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Episode Date: April 29, 2020

Trump signed an executive order aimed at keeping meat-processing plants open by designating them as “critical infrastructure.” The union representing workers at these plants is concerned about being compelled to stay open without proper safety equipment, worker protections, and enforcement. We interview Ed Yong, science writer at The Atlantic, about what we know about the virus so far, and what we're still learning.And in headlines: YouTube to ramp up fact-checking, Kentucky governor Andy Beshear v. Kentucky resident Tupac Shakur, and one reporter goes full Daffy Duck on Good Morning America.

it's wednesday april 29th i'm akilah hughes and i'm gideon resnick and this is what a day reminding vice president mike pence that wearing a face mask doesn't make you a beat nick yeah you'd actually just be following the rules which is the coolest thing you can do if you're mike join the movement mr p. Pence. Rules hive. Rise up. On today's show, an interview with Ed Yong of The Atlantic about what to predict from an unpredictable pandemic, then some headlines. But first, the latest. The U.S. now has more than one million confirmed cases of coronavirus, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Some researchers estimate that the true number could be about 10 times that. And while some hard-hit cities have managed to get a hold on infections, other places like in and around the country's meat plants are seeing cases grow.

Yesterday, President Trump said he was planning to address the country's meat production. So Gideon, what's he doing now? Yeah, so Trump signed this executive order essentially using the Defense Production Act to try to keep meat processing plants open by designating them as so-called critical infrastructure. This is the production act that would have been used for protective personal equipment. These plants have been hotbeds for the virus. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union says that 20 plant workers have died and at least 5,000 have been infected. And the communities that are surrounding some meatpacking plants have been impacted as well and have some of the highest daily growth rates in cases in the country.

So clearly still an issue. In some instances where there have been clusters of identified cases, plants have had to close. And as a result, there have been concerns about potential meat shortages. The union says that pork slaughter capacity has fallen by 25% and 10% for beef. Typically, meatpacking plants are crowded. Employees work shoulder to shoulder. There's a lot of shared spaces like group cafeterias. So do we know if that's going to be addressed? That's going to be one of the big questions, right? I mean, the CDC and OSHA released guidelines a few days ago about how to space workers apart, but the actual enforcement of that could be an issue.

The order says that the plant should be operated according to those rules, though. Now, the union is worried about a compulsion to stay open without the proper safety equipment and protection. They said, among other things, that workers need access to the federal stockpile of PPE, they need daily testing, enforcement of social distancing on the job, and full paid sick leave for workers who are infected. So we'll have to see how this actually all plays out in practice. Right. The order is also aiming to provide companies with, you know, additional liability protections in case of an outbreak. There aren't many details on that yet, but the topic of liability has started to make its way into the conversation. Oh, yes, it has. And it's coming from

lobbyists and executives who want the Trump administration and Congress to kind of preemptively shield them from possible lawsuits from employees. And it could come up in the negotiations for the next relief package. Republicans want these liability protections in place, and Democrats are rightfully worried that instituting them would just fuck over workers in advance. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is already trying to use the issue as a bargaining stick. Get these liability rules there or no more stimulus money for states and localities. It is just live, die, repeat with these negotiations. Yeah, endless. Yes, but that will be a big storyline to follow in the days to come.

Other than that, we have a lot of other news to touch on throughout the country and the world. Akilah, what else do we need to know for today? All right, so there's an update on the Amazon warehouse employee who was fired for trying to unionize. Letitia James, the New York attorney General, said in a letter that Amazon may have violated laws in firing a Staten Island worker who led a protest against the company. In fact, Amazon may have violated federal worker safety laws and New York State's whistleblower protections when they fired that employee for protesting the company's response to the coronavirus outbreak. An Amazon spokeswoman said in a statement, quote, we respect the rights of employees to

