captioning funded by cbs and ford. we go further, so you can. ( ticking ) >> people in the world report to you. i'm wondering what they're telling you what the height of unemployment will be. >> there will be more layoff, probably this month and next month. >> and your people are projecting what, 20%? 25%? >> those numbers sound about right for what the peak may be. >> how does the chairman imagine the country recovers from that? that's our story tonight. ( ticking ) >> to me he's nothing more than a really disgruntled, unhappy person. >> the president called you a disgruptdled employee. >> i am not disgruntled. i am frustrated at a lack of

leadership. i am frustrated at a lack of urgency. i am frustrated at our inability to be heard as scientists. those things frustrate me. ( ticking ) >> the physical world still is in charge. i've spent, you know, 30 years trying to get people to understand that physics and chemistry matter, that you can't spin them. they don't negotiate. >> looking back, mother earth was starting to clear her throat and make herself heard. pthe highest temperatures since records began. and then a pandemic bringing with it the tragic loss of 300,000 lives worldwide and counting. ( ticking ) >> i'm lesley stahl. >> i'm bill whitaker. >> i'm anderson cooper.

>> i'm scott pelley. those stories, tonight, on "60 minutes." ( ticking ) >> this portion of "60 minutes" is sponsored by progressive insurance. save when you bundle auto, home, or motorcycle insurance. visit progressive.com.

>> pelley: jerome powell shook washington, wall street and the world this past week when he warned the pandemic crisis threatens "lasting damage" to american prosperity. as chairman of the federal reserve, powell is among the most powerful people in the economy. he acted swiftly in the sharpest collapse since the great depression, but he fears congress's initial three

trillion dollar bailout will not be enough to save a generation from low growth and stagnant incomes. we asked chairman powell how high unemployment will go and how long it will take to see a recovery. he spoke to us this past wednesday after a blunt speech that gave markets a shove. mr. chairman, i just got a push notification on my phone: "dow tanks more than 500 points in wall street sell-off after fed chair warns economic recovery will be prolonged and bumpy." you knew that was coming. eewatching him.uths, tarkets his speech wednesday was a warning and a prayer. he raised the specter of a" prolonged recession and weak recovery" if the federal government doesn't use all its power to support business and workers. >> powell: i was really calling out a risk that i think is an important one for people to be cognizant of, the risk of longer-run damage to the

economy. and really, the good news is that we have the tools to limit that longer-run damage by continuing to provide support to households and businesses as we get through this. >> pelley: what metrics are you looking at here hour by hour, day to day, to divine what the future is going to be? >> powell: the thing that matters more than anything else is the medical metrics, frankly. it's the spread of the virus. the real-time economic data that we're seeing is just a function of how successful the social distancing measures are. so, the data we'll see for this quarter, which ends in june, will be very, very bad. there'll be a, you know, big decline in economic activity, big increase in unemployment. so what we're really looking at is getting the medical data, which is not what we usually look at, taken care of so that the economic data can start to recover. >> pelley: congress has already spent $3 trillion on relief. but another three trillion,

passed friday by house democrats, is a dead letter in the senate amid a partisan debate over how much to borrow. >> trump: we're in no rush. we're no rush. >> pelley: talk of slowing the economic response is among the reasons powell is speaking tonight. he's a republican, appointed by president trump. >> powell: congress has done a great deal and done it very quickly. there is no precedent in post- world war ii american history that's even close to what congress has done. and the question is, will it be enough? and i don't think we know the answer to that. it may well be that the fed has to do more. it may be that congress has to do more. >> pelley: as this period of time grows longer, what begins to happen to the economy? >> powell: there's a real risk that if people are out of work for long periods of time, that their skills atrophy a little bit and they lose contact with the workforce. longer and deeper recessions

tend to leave behind damage to people's careers. the small and medium size businesses that are so important to this country, if they have to go through a wave of avoidable insolvencies, you have-you've lost something there that's more than just a few businesses, you know, it's really the job creation machine. keeping people and businesses out of insolvency just for maybe three or six more months while the health authorities do what they can do. we can buy time with that. >> pelley: i was speaking to a former official of the federal reserve who said, "v-shape recovery, off the table. there's no chance." >> powell: well, i would say the main thing is to get back on the road to recovery. and i think that can happen relatively soon, likely to happen in the second half of the year. that's a reasonable expectation. after that, the path is going to depend on a range of things. it's very plausible that the

