Sunday School 6/19/22

I've got three interviews for you today, starting with Dana Bash and Rep. Fred Upton (R-Yes, I Voted to Impeach Him) in the State of the Union classroom. 

He said he thinks the January 6th Committee is making a dent with moderates and independents. While the economy and gas prices are the big issues, 

there's been real interest in what's going on... I think that it's had an impact on voters across the country. And we will see how this thing plays out. The committee has been very careful not to divulge any details in advance of their hearings.

He expressed frustration with folks who are talking to the committee now, saying

...where have they been for the last year-and-a-half? Why weren't they saying what they're saying now a year-and-a-half ago, particularly to those of us that actually witnessed what was going on, to back us up a little bit?

Upton said people "still like (president Trump) a lot... he's had a number of decisive wins, where he's endorsed candidates that they have won...he certainly entertains a majority of the Republican base, and will be hard to stop" if he runs in 2024.

And, frankly, as we look at the economy, we look at gas prices, all these different things, folks are not really happy with the Biden administration, which is why he is mired at a level even below where Donald Trump was at this point in his tenure.

Bash asked if there'll be anyone left who's willing to stand up to Trump, since half of the ten House Republicans who voted to impeach him won't be back next year, and "the remainder are facing some pretty tough reelection battles." Upton thinks there are.

And you've got to remember too, though there were only 10 of us that voted to impeach, there were 35 of us that voted for a bipartisan commission to look at this. And we know that there were a lot of folks who were, frankly, scared of their reelection, which is why they voted the other way as well... But we will -- that's why politics is so much fun sometimes. It's -- we will see how things all shake out.

Upton said he's hopeful the Senate can get a deal on guns, although he thought they'd have gotten there by now. And, he added,

Law-abiding folks, they shouldn't have any fears in terms of what's -- what's going on. It's been a rallying point, particularly for the NRA and the gun owners of America. You look at their Web site and they're, like, raising cash like you wouldn't believe in terms of their Second Amendment rights are being taken away.

That's not what's happening here, he said, but that thinking has "been elevated, for sure," mentioning that Texas Republicans Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Dan Crenshaw were both "accosted" at their state's GOP convention.

George talked with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in the This Week classroom. He mentioned a Wall Street Journal report that 44% of economists expect a recession. Both President Biden and Fed Chair Jerome Powell have made bringing inflation down a top priority, and she said

I don't think a recession is inevitable.

She pointed to still-strong consumer spending, while admitting "higher food and energy prices are certainly affecting consumers" and changing spending patterns. And, she said most folks "continue to have buffer stocks of savings" to help maintain spending levels, so she doesn't see that as a "likely cause of a recession" in the coming months. And, she said, the labor market is 

 arguably the strongest of the post-war period. Not only is the unemployment rate near historic lows but there are two job vacancies for every unemployed worker, so the labor market remains extremely strong; unemployment insurance claims near their lowest levels in history.

She said that having had high inflation "in first half of this year ...locks in high inflation really for the entire year," but she expects the pace of inflation will come down, and she cautioned, "there are so many uncertainties relating to global developments..."

George asked her to explain why in Europe the core inflation rate was under 4% but in the states it's 6%. I didn't think she answered that. She talked about "energy price spillover" being half of inflation, 

food and energy, and there are spillovers because energy is an important input into almost everything in the economy. It is true that we've had core inflation over and above that -- that is too high and the Fed will take steps to bring it down.

She mentioned Biden's "historic releases" from the strategic reserve, which have kept gas prices from being even higher, and said he's ready to work the with the oil industry and Congress to bring down "other costs that are burdening households," notably drug and healthcare costs and housing. 

She also countered some of what the oil industry folks argue, saying

I think that producers were partly caught unaware of the strength of the recovery... and weren't ready to meet the needs of the economy; high prices should induce them to increase supplies over time... The way in which we can ensure reasonable energy expenses for households is to move to renewables, to address climate change, as a medium-term matter. 