protest and recognize their legal right to do so, but these rights do not provide blanket immunity against bad actions. And in Germany, there's some not great news. So they've started reopening some stores and schools. And with that, the daily transmission rate has risen. You know, at peak, the transmission rate was such that one infected person could be expected to infect three other people. When Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to slowly reopen that country, each infected person was likely to infect less than one other person, you know, which would lead to a decline in cases. But now they're back to one person infecting one other person. So they're just watching this really carefully. And they're not opposed to

bringing back stronger restrictions if that number continues to rise. And that is the latest. States reopening when and how has been leading the news since last week. And so far, they are each taking their own approach. Some are opening retail shops, but keeping restaurants and salons closed, and others are reopening all of the above with restrictions on capacity. The White House set out its own suggested guidelines, but few seem to be following them. And Trump seems to be actively undercutting them. Right. And exactly what happens next is anybody's guess. But according to Dr. Anthony Fauci,

there's, quote, no doubt reopening will cause new cases to emerge. Ed Yong is a staff writer for The Atlantic, where he covers science, one of the best in the biz. And in his recent reporting, he's tried to hone in on what we can expect next and what we can't. I spoke to him yesterday and asked him what to make of the reopening efforts we're seeing so far. It's very clear that this virus is not going away anytime soon. It is out there. It has not infected a majority of people yet. We are still a long way away from a vaccine. And so you put all those things together, and we already see in some parts of the world,

like, say, in Singapore and some other countries that had this thing under control, that once you let your guard down, the virus seems to come back. And that's worrying when we look at places around the world and within the US that are now starting to think about lifting those social distancing restrictions. Those restrictions were put in place for a couple of reasons. The most obvious and famous one is to flatten the curve. So to avoid a massive surge of sick people that would overwhelm the healthcare system. But it was also about giving us time to address many of the deficiencies in the US's response, like its comparative lack of testing, the inadequate supplies of personal protective equipment for hospital workers. And those deficiencies haven't been addressed yet. Testing is still not nearly at the level that one would hope for to really get a handle on the virus. And if you reopen the country in the absence of that, we're really going to end up in a situation not that dissimilar to where we were in February and March.

Right. And to that end, then, when you look at the summer going into the fall, what does that entire picture look like? Because it sounds very much like you're describing initially still this process of mitigation that needs to happen, increased testing that needs to happen, and then the potentiality of a resurgence or second wave in the fall. Right. And, you know, I think it's unclear when that second wave will happen i think all the experts i've spoken to are pretty clear about the idea that the virus will resurge if we let our guard down but i think what exactly it does depends entirely on um when when those measures start to lift um to what extent they start to lift, how people behave is a big unknown. Like, are we going to very tentatively go back into the world? Are we going to rush out into large gatherings again? This is going to depend a lot on what different states do. And I

think we're still going to see a very patchy pandemic for the upcoming months. We're already seeing rural parts of the US starting to pick up cases, while other places, other states seem to have things under control and are starting to think about relaxing their restrictions. So we're really going to now move away from just one pandemic, I think, to lots of these very local level epidemics that are going to require different kinds of measures to bring them under control. Yeah. And to that end, one of the other points in terms of actually, you know, moving into some sort of normalcy in life has to do with antibody testing. And we've seen some of those early results from New York City, for instance, that have indicated around 20% of the population may have had COVID-19.

Now, that's, I think, fairly small sample sizes that in those early tests, but what, if anything, does that tell us about the virus? So what we're seeing is a wide range of different numbers, I think, from like, you know, a couple of percent to something like what New York has claimed about 20%. Now, let's, for a start, just take those numbers at face value. Let's assume that they are actually accurate. What that means is that the vast majority of people who are immunologically naive to the virus have not experienced it yet, which means we're still a long way from achieving what's called herd immunity, where enough of the population has been exposed and has some degree of immunity

that the virus finds it harder to move from one host to the next. Depending on how transmissible it is, you'll only really hit that level at the 60% to 80% of the mark of the population being infected. And clearly, even in a place like New York, which has been very hard hit, we're not anywhere near that yet. So the idea that you would lift restrictions

