Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's stay sixty two
Speaker 1: since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Our main story.
Speaker 1: As the pandemic rages on, shelter in place orders have
Speaker 1: stretched from weeks two months for some. It's causing distance
Speaker 1: fatigue and inspiring people to search for safe ways to
Speaker 1: bend the rules. An epidemiologist explains how to think about
Speaker 1: the risks of cutting corners while social distancing. But first,
Speaker 1: here's what happened today. In testimony before it Senate panel today,
Speaker 1: Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease official in the US,
Speaker 1: strongly warned against reopening the economy too soon. Fauci said
Speaker 1: he's concerned about cities and states resuming business without reaching
Speaker 1: checkpoints outlined in the White House guidelines for deciding when
Speaker 1: it's safe. Those checkpoints include things like declining infections. Fauci
Speaker 1: said a premature reopening would trigger outbreaks that could spiral
Speaker 1: out of control. Not only would that lead to avoidable
Speaker 1: suffering and death, he said, but it would set back
Speaker 1: an economic recovery and quote turn the clock back rather
Speaker 1: than going forward. Fauci's call for caution puts him in
Speaker 1: direct conflict with President Donald Trump's race to ease restrictions
Speaker 1: that have crushed the economy. Elsewhere, some governments are exercising
Speaker 1: extreme caution. Wuhan has ordered officials to test its entire
Speaker 1: population of eleven million people. That's after a handful of
Speaker 1: new coronavirus cases were detected in the central Chinese city
Speaker 1: where the pandemic began. They were the first positive tests
Speaker 1: reported since the city's lockdown was lifted in early May.
Speaker 1: Six people who were already under quarantine in the same
Speaker 1: residential compound and who are asymptomatic tested positive. Sweden will
Speaker 1: adjust a key element of its strategy for dealing with
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen after the death rate at elder care homes
Speaker 1: shot up. The government will ratchet up staff levels to
Speaker 1: help protect the country's oldest citizens. Like elsewhere, Sweden's COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen related deaths have disproportionately hit the elderly, but critics
Speaker 1: argue that many of those fatalities could have been avoided
Speaker 1: if the authorities had taken more steps to focus attention
Speaker 1: on the most vulnerable demographic. Finally, back in the US House,
Speaker 1: democrats proposed a three trillion dollar virus relief built today.
Speaker 1: The bill would offer aid to state in local governments,
Speaker 1: direct cash payments, expanded unemployment insurance, and food stamp spending.
Speaker 1: It also included a list of progressive priorities, like funds
Speaker 1: for voting by mail and for the troubled US postal service.
Speaker 1: The bill comes after Congress has already spent three trillion
Speaker 1: dollars on four bills in response to the economic downturn
Speaker 1: caused by the coronavirus pandemic. There is a little chance
Speaker 1: of the aid package in its current form getting Senate
Speaker 1: approval and President Donald Trump's signature, but by passing it
Speaker 1: in the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi will set down a
Speaker 1: marker as both parties positioned themselves for congressional elections in
Speaker 1: a few months. And now our main story. We're over
Speaker 1: two months into the global pandemic, and communities everywhere have
Speaker 1: been facing restrictions like shelter in place for a long time,
Speaker 1: and some have begun looking for ways to get around
Speaker 1: some of the more onerous social distancing orders. That's especially
Speaker 1: true is the weather warms up in the US over
Speaker 1: the last few weeks. Bloomberg reporter Kristen V. Brown has
Speaker 1: been collecting your questions about social distancing etiquette, and she
Speaker 1: brought them to an expert to clear up the confusion.
Speaker 1: Here's Kristen with more. Like a lot of people, I've
Speaker 1: been spending a fair amount of time each day having
Speaker 1: conversations with friends and colleagues about risk. I live in Oakland, California,
Speaker 1: and my county was one of the first in the
Speaker 1: country to implement shelter in place orders. The rules seemed
Speaker 1: pretty black and white on the surface. Don't leave home
Speaker 1: unless it's for something necessary like exercise or going to
Speaker 1: the store. Don't hang out with people you don't live with.
Speaker 1: Just don't put yourself at risk of catching COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: if you don't need to. But then real life happened.
Speaker 1: For example, my roommate pointed out that I go to
Speaker 1: the grocery store a lot. It's necessary to go get food, sure,
Speaker 1: but probably not actually necessary for me to go to
Speaker 1: Whole Foods every time I think of something new I
Speaker 1: want to bake every day for the last two months,
Speaker 1: it seems like we are constantly making these micro risk calculations.
