absentee, but we also have other options for you, and we have curbside voting. This is offered in all the states at some levels, and in our state, we offer it. For those of you in the highrisk population or have a handicap, you can come to a polling site and vote from your vehicle rather than having to put yourself in a situation where you are uncomfortable. So we are taking steps that we think will make voters a lot more comfortable. Host our first caller is from des moines, which is where our guest is located. Felicia, good morning. Caller hi. Hi, paul. This is felicia. Like they say, all politics is local, so you are our local politician, and i actually believe that you will speak truth to power. So my question is this my daughter is an essential worker, and, as a parent, i feel like i really, really want to protect her. Our governor, of course, has not closed us down, so she is still out there working. As a mother, what i taught my daughter her entire life is to work, to strive for her goals, prosper, in order to you need an education, you need to be able to work, you need to take care of your family, and now i am telling her, dont go to work. Dont go outside. And i cant even get her to understand me, because her entire life, i have been telling her how important it was to have a job. Just lost. Rent, im but i to protect her, also know that she is a strong person, and shes going to she feels like she is an essential worker. She has to be out there. But as a parent, my heart is breaking, because i cannot stop her from going out there. And i just want to know what do you say to your kids . What do you do, as a parent, to try to keep them safe when they are no longer your little cubs, and you just want to hold them and keep them safe, but you cant do that . I know you, and you know me, and i am just asking you what do you tell your kids . Host thank you for the call. Caller sure. Guest that is a real tough one. First of all, i want to thank all the folks who are putting themselves on the line, healthcare fields and other key support areas, to give our community is vibrant and going right now. We do need that kind of help. I am in the same boat. Actually,ndchildren, who work in high risk areas, if you will. One of them is the university of iowa hospitals. And it worries me to death. Oralked to them regularly texting, actually, and these in this day and age, please be careful, and we just give him the best support and advice that we can come and i am pretty confident that they listen to us when they were growing up, and hopefully some of that has sunk in, but i cannot thank you enough those who are out there putting it all on the line. Out a notice put that we are putting all of these resources behind voting by mail, or absentee. I did not want to expose the poll workers or voters to any unnecessary risks. We have 1000 precincts in iowa. Most of those are manned by our older population, the over 65 crowd, which is our highrisk population. First off, i do not want to put those poll workers in that situation, and we have an older voting population as well, so both of those need to be protected, and that is why we are leaning toward saying hey, vote absentee or use the curbside. We are recruiting younger poll workers now to help fill that gap, and thank the senior persons who have worked in the past with the heavy lift, but it is time for other folks to step in during this time of crisis. But i dont have an easy answer for you. I wish i did. Other than we love them and we get them all the support we can, and keep coaching them to make sure they are practicing all the safe procedures. What is the National Association of secretaries of state . Guest it is the oldest organization for elected office in the country, but basically it represents all the secretaries across the country. Bework on issues, whether it elections or Business Services or some of the commerce and commercial laws. These are areas most secretaries have jurisdiction over, and we try to put best practices out there and share ideas amongst our peers, and we have been around for quite a long time. Host website, by the way, is nass. Org. Rick from mckinley, maryland, good morning. Caller go ahead. Good morning. Voting ise mail order the way to go. The president says it is cheating. It cannot be cheating. It cannot be nearly as much cheating as Voting Machines that are rigged. It cant be merely as much being as counties were voting districts being gerrymandered. Anyway, voting by mail is definitely, i think, a much better way to go across the nation. I am 71 years old. I have got lung cancer. Being treated for it. I dont want to go out there and vote, take a chance. Number number one, and two, a couple of days ago, i saw a suggestion made on tv that health protectio professional sd go out there and buy swim masks as part of ppe. I saw a lot of jockey googles being thrown in the mud back in my day, and i know they are being made by the millions, and these are really good goggles. Host rick, thank you for your call, and good luck in your battle with cancer. To your earlier point, your response, mr. Pate . Guest i would say that my peers and i spend a lot of time on trying to ensure voters of the integrity of the election process. There are some redundancies built into the systems, and i will just speak to iowas. We have, your friends and neighbors who work at polling sites, we have paper ballots, we have secure voting equipment, so theres no computer telling you how to mark your ballot. Audits,postelection which means we look at a sampling of the voter ballots make sure everything is safe we have republicans and democrats at the polling site. These are all measures we put in place to ensure voters of the integrity of the system, and the absentee component that we have had for some time we are just promoting it aggressively samecycle have the factors to protect the voting process. Keep in mind, whether it is this particular virus issue or seeing challenges as bad actors and other countries trying to influence our elections, we cannot let these types of things take away the integrity, the confidence in that your vote will be counted and that the election process is on the up and up, and at the end of the day, you will have the results that you and your voters voted. Host katherines neck from st. Joseph, michigan. Go ahead. Good morning. Caller hi there. We decided to vote by absentee vote. We had a discussion here this morning. What happens with people who are in prisons and felons . Vote . Can they i know that the military gets but how absentee votes, about the prisons i system . Because they are felons, they dont have that right anymore to vote . Thank you. Host thank you. Guest thank you. It from state to state, but the majority, if you are a convicted are not voting. I dont want to split hairs, but if you are in a county facility and it is not a felony, those folks will be able to vote absentee, and as you know, military can vote. Weour state, we have what call summary law, that i was successful in passing a couple of years ago, so that military, and missionaries, for that matter, who are in isolated areas of the world, i think that qualifies in a bigger capacity today than it probably did a year ago, with this virus, but those individuals would actually have hundred days to start requesting their ballots, so they could be already voting today for our june primary, just because of the challenge of getting things to voters. That is an issue we have right now because of the out worldwide outbreak, individuals in italy and other places like that who have been heavily hit, mail is not moving because of what has happened, so we are allowing them to vote electronically, so they can actually vote through an email or a fax process. They can go online and look at their jurisdiction, it will tell them how to do it, but we are very flexible in that regard, because we know sometimes our military and our missionaries are in a position where they cannot get a ballot out. This is definitely one of those times. Host paul pate is joining us from des moines. He is the iowa secretary of state pate also serves as the president of the National Association of secretaries of state. Among those surveyed, 68 supporting the idea. What will november look like in all National Election with 50 states, washington, d. C. And u. S. Territories . What is different, if anything . Guest well, we have to plan for the worst and hope for the best. But my own crystal ball, for what it is worth, i am optimistic that we will go back to some level of normalcy come of normalcy, but even having said that, at least now what the Health Officials are saying, we will be encouraging our high risk populations to use curbside voting or an absentee approach for that period. But again, that is too far ahead to see. We moved our special election that was supposed to be in april, we move that to july. It was the first date we had available. We knew we were not an action to put the elections out there successfully with. You just dont get a vendor overnight to put out, you know, 2 million mailers for you, so we did reschedule those special. Lections host this headline from pandemiccom, the threatening monster turnout in november. Good morning. Caller good morning. How are you . Host fine, thank you. Caller you see, my main concern is how people, you know, that are going to be on the ballot, how this will affect them, if it rages on into election season. You look at polls, and, you know, the majority of older voters really have more of a support on the democratic side for biden, and more younger people have a support for sanders, so i am wondering if more people, you know, vulnerable, older people are, like, left out of commission because of the illness or has caused them harm or something, if it will affect the numbers in the end, like it will shift the vote, per se. Host thank you, ryan. That is more of a primary question, not the general election, but paul pate, if you could respond . Guest sure. I think anytime you look at primaries, which campaign has the ability to turn out votes . If you look at the history of most states, and i will speak to ours, the campaigns have been very aggressive on getting those early votes in, vote by mails, absentee balloting. They have a machine of sorts that does that kind of thing. It is more challenging, i think, and it will be a different look, because how do you put phone banks together if we are practicing safe distancing . So there will be some unique components with this, and i am Pretty Company all of the campaigns are looking at what should they do and how they can approach it. It is very frustrating, i am sure, for some of them to be somewhat sidelined, not able to do the more conventional. You are having your rallies and being able to have phone banks 24 hours, seven days a week, somewhere around the country. But i think we will still get through this, and a candidate who has the most motivated voter base will be the one who is successful, both in the primary and, i think, in the november elections. Host i just want to point this out, because it is frontpage and inside the Washington Post , the caller mentioned bernie sanders. Aides urging him to end his president ial bid. Good morning. Caller yes, i work the polls here, and i am going to be 80. And we cannot find anybody young to work at the