Name: Former CDC director reacts to coronavirus response
Uploaded: 2020-03-24T07:40:17.000Z
Duration: 5 min 58 s
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To-infinitive

around the globe, people are adjusting to major life changes, helping to fight the spread of the Corona virus.

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Many of you probably find yourselves at home and hopefully or practicing social distancing.

Present continuous

In the studio, seated six feet away from me is Dr Richard Besser, former acting director of the CDC during the swine flu pandemic.

Many of you remember him, of course, from his time here at ABC News.

He is now president and chief executive of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

What do we know about the spread of Corona virus?

Well, we know that it's a pandemic, and what that means is the expectation is the infection will spread around the globe.

But what that means is that it's not all at once.

You know, Corona virus is spreading at different times in different places.

So we saw it hit China and Singapore in Korea and Italy and then Seattle.

So what we're seeing in Seattle isn't exactly what we're seeing in New York.

And what's important to remember about a pandemic is that it's a Siri's of local outbreaks occurring at different times, and you need to respond to it based on what's going on in your community.

And what's the special magic number about six feet that distance eso.

Different types of infections spread in different ways, and this is one that is felt to spread mainly through respiratory droplets.

So when you speak or when you sneeze or when you cough, you spray out into the air Little little drops of moisture and in that moisture is the virus.

So if you're more than six feet apart and you're talking and you're sick or your sneeze, and you say the particles should hit the ground before they get to another person, how are people tracing these contagions?

Well, you know, it's it's challenging with certain infections, something like SARS or Ebola.

You can see who's sick, and people don't spread the infection until they're sick with this infection right now, what we think is that as many as 80% of people have either.

And so you could be with someone who looks perfectly well and feels perfectly well.

So from from a public health perspective, what you want to be able to do is look across the community by testing people who mean who may not be sick as well as those who are, and see if it's spreading their as well is testing people who are sick and seeing well.

Is it the flu is a Corona virus or something else?

Here in New York, we've been seeing this debate between the mayor, who's saying that we may decide to have people have a mandatory stay inside your house and governors saying, We're not gonna do that.

The world according to Dr Richard Besser, What's the right thing to d'oh?

You know, when I think back to two h one n one swine flu.

When I was running the CDC response way came up with all kinds of things for people to do.

We knew the best public health science, and he said, do these things and we didn't think as much about who's able to do these things and who can't.

I'm very conscious of that now, And there are so many people in America, millions and millions of people who live paycheck to paycheck, and you tell people to not work.

For some people, that means no food on the table.

No rent means that they're not gonna be able to do those things in life.

Rural communities communities of color get hit really, really hard when you do that, when the time is right.

But you don't want to do it too soon because people are going to suffer.

In a recent Washington Post op ed that you wrote, you talked about the benefit of potentially giving money, giving out checks monthly to Americans.

The administration says that they're considering doing that.

What's the benefit of that in a health care crisis?

Well, in America right now, there are only 10 states and the District of Columbia that mandates sick leave.

So for most people in America, if you don't work, you don't get paid.

And if you don't get paid, you can't do those things that you need to do.

If you're giving people a check, you're encouraging them to do the right thing.

Which means stay home, stay with your family, take care of those people around you.

And don't go out and potentially get infected and bring it home.

We need to make sure that we're helping them to do that.

You mentioned H one n one just a little while ago.

What would you say is the biggest lesson that you learned?

Well, there are a number of lessons, but I think that that the Maur straightforward you are with the public.

The more transparent you are, the more you're going to engender trust.

What we did at the CDC was we told people what we knew when we knew it, what we didn't know in what we're doing to get answers and we're not hearing from them now.

They've been sidelined, and I want to know what the best science public health scientists in the world are doing.

I talked to them, so I know and they're studying everything going on around the globe.

They're wanna learn from Italy in China and other countries that have seen this so we can apply it here and be safer.

And I think people would would feel comforted to know that we're learning from what's going on in real time because you are having those conversations.

Well, I'm telling my own family, you know, we have to two kids who are in their twenties.

I'm telling them that thankfully they were there very, very low risk of having serious illness.

But they have an important role to play in protecting my parents who are in their nineties.

I'm not trying to scare them that their great risk of severe illness because they're not.

And if you tell people information, that's not true.

In the end, they're gonna not gonna listen to anything you have to say.

But I'm also trying to let them know the important role they have to play here.

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Former CDC director reacts to coronavirus response

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