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♪ Say bottom's up ♪

♪ That's what I said now ♪

♪ I want more ♪

♪ That's what I said now ♪

♪ Hands up now, everybody ♪

♪ Hands up now, everybody ♪

♪ Hands up now ♪

- The coronovirus. - The coronovirus.

COVID-19.

Coronavirus officially hitting the US.

The coronavirus on both coasts.

This virus does not respect borders.

What we've got here is

failure to communicate.

As the novel coronavirus made landfall

in the US,

an air of extreme uncertainty fell over the nation.

Despite spreading in China and Europe for several weeks,

the initial information surrounding COVID-19 was mixed.

When COVID struck, you know, we,

this was a

this was a big new thing.

We hadn't seen anything exactly like this

and it was crisis for all of us.

We didn't know what was coming.

We didn't know how bad it was going to be.

We'd all been trained, of course, in PPE, in isolation,

we do that every day in the hospital

with, you know, different patients,

TB and different infections

that we isolate patients for.

We were used to that,

but what we weren't used to was not knowing

how bad it was going to get,

or exactly what these patients were going to look like.

It was a new thing.

I found three weeks in that I felt so unsteady

and confused and I think everybody has.

And I think that's why a lot of people

don't take it seriously.

I think that's why a lot of people

are taking it way too seriously.

It's just really confusing for everyone.

So there's so much that we don't know still

about COVID in general.

Right now, the scientific community thinks

that for those aged 18 or so, and under,

the risk is much lower relative to people who are older.

In the spring and summer of 2020,

dozens of Georgia residents were interviewed

about COVID-19 shutdown policies.

Their backgrounds were as diverse as their opinions

but their experience made one thing very clear.

This wasn't just a story about Georgia.

What happened in your state happened everywhere.

You know, you hear the rhetoric from Republicans

is that it's

not more severe than the flu.

It's not going to harm people

as we initially thought it would.

And then when you talk to members in the democratic side,

it's very much based on science.

There are going to be millions of people dying.

And I don't think there's any way to get around that.

The immediate risk of this virus

to the American public remains low.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of three to 5%.

- .1% - About 3.4%

- Between two and 3%. - Down to 1%.

- Around 10%. - About .6%.

- Evolving situation. - Similar to the season flu.

This is not the common flu, severe influenza season.

10 times more than the seasonal flu.

And we know 80% of the population

is going to survive.

There's a lot of information

that is not what the people originally got.

And then the news constantly changes,

oh, it stays in the air.

Oh, it doesn't stay in there.

Oh, it's in your clothes.

Oh, it's not in your clothes.

Airborne transmission.

Doesn't fly around in the air.

- Sore throat. - Fever, cough.

Headache and shortness of breath.

An alternation in smell.

Is more like a slow burn.

The fear is gonna cause the damage,

not the virus.

From the beginning, battle lines were drawn

across political and ideological fronts.

As conflicting information arose,

society became further polarized.

There were mayors in different cities

or city managers in different cities

that assessed the threat of COVID-19 differently.

You know, when you got on those group calls,

some people took it very seriously

and some people in different communities,

different community leaders did not.

At this point, the pandemic has been politicized

so aggressively, so ferociously,

and I am fearful that this is because

it is an election year,

that it makes the stakes much higher.

It's become very hyper-partisaned.

And at the end of the day, it really should be

about what is in the best interest of all of our citizens.

And it's a tough situation for any elected official

to be in right now.

I believe that there are people in politics right now

that love their power and their position

more than they love this country.

And they're willing to do whatever it takes

to maintain that power,

if it means creating panic,

if it will help get the administration that's in now, out,

they're willing to do whatever it takes.

The first coronavirus death.

The new developments in the coronavirus.

Researchers suggest coronavirus

had already been circulated...

Prepare of the expected, the unexpected

and the unimaginable.

I felt responsible in the job that I have

for making sure that we were in the best situation

that we could be day-to-day

for the operation of the hospital.

And thankfully, our numbers never got out of hand.

We were able to keep it all to one unit.

Our COVID patient population,

the ones that ended up in ICU tended to be older

and have coexisting conditions.

To us, Regency Manor is not just a business.

It's really an extension of our family.

The first month was horrible,

because we weren't sure if anybody,

if any of us has COVID, you know, so,

that first two three weeks of

we would get the residents up in stages.

So literally all day,

the first month was getting people up,

breakfast, you know,

lunch, dinner in phases, you know, two at a time.

So all day long we were eating.

I really believe that once you've lived a little bit,

I think you, I think even the fear of calamity

or death or whatever

is not nearly as strong as when you're younger.

I think most of the residents

have done great things in their lives,

have traveled, have done a lot of great things.

I don't really think they're necessarily

very concerned or afraid of death or,

you know, which is kind of a nice thing.

My firm belief is that

at the federal level and at the state level,

this has been mishandled so intensely,

and again, we were trying to work very quickly.

Everybody's trying to work quickly

and understand what was going on,

but it became pretty clear early on

that those is in long-term care facilities,

especially those in nursing homes were very vulnerable.

And it is true that many of the deaths

that have been experienced thus far,

in terms of the pandemic in the United States,

have occurred in long-term care facilities.

