What A Day - Whistleblow While You Work From Home

Episode Date: April 23, 2020

The doctor in charge of US government’s effort to develop a coronavirus vaccine was dismissed this week. He says it has to do with his opposition to untested treatments for Covid-19 pushed by President Trump. School closures nationwide have created a massive disruption for students, parents, and teachers. We talk to Monise Seward, a 6th grade special education teacher in Georgia, about the difficulties of taking the classroom online. And in headlines: Trump pops off about boats in Iran, Netflix sees big numbers under lockdown, and M.I.A.’s Vogue feature gets pulled due to very questionable takes.

it's thursday april 23rd i'm akilah hughes and i'm gideon resnick and this is what a day your source for updates on the vast and mysterious outside world honestly i can't for the life of me remember what it's like out there what is it i don't know I'm forgetting what people's mouths look like. Oh, no. On today's show, a check-in with a teacher in Georgia on how virtual learning is working for her students, then some headlines. But first, the latest. Hello, everyone. I hope you're doing okay during this quarantine time. And my son then changed his TikTok name to Ben underscore Travolta, all small letters. So check it out if you care to, and have a good day. Okay, so that was John Travolta wishing us all well and also taking a moment to hype up his son's TikTok.

Very sweet. Everybody follow Ben. It's underscore Gibraltar. But in news, the House is set to vote today on the interim coronavirus aid bill that's expected to be signed by the president. They're also planning to vote on the creation of an oversight committee that would have subpoena power to probe the federal response to coronavirus and spending. Awesome. So busy 24 hours, but let's run through some of the other news from D.C. Gideon, kick it off. Yeah. So beginning with the administration, we might see our first whistleblower emerge from the Trump White House's handling of this crisis. His name is Dr. Rick Bright. He was dismissed from his role this week as the director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development

Authority at the Department of Health and Human Services, HHS. His role was effectively to lead the agency developing a COVID-19 vaccine. Right. So he's no longer the vaccine chief, and he thinks there's some shady stuff going on with his dismissal. Interesting. What do you have to say? Yeah. So in his statement yesterday, Bright said that he viewed his reassignment to a different role as a kind of retribution for saying that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine treatments that have been pushed a lot by Trump needed to be strongly vetted before being broadly promoted to the general public. He said in part to the New York Times, quote, while I am prepared to look at all options

and to think outside the box for effective treatments, I rightly resisted efforts to provide an unproven drug on demand to the American public, which would make sense as a vaccine chief. Though, there is also reporting that Bright might have previously praised the federal government for acquiring doses of the drugs. That doesn't necessarily negate anything else that he said. There's going to be a lot more to learn from this and to unpack. Dr. Bright is also calling for an investigation. Yeah, definitely going to continue monitoring this. And we should say that NIH has also advised against widespread use of several treatments outside of clinical trials that Trump continues to promote. Oh, yeah. I mean, there's lots of concern about potential side effects. Dr. Fauci

has had to thread a difficult needle here, too, in terms of not getting out ahead of the science, but also not appearing to criticize Trump. Wouldn't want that job. There's also reporting that Trump previously threatened to fire the CDC's chief of respiratory diseases after she said earlier in the year that they were prepping for a pandemic. So this is a pattern of firing to hide information that the general public needs. It's obviously a very, very worrisome thing. Yeah. All right. Well, moving on, we talked yesterday about Trump's executive order to suspend green cards from being issued. He signed that yesterday, so it's now official for the next 60 days. But there's also more news regarding immigration, right?

Yeah. The Education Department is reportedly prohibiting colleges from giving emergency assistance to DACA students. Now, the CARES Act had set aside more than $6 billion for this express purpose, but the Education Department has qualified that money by saying that students must have filed a FAFSA form. So in other words, the students at these colleges must qualify for federal financial aid to get this extra relief money, and DACA students aren't eligible for that particular financial aid. Some of the money is supposed to go to students in order to help them pay for things

that have been impacted by campus closures like housing, food, childcare, and more, just the essentials. As of last week, though, less than 1% of the money overall had been distributed by the education department. Okay, that's not great. And if you thought that that was the only department

