Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day one hundred
Speaker 1: and six since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Our
Speaker 1: main story the city of Houston is staring down the
Speaker 1: barrel of an exponential increasing cases over the next few weeks,
Speaker 1: and its hospital system is on the verge of being overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: But first, here's what happened in virus news today. In
Speaker 1: the United States, the pandemic is tearing through the heartland.
Speaker 1: The U saw one of its highest ever increases in
Speaker 1: cases yesterday, more than thirty four thousand, five hundred new infections,
Speaker 1: close to the peak in April. New modeling predicts the
Speaker 1: virus will kill a hundred and eighty thousand Americans by October.
Speaker 1: It's causing some states that were previously lays a fair
Speaker 1: about IRIS restrictions to take more stringent measures like face
Speaker 1: mask orders and internal quarantines. The virus is now ravaging
Speaker 1: some states that hadn't been hit as hard in previous months,
Speaker 1: states that were slow to enforce lockdowns or quick to
Speaker 1: lift them. One of those states is Texas. Cases and
Speaker 1: hospitalizations there are surging as a result. Texas Governor Greg
Speaker 1: Abbott announced and in an executive order today that it
Speaker 1: was putting the brakes on its phase reopening. While businesses
Speaker 1: that were already permitted to open can stay open, the
Speaker 1: next phases of reopening have been put on hold. The
Speaker 1: situation is most dire in Houston, where some experts expect
Speaker 1: the virus outbreak to swamp the city's medical infrastructure by
Speaker 1: July four, and Houston is the subject of our main
Speaker 1: story today. Bloomberg reporters and the Court and Joe Carroll
Speaker 1: report that if cases keep rising at their current pace
Speaker 1: in Harris County, which includes Houston, they will triple or
Speaker 1: quadruple by mid July. I spoke with Emma and Joe
Speaker 1: today about how the city's hospital system expects to manage
Speaker 1: the crisis. How did we get to Texas being the
Speaker 1: new hot spot of COVID? You know, Texas shut down.
Speaker 1: The governor was reluctant to shut anything down back in
Speaker 1: back in March and April, as we saw COVID erupting
Speaker 1: in places like New York and Chicago. Eventually did did
Speaker 1: did order a lockdown of sorts um you know, and
Speaker 1: it seemed like it was it was working. The case
Speaker 1: load stayed low, relative to what were hot spots at
Speaker 1: that time. Hospitals were fine. And after after a few
Speaker 1: weeks so they reopened surgeries to you know, reopened doctor's
Speaker 1: offices and and and then at the beginning of May
Speaker 1: just began reopening the entire state. It was phased, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, if you were owned a restaurant, maybe you
Speaker 1: could go to your occupancy. You know, it wasn't a
Speaker 1: full on reopening, but but the numbers stayed low and
Speaker 1: and things really didn't sort of explode here until right
Speaker 1: around Memorial Day, late May, the cases started to really
Speaker 1: take off positivity rate with through the roof, and that
Speaker 1: has continued and we we get to where we are now.
Speaker 1: We're in the Houston area. Anyways, the intensive care units
Speaker 1: are all used up. They're going to have to convert
Speaker 1: some other beds over to to make some space, and
Speaker 1: the projections are of the case load world, we'll just
Speaker 1: continue higher. You know, what has been the response of
Speaker 1: of health workers, of physicians, of hospital workers to this development.
Speaker 1: We've heard a lot of understandably concerned from medical providers, um,
Speaker 1: you know, saying we don't really know what the coming
Speaker 1: days and weeks will bring, and you know, in particular
Speaker 1: for them, you know, as for I think everyone. You know,
Speaker 1: the example of New York City and what happened to
Speaker 1: our hospitals. You know, that example really looms large and
Speaker 1: cast kind of a dark cloud over you know, medical
Speaker 1: providers all around the country. You know, they don't want
Speaker 1: to see the same thing happening in their own emergency departments,
Speaker 1: in their intensive care units. And and yet you know,
Speaker 1: as these intensive care unit beds fell up, hospitals can
Speaker 1: of course expand their capacity, right um, But the concern
Speaker 1: here is really you know, once you start exceeding those
Speaker 1: traditional I see you beds, you know how much further
Speaker 1: can you expand capacity? Right? So I spoke with the
Speaker 1: head of the Texas Medical Center, which you know describes
Speaker 1: itself as the largest medical city in the world. It's
Speaker 1: based in Houston, and Bill McKeon said to me, do
Speaker 1: we think that we can care for those patients and
Speaker 1: provide them a bed and provide them and do we
Speaker 1: have the proper amount of personal protection equipment? Do we
Speaker 1: have the proper amount of ventilators? Yes? On all accounts,
Speaker 1: So in that sense we feel but remember, capacity is
Speaker 1: like a giant bathtub that at sooner or later if
Speaker 1: water goes unchecked and the faucets are filling, then at
Speaker 1: some point any place, even the biggest medical city in
Speaker 1: the world, will overflow. And Joe, you know, what is
Speaker 1: the the sense on the ground in Texas? Are people
Speaker 1: wearing masks? Are people getting a sense that, you know,
Speaker 1: this pandemic is not over yet? What what is the
Speaker 1: feeling in say Houston? For many weeks there was a
Speaker 1: sort of an undercurrent that a lot of the precautions
Speaker 1: that have been taken, we're overkilled, that masks were silly,
Speaker 1: um and and and there's also there is a deep
Speaker 1: strain of of you know, this this las fair approach
Speaker 1: where the government doesn't get to tell me what to do.