Speaker 1: It's just not always obvious what the right decision is
Speaker 1: and when we do know what's right. Even though we
Speaker 1: all want to do our part, sometimes it's hard. A
Speaker 1: lot of our listeners had questions too, so we turned
Speaker 1: those questions over to Bill Schaeffer, an epidemiologist at Vanderbilt
Speaker 1: University in Tennessee. Bill says, handerstands why everything feels so
Speaker 1: confusing right now. So under the strict lockdown phase shelter
Speaker 1: at home phase, it was difficult enough with all these questions.
Speaker 1: It's just gotten even more difficult because many states are
Speaker 1: now starting to open up in various ways. States are
Speaker 1: doing it differently, and within my own state, the rural
Speaker 1: areas are ahead of the cities and we're still unlocked
Speaker 1: up mode, so there'll be even more opportunities for confusion.
Speaker 1: And as you say, people are trying to take these
Speaker 1: general guidelines and apply them to their own specific circumstances,
Speaker 1: and we can tie ourselves into nuts doing this. So
Speaker 1: the first listener question we posed a Bill was from Julia,
Speaker 1: who has two related questions. Julia lives with her friends
Speaker 1: a couple, but she is single and she had been
Speaker 1: casually dating a guy for a few months. Once lockdown
Speaker 1: set in, she wanted to go COVID exclusive with the guy.
Speaker 1: And keep seeing him. But her roommates weren't okay with it.
Speaker 1: At the same time, they were okay with her volunteering,
Speaker 1: and she was confused about which activity was actually riskier.
Speaker 1: I'll let her take it from here. So since then
Speaker 1: I got involved with a project to make face shields
Speaker 1: for healthcare workers. And each day Monday through Friday, I
Speaker 1: go to an office with about twenty others, and they're
Speaker 1: not always the exact same people. We're mindful of keeping
Speaker 1: our distance and wearing masks, but we are handling the
Speaker 1: same applies, and we can't wear gloves with this project
Speaker 1: because we're doing really precise crafting work. So my question
Speaker 1: is which is riskier from an infection standpoint, sleeping and
Speaker 1: hanging out with a guy even though he's having other
Speaker 1: dates over however he does live alone, or doing this
Speaker 1: much more noble activity of making masks with a team
Speaker 1: of people every day. All right, I'm very curious to
Speaker 1: hear what you say. I so I thought, actually that
Speaker 1: was among the easier questions. First of all, you can
Speaker 1: define mask making as an essential activity, and so that
Speaker 1: gives you the okay to go there. Now, on the
Speaker 1: way there, you want to wear the mask yourself while
Speaker 1: you're in that congregate environment making the masks. You ought
Speaker 1: to be wearing the masks and using good hygiene, and
Speaker 1: separated by six ft from your other personnel. Wear the
Speaker 1: mask coming home, and when you come home, wash your
Speaker 1: hands very, very thoroughly. Now the dating issue is a
Speaker 1: completely different one. The A it's not an essential activity.
Speaker 1: B you can't stay six ft away from your date.
Speaker 1: Three you really can't control your dates activity, so you
Speaker 1: don't know how how compliant your your date has been.
Speaker 1: This is a period of time when ruled dates are
Speaker 1: the way to go. We're supposed to stay at home
Speaker 1: except for essential activities. And if you're out dating someone,
Speaker 1: then you come home and the people with whom you live,
Speaker 1: you're putting them at risk. So, uh, staying at home,
Speaker 1: sheltering in place was a very serious recommendation. It doesn't
Speaker 1: say if you don't feel like sorry, Julian, I guess
Speaker 1: it's zoom dates for now. Here's the next question. It's
Speaker 1: also about dating. From Bernie in Toronto. He's divorced with kids,
Speaker 1: and his children split their time between their father and
Speaker 1: their mother. He also has a longtime girlfriend. She's divorced
Speaker 1: and her kids moved back and forth from one house
Speaker 1: to the other house, and yet since the beginning of
Speaker 1: this I have not seen her. So am I allowed
Speaker 1: to see her? We've been physical distance saying and being
Speaker 1: very careful about everything we do from the grocery store, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And I miss her. Sore to hear your answer, thank you.
