Today, Explained - How to slow down coronavirus

Episode Date: March 12, 2020

President Trump has banned most Europeans from traveling to the US. Vox’s Jen Kirby explains why that won’t stop the novel coronavirus from spreading, and Eliza Barclay tells us what we can do to slow the spread. (Transcript here.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And fans, due to unforeseen circumstances, the game tonight has been postponed. You are all safe. And take your time in leaving the arena tonight and do so in an orderly fashion. Thank you for coming out tonight. Soon after, the NBA announced that a player had tested positive for coronavirus just before the game. Starting tomorrow, NBA play is suspended, and then the league is going to use that hiatus

to decide their next steps, how they'll go forward. But this is the last night of NBA games for the foreseeable future. But the NBA wasn't the only one closing down. All right, we do want to give you some breaking news because we understand now that Seattle public schools will close for at least two weeks starting tomorrow. Mosques, churches, synagogues. It had already been a part of the discussion here among staff about what is going to happen come Holy Week, come Easter, expectations of huge crowds, all those kinds of things. Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson even tested positive.

What's up, everyone? Yeah, it's true. My parents got coronavirus. Crazy. They're both down in Australia right now because my dad was shooting a movie down there. Then, at 9 p.m. Eastern time, President Trump gave a national address. After consulting with our top government health professionals, I have decided to take several strong but necessary actions to protect the health and well-being of all Americans.

To keep new cases from entering our shores, we will be suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days. Jen Kirby, Vox, this travel ban that President Trump announced last night, does it start immediately? It starts effective Friday at midnight. So the president said that this is suspending all travel from Europe to the U.S. What exactly counts as Europe? Yeah, so it specifically refers to the European Union Schengen zone, which is 26 countries, which includes France, Germany, Spain, among a bunch of others. And there was one country that he explicitly exempted. These restrictions will also not apply to the United Kingdom.

Why was the UK not included? It's not really clear why the UK wasn't included. We don't really have any reason. The UK is not part of the Schengen Zone. But, you know, the president is in the middle of trade talks with the UK and has a close relationship with Boris Johnson. So that might be why they're left out of the ban. But we ultimately don't know. And is this for everyone, like American citizens in Europe? Can they still come back? Yeah, right now, the ban only applies to foreign nationals who are coming from these 26 Schengen countries. It does not apply to U.S. citizens or to legal permanent residents. But there was some confusion about that leading to some hecticness and chaos at European airports today. And is this ban just for people or does it include everything coming from Europe? It is just people, according to the president of the White House. But they had to clarify that after the fact, because during the speech, Trump apparently misspoke and said that it would include cargo, which led to an absolute freak out because the

European Union and the U.S. are major trading partners, and that would probably be extraordinarily disruptive to the economy. But it turns out it was just a mistake. Just a mistake? In the speech, yeah. So it's not included in the order. The order just applies to people. But for, you know, a few minutes there, it seemed as if everything, both goods and people coming from Europe were banned. But that turns out not to be the case. And how has the EU responded to this ban? The EU has responded pretty harshly and directly. They condemned the United States for taking this action, basically saying that this is a time for cooperation and not unilateral action. And they basically said that they were not consulted on this pretty dramatic plan by the White House, which is incredible because these are some of our closest allies.

So to not even give them a heads up as we institute this dramatic measure is pretty remarkable. Yeah, I imagine, you know, fighting the coronavirus is going to take some pretty intense international collaboration. Is this going to impact our ability to do that going forward? I mean, I think that's sort of the main question. You would believe at a time like this in a global pandemic where every country is preparing for and expecting to see the coronavirus on their shores, you would think for something that the World Health Organization has declared a pandemic would require, you know, international cooperation and everybody working together to take measures to slow the spread of the disease. So this sort of nationalism in the

wake of a crisis that is definitely not respecting national borders is pretty remarkable. You know, I imagine restricting international travel, at least on some level, is helpful. Is there a sense that Trump may have backed into something at least slightly helpful here? So Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is a well-respected member of Trump's coronavirus task force, did say that he believed that stopping people from coming in as well as working to prevent the spread in the United States would be an effective measure. So he is somebody who seems to agree that at least preventing some people from coming in will be helpful. But I think a lot of experts believe that the important component is making sure that

you stop the spread in the United States. And the fear is that something like a travel ban kind of distracts from the very urgent measures that needs to be done in the U.S. and sort of places blame on Europe, for example, when right now everybody's kind of all in this together. Has this ban had any broader impacts yet? So the market does not seem happy about this order by the White House. Coming on the air with breaking news and the turmoil on Wall Street amid the coronavirus outbreak, all three major averages, the Dow, the Nasdaq and the S&P, set to plunge as the trading day begins, as it has just a few seconds ago. We see what's happening right there. That's the Dow Jones down about 7 percent this morning in the trading.