polls, because ory evidently dont want to, in that, other jobs and it is a long, long day when you work at the polls, and it i wears me out, so would assume not doing that this , so that is my comment on it. I am not afraid of going to work. It at our regular polling place. It does not bother me, but i they are talking here in iowa about doing it by mail, and i think we will have a lot more by mail, but my friend and i have talked to all sorts of younger people and tried to get them to work the polls, but we cant we dont have any luck. Host we will get a response. Thank you for the call, merrily. Maralee, i want to thank you for your service, and your story is the example i share with a lot of people. You are the kind of folks who ,re very dedicated poll workers and we appreciate that. During the time of this virus, we would like to give you a break, so everyone is safe. It has always been challenging. That is why we have to consolidate a lot of the polling sites. Many counties, they are reducing at 25 to 50 . That is presings they are actually covering. They are just merging them in, instead of having you go to the church up the street, you will have to go three miles over to a Different Church or school to have the voting opportunity. We are having to adapt, because the biggest challenge we have is, again, we want you to be healthy as poll workers, we want the voters to be healthy and protected, and we want to make sure you can count on elections, so they can go on as scheduled. Host we have another call from iowa cared a lot of people watching from your state. Thank you for waiting. Good morning. Caller good morning. Secretaryyou, mr. Appeared i appreciate you taking the time to address the nation. I am a former city, former mayor, certainly serving my second term on the county of supervisor. We have a great auditor, wonderful auditor in roxana moretz. Has done a fantastic job of running elections i am very proud of our state and how we have run elections, and thank you. Question is, on the several weeks ago, our auditor , mail ballots,il in the majority of the board wanted to wait. I supported that. And they wanted to wait until your decision. At the time, now that decision has been made. My question is, who will burden the costs . Will it be the local counties . Because we have several races, obviously. Who will burden that cause, mr. Secretary . Will that be held at the state or at the local level . I will hang up and listen to your response. Thank you for what you are doing. Host thank you for the question. Guest yes, roxana, your county elections commissioner, is of they the president statewide groups of county auditors, and working together is the only way we are going to get this done, and the mailing we are doing statewide to i was voters to give them the opportunity for an absentee ballot is being paid for by the state. So that has changed in a sense that we normally dont do a mailing, but the counties will continue to underwrite the traditional costs that they have in the past, so nothing has changed on that front here sometimes they are actually doing their own mailing as well, just because in a primary, you do not have the Political Parties pushing the absentee balloting, like you would in the november election. We are still doing a second mailing to make sure voters know that they have an opportunity. Host and final question for you do you have a sense of what ,ou expect the turnout to be just percentagewise, in a general election like this . Guest well, and our state, it will differ, because we already did the caucuses. The president ial thing is already off the table, so it is really about local, if there is a local supervisors race or legislative race. Those are the races that will drive the turnout. We do have a congressional primary into districts, or three, that are impacting some of that turnout. Let me look back, do my math backwards, 2016, we had about a 10 turnout in a primary, and in a general election, we hit closer to 70 . So i am assuming we will be somewhere in that ballpark. 10 . Maybe even a little but higher. If the local candidates are not pushing it aggressively, i do not see a high turnout. But further states that are still doing the president ial, and as long as there is a primary to be had meaning there are still two candidates or more running, i think it will have as robust a turnout as it would have had back in 2016 as well. Host but in november, and the general election, what do you expect . You mentioned 70 in iowa. What about the rest of the country . Guest in the general . I think somewhere between 60 and 70 . A lot of it is still too early to decide few the campaigns are really wet fire the voters up and motivate them to it we have sameday Voter Registration here we have online Voter Registration. So if the candidate fire them up, they can register the day of the election and come out and vote we saw that with trunk, and we have seen that with obama. It is kind of hard to predict it yet, but i am optimistic we will have at least 60 plus. Oht paul pate, he is the iowa secretary of state and the president of the National Association of secretaries of state, joining us from des moines. We thank you for being with us. Guest thank you. Host the Democratic National scheduled is now in july, one month before the public and National Convention in august. Coming up, we will talk about how the u. S. Is handling the pandemic. Nicolette louissaint will be joining us. Later, dr. Jeremy brown will discuss the history of influenza. And governor phil murphy, an update on how his state is responding to the coronavirus. [video clip] the numbers are particularly sobering today. Since yesterday, we have been notified that another 4331 residents have tested positive for the coronavirus. That brings our statewide total to 34,124. Overnight positive tes for a total of 34,124. As usual, judy will give you more color. Heart,tion, with a heavy we reporting another 200 residents half past due to covid19related complications. Total is nowte sits at 846 precious lives lost. Let me put this in a proper yet very sobering context. Moreve now lost nearly 100 of our fellow New Jerseyans to covid19 than we did in the september 11 attacks. Please let that sink in for a moment. This pandemic is writing one of the greatest tragedies in our states history, and just as we have committed to never forgetting those lost on 9 11, we must commit to never forgetting those we are losing to this pandemic. We wont do this every day, and we certainly wont do that often, even though those numbers will continue to climb. Washington journal continues. Baltimoreing us from is nicolette louissaint, joining us from healthcare ready. The organization was formed to do what . Guest good morning. The organization was formed after katrina, after disasters, when we are focused on the population, there need to be partnerships that exist between the Public Sector and the private sector to make sure that continuity of care can sustain, so our partnership, our designed to it keep coordination and healthcare flowing after a disaster, can happen between the government and the private sector. The stateadvised department during the ebola crisis. What are the parallels from back in 2014, 2015 . Guest yes, i think one of the most important lessons from the Ebola Outbreak was the role of partnerships. A big part of the responsibility that our team had was to make sure that the u. S. State department was working with the who and working with the u. S. Agency on the coronation that needed to happen across government, with businesses, to make sure that the west african outbreak could be contained, and that whatever we could do to make sure that the logistics were able to flow could sustain, and i think that is a big part of what we see. Every disaster, every disease outbreak is a huge logistical effort, and so making sure that we have our best on working with fema and others, to be able to do that but also that whatever is necessary from the private sector, private Sector Health kits, specifically, can be brought to bear during an outbreak, and that is what we saw during ebola as well. Host can you clarify, when it comes to the federal stockpile, of ppe, ventilators, and other equipment . What is the role of that . What is it supposed to be used for . Guest sure. So the Strategic National stockpile as an asset that is one of our most important bio defense assets. The reality is that if there is an outbreak or a chemical attack or some other type of biological or nuclear warfare, theres going to be what are called countermeasures, medicines, products that are needed to be able to protect communities who are impacted, and often times, the Strategic National stockpile is looked at as the first stopgap. So in the time right after a bio attack, if you would, or a chemical or nuclear attack, there needs to be those countermeasures that are flowing into a community to make sure that they have those medicines and can dispense them across that community. That is the role of the stockpile. Making sure that in that stock ap, they would be able to fill that backstop and provide additional medicines, that those are in place. Say,e sns is, i would underfunded, but it has been a tremendous asset that has been working to make sure that specifically for those types of attacks that we have what can serve to be that front line of defense. Host so with that background, here is what the president said about this very issue friday at his regular white house briefing. [video clip] the. Trump when we have federal stockpile, i mean, isnt that designed to be able to distribute pres. Trump sure, but it is also needed for the federal government. We have the federal stockpile, and they have state stockpiles, and frankly, many of the states were not prepared for this. What we are not an ordering clerk. They have to order for themselves. Some of the states were in good shape. Some of the states were not in good shape. That is something you probably could expect. We have been spending eight minutes amount of time, effort, and billions and billions of dollars on making sure that they have what they have. I mean, take new york, we built them hospitals i built them for hospitals built them medical centers, sent them a ship with 1000 rooms and 12 operating rooms, and then on top vast numbers of ventilators, vast amounts of surgical equipment, masks, everything else. Now, they had a chance to order ventilators over the years, but they did not choose to do it. We were there, and we helped them, and i think the governor of new york is very thankful for we help that we gave, but have a stockpile, it is a federal stockpile. We can use that for states, or we can use that for ourselves. We do use it for the federal government. We have a very big federal government. Host that is from the white house and the president on friday. Nicolette louissaint, your reaction. Guest i think the role is to make sure that the federal government does have the ability to support state and local governments during a disease outbreak or a disaster, and we have seen the sns continue to come a time again, support those local jurisdictions, those Public Health departments who are in need of product during a disaster, so i think that is my reaction, is that the sns has had a clear role, and that the men and women who are staffing the sns