This is Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Carol Masser and I'm Jason Kelly. We're right here every day bringing you the latest news from the world's of business and finance, plus technology, politics, economics, all harnessing the power of Business Week reporters and editors, and of course Carol that's part of a team of twenty seven hundred journalists and analysts more than a hundred and twenty countries and Jason. You can download Bloomberg Business
Week on iTunes, SoundCloud, bl Bloomberg dot com. You can also listen to our radio show at two pm Eastern on Bloomberg Radio every weekday, or watch us on YouTube by searching Bloomberg Global News. We've had a bunch of headlines about the virus, and of course we were just talking about kind of the push poll when it comes to opening up schools. Let's get to one of our go to voices when it comes to the virus and find out really the headlines you need to be aware of.
Dr Sandro Gallea. He's dean and professor at Boston University School of Public Health, author of Pained Uncomfortable Conversations about the Public's health. He joins us once again on the phone from Boston, Sona, I um Saunder to have you here with us once again. I do feel like we are at this really tough point where there is so much pressure to reopen the economy, um, because there's people who need to go back to work. We need to
get the economy moving again. But yet we're still nervous about what we don't know about this virus and then of course the spikes that we're seeing, certainly in the western part of our country. What do we need to know about where we are right now? Well, thank you for having me again. We we should be nervous. You said that we are nervous about where we are at, and I think it's appropriate for us to be nervous.
At the same time. We're at a point where we should have the sophistication to balance nervousness about risk with the things that we need to do to get our country moving again. And that is where in some respects or political conversation has failed us. But leaving the politics out of it, we as citizens should know that we are still in the middle of this pandemic, that we have more cases than we've ever had during the pandemic
it's has shifted geographies. It's gone from the northeast to the epicenters now being in the south and in the southwest. We also should know that we are learning more and more about how this pandemic is transmitted. We know that being inside and being in closed congreg congregation is what is largely fueling this pandemic, which means that we should be as much as possible outside social distancing, wearing masks.
We know that if we did this across the board, we should be able to bring this pandemic under control now. At the same time, the challenge is that the fear, the temptation is to say we cannot do anything. We are captive health, captive by this pandemic. But we've been at this now for almost six months and I think our job together is to figure out how to manage the risk so we can do what we need to
do as a society. What do you think, Dr Ghalia is the most important thing we've learned about sort of the way of life. I mean, you mentioned social distancing and math, and clearly that's top of mind for most people, although as you alluded to earlier, there's a political aspect to that, as well, what do you think is the
thing that's most important we understand about this virus and transmission. Increasingly, we are beginning to understand that the virus is spread when we are inside with a lot of people present who are not taking precautions with poor circulation. So that means that what we should avoid large gatherings, We should avoid being together with hundreds of people, and we should always be wearing masks when we're inside, and we should be keeping our distance from people as much as possible
that we know. We also know that you're much less likely to get the virus, for example, when you're outside and when you're when you're distant from people. So in some respect, those two observations by themselves should be enough to tell us what we should do and what we shouldn't do, and that should go a long way towards mitigating spread. Yeah, but that makes it often trick then
to open up a major city. Right well, if well we are in we are in summer and much of the country right now, which of course helps us because we can be outside much more than we normally can become much harder. One so we get to October November, of course, you know I'm in the middle of in my day job as a dean of the schools public Health, in the business of reopening the school for the fall.
And we are, like any other large organization, implementing steps to have people being distant, to make sure everybody wears masks, to make sure everybody's washing their hands, to limit number of people in the building. So it's complicated, and it's certainly it's certainly difficult, but it's the right thing to do.
And certainly, although it's harder than say giving up and just saying we're all going to stay in our houses, it is a way for us to learn to deal with risk, to minimize the risk as much as possible, but create the economic and social opportunities that we want to live for. And So Dr Galia, what are you doing specifically, or what's what's an interesting thing that maybe you guys come up with because you had the benefit, as you say, and or maybe the additional weight of
running a school. But it's also a school of public health, so you have the best advice and and the best people around you, including yourself, to make these decisions. So what's something you can share with us that you guys have come up with for for your campus and your crew. Well, I think there are there are two levels of precautions.
