besser, president and ceo of the robert wood johnson foundation, and former acting director of the centers for disease control. he joins us to talk about the federal response to the covid-19 pandemic. then michael straight, director of i can out -- director discusses how the virus has affected the american workforce. an illinois republican congressman darren lahood on the covid-19 response in his state, and the next steps lawmakers are likely to take in response to the pandemic. join the conversation tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. on the other site. guest is the johns hopkins university bloomberg school of public health senior research associate post up he also served as a former director general of the national public health institute of liberia from 2017-2019. we thank you for joining us today. guest: thank you, good morning. host: what are your specialties

during that time -- one of your specialties during that time was looking at the ebola outbreak. guest: at the time, the ebola unprecedentedas in history and i was the incident manager that led the entire outbreak to respond to the ebola outbreak. it got to zero cases and moved to west africa to get zero outbreak in that area. host: what kind of science did you apply to analyze it and development of treatments in order to stop the outbreak? guest: with covid-19 today, there are no vaccines, no therapeutics to deal with that. 2014-2016 outbreak, there was

not enough tools to deal with the outbreak in west africa when it broke out in 2014. was makeeeded to do sense out of the outbreak and put a management system together and this is a very predictable tool to use when there are no vaccines and people are dying. , tohave to think what to do organize the system and look at the data and make decisions. that's what we did in west africa and liberia with the help of organizations that came to the aid of west africa. host: one of the discussions about coronavirus is the idea of contact tracing. talk about its application not only in covid but was it used in the ebola outbreak into what success? when you don't have a

vexing of a disease, you use public health measures. for example, you do testing, you trace the contacts, you give them treatment that is available to treat the symptoms of the disease. same with covid-19. contact tracing was one of the key parts of the 2014-2016 ebola outbreak. it can help and covid-19. personsidentify, expose and prevent secondary infection. is one very critical missed contact can keep the outbreak going and going and going. contact, nos, if no further spread of the disease. iss is why contact tracing one of the tools we have in our

toolkit. it needs to be used and we can stop covid-19. host: this is our guest joining us and if you want to ask him about contact tracing and other lessons he learned from tracking ebola and how it can be applied to the covid pandemic, you can call us. i suspect manpower is needed and funds are needed, what did you learn from tracking that in liberia? what is the lesson for those tracking it in the united states? guest: contact tracing gets easier, it can be easier at the beginning of the outbreak if you are ahead of the curve.

but when the cases exponentially theease, catching up to curve, bending the curve and getting 20 can be difficult. this is where manpower, energy, resources can be important. you would need an army of health-care workers to be recruited. not necessarily with people with high level training but people who graduated with a high school education can be recruited. have to be in the field of public health. for us to get 20 covid-19, we must be able to catch up with the curve. today there is exponential increase of cases. the rate is increasing. with the one, catch up curve, bend the curve and get to zero. that's why contact tracing is so important.

johns hopkins was projecting over 100,000 people with 3.6 billion u.s. dollars to get the kind of contact tracing we need. it is very critical combined with all of the other things with isolation and the rest of the other interventions. host: if you are a contact -- whatwhat are information do you need to get from people to develop a database strong enough to help track and stop this? testing, hear about testing and testing. it's very critical. if you don't know what you are looking for, if you don't find it, you cannot trace the contact. number one is to test. you do the test and i agree with dr. fauci when he said we need

to double the testing in the united states. that is very important. theer two, we need to know laboratory confirmed cases. you look at the numbers in the number of test you do, those are positive. you look for the confirmed cases that are available. peoplesee also is that who are confirmed are in their homes and we need to appeal to those people an appeal to their conscience and get them to a facility to isolate them. after they have seen people who you review the reproductive numbers of the number of covid-19 cases. covid-19 looks at the reproductive number at the outbreak. [inaudible]

on the average, you have to remove the people who are sick. cases thatfind the have positive, confirmed results unless it is applicable and possible to remain home and prevent, then it's applicable. where the person cannot be treated at home and they should not be in a household, they need to be confirmed and removed immediately to isolation. then you trace the contacts. look at the signs on the household member in the united states which is three persons per household when i look at the data. with that, you want to make sure youof the contact tracing, can use telephone lines, mobile phones, there is a lot of