and making sure that that stockpile is using the resources that they have, be as resilient and bad support of of local governments as they can be is a critical one for we have continued to see over this outbreak the role of the supply chain, and the sns is a critical partner to the supply chain and making sure that it is definitely for a disaster of this nature, a disease outbreak that is impacting the entire country, the entire world. We need every aspect that we can. We need every partner at the table to make sure we are stemming this outbreak in saving as many lives as we can, and the sns is a critical part of that. Host we will get to your calls in just a moment did you can also send us a tweet cspanwj. What dan paul is writing this morning in Washington Post,s analysis piece, america was unprepared for a major crisis again. He says host he goes on to write host your reaction. Guest Emergency Management is complicated. It is underfunded, and that is an issue that many of us in the field have been elevating for a number of years. Some would argue decades. The history of Emergency Management in this country shows that if you actually think about most Emergency Management agencies across the u. S. , we are not talking about fully staffed, fully resourced Emergency Management agencies. We are talking about a mix of volunteers. And when you have a disaster of you nature, it goes to show that as a matter of federal andet, our state budgets, imagines the management really have to improve if we are going to build a resilient society. What we have seen time and time , for the last 20 years, is beyond the u. S. Health system, Health Security system that needs to be in place to make sure that we are actually prepared, to be able to protect, prevent, and respond to disasters is not there. We have not seen the Global Investment that is necessary, and that is an issue that many people in the field have continued to raise commanded problem is that, in this moment, we are seeing it as a result of the lack of investment. What we are seeing is that we need to have Stronger Health systems, we need to have a more resilient and prepared Emergency Management workforce. We need to be able to invest in our Emergency Management systems at every level, in a manner that protects us from a range of disasters. In 2017, about this with hurricane maria, from a different Vantage Point here we talked about this after 9 11, after hurricane katrina, but these are based on response and not based on preparedness. So when we are really thinking about how we got here and how we need to get through this and build better, it really comes down to preparedness and investing in readiness systems. I think most of the partners at every level will tell you that the system is stretched, and when you have a disaster like this, when you have a pandemic that is actually impacting the entire nation at once, it really bears light on what we are actually dealing with any system that we have invested in. And so my response to that or my reaction is that this is the result of the investments and the policies that we have not really put towards preparedness. Towards response and put money and resources to work, having a more nimble response, but we have not invested in preparedness in a way that actually builds the systems and supports the agencies that need that support. That is what we are seeing right now. Host our guest is joining us from baltimore. She is a graduate from Carnegie Mellon and Johns Hopkins university. Nicolette louissaint is the executive director of healthcare ready. Post,om the Washington Health care supplies are near depleted. ,oe is joining us from compton california. Good morning. Caller good morning, america. Question, and it is from what i see why dont they walk out here and do 100, swab checks on different people, and then say out of these random tests, we found 3, 4 coronavirus in this area, and then give us the general idea of what is going on here. The counties, the cities, we all have Health Departments. Making 40,000 a year. No county has walked out the door and just did random tests. Host thank you. We will get a response. Guest so i would actually challenge that pete i think there are many county and city Health Departments that have not been fully funded. They are working to do testing right now. As more tests are coming online and the ability to test more individuals is coming online, they are focusing on making sure more likelyho have contactor being tested first. There are a lot of ways to do testing and surveillance, and one,om testing is but right now, they are making sure that the ability to do rapid test, we are really focusing on those individuals who need to be tested more frequently. We are seeing in states like new york, new york city in particular, my hometown, that they are testing with much more frequency in the last week, and beginning to learn more about who has been infected, so the approach is not to do random testing, it is to really make sure that, first and foremost, they are focusing on those individuals who have more likely exposure, and then moving beyond that. But your point is certainly taken, that another approach is to do random testing. I am not sure about the Human Rights Watch locations of that pure you have to do these methods in a way that is respective of Human Rights Watch and im not sure that walking on the street and being able to just swab individuals is welcomed that would be by most. Part of that is focusing on those individuals who have likely exposures, who are a symptomatically and are in positions where they may be exposing others. News, more than 2000 countries and territories confirmed cases of coronavirus. If you look at the map, the deeper the rectum of the more cases. The deeper the red, the more cases. Of course, europe, the u. S. , and china with the majority. Good morning. Caller i am really concerned with how and where the people that are passing, especially those in new york, are going to be handled, the bodies of them, and if there could also be something that could be of concern, as far as spreading. I just do not understand how the resources and people and time they are spending on keeping for that purpose, i would think there would be something that could be done other than that. Even the Funeral Homes are bursting at the seams, from what ive heard, in new york. It is kind of a scary prospect. And then i had a thought of the ceos of all of these large fast food chains that are still running and probably making a huge profit. You see lines wrapped around the building every day. We have chosen not to actually go for takeout or delivery or fast food, to keep safe. , and i am just wondering why they arent doing something more to either use their millions of dollars to either retrofit local companies or what have you for gloves or masks, or their own employees. The local papa johns here in marion, the manager told me that her mother is making masks for all of them to wear, and i just think there could be something done more with all of these ceos that are making millions. Host jody, thank you, from iowa. Guest sure. So on burials, i have been tracking this a little. I dont know that i am confident in getting a definitive answer, but i am happy to tell you what i know. I do know that there is there are a lot of efforts that are happening, to make sure that we are looking things like burial bags. That is also a lesson from ebola. While this is a widely different packaging, that is something that was really at the forefront of the Ebola Response and something that stayed with me as we do safe that, as and dignified burials, that you are not doing that in a way that is transmitting further infections. So i do know that that is going on, and i also know that some of our colleagues in new york and other states as well are working to actually share those lessons with their partners at the state level, so that as we are seeing outbreaks in other states, those are things to consider. And your point about ceos, we have seen a number i want to start with what we have seen so far. We have seen a number of companies that have looked at what it takes to retrofit or have started to make, for example, sanitizer. There are a lot of distilleries to make it. Ho look the ford announcement, the ge announcement to make ventilators. We have seen those as well. Those things are happening. I think these are difficult decisions. One of the pieces that we have seen from the healthcare ready side is a question of, what is the most impactful thing that a company could do . Sometimes that is actually just donating the resources to other groups who can use those resources, those funds to be able to do those outfittings. Sometimes it is being able to make sure that their workforce is actually staffed and not laid off and is able to maintain their economic stability. So we have seen a few different strategies. I cannot say that i know what all of those Fast Food Companies are doing, but i think we have seen a few different approaches, and some of it is just making sure that their own workforce can maintain no mossy maintain normalcy. To me, that is an incredibly important part of this, because when it comes to a pandemic, you do not have to be infected to be impacted, so from the Vantage Point of what some of these ceos and companies can do, it is also making sure that they are keeping their workforce table, to the extent that they cant get we have seen a range, e nominees are working on that they can. We have seen a range, some companies are working on bringing in ppe, some are creating masks or sanitizer, other things. Summer making sure that whatever funds they have a going toward their workforce and keeping their workforce stable. I think all of these are important solutions, but your point is certainly taken that in a time this dire, all hands on deck is needed. Host compiling all of the materials on coronavirus, you can find on our website, cspan. Org. The events that are coming in are also streamed live, including news conferences by governors in the key states, and a fourth the white house Daily Briefing, which we also carry live here on the cspan networks. Nicolette louissaint is the directiv director of healthcare, and joanne is joining us from nevada. Good morning. Caller good morning. I have a comment and a question. The comment is, yesterday morning, watching the news, and you had all the firemen in new york going in front of the hospital and clapping when everybody is getting off. Nice gesture, but not a one of them wearing masks, and they are all congregated altogether. Now, if that is not a place for coronavirus to get ahold, it was right there in new york. Why wasnt cuomo saying anything . And then my question is i pay for the hospitals zone. I pay for indigent care. Labyrinthn a walking to take out the parking lot. Now, what the hell . Put it in a storage shed. Money should be used to protect the people that pay into it. Forthen i am charged extra my health care, and i think there is something wrong. I think the hospitals are doing a poor job on that. Host thank you. We will get a response. Guest thank you. Yeah, your point is certainly taken about how to show gratitude and also maintain social distancing. I think that is one of the hardest parts about a pandemic, and of course this particular pandemic, when youre dealing with a virus that is this infectious and easily transmittable is that all of the normal ways that we would go about showing support, expressing appreciation, being able to see communities support one another, are traditionally based on the physical proximity. We are used to being able to get close together to show support, and that is something that is, in fact, very dangerous as it relates to this particular outbreak, so your point is certainly taken. And i think a lot of people are struggling with that very thing right now. Host from Johns Hopkins university, 1. 