A gas tax holiday may be on the table (Biden said he might have a decision by the end of the week on that). And, Yellen said, he's "reviewing tariff policy toward China." 

We all recognize that China engages in a range of unfair trade practices that it's important to address. But the tariffs we inherited, some serve no strategic purpose and raise costs to consumers. And so, reconfiguring some of those tariffs so they make more sense and reduce some unnecessary burdens is something that's under consideration --

She wouldn't give any timeline for that. 

In the Face the Nation classroom, Margaret Brennan talked with Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the network's go-to guy for COVID stuff, about the newly authorized vaccine for kids five and under. 

Gottlieb anticipates this rollout will be "more complicated" than previous ones, saying people skilled with giving kids this age need to be involved. He thinks most kids will get them at their pediatrician's office, and that might make it take longer to get doses distributed.

He also said "it's continued to concern" him that that "only about 30% of kids ages 5-11 have been vaccinated" with two doses, which is lower than original estimates. And, he said

there are surveys showing that about 20% of parents plan to vaccinate children under the age of 5. I suspect it may end up being lower than that...a lot of parents may choose to take a wait-and-see attitude and reconsider this in the fall. 

They also talked about Florida, which is "affirmatively against" vaccinating kids in this age-group. Gottlieb thinks that was the wrong move. "They could have taken a neutral stance and just merely said, we're not recommending the vaccine for children." He clarified that they're not blocking access to the vaccine, just "not facilitating access."

See you around campus. 

Sunday School 1/2/22

Yesterday's classroom discussions focused mostly on the pandemic and the insurrection; I'll focus on the former here, and save the latter for your Extra Credit.

Dr. Anthony Fauci and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona made multiple appearances, while former FDA head Scott Gottlieb and Republican governors Larry Hogan (MD) and Asa Hutchinson (AR) were also roaming the halls. Here are some highlights.

Fauci, speaking with George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week, gave this as his "key message on where things stand right now." 

Well, we are definitely in the middle of a very severe surge and uptick in cases...it is actually almost a vertical increase. We're now at an average of about 400,000 cases per day. Hospitalizations are up. One of the things that we hope for, George, is that this thing will peak after a period of a few weeks and turn around. 

And, in the State of the Union classroom, here's Fauci's response to a question from Dana Bash about the driver of the CDC's new relaxed guidelines on quarantining - science or social and business pressures.

There is no doubt that you do want to get people out into the workplace if they are without symptoms. And in the second half of a 10-day period, which would normally be a 10-day isolation period, the likelihood of transmissibility is considerably lower... the CDC made the judgment that it would be relatively low-risk to get people out. You're right. People are getting concerned about, why not test people at that time? I myself feel that that's a reasonable thing to do. I believe that the CDC soon will be coming out with more clarification of that, since it obviously has generated a number of questions...

Gottlieb appears regularly on Face the Nation, and touched on a few key issues in his discussion with Margaret Brennan. For example, he said that over 600 children have died from COVID since the beginning of the pandemic, compared to three pediatric deaths from the flu in the same time period. That said, 

In terms of going back to school, I think the prerogative clearly is to try to get schools reopened. We shouldn't be doing preemptive school closures, in my opinion, but there will be situations where we have reactive school closures, when there are large outbreaks.

Antigen tests work fairly well at detecting the omicron variant, but that "serial testing over a period of time" is the best way to protect a high-risk setting like a school. 

While any individual test could miss the infection, if you're doing serial testing, you're likely to pick it up. And we need to get tests into schools. We still don't have tests widely available to the schools, so that they can use these tests for tests-to- stay policies to prevent large quarantines when are cases diagnosed in the classroom.

He said we should be focused on getting schools open, and keeping them open, pointing out "with the tools we have, with prudence, with the knowledge we have," we can do "a pretty good job" of controlling large outbreaks in schools. However, he's not a fan of mandating boosters for school-age kids. He pointed to studies showing that there was "100% protection" in the 12-16 age group, and said in that group, the vaccinated "are getting a more robust response" from vaccines than others.