technology available. when i did it in west africa with my team, we did not have the sophistication the united states have -- has. it's difficult to get to the to get tos difficult uselephone so we had to epidemiologist to go from town to town. it was a 4 million population. andere able to trace houses [indiscernible] to zero.you get our first call is from dandridge, tennessee. good morning. caller: good morning. said scaresest just zus out of theee

american people. you say you want to spy on the american people and you want to take them, force them into quarantine even if they have no symptoms, they are asymptomatic and you want to force them into a quarantine situation. millions and millions of american people are not going to do this. -- isre not going to take bill gates the one and -- in the rockefeller foundation in charge of this testing? i want to know where our dna and her blood in our testing, who is in charge of it? who is doing it? when the contact is suspected, at that time you have not confirmed to be removed from your home. you have come in contact with someone who is confirmed.

but we have to stop the outbreak. we need to start the social distancing. the lockdown that is going on now and do that safely by tracing the contact and get to zero so people can move about. that would get rid of the outbreak. people would not be removed from their home but it's trying to get the outbreak under control. individual rights and public health is very critical. host: from nick in woodbridge, virginia, you are next, go ahead. caller: good morning. points and iood empathize with the lady earlier with at being too harsh dictatorship type quarantine. we need to focus on the united we stand and divided we fall and utilize more resources for

getting antibody testing. that's the first step in getting the vaccine. we need more testing kits, we need more testing sites and i think we will need more recruitment with may be private helping the world health organization. the more blood we get, the more we learn about the virus. i had coronavirus. i am a nurse and i was in quarantine for almost 14 days and now i'm fun and i'm not getting sick again. i probably have antibodies and i would love to donate my blood and help out so we can find out the vaccine. once we have the vaccine, we are good. the permanent solution is vaccine, i agree. some sort of therapeutic treatment to treat those who

were sick. we don't have that option right now. the option we have right now are the public health measures of anding, tracing the contact treating them. for now, there is no vaccine so what we need to do is additional public health measures to end covid-19. we need to focus on the tracing contact because in those countries where the used social isolation, it has stopped the epidemic. we will keep testing and we need to be proactive to end this. host: yesterday, the white house released a blueprint when it comes to testing, giving states a large role in coming up with a plan of developing testing and

even providing guidelines from the federal government. what do you think about that model? guest: i think it's positive. we use to ramp up testing and double it, that's a very good model. testing is important. that's how you know who is sick in the population. your previous caller was talking about the antibodies and immunity or herd immunity but choice in there is a the scientific community is not supporting the issue of immunity. what we need to do and what is available right now to end covid-19 are those measures. and they haveng come up with a blueprint to test

more people and that's how we the positivity rate. those are the things you need to use to trace the contact, trace the contact, put them into isolation. the united states has the capacity. is of this i'm talking about the cdc provided a lot of resources in africa. the u.s. government has the capacity and has the technical know-how, it's just a matter of deploying it so the outbreak comes to an end. if we can do comprehensive and isolation, we can then open up. host: from missouri, ronald in

salem. caller: i just have to mention that 24 million people in africa doesn't equate to end the1/10 of the population here and he said it took 100,000 contact tracers to cover 24 million? if we extrapolate that, it's over one million contact tracers to go after 350 million that we have living here. it's not a feasible system. we will have to look at a different plan. what the president is doing is right, we need to get the states involved. the states will have to be responsible. our public health system was centered around counties doing the job and they have not done it. thegovernors are blaming president because they are not prepared and did not set aside funds to take care of this. there are all those masks and ppe, equipment was not stocked up. they just ignored the potential

and now they want to shift the blame to the president. it's a state and county responsibility. it has to be done at that level of we are going to deal with the numbers we are dealing with. talk about the comparisons of liberia to the united states. is that a point as far as the size of the two countries? guest: the manpower projected by my colleagues in the global health security were not projected for the united states. not all of the population of the united states is sick so when which city,ng, it's which town, which territory or state that has more than other cases inhe number of the 100ed states,

thousand contact tracers projected for the united states or you don't need millions of contact tracers to do the work on theu want to focus disease and what the epidemiology is telling you based on the testing of the cases. you put the contact tracer on what the local government is doing in the territories that would use contact tracing in the community. new york is coming up with a robust plan right now. so trainedg at that contact tracers can be used in new york. host: when the caller said the primary responsibility should fall to the states and localities, what do you make of that? guest: that's valid because that's where it starts.