2 million confirmed cases around the world , and 65,000 confirmed deaths. Patients who,000 have fully recovered, and the u. S. Now with an excess of 8000 confirmed deaths as a result of coronavirus. Froms next, joining us maryland. Good morning. Caller good morning. And thankcspan you, cspan, for bringing baltimore, actually. 52 miles from where i am sitting right now. My question is about the preparedness of the inner city baltimore. And after seeing the conference where there were the young youth, assaulting the Police Officer sitting in his automobile, the message is not seem to be getting to the young people to help these people to get better prepared. My question is should this thing go to the expectation that , whats goingold to happen to those of us that are being in a prepared state and being aware of what is coming our way should this thing get out of control, as it did with the freddie gray issue back just a few years ago . Host ok, we will get a response. Appreciate it. Guest sure. There are a few differences between this and the u uprising. I think the crux of your point, what happens when some of us are prepared but others of us are not prepared . Adhering to guidance is what actually im hearing you say, so the social isolation guidelines and the stayathome orders, they are something that actually help us to recognize how fortunate some of us are, but they are glaring reminders of some of the challenges that many face. In society for some people, home is not a siphon environment safe environment. Home is not a place where they can stay in have guaranteed access to food, safety, and a range of other things that so many of us are fortunate to have, but at the end of the day, preparedness is not an individual effort, it is a communitywide effort, and that is why what happens to one of us when it comes to preparedness and readiness will impact all of us. So what that means is exactly your question. And when you are dealing with inner cities or just urban environments, more specifically, when people are closer together, and you are talking about the spread of a pathogen, again, what happens with one of us can spread to all of us very easily. What we are seeing is that a lot of community organizations, specifically in baltimore, but i think a lot of cities across the nation are doing this, and health car healthcare ready is many of them,port those who come as i mentioned, are not as fortunate to be able to stay home and have a safe environment, and finding ways to make sure that they have food, make sure they have other support, so that it is not just a relationship where you have a stayathome order, it is being enforced by law enforcement, but there is no alternative for those individuals. So it is a challenging thing. One of the complexities of this outbreak is the social distancing, the guidance can become look at it individuals who may want to be prepared, are taking this seriously, but dont have the ability to do so in a safe environment or in a stable home. So there are solutions that are being put forward, but that is an ongoing challenge. There are many cities that are expressing concern about ways to be able to do this. We saw in new york and other cities, i think baltimore as well, they took down basketball playgrounds, and things of that nature, but there are other Solutions Working to provide alternatives, and we are trying to provide that as well. Host the website is healt hcareready. Org. Nicolette louissaint is the caller let me have a comment in terms of your preparedness. I dont believe government, corporations, community can prepare for anything other than a shortterm issue. In other words, its very limited planning that goes into longterm problems, crises such as the one were facing. The reasons for that are very simple. Its an inability to define what that longterm crisis is. Is it a hurricane . Is it a war . Is it a terrorist attack . And then the naysayers like come on and say why werent we prepared . I think its i think were doing the best we can in the circumstances. The reason why corporations, organizations cant essential prepare, because they cant define it. They cant fund it. And essentially they wouldnt implement the plans, the taxpayer wouldnt allow them to do it. So thats my comment in terms of this mondaymorning quarterback. I think everybody should be applauded for what theyre doing and reacting to, but that its very harsh to say you should have had, you know, 200,000 ventilators on hand when nobody was going to use them, and by the time you did stock them, they might absolutely be obsolete from the time you prepared for. Host mike, thank you, from new jersey. Guest sure, so im happy to respond to that. I dont think were disagreeing at all. Just to be clear, im not a naysayer or mondaymorning quarterback. We are actively responding to this event, and as i said, it takes all hands on deck. But i think what you highlighted is exactly why preparedness and investing in a more robust preparedness system is this hard. The reality is whenever we get to a disaster, whether it is a hurricane or tornado, warfare of some type or a pandemic, we are going to have the ability to do our best because we have to. That is our obligation as citizens and as residents of this society and as citizens of the United States. That is what we do, and as an emergency manager, that is what ive dedicated my career towards doing. So i dont think we disagree that. But what i will say is i think when it comes to how we prepare and how we plan, there are ways to do that. In my field, one of the things that we talk about is the idea of all hazards preparedness. Itsed idea that while you up cannot predict and play out every single dynamic of an event, thats absolutely not what were trying to do. Its to be a forecaster of exactly all of the details of how an event will happen or play out. But what you can do is build a system and build plans and coordination plans for how youre able to look at each individual hazard, so whether it be a nuclear attack, a chemical atark a pandemic, a hurricane, we have playbooks. We have plans for how this goes, and we test them at the federal, the state, the local level in partnership with public and private sector all of the time. And so the idea is that we take that all hazard preparedness frame work, we take that idea that any disaster that impacts us has a Public Health impact. Any disaster that impacts us has to be able to have the best of our Emergency Management capabilities coming in to make sure that we are resourced, and we play that out, and we have that plan, and that allows us to prepare. And the investment that is we make in preparedness are reflections of how we do that all hazards plan. So i dont think that we have to know every single detail of how an event plays out in order to be prepared, but what i do is that we do know enough about all hazards preparedness, and we do know enough about how we prepare for natural, man maid or environmental hazards in a way that helps to us take those capabilities and that training from Emergency Management and build a more resilient system, and the opportunity to use recovery to actually build greater resilience and invest more in preparedness is always there. Host i just want to put numbers on the screen, and this courtesy of the c. D. C. , with more than 311,000 confirmed cases here in the u. S. , 8,454 deaths, and nearly 15,000 americans who have recovered. But as you look at those numbers and the president saying its going to be a tough, difficult week or two ahead, what are you expecting . Guest im expecting that as we test more, as we are beginning to see the stayathome orders go in place, social distancing go in place, we are going to see that were approaching the peak of the outbreak in the coming weeks. What i am most concerned about is how high that peak will be and what it looks like to be able to support our Healthcare Systems, our Healthcare Partners who are doing everything they can to be able to extend and create a Healthcare System that can respond to this surge. So what we are expecting is that as were testing more, there are going to be more cases reported. That is a part of what happened when you test, youre going to find more, and thats a critical part of this. But also, were expecting that as there are more cases, and as we are learn more about how the outbreak is spreading and the stayathome orders are going to impact the number of cases that we see, that the Healthcare System is going to continue to need resources. Theyre going to continue to need supplies and products and things of that nature to be able to deal with the cases that are coming in and support those patients that need that help. So thats what were expecting. As an organization, we are gearing up for that and continuing in this fight and expecting that, over the next few weeks, were going to continue to see that surge and that weve got to do everything we can to make sure that that surge is not met with unnecessary fatality. Host well go to nicole next in elgin, illinois. Thank you for waiting. Good morning. Caller good morning. Yeah, my comment was mainly, i appreciate where i really appreciate the governments attempts to be transparent, you ow, i do agree with your comments earlier about how the hierarchy level of things has to remain. To me, a hierarchy is the important people that youre going to place in positions to handle these emergencies as they come. We dont know. We cant predict the future. So we dont know the emergency level of what needs to be dispersed out for each emergency situation that we have here in the United States. Each time weve had them, theyve been horrific. The courses of events thats been taken, has been scrutinized so, so bad to where i think that the government needs to set hierarchy levels of emergency in the place of these catastrophes as they come. There has to be First Response emergency immediately dispersed so that the people know things are going to be taken care of. People are afraid. Theyre afraid because theyve seen in the past that things have just been handled just irresponsibly. Host nicole, well get a response, thank you. Guest sure, i think your last point is the one that stays with me every day. People are afraid. S in a scary time. This is the pandemic that many have been worried about and many have been sounding the alarm about. But when the rubber meets the road, and this is a scary time. I just to want make sure that you know that i heard that. I think one of the premises of Emergency Management is that every disaster is locally controlled. So it may be states managed and federally supported. There are going to always be, for catastrophic events, resources and support, of course, that comes in from the federal government, but its a locally controlled