economy will take some time to gather momentum. >> pelley: we spoke to powell in the federal reserve boardroom. the washington headquarters was otherwise silent-- its staff working from home. the building dedicated in 1937 by f.d.r., was, itself, a depression era project to create construction jobs. the fed is the source of all u.s. currency and it regulates the economy by setting interest rates. in the depression, it was given vast power to lend money in an emergency. it used that authority for the first time in the 2008 collapse and for the second time, nine weeks ago. has the fed done all it can do? >> powell: well, there is a lot more we can do. we're not out of ammunition by a long shot. no, there's, there's really no limit to what we can do with these lending programs that we have. >> pelley: in march, as the dow collapsed 8,000 points and credit markets began to freeze,

powell called an emergency meeting on a sunday. he cut interest rates to near zero, and, in partnership with the treasury, the federal reserve offered more than $3 trillion in lending to banks, businesses, cities and states. with that assurance, the credit markets, essential to daily business, began to function again. fair to say you simply flooded the system with money? >> powell: yes, we did. that's another way to think about it. we did. >> pelley: where does it come from? do you just print it? >> powell: we print it digitally. so we-- you know, we-- as a central bank, we have the ability to create money digitally and we do that by buying treasury bills or bonds or other government guaranteed securities. and that actually increases the money supply. we also print actual currency and we distribute that through the federal reserve banks. >> pelley: but, by law, chairman powell's federal reserve can only lend money that must be paid back.

congress, he believes, should spend money to expand its historic bailout-after all, he says >> powell: this is not because there was some inherent problem, a housing bubble or something like that or the financial system in trouble, nothing like that. the economy was fine. the financial system was fine. we're doing this to protect ourselves from the virus. and that means that when the virus outbreak is behind us, the economy should be able to recover substantially. >> pelley: and what sort of support, in your view, do you think the congress would want to consider? >> powell: i don't give them advice on particular policies. but i would say, if i may, that policies that-- that help businesses avoid avoidable insolvencies and that do the same for individuals. keep workers in their homes, keep them paying their bills. keep families solvent. >> pelley: among the options: extending the increase in unemployment benefits which expires in july and supporting

powell believes trillions in additional federal debt could be paid down over decades. >> powell: the u.s. has been spending more than it's been taking in for some time. and that's something we're going to have to deal with. the time to do that is when the economy is strong. when unemployment is low, when economic activity is high, that's when you deal with that problem. this is not the time to prioritize that concern. we have the ability to borrow at low rates. we have the ability to service that debt. and i would say this is the time when we can use that strength to our longer run benefit. >> pelley: what economic reality do the american people need to be prepared for? >> powell: well, i would take a more optimistic cut at that, if i could, and that is-- this is a time of great suffering and difficulty. and it's come on us so quickly and with such force, that you

really can't put into words the pain people are feeling and the uncertainty they're realizing. and it's going to take a while for us to get back. but i would just say this. in the in the long run, and even in the medium run, you wouldn't want to bet against the american economy. this economy will recover. it may take a while. it may take a period of time. it could stretch through the end of next year. we really don't know. >> pelley: can there be a recovery without a reasonably effective vaccine? >> powell: assuming there's not a second wave of the coronavirus, i think you'll see the economy recover steadily through the second half of this year. so, for the economy to fully recover people will have to be fully confident and that may have to await the arrival of a vaccine. >> pelley: if an effective vaccine arrives, millions of doses are likely well over a year away. this month, president trump pressed states to reopen without a vaccine or adequate testing.

>> trump: well, i feel about vaccines like i feel about tests. this is going to go away without a vaccine. it's going to go away, and it's, we're not going to see it again, hopefully, after a period of time. >> pelley: chairman powell says vaccine development is highly uncertain and until then, major industries will suffer. >> powell: the parts that involve people being in the same place very close together. those parts of the economy will be challenged until people feel really safe again. >> pelley: sporting events, theaters? >> powell: i would think those would be very difficult. >> pelley: airlines? >> powell: it'll be quite challenging for them. lots of the rest of the economy though can move-- can move ahead. but we can't fully recover because those other parts of the economy matter. we can't fully recover though until people feel confident that they're safe. >> pelley: you are an enormous fan of the washington capitals. when do you think you're going to be comfortable going back to a game? >> powell: certainly no sooner than next season. generally, public sporting events, public concerts and