For his part, Secretary Cardona did his best to explain that the Biden administration wants kids in schools, they want everyone learning the best possible way they can, they want tests to be available, they want ventilation to be effective, and so on - but that's not enough, according to both Brennan and Gallagher. 

The hosts were skeptical of the efforts that have been undertaken, and how they are being perceived, particularly by teachers. Brennan wondered about teachers in Chicago, Massachusetts and Connecticut saying "they don't feel safe" in schools. Cardona said that the administration's messaging hasn't changed since he's been in position.

We need to make sure we're following mitigation strategies, that we're supporting our educators by providing a safe learning environment, we're providing vaccination for our students as young as 5, so that the whole school community is safe, and we're providing surveillance testing to make sure that, if someone is sick, that they stay home. 

Similarly, Gallagher referenced comments from Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, expressing concern that school districts "don't have the infrastructure for testing and tests to stay. It's going to be really, really bumpy and there's going to need a lot of grace," something she said was "in short supply." 

Cardona noted "there's a level of urgency that we shouldn't lose around making sure that our children learn in person", saying "the impact of hybrid learning, the impact of remote learning, is very real" for parents as well as for the kids. He said the American Rescue Plan funding, coupled with efforts from other groups, is all geared towards keeping kids in school.

And when Gallagher asked if the road wasn't going to be as bumpy as Weingarten predicted, Cardona said

...it's really important that we continue to work together. I do think there will be bumps on the road, especially tomorrow. I mean, superintendents today are receiving calls of staff members that they were expecting to be in the classroom tomorrow who have come down with COVID. So, we're going to roll up our sleeves, all hands on deck. Let's keep our children in the classroom. That should be our default thinking, and as problems come up, we need to work together to solve them.

In both classrooms, I think his arguments fell short.

I'll close with an interesting discussion down the hall in the Fox News Sunday classroom, where Trace Gallagher talked with Gov. Hutchinson. To me, it felt like Gallagher was trying to get Hutchinson to downplay the efforts of the Biden administration on the pandemic, but the gov was surprisingly complimentary. 

For example, Hutchinson thought it "was an important step" that the CDC revised the guidelines, saying it was "a recognition that we have to be able to manage our way through" the pandemic. He applauded that "they used science, they overlaid it with practicality" but admitted there could be more consistency and simplicity for people.

While he agreed that 'pandemic politics' has played a role, and caused frustration and division, he also said "it really is refreshing that, I believe, there's a uniformity of opinion by our leaders that vaccinations are critical to get us through this. And so that unified message is absolutely essential, and we've got to -- so I complemented the president on that." 

Vaccinations have been a sore point in Arkansas; the state ranks 45th in percentage of people vaccinated, but he's not moving towards a mandate any time soon. If they ever did get to that point,

there always has to be the right exceptions for religious convictions if -- you know, if vaccines are not acceptable, and that is the current law in Arkansas, and that should continue to be the case.

Feeling better after all of that? 

See you around campus. 

Sunday School Extra Credit 7/12/20

I'm still exhausted from the Sunday School two-fer with Betsy DeVos, but I'm suiting up and going back in for this week's Extra Credit.

To balance things out, I'm focusing on other folks who were in the classrooms yesterday who also had something to say about getting kids back into learning mode.

First up? Adm. Brett Giroir, Assistant Secretary for Health at HHS, who was in the This Week classroom with George Stephanopoulos, who asked first if Giroir agreed with the president that the CDC guidelines on reopening schools are too tough and too expensive.

Giroir thinks the guidelines "are really right on target" and that the entire task force worked on them together, all the medical folks and agency folks, and "we feel they're pretty strong." And, as a pediatrician, he said

We have to do this safely but kids not being in school risk their social and emotional health, risk many people with nutrition, the recognition of child abuse, child sexual abuse, it's really important to get kids physically back in school. But we have to do it safely and the first thing we need to do is, we need to get the virus under control. 