Of course, the stock market isn't the economy, but it's a sign that, you know, the United States may not be as on top of this pandemic and that might lead to economic disruptions worldwide. But we do not know the long term economic impact of a ban like this. So it's certainly not helping the economy. Is it at least helping calm people down a bit? Did Trump's speech put anyone at ease at all? I don't, I mean, it's hard to sort of gauge for how everybody felt. But, you know, public health experts have largely said this ban is a distraction and a waste of, you know, time and energy. And you have a lot of private entities, for example, the NBA, which is now suspending its season,

taking these kind of more drastic measures that the U.S. government hasn't really taken, at least when it comes to inside the U.S. So there's definitely a disconnect. And given the way the markets are reacting and some public health officials are speaking out, it seems that Trump's Oval Office speech didn't have the intended effect of calming the nation. Even if you don't have coronavirus yourself, there's a lot you can do to help keep it from spreading. That's next. Thank you. in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards

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Cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply. WHO has been assessing this outbreak around the clock and we're deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction. We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic. Eliza Barkley, science and health editor at Vox. Yesterday's announcement from the WHO means that we're now officially dealing with a pandemic. Was this a surprise? We actually expected this. Public

health experts have been saying actually now for a couple of weeks, this really looks like a pandemic. We can pretty much call it one. WHO tends to be cautious. They wanted to hold off until they were certain that it was really severe enough to call a pandemic. And I think it reflects their concern of how far it has spread and the fact that several countries are now dealing with very serious outbreaks. So far, the U.S. hasn't had the number of cases that Italy or China or South Korea has. Is that about to change? All the signs suggest yes. Yesterday, Dr. Tony Fauci of the NIH said, We will see more cases and things will get worse than they are right now. And part of that has to do with the fact we're going to be testing more.

So we're going to find more cases. But also, it seems that the virus is spreading in the United States, and it may spread very rapidly, very quickly, if we don't take all these measures that we're being asked to take to slow down the spread and prevent new cases. Is that really all we can hope for right now, to slow down the spread? We can't stop the spread? Yes, that is correct. Containment is now pretty much off the table. There are too many cases. It's too contagious. We are just going to have to try to slow it down. And what happens if we don't take steps to slow down the spread?

The consequences of that are not just lots of cases and deaths, but that our health care system, which, by the way, is at capacity right now, can be totally overwhelmed. And so that means that people who are sick with the virus, who need to be on a ventilator to breathe, and we're talking about here people who are very, very sick, who have severe pneumonia, those people, if we get an explosion of them, there won't be enough ventilators or beds for them. And then think about a hospital that's just overwhelmed with suddenly this influx of COVID-19 patients, that hospital then is going to not be as well equipped to care for everyone else who's going to have their issues. So when we talk about why we need to slow down this epidemic now, we're trying to avoid that worst

case scenario. So what should we do to prevent the worst-case scenario from happening? So social distancing is about slowing social contact. So think about those of us who live in a city. We go to the grocery store, we go to the gym, we go to work, we're on the metro, we're on a bus, we're constantly around a lot of other people. And so the idea with social distancing is to reduce the intensity and the frequency of possible exposure to the virus. What this means in terms of what public health authorities are asking us is avoid crowds, cancel mass public gatherings, maybe stay home from work depending on where you work,

whether there's a lot of cases in your area. Maybe close your school. In epidemiology world, this whole concept of trying to slow down the outbreak is called flattening the curve. The idea is what we don't want is a huge surge in cases where they're peaking and we get to that situation of overwhelming the health care system that I mentioned. Instead, we want a slow curve. So while containment's not an option anymore, we may still get a lot of cases. In this situation, we want to see those cases spread out over a very long period of time so that the health care system can manage and care for the people who are going to be really sick. Is there any chance that the Trump administration calls for a full lockdown? That seems pretty unlikely, in part because the federal government doesn't really have the power