disaster at all times, and thats really important. On your point about hierarchy, absolutely. I think we have seen over the last 10 years, a range of disasters that show the importance of being able to be prepared, but also show the impact that these disasters can have on individuals, can have on patients, and why it is so important to make sure that we are prepared to respond on a dime to these types of crises. So, you know, i think about last year. We saw the wildfires in california, we saw the worst flooding in nebraska that wed ever seen. And those communities are still recovering from those things while also dealing with a pandemic. We saw in 2017 the impact to puerto rico, the u. S. Virgin islands, parts of florida, from that Hurricane Season. And those communities are also still recovering. And so it is a really complex, it is a complex space to be in, to think about how disasters are both scary, but require that type of management, require that type of support to communities. So i fully take your point. Host were talking with the executive director of healthcare ready in st. Louis. Robert is on the phone from brooklyn, new york. Good morning to you, sir. Aller hi, good morning. , hink the response in china to come through the white house and put Jared Kushner in charge , guidelines that people follow in emergency pandemic, and it seem like nobody been following that guideline the last four months. I like cspan to bring please somebody from osha on the froom explain whats going on. Host on the issue of guidelines, do you want to respond . Guest shurek on the issue of guidelines, there are osha guidelines related to p. P. E. Those guidelines have been followed. I think the guidelines youre mentioning are the n95 guidelines as it relates to mask usage. The c. D. C. Is creating guidelines that are informed by osha, and so all of the protective equipment guidelines that are coming from the federal government are incorporating those osha guidelines. Now, the question of the of the federal authority, the decision of the white house to create a task force and to make sure that that leadership is in place and working with the interagencies, thats a decision that is for the president to make. So i dont know that i can comment on that, so much as i can acknowledge that that is the response posture of the u. S. Government at this time. Host larry is on the phone, from san diego, good morning. Caller thank you. Doctor, i have a question. I spent a good part of my Business Career in Disaster Recovery, continuing planning. One of the things i discovered was that the Business Planning project always got pushed to like the secondmost important thing in the company, and almost any project could push it back down to the second most important thing. Do you guys have any way of pushing the idea of Disaster Recovery preparedness up into the Government Organization so its more of a top priority instead of always the second most priority . Thats my question. My other comment is, i think if were successful with this flattening the curve, i think that kind of extends the whole curve out a longer time. Is anybody thinking about how do we get back from that down the road and how far down the road that might be . Host thank you, larry. Guest yeah. So im smiling as you say that, because im shocked that you said its the second highest priority. I would argue that its oftentimes dead last. I think thats exactly the issue. The idea of zears preparedness, Business Continuity, its hard o make the case that these are really, really core priorities to invest in and to make sure that those systems are in place. Whether or not there is a pressing threat or not. Its really difficult to get that kind of buyin, and i think thats something that weve seen over the years. What i am hopeful in in this moment is that after years of intense events, weve sign number of crises over the last decade that i think are helping us to make the case, but as a lot of society right now, all of society is really impacted by this particular event, were hoping that this is reinforcing the importance for Business Continuity planning and Business Continuity investments, so i fully take your point. It is really difficult to make the case that you should invest in what i always call a maybe event versus a known event, and i think thats really where the difficulty lies, making the case that these investments have to happen, even though a disaster is not a certainty. So i take your point, and we are working really hard to make sure that even after this event, that this is not something that we forget about or that we dont consider. And to your second question about flattening the curve and what it means for spreading it out longer, the reality is this pandemic is not just going to go away overnight. And so there are actually articles, a lot of discussion within Emergency Management spaces about what it looks like to be dealing with a pandemic in the midst of hurricane times. A flooding season is intended, predicted to be particularly intense, as well as an upcoming Hurricane Season. I think i saw it projected to be above average or highly active this season. So we are going to be dealing with this for a while. There are a lot of folks that are thinking about what it looks like to do both, to be able to manage the pandemic and that slow tail out, while there are other disasters that are going on. But its going to be difficult. And this is uncharted territory in many ways. Host william in prescott, wisconsin, good morning. William, you with us . Well try nolan in chester, pennsylvania. Good morning to you, nolan. Caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. Thank you, doctor, shout ouattara, black girl imagine magic, i see you. Thank you. The question i have, ive been following the doctors in cuba, giving d that theyre im noticing thats not really on the radar, the Coronavirus Task force, so im wondering even what the embargo, how would that Publicprivate Partnership happen . If states individually wanted to set up the privatepublic partnership with cuba or doctors there, so im wondering if i could get in insight from your expertise. Host nolan, thank you. We have about a minute left. Your response . Guest sure. So what were seeing right now is that a lot of scientists in many countries, including cuba, are looking at experimental treatments and therapies and trying to determine whether or not theyre effective. So what we are seeing right now is that there hasnt been opportunities to do state to country exchange. Thats quite difficult t. Has to go through the federal government. But what we are seeing is that a lot of the scientists and the physicians that are looking at those experimental therapies are working as quickly as they can to be able to get those published and get that information shared with the medical communities so that were all looking at promising experimental therapies at once. Thats part of the reason that you saw the plasma announcement earlier this week, that were looking at using plasma from cured or recovered patients to see if those antibodies can help those that are extremely sick, and other studies like that that are going on right now. For a question about state to country exchange, it does have to go through the u. S. Government. Host very quick, a followup, do you think having gone through all of this, when we look back, it will change the mindset in terms of preparedness by state and local communities and funding for these areas . Guest sure. I certainly hope so. I think what weve seen, if you actually map out the number of disasters that wee had, not just disease outbreaks, but natural, manmade events over the last decade, makes the case that this is something that we cannot afford to, as your caller said, make the number two priority. It has to be the number one priority. And so it is my hope that after this event, as we make it through this and hopefully a calm Hurricane Season and continue to build towards recovery, that the investments that we see and not just determined investments, but sustained investments in prepared tons help us to build a more ready and more resilient society, will take into account the lesson that is weve learned from this pandemic. Host the executive director of healthcare ready. She is joining us in baltimore. We thank you for being with us. Guest thank you. Host coming up in just a moment, were going to introduce you to an emergency room doctor. Hes also the author of the book influenza the 100year hunt to cure the deadliest disease in history. Dr. Jeremy brown will join us via zoom. But first, back in 2010, the department of health and Human Services putting together a documentary on that 1918 pandemic, the film was called we heard the bells. Heres a portion. The outbreak of influenza that swept the nation in 1918 and early 1919 killed over half a Million People in the u. S. When the population was only a third of what it is today. I was 4 years old at that time. In new ing at a ranch mexico. My mother was the midwife, and she tended to the people, delivery of babies and all that kind of thing. She used to take me with her to go and visit the new mothers, and i loved to go see the new babies. And i cried because at that time she didnt want to take me with her, because she was tending to the sick and the dying. But the miracle of it all is that she didnt get it. And according to her, none of us at home got it either. She would tell me about how people would die, sometimes two in the same bed, and they had no Funeral Services or anything like that. It was just carry them off to bury them. It was very hard for them to keep up burying the dead, because they were dying so fast. One thing that stayed in my mind because i used toer that even later was the pounding of the nailing of boards together, call them boxes, boxes for he people. People called it influenza or the spanish flu, it was clear this was not the flu that comes every winter. Today we know that influenza is caused by a virus, the influenza virus. We know that the virus spreads from one person to another through droplets when people cough and sneeze or through contact with the virus on someones hand or a contaminated surface. In 1918, no one knew what caused it, where it started or how to stop it. Washington journal continues. Host joining us via zoom is dr. Jeremy brown. He is the director of the office of Emergency Care research at n. I. H. Hes also the author of the book influenza the 100year hunt to cure the deadliest disease in history. We thank you for being with us. Guest good morning. Host what are the lessons from the 1918 pandemic . Guest well, as we look back at that terrible, terrible time, which perhaps there seems to be more overlap now than we could have ever imagined, i think that there are some differences and there are some important similarities as well. I think we should really focus on the differences between whats going on now and 1918. Because 1918 did leave us with several lessons. Perhaps the most important one is understanding what it was that was killing people in 1918. Just to remind everybody, back in 1918, people had not yet discovered viruses. That would happen over the next couple of decades. And so there was this terrible disease that ended up killing between 50 million and 100 Million People worldwide, or 675,000 people in the u. S. , which in