Level one is making sure that we have sufficient testing so that we can catch cases early, so we can we can isolate people who have who are COVID positive as well as find their contact and isolate them as well, So that's level one. Level one means making sure that you catch cases early so that cases do not become clusters that do not work in the epidemic. Level two is assuming that you're doing Level one, which means you're
catching cases early. Is making sure then that the virus doesn't spread in a community, and to do that you need to distance people, keep people apart from each other, and make sure everybody's wearing a mask, and make sure that you have high hygiene and sanitation. Now, in the context of US school, we for example, normally have many more people in a given classroom than we will have in the fall, so we will be spacing people out six feet apart and probably not have all the students
in the same classroom. At the same time, we have developed systems that we are able to teach our courses in person, yes, but also with a digital component. So some students will be online while some will be in a classroom. Now, these are these are difficult measures to put in place. They require work, They require a lot of thought about how to do them. But it is our way in our particular context to make sure that we can return to teaching, make sure students can continue
towards their educational goals, but also keeping every dication. You are listening to Bloomberg Business Week, Let's get right back to our conversation with Dr Sandro Galia, dean at the Boston University School Public Health, also the author of Pained Uncomfortable Conversations about the Public's Health and Dr Galia that Carol and I were talking via insent messages in the break. I'm so glad you reminded us what we're talking before that you also are the dean of this man in
public health school. Gives you know, we think of you as this expert doctor. You've got so many different things on your plate, not the least of which is you know, we talked about getting students and faculty back on campus, but a wrinkle this week with the visa issue brought up by the President. How are you looking at that
and how does it potentially affect your student body. Yeah, the the visa guidance from the President is one in a long line of divisive moves that really are are inspired by cruelty, more dentiting else there that it makes uh that there's no logic in the pandemic as to why that visa move was necessary. What the visa move does is it prohibits students international students from getting educational
visa for online only courses. Now, in our school, we are doing all our teaching as a hybrid both in person and online, so it should not affect our students, but many of our peer schools, schools of public health, undergraduate schools, and many other undergraduate colleges that have moved their teaching to all online, their students, at least as it stands right now, may not be able to get
visas to study United States. So this is really another example of the administration's efforts to divide us and by casting blame on on the other on this notion that it is is immigrants who are bringing challenges to our shores, when nothing could be further from the truth. Yeah, I
just I do wonder about this move. And as you said, in terms of the impact and your school maybe you're not going to feel it as much, but there are schools that really are dependent on it um because they want the diverse body, but they also financially, it's an important component of the of their overallaw you know, their
overall financial picture. Uh No, absolutely, it's uh. You know, for any any any excellent graduate school, or really any excellent university aspires to create an environment that is diverse. That means including Americans, including students from all over the world, including students of all strips. That is how we learned that. It's how we build a pluralistic society where we learn how to think together from people who are different than us. What dis guidance does is it tries to remove from
our communities students who are not from here. And that is that that that hurts us as much as it hurts them. It hurts us as a country because we are taking away from us the capacity to be with, learned from debate with students from other backgrounds. And of course it hurts students from these other backgrounds who cannot come and pursue their educational dreams in this country. It really is a lose lose for us in for the world.
So I wonder six months from now, eight months from now, three months from now, do you feel like we will feel all more normal because we will be back at work, back at school. What's the time frame I'm Sandra, that you think is realistic here at this point. Yeah, Carol, I think that's the question we all want to know the answer to. I also want to know the answer
to that. You know, I think you'll find that anybody in public health is very reluctant to get the answers simply because we do not know, and given where the stage of the pandemic is now, it's really difficult to tell. Will we eventually get through this pandemic. We definitely will. There will be we will get to a vaccine, or the pandemic will stop. There will be enough herd immunity to depandemic will stop. It's hard to say how long this will take. Will it take three months, will it
take six months, Will it take a year. It's really hard to make those kind of estimates. And for any estimate I give you, I could argue against my own estimate. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. Well, superstar cities apparently not all that they're cracked up to be, especially for blackmail college graduates. This is uh the results of a new study from
m I. T. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Let's talk about that study and his story in business Week Bloomberg business Week Economics. That are Peter Coy joining us right now on the phone in New Jersey. Um, Peter, tell us about this. Tell us about the study and what they found out. A study called the Faltering Escalator of Urban Opportunities by David auto Or, a prominent economists m I. T.
