information technology -- a lot úbusinesses. money went to big what equity actions have your task force presented to the governor so far? >> i break it down into short- term and long-term. short-term we need to make the needs of the families of california that are hurting the most and that includes taking care of their healthcare needs. we have millions of hungry people in our state. it is critical and the governor is on this intensely to make sure people are being fed. longer-term we need programs about creating jobs, getting

them back to work, making sure the education system and enables them to reach their potential so we have a short- term specific need to make me needs today and the longer-term goal of creating a structure that addresses economic inequity in our state. >> reporter: time is of the essence. have you presented the governor with specific action items? >> absolutely. look, we advise him on all of the business decisions he is making so the protocols for opening up a retail store, he is getting information from some of the 15 labor leaders who are on our task force, making sure that those protocols protect the health and safety of workers. he is getting advice from people who run thousands of retail stores around the world about what is practical to go, what can effectively be done so that in fact it will work for the working people and for the

customers. so we are doing that right now, as he considers what kind of infrastructure program to propose. we are giving him input on the different things that business can see will in fact produce jobs, produce productivity, make us more competitive, make us more equitable and sustainable. that is something that is going on on a daily basis. we are not trying to use a nice thick book to give to the governor in 6 months. we are trying to advise him on day-to-day decisions for the immediate term, doing lots of research on a daily basis to come back with the best informed decisions and long- term for a plan to structure a better california for the future. >> mr. tire -- they are before i let you go, i need to ask you a question that will seem in delicate. you are a wealthy white man. what makes you care so much about equity in a state and the nation?

>> well, i think, i am still a human being and i, my heart goes out to other human beings because i can see myself and my family now and so, one of the most moving experiences i have had with this, my partner and i have been associated with california food for california kids and seeing kids who need free and reduced lunch eat a healthy lunch on a sunny day outdoors in california is one of the most moving and meaningful experiences of my life. and, you know, that is what drives me is i can see in an 8- year-old, i am picturing him right now, down and send send has a with figures sticking out with a big smile eating a fish taco. that is incredibly meaningful.

>> mr. tom steyer, thank you very much, mr. tom steyer, task force on business recovery. >> thank you. >> straddling arizona, new mexico and utah, navajo nation now has the highest rate of infection per capita in the united states. the nation which is roughly the size of west virginia lacks comprehensive healthcare and only 60% of all residents have running water. residents have been wearing masks for 6 weeks and dividing by 57 our weekend lockdown spends. since late april, -- to help the vulnerable committee. joining me now is a professor of medicine at uc fs that has treated hunters hundreds of patients in the navajo nation, joining us by skype. doctor, thank you so much for being with us.

>> thanks for having me. you have been going out to the navajo nation since 2015 but this was a special trip to assist with the pandemic surge response. why is there such a high rate of infection there? >> well, there are several reasons why when you talk about the history of navajo nation is a history of neglect of native americans in the united states and so, you have genocide, broken treaties and you have a health system that is underfunded so one third of the rate per capita that the indian health service which takes care of the navajo population is funded only one third of what the va is funded and medicare and then you have as you mentioned, in your opening, a lack of electricity or running water for one third of the population and so when you talk about shelter in place which might be an atv, it is an impossibility for many navajo

folks and going into this beautiful, expansive definition of family that a lot of navajo communities have where several generations live in close quarters. it is really hard if one person is positive and you see these family clusters that we are seeing. lastly, i will say that there is higher rates of diabetes or obesity, severalfold compared to the general population but when you talk about 27,000 square miles across navajo nation, the size of west virginia, there is actually only 13 grocery stores and west virginia has 162 in comparison so if you are talking about, you know, comorbidities like that, obesity, being in a food desert and having mostly access to processed foods is one of the major risk factors we are seeing. >> as a doctor, what have you learned about covid-19 from treating hundreds of patients? >> in navajo nation, it is very humbling in a lot of ways because what i know as a doctor , i see so many types of pneumonias and i did not see

enough patients in san francisco that when i went over to navajo nation, you know, general you start to get good at what can i predict. this patient is coming into the emergency room. i see them and i can predict their course and actually in covid-19 you sometimes people that i thought would do exceptionally well start to go up in their oxygen and we end up intubating them and they get flown out to flagstaff or albuquerque or phoenix and some people actually peek at that oxygen level, high flow oxygen and you really think that you are going to have to intimate them and actually they turn around and turn the corner so it is actually one of these very humbling diseases and, you know, from our standpoint, we don't have a lot of therapies. we are starting to get rem to severe so it is really supportive care with oxygen and really, i felt like a cheerleader for a lot of our patients just trying to get them through and give them hope that they would survive.