It is without a doubt also true

that many of those facilities struggle to meet their needs

on a daily basis, completely pre-pandemic.

The White House and Congress

reached a deal early this morning

on the economic rescue package

that dwarfs the entire national...

Throw and economic lifeline to businesses

and to workers...

Providing over 800 billion dollars in support

for businesses, big and small.

At last, we have a deal.

All government expenditures come from two primary sources,

taxes and borrowing.

You know, I heard about the PPP

and I immediately went on their site.

Well, first round, they didn't have their stuff together.

I mean it literally, they didn't even take our application.

And then all the first part was gone.

So then the second part of the stimulus came in,

and I thought, this is ridiculous.

Everybody's getting, you know,

a bail of money except us.

Right now to this day,

I get almost a hundred emails a day about unemployment.

And it's so far behind now

that there are people that are at-risk

of losing their homes, you know,

and losing everything just because

they just haven't gotten to their name yet in the system.

Well, I believe that as finances are distributed,

it depends on the priority of the people

that are distributing the money.

And whether it's nursing homes or not,

they're the ones that are,

they're picking the ones that get the money.

I probably applied to about six

or seven places, literally.

I would just stay on the computer and just apply.

And finally, they did, ultimately.

It was not what

we were led to believe.

I would say,

it was about 60% of what I thought we qualified for.

As you adequately put, the problem is choice.

As confirmed cases of COVID-19 began

to increase and exactly one week after,

16 Gwinnett County cities closed all bars and restaurants.

Gwinnett County commission chairman, Charlotte Nash,

issued a county-wide shelter-in-place order, on March 27th.

Well, I think the policy itself was a sound.

I think the county went about it the right way

to craft a shelter-in-place order.

Did it take time to put in place?

Yes, but these things are not done overnight.

It was really sort of a joint effort

between the county and the cities about the same time.

My name is Curt Yeomans.

I am the senior reporter at the Gwinnett Daily Post

in Lawrenceville, Georgia.

They released a statement saying,

we're just going to shut everything down.

And that was, of course, before the state stepped in

with its own order from the governor,

which superseded any local ordinances.

We came in at eight o'clock that morning.

It was a one day special session

to give emergency powers to Governor Kemp.

And so it was pretty common sense for me

as a representative and as a constitutional conservative

that I was not going to support the unlimited power

but I would support the 30 day renewal

because I thought it was responsible and it was reasonable.

We had to have a special session

where we all came in during the pandemic,

and what we had to do was basically,

give the governor his emergency powers.

And in doing that,

we basically relinquished our legislative powers.

It actually turned into a seven hour almost standoff

about how long he should have those emergency powers.

So there was one camp that basically said,

that we need to come back in 30 days

and decide if we're going to renew.

And another campus that said,

we need to give him the power to renew on his own.

It came down to a vote

and everybody that said that they were not going

to vote for the unlimited

voted for the unlimited, except me.

Now, I'm not sure why a lot of people voted yes to it.

I think a lot of it had to do with fear,

fear of their seats, fear of their power,

fear of retribution for the media, maybe,

fear of retribution from the leadership.

On Thursday, April 2nd,

following in the footsteps of city and county governments

and state governors elsewhere,

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp

issued a statewide shelter-in-place order.

So we had something unique

for Gwinnett County that fit the needs of Gwinnett County.

The governor's order, what it did,

was superseded all of that

and really trampled the home rule authority

or local control of counties

and municipalities all across Georgia.

It was never said how many lives they might save

or how many cases they might avoid.

They just wanted to limit the chance

that there would be spread in the community, in general.

They didn't really want anybody to catch the disease.

The goal to shut down was to minimize the spread

of the coronavirus.

Really about health care supply.

A reaction to the numbers.

They're saying it was for healthcare.

I would think that any crisis would be just as big

as the shutdown decision in any crisis,

whether it is a natural disaster or a manmade disaster,

or a pandemic.

I would think that as a leader,

you would have to make a very tough decision

on whether to continue operating or to shut down

and always making a decision

in the best interest of our constituents.

This is one of the toughest decisions

that anyone could make.

And then when you look at it, everybody was involved.

There was no Democrats, there was no Republicans,

no libertarians.

Everybody came on board

and realized we've got to do something.

Specifically, the data that were forefront

in that decision really centered

around health care supplies.

So there's a lot of language that's been used

about flattening the curve.

The whole idea, of course,

of these shelter-in-place ordinances and policies

were to try to basically prevent our healthcare system

from being completely overwhelmed.

I think it's helping limit the spread...

Of the virus

you know, the pandemic.

And that's what kind of the important message

to get to policy makers is that

limiting the spread of the virus

and kind of stalling along until we can get treatments,

therapies and vaccines

will help the economy in the longer run

because we'll actually be able to get back

into business faster.

The governor now issuing

a statewide shelter-in-place order.

Statewide order for people to stay at home stay.

Stay home.

I think people are enjoying being reconnected

to their families.

What I found is that I'm able to get back

really to the basics.

And what I've observed is that

there's been so much growth within my own three kids.

I missed it, working.

I totally missed the autonomy that they've gained.

The benefits for the citizens public safety,

I mean, we're in the middle,

or we're still in the middle

of a deadly public health pandemic.