Speaker 1: Personal relationships are going to be strained. They're difficult under
Speaker 1: uh strict sheltering at home time. Because it's really quite
Speaker 1: clear the answer to that. Under a sheltering at home
Speaker 1: circumstance is you will have face time with your new girlfriend,
Speaker 1: but you will not see her in person until the
Speaker 1: sheltering at home phase ends, and then you can start
Speaker 1: seeing people again. That's really a pretty straightforward circumstance. Obviously,
Speaker 1: a lot of parents have been having a hard time
Speaker 1: to working from home while also keeping an eye on
Speaker 1: the kids can be a lot still. Our next listener
Speaker 1: has been playing by the rules and asked their babysitter
Speaker 1: to stop watching the kids, but a friend that they
Speaker 1: share the baby sit are with recently decided to ask
Speaker 1: the babysitter to come back to work. Our listener didn't
Speaker 1: know what to do. Did this mean it was safe
Speaker 1: to have the babysitter come back to their house too,
Speaker 1: or do they need to intervene and ask their friend
Speaker 1: to stop. Are we in the wrong here thinking that
Speaker 1: it's a little too soon to be trying to get
Speaker 1: back to normal and bring a babysitter back into the equation?
Speaker 1: Should we be more insistent with our friends that they
Speaker 1: lay off for a little while longer and trying to
Speaker 1: make do without a babysitter because it affects us to
Speaker 1: and the people in our apartment building if they bring
Speaker 1: back our babysitter before thanks sir a little calmer, or
Speaker 1: do we just need to leave well enough alone, respect
Speaker 1: their decision and make our own choices based on based
Speaker 1: on what we feel comfortable about. That's it. So, if
Speaker 1: you're in a lockdown mode, then having that person come
Speaker 1: into your house where they're also been with others clearly
Speaker 1: is not what's being recommended. This is a circumstance where
Speaker 1: you and the family are to shelter at home as
Speaker 1: as a family unit and not have visitors nor go
Speaker 1: out except on essential functions. Now, as we open up
Speaker 1: and move into phase one and phase two of opening up, obviously,
Speaker 1: then people can go out and visit and that may
Speaker 1: be a time when they can share uh the babysitter.
Speaker 1: Of course, they'll want to make sure that the babysitter
Speaker 1: is healthy, doesn't have a fever, and has also been
Speaker 1: uh sheltering at home and taking care of herself and
Speaker 1: complying with all the guidelines. So you may be sensing
Speaker 1: a pattern here. Bill says, the rules are there for
Speaker 1: a reason, don't break them. I try to hard to
Speaker 1: get Bill to acknowledge some sort of gray area in
Speaker 1: these scenarios. I even asked another epidemiologist for a second opinion.
Speaker 1: His answers were the same as Bills. I asked Bill,
Speaker 1: why so many of us are having such a hard
Speaker 1: time with these rules. We're Americans, were very individual oriented.
Speaker 1: We always look for the exceptions or saying does that
Speaker 1: really apply to me? It's part of our American very individualistic,
Speaker 1: wonderfully individualistic nature. How can I go out to the
Speaker 1: edge of this and maybe step a little bit on
Speaker 1: the other side. Bill acknowledges that doing the right thing
Speaker 1: isn't always easy in these times. This virus doesn't care
Speaker 1: about our social, financial, economic, and cultural needs. It's going
Speaker 1: to affect people, and it will make some people very
Speaker 1: very ill. How we balance that is very very difficult.
Speaker 1: As I like to say, there are no right answers,
Speaker 1: they're only very difficult answers. Bill gets it. There are
Speaker 1: some things he really misses too. I really miss going
Speaker 1: to the library. Oh I'm a withdrawal from that. So
Speaker 1: there you have it. There really isn't as much gray
Speaker 1: area as we might like to tell ourselves during these horrible,
Speaker 1: weird times. But if we follow these rules, at least
Speaker 1: we can know we're doing everything in our power to
Speaker 1: help get things under control. By the way, if you
Speaker 1: have any more questions about social distancing, etiquette, or anything
Speaker 1: else during these confusing times, please give us a call
Speaker 1: and leave a voicemail at six or six four zero.
Speaker 1: If you leave a voicemail, we might play your message
Speaker 1: on the show. That was Bloomberg's Chris and v Brown
Speaker 1: and that's our show today. For coverage of the outbreak
Speaker 1: from one and twenty bureaus around the world, visit bloomberg
Speaker 1: dot com Flash Coronavirus, and if you like the show,
Speaker 1: please leave us a review and a rating on Apple
Speaker 1: Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more
Speaker 1: listeners find our global reporting The Prognosis Daily edition is
Speaker 1: hosted by me Laura Carlson. The show is produced by
Speaker 1: me To for Foreheads, Jordan Gospoure and Magnus Hendrickson. Today's
Speaker 1: main story was reported by Kristen V. Brown. Original music
Speaker 1: by Leo Sidrin. Our editors are Francesca Levi and Rick Shine.
Speaker 1: Francesco Levy is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: in the l