todays numbers, would be about three million deaths. And they did not know what it was that was killing them. The word influenza comes from a latin word, meaning influence. People thought that it was the stars and planets that was killing them, because they were misaligned. And so, for me, perhaps the most important lesson that came out of 1918 was the scientific communitys urgent need to figure out what it was that had caused so much destruction. That came very quickly. And, of course, today, were in a very, very different place. Within about two weeks of the first descriptions of coronavirus, a chinese team had published the full genome of the coronavirus, covid19, and published it in a major u. S. Journal, so it was in english for everybody here in the u. S. And around the world to read. An important difference between those two outbreaks and what was the number one thrust of the Science Community back then, and, of course, it still is today. Host but based on what was published back in january, are you surprised or not surprised where we are today in early april . Caller well, ill be honest with you. I am surprised. There are often reports of novel viruses that are described. Its not unusual to read of cases of a new influenza virus, for example, that flare up. Weve had several over the last few decades that have climbed the lives of perhaps a couple of dozen people in china or hong kong or elsewhere in the far east. And generally those have just sort of gone away, and weve watched them with curiosity, a little bit of concern. But i will be honest, the repeatedity with which this current pandemic spread certainly surprised and he surprised many others as well. Host from the book, back in 2018, you wrote the following, just one century is all that separates us from a Global Health crisis that killed more people than any other illness in recorded history. What weve learned in the interim is enough to scare and motivate us, but maybe not enough to stop another pandemic from happening. Because of its mystery and its ability to mutate and spread, the flu is one of mankinds most dangerous foes. Guest well, thats right. And we are in the midst of this coronavirus pandemic. Just to remind everybody, coronavirus is one of the winter viruses. It has a seasonality to it generally. Just like flu does. So we have a flu season that begins in the fall and goes through usually to the early spring. And coronavirus, as a family of viruses, caused the common cold. Thats how many people listening today will have had a Coronavirus Infection at some times in their lives, simply because they have had cold symptoms over the winter. Thats very common, and it usually goes away. What is different about 1918 was that it went away in the spring of 1918, having caused some devastation, but came quickly back in the fall. It wasnt that we dont think it was a different virus, it just reader up again in the fall. Theres a seasonality to this virus. And it caused tremendous devastation through the early winter of 1919. I think the big question for everybody is will covid19 act like a regular coronavirus which doesnt like, if you like to use that metaphor, it doesnt like warm weather, it doesnt like humid weather so. Will covid19 tend to weather as the warm weather of spring creeps in . We hope so. We hope it will continue to act like a winter virus. And then the big question will be, what will happen in the install will it disappear, having caused i said destruction, or will it come back with a vengeance, just like influenza did in the pandemic of 1918 . That remains to be seen. Host about 40 years after the pandemic of 1918, another flu virus back in 1957 affected americans and elsewhere around the world. This is a documentary produced in partnership with the American Medical Association on what happened back in 1957. Lets watch. Now the man upon whose shoulders rests the responsibility for preparing the United States for the impending battle with asian influenza is dr. Leroy berney, Surgeon General of the United States Public Health service. Doctor, i imagine and you your staff have had gathering quite a tremendous amount of material on asian flu. It seems to me that everybody i know has had and has talked about influenza, but i dont think anyone really knows what it is. Carl, its one of the upper Republican Attorney infections, Something Like a cold, only caused by flu virus, and the difference between the asian influenza and the influenza that weve been having all of these past few years is that this strain began in the strain of the virus began in hong kong and spread from hong kong to the rest of the world, including the United States. Well, every year, influenza is a problem in our communities. Im sure it is in yours, too. Why are we suddenly so all concerned about it now . Well, thats a very good question. We are concerned because in the other countries in which its appeared, and even in the outbreak that is weve had so far in this country, the attack rate has been 15 to 20 of the population. And this attack rate occurs in about four to six weeks. For example, in metropolitan pittsburgh, with approximately one Million People, if we had this flu strike here, you would have approximately 200,000 people who would become ill in a four to sixweek period. And this, of course, would make a tremendous impact upon the economy of this particular area. Host that from Westinghouse Broadcasting and the American Medical Association back in 1957. More recently, dr. Brown, back in 18 to have 19, most recent figures indicate about 16,000 americans died from the standard influenza. Why does it remain such a mystery . Uest well, the challenge of influenza is perhaps i would frame it slightly differently. It doesnt remain a mystery. It remains a challenge. The biggest challenge that we have when we talk about influenza is finding a vaccine that we dont have to repeat every year. So your viewers know that every year they get a flu vaccine. Different to that is the vaccine we get as children, like mumps, meese he wills and rubella, which after one or two doses, youre essentially immune the rest of your life. The challenge for the flu, theyre a clever shape shifter. While we can become immune to a certain strain of that virus, it quickly changes its outer coat and this means that new strains that infect us will not be recognized by our immune system. So the challenge of the influenza vaccine is to find a vaccine that is a universal vaccine, that will be able to walk against all strains of the flu, not just the ones that are in circulation that year. And also will not have to be given year after year after year. So those are the challenges of influenza. Its not so much a mystery as a medical challenge. The way that scientists approach this is to find that part of the flu virus that doesnt change between strain and sort of direct our immune system against that unchanging piece of the virus. That sounds very easy to do. But, in fact, its actually very challenging. When it comes to covid19, were here building essentially a vaccine from scratch almost, and there will be different challenges, but it certainly needs to be figured out whether or not we will need to get a vaccine that is going to be repeated year after year, whether there will be different strains of covid19 or coronaviruses that will need different vaccines. All the scientists are quickly trying to work it out so they can produce some kind of vaccine as quickly as possible. Host our guest, who grew up in london, as you can tell by the accent, is the author of influenza the 100year hunt to cure the deadliest disease in history. We go to the phone from ohio. Good morning. Caller good morning. My question and my comment has to do with all of this, but its something that i havent heard anybody ask yet on any of your shows about any of it. Id like to know i woke up this morning to mike murdochs ministry. The inspirational ministries, asking for money again. I keep saying, all these evangelical leaders that have millions of dollars, multiple homes, private planes, what are they doing . Are they giving up any of their money like the sports franchise owners have done to go to foreign countries, to help get the p. P. E. , to help get the ventilators and everything. If anything, wouldnt that be the best way for them to show gods love and to sow the seeds back to the people that gave them all that . Id like to know why no one is looking at that, why no one is asking that. You have ministers still having their congregations, endangering Peoples Health and stuff, and no one is bringing this up. No one is directing anything to them. I just i believe that alone is antichristian, antigod. Host we will leave your comment stand. Dr. Brown, thats not really part of your area of expertise. You can comment on it if you want, but i did want to ask you about social distancing. Did they understand that back in 1918 . Guest oh, they certainly did. In fact, it was understood before that quarantine has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years. We know that it was used, for example, in the great plague that struck in europe around 1357. We get this idea of 40 day, the italian word, 40 days quarantine, perhaps coming from the biblical idea of 40 days of lent, moses being on the mountain for 40 days, something magical and mysterious and special about that 40day number. So social distancing and quarantine, 40 or 30day period, has been known for many, many centuries. It was also a practice during the very foundations of this country back in the 1620s when the pilgrims were first coming over from england. There was a devastating smallpox pandemic that killed anywhere between perhaps 80 and 95 of the Indigenous People of this country, and even back then, there was a notion, a suggestion that we need to distance ourselves. We have early quarantine goals appearing in the colonies from the 1720s, the first laws nap boston requiring quarantine and separation. And so even though we had no idea what it was that was killing us, there was no notion of viruses and bacteria back then, there was certainly social distancing. So weve known about this for a long time. In the 1918 flu edmonton, it was widely practiced. So was wearing a face nascar public, by the way. And so here we are today using something thats really been around for many hundreds of years. Host well go to morgantown, west virginia. Raffle, good morning. Caller yes, good morningment thought that audio clip was very interesting, the doctor referenced pittsburgh, pennsylvania. That is exactly 70 miles due north from where im located in morgantown. But what i would like to comment on is, earlier in the show, i heard some comments about people talking about, well, what have we done wrong up until this point and calling it monday morning quarterbacking. At the moment, we appear to have more than two times the number of cases of any other country in the world. It certainly appears with the modeling that we are going to have way more deaths than any other country in the world. Theyre talking about a potential second wave coming in the fall or in the winter. I dont believe that its monday morning quarterbacking. To have take a look at what has been done that should have been done differently, because it certainly appears as if this situation, once the weather gets warm, just isnt going to go away. As