Sunday School 3/15/20

Today, I sat in on three classrooms, looking for discussion on different aspects of the coronavirus threat.

So, I've got Dr. Tony Fauci, our top expert on infectious diseases talking to Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday (he was in all the classrooms today, I'm hoping from a remote and socially distanced location), SecTreas Steven Mnuchin talking with Jon Karl on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, and a couple of governors, Mike DeWine (R-OH) and J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) who chatted with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press.   

We'll start with Mnuchin, fresh off his negotiations with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the second coronavirus aid bill. Mnuchin denied we're in a recession, which a lot of people are saying is the current state of things.

I don't think so. But I think the real issue is not the economic situation today. The real issue is what economic tools are we going to use to make sure we get through this. This is a unique situation...We're addressing issues for small and medium-sized businesses. And later in the year, obviously the economic activity will pick up as we confront this virus.

And, he tried to explain to us why the president is so focused on the stock market "because it's just one indication of the economy that gives people confidence."

Karl brought up Trump's Oval Office address, noting that there was pretty strong negative reaction to it, not just from the stock markets; he also noted the false statements that were made, and wondered how it could have happened. Ironically, after his immediately prior comment about Trump focusing on the market because it gives us confidence, he said

Well, let me just first comment on your reaction to the stock market. Because the stock market is going to go up; it's going to go down. We can't focus on, every day, the move.

O-kay.  And then, speaking of the Oval Office address, he said Trump

...wanted to address a very important point, which was he made the move to shut down travel so that he could shut down more cases coming in. He wanted to reassure the American public. I don't think, in an Oval Office address, you're going to address every single issue as you're discussing it...

Karl tried again, asking how does he get things wrong about his own proposals, and Mnuchin said he doesn't think Trump got it wrong "at all." And when Karl said "I mean, cargo's not banned" here's the response.

And we were very clear that people misinterpreted the comments on cargo and we immediately put out a statement to clarify that. So the president said this is similar to China and China cargo is not banned.

It was almost impossible to misinterpret what the president said. Here are those words, as reported on the White House website. Referencing the suspension of travel from Europe for 30 days,

... these prohibitions will not only apply to the tremendous amount of trade and cargo, but various other things as we get approval. Anything coming from Europe to the United States is what we are discussing.  

Mnuchin also spent a lot of time talking about tools: tools they have, and tools they'll ask Congress for if needed.  And on the bill he worked out with Pelosi, that hopefully will get Senate attention this week,

So we were -- we were constantly in touch, updating the bill and making changes. And, yes, our focus is especially small and medium-sized businesses that are really hit hard in specific industries. Again, this is going to be a process with working with Congress. But, again, what I want to focus on is, there is an economic situation, and the American public should know that the president, the vice president, the entire Cabinet is going to be focused on what economic things we need to do.

And now, let's see what Dr. Fauci had to say to Chris Wallace. He's not thrilled with what's happening in the airports where Americans are coming back home from Europe and need screening. The pictures are less than comforting - people packed in like sardines in a can, physically touching people next to them whether they want to or not, for five, six, seven hours or more.

Yes, I mean we'd like to not see crowds like that. I think what people need to understand, if you're an American citizen, if you are a family member, that you can get back. You don't need to rush back. You'll be able to get back. But it's understandable how when people see a travel ban, they immediately want to hunker and get home... 

He's not sure what can be done about it, other than letting people know that Americans and their family members don't have to rush back from Europe and they can take some time and avoid the crowd.

On his comments before Congress, including the part about the mortality rate being 10 times the 0.1% mortality with the flu,

Well, the -- I would say three things, Chris. One it's brand new so we don't have any prior experience about what it's going to do, what it's dynamics are going to be. Number two, it spreads very easily. There's no doubt about that... And number three, it's very serious in the sense of morbidity and mortality particularly among -- and very heavily weighted towards - individuals who are more susceptible, the elderly and those with underlying conditions.  

Wallace pushed on the contagiousness and lethality being worse than the flu.

Well, yes. I mean, it just is. And we've got to face that fact. We've got to be realistic. I mean, we've got to realize -- and I said that at the hearing, that things are going to get worse before they get better but the kinds of things we're doing now will hopefully mitigate that... 

Wallace questioned the duration of the thing, since both the president and Fauci mentioned eight weeks a couple of days ago, and asked if Fauci was suggesting that "if we do everything right we could be on the other side of the curve" in that amount of time.

-- first of all, we have to say that people don't misunderstand. We are not sure what the duration is going to be, number one. Number two, if you look at what happened in China... it started off China, you know, two or three months ago, they started coming down within a two-month period. So if you're talking about reflecting what went on there, it's going to be about that time that we hopefully in the next couple of months are going to see the direction it's going to go. Hopefully, what we're doing, in a very aggressive way of containment and mitigation, we'll be able to not only flatten it in the sense of not as many cases, but also diminish the duration. 

