Industry, as a public service, and brought to you by your television provider. Day. Your us is a dock Infectious Disease physician and associate professor at the Boston University school of medicine. She serves as the director of special pathogens unit at Boston Medical Center. Thank you for being with us. Guest thank you for having me. Host let me begin with the pandemic and where we are. What have we learned so far, and what happens next . Guest there are a couple of interesting studies this week alone that tell us where we are within this pandemic. That haveicenters seen huge numbers of cases, we are at the point where we are coming off of the peak. Both in new york, and now in boston, which was into laughter new york being one of the biggest in the country. We see the rates of admissions of patients and people getting sick, requiring acute level care dropping. It is still a pretty high normal. That represents all of the people who had been exposed when society was still open, infections that may have occurred since then, those are decreasing. Secondary to the fact we have put those restrictions into place. The new studies this week, some of the modeling has looked at the fact that to get to this point, to have these many people, and the studies that have told us how many people may have already had it and not known. Models are not showing that. For us to get to this point, it was probably circulating weeks before we got it in a more general fashion. Peak, whatrs of the happens now depends on how we move forward with opening, where we open, and who we open society for. Host this from Governor Cuomo of new york indicating a sample of about 3000 new yorkers indicated as many as 2. 7 Million People in the state may have been infected. The highest rate in new york city at 21 . The lowest in upstate at 3. 5 . What does that tell you . Guest it is on par with other studies coming out, both looking at active infections and there are two kinds of tests for coronavirus. One is the active test that looks for the virus in your body when youre ill. A second type is the Antibody Test that tells you if your body has immune memory or antibody to this virus, and you have been infected in the past. A couple of studies have come out in certain areas that the prevalence of the disease is 30 . In other communities, a california study showed between 2 and 4 . Is the is revealing reality is we are all facing a different level of transmission during this pandemic, which we already knew. Depending on population density and other risk factors, it played out differently. There are a couple of caveats. This particular Antibody Test, there are many on the market currently. Them concern some of many may suffer with some of the same issues. They may not be as accurate as we would like them to be. They may be negative when the person already had an infection. It can be positive when the person was never infected. It may not be helpful for the person. What these tests are doing is giving us a relative sense of the intensity of the outbreak in different populations. Host in entropy, Vice President pence saying the pandemic be behind us by june. Will it . It completely depends. I dont think the virus is going away. Lets start there. I dont think it goes away magically. There is no evidence to say it could. Given how widespread it has been, and even with the high numbers we see, many people are still vulnerable. The hope is with the summer months, with more people being outside, the rate of transmission decreases. That is the hope. You are still going to get some people who might get sick, because we see that in temperate countries who have summer weather all along, and still see these cases read the worry is during the fall it will come back with the same level of intensity at which we are seeing right now, or were we saw it the last few months. Host he also teach a course on Human Security and emerging Infectious Diseases at the school of law and policy. Lets get to a few phone calls. Question is can there be more than one pandemic virus at once . Has there ever been with the increasing frequency . Could there be . Guest i really hope not. It could. , wereality is every year see these new emerging Infectious Diseases on the international scene. That weit is the fact are changing as a population. There are twice as many people on the face of the earth then since this point when i was born. We are consuming Different Levels of resources. We are coming into contact with natural reservoirs of animals, viruses, and other aspects that are in balance with each other. We are seeing some of the viruses are spilling over, moving from animals and into humans. That is happening with increasing frequency. We discovered over 40 new diseases in the last 20 years. With all of them, the challenge is the same. We need to build resilience through our society, our medical systems. We need to improve technologies to detect them before they become pandemics. While they are still small clusters of diseases. Host you spent your life studying Infectious Diseases. When we get beyond this pandemic, what would you tell the Chinese Government . Whether it is what markets or other sources of these viruses . I think that has always been a concern. At these wet markets, there is concern that you have not just wild animals that might carry the viruses, but Domestic Animals mingling with wild animals, so it may jump from while to domestic animal, then to humans. I heard a talk yesterday about it. The president of an organization that works on exactly that part of the problem. The interface between humans and animals. One thing he said was we have to make those environments safer, rather than just banning them. These concerns it will drive the markets in the underground, and we wont be able to detect outbreaks it would be even harder to detect than it is right now. There is some point to that. We need to work around figuring out how the Chinese Government can make those environments safer and invest more to make sure it continues how it is regulated that her. Host bob is joining us. I am in seattle, about the time the outbreak happened in kirkland, which is where i was visiting friends. When i got home, they are ok. I got a case of upper respiratory infection, which i get every couple three years. Im pretty come from eyes. It, i lost myer sense of taste. That was unusual. His that miss or marker is that myth or marker . That is actually true. What we have noticed in a huge number of people, there was a fromt study a reporting fact that talks about the that over half of the people, when they were called, said they lost their sense of smell or taste at some point. Mers. It with even in that, it was documented. We are seeing a much greater frequency to the point that in some clinics, they use it as a marker of saying you probably had it. If you had a lost sense of smell or taste with the upper respiratory infection. Our guest from massachusetts. Host our guest from massachusetts. Caller im concerned about georgia opening up. Restaurants on monday, along with movie theaters. People fly into the airport all the time. Thats loaded with restaurants and bars. Will it spread the virus all over