things like that, those will be among the last things that can be resumed. >> pelley: most states are taking early steps to reopen even though the u.s. lacks the testing capacity experts say is indispensable to success. if the economy reopens and the infection rate surges, what then? >> powell: the government would have to reintroduce the social distancing measures. and you would have another downturn. and that would be bad for confidence. so that's a risk we really want to avoid. you know, the virus hasn't gone away. the reason that cases have gone down and are declining is because people have been in their homes and not in their businesses and not out among crowds. >> pelley: powell told us the economy will shrink dramatically in the second quarter, april, may and june-- at an annualized rate of around 30%. this past week, the labor department reported a total of more than 35 million americans

had lost their jobs so far. the unemployment rate will be historic. and your people are projecting what, 20%? 25%? >> powell: there're a range of perspectives. but those are-those numbers sound about right for what the peak may be. >> pelley: 25% is the estimated height of unemployment during the great depression. do you think history will look back on this time and call this the second great depression? >> powel: no, i don't. i don't think that's a likely outcome at all. we had a very healthy economy two months ago. our financial system is strong. you have governments around the world and central banks around the world responding with great force and very quickly. and staying at it. so, i think all of those things point to what will be-it's going to be a very sharp downturn. it should be a much shorter downturn than you would associate with the 1930s. >> pelley: you expect the third quarter to see growth? >> powell: it's a reasonable

expectation that there'll be growth in the second half of the year. i would say though we're not going to get back to where we were quickly. we won't get back to where we were by the end of the year. that's unlikely to happen. >> pelley: in terms of the workforce, mr. chairman, who is getting hurt the worst by this downturn? >> powell: the people who're getting hurt the worst are the most recently hired, the lowest paid people. it's women to an extraordinary extent. of the people who were working in february, who were making less than $40,000 per year, almost 40% have lost their jobs in the last month or so. >> pelley: what gives you hope in this dark time? >> powell:. we have highly industrious people. we have the most dynamic economy in the world. and you know, we're the home of so much of the great technology in the world. so, in the long run, i would say the u.s. economy will recover. we'll get back to the place we were in february; we'll get to an even better place than that. i'm highly confident of that.

so, i think we're going to need to help each other through this. and we will. ( ticking )

>> norah o'donnell: dr. rick bright is the highest-ranking government scientist to charge the federal government's response to the coronavirus pandemic has been slow and chaotic. he says it has prioritized politics over science, and has cost people their lives. it has cost dr. bright his job. in april he was removed from a top position in the department. of health and human services, and transferred to what he considers a position of less stature and responsibility. dr. bright has filed a

whistleblower complaint running over 300 pages. president trump has called rick bright a disgruntled employee. in congressional testimony on thursday, bright claimed the government retaliated against him for telling the truth about the depth of the crisis. >> our window of opportunity is closing. if we fail to improve our response now based on science, i fear the pandemic will get worse and be prolonged. >> o'donnell: until a month ago, dr. rick bright led barda, the biomedical advanced research and development authority, a federal agency to which congress has handed more than five billion dollars to fund vaccine development, new anti-viral drugs, and badly-needed medical supplies. what is barda's mission? and how does it fit in the response to a coronavirus like this? >> rick bright: we focus on chemical threats, biological threats such as anthrax, nuclear threats, radiological threats, pandemic influenza and emerging

infectious diseases. >> o'donnell: he still speaks in the present tense, but rick bright isn't running barda anymore. the reasons trace back to the very first days of january, when he heard of a new coronavirus outbreak in wuhan, china. >> o'donnell: when did you first realize that this virus might be different? that this was the big one? >> bright: well, i have been trained my entire life to recognize these outbreaks and recognize viruses. i have a ph.d. in virology. i knew that all of the signs for a pandemic were present. a novel virus, infecting people, causing significant mortality and spreading. so all the signs were there. it was just a matter of time before that virus then jumped and left china and appeared in other countries. >> o'donnell: in early january when you were concerned about this virus, were other government officials on alert? >> bright: i believe my concerns were shared by other scientists in the government.