Fauci said he doesn't really know what the president is talking about when he points to the Obama administration (one of five or six administrations other than this one in which Fauci has served), and rules and regulations that hampered testing.

You know, Chris, to be honest with you, I'm not sure what regulations or what it was that they're talking about. I really mean that. I mean, I'm trying to figure out what it is that these things were in place that were able to or inhibiting. But one thing that I do know now is that the ability to get a test had some regulatory and other restrictions on it that the FDA now has just gotten rid of. 

And as to our healthcare system being overwhelmed, given we have less than a million hospital beds and only 45,000 ICU beds, we have only 160,000 ventilators. Fauci said the models are only as good as the assumptions used to run them, but

If we have a worst-case scenario, we've got to admit it, we could be overwhelmed. Are we going to have a worst-case scenario? I don't think so. I hope not. What are we doing to not have that worst-case scenario? That's when you get into the things that we're doing...preventing infections from going in with some rather stringent travel restrictions... containment and mitigation from within. So, at a worst-case scenario, anywhere in the world, no matter what country you are, you won't be prepared. So our job is to not let that worst-case scenario happen. 

And finally, we turn to Meet the Press and the governors, starting with Pritzker of Illinois, home of the nightmare that was (or could still be) O'Hare Airport.

We knew when the president gave the orders that European travel back to the United States was going to be cut off, that there would be an influx of people, Americans and others, that would come before the final cutoff. So what should've happened? They should've increased the Customs and Border Patrol numbers. And they should've increased the number of CDC personnel on the ground doing those checks. They did neither of those.

And he expects it will be worse today, with even more flights coming in and CBP seeming to be "completely unprepared."  As to any "reassurance" from the administration on getting more folks on the ground?

Well, here's what I got. I got a call at about 11:00 last night after that tweet from a White House staffer who yelled at me about the tweet. That is what I got. Now, we've been talking to Customs and Border Patrol officials directly on the ground at O'Hare. I've been working with the mayor and our senators to make sure that we're getting the federal government to pay attention to this problem because we can't have it happen all day today.

DeWine, who's recognized as one of the governors who is pretty strictly following the guidance from Fauci and the other experts, was asked if he's going to close restaurants and bars in Ohio.

We're certainly looking at that. You know, we started off last week closing the schools. We reduced the number of people gathered together to 100. You know, we've restricted access to our nursing homes, to our prisons. So we're taking tough steps... all the people I've been consulting...they say, "Look. Every day counts so much. And you cannot wait. You've got to move very, very quickly." And look, these are tough decisions. We're inconveniencing people. It's making people's lives change. But we've got to save lives. Everything we're doing is to save lives.

DeWine noted the experts have said "we're always way, way behind in what we know" and that while infection rates in his state have just about doubled several days in a row, testing is ramping up and the rates are going to go up as testing comes online. And,

what I'm telling the people of Ohio, look, none of this should be a surprise. We know there's a bunch of people out there who are carrying this virus around. And that's part of the message, particularly to young people who maybe aren't so worried about it, the 20-somethings. Look, you may not get really, really sick. You may get lucky. But you may take that to your grandmother, who's 80. And we know people in their eighties, the mortality rates at least 15-20%.

Pritzker was asked the same question, specifically with regard to the massive St. Patrick's celebration in Chicago. 

With regard to St. Patrick's Day, we shut down the parade. We didn't color the river green, as we usually do. And I have advised that we need to keep our crowds smaller. And yesterday we say that -- you know, we put a limit of 250 people in gatherings. We cancelled all the gatherings larger than that. And then yesterday what we saw was many young people who think they're impervious to this went out and celebrated... People aren't understanding that, even if you're healthy, even if you're young, that you may be a carrier. And you're going to hand it over to somebody else. COVID-19 is spreading because even healthy people can be walking around, giving it to other people. So we need to go on lockdown.

But, he said, there are issues with keeping open and with shutting down, outside of the pandemic itself. The decisions, he said.

They're also about people's livelihoods. So we're actually looking hard at that decision making today. We obviously saw what happened in Europe. Nowhere in the United States really has there been a lockdown on bars and restaurants, but it's something that we're seriously looking at.

Both states have primaries on Tuesday, and that they previously had said they plan on going forward. Todd wondered if they were hesitating now. DeWine said.

We're going to go ahead. But we're telling people, again, to be careful. The good thing in Ohio is we have basically four weeks of voting. People can vote today. We're urging them to go vote today. They can vote Monday. They've got 13 hours on Tuesday. So that just naturally spreads it out. We're asking them to be very, very careful.

Pritzker said they've taking similar steps.

We have actually lengthened our hours of early voting. We have mail balloting. We've had record mail balloting this year. So we're going to go ahead with it. But we've been extra careful at all of our polling places...we're making sure that it's safe for people to come and vote. 

Todd left this discussion noting "I have a feeling it may be the last primaries we have for a little while." And that's a whole nother can of worms to think about.

See you around campus.