What A Day - Curve Your Enthusiasm

Episode Date: April 1, 2020

We interview New York Times reporter Caitlin Dickerson about the far-reaching effects the pandemic is having on people in our immigration system: asylum seekers, DACA recipients, undocumented workers, ICE detainees and more. The Trump administration has finally spoken up about their projections for the loss of life that America might experience as a result of Covid-19. Plus, we discuss the current recommendations on face-masks as protection against the virus. And in headlines: Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is given unchecked power, Idaho's governor passes transphobic laws, and a fancy baby clothes company pitches in for coronavirus relief.

It's Wednesday, April 1st. I'm Akilah Hughes. And I'm Gideon Resnick, and this is What A Day, coming to you on a historically unfunny April Fool's Day. Yeah, if you're a startup and you're trying to get traction, maybe just don't. Maybe wait till the day after. Shelve those tweets. I don't want to see Oreo cracking jokes. I want to see Oreo making masks. You know what I'm saying? On today's show, how our immigration system is handling the coronavirus pandemic. Not well. Then some headlines. But first, the latest.

Go home, watch TV. That's my advice to you. You know, if you've seen my show, nothing good ever happens going out of the house. You know that. There's just trouble out there. It's not a good place to be. He's not wrong.

That was Larry David with a great reminder. So if you need a quick way to remember, it's TV good outside bad. All right. So it is the first of the month. And while some states and localities have passed various mortgage and eviction relief programs, rent is still due for some odd reason. And rent strikes are happening nationwide. No word from the feds on that. But one thing that the Trump administration has finally spoken up about is their projections for the loss of life that America might experience as a result of COVID-19.

And it was pretty dark. So Gideon, do you want to take us through what we learned yesterday? Yeah. So what the task force said was that the country could see 100,000 to 240,000 deaths. And that shocking number is even with the social distancing practices that we currently have in place. Dr. Anthony Fauci from the NIH said that the measures being taken throughout the country are, in fact, slowing the spread. But he emphasized that it is really important for people to not take their foot off the gas right now. Yeah. I mean, Donald Trump thought this was a hoax. So I guess it's the deadliest hoax in history. It's a real disaster.

It really didn't have to be this way. Yeah. And then also on the topic of face masks, which is something that there's been more reporting on recently, the World Health Organization and the CDC have said that people do not need to wear masks outside unless they are sick and coughing. But now the CDC is starting to reassess that given more information about high rates of transmission from individuals who are infected but asymptomatic, they're not having the symptoms that other people are having. Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC,

said that the coronavirus is about three times as infectious as the flu and that some folks could be transmitting it for as long as two days before showing symptoms or not even showing them at all. Overall, up to 25% of people infected might not show symptoms. That was the new word from Redfield and the CDC, which is crazy. So there are some important things to consider, though, when it comes to this question of masks and whether there will be any sort of nationwide guidance on it. First, information is changing rapidly as experts get more of it about the virus and effective public health measures can change in response to that.

For one thing, Fauci mentioned on Tuesday that telling everybody to wear masks could have a downside of keeping them out of the hands of healthcare workers who desperately need them right now. Also, some of the scientific community have expressed concern that masks could make people less disciplined about these other crucial elements of stopping the spread like social distancing. So we're going to have to see what the recommendation ends up

ultimately being, and we'll kind of keep you updated on that when we find out more. But as we hinted at before, there have been some good signs that social distancing is working in particular regions throughout the country. Akilah, do you want to take us through that? Yeah. All right. So there is a bit of good news and hope. Remember that feeling? So in the Bay Area and around San Francisco, evidence is suggesting that the early shelter in place measures have positively affected the trajectory of the outbreak. Northern California was one of the first places in the country to do a lockdown, as we all remember. So that's going to be our leading indicator, you know, for these sorts of measures. More hope in Washington state, which was the initial epicenter of the outbreak in the U.S. Researchers are saying that the spread

has slowed due to their early stay at home measures. So Governor Inslee out there warns that the state is far from turning a corner, but the number of reported cases and deaths each day isn't increasing exponentially like in cities that are having a much worse go of it. It's staying relatively stagnant. So that feels like, you know, some good news. And, you know, Gideon, what else is going on around the world right now? Well, so something we didn't get to on yesterday's show, but there's some discussion in China about the full extent of the outbreak there. Chai Xing, a Chinese publication, has been pushing for disclosure of asymptomatic infections in the country. Asymptomatic infections now kind of a big theme of

