Sunday School 4/12/20

So, what's shaking in the distance learning classrooms today?

Well, we've got Chuck Todd's interviews with FDA's Dr. Stephen Hahn and WHO's special coronavirus envoy Dr. David Nabarro kicking things off.

Chuck asked Dr. Hahn whether it's realistic to think about a May 1st target date for lifting social distancing guidelines. Hahn reassured us that the task force is taking a "balanced approach," with our safety and welfare being the primary consideration.

And I think we've seen the mitigation efforts working. We have really good signs of that now, which I think just...speaks to the resiliency of the American people. But that has to be balanced with all the other issues that have to be taken into account as we move forward...

On testing, Hahn said everyone's working to "try to ramp up further testing." Todd wondered why we're still looking for innovation in that regard, and said that we're still behind other countries with the rate of our testing. Hahn focused on the importance of having the right tests - ones which are "valid and accurate and reliable." 

Hahn admitted he hadn't gone through the government's pandemic exercises. But he does feel that there's enough institutional knowledge in the group working on all of this, and the experts, particularly at FDA, are responding as the situation changes.  He denied feeling any political pressure, but he does feel the pressure of urgency. 

Finally, circling back to that May 1st date, Hahn said there have been some good debates within the task force, but noted he can't predict when we'll be ready, 

because, as I said, things are happening very rapidly. But this team... they're focused at looking at the earliest possible time that we can get Americans back to work safely and to give Americans the confidence they need to make sure that these are the right decisions.

A couple highlights from the conversation with Dr. Nabarro, who noted that WHO is still "very worried" and trying to support countries with weaker health systems. He also said they're not sure if this virus will act like the flu, which comes in waves.

We think it's going to be a virus that stalks the human race for quite a long time to come, until we can all have a vaccine that will protect us, and that there will be small outbreaks that will emerge sporadically...

Every single country will need to be able to "pick up cases as soon as they appear, isolate them, and stop outbreaks from developing." And on global cooperation? 

I'd love to see much greater cooperation between leaders. I'd like to see them uniting, and showing the world that they believe that this global threat has to be dealt with through united action between all countries and their people.

He appreciates WHO being seen by public health professionals as "a really good direction finder" and that they've been able to help those professionals. But,

I would like leaders to be a little bit more cooperative. Yes please.

Todd asked about Trump's threats to withhold money, amounting to perhaps as much as 20% of WHO's total funding, and wondered "how devastating" that would be. Pointing to the "massive epic struggle" affecting everyone around the world, Nabarro said

I really do hope that all nations will not find any reason to make threats or other such things that will undermine our capacity to bring together all the best knowledge that we can find... And that would be so unfortunate if anything happened to lessen that cooperation... It's too important to have anything that disturbs the functioning of the international system at this time.

He's got that last part right, doesn't he?

Moving on to Chris Wallace's conversation with Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and a bit of a maverick himself, on Fox News Sunday. They talked about the administration's desire to be back and open for business come May. Cuban doesn't seem convinced.

Will it be open 24 hours a day? No. Will we open some doors and take some baby steps? Yes. How will I decide? When the scientists say it's safe for my employees to come back to work, that's when I'll feel confident enough...

Cuban doesn't see the sharp v-curve that the president sees happening.

I wish he was right, but he's not. I think it's going to be slower. I think there's going to be so many different ways we have to adapt to this new abnormal... (people) are not going to feel confident right off the bat... And that concern is going to lead people to holding back on spending money...

And, he thinks there's a better way to help than the forgivable loans for small businesses: overdraft protection, where the bank guarantees that checks won't bounce. That eliminates all the friction, he said.

With overdraft an overdraft protection program, companies could just continue as usual, pay their payrolls, pay their insurance, pay the utilities, rent, etc. and they wouldn't have that fear that they wouldn't be able to make those payments.

Cuban also feels we taxpayers should get something - equity kickers, he said - if we're going to bail out large corporations. We need to be more like Warren Buffett, who helped bail out Bank of America with a $5B loan, but the considerations he got as part of the loan ended up giving him a $12B profit. We need the feds to do that for us.

He has other ideas too, things like pre-paying for government air travel, having federal employees be the confidence-builders in the airlines and what not, which will help them back up and running. That's better than bailing them out, don't you think?

They closed the interview with some talk about one of them possibly running for president. I'll let you dig into that one yourself.

And finally, Martha Raddatz talked with Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD) on This Week with George;  there were a couple of key points in this one.

There was a lot of discussion about racial disparity, which has become a very hot topic. Hogan said they're doing a lot of checking on test results, compiling data down to the zip code level, and getting a "hot spot" designation for the Baltimore and the Baltimore-Washington corridor, the area where there's the highest concentration of people of color.  He said that statewide data would be released soon.

Raddatz wondered what they're doing with all the data they're gathering; he said they're directing all the resources in the areas the data identifies.

It’s where almost all of our attention and all of our focus, all of our money, all of our healthcare, all the assistance from the National Guard, it’s really where all of our testing is being done, it’s where all of our healthcare is being ramped up, where we’re adding 6,000 hospital beds. So it’s definitely where the attention of the entire state and local governments are focused. And now we, thankfully, have gotten the attention of the federal government to consider this entire corridor as a place to focus on.

And the other topic that we've been hearing so much about? Governors and states getting everything they need to help with fighting the pandemic.  Last Friday, the president said "we're not getting any calls from governors at this moment. We're getting very few calls from - from governors or anybody else needing anything" and he's made similar comments before.

Hogan, who's chair of the National Governors Association, said he's "had 12 calls now with every single governor in America, eight of which the president and/or vice president was on the call with us." And, he said, 

Look, I think the -- we’ve certainly seen an improvement over the past week from the week before. I know that a lot of people in Washington are working very hard. Everybody has gotten more supplies than we had the week before and the day before. And I know there’s people in Washington that are working very hard as partners to try to help the states. 

But I think to say that everybody’s completely happy and that we have everything we need is -- is not quite accurate. I mean everybody still has tremendous needs on personal protective equipment and ventilators and all of these things that you keep hearing about. Everybody’s fighting to find these things all over the -- all over the nation and all over the world.

So, it would seem that someone's not telling the truth here. I've got a guess as to who that might be, do you? 

Keep keeping your distance; everyone who's in the know says it's working. And those nice clean hands? They're doing the trick, too. 

I'll see you around the virtual campus.