Then, taxpayers for common sense president steve ellis talks about what is in the to trillion dollar coronavirus aid bill recently passed by congress. Washington journal is next. Host with the United States death toll from coronavirus approaching 2500, the president made the announcement he is extending social distancing guidelines until at least april 30. Big news coming out of that briefing with reporters last night. We want to get your reaction this monday morning, march 30, to the president s news extending the social distancing guidelines to april 30. If you live in the eastern or central time zones, call 202 7488000. The mountain1 four and pacific time zones. If you are a medical professional, we have a number for you 202 7488002. A couple of other ways to take part in the conversation this morning. Send us a text at 202 7488003. Please leave your name and the city you are calling from. You can also send a tweet. cspanwj is our twitter handle. You can also post a comment on faceb
Joining us now this morning on washington journal is dr. John andrews. Andrus who is an adjunct professor of Global Health at George Washington university. Your take on the president s announcement yesterday after the grim forecast, president is extending the social distancing limits until the end of april. What do you make of that move . I think thats excellent. I think the evidence has to be in the drivers seat and i have to commend him for taking that action. Host let me show you the Johns Hopkins statistics that are out there. Total confirmed cases around the world approaching 750,000. Total deaths approaching 35,000. We have been reviewing the u. S. Numbers this morning. The numberssee in and recent trends and other news from recent days. Put this in perspective for us. When i personally try to put this in perspective i think about my 35 years working in Global Health and there are two events that i think i use personally as touchstones in dealing with this current crisis. One is
Total deaths approaching 35,000. We have been reviewing the u. S. Numbers this morning. The numberssee in and recent trends and other news from recent days. Put this in perspective for us. When i personally try to put this in perspective i think about my 35 years working in Global Health and there are two events that i think i use personally as touchstones in dealing with this current crisis. One is india. I worked in the 1990s in india and saw firsthand in 1994 how the ague crisis brought the country to its knees. It was mismanaged. There was miscommunication. Fear was created. A reactive mode that started. And so the country shut down. It lost millions if not billions of dollars in tourist revenue. But the Indian Government learned from it. An infectioused Disease Surveillance Program best publicy is the Health Infectious Disease Surveillance Program in the world. Its an amazing story. The other event is haiti. I was Deputy Director of the Panamerican Health organization which is the
Deadliest diseases. Throughout history, humans have been fighting diseases winning deadly neverending wars against rampant contagions. In fact, theres never been a time when humans were not affected with microbes and against them. During the time as a disease detective our speaker has had his ow own brush and own brushi, Infectious Diseases and contagions. For example, in 1995, working with red cross workers for the first ebola crisis and after 9 11, he was called to washington to prevent the spread of anthrax to the Senate Office building. And in 2003 he was called to hong kong. But these are just some of the stories doctor khan chronicles in the next pandemic carried as an epidemic intelligence officer, a disease hunter if you go, his missions for two decades were to read the efforts to prepare the public for disease outbreaks in the Health Emergencies. He has seen it all. While he tells us that it will always be a problem, he also writes as all epidemics and pandemics are inevitable
Are your questions can be heard. Please join me in welcoming john barry. [applause] thank you very much. Its kind of funny to be sitting here in a Community Room of the Louisiana Legislature talking about this subject largely because although you might not think it, politics is very involved in the story of the pandemic i cant think of a better place to talk about politics in the legislature. When you read about the 1918 pandemic in the newspapers these days you say the death toll was over 20 million. That estimate comes from the first of the disease thats fairly accurate for the western world but wildly inaccurate for the rest of the world. In a Nobel Prize Winner that spent most of his life studying influenza concluded that the death toll was a minimum of 50 Million People and possibly as many as 100 million. All this was in a world with the population 28 the size of today. So, if you adjust the population, the death toll on 1918 was between 175 to 350 Million People in todays world.