people could get reinfected so missing a contact can keep the epidemic going. look at communities, territories, states and they should do the work and end this outbreak. host: thank you for joining us for this conversation. shealy's next from tuskegee, alabama. caller: i want to talk about the virus. if they tested so many people, they would not catch the virus. they test you and you get the virus. and they have to treat it. while,don't test for a let them come to you with , letver symptoms they have them come to you and you test them step if they have a virus then, you know what to do.

them that don't have the virus. if you test them, i think they might catch it. guest: can you go over that? i didn't catch that. host: were you having problems hearing her? guest: what was the question? 's host: she said focus not on those who have the virus but those who don't have it as far as the data. i could be wrong but i'm paraphrasing. , testing isoint is important. that's how you know who has the disease. two, when cases are case may or may not generate contact. the contact are those you want to follow up with . difficult forwas

asymptomatic people. virus to another person. with covid-19, people who are asymptomatic can contract the disease. if the case is not confirmed, the contact goes for 14 days and that's fine but once you have a confirmed case and there is contact generated, that contact must be followed. you are hearing these governors deciding to open up aspects of their businesses and those kind of issues. how does that impact testing and the analysis needed to determine what comes next in the pandemic? for those who are opening

up and still have confirmed cases in their localities and where they are, they a taking -- they are taking a big risk. it will spread very fast. ebola was spreading like covid-19. if you look at the reproductive numbers of ebola, it's less than 2. with covid-19, it's about three so it means covid-19 spreads faster. if you have two or three cases in a community or in a state or thestrict or territory, fact that you have an outbreak means it can happen.

those states, territories that are reopening and still have cases need to have zero. the united states is one country. if you open up and there were , it's a risk to the population. in the democratic republic of congo, two weeks ago, they had the same outbreak of ebola right now. everybody was celebrating that the of bola outbreak was over. guess what happened? in the ebola virus was there and there was a case of ebola. two days into that, five other people got infected because of

contact and now they are tracing the contacts. the outbreak will take another two days before it can be declared over. was we did in west africa you look at ebola, we knew that we were not out of the woods until sierra leone got there outbreak over with. it's about five years now and we not -- we have not a single case of ebola in the region. to reopen these things, we have epidemic,p with the been the curve and get to zero. that's how it can work. it is possible within a couple of months to get that done because we can do systematic tracing combined with social distancing and handwashing and other things, that could get us to zero.

the permanent solution is vaccine or therapeutics. host: nova in danbury, connecticut? yes, i would just like to say that trump is doing a good job. i love trump but let's bring back america. happiness.o pursue right now, we are in a crisis worldwide. amish.ring back the let's think about what north korea is doing, what china is doing. let's free up the economy. host: do you have a specific question for our guests? caller: just that we should actually be living as a community, as a whole, not as monetarily community. we should actually work together

to survive. we have global warming that is creating storms, probably creating viruses. host: we will go to gym in cairo, missouri, good morning. aps this0 minutes did past sunday -- this past sunday on an outfit called blue dot. they track cell phones. it's been going on for a while. it's used worldwide except in america. once again, we insist on reinventing the wheel. on those not acknowledging the problem. they use them successfully in south korea and we wanted to make our own tests. i will leave it there, thank

you. i think the testing is not a problem now. from the beginning it was a problem but right now, there are sophisticated tests out there, the rapid test are being developed, more than any other place in the world. what we need to do is do more cases wherefind the we have data that's being reported and analyzed in the state on the local governmental territories. tests.n use the there are other technologies that can do contact tracing but you can use technology because confidentiality and other things have to be taken care of. host: when you hear companies like google involving themselves as far as apps that can be used for this kind of information gathering, are there civil

rights concerns there? ones that are not intrusive, if they are not infringing on the rights of intended tohey are stop this outbreak, we welcome that but everything that is done in public health should be respected. we should not infringe on people's rights. responsibility to end this outbreak and move on with our lives. there is a choice between some sort of rights and enforcing public health and getting to zero and reopening. host: massachusetts, anthony, west stockbridge. caller: i would like to make a comment. i would like to say to you, thank you, first of all. there is not enough, i think, of the people who need to listen to

