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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's Tuesday, March 31st, 2020, the last day of March sadness. I'm Sean Rameswaram and this is your Coronavirus Update from Today Explained.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The numbers of new infections appear to be stabilizing in places like Spain and Italy. Italy's new cases just hit a two-week low. Unfortunately, the United States is bracing itself for a surge in cases. New York's confirmed cases jumped something like 14% just overnight.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx from the president's coronavirus task force are expected to provide more details this evening, but it seems like the country was just a little too late to the social distancing thing. And as a result, hospitals across the country will be overwhelmed, leading to more cases, more deaths.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is not to downplay the importance of social distancing. According to Politico, doctors and state leaders in California are saying that the Bay Area's early moves to lockdown residents have prevented a surge of coronavirus patients from overwhelming the region's hospitals so far.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The entire Washington, D.C. area imposed similar lockdown measures on Monday after seeing cases continue to rise in this region. And employees from Whole Foods across the country planned to call in sick today to protest unsafe working conditions at the grocery stores.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This was an effort to press its parent company, Amazon, owned by the richest person in the world to provide more protection and higher pay to employees. After a colleague at another store tested positive for COVID-19, one employee told the LA Times, "we are scared to come in. We didn't really ask to be at the front lines of this pandemic."
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And this was after a group of workers at an Amazon warehouse in New York City walked off the job on Monday to protest safety conditions and wages there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But it's not all bad news for booksellers. Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon, had to hire back over 100 workers after laying 400 of them off earlier this month. With full-time schedules and benefits, the staff are returning to help ship books sold online.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's true what the bumper sticker says. Think global. Act local. You can hit us with your coronavirus questions via email todayexplained at vox.com. We are on Twitter at today underscore explained or at Ramisverham or call us 202-688-5944.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from Adio. Adio is an AI-native customer relationship management platform that Adio says is built for the next era of companies.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The president is speaking used to mean something. It meant, like, stop what you're doing. It meant you need to hear what's about to be said. But with this president, the president is speaking means something else. It means maybe he's blasting the media. Maybe he's talking about how great he is. Maybe he's trying to make the case that there's very fine people on both sides.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But now we are in a crisis and the president is speaking every day. He gets up with his task force, practices unsafe social distancing, and talks off the cuff for an hour, an hour plus, and it's all over the TV and people are watching.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: At Sunday's briefing, the president even bragged about how many people are watching. But even they said that the ratings are like Monday night football ratings and that these are like Bachelor finale.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Nell Greenfield-Boyce has been watching the briefings for NPR, where she's a science correspondent. So, for example, the president will say that testing is going very, very well.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: In eight days, because we kept hearing about South Korea, they had a very tough time at the beginning, if you remember. In eight days, we're doing more testing than they've done in eight weeks. That's a tremendous turn.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And, you know, if you're just carrying the briefing live, you can't jump in there and sort of offer some context and say, well, you know, on a per capita basis, it's not testing the most of any other country in the world.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: Or, for example, President Trump will say, you know, he's thinking of reopening the economy on, you know, Easter. And, you know, somebody will ask him. Who suggested Easter? Who suggested Easter? I just thought it was a beautiful time. It would be a beautiful time, a beautiful timeline.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And so there are these things that are sort of floated out there. For example, another one was the drug hydroxychloroquine. It is known as a malaria drug, and it's been around for a long time, and it's very powerful.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: But the nice part is it's been around for a long time. So we know that if things don't go as planned, it's not going to kill anybody. When you go with a brand new drug, you don't know that that's going to happen. You have to see and you have to go long tests, but this has been used in different forms, very powerful drug in different forms.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And it's shown very encouraging, very, very encouraging early results. And then, you know, medical experts will have to say then, well, you know, it hasn't been tested and controlled trials. Like we really don't know how useful it will be.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And so, you know, some places have said maybe it's not so useful to carry these briefings live. Maybe it would be better to just report on what was said and then you know things can be put into some sort of context.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The president of course also has a historically contentious relationship with the media. Has that been an issue at these press briefings?
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: Yeah. I mean, so he'll have responses to reporters that, you know, will generate their own headlines. Why don't you act in a little more positive? It's always trying to get you. My question to you is— Get you, get you.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And you know what? That's why nobody trusts the media anymore. My question is, how is that going to impact? Excuse me, you didn't hear me. That's why you used to work for The Times and now you work for somebody else.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: Look, let me tell you something. Be nice. Don't be threatening. Mr. President, my question is. Don't be threatening. Be nice. Go ahead. My question is, how is that going to impact?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The news briefings that the coronavirus task force are giving sort of cover the whole gamut of subjects. So in the same briefing, you know, you'll have discussion of testing and ventilators, but also discussion of political concerns, international concerns, economic concerns, legislation.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And so what it means is that, you know, none of these subjects gets delved into very in-depth. Like a whole bunch of things are kind of touched upon. And then there's some brief questions, but then the briefing is over.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And then people sort of come up with headlines based on what was said. And then everybody waits around until the next briefing the next day.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I guess this isn't really a normal situation, but how are these things normally done?