and i believe the n.i.h. was also moving very quickly to start some research in developing a vaccine and starting a clinical trial for an antiviral drug. what struck me though was my sense of urgency didn't seem to prevail across all of h.h.s. >> o'donnell: bright says that lack of urgency started with the boss of his department, health and human services secretary alex azar. he recalls a meeting azar chaired on january 23rd to discuss the coronavirus. >> bright: i was the only person in the room, however, that sai"" we're going to need vaccines and diagnostics and drugs. it's going to take a while and we need to get started." >> o'donnell: you were the only one to raise that? >> bright: yes. >> o'donnell: in your complaint, you said that secretary azar was intent on downplaying this catastrophic threat. why would he do that? >> bright: you know, i don't know why he would do that. >> o'donnell: president trump was also downplaying the threat.

he saithis a event i chary >>mpwe te r ntrol. we have very little problem in this country at this moment, five. >> bright: remember, the entire leadership was focused on containment. there was a belief that we could contain this virus and keep it out of the united states. containment doesn't work. containment does buy time. it could slow, it very well could slow the spread. but while you're slowing the spread, you better be doing something in parallel to be prepared for when that virus breaks out. that was my job. >> o'donnell: bright says he was well-equipped to do that job because just five months before the new virus emerged, his and other key agencies had concluded an exercise titled crimson contagion, premised on the exact idea of a fast-spreading virus originating in china. what did crimson contagion teach

you about fighting pandemics? what were the lessons? >> bright: they were lessons about shortages on critical supplies such as personal protective equipment, such as masks, n95 masks, gowns, goggles. and there were lessons about the need for funding. >> o'donnell: you had practiced this. >> bright: we had drilled. we had practiced. we've been through ebola, we've been through zika, we've been through h1n1. this was not a new thing for us. we knew exactly what to do. >> o'donnell: bright says one big lesson from crimson contagion-- was that the entire u.s. medical supply chain would be understocked and under stress for vaccines, testing, and personal protective equipment. >> bright: i had industry-- manufacturers, industry reps sending me emails almost every day, raising alarm bells that the supply chain was running dry, that america and the world

was in trouble. mike bowen was one of those people. he had been warning rick bright and barda for years. his small texas company, prestige ameritech, is one of just a few that still make surgical and n95 masks in the u.s. over the last 15 years, he says, 90% percent of the manufacturing has shifted abroad, where masks are cheaper to make. >> o'donnell: how long have you been telling anyone who would listen that, once a pandemic hits, that america would face a big problem? >> mike bowen: since 2007. and for 13 years, we told-- we told the story that a pandemic was going to come, the mask supply was going to collapse, and foreign health officials were going to cut off masks to the united states, and that's exactly what happened. >> o'donnell: bowen's factory near fort worth had several mask production lines sitting idle, and on january 22nd, he sent

rick bright an e-mail offering to reactivate those lines, which could produce seven million masks a month, but said he could only do it "with government help." mike bowen was offering to ramp up production. he's like, "i have the factory. i can make more masks." did you have the authority to say, "yes, let's do it?" >> bright: i did not, not in barda. i had the authority to push that need up into the right department in the-- in-- h.h.s., in our department. and i did so almost daily for a period of time. >> o'donnell: in fact on january 25th, you wrote your colleagues that, "the mask situation seems to be of concern, and we have been receiving warnings for over a week." how did they respond? >> bright: passively. they responded with a, "thank you for notification. we'll talk to the manufacturers ourselves and-- take appropriate action when it's needed." >> o'donnell: a day later, on january 26th, mike bowen was even more blunt in an e-mail to you, saying this: "the u.s. mask supply is at imminent risk.

rick, i think we're in deep ( bleep )." >> bright: he was exactly right. mike bowen saw this coming and was doing everything he could do to get the attention of the u.s. government to get us to act. though it took nearly two months, the u.s. government finally did act, ordering 500 million masks. >> o'donnell: a push for that came from peter navarro, president trump's director of trade and manufacturing policy, who has long been concerned about american industrial production shifting abroad, especially to china. president bush didn't fix the problem-- of manufacturing like this going overseas. president obama didn't. and neither has president trump. why is this so hard? >> bright: it's actually not hard. it does take a strategy. it does take a commitment. it does take some investment, as well. and again, it's not just about masks. >> o'donnell: you're telling me we've completely offshored our

ability to respond to a pandemic. >> bright: we have offshored a lot of our industry for critical supplies, critical health care supplies, and critical medicines to save money. >> o'donnell: in march, as hospitals were beginning to swell with critically ill covid- 19 patients, the search was on for any and all possible treatments. >> trump: hydroxychloroquine, i don't know it's looking like it's having some good results. i hope that that would be a phenomenal thing. >> o'donnell: the president began to tout the potential of a drug combination that he said in a tweet on march 21st had a "real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine." did you ever think that hydroxychloroquine would be a game changer? >> bright: no, never. and the limited data available told us that it could be dangerous. it could have negative side effects. and it could even lead to death.