to do a national lockdown. So there's actually a significant debate even among public health experts about whether a lockdown type of policy where you are saying to people, stay home for the most part, except for essential travel, whether those really work, or if you can get by with these other kinds of social distancing measures, which just say, let's close some schools for a period of time. Let's ask people to work from home if they can. Those things alone may be enough. And also we're advising especially the most vulnerable groups to avoid crowds to stay home, you know, more than they would. What this situation shows us, right, is that we are all in this together. We have a collective responsibility to protect the most vulnerable. And that means

ideally everyone follows these guidelines because nobody has immunity to this disease. So if I'm young and healthy and I get sick, I may be asymptomatic. But if I'm out and about in a lot of public spaces, I'm potentially infecting people who may or may not be vulnerable, but they might take it home to their vulnerable grandmother.

We are very interconnected in this situation. And that's why we've seen in the last week, you know, a couple of governors making pretty big decisions for their citizens. Governor Jay Inslee on Tuesday announced new rules about visiting nursing homes in Washington state. Number one, we are requiring compliance that residents are limited to one visitor per day. Visitors must be adults and the visit must take place in the residence room. Number two, all visitors must follow COVID-19 screening and follow reasonable precautionary

measures. And then yesterday, he said that all public gatherings of more than 250 people in the Seattle area will be canceled. These events that are prohibited are gatherings for social, recreational, spiritual, and other matters, including but not limited to community, civic, public, leisure, faith-based, or sporting events. Parades, concerts, festivals, conventions, fundraisers, and similar activities of that dimension are prohibited as we go forward.

And then lastly, the first school district in the country, the Seattle Public School District, announced it was closing. And that begins today, and it will last for two weeks. What about other places around the country? In New York State, we have Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a new one-mile containment area around New Rochelle because there is a cluster of coronavirus cases there. Let's look at the situation. We have about 108 cases in New Rochelle. Just to put it in perspective, we have 36 cases in New York City. New York City is 100 times the size of New Rochelle, okay? So New Rochelle is the hottest

spot, if you will, in the country. Yesterday, Governor Cuomo declared a two-week ban on all large gatherings in the area, where thousands of people live and work, effectively shutting down its schools, houses of worship, and athletic clubs. We're also going to use the National Guard in the containment area to deliver food to homes, to help with the cleaning of public spaces. So this is the first time we're seeing this type of measure in the United States. It sounds like a, I think, more severe measure than it is. Containment doesn't mean that everyone can't leave. It just means they're actively trying to contain this cluster of cases in this community,

not let it spread outside. It doesn't seem obvious to me that everyone would just abide by these rules if they're handed down by states or companies. I read this story about this guy in Missouri who was told to self-quarantine and then went to his father-daughter dance. I mean, are there measures in place to hold people accountable if they break quarantine? Or is this sort of an honor system at this point? In general, I think we can expect local government to try voluntary measures first. So many people have been told to self-quarantine at this point. If they have symptoms, they may not have been tested yet, or they may so far be testing negative,

but they're still being told to stay home in case they might have it and then potentially get tested. But in general, if you're not sick, minimize your time in crowded places, wash your hands a lot, and look out for the vulnerable. I mean, the other thing we can do is if we know someone who is, let's say, has a chronic medical condition, we can help them by doing their grocery shopping for them, things like that. You know, we've covered this from so many different angles on the show. I mean, Sean actually spoke to someone who had the coronavirus. And even though he was in a high-risk group, it didn't seem like having it necessarily was such a terrible experience. But I guess to be clear, what you're saying is that even if we don't have it,

it's important for us to act differently? Yes, because we could get other people sick without knowing it. We all want to be able to use the healthcare system, you know, whenever we want to. But if we have a situation where we have so many people who are sick with coronavirus overloading our hospitals, then that's going to affect everyone. So we do this now to prevent that. Eliza Barkley is the science and health editor at Vox. I'm Noam Hassenfeld, filling in for Sean Ramos for him while he's on vacation. This is Today Explained. Thank you.