he has failed to protect america. and my fellow americans, that is unforgivable. >> the first presidential debate between donald trump and joe biden is tuesday, september 29 at 9:00 p.m. eastern. watch live coverage on c-span. watch livestreaming and on demand at c-span.org or listen live on the free c-span radio app. next, we are joined by the president of the foundation for research on equal opportunity. here with us to talk about the trump administration's response to the pandemic. good morning. welcome to washington journal. >> hey, how are you? nice to be with you. street -- youall wrote a wall street journal opinion piece. i it is mostly safe to reopen

schools. younger children urgently need to get back to their classrooms. the evidence from europe shows no wider harms. it's more complicated with older students. has your opinion changed any on that and what were you trying to get at in your opinion piece? guest: i would say that the reopening experience we have had thus far in the united states actually confirms and is consistent with the evidence that we have had around the world, and that evidence is overwhelming when it comes to children under the age of 12 that for reasons we obviously do not yet fully understand, younger children, particularly preadolescent children, do not appear -- not only are they themselves are very low risk of serious death from covid-19 but they also appear to virus tomit the adults. this is counterintuitive to a lot of people. most of us are used to our kids going to school, picking up whatever bug is going around

school, and bringing it back to us. the idea that covid-19 does not work that way, you know, it's counterintuitive to a lot of people, but that's what the evidence shows. whenever schools reopen, particularly for younger kids, but also older kids, in europe in particular, we did not see children transmitting the virus to adults or to their parents. not only do we have a strong case in that instance of reopening schools but it may be that one of the reasons why europe has had success over the summer with covid-19 is because the schools reopen. when they reopen schools in the spring, it may be -- this is a hypothesis that has been proposed by a number of german scientists that reopening schools serves as a break on the spread of covid-19. kids for reasons we don't fully understand, they have developed a low level immunity to the virus and thereby limit

transmission to the others. tell us about your organization, your think tank. tank are a nonprofit think and we focus on expanding economic opportunity to those who leased have it. economyhe 21st century work for everyone. host: in terms of covid-19, you talked about research from europe. how difficult has it been for your organization to keep abreast of the latest scientific research, the studies coming out during the pandemic since it broke earlier this year? >> in a certain way we are living through a renaissance or an explosion of scientific research in real-time. my father was a molecular oil

just. the traditional way of doing academic research is you do a study, you come up with something and then the journal spends six month reviewing it and finally a year later your research is out there. we are something completely different happening now due to the necessity and emergency that we are in. journalsernet-based were people will put preliminary findings online before they've gone true that -- through that traditional process of academic peer review. research isn't as rigorously vetted, the fact that it's coming out in real-time means people are able to learn from each other very quickly and our knowledge and understanding of the virus has improved over the last month.

host: our guest is avik roy. for supporters of joe biden and republicans., undecided and all others. new trump pandemic advisor pushes controversial herd immunity strategy, worry public health officials at a picture of dr. atlas, an advisor from the hoover institution. tell us about the concept of heard immunity and you agree -- do you agree with dr. atlas in this case? >> there's two things to mention. what is heard immunity and what are dr. atlas's actual reviews. or population

immunity is basically the principle that at a certain point if the broad community or population in a particular country or region develops immunity to a virus or any other infectious agent that basically even if not everybody has 70%nity, let's say 50% or or 30%, if a certain percentage of people in that population have developed immunity to the virus that the virus has difficulty gaining any traction. it can't spread with the exponential speed that it does in a naive population because a lot of people are immune. to a forestight be fire. forest fires happen when there's a lot of dry kindling wood in a forest. if the trees are healthy and they have been well fed and they are somewhat wet because they have water content, it's a lot harder for those trees to burn

down. similarly, the idea of heard immunity is at a certain point if the population is immune to the virus are enough of it is, the virus can't take off. there are two ways to achieve heard immunity. one is through a lot of people getting infected with the dangerous version of the virus. another version is when you have a vaccine. world, you have a vaccine, most people get the vaccine and it can't develop any traction. you can have a combination of both as we hope to do in this situation. host: are there cases where we have used the heard immunity to conquer viruses? a heard immunity is not strategy per se.