>> doctor, we are certainly seeing across the nation that covid-19 has laid bare many of the inequities across our country and that is really seen in navajo nation which is a prime example of how poor people are suffering much worse than people in wealthier areas. can you speak to us about this in equity and what you think can be done to change that? >> that is absolutely true. i think that, i have worked in navajo nation since 2015 and a lot of the conversations we are having know about rationing care, being understaffed, to take care of patients, all of that existed long before people were paying attention to navajo nation and across the united states, if you are paying attention, whether it is the black population of chicago or new orleans or native americans, for example, native americans only make up 11% of

the new mexico populatin there are one third of covid-19 cases and 31% of blacks both live in chicago i make up 60% of the deaths and these are inequities that are so clear and it is very apparent but what we have to do, as americans is pay attention to our history and i think in the united states, whether you are talking about george floyd and the protests in minneapolis or the genocide, the history of broken treaties in the navajo nation, this has relevance to this moment and if covid-19 is going to be a portal to a more just america, we have to look in the mirror at ourselves so when there is vaccinations or drugs, how do we place the needs as the first ones that have access to in historically and in whole covid- 19 they have been the last ones.

>> is there a store you can share with us that illustrates the navajo community, their resilience or perhaps the challenges they face? >> sure. last week, i was in chinle, arizona, right in the heart of the navajo nation and i was taking care of a woman who was probably close to 60 years old and she was very sick, on high flow oxygen and she was telling me that for two weeks before she came into the hospital, she was very short of breath, was having fevers and chills and she stayed in her pickup truck. she laid down a blanket and she stayed in her pickup truck with fevers and chills in order to not expose her 85-year-old parents and so in navajo nation, the level of kinship and the level of family commitment is so beautiful and it is just a cornerstone of who they are as a people and so we so, i saw this woman who was a very

resilient, you know, highly, like beautiful person and had just suffered for two weeks before she came into the hospital in order to protect her elders and that is what we are seeing over and over again that the elders are so incredibly important to the community and i hear over and over again that despite this difficult time, there is a navajo saying of "we will walk in beauty once again," and that so that is what we hear from a lot of our patients, even through their struggle and through their pain. i left taking care of her and one of my colleagues was taking care of her the next weekend he said, without -- an unsolicited comment that came from her was that dr. shuri made me believe that i will get through this and now she is sharing a room with another patient and she said i am doing the same for my

patient, my next-door neighbor and in the hospital and so she was down to two liters, getting close to discharge and like i mentioned, she is somebody that could very easily have gotten intubated and flown out to another part of the state and instead, she kind of turned the corner and she is going to be going home soon. make it must feel great to see the work that you are doing having such effect. doctor, thank you for your time and for your help out there. >> thanks so much for having me. working from home has become the new norm for many in the age of coronavirus. some tech companies like twitter and square are allowing their employees to work from home indefinitely and as the ability to work away from the office becomes more robust, then he will have different choices about where to live. but will cities continue to thrive in this new reality or will they empty out? driven in part by fears of

another opera, we start a new closing seven tonight in which we will look at the systemic problems the pandemic is revealing and the opportunities for change. this evening, we focus on the future of cities. joining me by skype is wally turner, a lecturer at the hospital -- school of business at uc berkeley. molly, thank you for joining us. >> happy to be here. >> let's start with a case study. let's look at facebook, they headquartered in menlo park, offices in san francisco and said in the next decade half of their workforce could be working remotely. how much will that impact those two cities which have lied on there revenue, tax revenue and ancillary spending? >> there is a difference between an employer giving employees the opportunity to work remotely and employees actually wanting to do that every day of the week. i think a lot of the surveys úthat have come out show us tha employees do want flexibility but that does not mean they want to work remotely forever. they still value face-to-face interaction and of course,

there are a lot of jobs that cannot be done remotely and we have seen the impact on those jobs through the shelter in place. while some small percentage of workers may choose to work remotely and in fact leave the bay area, i don't think it is going to have a dramatic effect on silicon valley's economy. >> interest in what about the need for people to feel safe in cities? do people want to be living clustered together, congregating one it seems like disease can be spread so much more easily when you are close together with other people? cities have to make a specific marketing appeal to say, we are safe, come live here, come work here. >> look, there are plenty of big cities across the world that have managed to contain this pandemic. living in a big city does not have to be this dangerous and in fact, cities have persisted through pandemics for centuries, and living in cities has always had high cost. high rent, noise, contagion, congestion but people continue to choose to live in cities not just because of where the jobs and economic opportunity about also diversity and living in