And this public health is a vital function

of local government, of county government.

If I told you, don't go out into the world,

don't get any germs,

don't associate with anybody,

you might remain healthy,

you might not get a cold,

you might not catch any viruses,

but what's that going to do to you emotionally,

psychologically, or even physically?

There are always going to be challenges

in making any decisions because whatever decision you make,

whether it's about a law or health or anything else,

it's going to affect lives.

The social distancing and the shutdowns,

the most immediate and direct impact, is of course,

in those industries that require in-person

kinds of activities.

My name is Normal Scholz.

This is The Globe, Athens, Georgia.

Currently, the general manager and also a part owner.

We've been watching the situation

obviously for weeks before.

And we actually closed down the 17th,

the afternoon of the 17th.

That was the,

I believe that was the stay-at-home for Athens Clark County,

passed their separate stay-at-home.

And we went ahead and shut down.

It was really unusual.

The 17th was St. Patrick's Day,

which is typically a massive, massive day for us.

High formation, Christian Payne, fullback..

He blocks the...

Decided just to go ahead and close it down,

if it was going to be that,

if it was that risky to be open,

then we figured it wasn't worthwhile to be open.

And again, the business numbers, just,

the sales just didn't really, weren't worthwhile anyway.

My name's Terry Hanley.

I'm the owner of of Black Diamond Grill in Cumming, Georgia.

We shut down for six weeks.

So at that point we had let all our employees go.

We've offered all of them jobs again.

I think most everybody knew what was going to happen

just from what the media had expressed

and what was going on in the world.

I think everybody knew there would be

some type of restrictions in every business.

My name is Davendra Gautuam

and everybody call me Gautuam.

I own this restaurant for more than 11 years.

We decided to close the restaurant March, 2020.

And since then, we opened for takeout only,

which is in the evening.

And we stopped lunch buffet and the dinner dining out.

As the spring of 2020 continued,

and with it, the confusion and uncertainty that COVID-19

and the shutdown had created,

a rift between elected officials

and those they were elected by began to show.

What we need in this time

is calm, sound, professional leadership

from state and local elected officials.

And I feel

in Gwinnett County,

that's probably what was missing.

♪ Amazing grace ♪

♪ How sweet the sound ♪

♪ That saved ♪

♪ A wretch ♪

♪ Like me ♪

♪ I once ♪

♪ Was lost ♪

♪ But now ♪

♪ I'm found ♪

Working together, we can do this.

No, I don't think it's appropriate.

And if they're withholding information,

that doesn't seem very transparent to me.

Again, I'm open for transparency in my campaign.

I believe that you should open up, talk to everybody.

No, I don't think that the government

should withhold information from the public.

I think that there needs to be transparency.

Wasn't giving any information that the public didn't have.

There were no hearings on the shutdown.

Public, in the county level, not really.

It was just a joint announcement from the cities.

I personally believe that

the responsibility of emergency management is,

that's the responsibility of the public sector.

I don't think anything should be done

for political purposes.

You know, the legislator

or the policymakers can do whatever they can

to protect their seat, right?

So when they look at a cost benefit analysis

and any decision that they make,

what are they really doing?

They're trying to maximize the probability

that they get reelected, right?

It's unusual for politicians to admit mistakes

because that would mean that they're not good leaders.

Parties never admit mistakes unless you catch them

with indisputable proof, that they made a mistake.

Here's a number.

Every 1% unemployment goes up, 40,000 people died.

Did you know that?

- No. - Did you know that?

No, I didn't know this.

It's the most severe contraction we've had

since the great depression.

♪ Today ♪

♪ A sad day ♪

Early indicators that economists use

like contraction of output,

gross domestic product and unemployment.

Those numbers are looking really bad.

So it's a pretty dire looking situation right now

on the employment side.

3.3 million unemployment claims.

- More than 6.6 million. - 17,000,000.

One in five Americans is out of work.

- 26 million. - 44 million Americans filed.

What has changed for me is job loss,

access to quality and affordable healthcare,

a decrease of income in my household.

People don't have as much footing right now.

Their savings are being used to pay bills,

to pay rent,

get into survival mode with their money.

If you shift away from dining in restaurants,

towards takeout and delivery...

80% of the restaurant industry jobs are gone.

National Restaurant Association projects

some $225 billion in sales could be lost

over the next three months.

People are being fired,

especially the people who are working at restaurants,

as well.

I've got a couple of clients

and a couple of friends actually who have lost their jobs.

And one of their restaurants has closed down entirely.

So they will not be returning to that job.

The uncertainty of not being employed

or not knowing where your next paycheck

is going to come from

or how long you'll be receiving unemployment benefits.

We're probably about 40% of our business right now.

If we're just at a breakeven spot or any restaurant,

then there's no reason for them to be open.

There are businesses closing.

The economy may never recover in this industry.

And us specifically, we tend to run, you know,

on a almost week-to-week basis, as far as cash flow.

So having, you know, a couple of weeks,

you know, at minimum of not having any income whatsoever,

I spend a lot of time here with nobody else in the building,

you know pouring over numbers

and trying to figure stuff out.

For many people,

school closings in particular were especially damaging.