Speaker 1: That's very, very ingrained here, even in the metropolitan areas.
Speaker 1: Over the last couple of days, that has taken quite
Speaker 1: a hit because the numbers coming out of the medical
Speaker 1: center in other places of and so alarming. There seems
Speaker 1: to be a little more acceptance there. There's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of fear when you when you know, when you
Speaker 1: hear that that the all the I c U ben
Speaker 1: are are taken up, or most of them are taken up.
Speaker 1: I mean it frightens people, and so the community is
Speaker 1: pretty divided. There are still folks who saying, look, mask
Speaker 1: won't help, you know, who sort of sneer at the
Speaker 1: formal recommendations, and then of course their neighbors are angry
Speaker 1: with them because they'd really like to see you wearing
Speaker 1: a mask. This morning, the governor surprised everybody when he
Speaker 1: came out and he said, the reopening is on hold.
Speaker 1: You know, it had been set to be a phase reopening,
Speaker 1: and so we're you know, depending on the line of
Speaker 1: business you were in, you were open to maybe fifty capacity,
Speaker 1: you're uh, and then on a certain date in the
Speaker 1: next few weeks you were going to be allowed to
Speaker 1: go to seventy some to that. So he froze all
Speaker 1: of that, which nobody saw coming. Is there any sense
Speaker 1: from from the medical community that perhaps with the new
Speaker 1: drugs and the new therapies that have started to become available,
Speaker 1: like from desevere and whatnot, that even though there is
Speaker 1: a high or case count, that perhaps you know, the
Speaker 1: death rate will not correspondingly rise as well in safe
Speaker 1: places like Texas if you think about it, like in
Speaker 1: the start of this pandemic, we were talking a lot
Speaker 1: about building, you know, creating more ventilators. You know, we're
Speaker 1: still kind of talking about, you know, producing more testing supplies,
Speaker 1: things like that. So we've had some time to prepare,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the hospitals I spoke to in
Speaker 1: Texas as well as in Arizona, where there's also you know,
Speaker 1: a rising hospitalizations, have said we are better prepared than
Speaker 1: we were before. We have personal protective equipment, Whereas at
Speaker 1: the start of this pandemic, I mean, there were some
Speaker 1: really horrifying reports coming out about what, you know, frontline
Speaker 1: medical providers were wearing to go to work at this
Speaker 1: with this really highly infectious disease on the loose. But
Speaker 1: you know, across the board, preparation is better. But I
Speaker 1: think what's important to note, and I spoke with a
Speaker 1: really wonderful doctor and professor in New York UM who said,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of things you can do
Speaker 1: to prepare UM now that we have all this information
Speaker 1: about the virus, but until you're in it, it can
Speaker 1: be hard to know if you're really prepared. And I
Speaker 1: think we've heard that also from you know, hospitals in
Speaker 1: Texas and Arizona saying we think we're prepared, but reasonably,
Speaker 1: there's only so much stuff we have, right There's a
Speaker 1: limit to how many doctors we have. You can't stockpile
Speaker 1: respiratory therapists the way you can, you know, mask, So
Speaker 1: this is just something to keep in mind. You know,
Speaker 1: there we have a lot of medical infrastructure in this country,
Speaker 1: and we have the ability to to bring in volunteers
Speaker 1: or even travel providers from other parts of the country,
Speaker 1: but there are going to be some serious limits. And
Speaker 1: I think it's worth pointing out that in some of
Speaker 1: the parts of the country where we're seeing these cases
Speaker 1: take off, it's also extremely hot outside. I'm not a
Speaker 1: field hospital expert, but I think what we did in
Speaker 1: New York when putting a field hospital in Central Park
Speaker 1: kind of most iconically. I don't know how feasible that's
Speaker 1: going to be in other parts of the country where
Speaker 1: it's just so hot outside. What are either some lessons
Speaker 1: perhaps Texas can take from some of the former hotspots
Speaker 1: like New York in kind of charting a path forward,
Speaker 1: or alternatively, what are some new factors that people are
Speaker 1: going to have to take into account, like the heat
Speaker 1: in Texas in the summer that is going to necessarily
Speaker 1: mean a new roadmap that people are going to have
Speaker 1: to start writing a new guide book of how to
Speaker 1: deal with a COVID outbreak In a state like Texas,
Speaker 1: the heat has been a real challenge and and and