our president initially said that it would. I mean, its very discouraging, and i really dont want to get political, especially in a time like this. I dont think we should worry how the horse got in the ditch at the moment, but how to get him out. But then after that, i think we have to take a look at what was done and the complete lack of preparedness that we have had that has been a direct contribution to all of these numbers of cases and going to be a direct contribution to the vast number of deaths that we experience here in this country. Host ralph, thank you for the call, the comment, the question. Well get a response. Guest i think a very important aspect of all this, which is figuring out what we could have done better once this is behind us. Of course, as you point out, we have a job right now to do, which is to limit the infection, save the people who can be saved, and make sure that each of us is doing our part to prevent the spread. But i think youre quite right that when this is all done, we will have to ask some very important questions about how we allocate our resources for scientific research, how we allocate our resources for preparedness, and not surprising that, you know, pandemic preparedness is very often put to the side as more pressing important ways that we have to spend our money. But i think weve all learned that when these events strike, they are so catastrophic that we certainly need to think as a community, as a nation about what we can do Going Forward to be better prepared. After the terrible flu outbreak in Great Britain and also in boston in the 1890s, there was a parliamentary inquiry in the United Kingdom that led to some important changes in the way that things were done there. And i think that were going to see the same here. But were many, many months away from that, and as you said, right now we have a different priority, which is the medical priority. Host if covid19, doctor, is similar to past viruses, if you have it, are you i. M. F. Mune from getting it in the future . Guest scientists are certainly looking at this. The answer is generally yes. Once youve been infected with a virus, you are generally immune from further infections of that specific strain. This is true of all viruses, and, in fact, thats how vaccines work. You are given a dose of a virus at is either dead or incapacitated as it were, and you are mounting an immune response, and you remain immune to that virus for the rest of your life. So the question now is, will covid19 act like all the other viruses act, and you will have a lifetime immunity . It seems very likely. The question then becomes, what about the constraints, just as covid19, a strain of coronavirus and influenza, theyre different strains, does immunity to one strain translate into immunity to other strains . We know for influenza that does not occur. If you get a vaccine against one strain, you are still susceptible to a different strain, and it may that be even if youre immune now to a specific strain of coronavirus or covid19, that you will not immune to a different strain of the coronavirus. That remains to be seen. It is an important focus of scientific work. Host in addition to his book on influenza, our guest has written a number of text books on emergency medicine published by Oxford University press. Hes also the former Research Department at George Washington university and currently the director of the office of Emergency Care at n. I. H. Linda is next, joining us from ohio. Good morning. Caller good morning. I feel somewhat connected to the spanish flu, because my grandmother, i remember hearing the stories of the flu, and she lost two little boys, one was 6 and one was 4. And grandma said that there was so much death around them. And hearing about it, 100 years doesnt seem that long ago. And i just have a couple of questions. I was reading that we have identified 3,000 different viruses, and i guess there are thousands more. Can that can the virus be created in a petrie dish . This is what has been in the back of my mind. And do we know with the spanish flu where it started . I can remember we called it the spanish flu because it stopped and started in spain, but then i heard that it actually started over here. So do we know for sure where it actually started . 100 years isnt that long ago. Im 74 years old. And i remember consoling my grandma, because she never, ever was able to get over the fact. She was telling me that within the same yeerks months apart, when she lost charles, and then when she lost arthur. She doesnt remember it, but she had him in her arms, and she refused to let go of him. And she said she just lost her mind over that and just couldnt bear to lose another child. Host linda, what a story. Well get a response. Thank you very much for the call and sharing your own experiences and what that of your grandmother. What a sad story. Guest linda, thank you. Thats, of course, a terrible story. U a personal connection with it , and its a story that was repeated millions of times across the world at that time. Just to take a couple of the questions that you raised, yes, viruses can be created in the lab. In fact, the 1918 virus was resurrected as it were for experimental reasons so that scientists could better understand it. And today, with genetic engineering, all kinds of viruses can not only be created in the lab, but can be manipulated and changed so that we can understand how their function will change if certain natural mutations occur, and this is a very important part of Scientific Understanding of how viruses work. Let me tackle another part of your question, which is where the 1918 virus originated. You mentioned that it was called spanish flu, which it was, and you are youre correct, it did not originate in spain actually. It was reported in spain widely for the reason that during the great war of 1914 to 1918, there was a tacit agreement between the newspaper editors and the governments of the western powers to try and keep the bad news about influenza off of the front pages. Andy looked at hundreds and hundreds of historic newspapers, and while there are some that reported influenza on the front pages of those newspapers of the day, the vast majority relegate them to the inside or the back page. Spain was a neutral country. It did not have this agreement between its newspaper editors and its government to keep influenza off of the front pages of the newspapers, and so the outbreak of influenza in 1918 was widely reported in spain because it was a neutral country, didnt have this censorship, if you like. And so people started referring to it as the spanish flu, but it was not, in fact, a flu that came from spain. It was reported there. We do have some theories as to where it came from. The first theory is that it actually started here in the United States in kansas. The evidence that supports that is that the first reports of influenza coming out of the United States were from haskill county in early january and february, a county excuse me, a country miner probably went to visit his patients on horseback. He reported 18 deaths, 18 cases of flu and three deaths in one day in january and february of 1918. He reported this in the medical journal. And from there, the flu seems to have spread to a camp only a couple of hundred miles away, and then out into the United States. Thats one theory. And there is good evidence to support it. But there are two at least two other theories as to where the 1918 influenza pandemic originated. A second was that it originated in northern france. The evidence for that is that in 1916, in northern france, there were reports of an influenza outbreak there in the troops, and at least one theory that says it began there and seeded across the world and then reared its ugly head all at once in 1918 two years later. That would explain how the virus managed to travel across the world seemingly so quickly in 1918. There was no International Air travel, of course, and yet the virus appeared in all kinds of dispar ate countries around the world very quickly. The suggestion is that it actually seed over the previous two years from northern france, and then was able to appear, as it were, all across across the world. Thats the second theory. The third and final theory that circumstances late today is that it began in china. There were reports of an influenza in china several months before the outbreak of the 1918 pandemic. It is suggested that the virus was brought with Chinese Workers at least 140,000 Chinese Workers were hired in a supporting role on the front lines of the european theater of the 1918 war, and perhaps they inadvertently brought the virus with them. So three three are his as to where the 1918 pandemic began. It either began here in the u. S. , in northern france, possibly china. Well never know for sure, but we do know for sure where the coronavirus began, and thats, again, another very interesting and important difference. Host a very quick followup, because i want to get back to calls, but Business Insider reporting that patient zero, a 55yearold man, he was first diagnosed back in november, and chinese officials realizing in middecember that they had a new strain, a new virus. Do you have any idea who patient zero is . Guest no, no, i dont. But i think there will be a great amount of scientific work that will congregate around that person, if indeed it turns out to be correct. All these reports need to be verified. But we do know where the first patient at least to have symptoms remember, patient zero is the one who had symptoms. That doesnt mean that the coronavirus that is currently circulating wasnt in other people and was asymptomatic at the time, in which case that person was symptomatic patient zero, but not carrier zero. So we have to be very careful about calling this patient the first one who had the disease. But because we have samples of this persons blood and serum, well be able to understand through molecular genetics exactly what that initial virus looked like and compare and contrast it to the virus as it has appeared around the world. Host dr. Jeremy brown is the author of influenza the 100year hunt to end the deadliest disease in history, joining from us outside washington, d. C. Melody is next, ohio. Good morning. Caller good morning. Im from terre haute, indiana. Host youre on the air. Go ahead. Caller my first question is, its been answered by listening to the phone and the tv. I wanted to ask if we had the flu again, this flu, could we get it again . But my question was answered. Secondly, is this what you call biological warfare . I spent over 20 years in the service, and im not going say at branch, but i recognize the problem, and i feel sorry for all these people, plus the ilitary, plus everybody thats but, but since this is peace time, is this still considered biological warfare . Host thank you. Well get a response. Guest of course, that means that somebody designed an infectious agent, a virus or bacteria, and deliberately released it to cause death and destruction. And then if you were to go down that path, you would have to ask yourself who would have done such a thing and to what gain . Nobody gains from this. There is very strong Scientific Evidence that this is a completely natural virus. And anybody who would claim otherwise, really, the burden of proof is on