Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's stay sixty two since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Our main story. As the pandemic rages on, shelter in place orders have stretched from weeks two months for some. It's causing distance fatigue and inspiring people to search for safe ways to bend the rules. An epidemiologist explains how to think about the risks of cutting corners while social distancing. But first,
here's what happened today. In testimony before it Senate panel today, Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease official in the US, strongly warned against reopening the economy too soon. Fauci said he's concerned about cities and states resuming business without reaching checkpoints outlined in the White House guidelines for deciding when it's safe. Those checkpoints include things like declining infections. Fauci said a premature reopening would trigger outbreaks that could spiral
out of control. Not only would that lead to avoidable suffering and death, he said, but it would set back an economic recovery and quote turn the clock back rather than going forward. Fauci's call for caution puts him in direct conflict with President Donald Trump's race to ease restrictions that have crushed the economy. Elsewhere, some governments are exercising extreme caution. Wuhan has ordered officials to test its entire
population of eleven million people. That's after a handful of new coronavirus cases were detected in the central Chinese city where the pandemic began. They were the first positive tests reported since the city's lockdown was lifted in early May. Six people who were already under quarantine in the same residential compound and who are asymptomatic tested positive. Sweden will adjust a key element of its strategy for dealing with COVID nineteen after the death rate at elder care homes
shot up. The government will ratchet up staff levels to help protect the country's oldest citizens. Like elsewhere, Sweden's COVID nineteen related deaths have disproportionately hit the elderly, but critics argue that many of those fatalities could have been avoided if the authorities had taken more steps to focus attention on the most vulnerable demographic. Finally, back in the US House, democrats proposed a three trillion dollar virus relief built today.
The bill would offer aid to state in local governments, direct cash payments, expanded unemployment insurance, and food stamp spending. It also included a list of progressive priorities, like funds for voting by mail and for the troubled US postal service. The bill comes after Congress has already spent three trillion dollars on four bills in response to the economic downturn
caused by the coronavirus pandemic. There is a little chance of the aid package in its current form getting Senate approval and President Donald Trump's signature, but by passing it in the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi will set down a marker as both parties positioned themselves for congressional elections in
a few months. And now our main story. We're over two months into the global pandemic, and communities everywhere have been facing restrictions like shelter in place for a long time, and some have begun looking for ways to get around some of the more onerous social distancing orders. That's especially true is the weather warms up in the US over
the last few weeks. Bloomberg reporter Kristen V. Brown has been collecting your questions about social distancing etiquette, and she brought them to an expert to clear up the confusion. Here's Kristen with more. Like a lot of people, I've been spending a fair amount of time each day having conversations with friends and colleagues about risk. I live in Oakland, California, and my county was one of the first in the country to implement shelter in place orders. The rules seemed
pretty black and white on the surface. Don't leave home unless it's for something necessary like exercise or going to the store. Don't hang out with people you don't live with. Just don't put yourself at risk of catching COVID nineteen if you don't need to. But then real life happened. For example, my roommate pointed out that I go to
the grocery store a lot. It's necessary to go get food, sure, but probably not actually necessary for me to go to Whole Foods every time I think of something new I want to bake every day for the last two months, it seems like we are constantly making these micro risk calculations. It's just not always obvious what the right decision is and when we do know what's right. Even though we
all want to do our part, sometimes it's hard. A lot of our listeners had questions too, so we turned those questions over to Bill Schaeffer, an epidemiologist at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. Bill says, handerstands why everything feels so confusing right now. So under the strict lockdown phase shelter at home phase, it was difficult enough with all these questions. It's just gotten even more difficult because many states are
now starting to open up in various ways. States are doing it differently, and within my own state, the rural areas are ahead of the cities and we're still unlocked up mode, so there'll be even more opportunities for confusion. And as you say, people are trying to take these general guidelines and apply them to their own specific circumstances, and we can tie ourselves into nuts doing this. So the first listener question we posed a Bill was from Julia,
who has two related questions. Julia lives with her friends a couple, but she is single and she had been casually dating a guy for a few months. Once lockdown set in, she wanted to go COVID exclusive with the guy. And keep seeing him. But her roommates weren't okay with it. At the same time, they were okay with her volunteering, and she was confused about which activity was actually riskier. I'll let her take it from here. So since then I got involved with a project to make face shields
for healthcare workers. And each day Monday through Friday, I go to an office with about twenty others, and they're not always the exact same people. We're mindful of keeping our distance and wearing masks, but we are handling the same applies, and we can't wear gloves with this project
because we're doing really precise crafting work. So my question is which is riskier from an infection standpoint, sleeping and hanging out with a guy even though he's having other dates over however he does live alone, or doing this much more noble activity of making masks with a team of people every day. All right, I'm very curious to hear what you say. I so I thought, actually that was among the easier questions. First of all, you can define mask making as an essential activity, and so that
gives you the okay to go there. Now, on the way there, you want to wear the mask yourself while you're in that congregate environment making the masks. You ought to be wearing the masks and using good hygiene, and separated by six ft from your other personnel. Wear the mask coming home, and when you come home, wash your hands very, very thoroughly. Now the dating issue is a completely different one. The A it's not an essential activity. B you can't stay six ft away from your date.