and the virus would be unable to research back seems very unlikely. It's less unlikely if New York is at 20% than if it was, say, at 2%. But, you know, that's the difference between, I would say, slightly bad news and very bad news. There's also the issue with how accurate these tests are. Antibody tests are not foolproof. It's not clear whether if you test positive for antibodies against this virus, whether those antibodies actually are good at neutralising the virus, or whether they're less effective, whether you have enough of the antibodies to have a

neutralising effect, and crucially, whether you even have those antibodies at all. And this is hard for people to get their heads around, I think, because we assume that if we get tested for something, if the test comes back positive, then you have that thing. But all tests have some number of false positives, so they give you a false alarm some proportion of the time. And if that rate is very low, if the proportion of the population that is has been infected is also very low, then the number of false positives is going to be at least as high as if not greater than the number of actual positives. So put it simply, at this moment, if you get a positive antibody test for COVID-19, it might actually be unlikely that you actually have those antibodies. Right. And then can we even say that it's

possible to rely on these antibody tests at the population level anymore if it's difficult to rely on them at the individual level, if that makes sense? Is there anything that is helpful to draw upon for them at the population level? Yeah, so epidemiologists and statisticians can adjust for that false positive problem at a population level. So once enough of these large surveys using antibody tests come in, we'll be in a bit better position to understand what proportion of the country or different parts of the country have been infected. What you can't really do is do those same kind of adjustments at the individual level. So at the moment, when a minority of Americans have encountered COVID-19, it is still really hard to say whether your result

from an antibody test is reliable or not, which is, of course, what people want. You want the reassurance that you might be immune or that you could go back to work or so on. But at the moment, antibody tests cannot offer that reassurance. They're good for sort of broad population-wide looks at the pandemic, answering that question of what proportion of people have encountered the virus, but not for that more individual question of, are you immune or not? Right. So a lot of helpful information from Yang about where we are in terms of getting through this pandemic and how to understand some of those antibody studies. While I had him, I also asked about some of the new reports we're seeing of young people with the virus having strokes or other serious blood clotting,

and how that's changing our understanding of COVID-19 and its effects on the body. One of the reasons why it's hard to know exactly what COVID-19 is doing. And one of the reasons why there's so many surprising results about which organs it's affecting or what its symptoms actually are is that it's hitting so many people so very quickly. Usually when a new disease emerges, like the previous coronavirus epidemic, SARS and MERS, doctors are not seeing like 100 or 200 cases every week you know sometimes it takes that a whole career to see that many cases so when you have a new disease and a

lot of cases at once things that happen on things that are outliers things that actually happen only quite rarely now happen quite commonly and people are seeing a lot of them, which might explain why there's such a wide variety of how the disease itself is presenting. We're just seeing a lot more cases. So when you see weird stuff like the strokes with different organs being hit, I think the open questions are, is that the virus attacking organs outside the respiratory symptom? Is that the immune system going nuts and causing this body-wide systemic inflammatory state? Is it the patients reacting to long bouts on ventilators? Is it side effects of treatments that are being offered to them? It's really hard. And doctors are having to make these decisions and study all of this evidence

at a time when they are stressed, exhausted, and confronted by something, but by all accounts, is very unusual, and has this sort of sense of almost mystique to it, the sense that it is very, very different to what's come before. And I think it's unclear now to what extent it is different to what has come before in ways other than its incredible spread and prevalence. That was Ed Yong, science writer for The Atlantic. He's got a new piece out today about why the pandemic is proving to be so confusing and how to deal with the uncertainties around it. Go ahead and check it out. it's wednesday my dudes we made it halfway through the week wad squad so giddy and i are

back together and it's another moment to check in so giddy what's for dinner tonight put me on the freaking spot um it's to be what is in the fridge currently. And that might be Amy's pesto tortellini. That might be the best I can do. Which is not that bad. You know, organic, noodley. Sounds like what we're all doing right now. Facts.