the country . Guest that is the concern. Everybody hearing about georgia is concerned about that. We are truly all connected through travel. Outbreaks,ok at whether it be ebola or other outbreaks, states or countries control their outbreak, there are pockets where it continues. Its just another match waiting to be lit to spread that virus all over again. Doneorgia, what have they to make it safer for everybody else that will begin the community . Sameverybody will have the Public Education to understand the consequences of their actions. Im concerned that if those measures are not in any of these public spaces, it would be bad for georgia overall, in terms of the cases that might present after opening. Your family, your friends, when you think about going to restaurants, sporting events, shopping, what will you be looking for . Guest there are some really great capacities set aside by the white house when they released this criteria about how states should move to the next level opening. Some were having enough testing capacity, the ability if you have cluster of cases, finding anyone who is sick, and finding anybody else in contact because this disease can spread exponentially. Having those elements of Public Health in place, but you have to open slowly the reason why is the limiting factor will be the medical capacity. You dont want to go back to the same point we are here, where even at Boston Medical Center, we spoke through the press, and 50 of our hospital beds are required by people who are covid patients. We dont want to get to this point again. In showing we open slowly so Health Care Capacity can continue and supply chains can soe through and provide that Health Care Workers are not left without the tools they need. Out, i would going want to see a couple of things in place. Knowing many of us are still vulnerable, businesses have to look at places to distance people in society. We talked about different ways it can be done. We have seen it in grocery stores. I would like to see more people utilize the suggested use of masks or face coverings, knowing many of us will be shedding into our environment, even if we dont appear to be sick, i would like to see good plans about disinfecting public spaces and businesses opening up. And a good way to surveilled how this is going on and protect themselves. However that worked out, showing employees are under surveillance programs so they dont get sick. Host stephen joining us from new york. Caller good afternoon. I do have a comment question. This is with regards to the testing. If you listen to donald trump, dr. Birx, dr. Fauci, concentrating on testing. Producet testing, you graphs and get an isolation of who is where and so on and so forth. Should you be concentrating on a cure . I hear a lot about testing, i hear about demographics, people that have to be tested, which is impossible to get, anyway. Shouldnt the focus be on a cure . Guest there is a lot of focus on the cure, it just takes time to get results. Months,ast couple of there have been a lot of candidate drugs identified that can be working, and others that laboratories across the country, including our own. I am a faculty member at the emerging Infectious Diseases faculty. Our investigators have been looking at drugs that might be successful based on their in celle, how they act lines and other basic translational research. Then you put those into Clinical Trial. You try and compare it to another drug or a placebo, just because you are not hearing much about the drugs, they are all in the middle of going through this Clinical Trial work. There are a couple of big trials with results just around the corner. One is a couple of u. S. Based trials. A couple of them are on highly hydroxychloroquine, and another drug that looks like it is not going to be as successful. There is another drug that is another antiviral medication. There is a who trial that is ongoing. There are a couple of smaller trials. Drugsother class of drug, that help the immune system respond to this. The work is happening, it is just not in the press. There is no answers yet. Dr. Gregoryow, poland, who heads up the Vaccine Research group at the mayo clinic, will be talking about vaccines. It is apparent this is your passion, your enthusiasm is infectious. Why such interest in Infectious Diseases . Guest i have always found it so interesting. , thenk Infectious Diseases Infectious Diseases we see are a result of the mosaic of our cultures, society of our economics, and the way outbreaks play out, they prey on our weaknesses. The thing i find interesting is in working with these diseases, i get to work on some inherent problems in our society to discover those holes and improve them to build the resilience. That there are two organisms involved, the human and disease itself, and how they interact, has always been fascinating. And how differently diseases play out in different societies, and how unjust it is in some cases. Us frome is joining boston. Shes affiliated with the Boston University school of medicine and Boston Medical Center as rector of the special pathogens unit. Thank you for cspans washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that coming up, director of the division of Infectious Disease and International Medicine at the university of minnesota discusses the response to the coronavirus pandemic. In a sutter republican candidate congressman will be on to talk about the impact of the pandemic and recently passed release legislation. Main street alliances discusses federal efforts to support Small Businesses during the pandemic. Be sure to watch washington journal coming up at 7 00 a. M. This morning. Join the discussion. Members of congress are working from their home district. Many of my folks, 30 of them, are ones at the automotive industry. The other majority are what i would call your frontline workers, now they are called essential workers. These are the folks that have been demanding 15 minimum wage. It is really important to highlight they are the ones who are keeping us afloat. This is a very serious issue. What i have been telling people is, please, listen to the federal authorities, state authorities and local authorities and health experts, and do. Stay away from people right now. I see this as a war. The United States is at war with this virus. Stay in touch easing the newly updated cspan directional cspan congressional directory. It has the information you need to connect to your senator or representative. Order your copy as cspanstore. Org. Nancy pelosi holds her Weekly News Conference today to talk about the Coronavirus Response and other legislative priorities. Alive at 11 30 a. M. Eastern on cspan. Some reporting on the latest round of federal economic aid totaling 484 billion dollars, nearly three quarters of that money will be spent on helping Small Businesses. Writes that the measure approved in the house by a vote of 3885 is a fourth in a series of relief measures pushed through congress. Totaling 2. 7 trillion. It comes after two weeks of intense negotiations between pelosi, gop leaders and the white house. Mr. Neal thank you, madam speaker. Its my pleasure to yield one minute to the gentlelady from