As did DeVos, he pointed to other countries, Sweden, Finland and Japan, as places they're looking to find out how to do this safely, and from them we learned that children don't seem to spread the virus.  He also said

the guidelines aren't changing this week. These are more guidelines that are amenable to school districts actually implementing them - the CDC guidelines tend to be a little more academic and long, these are going to be much more concise so people can really follow them and understand them.

He also noted, tangentially to schools reopening, that "we were hopeful that (the virus) would diminish in the summer, but we didn't count on it. And yes, there's a possibility it could be worse in the fall and we are all continuing to increase everything we do.

...we're going to need tens of millions of more tests a month and we're planning for that, because we have a lot of respiratory viruses like flu circulating. Very critical that people get their flu vaccines because we don't want flu circulating with COVID.

So, I'm guessing we might see some flu vaccine requirements for schools that do reopen, and we know that's going to cause yet another uproar.  So much to look forward to, don't you think?

Next up? Chuck Todd's conversation with Miami-Dade Public Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho on MTP, who was asked about the CDC guidelines being too strict or too costly.

Carvalho said some of them might be costly, but they're using the guidelines to inform how they develop their reopening plan, in conjunction with state and local health departments. He spoke about social distancing specifically, and how they're looking at using "non-traditional spaces, like cafeterias or media centers or gyms" - in effect, making more classrooms.

Carvalho said some of the money to pay for this coming from the CARES Act, but there's going to be need for more. So far, $15B has been made available, but back during the Great Recession, over $113B "had already been invested nationally to protect K-12 institutions.

So, I think that for the purchase of PPEs, additional disinfection cycles, the electrostatic disinfection of schools, alteration of schedules, may need more bus routes to achieve greater social distancing between the riders, more than likely we will need additional resources earmarked specifically for local governments and school systems.

He talked a bit about his multi-option plan, which "relies on a five-day-a-week schooling experience in-person across all of Miami-Dade" but also offers remote teaching and learning opportunities as well as a hybrid model, with one group of kids in school some days and another group in school on alternate days. But, he said,

One of the elements that we keep looking at is... younger children, perhaps students with disabilities, to a certain extent English language learners, you know, some of those that by virtue of age but also by virtue of the greatest possibility for learning loss since last fall need to re-engage quickly in the best possible way of teaching which is face to face with a caring, professional teacher.

I think everyone agrees with him on that, as long as it can be done safely.

Down the hall to the right, Chris Wallace had Dr. Tom Inglesby of Johns Hopkins, in the Fox News Sunday classroom and the first question was on what Inglesby thought of the presidents push to open schools and his complaint about the guidelines being "too tough, too expensive and too impractical." After saying that it's not "even a matter of debate" that pretty much everyone wants to open schools safely and as soon as possible, he said

I do think there are going to be many challenges to opening schools safely and just kind of asserting that just because they want to open safely doesn't make it so. It's going to be pretty -- pretty difficult for many schools. States around the country have been preparing for this. 

Wallace wondered what we know about the risks of kids getting the virus, and spreading it. Inglesby said "we do know" that kids have a much lower risk than adults, "but not zero," and we have have children die from COVID. It's less clear, he said, "how efficiently kids will spread the virus in school" but he did note

there are examples such as in Israel in the last couple of months, there have been a large -- there was a large outbreak in schools when they reopened. And so, I think there still is uncertainty that we're going to have to live with. We probably won't know all the answers when we started in the fall but we'll have to watch very carefully and react to what we find.

And his thoughts on cutting funding, as the president and DeVos suggest? "Yeah, no."

I think issuing an ultimatum for schools opening is the wrong approach. I think guiding schools and helping schools with financial support and encouraging schools to follow CDC guidance and state health department guidance is the right way to go. I think our incentives are all aligned in the sense that everyone really does want schools to open safely, but mandating it under a very tight timeline such as what happens in Florida this week where they're required to open schools five days a week in 30 days, before the state has really even had a chance to review school plans, seems really like the wrong approach to me.