it's basically a what are your alternatives. if you take the example of influenza a hundred years ago, the great pandemic of 1918, we didn't have vaccines back then. the technology of vaccines was just starting to get underway. so there was no alternative. you could shut down society and they did at times particularly in cities like philadelphia that had really bad out rakes of influenza. we effectively had heard immunity regardless. sweden isappened in sweden had a deliberate strategy where they said we will than that large gatherings, maybe really enclosed spaces like bars that get very crowded, but we will keep schools open and we will otherwise have a relatively light touch. their argument has been because

a vaccine is not forthcoming in the timeframe that we are health damage the from lockdowns can be pretty we keep ourf havemy mostly open, we may some deaths from covid-19 but we will emerge from lockdown faster. the argument of the swedes is ,hat if you lockdown and weight you have the damage that comes from lockdown but you haven't developed any immunity to the virus and then when you reopen, the virus has basically the same impact that it had before. that's the theory. host: let me get your response to an argument. we are talking about 200 million plus americans getting this and a fatality rate of 1%, that's 2 million americans who will die in the effort to get hurt

immunity. those are preventative -- preventable deaths of our loved ones that we can't let happen on our watch. >> there are a lot of if's in that sentence that you just recounted. we don't know the percentage of people that need to be infected in order to achieve heard immunity. some people looking at the influenza model assume it's about 70%. others look at the data emerging and say it's more like 20%. we don't know the answer and everyone who is expressing a percentage is guessing. we are all guessing. percentagee that the is much higher to achieve heard immunity, that's a problem. it is whatce of percentage of people who are infected are actually at risk of serious illness or death.

not thecase 1% is correct number. early on we were seeing a much higher what's called the infection fatality ratio. partly it's because most of the infections and deaths were happening in nursing homes. debts in the united states from covid-19 have been occurring among vulnerable seniors who live in nursing homes and other assisted-living facilities. 0.6% of americans live in those facilities, so almost half the deaths in the u.s. are occurring in 0.6% of the population. you think every day the headline in the newspaper would be what are we doing to protect vulnerable seniors in nursing homes and yet we are keeping schools close. there are 57 million kids in america aged one to 15 and only 36 have died of covid-19.

understand where the risk is and where the fatality ratios are. here is to really work harder to protect high risk individuals, high-risk communities like seniors in nursing homes, but also understand that for children, the infection tally ratio is extremely low. it's like one in 2 million. we have the opportunity in those instances to reopen society and the open schools. host: we have calls waiting period we will start with hawaii. we have our own issues in hawaii. hopefully you won't cut me off. i'm going to throw a few names at the doctor. i noticed you are an md. michael leavitt, who is not a physician but as a biophysicist, and his concepts on the

statistics -- more importantly what i'm curious about is a lady who is a professor at ucsf named monica gandhi who is with a lot showta that people are actually getting immunity by wear a masks, t-cells, not anti-bodies. protocols, testing you are talking about letting kids stay in school, that is fine, and protecting the elderly. but there are elderly teachers into substitutes in the schools and if masks are not well enforced, we have the danger of transmission. there are studies both ways. it depends which you pull out of a hat to defend your argument on

whether transmission occurs in the under populations. guest: you brought up a lot of points. i will get through the key ones. in terms of the studies -- while i went to med school, i'm not a practicing physician , so i am not giving medical advice here, looking at the data only. but in terms of school anpening, we have not seen increased risk of transmission among teachers in people who work at the schools. on my twitter feed, also on our ansite, we go through enormous amount of the data. click on the covid-19 link on the top of our webpage, and you can go through all the data and there are links to every single page, in terms of reopening schools. mentioned, in

terms of measuring covid-19, we may be wrong. we are doing what is called an antibody test, where we measure a specific type of antibody response to the coronavirus. this is called igt. that is one way -- you can have igt based immunity, but there are other forms, as you alluded to. t cell immunity is a different form. it may be that we are under appreciating or undercounting the amount of immunity in the population. there is research that suggests, this goes back to what we were talking about earlier, there is research that suggests that this virus is biologically related to the common cold.