in the federal government that's, you know, dropping the fucking ball during the crisis, there was more reporting on something really important involving the Labor Department. We've talked about OSHA before, or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The agency has been getting a lot more complaints from workers about safety over the past few weeks, given everything that's going on. And last week, they announced that they're going to limit inspections of workplaces, except for certain high-risk jobs like healthcare and emergency response. Instead, though, they want employers to inspect themselves. The first part is somewhat

understandable, but the concern really here lies in the fact that OSHA hasn't put out standard coronavirus safety protocols for employers and hasn't said what potential fines they may face if they don't comply, which is a good way to get these things enforced. There are tons of examples outside of those other high-risk jobs that were mentioned in retail, grocery, and elsewhere where workers have tested positive or died from the virus. So it's clearly an enormous problem. And on Wednesday, Tyson Foods closed its largest pork plant located in Iowa, as many workers had called out sick there. Yeah, so last bit of news before we go. It looks like our entire timeline of when the virus showed up in the U.S. is getting revised, given some new autopsy reports out of Northern California.

So Gideon, what did we learn? Yeah, officials in Santa Clara County said that autopsies of two people who died in their homes on February 6th and 17th showed that they were infected with the virus. The county's chief medical officer said that these people did not have known travel histories to or from China and concluded that the virus actually got there from community spread. Now, before this, the first known deaths in the United States were in late February in the Seattle area. So with this new information, there is this kind first known deaths in the United States were in late February in the Seattle area. So with this new information, there is this kind of resetting of the timeline to several weeks earlier. But it also shows how critical it was to test people at this early juncture who hadn't traveled abroad because community spread may very well have been happening towards the start of the calendar year. In recent days, given this history of testing, California became the first

state to expand out those restrictive guidelines and start to recommend that asymptomatic people who live or work in places like nursing homes, prisons, and those who are unhoused be tested. The new move from them comes directly in response to recent outbreaks at two homeless shelters in the state. So a whirlwind, that's some of what is happening around the country and the latest that we have for you for now. On March 18th, the governor of Georgia closed schools across the state. And on April 1st, he extended the closure for the rest of the year. In total, 39 states have extended their closures through the end of this school year. It's created a massive disruption for students all over the country, their parents, and their teachers, and it's a unique challenge for kids with special needs. Moni Seward is a sixth grade special education teacher in Shambly, Georgia, northeast of

Atlanta. She works with students that have learning disabilities like attention deficit disorder and autism, and now she's doing all of that online. I called her up yesterday to see how it's going, a little over a month in, and I asked her how her students are doing. Everybody's different. So some of the students are a little bit more self-directed. They can, you know, do some of the work. Some of them do have parents at home who can help them, but we do have a lot of parents who are still working. My main concern is the students that it took me so long to build a relationship with, to get them to trust me and to trust themselves and to believe that they had what it took to,

you know, get through the material. Those are the students that I'm worried about because they've interacted very little since we've been online. Right. And I feel like they are the ones who would benefit the most if they were able to log in a little bit more frequently. But I understand this is very different for a lot of people. It's different for me because I'm used to being in the classroom with my students every day. Yeah. You know? Absolutely. with my students every day. Yeah, absolutely. And so if it's a student that I really, really had to kind of like pull along all year and

I finally got them to the point where they were not afraid to ask questions, they were not afraid to give answers in the classroom. And then all of a sudden, boom, we're not going to be in school anymore. Right. Yeah. And how do you maintain that confidence when you're alone? It's difficult. It's also difficult insofar as, you know, none of us have lived through a pandemic. And so you have your own personal life. You have to have an order on top, things are going great or things are, you know, this is where we feel like we're lacking because, you know, like you sort of mentioned, there's a lot of parents who are still at work all day who maybe

have no background in, you know, teaching their child. They just, they know how to, you know, bring them home and love them, but they don't know how to, you know, handle them in a classroom sort of experience. So can you talk a little bit about that? I've had, in the beginning, I had a couple of parents who were like, okay, we're going to try to do this. We have two kids at home and we're all working from home. So we're going to try to figure out how this works. And I said, look, please don't stress about this. I said, and this is one of the kids I know who can do the work. I said, your child can do the work, but they need those reminders. And I had other parents who, who sent me a message saying,

