The NPR Politics Podcast - White House Touts Coronavirus Treatments, As FDA Warns They May Be Months Away

Episode Date: March 19, 2020

The White House gave a press conference Thursday afternoon touting potential new treatments for the coronavirus. The head of the Food and Drug Administration warned that their effectiveness and testing timeline remain uncertain. Also, Congress may soon pass a trillion dollar stimulus package that would provide cash directly to Americans and a backstop for the wide swaths of the economy crippled by the coronavirus outbreak. This episode: campaign correspondent Asma Khalid, White House correspondent Ayesha Rascoe, and Chief Economics Correspondent Scott Horsley.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey guys, this is Mike from San Antonio, Texas, where me and my daughter Matilda are socially distancing ourselves, and she is making mushroom soup, it looks like. This podcast was recorded at 2.11pm on Thursday, March 19th. Okay, here's the show. 11 p.m. on Thursday, March 19th. Okay. Here's the show. Mushroom soup made by a kid. I feel like we all have our own stories of socially distancing and how difficult it is when you've got a random kid around you. Yeah, just so I get a lot of, at least they're being helpful.

They're making something. I get asked to make stuff. Juice I mean, where's my juice? Well, hey, there it is the NPR politics podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I'm covering the presidential campaign. And I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. In what seems to be turning into a daily tradition in the time of coronavirus, President Trump just held a press conference earlier today to discuss the administration's latest efforts to deal with the pandemic. And what seemed most newsworthy to me, Ayesha, was this announcement the president made about drugs to treat the coronavirus. But walk us through this because it doesn't sound like we have an immediate cure. There certainly isn't a cure for the coronavirus at the moment. But he what President Trump and he's kind of been trumpeting

this since yesterday that there was going to be this big FDA announcement. And today what he came out with what he basically said was that the FDA is working to get these drugs out that could potentially help with treatment of people who have the virus maybe make it uh less severe or things of that nature um president trump as is his way he talked about it in this way like we're going to have these drugs one of the drugs is already uh available but it's not for treatment of the coronavirus it's an anti-malmalarial drug and it has been around. And so there's this idea that this might be possible to be used to help with the treatment of this virus. The nice part is it's been around for a long time.

So we know that if it if 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. And it's shown very encouraging, very, very encouraging early results. And we're going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately. So after Trump made all these comments, Stephen Hahn, the FDA commissioner, quickly came in and basically he threw a little bit of cold water on it. We need to make sure that the sea of new treatments will get the right drug to the right patient at the right dosage at the right time.

As an example, we may have the right drug, but it may not be in the appropriate dosage form right now. And that may do more harm than good. Those are the things that that's our job to look at. And that's why it's really important we have these dedicated professionals looking at these aspects of therapeutic development. He said that, yes, these drugs exist, but the FDA has to go through a process to make sure they're safe. They have to go through clinical trials. You can't just give them to people for treatment of this new virus without knowing the actual effects that it could have. So, Aisha, did they outline a timeline for this?

Because, you know, my understanding is drugs have to go through multiple phases for a clinical trial before they can generally be used by the public. They're going through this continuous process. Han said it might take three to six months. I mean, so that's better than the vaccine, which probably won't be complete for about a year at least. There is this thing called compassionate use, where if a doctor says so with the doctor's approval, they can apply to the FDA to see if they can use a drug for someone who's really kind of in dire straits and might be about to lose their life. Then they can ask, can we just try this drug?

And what Han was saying is that was good because if a doctor applies and they use this drug, then the doctor is required to tell the FDA how things went. And so they can collect more data that way. But that's kind of more, it sounds like more extreme cases. So, I mean, there's no doubt that researchers and doctors, you know, are trying to move very quickly. But it sounds like there is still a lot of uncertainty and not just in the world of science, but also in the economy and what the coronavirus means there. There are, you know, plenty of questions about how the administration is going to stabilize our economy. So we have brought in NPR senior economic correspondent Scott Horsley again.

Hey there, Scott. Hey, Scott. Good to be with you. I want to start, Scott, with unemployment numbers. And, you know, we should point out that part of the reason why unemployment is so high right now is because a number of people can't work. Businesses are shut down. Cities, state governments have told us that we're not supposed to go into restaurants and dine in and whatnot. But, you know, we did get an early look today at the way that the pandemic is affecting employment.

And really, there's no upbeat way to put this. It does not look good. No, it really doesn't. The initial claims for unemployment jumped 33% last week. And that's last week, which was really before the wave of job cuts that we saw as the really draconian public health measures kicked in this week. So this is just a hint of what is likely to be on our horizon, really unprecedented job losses in the near term as big chunks of the economy just get closed down as the public health officials try to

slow the spread of this pandemic. And Scott, so I mean, the president is always talking about how strong the economy was before this all hit, and it was strong. Will that make any difference with like the job numbers or job losses that we see now? Like will things, I mean, take a really bad hit or do we have any cushion? It's good in the sense that maybe people had socked away a little bit of money while the times were good. But we are not just tapping on the brakes here. We are slamming on the economic brakes. I've seen forecasts that we're going to see millions of job losses in the months to come.