Athens is a college town

and most of our business is based around, you know,

at least tangentially to the university.

So without the university operating right now,

there's just not enough business in town.

This week.

A massive football party in Athens, Georgia.

We have these massive crazy event weekends

where we have an extra couple hundred thousand people

come into town

and everybody does tremendous business

for those time periods.

And everyone in this area's rent

is based on us being able to operate

for those six to six or seven weekends in a year

to be able to cover our rent for the whole rest of the year.

So if none of those are in place,

no one's going to be able to pay their rent.

Digital learning and being cooped up

has been a nightmare.

Half the parents did the digital learning for their children

just to get over it.

You know, I know I've talked to my son's friends like,

so the students aren't learning.

So either they're struggling in guessing

or online with their other friends trying to get the answers

or their parents are doing it for them.

With schools closed,

many parents struggled to balance their financial livelihood

with their new found responsibility

as teacher and babysitter.

If we don't bring our guests in, we don't make money.

I'm going to have to go for it. I have two kids at home.

I've got to take care of them, feed 'em and get through this.

I'm concerned about parents feeling concerned

about not being able to provide their kids' basic needs

because they can't go to work,

because they have to be at home to take care of their kids.

I'm concerned about their emotional needs, as well.

A lot of my kiddos, when they go to schools,

for some of them, that's the only meal that they get.

So many will not be able to return to work

because many of them have small school-aged kids

that require supervision.

So they can't, and they can't afford daycare.

They can't afford to have an independent babysitter

to come in so they are responsible for providing their care.

So that's going to impact them financially.

Parents like myself,

who have children with special needs

are extremely overwhelmed.

How they learn, they learn differently.

Well, I'm not trained in special education.

So it makes it,

it poses some different challenges.

I would say that in-person learning

is without a doubt, preferably.

So when you take a child out of a school,

particularly a child with certain needs,

whether they be instructional needs

or economic needs

or medical needs,

you do shut down that avenue.

The schools are essential

for the overall future of this country.

If you want to compete in today's worldwide market place,

you have got to be armed with an educated workforce, period.

And we know how important school is.

You know, you can't retroactively correct stupid.

You can't retroactively get a kid back

on a reading level, right,

especially in third and fourth grade.

So I often wonder,

did we take the best approach

when it came to public education, responding to COVID?

When you say let's just shut down the school,

it's just not, oh boy, the kids get more time off, you know,

and the kids don't have the social interaction

that they need.

They're not learning.

It's almost like taking a person,

putting somebody in jail.

It's got to have an impact

when children are isolated from their peers

over an extended period of time.

I can't imagine what it's, you know,

the impact would be on the seven or eight-year-old child

sitting at home.

And then the parents are trying

to keep body and soul together,

working and dealing with child care and what have ya.

It's got to be

an awfully strenuous environment,

got to be.

When you think about things

that are stressful in people's lives,

it's the unknown and the unpredictable

and things that don't have a timeline.

My name is Dr. Wendy Dickinson.

I am a licensed psychologist

and the director at Grow Counseling.

We've had a collective traumatic experience

and that doesn't just go away.

Most people, at some point in their life,

will have suicidal thoughts.

It's a pretty normal experience,

even though we don't talk about it a whole lot.

So a lot of times that can come from

an ongoing mental health issue like depression or anxiety.

Sometimes, it can come from situations

when people just feel overwhelmed.

Being at home and being in stressful situations,

be it with a partner or a job,

or just the stress of the environment, in general,

just of our society

has led to an increase in substance use.

Most certainly.

My name is Isom White.

I'm a licensed clinical social worker.

I can't speak to whether or not we'll see a rise

and a fall or a rise in suicide attempts.

You know, given the stress that, you know,

some people are going to have to endure

and then if they've already got, you know,

an underlying depressive disorder

that may be going untreated

because they can't receive services

because they've lost their health insurance

or they can't afford the rates of a therapist.

Well, then that, I think that maybe increases their risk.

Spousal abuse is at an all time high.

Why aren't we talking suicides?

I know my son, he's in the Army.

Somebody committed suicide

at his base a couple of weeks ago.

Your mental health impacts everything that you do.

You have a cycle pathology

that impacts all of your behaviors.

So if we are aware that mental health is important,

it makes absolutely no sense for us to react

and wait for situations to occur to then respond.

Anytime we have a family unit,

a family system where the stress is increased,

it causes other kinds of fallouts.

So I think for families and couples,

whether they have children or not,

there are significant impacts around financial stress,

under employment, unemployment.

It can lead to depression, anxiety, even suicidal ideation.

I think that there's going to be some mental strain there

because of the order.

And a lot of people,

a lot of families didn't have the necessary skills

to cope with that situation.

Anytime that you have an economical downturn,

you're going to see an increase or an uptick in crime.

I think we're gonna see some residuals from people,

you know, as we do start to open back up,

that there's going to be some things that has manifested

with people that we probably are not on top of right now.

Black Lives Matter

and Blue Lives Matter protesters square off.

Witnesses say they heard

at least three gunshots

before spotting a victim on the ground.

Police here now firing tear gas.

The nation erupted into scenes of chaos.

Portland police say 10 people were arrested

following last night's protest.