our medical professionals. i have to say, dr., you have been through this. you have seen contact tracing in your own country. many, many people have died from this.i think you are a wonderful, wonderful example of what we have to listen to. we have to listen to the doctors more and listen to politicians just a little bit less. thank you very much for your help. anything to add? aest: thank you, this is not first time -- this is happening to the world. we so the outbreak in 1918 that claimed the lives of 50 million people worldwide. 2n 1957, 1958 , we saw theh1n

which was the influence of the claimed the life of 1.2 million people worldwide. saw theh3n2 that claimed the lives of 70,000 people. we set interaction between animals and people and the environment. what we need to do is to build a response around this and move on with public health and find the vaccines and therapeutics. and get todo this zero for us to move about our normal lives. host: when it comes to the future development of a vaccine

for covid-19, which is the experience liberia had with ebola teach us as far as the development of that vaccine? experience was that it is possible. it is feasible to develop vaccines and therapeutics during health crises. we are grateful to the national institute of health in united states that came to the aid of west africa. they worked with other countries and went to other organizations and liberians were taking the test for the ebola vaccine. ebola has a lot of tools in the toolkit. the ebola vaccines have been prequalified as being approved. right now the

democratic republic of the congo. it is possible you can have a vaccine but it took a long time. it is not a quick fix. we have almost 2-3 years [indiscernible] host: christine in rhode island. caller: thank you for c-span and thank you for your guest. i have a question about the people working in these meatpacking companies. how can they be protected and tested and how should the topanies be held responsible keep these people safe and their families in their state? also, have another question. affect the going to west indies like haiti and the islands?

my husband is from haiti so we are very concerned. thank you. host: go ahead. guest: can you repeat the question? she was asking how it could affect areas like haiti and the west indies? countries areand secure because of the fact that movement in those areas come i didn't look at the data of infection rates but what i know is that other countries in asia like taiwan and landlocked countries, the infection rate is lower. knowost important thing to countries in africa our

challenge because they don't have the necessary ppe. they are dealing with other andesses like tuberculosis malaria. there is a low supply chain so with an outbreak of covid-19 in those countries, that would put more stress on an already stressed medical system. deafen that'st of why the scientific community and the health community worries about countries like haiti, west africa, sub-saharan africa. must -- we have limited ppe and the like. host: when it comes to vaccines in liberia, is it required when it comes to the vaccine for ebola? guest: what do you mean? host: is it mandatory to get a vaccine? isst: right now, the vaccine

only compassionately used. when there is an outbreak, that's the only time the vaccine is deployed. it's not in large quantity yet so it's not part of the expanded program. in the united states, you have the program for immunization. africa does not have widespread ebola vaccines yet. , one ofa case of ebola the tools is the ebola vaccine. the: it's a scenario but in united states, once the vaccine is developed, should that be mandatory? depends on what the and what other .rganizations will decide

there are pre-existing conditions. what is important to me is to put the times out there to stop the outbreak. about what happened and what politicians do. what i do know is there is no

substitute for politics in outbreak response. it's very important. the former president of lead. up and get toatch zero outbreak is very important. one of the things i will mention , tohat there was a report separate independent panel wasrts one of the panels the united nations secretary

chaired by it was the former president of tanzania. , international health, and global leadership. member of the international index of john hopkins, recommendation from the three

panel to be prepared for global pandemic. dying, we will get elected. when done, people's hands that is what we saw with ebola. this time, with covid-19, it will unite the world and get our leaders together and the noble leadership. outbreaks. paycheck protection program one more -- host: one more call. caller: i wonder if the tests

could be like with the collect for colon cancer if it is done at home and mailed in. can you see the virus in the stool? the other thing is i noticed you mentioned territories and i wonder if it is mostly in the tropics if sunlight and seawater in the tropical area helps in either way to treat the symptoms . no one talks about decontamination. thank you. guest: that is a great question. this is important. constant washing of homes and , that is veryer important. there is no evidence that in tropical areas you cannot get the virus, because comfort --

sin africa -- countries in africa got it. paycheck protection program -- h ost: senior research director and the former general of the public health institute of liberia. thank you for your time today. uest: thank you, a privilege being with you.