them, not just to suggest it, but to bring proof. Scientists have looked at this virus very carefully. A Group Published a paper in one of the nature journals within the last couple of weeks showing why all the evidence shows that this is a naturally occurring virus. It has to do with the way it seems to be similar to other naturally occurring bat viruses from where we believe this originated. And the suggestion that they have made, and these people who spend their entire professional lives studying the genome of a virus, there is nothing about this virus that suggests its anything other than a natural mutation and is a reminder that we dont need all kinds of theories of biological warfare to really explain something that is natural. And i think to be a wakeup call to all of us that nations must be taking very seriously. Host can you clear up there are a lot of conspiracy theories out there that this was a planted virus to harm the u. S. Guest well, i think just look around the world. Again, people who extraordinarily claim, require extraordinary evidence. I would ask people with those extraordinary claims to bring their extraordinary evidence to support that. Nobody has gained from this. Not the u. S. , and not any of the other large actors in the world from nobody has gained from the release of this virus. So i think thats a silly suggestion, and if people to want make it, they need to come up with some very, very extraordinary evidence. Host and weigh gree, thank you. Kevin is next from texas. Good morning. Caller good morning. Yes, doctor, i was seeking some statistical support for the effectiveness of social distancing. Specifically, the tack that we seem to take is that s where we have essential and nonessential places, and i know intuitively you would think social distancing is going to help. But it seems to me that all those people that were in bars and restaurants, theyre now at the Grocery Store with the same viruses that they would have carried in the other places. And, in fact, because of the shortages, theyre going to the Grocery Store more often. Host well get a chance. Thank you, kevin. Guest well, i think youre correct. People do venture out and carry with them the viruses that they do. But theres important caveats here. First of all, we should be limiting the number of times we go out. Dont go out twice a week to the Grocery Store. Buy what you need for the entire week, at the beginning of the week, and not more, because there may be shortages of some important things, so buy what you need, but only buy it once and limit the amount of time you go out. That will limit the spread. But, again, coronavirus and all the winter viruses dont last very long when theyre outside the host. It is true that we understand today that coronavirus can, under certain circumstances, last for several hours or perhaps a day or more on certain surfaces. But the amount of virus that will exist, that will live as it were on those surfaces is relatively small, and so your risk of getting the virus from surfaces is very, very small, compared to the risk of getting it because youre in contact with somebody. So if we limit the amount of contact that we have, we will limit the ability to pass the virus on from one person to the next. We know that is the number one way in which this virus and all winter viruses are spread. Host well go to craig in las vegas. Good morning. Guest good morning. How are you, sir . Host were fine. Good morning. Caller dr. Brown, my question first of all, i am a 63yearold disabled naval veteran. I was a corpsman. I suffered with lupus. But my question i wanted to post to you is, every couple of years i have to take a test for my colin, and we have to take a stool sample, put it in a tube, mail it out, and then we get our results through primary care. My question to you is why couldnt we, as a nation, do that for this test . Because weve not had any testing done, take the test, and even if the test would be to develop it would be restrictive because of the covid19, but because its in the influenza family, couldnt we develop a test that we can all mail in, and then get the results back so we can try to get ahead and find a way to maybe better combat the virus . Guest well, thats a brilliant suggestion. Im sure there are people working on it. Lets just sort of think about what we know from other examples about that. It certainly is possible that we will end up with exactly what you have suggested, which is a selfadministered, perhaps a buckle test, where we just take a sample from a mouth, put it in a tube, and mail it in and get a result. For example, we have that now with, of all things, h. I. V. You can now get a test that will detect h. I. V. You can take it at home, and you can send it in and get the results. Of course, this took many, many, many years, and not only to develop it, but to figure out whether it was a wise thing to do socially and psychologically. But we went there, and we now have tests like that. So if you consider that in the early 1980s, h. I. V. Was not even described, let alone having a test for it, so we discovered it in the early 1980s, and by the middle of the 2010, even earlier, we had selfadministered home tests for that infection. So it takes a while, but its certainly possible, and i would not be surprised if over the next many years, and it will take many years, we end up seeing something very similar to this and for other viruses that are in circulation, home tests for those viruses, yes. Host next up is steve from maryland. Good morning. Caller good morning. Very interesting conversation. A little background, im actually in the biotech industry. We have a company, or i work for a company that actually makes testing for coronavirus and other pathogens. We can also do other testing as well. I was curious about your surveillance y, that detects multiple pathogens, where like coronavirus, have flu or pneumonialike symptoms. If you had others that can screen for all those pathogens, how useful that would be during a pandemic and lest poffer pandemic, as well as for surveillance, like theres a second wave. Guest yeah, thank you for that question. I think these, of course, are terribly important, and we do have biosurveillance at levels that are sort of occurring in the background. When i would ride the metro in washington, d. C. , there would be these little machines at some of the stations in the middle of washington, d. C. That were out there to detect dangerous pathogens with a concern, of course, tv people deliberately spreading them. And so we do have mill father civilian tests that military and civilian tests that look at background detection, that look at a background to be able to detect these pathogens. The question is not only about detecting them, but in interpreting what it is that youve detected. So you, for example, might be a carry why are of a pathogen and not have storges all this needs to be worked out. Im sure that people will be very heavily focused both on the private and the Public Sectors in this important area of surveillance of trying to understand what is going on in the background, and then, of course, comes the translation of being able to interpret those backgrounds, and make some meaningful policy as a result of them. Host dr. Brown, i just received an email from nbcs meet the press on jerome adams, the u. S. Surgeon general making an appearance this morning. I want to read the quote he just told nbcs chuck todd, the next week is going to be out of pearl harbor moment. It is going to be our 9 11 moment t. Is going to be the hardest moment for Many Americans in their entire lives. When you hear that this morning, whats your reaction . Guest well, i think its something ive discussed wide well my own family, which is i think that we are seeing a very bifurcated kind of response here, and its natural. There are people who are completely untouched by this. At most they are working from home. They still have salaries, and they can still go about their daily lives, almost unchanged. And there are people for whom the economic level, let alone the medical devastation, has been overwhelming. Theyre living paycheck to paycheck. They cant make the rent or the next mortgage payment. And, of course, there are people whose loved ones are fighting this virus or maybe even will die from it. I think what were seeing here is this bifurcation is that for many people it will be exactly as the Surgeon General suggested, and for others, theyll be scratching their heads and saying, well, life goes on around me. In fact, its a Beautiful Day today. Im going to go out and walk the dog. I think it really is important for each of us to put ourselves in the shoes of those people who are on those front lines, even if we ourselves dont feel that this is, as the Surgeon General put, it the pearl harbor moment. For many, many hundreds of thousands of americans, thats exactly right. We need to offer our thoughts and prayers and anything we can do physically to make the lives of First Responders and physicians, nurses, support staff, as easy as possible there on the front lines for caring for the most sick and vulnerable today and every day. Host our last call is from north carolina. Good morning. Caller good morning. Beautiful topic. Look, i got a question now. I kind of got an understanding that h. I. V. Has like two components in the virus, that one attacks the immune system and the other attacks different organs. Now, i dont know about the corona. Do corona also have two components that one disguised itself as part of the immune system, attack the immune system, and do respiratory damage . Do you explain, if thats the case, why come the h. I. V. Medicine would not help the public if thats the case . Host thank you. Well get a response. Guest very briefly, people are looking at h. I. V. Type medicine, because h. I. V. Is a virus, and corona is a crorningse obviously a virus. People are looking at existing antiviral medications, seeing if they will work against coronavirus, and theres actually probably at least 100 Clinical Trials currently underway looking at various medications to fight the virus. But you point to an important aspect, which is we are now beginning to understand coronavirus not only attacks the lungs, but does all kinds of other damage, specifically we are understanding that it actually attacks the brain in all kinds of unpredictable ways, giving people neurological symptoms. So this is another area where we are beginning to understand that the virus does so much more damage than just necessarily attacking the lungs, and we have to keep our eyes on this and we have to keep our eyes on this and figure out all of the other ways coronavirus works so we can respond. We will conclude on that note. The book is called influenza, the 100 year hunt. Also director at nih in maryland. He is driving us via zoom from his home in silver spring. Thank you for being with us. Tonight on q a and 8 00, a look at the the the doctor at nih based on past interviews we have conducted. Tomorrow morning as Speaker Pelosi he works on it for the stimulus plan. More details and then we back tomorrow evening. Thank you for joining us on this sunday. Yourfe, enjoy the rest of weekend, and have a good week ahead. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. 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