Another huge turnout for the second day

thousands of protestors out in force.

The flip side to families being together,

unfortunately, I have a lot of kiddos that I work with

who don't reside in safe households.

They don't reside in safe communities.

There's been an increase in domestic violence calls.

I had a woman that,

who I was providing counseling for via tele-health

and she was signaling to me

that she was in a dangerous situation.

And it was a struggle and somewhat chaotic

just to be able to get first responders to her household,

to ensure her safety.

♪ Came into my life ♪

There's been some new additions to the families.

And if you've got families that live across the state

or across the country like my father, I can't get to him.

So that's emotionally hard for us as a family.

And when you couple that with health problems.

So my father is elderly and he has health problems.

I'm his primary caregiver.

It is a struggle getting him to doctor's appointments.

It is a struggle contacting

and making those arrangements for him.

If you don't go to the doctor because you're afraid

or because the doctor's office is closed

or you don't get your treatment,

you don't go to your dialysis,

you don't do it,

you're increasing the chances

of either getting sicker or dying.

That's what the shutdown has caused.

The hospital did pretty much across the country,

from what I understand,

stopped doing elective procedures,

particularly people with stroke symptoms and chest pain,

not coming in.

We did see some people that had chest pain

and should have come in immediately and waited.

And there was nationally a rise in strokes

and heart attacks.

I got a call from a friend whose husband had fallen,

passed out, filleted his face open,

and she was afraid to bring him to the emergency room

and he obviously needed to come.

So when it comes to the issue of elective surgeries

and the fact that many hospitals

discontinued elective surgeries,

and the word elective here is a little bit misleading

because it doesn't mean

that the surgery was actually not important

or it couldn't save a life.

I'm sure that there were lives lost over that.

We don't have the data,

those data are being made available in real time.

But what I can tell you is that you have to consider

who, where the locus of authority is

in the decisions around preventing elective surgeries.

And those decisions are typically made

by the healthcare systems themselves.

My understanding was it came,

it was just internally from the hospitals themselves

wanting to get ahead.

Those instructions have come from the association,

the American Pediatric Association

or the American Dental Associations.

When the governor passed his shelter-in-place order,

it prevented certain healthcare professionals

from doing certain work.

I don't know where the directive

to stop the elective surgeries came from.

A growing disconnect in overall experience

began to manifest as the difference

in people's individual environments were exposed,

so too, was the overall course they had

and would continue to pay.

What I've been able to do is have conversations

with people who seem disconnected

and what I've noticed is that

the only thing about their lives that changed

was being able to visit family and friends.

They were able to pay their bills on time.

They were still able to feed their families.

They didn't lose access to quality, affordable health care.

- In a written statement,

Gwinnett County commission chairman Charlotte Nash,

thanked businesses and residents

for their temporary sacrifices.

I think citizens were making temporary sacrifices

with handling their day-to-day,

you know, activities,

you know, such as going to the barbershop,

nail salons, grocery stores,

being out in public,

attending some of our, you know, parks and recreation

and beaches and that kind of thing.

I think they had to make temporary sacrifices.

The sacrifices that Americans are experiencing,

these sacrifices are significant

and there are not temporary.

I think any elected leader needs to take this seriously.

And I think the residents

and the voters will respect you more

for taking it seriously.

It's not temporary.

When you lose your job,

when you commit suicide, the suicide rate went up,

the divorce rate went up,

the alcoholism rate went up.

Those are not temporary situations.

And not to mention,

the number of people that lost their businesses

and they put their life savings into those businesses.

That's not temporary.

Almost finished with the potential disasters.

Worst scenario is either quick sand, spontaneous combustion.

There's a part of our brain

that is the most primal part of our brain

that keeps us alive.

It's the part that jumps out of the way

when we drop a knife,

before we even realize that we've we've dropped the knife

or the pair of scissors.

So we're constantly hardwired for survival.

And that part of our brain is largely driven by fear.

Fear is one of the indicators that tells us,

hey, something's not safe here.

We might not be okay

and need to change the situation.

And so, unless we're really in touch

with how we're feeling and paying attention to the way

that the fear is motivating us,

we're most likely to make decisions

from a fear based perspective.

If you are fearful for your life or for your livelihood,

it may cause you to react,

first, without maybe thinking or considering

the logic or the numbers or the science,

or the statistics.

If a person catches it,

then there's one of three things they're going to happen.

You're either going to be asymptomatic.

Well, I'll say four things.

You're going to be asymptomatic.

You going to have mild symptoms.

You're going to have really, really bad symptoms

that might be life-threatening.

Or you might die from the virus.

And unfortunately, what we've seen with this virus

is that part is a lottery.

We have been taking it very seriously.

I think it's a very serious issue.

So there's a gamble in this.

Clear and convincing evidence.

Putting up my own guidelines.

It's better to be safe than sorry.

If we overreact, thank God, we overreacted.

How serious is it?

As we get more data going forward.

It's just so much higher.

It's a roller coaster ride.

The likelihood versus the possibility

are two different things.

'Cause you never know what you don't know.

Always based on data.

The whole idea, well, children barely, you know,

get very sick or if they do get sick,

they don't die.

And the numbers don't show that.