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: This is not a normal situation, okay? So this is really a very unusual health threat that the United States is facing.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And so, you know, one could say, of course, people want to hear from the White House. On the other hand, the White House briefing room is traditionally kind of a politically based scene.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: You know what I mean? As opposed to a place like, for example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, which in the past has really taken the lead on informing the public about infectious disease outbreaks.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: So think about Ebola, think about Zika. Yeah, we do think that if you come back from an area where Zika is spreading and you're pregnant, we recommend that you be tested whether you were symptomatic or not.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: We recommend testing in the first trimester and then again in the third trimester. In terms of people who don't have symptoms, we don't think they need to be tested, but we think that, who aren't pregnant, but we think that they do need to take precautions with sexual contact, particularly in terms of sex with a pregnant woman.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: In those kinds of situations, it was the CDC that was continually updating the public on the numbers, talking with the public about what's known, what the science is suggesting, what they're looking for, you know, what the best measures might be for mitigation or addressing the problem.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And yet with these White House briefings, you haven't seen anyone from the CDC on the stage in days, if not weeks.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: I mean, there's a member of the task force, Dr. Robert Redfield, who's the director of the CDC, but he's not appearing at the podium. It's not the CDC this time speaking out to the public from this sort of high-profile briefing.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: Why is that? Why isn't Dr. Redfield around?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: For a while, at the beginning of this outbreak, the CDC had been having regular teleconferences with reporters. And that's very similar to what they've done in past outbreaks.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And with those calls, they would be focused on the epidemiology and the science. We expect we will see community spread in this country. It's not so much a question of if this will happen anymore, but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And the people who called in were typically experienced health and medical reporters who had covered lots of outbreaks in the past. And the questioning would be focused on scientific questions.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The last one was on March 9th. And, you know, I asked the CDC in an email why those had been suspended and if they were going to be resumed, and I didn't get any response.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And, you know, you see that, at least I see it, because I've been noticing in articles, reporters will say they reached out to the CDC and didn't get any response.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And the CDC is normally a very accessible organization. And in the last few days, I have been seeing a few interviews here and there. So like Anne Schuchat spoke with a paper in Israel, for example, and with the newspaper The Hill.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: But you're not seeing them speaking out in the public like Anthony Fauci is, for example. And you're also not hearing from them when you ask why you're not seeing them, just to be clear?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, I didn't get a response to that question.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: So if we email the CDC and ask why they're being quiet, you think we'll end up with nothing?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Editor's note, we gave it a shot. The CDC didn't get back to us either.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: I'm just like stunned by, I'm stunned a little bit by the fact that they haven't even responded to you. Like it just sounds, I don't know, off the record.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: I'm just trying to work through this. Like, sometimes I find myself going through an interview with someone and there's like just this one big question that we're not answering.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And it just seems like the one big question we're not answering is why aren't they talking to reporters? That's bizarre, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, I mean, I think. Again, you know, this is on the record. You know, I think that I was watching one of Governor Cuomo's briefings from New York.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And in his briefing, he was very clear to separate out, like, here's what I know as facts and here's just my personal opinion. Do you know what I mean?
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: Like, he made it very clear, like, first I'm going to give you a series of facts and then I'm going to tell you what I think about them. But he was very clear to say, you know, this is just me talking. This is like, you know, what I'm taking from this.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And I think that kind of communication can be really helpful where you just sort of make it clear to people what's known, what's not known, you know, what we surmise.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And I think that you know at the state level you're seeing people take that approach And I think that at the state level you are seeing the kind of communication that crisis management experts suggest which is consistent message sort of repeated over and over again by trusted voices in authority whose messages are basically compatible with each other
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: But we don't get that from the White House briefings We have President Trump on one planet and then people like Dr Birx and Dr Fauci on another
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: Will that be enough I mean, Dr. Fauci is highly respected and people think he is a great communicator and he has a lot of experience
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: But the institute that he runs is primarily a research institute. You know, they're doing things like, you know, helping set the research agenda on the virus and looking at the development of vaccines
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: It's the CDC that is our nation's foremost public health agency that is involved in the prevention of disease transmission
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: It's the CDC that's traditionally been the one that is in close contact with all the state departments of public health
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And so, you know, it's the CDC that has the disease detectives who go around, you know, investigating outbreaks and helping states devise mitigation plans
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: So, you know, I think people are really happy to hear from Dr. Fauci. And in fact, if Dr. Fauci doesn't appear at a briefing, it makes some people worried
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: You know, you see people on Twitter saying, where is Fauci? There's this fear that his occasional willingness to contradict the president might lead to President Trump, you know, not wanting him at the press briefings
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't see any reason why there couldn't be briefings from the White House that would cover things like the economy and, you know, the sort of political response.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And also have briefings from the CDC that are focused more on the science and what's happening, you know, with regards to transmission at the state level and that kind of thing
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: But so far that hasn't been happening. It's just been the briefings from the White House task force
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: After the break, Matthew Iglesias argues the cable news networks should get together and cancel the Trump show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's Today Explained. Support for today's show comes from Adio.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What is Adio? Adio Adio is an AI-native customer relationship management system built specifically for the next era of companies.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Matthew Iglesias is the host of The Weeds. It's a podcast from Vox. I'm Sean Rameswaram from This is Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Great trainers and personnel work on the end!
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained is a Vox production. Our executive producer is Noel King. Our producer is Alex Sugiura. Our editor is Madeline Marshall.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