And, checking in with Margaret Brennan in the Face the Nation classroom, Surgeon General Jerome Adams was also asked about the CDC guidelines and which parts are too tough and too expensive. Adams wants his own school-aged kids back in class, and he noted that the CDC guidelines "talk about best-case scenarios," and gave the example of school lunches. The guidelines say every child should bring their own lunch, but, he said

We know that in some school districts and many school districts, over fifty percent of kids are eating lunch at school and don't have the ability to bring their own lunch. So that's one case where we need to work directly with local school districts and help them figure out, okay, 'if you can't do what is the gold standard, best-case scenario, can you do something that's a compromise to safely reopen?'

He said that's the kind of thing they're talking about with new, "more specific recommendations" that can be looked at by individual school districts. And each district needs their own plan, even though, as Brennan mentioned, lots of people are looking for a national plan.

And finally  we hear from  former FDA head Scott Gottlieb who was asked by Brennan whether we have 'definitive data' that kids don't spread the virus, given DeVos' urging that kids get back in the classroom five days a week.

Well, look, the data isn't definitive, but it's certainly suggestive. And what we've learned from this virus is it has surprised us. It has both- we've both underestimated it and overestimated it at the same time... I think it's important to give discretion to local districts to take steps to try to de-densify schools and protect kids so we don't have outbreaks. Everyone should be working to reopen the schools. It's critical. And when I talked to Republican and Democratic governors, they are, in fact, doing that. But I think districts need discretion to try to put in place measures to keep kids safe.

Gottlieb also said that, other than maybe Sweden, no other countries reopened or kept schools open with so much spread of the virus like we're trying to do here, so "we do face a unique risk." Not only that, but 'less susceptible' doesn't mean 'not susceptible."

And sometimes-- some of the studies show that they (children) can compensate for their decline in susceptibility by their propensity to spread infection, by their behaviors that are more likely to propagate infection.

He mentioned the 2018-2019 flu season, with 11.3 million symptomatic kids and 480 deaths. We haven't seen that with COVID yet, he said, because

 we've largely sheltered the children. And we don't want to see it. We've got to take measures to make sure it doesn't become epidemic in children in the same way that flu becomes epidemic in children because we don't know what the impact's going to be on kids. Right now, the kids have been sheltered...

So - while everyone agrees that the goal is to get kids in school as soon and as safely as possible, no one seems to be chomping at the bit to get things opened back up. Everyone seemed open to some kind of hybrid plan, either out of caution or out of necessity. And, notably, no one was talking about implementing school vouchers.

Stay safe.

In Case You Missed it (v32)

Miss any of last week's posts? Not to worry - here's your week in review.

In our Sunday School classroom visits, I had the opportunity to listen in on 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...

Others making the rounds? The FDA's Dr. Steven Hahn and the WHO's Dr. David Nabarro on Meet the Press.

Our Sunday School Extra Credit this week included interviews with three governors on CNN's State of the Union, and Margaret Brennan's interview with the former Trump FDA head, Scott Gottlieb, talking a lot about reopening, which include him saying

he doesn't think "anyone's optimized really right now" to handle a rolling reopening, and he acknowledged the pressure not just on the administration, but on governors as well. Gottlieb expects a "slow reopening" through May, which could include older people staying home longer, under-staffing shifts, limited face to face meetings, and so on - decisions that will likely fall to local politicians and governors.

I don't know about you, but that gave me pause.

When it was time for Wondering on Wednesday, in addition to the good news stuff that's so much fun, I was wondering about the Economic Impact Payment, commonly referred to as the stimulus checks. Among other things, there was this.

Staying on the stimulus, there are multiple memes floating around wondering if #NeverTrumpers like me are going to refuse the stimulus checks because "they're from Trump" - which of course, they're not - as noted above, it's our money. Because that's where the government gets money -- from us. But now I have to wonder, will the Trumpeters keep the check, you know, frame it or something, like businesses do with their first dollar? 

This week's TGIF was focused completely on the thank goodness part, and included my thanks to everyone involved in helping fight the pandemic, including all the regular folks.

 doing their level best to do what we're being

asked to do, to help protect others, and maybe even ourselves, and to anyone I missed.  