I absolutely believe that

the media, local, national,

is pandering to a certain group of people.

And it's amazing how many of the people

that run these different news organizations

are related through marriage or business

or some other way to the politicians

that want to see the present...

president and others out.

It's just amazing to see that

and to publish information to cause panic,

disruption, and disrupt people's lives

the way that they have,

I think it's criminal.

Fear, I think it's fear-driven and emotional.

And I didn't know Americans were so scared.

And I'm like, wow, it's just really,

the percentages even, it's just so low.

I'm sure there's people that legitimately died.

I'm not saying that.

And I'm not discrediting the life

of the people that love them, okay?

But people die every day.

And now, you crush our economy.

It's not about money, it's not that I don't care.

You crush families.

People are going to be homeless because of this.

People are gonna lose their homes.

People are going to be on the streets.

You're putting women, men and children on the streets.

They played off our fear and people's emotion.

The fear is, oh my God, oh my God, you're gonna die,

you're gonna die, you're gonna die.

And the emotion is,

if you don't stay home and stay safe,

you don't care about other people.

Many began to see the media

as a chief contributor to the country's divisiveness.

Even locally, we get people,

they just don't like us reporting the numbers

because they think we're over playing it.

They believe we're blowing it out of proportion.

I mean, that's essentially it.

The liberal media wants to shut everything down

and their collusion with the Democrats

and blow it out of proportion.

Deaths are rising in at least 17 states.

One day this week, there was a death nearly every minute.

The worst thing, coronavirus outbreak.

Here are the very latest details this morning.

In the nation's three most populous states,

things are going from bad to worse.

That's exactly what they did.

And we fell right in line.

And I've expected more from them.

I thought more people,

maybe people aren't such freethinkers.

Maybe people are so in tune to what they're told.

One of the things that I talk to clients a lot about

is that what we focus on grows

and our brain actually doesn't know the difference

between what's real and what we imagine.

So when there's a stressor out there

and we focus on it and we imagine

that there's this invisible monster that's going to get us,

and we stay focused on that,

it continues to grow

and our body actually responds biochemically

as if there's a real monster out there.

I think one thing that people could do

in terms of, I guess in a response

to the reactionary part of fear

is to practice being comfortable with fear,

practice sitting with it,

practice sitting with the bodily experience of fear.

So what does that fear feel like in your body

and how can you maybe withstand

or like I use the term, sit with,

how can you sit with that fear

for an extended period of time?

This is a once in a lifetime situation that we're in.

With COVID-19,

I think we've seen, we've never had this before.

The year was 1957.

Elvis was entertaining the masses

and "I Love Lucy" was airing its final episode.

New advances in science and technology

were capturing the attention of Americans everywhere.

And while local industries boomed,

something else was happening.

A new strain of the influenza virus

was killing 116,000 Americans.

Like COVID-19, it was especially dangerous

to the elderly population but in a frightening twist,

the virus could be fatal to pregnant women, as well.

The US population was half its current size

and life expectancy was nearly 10 years less.

However, without a 24 hour news cycle, hungry for eyeballs,

hardly anyone noticed and next to nothing was shut down.

Other than a renewed commitment to basic hygiene,

American life went on as usual.

I don't remember that.

I don't remember that.

I do remember flu epidemics that popped up

from time to time, but I don't remember that specific one,

but I honestly do not recall anything unusual taking place

around my home or in my school associated with it.

Again, years back, a few years ago,

was it the H1N1, the swine flu, it was killing people.

The avian blue bird flu was killing people.

And what was scaring me to death is that one year,

it was killing little kids

and that's all the world news was scaring me about.

And I had two younger ones.

They were younger then.

Scared me to death at night nearly.

And eventually, guess what?

It fades way because Hawaii has a volcano

and starts erupting

and no more you hear about the flu, it just goes away.

So sometimes I wonder,

does media like to blow it up too much?

Or did they give us too much, too little?

We begin tonight with a stunning number, 150,000.

Deaths from coronavirus in the United States

have surpassed 160,000.

Total US death toll, now nearing 170,000.

In the United States,

around three million people die on average every year.

The death rate is just under 900 deaths per 100,000 people

in the population.

Life expectancy currently stands at 78.6 years.

And the infant mortality rate

is about six deaths per 1000 live births.

The leading causes of death in the US

are heart disease and cancer

with over a million on average, combined.

Other common causes include accidents

with about 170,000 deaths every year

and chronic lower respiratory disease with 160,000.

About 150,000 people die every year from stroke.

And Alzheimer's disease kills about 120,000 Americans

every 12 months.

Over 80,000 people perish yearly from diabetes.

And the flu and pneumonia send almost 60,000 people

to their ultimate demise over the course of 52 weeks.

And finally, suicide results

in under 50,000 fatalities annually.

The numbers aren't even close to correct.

I have yet to meet one person

and I talk a lot to a lot of people.

I ask every single person

do they personally know somebody that died of COVID-19

and nobody can say yes.

Adding to an already full load of problems,

many people also began to grow suspicious

of reported cases and deaths.

My mechanic, his name is Sal,

his aunt just died of some type of terminal cancer.

They put her down for COVID-19,

didn't test her for COVID-19.

It's interesting.