it's a lot of work. And I said, okay, let me, let me handle that. Let me send an email to the other teachers and say, you know, we're not supposed to give this much work. You guys got to pull back some. And then my other parents who, whose English may not be very good. I can send them messages in Spanish to remind, and they know they can send them messages in Spanish through Remind and they know they can communicate with me if they have any concerns. So the communication with the parents, it's not, it's not been an issue because I was doing that from the very beginning of the school year in English and Spanish. So that's not been an issue. It's just, you know, like you said, it's different for everybody, everybody. And if adults are struggling, so,

you know, the kids have to be struggling, but everybody is trying to adjust. Everybody's trying to adjust. And they're, you know, with responsibilities of working and then going home and making sure your kids log on. Whether you even see that as a priority. And that's not a judgment statement at all. Right. It's like, yeah, I mean, we all have, you know, there's that hierarchy of needs. If we don't have food on the table, we don't have time to figure out the homework. I understand that as well. And I even told one of my students, look, if you're not going to do the work, whatever, just check in with me and let me know you're OK. So I communicate with that student through an older sibling and say, I just want to make sure they're OK. That's it. Wow.

That's it. Yeah. I mean, when you talk about, you know, adjusting for working online and adjusting for the rest of the school year and even next year, you know, I'm sure you've had to adjust goals with your students, but what is the goal for you right now? Is it a learning goal, you know, just to make sure you don't lose those gains that you've already made? Or is it more of an emotional support thing? Like you sort of mentioned, you know, keeping those students feeling like they're a part of something, like they have the confidence, you're making sure they're okay. You know, what's your goal? It's both. The emotional one is first, which is why I try to always check in. And if I don't

see them checking in online, I'll either send a text or I'll call. And I don't want this next part to sound pessimistic, but I'm just going to be honest with you. Yeah. For my students, I am being realistic when I say that I know that this time out is going to hurt them. It's going to hurt them academically. I know it is because with my students, we were working on covering things that they didn't get from fourth and fifth grade mixed in with doing sixth grade stuff. So we, I mean, I was really pushing my students. I was really pushing them in the beginning of the school year because in order for us to even get to the sixth grade stuff, we had to get the other stuff first. So

I was really pushing them and we were, we were making some gains. We were making some connections. And like I said, they were trusting me and we were moving and I could challenge them. And I got them to the point where they weren't giving up just because it was getting hard. the rug out from under somebody, it's just, there's going to be consequences to that. There'll be consequences to that. And my kids, they're going to have to do even more work to try to cover the ground they lost these past couple of weeks. Yeah. My mom works at an elementary school. I saw that. I saw you tweet that. Yeah. Yeah. She's worked there my entire life. And I think something that, you know, is often overlooked in this conversation too is, you know, you're spending all day with these students. These are your kids. These are your kids. So, I mean, can you talk a little bit about that? You know, because I know my mom misses those kids every day, even when she gets on their nerves. She's like, I'm over it. But, you know, that is, it's like your own children, right?

You are watching them grow up. You are helping them along. How are you handling that part of it? I'm not. It's rough. Like I said, you make the, you spend time with them and you get them to see things in themselves that they never saw before.

And it takes work. It takes work. Like the whole first semester I had, I have like a group of girls in my class, the whole first semester I was focused on getting them to speak up. When I asked you a question and you answer me, speak up so I can hear you. And I got to the point where I said, make sure people know you're still in the room. I need you to speak up and it's okay if you're wrong, but I need you to speak up. And they got, the girls got to that point. They were there. They were confident. They would answer questions. They would get the answers right on the first try and it's gone. I know they'll keep some of it, but it's gone because we were just getting so close to what I wanted to see out of them by the end of the school year.

And it's hard. I'm not going to lie to you. It's hard. I miss, yeah, I got up at the crack of dawn to go to work, but I still miss having that part of my life because online is not the same. That was Monique Seward, a sixth grade special education teacher in Shambly, Georgia. I also asked Monique about her thoughts on the governor of her state pushing to reopen some businesses like hair salons, gyms and movie theaters this week and next. And she said that she's worried that, you know, cases will grow and about what that could mean for the fall and whether it'll even be safe for them to return next semester. Hey, hey, everybody. Happy Thursday. You know, we've been personally checking in on our friends and our family.