>> o'donnell: according to bright's whistleblower complai"" on march 23, dr. bright received an urgent directive passed down from the white house, to drop everything and make" the drug "widely available to the american public." what was the reaction of your lead coronavirus scientist when you got this directive, "you've got to drop everything?" >> bright: i believe his expression was at the time that, you know, we've been hit by a bus. >> o'donnell: bright says his team tried to limit access to the drugs to hospital patients only, and he shared his concerns with a reporter. on april 21st, he was reassigned to what he considered a lesser role at the national institutes of health. you believe you were retaliated against because you raised concerns about hydroxychloroquine? >> bright: yes, i do. i believe my last ditch effort to protect americans from that drug was the final straw that

they used and believed was essential to push me out. >> o'donnell: h.h.s. firmly disputes that, claiming in a statement that bright's" whistleblower complaint is filled with one-sided arguments and misinformation." and secretary alex azar said it was bright who made the request for an emergency use authorization, or e.u.a., for hydroxychloroquine. >> alex azar: dr. bright literally signed the application for f.d.a. authorization of it. literally he's the sponsor of it! >> o'donnell: i mean, you say you were retaliated against. but at the same time, you did sign the e.u.a. >> bright: i was given a directive. i didn't have a choice, other than to leave at that time. and i went along and signed that letter knowing that we had contained access to that drug. the american healthcare system is being taxed to the limit. >> o'donnell: as rick bright was

testifying before congress on thursday, president trump weighed in. >> trump: i tell you what. i watched this guy for a little while thismorning. to me he's nothing more than a really disgruntled, unhappy person. >> o'donnell: the president called you a disgruntled employee. >> bright: i am not disgruntled. i am frustrated at a lack of leadership. i am frustrated at a lack of urgency to get a head start on developing lifesaving tools for americans. i'm frustrated at our inability to be heard as scientists. those things frustrate me. >> o'donnell: rick bright knows he won't be barda's director again, but he says he will report to his new position at the n.i.h. by the end of may, and hopes to continue to speak out about the coronavirus pandemic. >> bright: we don't yet have a

national strategy to respond fully to this pandemic. the best scientists that we have in our government who are working really hard to try to figure this out aren't getting that clear, cohesive leadership, strategic plan message yet. until they get that, it's still going to be chaotic. ( ticking ) >> for more on our coverage of the coronavirus, go to 60minutesovertime.com.

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and the spanish flu, warren harding popularized a phrase and ran for president on the sloga"" return to normalcy." he won the election, but there was no normalcy. there was a roaring and rambunctious decade that ended wth a depression. the same principle applies today. we might speak, achingly, of our pre-covid existences, but life has changed-abruptly, profoundly and irretrievably. we will, instead, go hurtling into a new era. the real reckoning of our age, maybe of our lifetime is not whether we will prevail over the virus. it's whether our respect for science, and our collective will, so muscular during the crisis, will prevail when we reboot and rebuild. let's start with a thought exercise: it's new year's eve heading into 2020, a number, ironically, associated with perfect vision and clarity. what's your response that night upon being told that soon there will be no live sports or

concerts or broadway shows? that grand central station at rush hour will look like this? that toilet paper might be more valuable than crude oil? that by spring, there will be food lines on the streets of new york, and more than 300,000 people worldwide will have died tragically. looking back, mother earth was starting to clear her throat and make herself heard: australian bush fires were ravaging the continent. earth had registered its highest temperatures since records began-- icebergs and glaciers melted, popsicles in the sun; there were floods and droughts; and swarms of locusts descending on africa. bill mckibben was one of the early climate change whistleblowers, so to speak. ever since, he has been issuing warnings on the danger of ignoring science. >> bill mckibben: one of the things that's so important here,

