Speaker 1: It's Monday, March. I'm Oscar Ramiras from the Daily Dive
Speaker 1: podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your daily coronavirus update.
Speaker 1: Rand Paul has become the first Senator to test positive
Speaker 1: for COVID nineteen. He is asymptomatic and now in quarantine.
Speaker 1: This is happening as Congress is working on another financial
Speaker 1: aid package that could be worth nearly two trillion dollars.
Speaker 1: This would provide help for small businesses, checks for Americans
Speaker 1: about three thousand for a family of four, and enhanced
Speaker 1: unemployment insurance. And while states try to grapple with the
Speaker 1: influx of patients, they're still desperately short on masks and
Speaker 1: protective equipment for medical workers. Some governors are calling for
Speaker 1: a coordinated national response to the shortage. Ginger Gibson, political
Speaker 1: reporter for Reuters, joins US for more. Thanks for joining US, Ginger.
Speaker 1: Continuing on with all of the coronavirus coverage, the US
Speaker 1: is now reporting the fourth most coronavirus cases in the world,
Speaker 1: were over twenty seven thousand in in the country, almost
Speaker 1: four hundred deaths. New York has become kind of this
Speaker 1: epicenter of COVID nineteen with about of the country's total cases. There.
Speaker 1: Governor Andrew Cuomo has been on a lot of the
Speaker 1: talk shows just talking about how much his state and
Speaker 1: just kind of in general. I think it's a general
Speaker 1: feeling around the country that the states and the governors
Speaker 1: need help there. But I wanted to start off with
Speaker 1: the new news that we've just got. Kentucky Senator Ran
Speaker 1: Paul has just tested if positive for coronavirus. I think
Speaker 1: he's the fourth member of Congress overall that has it. Now,
Speaker 1: that's right, we now have several members of Congress. Additionally,
Speaker 1: I know some reporters who cover the Hill that have
Speaker 1: been tested for it, haven't seen their results yet, but
Speaker 1: are showing the symptoms that have pursumed cases. These folks
Speaker 1: have been walking around the building with each other for
Speaker 1: the past week and what can sometimes be very close quarters.
Speaker 1: So an example of what happens when you're not putting
Speaker 1: that distance between yourself. Congress, the halls of the United
Speaker 1: States Capital are full of people who can transmit diseases
Speaker 1: to one another. So we've seen that play out. We've
Speaker 1: seen reports said at least the sick members of Congress
Speaker 1: who have contracted this disease say they are doing well.
Speaker 1: They don't have any of the critical symptoms or conditions
Speaker 1: that have hit other people. But again, as we know,
Speaker 1: this disease progresses and they'll all be watching their health
Speaker 1: very closely in the coming days and weeks. Yeah, Senator
Speaker 1: ran Paul, they put out a tweet. They said he's
Speaker 1: asymptomatic and he was tested out of an abundance of
Speaker 1: caution due to his travel and everything, and they said
Speaker 1: they closed their office down about ten days ago. They've
Speaker 1: been working remotely, so they don't think that any staffers
Speaker 1: have been exposed to him while he's had coronavirus, so
Speaker 1: hopefully the spread is limited there. Let's move on to
Speaker 1: this financial aid package that Congress is working on. They're
Speaker 1: saying now it could be up to two trillion dollars.
Speaker 1: That is a lot of money. But they're still going
Speaker 1: back and forth. I think the last thing I heard
Speaker 1: was that Nancy Pelosi said they're not just there yet,
Speaker 1: so everybody's kind of go back and forth. They're still
Speaker 1: trying to figure it out. But everybody does maintain that
Speaker 1: this is very bipartisan right now. They've worked negotiating over
Speaker 1: the weekend. Everyone has priorities there are priorities coming from
Speaker 1: the White House, coming from the Republican controlled Senate and
Speaker 1: the Democratic controlled House. I think it's fair to say
Speaker 1: we're going to see something past in the coming days,
Speaker 1: and I would expect that to be sort of a
Speaker 1: dual focus piece of legislation here, and dual focus might
Speaker 1: be a little too simple fuckation of it. This is
Speaker 1: going to be a very large piece of legislation, and
Speaker 1: that it appropriates a lot of money, as you suggested,
Speaker 1: could be to trillion dollars. But I think we're going
Speaker 1: to see something focused on business and something focused on people.