Speaker 1: there's there's no blueprint for for how to deal with it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's it's in the nineties fahrenheit here
Speaker 1: every day now, it's especially in South Texas, and it's
Speaker 1: extremely humid, and that strives everybody indoors. Everybody's got an
Speaker 1: air conditioning running. And the question, the unanswered question, is
Speaker 1: that actually contributing to the to the sort of the
Speaker 1: bloom and cases we're seeing because indoors it's transmitted more
Speaker 1: easily and you just don't stay outside all afternoon like
Speaker 1: like you might if you were, you know, in Chicago
Speaker 1: or Detroit or someplace. And it's sort of counterintuitive because
Speaker 1: when you think about a quarantine, certainly don't think about
Speaker 1: you need to get outside in the sunshine. Um when
Speaker 1: they set up a field hospital here, they did set
Speaker 1: up one for Harris County. That's the third wild third
Speaker 1: largest county in the in the country, and it's where
Speaker 1: Houston is. It was at a at the pro football
Speaker 1: stadium turned out not to need it because we just
Speaker 1: didn't have the caseload then. So we spoke with county
Speaker 1: officials yesterday and they are getting ready to re establish
Speaker 1: it within forty eight hours when they see sort of
Speaker 1: the overflow. I see you beds that we talked about,
Speaker 1: If they'll start to fill up, then they're gonna they're
Speaker 1: gonna go open this field house and it is it
Speaker 1: is air conditioned. You said you could not do it
Speaker 1: outside and at this climate. Something we're also hearing out
Speaker 1: of Texas has been this tendency towards you know, the
Speaker 1: cases that are new are a lot in younger age groups.
Speaker 1: Are young people inadvertently spreading the virus in the community,
Speaker 1: you know, thinking that they're young and healthy, not taking
Speaker 1: precautions because they don't think that they're at risk. Folks
Speaker 1: were starved of of of of a social life for
Speaker 1: more than a month, and so when when clubs and
Speaker 1: taverns and restaurants started to reopen, especially here in Houston,
Speaker 1: in places like Austin, Dallas, uh, young people predictably flocked
Speaker 1: to them. The medical authorities do think that played a
Speaker 1: big role in our surge here as much as the
Speaker 1: younger folks aren't tend not to be fragile. They're also
Speaker 1: really hard to scare. And so you could talk about
Speaker 1: this virus being out there and there there is a
Speaker 1: certain segment of community that thinks, well, that's you know,
Speaker 1: I get the flu every year and I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: not eighty years old. I don't need to worry about it.
Speaker 1: And so it seems that the folks trying to trying
Speaker 1: to convince everybody to mask up have a challenge on
Speaker 1: their hands. I mean, what would you say, is is
Speaker 1: something that can be done or should be done on
Speaker 1: the ground in these states right now? I think going
Speaker 1: forward in the in the next two weeks, maybe three weeks,
Speaker 1: what we that will determine the path States like Texas
Speaker 1: take what they're gonna watch. You know, we are seeing
Speaker 1: the sort of expected rise in in case in caseloads,
Speaker 1: you know, due to so many weeks after after the
Speaker 1: state reopened. Question is is COVID nineteen is lethal this
Speaker 1: time around, as say it was when it when it
Speaker 1: ravaged New York. We don't know that it's not yet.
Speaker 1: We're not seeing those kind of fatality numbers, and I
Speaker 1: really think that will drive what what the politicians do
Speaker 1: if we see that sort of tragedy, I think that
Speaker 1: they will rethink how how hard they want to go
Speaker 1: on businesses and on residents. Frankly, with the next when
Speaker 1: we have our next pandemic, if it is not as lethal,
Speaker 1: I I don't think there'll be the political will to
Speaker 1: change things. That was Ema Court in New York and
Speaker 1: Joe Carroll in Texas, And that's our show today. For
Speaker 1: coverage of the outbreak from one and twenty bureaus around
Speaker 1: the world, visit Bloomberg dot com slash Coronavirus and if
Speaker 1: you like the show, please leave us a review and
Speaker 1: a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best
Speaker 1: way to help more listeners find our global reporting. The
Speaker 1: Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Topher foreheads Jordan Gaspore,
Speaker 1: Magnus Hendrickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was
Speaker 1: recorded by Emma Cort and Joe Carroll. Original music by
Speaker 1: Leo Sidron. Our editors are Rick Shine and Francesca Levi.
Speaker 1: Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. Thanks for listening.