i think, is that we're being reminded that physical reality is real. >> wertheim: what do you mean by that? >> mckibben: we tend to forget that the physical world still is in charge. i've spent, you know, 30 years trying to get people to understand that physics and chemistry matter. that you can't spin them. they don't negotiate. they're not gonna compromise with you. you have to do what they say. >> wertheim: same goes for biology. on new year's eve, a chinese government website made quiet reference to "pneumonia of an unknown cause," clustered near a market in wuhan. it was, of course, the coronavirus. >> mckibben: biology just doesn't care. it doesn't care that it's causing a recession, you know? it's not going to back off because it's an election year. i mean, it just-- doesn't give a fig about any of that, you know? so you have to respect that, and that's hard for us because we're kind of used to a world where,

you know, we run everything that there is to run. >> wertheim: yet by may, half the planet's population would be on lockdown, including frank snowden, a professor emeritus of history at yale. only months earlier, he'd published a book titled" epidemics and society: from the black death to the present." you've seen the movie before? >> frank snowden: i have seen parts of the movie; other parts have changed. the science is very different, but yes the plot is similar. >> wertheim: this semester, while on a research trip in rome, the professor came into contact with his subject matter, quite literally. he contracted covid-19 and was quarantined. he couldn't help but notice that the methods used today to contain the virus were all too familiar-- from the bubonic plague of the 1300s to the cholera pandemic of the 1800s. >> snowden: our public health methods were built on the plague-- precedents. and so they had quarantine.

they had social distancing. they had-lockdowns. doctors actually wore p.p.e. and what they had was a mask. we know about that. theirs was differently shaped. it had a long beak. and they put sweet-smelling herbs in it to keep the foul odors away. but in addition, they carried a long rod or verger and the doctor would physically keep people at a distance. >> wertheim: he says there's comfort in history; we've been here before. and the real source of optimism might come from knowing that the aftermath of plagues has, consistently, brought about some of the great transformations, leaving societies looking radically different. order comes from chaos. you say it's not all doom and gloom. what are some other specific advancements that have come out of plagues? >> snowden: they introduced sewer systems, toilets-- they-- set housing regulations, paved streets.

so the hygiene of modern cities that we see today was built, in large part, on the sanitary measures that grew out of the terrible experience of asiatic cholera. >> wertheim: you're talking about real enhancements that we've enjoyed for centuries that have sprung from plagues. >> snowden: yes, that's absolutely correct. >> wertheim: but before we advance, we must survive. survive what is being termed," the war," an analogy used to help us conceive of the inconceivable. weapons. armor. provisions. casualties. emergency medics. valor on the front lines. but leave it to a novelist to pick apart flawed imagery. arundhati roy lives in delhi, where she's written a defining account of the covid crisis for the "financial times." you wrote that this virus has mocked immigration controls, biometrics, border surveillance. what did you mean by that? >> arundhati roy: well, i just meant that, you know, the world

has spent so much time-- guarding its borders against-- the outsider or the enemy, you know? and somehow it has attacked the most powerful countries in the world, in-- in the most tragically powerful way. >> wertheim: no defense budget can-- can repel this? >> roy: no defense budget. they refer to it as a war. but if it were a war, then nobody would be better prepared than the united states, you know? if it-- if it were that you needed nuclear missiles or depleted uranium or bunker busters or tanks or submarines or whatever it is, there would be plenty. but there aren't swabs. there aren't gloves. there aren't masks. there isn't medicine. >> wertheim: and these microbes are no conventional enemy. they outnumber us, they mutate, they travel undetected, indifferent to what country we come from, the size of our

social media following, or our net worth. so it is that coronavirus has consigned athletes, the alphas of our society, to their basements and yards, freezing their careers. it has grounded concert tours, the air now wallpapered by different musical acts, some less famous, all less mobile. coronavirus has exposed fissures in our society-- cities, of course, are particularly hard- hit. their hum and thrum silenced, their beating hearts no longer pulsing with life. the poor are bearing the brunt, suffering, and dying, disproportionately.

