Consider This from NPR - Trump And Governors Mix Messages; Managing Your Mortgage Or Rent

Episode Date: March 31, 2020

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, messages from President Trump and state governors have been mixed. Meanwhile, New York City has over 40,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, making it the epicenter of the pandemic in America. WNYC reporter Gwynne Hogan visits a Brooklyn hospital on the front lines of the pandemic, and the owner of a restaurant in Manhattan's Chinatown explains why he closed three weeks ago. Also, tips to help you pay your mortgage or rent if you've lost your job.Links:Find and support your local public radio stationRachel Martin's conversation with Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan Life Kit's guide to receiving financial help during the pandemic on Apple, Spotify and NPR One.Sign up for 'The New Normal' newsletterThis episode was recorded and published as part of this podcast's former 'Coronavirus Daily' format.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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The first person to die from COVID-19 in the U.S. was in Washington state. It happened on the last day of February. By today, the last day of March, nearly 3,500 people have died in the U.S. I don't care how smart, how rich, how powerful you think you are. I don't care how young, how old. This virus is the great equalizer. That's Andrew Cuomo, governor of the hardest hit state so far, New York. This episode, what it feels like in a Brooklyn hospital, and some financial advice for people who own their homes and for some renters.

This is Coronavirus Daily from NPR. I'm Kelly McEvers. It's Tuesday, March 31st. This week, the federal government finally caught up with many states when President Trump extended federal guidance for Americans to stay home from work and school. By the time he did that, more than half the state governors had already issued their own stay-at-home orders. Some more than a week earlier. Like California. We need to bend the curve in earlier, like California, New Jersey, and Illinois. I fully recognize that in some cases, I am choosing between saving people's lives and saving people's livelihoods. And those governors were issuing orders, not just guidance, orders to stay home. But ultimately, you can't have a livelihood if you don't have your life.

This disconnect between the federal government and the states has not just been about how soon to tell people to stay home. It's also about facts, like the fed's downplaying the number of infections in some states, citing a study that had been withdrawn. It's about supplies, like the White House encouraging states to buy equipment, including ventilators, on their own, setting up competition instead of collaboration. You now literally will have a company call you up and say, well, California just outbid you. It's like being on eBay with 50 other states bidding on a ventilator. That was New York Governor Cuomo today. And this disconnect is also about testing.

President Trump has suggested that the testing problems are over. They've been fixed. It's no longer an issue. Yeah, that's just not true. Republican Larry Hogan, the governor of Maryland, said today on NPR's Morning Edition that the federal government is not doing enough to help his state ramp up testing capacity. They've got some new things in the works,

but they're not actually out on the streets, and no state has enough testing. Another governor, Steve Bullock of Montana, told the president in a conference call this week his state is also struggling. But we just don't have enough supplies to do the testing. Tony, I think I can answer to you, but I haven't heard about testing in weeks. In leaked audio obtained by CBS News, the president said he hadn't heard about testing in weeks. Like, he doesn't think testing is a problem. We've got these great tests, and we come out with another one tomorrow where it's, you know, almost instantaneous testing.

But I haven't heard about testing being a problem. We've got a link to Maryland Governor Larry Hogan's full interview with Morning Edition host Rachel Martin. It's in the episode notes. The U.S. naval ship Comfort glided into New York Harbor this week. And on board are 12 operating rooms, a thousand beds, a pharmacy, a medical lab, and oxygen-producing equipment. The ship is supposed to serve as overflow for New York City hospitals for non-COVID-19 patients. That's because the city has by far the most confirmed cases of coronavirus in the country, nearly 41,000. Gwen Hogan from member station WNYC visited a hospital in Brooklyn that's running out of room. Inside Maimonides Medical Center, nurses and doctors rush from patient to patient who are in separate rooms

behind sliding glass doors. So this is ICU X. This is actually an ICU we stood up just Sunday night. Dr. John Marshall is the chair of emergency medicine. He shows me how to properly put on a surgical mask. So it kind of form fits to your face, and then it should fit down below, too. And then when you suck in, you see how it collapses in? That's a sign that it's working right now. They've treated hundreds of patients

over the course of the pandemic so far. Notice we've got all the patients are kind of in isolated areas. We have a lot of the equipment outside of the room. As he's speaking, a nurse calls out for help. Chris, 13? 13. Thank you. The patients are obviously very sick. It's an entirely different kind of care, so we're learning how to care for these patients as we go. Marshall says the hospital is trying to more than double its capacity to 1,400 beds. They're aiming for around 300 intensive care beds, up from about 50 they had before all of this started.

They have enough ventilators for now. It's, um, so we have been sourcing additional ventilators. He won't give specifics. He does say if they had the same number they had a month ago, they would have run out by now. 50 were donated. 50 more are on the way. But critically ill patients with COVID-19 spend two to three weeks on these machines, much longer than many other illnesses.

So at Maimonides... What we're doing with a lot of patients up here is actually not putting them on ventilators and putting them on the high-flow oxygen machine and trying to keep them off the ventilator as long as we can and trying to get the lung to heal. One patient calls out to the ICU's head doctor through the glass. He calls back. How are you feeling? The patient has been completely taken off oxygen and is able to breathe on his own for the first time in days.