cities is better for our planet when we choose to live in density with each other, use resources efficiently and preserve agricultural and open land. >> interesting. the pandemic has upended not only our daily lives but is giving us an opportunity to look at our social systems. what are the most innovative ideas being floated right now when it comes to managing population growth and urban density? >> there are really interesting silver linings to this. first of all, we have seen amazing regional collaboration among the bay area counties, something urban planners like me have wanted for years if only we could collaborate regionally like that on a regional transportation system to increase public transit around the entire region. housing is another thing that we need more regional collaboration on. it has been really interesting to see a lot of cities that have resisted formalizing homeless tent and campus like

san francisco, actually really invest in that right now and so quickly. it has been really interesting to see cities that have really been afraid to take space away from cars and allocate that to bicycles and pedestrians, doing that so quickly. look at oakland, dedicating a huge number of streets to slow street and creating this massive trend across the u.s. cities. there are some really inspiring big decisions that city leaders can be making right now. >> is there an equity lines we could be looking at this through, as people move through to perhaps smaller cities or other places across the country? what opportunities arise within the city? >> absolutely, i think as some percentage of workers choose to leave the bay area, choose to work remotely or may have lost their jobs and therefore choose to leave leave the bay area, that may actually be pretty good for u.s. cities because right now, superstar cities like separate cisco have the

disproportionate share of tech and knowledge workers and if those jobs are distributed across more cities, that could not only help second and third tier cities across the country but that could also leave room for more people who want to and need to live in the bay area. mcmullen, what institutional changes need to be put into the works right now during this window of potential opportunity in order for there to be a better city tomorrow? >> we need to be able to make some really big decisions that we have been dragging our feet on all along. we already know what we need to do to make the bay area more affordable. more easy to get around and more equitable. that is not rocket science. we know we need to do. we have dragged our feet making big decisions and that means regional collaboration, investing in housing development, more affordable housing development and housing development across the region and investing in a regional transportation network. these are all things that we had plans for but we just need

to take this opportunity to actually implement them. >> what do you think are the odds that these changes will take place? >> i'm really hopeful because i am already seeing a city leaders across the region make these big decisions. just look at how quickly the city of oakland was able to open a huge network of slow streets. we can move quickly and make decisions if we want to so i say 100% likelihood that we as a region can make these decisions. >> where do you see the obstacles? >> you know, we are politically divided in this region just as we are in the nation and i think we need to find opportunities of shared values and focus on outcomes. and i see that happening as we make these tough decisions, city by city and region by region. i know it can be done. we have to put the politics

aside and figure out how we can achieve these shared goals we have picked. >> there are people we could point to around the world that we can emulate to handle some of these problems like congestion or housing shortages. make sure, so some northern european cities have been really inspiring when it comes to some of the big transportation decisions we have been making lately. i believe lithuania was one of the first cities to open its streets for restaurants and other small businesses and restaurants to continue businesses outside and that is something we are seeing u.s. cities across the country start to adopt is a policy. a lot of denmark and sweden and norway have really great active transportation first polities where they prioritize and invest in infrastructure for bicycles and walking over private vehicles. that is something that transportation planners have been looking at for years. and we are seeing them lead the way again right now so there

are plenty of cities that have great examples for us to follow. >> so, molly, great ideas but let's talk about where the rubber hits the road. we are in a massive deficit in this state. $54 billion in deficit and the federal picture is not looking great either. what real likelihood is there of funding these projects and these ideas? >> well, i think, first of all we can prioritize projects that are not as expensive, creating bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure is a pretty affordable transportation investment, a lot more than building another train right now. second of all, i think in california and the bay area, we really need to rethink our tax structure. right now, with property taxes frozen, we are reliant on taxing income which is really difficult during an economic downturn like this. so, for example, prop 13 reform will be on the ballot this

november and we, as a state, have an opportunity to rethink how we want to tax commercial real estate and that could be a huge boon, particularly for school budgets right now so there is going to be a interesting debate about whether or not that is a reasonable solution during this economic downturn . >> molly turner with uc berkeley, thank you so much. >> thank you. as always, you can find more of our coverage at kqed.org/ kqed newsroom. you can reach me through my social media handle. thank you for watching. stay safe.

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