social distancing, never mind zoom conferencing, is an impossible luxury to many. different places experience this horror differently. different ages, too. an entire generation of students sits in a kind of virtual detention, no fault of their own, unsure when and how they will graduate or restart school. time and space have unraveled for us all. and arundhati roy has some analogies. >> roy: right now it feels as though we have no present, you know? we have a past. and we have a future. and right now we're in some sort of transit lounge. and there isn't any connection between the past and the future. we should not be trying to stitch them together without thinking about that rupture, you know? and that rupture is not just one of production and consumption and all our-- you know, it's-- i think the most profound thing is the rupture of the idea of touch, you know, the idea of proximity.

all these things will become so laden with risk and fear for a long, long time. ♪ ♪ >> wertheim: if microbes have the ability to create a rupture in the lives of billions, we humans have our own powers and evolutionary advantages. our intelligence, empathy, and our ability to cooperate. it's hard to conceive of another time in human history when, worldwide, the best minds of our generation were all fixated on solving the same riddle, scribbling on the same blackboard, sharing data and sharing screens. and it is precisely this spirit that will determine how the aftermath of covid-19 transforms us and shapes our future. do we reimagine health care, now that we've seen how easily systems stress and lock out so many? and what about the gulfs between rich and poor? maybe the biggest decision of all: now that the planet has essentially hissed "i will not

be ignored," how do we confront the climate emergency? it's been the life-work of the environmentalist bill mckibben, who is also a distinguished scholar at middlebury college. you see a real way to use this catastrophe as opportunity? >> mckibben: well, what choice does one have, really, in a-- in a crisis but to try and-- and make something useful of it? i mean, the dumbest thing to do would just be to set up all the pins in the bowling alley one more time exactly the same way. here we are, where robert frost, you know, lived for the last 40 years of his life, in the woods of vermont. wrote many of his great poems. maybe his most famous poem is about the two roads diverging in the wood, you know? maybe it's sort of time to think about taking-- the slightly less traveled one. >> wertheim: what-- what does the less traveled road look like here? >> mckibben: we've spent the last 75 to 100 years really fixated-- in our country and

increasingly around the world, on economic growth as the reason for all being. and you know, for the most part, that's where there-- at least for a while, that worked out pretty well. lot of people were pulled out of poverty, whatever else. but we've begun to sense the limits of that too. that's why the temperature keeps rising. >> wertheim: look no further than what's happened during the crisis. the shutdown to industry has offered a glimpse of what collective response can look like. arundhati roy's india is home to 17 of the world's 25 most polluted cities; and not coincidentally the world's fastest growing major economy. what is it normally like in delhi? >> roy: well, normally it is dystopian, you know? especially in the winter months. sometimes that smog is not just outside your house, it's inside your house, inside the rooms, you know? so that's how terrible delhi is.

and suddenly we're just seeing blue skies. >> wertheim: and it's like this, from shanghai to secaucus. by circumstance and not design, a glimpse of life with fewer fossil fuels, nd already the clean and quiet surroundings have found favor with wildlife. what does that tell you about the earth's ability to rebound and snap back? >> mckibben: well, maybe we still have a window to-- to take a step back. and if we do, maybe the earth will meet us halfway. >> wertheim: and when people say, need to get thisstar we need to jump back on planes. this climate change, that can wait," what do you say? >> mckibben: well, it obviously can't wait. you've got to pay attention to reality or else you end up getting bit by it, and bit pretty hard, okay? >> wertheim: you're saying flatten another curve? >> mckibben: flatten another curve.

flatten the carbon curve too. and-- anif we did that, then people might look back in 50 years at this time and thank us, you know, instead of curse us. because those are the two possibilities. ( ticking )

>> dickerson: this was supposed to be the last broadcast of our season. but seasons are jumbled in the age of covid-19. spring has been taken and summer is thinning. if there is baseball, the season will be shorter and with no fans. the boardwalk might look a little more like it does in winter. it's just one of the ways time has come untethered. days smear into days, when, for many, the commute is just across the living room. weekends lose their shape. every day seems to be tuesday. but there are still 60 minutes in an hour, and for one more month, "60 minutes" on sunday night. we'll be here with new shows in june, grateful to stay a part of your routine a little longer. we'll still hope though; to get back to losing track of time for the usual reasons you do during summer: to watch a sunset, or swim a little longer at the

lake, or stay out on the stoop to watch the kids who called us there with their laughter. i'm john dickerson, next week cbs will present the movie "titanic," but we'll be back in two weeks with a new edition of "60 minutes." ( ticking )

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