And things wrapped up with an emptying of the laundry pile on the Irony Board. There's so much irony out there, related to the pandemic, and how people are reacting to it, and what things are coming to light and lighting fires under people in a way that would never light a fire under them under anything close to normal circumstances. Which led me to think about the lessons in the irony, and what we can take away from it all.  Among the takeaways?

• Irony is everywhere.
• What we don't want today we might need tomorrow, so when we get what we want, we may come to regret it. 
• Our elected officials are human - and imperfect - as are we.
• Many times, the ideas of one party are the ideas of the other party.
• We'd probably be better served if we focused more on the ideas and less on the people.
• 'We' includes me. 

There you have it - last week's veritable pastiche, ready whenever you are. Don't forget, you can subscribe safely, without a mask, by entering your email in the Instant Gratification box on the right sidebar. 

I'll be back later with today's Sunday School. 

Sunday School Extra Credit 4/12/20

I wanted to drop in on a couple of the other virtual classrooms, starting with Margaret Brennan' and Scott Gottlieb on Face the Nation.  Gottlieb is the former FDA commish, and I had his interview with Chuck Todd in yesterday's Sunday School if you want to compare the two.

Brennan wondered who should be responsible for testing in advance of any 'reopening' effort. Gottlieb said it would likely have to be the states, particularly the contract tracing to identify people who may have been infected. He said Wuhan had 1800 five-person teams - 9000 people - handling the process, but that CDC only has about 600 deployed across the country.

The states are supplementing that, but the states need to increase their resources now. The feds are gonna have a hard time pulsing their resources in the throes of this crisis... and a lot of it's going to be on the governors. 

Gottlieb reminded us that contact tracing is "sort of the bread and butter of public health work." He thinks that businesses will have to think about compensation, paid leave and whatnot for people who are forced to by the government to self-quarantine. And,

the government might actually want to pay those people to give them an incentive to step forward, because if it's seen as punitive, if it's seen that when you get COVID-19, you're going to be forced to self-isolate for two weeks, you're going to miss work and you're going to be out of money, then people aren't going to want to step forward and get diagnosed. 

He also said he doesn't think "anyone's optimized really right now" to handle a rolling reopening, and he acknowledged the pressure not just on the administration, but on governors as well. Gottlieb expects a "slow reopening" through May, which could include older people staying home longer, under-staffing shifts, limited face to face meetings, and so on - decisions that will likely fall to local politicians and governors.

He sees only "marginal utility and impact" from serology tests, and thinks there'll be around 2% immunity in the general population, versus the 30% or more some people are anticipating. And, he doesn't think this is a good time to defund the WHO, but he also believes that WHO accepting and sharing what China was saying, which was not truthful, slowed the global response.

I think going forward, the WHO needs to commit to an after action report that specifically examines what China did or didn't tell the world and how that stymied the global response to this.

And he called on the organization to welcome Taiwan into the fold. 

Moving over to CNN's State of the Union virtual classroom, Jake Tapper had three governors visiting: Phil Murphy (D-NJ), Asa Hutchinson (R-AR), and Michelle Lujan Griffin (D-NM). I'll take them in that order. 

Here's Murphy on the anticipated May 1st reopening: There's "a sequence here" he said, that includes "a health care recovery, a health recovery first, and then the economic recovery."

And I fear, if we open up too early, and we have not sufficiently made that health recovery and cracked the back of this virus, that we could be pouring gasoline on the fire, even inadvertently...

He also said it has to be a regional thing, agreeing with my Sonofa Gov on that.

...  in this respect, whether it's testing, contact tracing, the rules of the road such that you don't have -- you don't have unintended consequences or you get a different set of policies on one side of the Hudson vs. the other, or one side of the Delaware River in our case or the other, is, we need to do this regionally.

On whether he could have acted sooner, or if any of them could have acted sooner? There's always an urge to second guess, and it's a fair thing to do on something like this. He'd like to see a national, bipartisan commission, similar to the 9/11 Commission, as well as state-level reviews.  