I've had a few people pass away,

not because of COVID,

but they've been marked as COVID deaths.

I don't know anyone personally who's had it.

I know people who had some symptoms

and we've kind of assumed that's probably what it was.

A friend of mine,

he was, I believe in his sixties, he had a heart attack.

He was very healthy.

He was making a veggie smoothie

for him and his wife and his paraplegic son.

And he had a heart attack.

And they tested him and his wife, his body,

they tested his body and he was positive.

And so was she.

They took another test and they were negative,

but they listed him as a COVID death.

And therefore,

the funeral,

she couldn't be touched.

She couldn't receive hugs.

She had a mask on, everybody was uncomfortable

and they have discontinued her food train.

She's not receiving any dinners.

It's just really,

I'm actually getting emotional.

I haven't cried about this yet,

but it's just frustrating.

The hospitals are getting money for every COVID death,

I think just, you know,

to cover whatever the finances are

to like put people on ventilators, et cetera,

which I've actually read that they put people on ventilators

before they die just to like prove

that they treated someone for COVID.

And that actually decreases your chance of survival

because you're depending on that machine.

Another friend of mine,

her nephew died in a car wreck in New York, 20 years old.

And they put them down for COVID-19.

Everyone knows FEMA's given the hospital, what?

25, $3,500 for every case they say is COVID-19.

So I have a friend in Arizona

who my sister was talking to the other day.

And she said that her friend's husband,

clearly retired

with serious heart issues,

went to the hospital

with having a hard time breathing.

But as I said, very, very compromised with his heart.

He died.

They tested him, he had COVID.

He died,

they say of COVID.

His wife says with COVID.

Slight difference, but you know.

But in his case, they really thought that,

if it wasn't going to be this,

it would have been something else pretty quickly.

So my wife's stepfather's

father passed away.

He was in a retirement home in Gainesville.

And they had an outbreak in the retirement home

and he passed away last week.

Maybe a couple of patients

that I checked out at the morgue that I said,

okay, well, we never got a positive,

but we're calling it a COVID death.

We didn't always trust the test.

You don't, you can't risk,

you know, that a test wasn't correct.

You have to assume.

A lot of the information that I've obtained

basically says that

if you die of a heart attack,

but you have tested positive for COVID, you died from COVID.

I can speak to some of the cynicism that people may feel.

I know the Georgia Department of Public Health

has been criticized recently,

made its way in the national news

by putting out misleading,

we'll say,

maybe just outright say blanket false

graphs or information coming from state government.

What the reason, the reasoning is, I'm not sure.

Some say it's financial.

Some say it's political.

You know, I don't know what the reasoning is,

but I know that a lot of deaths

have been attributed to COVID, that weren't COVID.

If you ever can make yourself appear as a hero,

and there are some financial benefits to that,

I think that's a good incentive for people.

I don't have any personal or professional experience

but I have had conversations with other colleagues,

medical and clinical colleagues.

And COVID was listed as the cause of death.

But they felt like there was something else

that this person passed away from.

So we've had conversations about why that may have happened.

And it has a lot to do with money.

Toto?

I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.

There are a lot of people right now

who don't have hope.

They don't have jobs.

They live in areas that are deteriorating.

I think it really changes our expectations

of how stable life is going to be.

We, as a people, are resilient.

When we go through adversity, we become stronger.

Anytime we've had a challenge,

it's never been easy, right?

Whether it was World War II,

whether it was recovering from 9-11,

whether it was recovering from the great recession.

♪ Check it ♪

♪ You're 21 and you've never had this feeling ♪

♪ You check your pulse to find the answer, just be queaving ♪

♪ You paid it out, didn't try to hide the reaching ♪

♪ You struggle with us and we're show you how we're living ♪

♪ 'Cause we are so done ♪

I'm hoping this toughens us up.

I think it's toughened me up.

I've become a lot more aware of my effect on the world

and people around me.

And it's amazing how connected we really are.

And I hope that, you know,

a lot of people my age,

I hope their eyes are being peeled financially.

There was a message for our generation,

millennial, Gen X, whatever you want to call it,

that if you do the right thing,

you finish high school,

you go to college, you get a good job,

and you'll be stable.

Some of us got there and some of us didn't.

Yeah, it makes the future uncertain.

You know, some of the clients that I know

and that I have that we're similar in age,

they're really struggling right now.

They don't have careers.

And if they did have a career,

some of them have been put on pause.

When we go into something expecting

for life to go our way and things to be predictable

and stable and calm

and an outcome that's congruent

with whatever work we put into it,

that's a really different expectation

than somebody who's lived through trauma or stress.

I think one of the positive things

that we learned from it

is a sense of resilience about who we are.

So we adopt this idea

that we are strong enough to overcome things

or we're creative enough to problem-solve

or we can rally together with a support system

and figure out a way to navigate something together.

You can't quit living, you know.

You just can't give up on life.

You've got to keep pressing forward, moving forward,

and make the best that you can.

Like any good crisis,

COVID-19 and its wide-reaching effects

created a laundry list

of varying opinions on the best way forward.

We have a lot of people

who have nothing

including health insurance.

They're in poor health.

There is little to no prospect of upward mobility.