Who I really love. He does such excellent work. This is part of a task force that he co chares called the task Force and the Work of the Future. So the conventional wisdom is that cities are good places for opportunity because there are things, there are kinds of jobs that are available in cities that simply aren't available in suburbs or rural areas. And for one while that was true, if you move to the city, you were likely to get a better job, earn more money, and
be on an escalator towards higher pay um. But what he's found is that is going back as far as that started to become less twoe, and it's become less and less true as time has gone by, and uh so there's more of a barbell now. There are some great jobs for upper income people, and there are some plentiful jobs for people at the bottom, whether they are security guards or the food preparation types. Uh, you know, service jobs like that, but it's kind of a middle
paying job. There are far fewer of them than they were in past decades. Well, also with us is Business Week editor Joel Wepper joining us from Massachusetts. So Joel put this story in context. I mean, we love a good Peter Koy story. I know you're never want to turn it down to either, but framed this for us in in the sort of broader uh theme of the
magazine and what you're trying to do UM. Funny enough, it relates to a conversation Peter and I were actually just having kind of earlier in the day, and I think it helps inform some of UM coverage that you'll probably continue to be seeing from us, because you know, cities have really been this um, this engine of economic activity, and that is has been true for you know, us being sort of in New York City properly most of
the time and in the before times. UM, But you do you think about it at large, especially for the American economy, that has been the story of UM sort of the the economic in gine of America has been sort of like the movement towards cities, the economic activity that they survived, that they provide. And now that the pandemic UM, as Peter kind of said, it actually is almost sort of like excellent accelerated some trends and some of those were pre existing trends and others were were
things that were sort of unexpected UM. And I think it puts the burden on cities in a in a way that UM it doesn't for a lot of other economic models. And I think that that is going to be UM just an ongoing conversation of like, you know,
you take New York City for instance. As Peter and I were talking about earlier, it was like, so what does this mean for the m t A Right like in d A, all of these things that the city, the city needs people in order to fuel the city itself, And the moment that you sort of remove the people from that equation, it starts to actually become somewhat of
the downward spiral. So what does that mean, Peter, I mean, like play this out for us, you know, based on the folks you talk to and your own research and expertise. I mean, we're talking about, as Joel just mentioned, basic infrastructure. I mean, just sort of the way that cities live and breathe and grow and uh and operate. Yeah. Well, New York City is unique in the United States and its density, particularly in Manhattan, it's not the norm for
U S cities. You hear a lot of people talking about edge cities, which are far less dense and in some ways more sustainable. Problem with like New York is that the subway needs a lot of riders to you know, to pay a budget. You take away all the writers and you still run the trains and you're running massive deficits. That's just unsustainable. So you can't get away with less
density in New York. But I just want quickly go back to the topic of mail um college grads, which Carol mentioned in their intro, is that that's a special problem because in general, the middle paying jobs were held by people maybe without college degrees. Uh, And so it was the people without college degrees in general who suffered the most from this hollowing out, but for black male
college grads they have been dragged down as well. And that was one of the big surprises for all Tour in his research, that they their share of middle paying jobs went down and their share of low paying jobs went up from so they said, compounding all the other
problems we've been talking about. Well, and it's interesting, you know, Peter, as you right, I mean, it's not We've often talked about just these cities becoming unaffordable for so many but as you point out, and the research shows, you know that middle paying occupations are even lower. I mean, these are jobs that are going away and not being replaced, and so there isn't even that demand for those kinds
of workers. Yeah, right, I mean, the theory that cities are magnets are escalators of opportunity leads you to believe, well, if only we could deal with the cost cost of housing, for example, then we'd really solve our problems. But what Autour is saying is even that wouldn't really do it, because it's it's not just that people can't afford to work there, it's just that they show up there. And
there's nothing for them to do. Mhm. So, Peter, um, if you think about sort of what what position this really puts cities in in sort of the medium to long term? You know, what do you what do you Bringing this back to part of the conversation we had, which is if you if you think about, um, what what what does this mean for this thing that's been you know, this center of economic activity? Like what do you what do you think the future of city starts
to look like? I think the problem now, let's bring it back to COVID and the recession is that this Autra's research goes between fifteen before that happened, but that actually this actually exacerbates the problem because uh, cities, in his research, we're still magnets for you know, the highly skilled, highly compensated people in finance, for example, a lot of
people probably listening to this radio program right now. But if they're finding that they can live at home in Westchester, NASA, Suffolk Berg and whatever, then they might do it, and then there's even less reason to live and work in the city, and that worsens the city's finances, and that also hurts the people at the bottom because those people at the bottom are basically serving the people at the top. So the whole economic model just kind of dissolved. It's
a really really interesting story. Uh. We always come on you, Peter, for finding these ideas that you twist the prism just a little bit and and find something that's extraordinary use extraordinarily useful. Easy for me to say, Peter Koy, thank you so much, economics editor for Bloomberg Business Week, along with Joe Webber, the editor of the magazine. You are listening to Bloomberg Business Week, Jason Kelly and Carol Master here with you on a Wednesday. That's right, I got
it right this time. It's a Wednesday. Emily Jason back with a sustainability editor for Bloomberg. Green, by the way it is. I know it all sort of comes together. I just need these markers, Carol to let me know where I am, because I'm staring out at the exact same backyard that I've been staring at for seventeen weeks. It's lovely, it's it's green, and it's green, little cloudie and rainy here on Westchester. Emily Jason is here with us, So, Emily, a lot going on in the world of green including
a big conversation that you had. Tell us about it. Oh, so, I guess which conversation, Al Gore. I'm sorry you have so many big conversations. I have to be more specific, Al Gore, tell us about them. See which official was I talking to? So tell us about the conversation. We have a conversation this week about you know, how does some sort of a once in a generational opportunity to rebuild and rethink everything that we're working within our economy UM.