how people are sort of differentiating through all of these numbers. In China's count of confirmed cases so far, people who test positive but don't show symptoms aren't actually included. And given what we were saying earlier about what we know in the United States about asymptomatic spread, that can be really crucial to understanding the virus more. The publication also reported that last week, thousands of urns were sent to funeral homes in Wuhan, which, again, raising questions about whether the death toll there might be higher than reported. But in more recent days, despite the epidemic seeming to have been brought under control, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan have barred foreigners from entry. Japan has barred visitors from most of Europe and is considering expanding on that too. And South Korea is requiring foreigners that are coming into quarantine in government facilities for 14 days.

So that's a little bit of what's happening throughout the continent of Asia. On a separate note, but worth flagging for the pics alone, a bunch of mountain goats have descended on a town in northern Wales. They are cool and good. I enjoy pictures of animals taking over city streets. Yeah, honestly, maybe they needed a break from us, so good for them. Good for these animals. But this isn't the only thing that is happening in America.

So since we're all stuck inside and we're all following the news, you might want to take a break, take five minutes. So here's one thing you could do. You could fill out the census. Thankfully, for the first time ever in history, the census is available online at my2020census.gov. The census uses the info about our population to determine who gets federal resources and how many representatives we get. So it's a really big deal. It only takes five minutes. I mean, it took me three. So, you know, maybe you can beat my time. But, you know, take it, fill it out, remind everyone you know to do the same. My2020census.gov. Two weeks ago, the president announced the United States border with Mexico would be closed to all non-essential travel.

The U.S.-Canadian border has also been restricted, along with other international travel. It's all part of the grinding halt we've seen to our immigration system as much of the country goes into lockdown mode. And it's left millions of people, from asylum seekers to DACA recipients, undocumented workers, detainees and their families in limbo. That's right. And Caitlin Dickerson is an immigration reporter from The New York Times. We spoke with her yesterday to get a sense of what the standstill really means and how far it reaches. Big picture, biggest picture, the way that this pandemic impacts immigration is that the border is pretty much shut down. You know, there's very little processing happening, very few people who are able to enter the country, even under the most difficult circumstances, you know, people who are fleeing violence or fleeing persecution and who want to claim asylum are not being allowed in right now,

because as the federal government has at least described it, they want to keep COVID-19 out of the country and they think shutting the border will do so. But also then you have immigration courts that are shut down. You have ICE arrests that have been scaled back really dramatically. You have visa processing that has been slowed in some cases pretty dramatically. So you're right. It's at a bit of a standstill right now. And to zero in on something specific that has to do with people who are already here and working, you just had a story out on housekeepers and caregivers, many of whom are undocumented. What are they going through right now?

So undocumented workers don't have a safety net to draw on in a situation like this. They can't take advantage of the stimulus bill that was passed, but they also aren't eligible for things that you or I would be eligible for if we were out of work and we didn't have any money to pay our bills. You know, things like Medicaid, things like food stamps, you know, things like help with housing and things of those nature of that nature. So, you know, I talked to a lot of nannies and gardeners and house cleaners for the story that I wrote with my colleague, Miriam Jordan, and they all, they basically lost their work overnight and not just a little bit of it, but all of it. And they had nobody to turn to, to ask for help. And so, you know, the situation is very serious for a lot of them. They were saying,

you know, I've got food for the next few days, but then I don't know what happens. I don't know how I'm going to pay my rent. I don't know how I'm going to make my car payment. That came up a lot, especially in rural areas where cars are essential. You know, if you don't have public transportation, you need a car to be able to get to the grocery store to get food. So it's a pretty dire situation for a lot of undocumented workers right now. That's a really important point. You know, there's one woman in your reporting, and that's Myra from Austin, Texas, who is, you know, she's a nanny.

