Sunday School 4/26/20

Holy moly, the classrooms were packed today! I'll fit in what I can, and the rest will flow over into an Extra Credit post, sound good?

Stacey Abrams, the woman who has made it clear she wants to be Joe Biden's veep. was on with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press, as was Dr. Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.  Here are highlights of those discussions, starting with Abrams.

If she were governor of Georgia, it seems clear she would not have reopened until there was more testing and a reduced infection rate; she said reopening before those were in place "wrongheaded," noting the state's "14th highest infection rate and 7th slowest testing rate."  In response to Todd's question on how she'd "launch a national testing strategy" if she were in charge of the federal government. She likes what Congress is doing with the investment in testing, and funding for folks in the trenches,

But I would also be encouraging states like Georgia and the other southern states and Midwestern states that have refused to expand Medicaid to do so immediately. Part of testing is making sure people trust that they can go and be tested. And right now, there is an inadequate equipment, an inadequate strategy. We should increase production. We should make certain it's not simply the testing that's available but the mechanics, the swabs, the vials. And that we are funding people on the front-lines to do this work, to put themselves in harm's way, to make sure we can test, trace and track.

After some discussion on what skills a Biden VP should have, or what that person should bring to the table, she was asked if she thought it'd be a mistake if Papa Joe didn't pick a woman of color.

I think President, a President Biden will do what he has always done, which is respect and value communities of color. I think he understands that black communities and people of color are vital to the success of the Democratic Party. And I think he's going to pick the right person. I, of course, think that a woman of color can bring certain attributes. We have to lift up marginalized communities, communities that do not trust that they will be served because they’ve been the hardest hit by this pandemic.. And so, yes, having a woman of color on the ticket will help promote not only diversity, but trust. But I trust Joe Biden to pick the person he thinks is the right running mate for him.

And yes, of course, she's still interested in the position. 

Moving on to Osterholm, there was a lot of talk about testing. He said that "our government is not working with private sector companies," that "we have the wild wild west for testing right now. The FDA has all but given up its oversight responsibility," and that, "if you were to test for antibody in most places in the US, over half the tests would be false positives."

So what we need is a major, new initiative on testing that gets away from every day just saying how many people get tested. We're missing the mark in a big way right now.

Using the Defense Production Act to force companies to make what we need to be able to use the available testing capacity is part of the answer, but "we're competing against the world for the reagents" and we've not been clear what we want or need. We have "too much happy talk" and we need a "strategic plan that lays out why we are going to use the test, how we are going to use the test, when will it be available?" And finally, on which will come first, herd immunity or a vaccine, he said we'll have the former if we don't get the latter, but that he thinks "we have a better chance of a vaccine than some." 

Next up? Senator Amy Klobuchar, talking with George Stephanopoulos on This Week. She supports what Minnesota's governor is doing as far as stating to reopen things, as he's "been very careful and listened to the doctors and scientists" and they still have stay-at-home orders in place. And, like others who made the rounds today, she lamented the lack of a national strategy and "that there is an absence of national leadership." 

She said Dems are going to keep pushing for funds for state and local governments which are being hit so hard with all of this.  Short term, the goal is to get the state/local money; long term, it's "how we're going to make a steady economy so we can once again lead in the world. And we're not going to do it with this president."

And, does she think Minnesota is in play for November? 

No, I don't think Minnesota is in play because we want a real leader in the White House, and I am -- you know, the whole Midwest, when you look at what's happening with our biofuel plants, with our commodities, with what's happening with our poultry, this is not a good situation, and the president, in my mind, has never done enough when it comes to rural America, and now as they would say, the chickens coming home to roost and you have seen some real problems with people having to kill their chickens literally, because of what is going on right now with our rural economy. 

And finally, Dr. Deborah Birx and Jake Tapper on CNN's State of the Union. Their conversation started on testing, and why it's "taking so long" to fix things such as the shortage of nasal swabs, not enough people or equipment at labs, and so on.

Birx said in the beginning, there was only one platform for the labs, but now there are "six or seven platforms that they have to integrate" in order to use the capacity we have. Tapper asked about how our capitalist system - he's "glad we have it" - there isn't any financial incentive for companies to "do things out of the goodness of their hearts" and can't we use the DPA here to make sure the testing supplies get made?

Like others in the administration, Birx said that Trump has used the DPA, but didn't specify how it was being used here. Instead, she focused on what the FDA is doing behind the scenes to "unlock capacity day after day after day." (Trump himself has often tweeted about 'invoking the D but it in fact it's been used more as leverage than as a directive, which is what folks have asked for.)

She also noted that so much of what we need, from PPE to ventilators to testing supplies are not made in the USA,

And I think this is really a wakeup call for all of America to really ensure that we have internal capacity, because everybody's supply chains are very stressed right now... And so there's amazing positives, but there's also a real analysis of, after we move through this into the summer months, to really ensure that we have more vibrant internal, at least Northern Hemisphere and North America, supply chains that we can count on.

On concerns about seeing a surge in cases and deaths in states that are relaxing their stay-at-home orders but aren't following the Administration's guidelines. she said she's "always concerned" and said that's why they put out "key, key gating criteria" which included a focus on protecting health care workers and hospital capacity, and other things too. Basically, she gave a very detailed response which illustrated the point of Tapper's question - and he was not shy about pointing that out, either.

He said it seems like the states are on their own, and mentioned a CDC web site that's still not up and running with critical information on contact tracing, and asked if she thought states are ready to do what they're doing. given there's little evidence that they're meeting the gating criteria.

Her answer? Well, in a nutshell, CDC is doing more, but more importantly she spoke to all the ways that state and local officials are doing more, too. And they're sharing information with each other, and with CDC, and everyone is learning together.

We have never had to do this before as a country. And so we're learning, as a federal government, how to better support the states, and the states are learning how to share critical information about how we work through this together.

Not sure anyone should feel more confident about the states jumping early, without even meeting the case, death, and hospitalization metrics, much less the rest of it. But maybe it's just me.

They also talked about antibodies, and what we don't know about immunity; Birx said that the WHO is being cautious when they talk about that stuff. She thinks that all the data that's being collected by CDC, which is studying antibodies, and by the hospitals that are using plasma from recovered patients, the data is what's going to tell us what we need to know about antibodies.

I think what WHO was saying, we don't know how long that effective antibody lasts. And I think that is a question that we have to explore over the next few months and over the next few years. But I think everything that the WHO said should be happening, we're doing here in the United States to help the American people.

And finally, Tapper asked her "what should Americans know about disinfectants and the human body?" She defended the president, point to a "dialogue" he was having with the DHS guy, but that she made it clear to Trump - and he understood - that "it was not a treatment." She pointed to the DHS study as being important, and helpful in our understanding "how we can effectively create decontamination in different environments."

What bothered her about all of this - the scurrying to issue statements to protect Americans who might have acted on what the president was musing about - was not what he said, or that he said it. Rather, she's concerned that people are still taking about that, and not talking about all of the things that we're seeing that other countries didn't see - she mentioned a few of them - and that we need to have information so we can protect ourselves and each other. She wants us to move on,

to be able to get information to the American people that can help them protect each other and also help them understand how devastating this virus is to different age groups and different symptoms and different comorbidities.

If he would only let the task force do that, and if he wouldn't argue with his experts on camera, and if he wouldn't provide support to people who are ignoring his own guidelines, we might be at exactly the place Dr. Birx wants us to be in.

Lots to digest here, and I can assure you it's better digested from a safe social distance with nice clean hands.

See you around the virtual campus.