are also theolds coronavirus. it appears some people have been immunity to this novel coronavirus because they have had the, cold and they have developed immunity to that. so we do not know how much baseline immunity is already in the population due two experiences with the common cold and other related coronavirus is. avik roy -- host: linda in missouri. good morning. you are on the air. go ahead. one more time, linda? a question for you on twitter from mark. "do you know the number of people who die each year from the flu compared to the coronavirus?" guest: it is a great question. we have done a whole study on this, looking at historical data over 10 years, from 2007-2017, anderms of deaths from flu

pneumonia, compared to this year's deaths from covid-19. if you split it by age, roughly ,peaking for those adults working age adults around 25 and today or theance probability of death from covid-19, you are at about three times more likely to die of that than influenza in an average year. but for children, probability goes in the other direction. if you are a young child, if memory serves, something like eight times less likely to die of covid-19 than the flu. you are more likely to die from influenza, yet we do not shut down schools for influenza pandemics. covid-19 -- by the week when death is not the only important problem. you could have a serious illness as a result of covid-19.

but we have statistics we can compare influenza versus covid-19. so people are trying to understand, there is a lot of alarmist headlines and people want to know how dangerous is this relative to other things we encounter every day. and the answer is covid-19, based on what we see today and the epidemiology and transmission of covid in the united states, about three times as many -- the probability of death is three times what would be for the flu for individuals who are older, for those who are middle-aged, but for children it is much lower. avik roy we are talking about the trump's administration -- we are with avik roy talking about the trump's administration -- responseonstration's to the coronavirus. caller, go ahead. caller: good morning. it is refreshing to hear someone

who actually knows what he is talking about regarding this pandemic. in myhere has been covid own family. i am 71. my wife and i contracted it, but neither one of us got sick. my sister and brother-in-law contracted it. they were both hospitalized, but they survived. my father, who was 94, contracted it and he passed away from it. we have experienced all of the various, different aspects of the effects of covid-19. coupleow, i was tested a weeks ago for the antibody. and according to the results, my wife and i have the antibodies. we have 0% of getting the covid again. not givefore, we can the covid to anyone else.

but the question is, how long with a antibody last? shuter aspect of this to down the what have you -- another important aspect of this is my son lost his job as a result of the shutdown. despite all the various inconsistencies in the shutdown, that covid has continued to spread up until a certain point, which seems to be a result of g place,unity takin which now seems to be putting a damper on the spread of covid more than anything else. host: let me get you to respond to his statement. he said if you have the antibody, you have 0% of getting it again is that true? guest: let me express my

condolences for the loss of your father. i am glad your sister and brother are doing better. we do not know how long immunity will last, if you have it because you have been infected, or even from the vaccine. there are now reports in scientific literature of cases of reinfection. there was one out of hong kong. i think there was one from the united states. and there are other anecdotal reports of reinfection. part of the reason you are seeing reinfection, it is not about whether the antibody stay in your system, our experience with other coronavirus is, our best guess is immunity may last around six months, plus or minus. but in wildcard is the coronavirus tends to be -- a lo t. we have already seen many different strains of the novel coronavirus spread throughout

the world. some are more dangerous and they kill more people. some are more mild. and that could be part of why we are seeing different statistics in different countries, because they have seen different strains of the virus come through the populations. so there are many unanswered questions on how long immunity lasts, but we can hope it will last about six months. and most importantly, we hope that if there are mutated versions, that they will be less dangerous. that is our hope, but we do not know for sure. one thing we have talked about in our think tank is many people appear to be putting all their eggs in the basket of the vaccine, saying, let's lock down the economy until the vaccine comes. it's just around the corner. and we are hoping they will get a vaccine sooner rather than later. but we cannot be certain a

vaccine will come back quickly. never in our history have we developed a vaccine in a timeframe shorter than five years for a novel virus that we have never encountered before. science has gotten better, so it is possible we could break that record, but we cannot be certain of that. we need to have a plan b, just in case they do not give as much immunity as we hope. host: so the white house is saying states should be prepared for vaccine disruption, why? guest: it is important to be prepared because if we are successful at developing a vaccine, what will be important at that point is to get the vaccine to the population, which requires an incredible amount of logistics. manufacturing,le get the vaccine to every part of nd you have to have people to administer the vaccine.