She's a Spanish tutor. Can you talk about her a little bit? So, yes. So Myra is a nanny from Mexico right now. She nannies for two different families. And one is sort of a middle class family. Parents are both teachers. They have four kids. The other family was wealthier. Their parents work in tech and they have two kids. She visits one of the families in the morning typically and one after school. And she takes care of the kids and she

teaches them Spanish and she makes them food and she does their laundry and she takes care of the kids, and she teaches them Spanish, and she makes them food, and she does their laundry, and she cleans up around the house, et cetera, et cetera. And when the threat of COVID-19 became very serious just a couple of weeks ago, she found out that both of those employers didn't want her to come in anymore. One of her employers let her know in a text message kind of out of nowhere. It was a huge shock. And she made sure to say that she felt like their reasoning was understandable to a certain degree. One of the families had a baby at home.

The other one had grandparents living at home. You know, both felt like they needed to make this decision to protect their family. But she said, you know, what I don't understand is how they couldn't offer to at least pay me something. You know, the parents are all still working. They're still making money. They know that I rely on them. And yet they hadn't offered to compensate her. Even when one of the families asked her to FaceTime with their kids because their kids missed her, they didn't offer to compensate her for those calls. It's surprising, you know, that people don't remember these things sometimes, I guess, because, you know, Myra said she couldn't believe that the parents didn't offer to pay or anything.

And you think that that's sort of a natural thought that people have as employers. But actually, I got quite a few emails from people after the story published who said, thank you so much for reminding me. I just put a check in the mail. To switch gears ever so slightly to another topic that we want to cover, you know, there are thousands of children in detainment and adults being held in various forms of detention. We've seen some news here and there about judges looking to expedite release. But what have you seen is going on broadly with those in detention right now? I mean, there's a huge push to get some or all immigrants who are detained in the country. And there are more than 40,000 right now detained, released, because as we've seen in places like Rikers Island and Cook County, that once COVID reaches a facility where people are held in close quarters, it's going to

spread really quickly. But the likelihood of that happening, I think, is very small. I mean, I just reported this morning on one individual case that is allowing for 13 older ICE detainees who have chronic health issues to be released out of facilities in Pennsylvania. But in a broad way, I mean, you can't really imagine this administration deciding all of a sudden that civil immigration holds were not going to be important and that people should be released. There's also a public safety question about releasing people, you know, en masse at a time when much of the country is really locked down. People aren't supposed to be traveling. It would be really difficult for people to find new housing and new food. But I think for the most part, what we've seen so far is that the vast majority of

immigrants who are detained are going to are going to stay detained through this pandemic. Right. And we were mentioning earlier, sort of the effective halting of the border in a sense. And do we know about what is being discussed at the moment and what ramifications could actions like sealing off the border actually have? Well, I think the biggest change, like we said, is that trying to seek asylum in the United States has become kind of an impossible proposition at this point. And then I think at the same time you see the focus and the intent on arrests

ramping up within cities. ICE did announce that it scaled back its arrests because of the pandemic, but made sure to make clear that they still are performing arrests that they consider to be mission critical. Any arrests that they consider to be high stakes are important. They're still sending officers out on the streets to make those arrests. So I think that that change, that sort of more aggressive enforcement environment, even in a pandemic situation, is what foments concern that when people get sick or when their family members get sick, they may not want to go out of the house. They may not want to take their family members to the doctor because that doesn't feel like a safe option right now. I mean, I think all of these things we've talked about, they really reflect what happens when you have stagnation in Congress over what to do

about comprehensive immigration reform over the course of many administrations, whether it's people who don't have access to a safety net because they've lost their job or people who, you know, are they eligible for asylum? Are they not? Should they be able to get into the country? Shouldn't they? Should they be eligible for healthcare? All these things reflect the fact that we've had, you know, a decade of discussion among lawmakers about what to do. And all the while, you know, an undocumented population of millions of people, nothing's changed for them. And so in a national emergency, that becomes even more obvious.