And Naomi Ekperigen, a comedian and frequent co-host on the Hysteria podcast, asked Twitter a really great question. And that has inspired today's check-in. So, Giddy, what's your getting off the phone strategy now that just getting home or just got to the office or, you know, oh, my friend just got here aren't really exit strategies? I have two. One is the water is boiling and the other is I have to go to the bathroom. And they're deployed depending on who I'm talking to. Bathroom is easily deployed if it's girlfriend,

longtime friends, whatever. Water boiling might be, you know, an all hands for the company or something. Yeah, I dig that. I mean, honestly, I admire it. I think that, you know, maybe I should have, that's not what I do. What are you doing though? What's your exit strategy? Oh, I'm just like super outlandish. Like I'll just be like, oh man, the phone service sucks in LA. And then it'll just like drop. I'll just like hang up or I'll be like someone's on the other line it might be the bank

like just like make up that thing and you know for my friends who are listening I would never do that to you like I'm only telling you the truth it's everyone else that I'm lying to just keep that in mind yeah I mean to everybody else that could be my friend that's listening I'm gonna tell you

when I have to go to the bathroom. So be warned that that's what you're going to experience on a phone call. Yeah, and tell us when you have to go to the bathroom. And guess what? There you have it. Temperature check for the ages. All right, we're going to check in with you tomorrow, but we actually have to go now because our pizza needs to be taken out of the oven.

I'm just saying. The bank is calling. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. President Trump told the Navy to, quote, shoot down any Iranian boats that harass U.S. warships yesterday. The comment follows an instance last week when 11 small boats from Iran came fairly close to American military ships in the Persian Gulf. The Pentagon accused Iran of sending the boats to harass the U.S. ships.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard also launched a military satellite into orbit for the first time ever yesterday, which also contributed to rising tension in recent days. Hostility between the two governments escalated three months ago when the U.S. killed Iran's most prominent military official and Iran responded with missile strikes on a military base with U.S. soldiers. The pandemic put those tensions in the background, but it seems like they've returned. Put them back in the background. As entertainment companies all over the world

navigate the pitfalls of content during COVID, Netflix is making out like a bandit. It ended its first quarter with almost 16 million new subscribers as more people turn to streaming services while they're stuck in their homes. Netflix also announced that it has enough shows and movies in the can, biz term,

to last through 2020 without any delays to the release schedule. Over 200 projects are in the works, including more original content than it put out last year. I'm crossing my fingers for some kind of tall girl horse girl crossover. I don't know what either of those are. They're real. They're real Netflix movies. And I'm not saying if I recommend them or not. All right. Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden announced that he will name the panel to help him choose his running mate by May 1st. The media is already discussing potential picks, including Biden's former competitors like Senators Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren, along with Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and former

Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. Whoever gets tapped will have to make peace with the fact that they're technically Biden's second choice. In an interview this Monday, he told a local Pittsburgh station that he would take Michelle Obama, quote, in a heartbeat. Me too. Sources close to Obama says she has zero interest in returning to the White House. I cannot blame her. Trump better hope she doesn't change her mind, though, because if Michelle is on that ticket, they might as well pull up moving trucks to the White House right now. Noticeably absent from the list is Corn Pop. Rapper M.I.A. allegedly had a feature article pulled from British Vogue because she promoted anti-vax views during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Real motherfucking bad girl hours. On Wednesday morning, M.I.A. posted DMs that showed Vogue's editor saying it would be inappropriate to feature her in an upcoming issue that will also honor healthcare workers in England. Makes sense. That's because over the past month or so, MIA has tweeted things like, quote, if I have to choose the vaccine or chip, I'm going to choose death. And on the issue of catching coronavirus, quote, all the vaccines you've had is enough to see you through. I don't think that that's true, Maya. MIA has also toyed with anti-5G theories on social media, along with fellow celebs like happy-go-lucky weed guy Woody Harrelson and dead serious politics guy John Cusack.

Somebody please quarantine their accounts. I want to be able to like these people. Yeah, me too. Gosh, all they had to do was shut up and eat their food. And those are the headlines. That's all for today. If you like the show show make sure you subscribe leave a review help us crowdfund tall girl horse girl and tell your friends to listen and if you're into reading and not just license plates like me what a day is also a nightly newsletter check it out and subscribe at cricket.com subscribe i'm akilah hughes i'm gideon resnick and i gotta go because the water

is boiling. It's gonna boil over. Yeah, am I supposed to live in a flood? What do you think, I'm Noah? We're gonna get burnt. It's dangerous. 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.