the administration is trying to be as prepared as possible with the hope that a vaccine get through and be successful, up through the clinical trials. one other question that was mentioned is whether or not lockdowns are achieving their stated effect, to limit mortality. the evidence is not as clear as conventional wisdom would suggest. new york did a lot, they had a strict lockdown, yet they have had the most deaths per capita of any state in the country. california and texas, compare those states, similar when you look at the charts in terms of the caseload, deaths, but california had a strict lockdown and texas did not. when were predictions of texas and florida would reopen their economies. yes, they saw a late-summer increase in cases and deaths.

but so to california, which did not take the same path as texas and california there have been overly simplistic commentary about how lockdowns work. and there is reason to believe that the lockdowns overshot the target, meaning a moderate lockdown, where again you keep the bars closed, limit large gatherings like sporting events and conventions, but you allow businesses to operate and function. you allow the schools to reopen. that could be the sweet spot, especially if people are doing social distancing and wearing masks, that we can restrain the transmission of the virus and enough that without overly disrupting or army the economy, and the kids and public health, not related to covid. so checkups and things like that. host: we are getting back to calls. sue in massachusetts. caller: good morning. host: make sure that you mute your volume so you will not get

feedback, ok? you are on the air. caller: alright. 180,000 deaths have occurred already. it's not a nothing deal. and nobody knows what is going on. i'm 66. i have been isolated, because i am disabled. i am fine. i'm negative. but this immunity thing that this guy is talking about -- give me a break. wait until we are all annihilated before somebody know something. but putting kids at risk is insane. so, you know, i am an independent. i am voting for joe biden. i voted for governor baker, a republican, in massachusetts. he has kept us safe more than the president has. host: any response? guest: it is important to understand that the risk of serious illness and death from

covid-19 varies considerably based on your age. younger people in general have a very, very low risk of death or serious illness from covid-19. school age children, 1-15 in age, only about 40 have died in the entire country. 57 million people in that age bracket, and only 36-40 have died, that is about one in a million. so that is a pretty low ratio. when you thing about the other things that kids die from, drowning, car accidents, they happen at a higher frequency than about 39 or 40. we have to be aware of that. on the other side of the spectrum, people who are elderly, people who are disabled and living in nursing homes or assisted-living facilities, they are at a high risk. massachusetts has had problems.

they were one of the states with the highest percentage of nursing home deaths in terms of a share of the population in any state of the country, new york, new jersey, connecticut -- those have also been hardest hit. so that has been a huge problem. instead of having the one-size-fits-all panic lockdown from the beginning, if we said we will try to protect people in nursing homes, or we will let the schools reopen, particularly for the younger children, we could've had a much more effective response. host: marianne in denver, pennsylvania. caller: thank you for taking my call. i have a couple points to make. i'm a patient at johns hopkins. i go for routine treatments. i will go in november, december, january into february. no precautions were made. there was nothing mentioned, except, have you been to china in the past 12 months and have

you been near someone? nobody was wearing face masks, not even the staff. no special distancing. no hand sanitizer. and i called them and i asked, and they said they do not understand why people were saying, as far back as january and february, that the president seriousth experts knew it was -- they said that was a fallacy. they said that they would have never put their own staff and international patients at risk if they had any consideration. so people are saying that there has been a slow response. they are not looking at the actual data. closepatient who frequently to johns hopkins, and they take good care of their patients and the staff. the second point, people are

also blaming the president for not making nationwide mandates. in the beginning, he attempted to do that and governor cuomo governornor murphy and wolf of pennsylvania all decided together to let the president know that he is not king, those were the exact words that governor cuomo used. he said he cannot tell us how to run our states. we know better than he does. i wanted to bring up those two points. thank you for having this conversation. it is very informative. guest: in the u.s., our system requires the states to have a more significant role in responses like this. states have made consequential decisions regarding covid that have ended up being harmful. one example is governor cuomo in new york and governor murphy of

new jersey forced nursing homes o had not patients wh recovered yet from covid-19, but had recovered enough to be discharged from the hospital. italy of pictures in the hospitals getting overwhelmed. they thought, all we have to care about is clearing the hospitals, it does not matter if the nursing homes get infected. that was backwards, because if you take covid positive patients and put them in nursing homes, everybody will get infected at the nursing homes, then you have more people coming back to the hospital with serious illnesses. so those were literally catastrophic, fatal decisions. many people have been affected by those decisions. and that has not been as important or prominent in the conversation nationally as it needs to be. decisions around nursing homes, really, the overall problem we have had with people in nursing homes is really important for us to look at and think about what