And he needs some really good points about what needs to happen to reset and how people are thinking about science UM, and listening to scientists, which is something he's been trying to say for a long time on climate change. And here we are, you know, needing to listen to scientists in coronavirus and um, what can we learn from that about the future And what can you rethink about society because we're making changes really fast right now um
and building a more equal, more environmentally friendly future. So he is positive going forward. He thinks we get to a better place. He's very optimistic, for sure. There's a lot of changes that he thought had accelerated, like using more telehealth, more distributed work um, where the need for jobs dovetails with the needs to recorfit building. So that was sort of our conversation. And I mean, this is
a guy. I mean, and you've written a lot about the former vice president over the years, Emily, and I do you know, sort of wonder about this moment and how he sees it as you've just described, because he's sort of been waiting a long time for everybody to kind of get on board, and and I wonder if
if this time sort of feels different to some extent. Yeah, I would say that, you know, it's interesting from his perspective that he's been doing this a long time and building these long term views, and the moment like this says, hey, we can actually accelerate and speed things up. Um. And so looking at different trends, we talked a lot about fundamental changes and consumer and social behavior, um, about just ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and also about stimulus, right,
and that the role of government and making this happen. Yeah, it's it's just interesting and we'll see ultimately what happens. I feel like this has been a big week for the green environment. I think about all of the rulings when it comes to pipeline, some of the big pipelines, And we just had we had one as we kicked off our show about energy transfer on the Dakota Access pipeline. UM, they're like, oh, you know you ruled that. No, we're good,
We're good. We're gonna keep going with I didn't see it. I didn't see it. I'll say sorry later. UM, talk to us about some of the headlines that are coming across your desk right now that you're writing about. Yeah, it was a really bad week to be a pipeline
in North America. We can start there right so. UM. Just over the past few days, the Atlantic Coast Natural Guests typeline was canceled by its developers, the Dakota Access Oil typeline was set down by a federal judge, and the Trump administration lost it's to be incorporate to bring back the Keystone Xcel oil typeline. So it seems like
they're really risky assets. UM. It's interesting because Warren Buffett payment and and bought some tipeline assets, and people really watched him carefully and say, you know what it is being there and there is still like used for natural gas. UM in the transition. Natural gas man has fallen a
lot in COVID over the past few months. But um, there is a use for them in terms of like building hydrogen, in terms of swishing off the coal um so, and obviously the US has a huge amount of natural gas that we're sitting on, but um all the methane leaks and all the pollution from it, people are wondering, you know, maybe it's not to say useful feel so it's a big debate, but it seems much riskier than
it was a few months ago. For sure. Can you talk to us about hydrogen UM and what Europe is doing? I have to say this is you're Jason, say have you guys bought an e V. Part of the reason is is my husband is kind of like, wait for hydrogen, UM, So what are we hearing on that front? Emily, Yeah,
hydrogen is really exciting. UM. I guess there's tons of movement right now to see whether you can build hydrogen without natural gas UM and whether you can make low carbon hydrogen because when hydrogen burns, it just becomes um water, and so it's really better for air pollution in the cities. UM. It's pretty easy to like go to a hydrogen station and just sort of swap out your canister as opposed to um, having to wait for a battery to recharge. So a lot of people are really excited about it.
It's lighter than batteries, so, UM, if you're truck, hydrogen might be a better option. Um. So there's a lot of possibility there for sure. Look as long as it doesn't blow up. Right, That's like, I'm so glad you said, because I was like this that can actually explode? Am I misremembering a case? All right? Emily Jason, thank you as always, we took you all over the place. Thanks
for coming with us. Uh, Emily Jason of course the sustainability editor for Bloomberg joining us Bloomberg that we were doing three hundred sixty degree world tours today exactly. People need to be prepared. I mean, just look ahead, it's all gonna happen. We are awaiting some comments a little later this hour from the President down in Washington meeting
with the President of Mexico. UM. He told it was meant to be reporting says, it's meant to be a trilateral meeting, but it's just going to be a bilateral meeting because I was like, make it. I'm good. Borders closed, We're gonna We're gonna stay up here and listen. Mexico also dealing with the virus. Like, there's a lot going on right now. Um, so it'll be interesting to see what comes out of that. Thanks so much for listening
to Bloomberg Business Week. Download the podcast on iTunes, Southcloud, Bloomberg dot com, or wherever you get your podcasts. And of course you can always listen to our radio show at two pm Eastern on Bloomberg Radio, or watch us on YouTube by searching Bloomberg Global Moves