Speaker 1: So they have been negotiating how to get cash into
Speaker 1: people's hands, people who are facing real economic hardships, that
Speaker 1: have lost their jobs, that are struggling, or that the
Speaker 1: prospect of an illness means they couldn't work and it
Speaker 1: would be bankrupt in the process. And then we're going
Speaker 1: to see aid to business. We're going to see help
Speaker 1: to the airlines and the rest of the track evel industry,
Speaker 1: some type of assistance to small businesses that are having
Speaker 1: to close down all across the country. So it's going
Speaker 1: to be very large and very sweeping. And what is
Speaker 1: the most unprecedented shutdown of economic activity and trying to
Speaker 1: stave off what would be a really devastating economic fallout
Speaker 1: because of it. They said that they're trying to make
Speaker 1: this one last about ten and twelve weeks. It would
Speaker 1: tie the economy over for about ten and twelve weeks.
Speaker 1: They said, direct payments to Americans about a thousand and
Speaker 1: twelve hundred dollars. Families of four would be getting about
Speaker 1: three thousand dollars, and as you said, just a bunch
Speaker 1: of other things, enhanced unemployment, insurance, things for small businesses.
Speaker 1: You mentioned the number again, two trillion dollars. Where does
Speaker 1: this money come from? Is this stuff from the taxpayers?
Speaker 1: Are they just reapportioning money that we have? How do
Speaker 1: we get all this money? This money would be coming
Speaker 1: onto the United States debt. It would be increasing the
Speaker 1: US debt. It would be basically borrowing money from the
Speaker 1: future that the federal government would be responsible for paying back.
Speaker 1: The argument being that better off to have the federal government,
Speaker 1: which is capable of taking on this kind of dead
Speaker 1: do it now and try to save the economy before
Speaker 1: it's in a free fall, then wait and then have
Speaker 1: to deal with it afterwards. There was efforts to try
Speaker 1: to keep and stave off in two thousand eight, during
Speaker 1: the financial crisis that led to a recession. There was
Speaker 1: a lot of pushback that it would increase debt, not
Speaker 1: as much money was spent as some people would have liked.
Speaker 1: There was criticism then that the government didn't do enough
Speaker 1: to get the economy to recover fast enough. And this
Speaker 1: is an attempt to try to not repeat that, to say,
Speaker 1: all right, well, let's put as much money into this
Speaker 1: as we need to stop this from being another catastrophe.
Speaker 1: So that's on the financial front. On the health front,
Speaker 1: it's still very critical. States across the country are just
Speaker 1: kind of desperate and angry. They need more and more
Speaker 1: medical supplies. Hospitals are experienced a big shortage of masks
Speaker 1: and other equipment that they need. I mentioned earlier Governor
Speaker 1: Andrew Cole from New York. He said that states are
Speaker 1: starting to compete with each other for some of these materials,
Speaker 1: and he's calling for some type of coordinated national response
Speaker 1: on all of this. Get people to start manufacturing these
Speaker 1: things more, distribute them to hospitals and states so they
Speaker 1: have it. So the administration is facing a lot of
Speaker 1: pressure from the states individually on this. That's right. We
Speaker 1: have seen a response to this epidemic that's really been
Speaker 1: on a state level, more often state governors putting out
Speaker 1: responses telling people what they should and shouldn't be doing.
Speaker 1: Before we see it coming at a federal level, and
Speaker 1: a little bit of a back and forth between governors
Speaker 1: and the president over who should be sort of helming
Speaker 1: some of these things. So, yes, we're seeing states trying
Speaker 1: to get the resources their states need at the expense
Speaker 1: at times of the other states that might be needing them.
Speaker 1: And as you mentioned earlier, this is not uniform. We're
Speaker 1: not seeing this epidemic evenly across the country. There are
Speaker 1: pecular areas that are much more hard hit than others.
Speaker 1: New York City, very hard hit, parts of Florida, very
Speaker 1: hard hit. Other places along the East Coast also hard
Speaker 1: hit Seattle, Washington. Those are the places that would appear
Speaker 1: to need these resources more and they say it shouldn't
Speaker 1: be left to just who can bid the highest or
Speaker 1: who can buy the vast the fastest gets these resources.
Speaker 1: Ginger Gibson, political reporter for Reuters. Thank you very much
Speaker 1: for joining us. Thanks for having me. I'm Oscar Ramirez,
Speaker 1: and this has been your daily coronavirus update. Don't forget that.
Speaker 1: For today's big news stories, you can check me out
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