Yeah, I'm into it. I'm proud of you. Good for you. What's on your menu? Five course dinner. Yeah, my dinner is not going to be that fancy, but I've been trying to support local businesses, so I ordered some just chicken and some mashed potatoes

from a local business. Hell yeah. And I'm eating that. But I also had some, what are they called? They're green beans that you have to wash. Organic green beans, I guess is the answer. So yeah, I have those, and I'm going to cook those alongside what's already coming from the restaurant.

So it'll be a very basic but very healthy good meal, and that's pretty much it. It's like the best that Boston Market could be, and I mean that as a compliment. I am taking it as a compliment. I'm going to pretend that Boston Market is the little local company that I ordered dinner from, so thank you for that.

You're very welcome. And easy as that, we have checked our temperatures. It is so good to just slow down, take a break from the news for a second, talk to a human being about anything else. So why don't you try it? You know, just talk to one person you haven't spoken to in a while today. And we're going to check back tomorrow to find out who it was. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. Protests in Lebanon have been ramping up in recent days as citizens face rising levels of hunger and poverty. Yesterday, protesters burned down banks and blocked highways while chanting, We are hungry. The country was already experiencing one of its worst economic crises before the pandemic,

and things haven't gotten better. Food prices have soared and many people have lost their jobs. The government said up to 75% of people in the country are in need of aid. Protesters took to the streets after the government announced plans to reopen, following a decline in the number of COVID-19 cases. The protests turned violent after one protester was killed during a clash with the army on Monday. YouTube announced it will start fact-checking videos in the U.S. to prevent the spread of COVID-19-related misinformation, which could otherwise create what the World Health Organization calls an infodemic. The company said it would use

links and text from a network of third-party sources like PolitiFact and the Washington Post Fact Checker, which would appear when YouTube users search for certain subjects. So when someone inputs a false claim like, quote, 5G causes coronavirus, or, quote, swallowing father's laser pointer to treat COVID, links to articles that say no will pop up. Fact-checking panels will be new to the United States, though they were introduced last year in Brazil and India. I feel like we're already in an infodemic with like everything else, but sure, I guess the pandemic is good enough reason to start YouTube. All right, well, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear recently rolled out a powerful disappointed dad impression to shame someone who he thought was

slowing down the fulfillment of unemployment claims. This was him on Monday. Now understand that unfortunately it's going to take a little bit of time in these because a couple of bad apples can make this challenge that much more difficult. For instance we had somebody apply for unemployment for Tupac Shakur here in Kentucky, and that person probably thought they were being funny. They probably did, except for the fact that because of them, we've got to go through so many other claims. Love the idea of a Johnny Knoxville type guy who gathers his friends around a computer to do the awesome prank of writing the wrong name on a social service form. Turns out there was no Johnny Knoxville, but there is a Tupac Shakur. He's a 46

year old resident of Lexington, Kentucky, who actually did get laid off and needs unemployment benefits. His benefits were held up probably because someone in the state government thought his name wasn't real. Bashir has since called Shakur to apologize and Shakur accepted his apology. Most importantly, everyone has got to keep their heads up. ABC News reporter Will Reeve just took quarantine chic to new heights yesterday by appearing from home on Good Morning America with no pants, only a shirt and jacket. Now, Reeve's lower half was covered by a chyron for most of his appearance, which dealt with the very pants on topic of pharmacies delivering prescriptions to patients via drone. But at one point, the chyron moved, and it became clear Reeve was Donald Ducking it

in front of the entire country. Reeve later copped his mistake, saying that he had actually been wearing gym shorts since he had been working out just prior to going on the air, humble brag. Will Reeve is the son of late Superman actor Christopher Reeve, which makes you wonder if his job as a reporter is just a cover for a life of crime fighting.

Probably. Probably. Probably. And those are the headlines. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe. Send me recipes that use Amy's pesto tortellini. Send me frozen meat and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just words on the backs of sweatpants in 2008 like me,

what a day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Cricut dot com slash subscribe. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And don't forget pants on Good Morning America. Put them on. Or Donald Duckett like me. Fine, whatever.

Winnie the Pooh. What a Day is a product of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tun 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.