And, you know, the worst month we ever had during the Great Recession, and I remember covering this, was in the spring of 2009 when we saw 800,000 jobs lost. That could be dwarfed in April of this year. The March survey for jobs was actually done last week. So again, we won't see the really big job losses in that figure. But when the April numbers come out, it's likely to be really alarming. So So Scott, it's not just employment. You know, the stock market that the president has loved to tout how well it's doing, that continues to swing wildly. And, you know, it's worth noting that the Federal Reserve has essentially exhausted all of the major tools that it would traditionally use to combat this volatility. And it doesn't seem like those

tools are working to stop essentially just major swings and sometimes pretty deep plunges that we've seen in the stock market. No, you're absolutely right. The market's actually up a little bit today as we record this in the afternoon, but it has been generally speaking down over the last month or so. Just a month or so ago, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was hitting record highs. Now it's fallen below 20,000. There was a time on Wednesday when it had actually fallen below the level it was at when President Trump was sworn in, so effectively erasing all the gains of the last three-plus years. It continues to bounce around a little bit as investors try to

get a handle on just how steep this downturn is going to be. But you're right, the Federal Reserve has used all of its tools. It's cut interest rates to zero. It has pulled out some of the emergency powers that it last used during the Great Recession to try to flood the credit markets with cash so that this doesn't turn into an even worse financial crisis. But thus far, there's still a lot of nervousness out there as people wait to see how this shakes out. All right, well, let's take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll talk more about the economy. This message comes from NPR sponsor StoryPoint Vineyards, maker of StoryPoint, a new wine brand who believes wine and storytelling are the perfect pair. StoryPoint grapes are sourced from California's best growing regions, so their wines are never one-dimensional. Consumers on Vivino rank StoryPoint among the top 3% of wines in the world. As a special offer to

NPR listeners, shipping is included in your online order. Visit storypointvineyards.com slash politics to purchase. Change is hard. Transitions can be even harder. But they're also an opportunity to explore and discover and reimagine things you thought you knew. I'm Manoush Zomorodi, the new host of NPR's TED Radio Hour. And with all this in mind, we've decided to make my entire first episode about reinvention. Subscribe or listen right now. And we're back. Scott, one of the things we've been hearing a lot about, and we talked a bit about this yesterday, is the idea that the government will soon begin providing checks to Americans, potentially. And I recall the government did something like this during the Great Recession, but explain to us, what is the thinking behind

giving every American a check? Well, the thinking is that the really big moves that the government's made to try to control this pandemic has just blown a huge hole in the economy. And the government needs to do what it can to try to not necessarily patch that hole, but at least throw a rope down to people so they can hold on for the time being. And one way to do that is just by sending direct payments to all Americans. They've talked about sending $1,000 to every adult, $500 to every kid, and all told, a half a trillion dollars that the administration wants to go out over the next six to nine weeks. And these wouldn't be actual checks in the mail, right? Or would they? In most cases, this would probably be a direct deposit, actually. The Treasury Department already

has a lot of people's bank account information, so that'd be the most efficient way to get money out to people. In some cases, there might be physical checks in the mail. And we should say that the administration has hinted there may be some income limit on these payments. It may be that if you're above a certain income threshold, they'll figure you don't need the money and save it for people who do. So, you know, Scott, I was mentioning that there was something akin to this during the recession, from what I recall, but that money was meant so that, you know, we would go out and spend money at local businesses. Right now, a lot of businesses are shut down. So what are people theoretically supposed to do with this money once they receive it? Yeah, that's what makes this downturn so unusual. Ordinarily, when the Federal Reserve

cuts interest rates or the government sends out stimulus money like this, the goal is to encourage people to go out and spend money, to encourage businesses to invest money. And obviously that's not happening right now. Opportunities certainly for discretionary spending have largely been closed off. So this is really more of a sort of a social insurance policy. It's just a way to help people pay for the absolute necessities. They can pay their rent, pay their mortgage, maybe keep groceries on the table in the short term while we try to muddle through this pandemic. Scott, the other thing we've heard the president talk about is financial assistance to large businesses, you know, not just the help that individual families need.

What is the situation with potentially offering stimulus packages to complete sectors of the economy? Right. There's aid in this trillion-dollar rescue package for both big businesses like the airlines, which were among the first to feel the effects of this downturn, and also small businesses, ordinary mom-and-pop restaurants and bookstores and retail outlets that have been forced to close their doors. There may be some strings attached to that. The administration is careful to avoid using the term bailout for this money. They're talking about bridge loans and financial assistance to get them over the hump. But they don't like the term bailout because the idea is they're not trying to reward companies that were already in trouble. They're trying to save companies that were doing well and would be continuing to do well, but for the effects of this virus. The government or the White House can't just do this on their

own, right? No, this is a proposal that they've put to Congress. And really, the administration surprising is even in Congress, no one's really batting too many eyes at that idea. Even though it's a very big number, people seem to be willing to entertain the idea and to pass this or at least something like this in pretty short order. All right. Well, that is a wrap for today. And we've got some special news. Scott and Aisha, do you all know that NPR has launched a new daily podcast about the coronavirus? I heard about that. Another way to keep up to speed. That's right.

Every evening, the podcast will dive into the biggest stories of the day and explain what is going on with the coronavirus in 15 minutes or less. It's called Coronavirus Daily, and you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back tomorrow with our weekly roundup. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And I'm Scott Horslake. I cover economics. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.