You know, the intersection of all of this

in the global pandemic,

the lessons it's teaching us,

I think that we're still the richest country in the world

but it really doesn't matter

if you can't access the resources that you need.

One of the things I've learned is

that there are a number of policies being made

in regards to funding,

in regards to access to healthcare,

that unfortunately don't always include people

who are implementing and practicing this healthcare.

We're not included at the table

when these decisions are being made.

So that can cause like a negative impact,

specifically, people who are on the lower income bracket.

I don't think that they realized

the personal costs,

the individual costs of the shutdown

and the costs of lives that it took,

the cost of businesses.

But I think this will be a unique time to look back on

where there were shortcomings,

where there were ways

we probably could have addressed situations better.

You know, we need to take that

and weave that into public policy

and SOPs across the country.

I'm hoping public health experts,

public policy will be shaped

for the better after this pandemic.

Thank God, here in Georgia,

none of us were required or forced to take people,

residents with COVID.

But I'm thinking in New York City, for example,

where they were required to take,

knowing that the resident had COVID

and to take them back into the population,

that is just terrible.

That is just unbelievable.

Among the biggest unknowns

is the future of the restaurant and service industries.

As one of the largest employers of people worldwide,

its prospects will influence millions of lives

in the near and long-term.

It's hard to say right now,

you know, how it goes.

I mean, for the short time, it's okay,

if a month or two months,

if it is long time, then you know,

I definitely be concerned about this.

I want to thank everyone

that supported The Globe, in general.

So the GoFundMe, especially,

we had such amazing outpour and support.

It means a lot to be well loved

and respected and taken care of in our community.

I just wanted to say thanks

to all the customers.

If we have another pandemic in the fall,

I'm sure we're going to be closed.

We can't spend money that we don't have.

If you're only doing 20% of your business,

there's no reason to be open.

My parents are 80

and suddenly I wasn't able to see them.

And it got kind of nerve wracking.

I started cross-stitching.

I went and bought a God bless America

cross stitch pattern

and essentially, prayed over the nation

and all of the first responders as I cross stitched it.

And I had my dad in mind when I did it.

And with him being at-risk,

if he had contacted it,

really made me dive deep into myself

about what was important

and our nation and how we all work together.

You know, I have a 93-year-old dad

and a 91-year-old stepmom living in Massachusetts.

And you know, they're in lockdown in their retirement home

and you know, they've made it this far.

He was a soldier in World War II.

You know, to me, it's like priceless.

I couldn't put a monetary value on saving my dad's life.

Sorry, I'm getting emotional.

But yeah, I can't think of it that way.

If you got sick from this,

I would feel horrible

because if you passed it along to your grandparents

or your father or your mother, and one of those passed away,

it would be very difficult for you

when you got married and you can't walk down the aisle

with your father,

or you can't,

your parents never get to meet their grandchildren.

When we closed down last March,

and went to virtual learning,

I could not be of much help

to the people here in the system

that were scrambling, trying to keep the thing going.

And they did a yeoman's job.

I mean, I was absolutely amazed

at the kind of job, I want to say we did,

but that wouldn't be fair to them,

the kind of job they did.

Our intensivist emergency room doctors,

we had two doctors, two marvelous doctors

that I can't say enough about

who volunteered to man the COVID unit.

Yeah, you see the heroes and then suddenly,

it makes everybody better.

A crisis ultimately does make people better.

And it's something like this

that really makes you appreciate great people.

♪ And I want the river ♪

♪ And I want the river to flow ♪

♪ Hide all the troubles ♪

♪ To only discover more, oh oh oh ♪

♪ There was a rise, more than I'm trying to go ♪

♪ Out there along the water edge ♪

♪ One step closer, I can't feel the ledge ♪

This is not a one size fits all scenario, right?

So I think everybody has been impacted in some way

by the shutdown, by the quarantine, by COVID-19.

How do you get caught off guard by nature?

I don't know how we keep getting caught off guard

by certain things.

This isn't the first pandemic that's happened.

So how are we not better prepared?

I have, what's called a wishlist

that I leave for Santa Claus every year.

I'll put that on my wishlist.

Well, in the future, we need to have a plan.

You know, we need to have certain criteria available

to us to help us make that kind of a decision

or not.

And we're going to have to start gathering

that information now

because evidently, we didn't have it before.

I just begin to worry about what we got going on around us

and how long it's going to take to deal with it

and what the situation is gonna be,

after it's run its course.

I mean, it's doing damage.

There's no question about it.

It's doing damage as we speak

on all kinds of fronts.

And...

I just hope it ends soon.

I'm interested to see what happens in the future.

We can't shut down again.

It's just too much.

It's going to be too much on too many people.

Only time will tell.

You know, we'll have to wait and see.

We have the tools to be able to estimate

how many lives have been saved from shelter-in-place.

That's definitely something that we do.

And actually, I can tell you,

I already know of a whole gaggle of economists

that are working to do that right now

with the latest available data that we have.

It's very clear to me that we'll have the data

and the tools to be able to answer that question.

What's not clear to me is whether or not

the policy makers and society in general

is going to be open to the answers, what the answers are.

Not shutting down,

we would have seen even more deaths

than we are seeing right now.

Could you point us to a report

that would support that?

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