we could do better with. florida did better. they were more intelligent early on saying, we will restrict visitations to nursing homes, we will not let the hospitals discharge positive patients back into nursing homes. that would only lead to more people back in the hospitals. that help to stem the tide of covid. so we have seen variation in state responses. it has been healthy in the sense that if we had a one-size-fits-all response from the federal government, when we did not know a lot in the beginning on how the virus behaved, i think we could've had much more negative consequences than we have had, allowing some room for experimentation and alternative approaches. host: tony in florida. good morning. caller: good morning. subjectu for having the being discussed on c-span. and the speaker -- i did not get

his name, but still the same. i would like to simply suggest that you consider thinking of s a social thing a illness, or social disease, so to speak. and look at it like that. with a second thing is, social issue like this, i believe it does not make sense to call in -- it's irrelevant whether you support joe biden or is -- justnt, here look at it like with the children and school. that's because they are socially innocent and they do not have the social stress and the challenges that older people face, so that is the reason why

they would not be affected by any illness or by a virus. you know, it is not so much immunity. that's just it. they are so well-balanced. that mindset, attitude, the desperation and everything, that when it comes to an illness, yeah. he of the part is if society as a whole is compromised, stressed and socially corrupt, and if they are morally corrupt, you know, uch, thereociety is s is no way heard immunity could -- herd immunity could work. if you want to look at it as a theory, that's simply not going to work. is is whatample -- th

i will end on -- if that patient is already psychologically, or mentally stressed, and is being compromised by all the issues and problems in his life, then of course he would be totally o fighting the t illness. that's what you need to consider. but you have not talked about it. the culture in america is already stressed and compromised to begin with. host: i will let you go. what are your thoughts? ofst: first of all, in terms the fact that children do not appear to be getting seriously ill or dying from covid-19, certainly not in meaningful numbers, i personally do believe there is a biological basis for that. we do not know what it is yet, but there are hypotheses and

theories related to the way that the virus interacts with what is ealled the ace receptor, or th converting enzyme receptor on various cell surfaces in children that may be different. at lease there is good reason to believe that there is biological data. i do want to say it is absolutely true that social disparities are a big part of why we have seen disparate challenges, particularly in the african-american population. i have testified in congress this year on this particular topic. it's pretty clear that african-americans are seeing a disparate impact from covid because of i would say the legacy of slavery and segregation, and how that has led to disparities despite our efforts to address those disparities. we can still see them, especially in health status and underlying conditions and that and a serious illness,

death possible from covid-19. so this pandemic has highlighted that. another thing the pandemic has highlighted is unemployment for minorities. prior to the pandemic, the unappointed rate for black was at a record low. for hispanics at a record though. for whites and asians also at record lows. races disparity between and unemployment was at record those. -- lows. those have gone out the window with the pandemic. that shows the cost of the lockdown. when you have lockdown, who is affected? it is not software engineers who can work from home, it is the everyday people who work at jobs where they are not in front of a computer into the cannot order -- of a computer all day. people who have to be at work have been the most damaged.

that is why it is important we are only engaging in lockdowns or economic restrictions that really have an impact on the virus. i am afraid in many states and localities we have gone too far. host: dave in california. caller: good morning. where notcalifornia, only did we have a lockdown, but we have had a mask mandate ever since it was recommended. and we have by far the most number of infections of any state in the country. a prettyhat we have good idea of what the infection rate of the population needs to be to make a significant difference in the transmission of this virus by looking at new york city. they have had such a terrible outbreak. now the infection reaches almost 0%. that is not because their behavior has changed. ithe outbreak was going full

force. what has changed is 30% of new yorkers have been infected and they have recovered from the virus. that's a good indication that people are not getting reinfected, because if they were, the new infection rate would be much higher. i have been disappointed that there has not been more of a debate about our approach in dealing with the pandemic. prolongoach has been to the pandemic as long as possible. and you can see what the damage has been. know, it is-- you true that there are more deaths that have or would have occurred if we had not taken this approach, but on the other hand the pandemic, we would be over with it -- the pandemic would be over much sooner. host: we appreciate that.