That was Caitlin Dickerson from The New York Times. Definitely follow more of her reporting over there. It's Wednesday, WOD Squad. It's the middle of the week. We're trying to keep our spirits up by keeping each other virtual company and checking in regularly. So let's get to it. Gideon, have you cooked anything that was surprisingly good? Oh, I made a, it was like a boxed Kung Pao chicken last night, but it wasn't, it wasn't, it was like all of the separate, like a HelloFresh type thing. Got it. So it was like a, you had the ingredients and they told you what to do. Yeah. Yeah. I made it, I started off making it sound

like it was microwavable, but there was a lot of elbow grease put into this. Yeah, it was solid. What about you? What are you cooking? So I made, I guess stir fry is not the word, but I had a bunch of vegetables, and I had some chicken, and I had some brown rice, and I had a bunch of spices,

and I made what I think is adjacent to a stir fry, sort of a hybrid of a fried rice and a stir fry. And it is so good. I posted it on my Insta story, but it is bomb, and I plan on eating it for the next several days. What kind of spices are we working with? If you're allowed to say. I don't want to inquire too much about the chef. Listen, I mean, Lord knows I'm not going to be able to recreate this,

but let's see. There was some lemon pepper, some cayenne pepper. There was some smoked paprika. There was a little bit of black pepper, but again, you don't want to do too much like black pepper in an asian dish i feel like that's you know it's a separate thing right uh salts like a variety of like garlic salts and things and um what else did i put in there um you just knocked over what you're saying yeah and like a tiny bit of cumin but i like went like ham and I just like was tasting it like it was like ratatouille. Like I really thought I was knocking it out.

And you're bouncing on the edge of a soup dish and you're just scooping it. Yeah, I was actually cooking it from inside of a man's hat. So listen, I'm impressed either way. Thank you so much. And there you go. Another temperature check for the record books. It's a perfect 98.6. So good for us.

So everybody else, you know, keep staying home. Check in on your friends, your enemies, your coworkers, your family. And we're going to do the same. Let's wrap up with some headlines headlines a quote-unquote coronavirus bill passed by the hungarian parliament on monday will give unchecked power to populist prime minister victor orban with no time limit. The bill allows Orban to rule by decree, suspends elections, and also punishes those who distort or publish false information with five years in jail. It's supposed to help Hungary fight the pandemic. Probably just a fun coincidence that it also serves Orban's clear authoritarian tendencies.

Members of the European Union are required to have democratic governments. That's not the reality in Hungary now, but the EU has yet to make any bold moves. On Tuesday, EU officials sent a statement criticizing Orban's actions, but said it's the wrong time to pick a fight with just one member. I don't know. Yeah, I disagree. Be messy like you're on The Real Housewives and call them out. Now's the time for drama. All right. All right. So the governor of Idaho passed two laws limiting the rights of trans people yesterday on the International Transgender Day of Visibility.

Messed up. One of the laws prohibits trans girls from playing on sports teams that align with their gender. The other makes it illegal for trans people to change their gender on their own birth certificates. Both laws are likely to face challenges in court. Great. The birth certificate law seems to completely ignore a federal ruling from when Idaho tried to pass a similar law in 2018. For their part, the Idaho chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union released a statement saying, quote, the ACLU will see the governor in court. Good.

Yeah, you got an appointment, sir. TC Energy announced on Tuesday that they will begin construction on the Keystone XL pipeline. Remember that one? Which would deliver hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil from Canada to the United States. Since its proposal a decade ago, the construction of the pipeline has been delayed and reversed. Environmental activists warned that processing the oil from Canada would emit more greenhouse gases than drilling. Landowners, state regulators, and Native American tribes have also fought legal battles against TC Energy. President Obama blocked its construction in 2015, but President Trump reversed that decision when he came into office. The company predicts the pipeline will be in service in 2023. I guess a pandemic is a good time to be a bunch of dicks. All right, so babies that wear

thousand-dollar dresses should feel really good today. The company that keeps them looking like weird little CEOs, Baby Dior, is doing a coronavirus pivot to make masks for healthcare workers. Dior's parent company has already repurposed perfume factories to make hand sanitizer in the fight against the pandemic. So on Tuesday, they started sewing masks at a French Baby Dior factory as part of the same effort. Masks made by fashion companies aren't as effective as FDA-recommended N95 respirators, and they'll never look as good on us as they do on Cara Delevingne. But we are still thankful for Dior for pitching in.

And those are the headlines. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, teach us a spell, and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just where it says

thank you on plastic bags like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Cricut.com slash subscribe. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And hello to fashionable babies. Good morning babies. Good morning little

one in your thousand dollar suit. What a Day is a product of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tunn is our assistant producer. Our head writer is John Milstein, and our senior producer is Katie Long. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.