The woulda, shoulda, coulda deserves a -- an important focus. Right now, again, the house is on fire. We got to put the fire in the house out, and then we got to begin to get back on our feet. And then, at that point, we have to look back and say, what could we have done differently?

Moving across the country, here's Hutchinson on whether other governors were wrong to have done statewide stay-at-home orders (Arkansas is one of the few states that didn't). 

No, not at all. It just reflects the flexibility a state needs. I applaud that New Jersey and New York, they've had to really lock down. They have a high density population. But we have less density in our population here in Arkansas. And I think we can take this targeted approach, which has proven to be effective.

He thinks they're "beating that trend line" and said there's "a lot of hope and optimism this Easter that our tough time is behind and we're going to be getting better." He also said "no such thing as a true lockdown."

You're going to have, if we put a shelter-in-place order today, tomorrow we would have 700,000 Arkansans that will be going out on the streets going to work. The most important message is that you wear your mask, you do your social distancing and the people of Arkansas have embraced that.... 

He said he assured Tony Fauci that he'd do more, if they needed to, but feels his targeted, long-term approach, is working, even when Tapper cited the data showing one case and zero deaths a month ago to over 1200 cases and at least 25 deaths now. Hutchinson said that's still more than 1000 cases short of projections, and only 80 people are in the hospital, in a state with 8000 hospital beds available. He also said some counties in neighboring states that have more cases than the entire state of Arkansas.

They talked about religious gatherings, which are OK as long as attendees practice social/physical distancing at church, even thought Hutchinson has been "discouraging" large religious gatherings. Hutchinson said there wouldn't be any action taken against people who don't follow the guidelines, but there would be a "very specific directive" and a discussion with any church where there was an outbreak.

So just virtually all of the churches in Arkansas are following the guidelines very carefully. They're just as concerned about their parishioners as I am as governor... and I expect everybody to make sure they follow those social distancing guidelines and not gather whenever you have a risk.

Finally, let's head to New Mexico, where Tapper asked the governor what she's do if the president makes the call for a May 1st reopening. Lujan Grisham said they'll make whatever decision safeguards New Mexicans, including first responders and healthcare workers. And the said there's a problem without having a national strategy.

This virus is blind to state borders. And if we had better national strategies... and universal testing and software-based contract tracing then we can really figure out when opening makes sense and we could actually start to do that in the country.

She said they're already looking at recovery options, but nothing going to happen "until that peak occurs and we're clear about not having hospitalizations and reducing the number of people that are positive every day in our surveillance and testing efforts."

Tapper asked about the tracking, using cellphone data, and about privacy concerns people might have and what kind of oversight there is. She said it's not state data or a state effort, it's whole-country aggregate data, which they're using to see where people are travelling and for how long and the data's being used to see if they need any additional social distancing guidelines. 

Next, they moved to the issue of communities of color being more impacted by the virus. Tapper noted that almost half of New Mexico's population is Hispanic; the governor added that another 6% of the population is Native American, with 23 distinct sovereign nations. She acknowledged

that the social determinants of health, poverty, lack of access to adequate shelter, food, health care, is an aspect that makes this virus and our efforts to combat it and provide productive treatment incredibly challenging.

And, in some cases, with the Native Americans populations, there are places where people don't have access to water and electricity, creating "unique challenges." And while she said the administration needs to do more, she echoed NJ's Gov Murphy on states working together

We're looking at a regional strategy to support the leadership of the Navajo nation between Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. We're putting out field hospitals, triage centers. And I will tell you that the pueblo nations in New Mexico have really looked at containment strategies for their community, and we're supporting that... we hope this not only slows the spread but gives us better support to the individuals living in these remote areas in New Mexico. 

They closed the conversation with Lujan Grisham denying that she wanted to be veep in a Biden administration.

I want to be the governor of New Mexico. I will do whatever it takes to support a Biden administration, and I'm looking forward to a federal administration that can do a national strategy in good times and in bad times both.

Aren't we all... 

See you around the virtual campus, with smiling faces and nice clean hands. Those'll get you real extra credit.