guest: well, several points to make. first, i agree with you, david, that i believe what appears to have happened in new york city and the new york city region is herd immunity. that was not the strategy . they locked down and did other things to try to stem the tide. major moveray was a of transmission. and because it is a dense city. other cities around the world did not have the same problem. i think there were some decisions made by new york that contributed to the problems there, but what we are seeing now is you are not seeing new cases, not because of the lockdown, but because there was massive transmission and fatalities. so i think that is an example of, you want to know what herd immunity is, new york city is a good example of that. the other point about california.

as i said, that is where they have had lockdowns, mask mandate, yet they still have the placesfection curve as like texas and florida, which have had a lighter touch with those measures. i want to make sure i am clear about this. i do believe that masks, wearing masks and distancing and washing hands do reduce transmissions, and they are things we should do to limit the spread of the virus as much as we can. if we want their economy to reopen, if we want a normal life, as close as possible, those are steps we you can take that we do not need the government to tell us to do, that can make a difference. host: what about events, like the sturgis bike rally. they reported about 4000 people there. positive,tested 260 so far, and one death reported from that now. was it too big of a gathering? guest: those are small numbers

when you consider the size of the gathering. there is a law of accumulated evidence at this point that when you are outdoors, transmission ust does not -- it j transmission as rapidly, or the probability of getting effective from somebody else is lower if you are outside. we had the big protests after the george floyd death. we have not seen a correlation between the big protests and the outbreaks in those specific locations. outdoor protests or gatherings do not appear to be as risky as crammed, indoor gatherings, particularly in places with poor ventilation. host: one more call from roseann. she's in wisconsin. caller: i had a couple questions. nobody seems to know the origin of the virus.

people have been talking about the bats, wet markets. looking at the history of sars, that supposedly happened with cats. mers came from the middle east. i was wondering, did the virus jump from species to species? another point i wanted to make, when you have a capitalistic society and you are talking about people not being able to are most people that compromised are the people that make terrible wages and they cannot afford good nutrition, like fruits and vegetables. then you have a compromised society of people that are overweight and have problems, because nutritional needs are not being met. so they purchase junk food instead of nutritional food, because of the wage disparity between the rich and the poor. i wondered what your comment would be on. guest: again, a number of points

brought up. in terms of the origin, i think there is reason to believe that it did originate in an animal, and then jumped to humans. this is a common occurrence with viruses jumping from one animal species to another. the famous 1918 pandemic, for example, the best theory is it originated in pigs. that is widely believed. has been swine flu virus to bird flu. it is common enough for them to jump from species to species and that could have been what happened in the wet markets or other laboratories in china. on the question on whether our economic system is the reason why the pandemic has been so challenging in the united states, um, we have seen pretty severe pandemics in a lot of

different countries with different types of economic systems. people who admire european, single-payer health care systems, one argument you hear is if we had a single-payer health care system, we would not have had a serious pandemic. but italy has a single-payer health care system and they were overwhelmed by covid-19. the united kingdom has a socialized system or the government is the insurance company and they on the hospital's, and they have had a more severe pandemic than the u.s. in terms of death per capita. and france, another single-payer country, they have had a comparable number of deaths compared to the u.s., per capita. so those countries with systems that people say, we should be more like them, they have also had serious pandemics. spain is another example. the large european countries, except for germany, all have had pandemics that are as severe as the u.s.

you hear people say, well, the u.s. has done the worst of any other country on covid-19. that is not true. if you look at deaths per capita. on our website, we put a lot of metrics up to take a look at the u.s.'s performance compared to other countries. the u.s. is not doing great, but other countries have done worse. and that is a point we should make more often. is president of the foundation for research on equal opportunity. c-span's washington journal, taking your calls live. we will discuss policy issues that impact you. the bipartisan policy center's discusses voting ahead of election 2020. and the editor-in-chief of the

journal of the american medical association talks about the u.s. response to covid-19. watch "washington journal" live 7:00 eastern friday morning. join the discussion with your facebook calls -- facebook comments, calls and tweets. friday joe biden talked about the pandemic's impact on the economy. live coverage begins at 12:00 eastern on c-span. graham, chair of the senate judiciary committee, discusses the role of judges with the federal judiciary. live coverage begins friday 2:00 eastern on c-span. [crowd noises]