The ICU doctor is beaming from behind his mask. How do you like that? You look good, Rich. There are about a dozen patients in the small ICU, mostly sleeping or sedated, and it's relatively calm. But there are so many of these wards throughout the hospital and dozens more patients waiting to be admitted down below in the emergency room.

A worker in scrubs comes up to the ICU to ask Dr. Marshall where he should start sending them. CCU is filling up. They're trying to figure out where patients are going to go. How are you doing? They're at six or seven now. There's three more I'm trying to bring over. I'll call her back in a few minutes.

It's a constant rapid-fire shuffle, turning a laboratory into a COVID ward, a rehab gym into a COVID ward. Most spaces in the hospital are being turned into COVID wards. Then there are the large tents out front that are being fitted with electricity and climate control in case it gets to that. There's also a refrigerated truck outside if the hospital runs out of space in its morgue. You want to head down towards the emergency room? Down some stairs through a maze of corridors.

This side of the emergency department was normally our critical care side. It became our hot zone last week for the COVID patients. Although as the week has progressed, pretty much everything has become the hot zone at this point. It's overwhelming, bed to bed to bed, dozens of patients of all ages in hospital gowns,

all in rows, one in a chair, everyone wearing masks. And it's just starting. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says the pandemic won't reach its peak for several more weeks. At Maimonides, Dr. Marshall says the question on everyone's mind? Will there be enough protective gear, equipment, physical space, and healthy staff members to care for everyone who needs it as best they can? That's the concern that every nurse, every doctor, every tech, every person has downstairs is, you know, am I going to be able to do what I spent my whole life training to do when it matters the most? And this is, you know, in the 30 years of my medical career,

this is the time it's mattered the most. That story by WNYC's Gwen Hogan in New York. About eight miles north of that Brooklyn hospital, across the Manhattan Bridge, is Jingfeng, one of Chinatown's largest restaurants. On a busy weekend for dim sum, it can seat about 800 people. Truman Lam's family has owned Jingfeng for almost 40 years. And Lam said their last day in business was March 10th, before Governor Cuomo banned large gatherings. And he told Weekend Edition host Scott Simon why they decided to close their doors. You know, being in a Chinese restaurant

full of immigrant workers, we heard about the coronavirus pretty early on because, you know, while not physically close to a lot of the people in China, my staff has a lot of close ties to people in China. They already knew what was going back and happening in Wuhan and other cities in China. And we started feeling the effects on the business around the Lunar New Year, so around mid-January. Boy. And it just kept getting worse and worse. Mr. Lam, I have to ask. We've heard reports about anti-Asian slurs all over the country. New York's Chinatown has been there a long time, and everybody there is a valued member of the community. But I wonder if you or your employees have experienced anything like that, or your neighbors.

So we've seen cases of it happening. There was an attack on someone wearing a mask at the Grand Street subway station a while back. But personally, I haven't felt anything like that happen. And I think it's a little bit incorrect to say that our business went down because of racist issues. That's not the reason why our business went down because of, you know, racist issues. That's not the reason why our business went down, because I think it was across the board, you know, Asians, non-Asians were not visiting restaurants. But I think there are incidents of racism

happening against Chinese people, but I personally have not experienced it myself. I gather you used to be an investment banker. Yeah, I did. I did it for about four years. Well, based on your matchless expertise in investment banking and running a Chinese restaurant, how does the economy look to you now? I don't know if I'm qualified to speak on the economy, but I think we're in a difficult position. The two main reasons why we decided to close the business before Governor Cuomo banned gatherings of 500 or more was because we started feeling like our staff

was getting worried about coming to work sometimes and we didn't want people to get sick. The other one was it cost us more money to stay open than close. We couldn't even make payroll for that one day based on the sales. I mean, my gosh, Mr. Lamb, is there any chance you won't reopen? I think the overwhelming sense is we're going to reopen, obviously. Whether we make it or not after that is a totally different story. There's no guarantee that people are going to feel comfortable after months of

social distancing, feel comfortable to come out and just start eating again and resuming life as they were doing so before coronavirus, right? It's not like, you know, bands get lifted, tomorrow we go to work and we resume and go back to normal. It takes time. That was restaurant owner Truman Lamb talking to NPR's Scott Simon. Okay, so tomorrow is the first of the month, which of course means bills are due. And you might have heard that mortgage companies are now required to let people make reduced payments or to skip their payments. The directive is part of the new coronavirus relief law, and it specifically applies to anyone who has lost a job or a significant amount of income because of the pandemic. The law was written for mortgage holders, but if you are a renter,

your landlord likely has a mortgage and might be willing to pass the benefit on to you. Here's the thing, though. You can't just skip a payment. You have to call your lender and negotiate terms. In other words, be proactive. Our friends over at LifeKit have a full episode of advice to help anyone who has lost a job. Check our episode notes for a link or just search NPR LifeKit. And for more on the coronavirus, you can stay up to date with the latest news on your local public radio station. I'm Kelly McEvers. We will be back tomorrow.