Three you really can't control your dates activity, so you don't know how how compliant your your date has been. This is a period of time when ruled dates are the way to go. We're supposed to stay at home except for essential activities. And if you're out dating someone, then you come home and the people with whom you live, you're putting them at risk. So, uh, staying at home, sheltering in place was a very serious recommendation. It doesn't say if you don't feel like sorry, Julian, I guess
it's zoom dates for now. Here's the next question. It's also about dating. From Bernie in Toronto. He's divorced with kids, and his children split their time between their father and their mother. He also has a longtime girlfriend. She's divorced and her kids moved back and forth from one house to the other house, and yet since the beginning of this I have not seen her. So am I allowed
to see her? We've been physical distance saying and being very careful about everything we do from the grocery store, etcetera. And I miss her. Sore to hear your answer, thank you. Personal relationships are going to be strained. They're difficult under uh strict sheltering at home time. Because it's really quite
clear the answer to that. Under a sheltering at home circumstance is you will have face time with your new girlfriend, but you will not see her in person until the sheltering at home phase ends, and then you can start seeing people again. That's really a pretty straightforward circumstance. Obviously, a lot of parents have been having a hard time to working from home while also keeping an eye on
the kids can be a lot still. Our next listener has been playing by the rules and asked their babysitter to stop watching the kids, but a friend that they share the baby sit are with recently decided to ask the babysitter to come back to work. Our listener didn't know what to do. Did this mean it was safe to have the babysitter come back to their house too, or do they need to intervene and ask their friend
to stop. Are we in the wrong here thinking that it's a little too soon to be trying to get back to normal and bring a babysitter back into the equation?
Should we be more insistent with our friends that they lay off for a little while longer and trying to make do without a babysitter because it affects us to and the people in our apartment building if they bring back our babysitter before thanks sir a little calmer, or do we just need to leave well enough alone, respect their decision and make our own choices based on based
on what we feel comfortable about. That's it. So, if you're in a lockdown mode, then having that person come into your house where they're also been with others clearly is not what's being recommended. This is a circumstance where you and the family are to shelter at home as as a family unit and not have visitors nor go
out except on essential functions. Now, as we open up and move into phase one and phase two of opening up, obviously, then people can go out and visit and that may be a time when they can share uh the babysitter. Of course, they'll want to make sure that the babysitter is healthy, doesn't have a fever, and has also been uh sheltering at home and taking care of herself and complying with all the guidelines. So you may be sensing a pattern here. Bill says, the rules are there for
a reason, don't break them. I try to hard to get Bill to acknowledge some sort of gray area in these scenarios. I even asked another epidemiologist for a second opinion. His answers were the same as Bills. I asked Bill, why so many of us are having such a hard time with these rules. We're Americans, were very individual oriented. We always look for the exceptions or saying does that really apply to me? It's part of our American very individualistic,
wonderfully individualistic nature. How can I go out to the edge of this and maybe step a little bit on the other side. Bill acknowledges that doing the right thing isn't always easy in these times. This virus doesn't care about our social, financial, economic, and cultural needs. It's going to affect people, and it will make some people very very ill. How we balance that is very very difficult. As I like to say, there are no right answers,
they're only very difficult answers. Bill gets it. There are some things he really misses too. I really miss going to the library. Oh I'm a withdrawal from that. So there you have it. There really isn't as much gray area as we might like to tell ourselves during these horrible, weird times. But if we follow these rules, at least we can know we're doing everything in our power to
help get things under control. By the way, if you have any more questions about social distancing, etiquette, or anything else during these confusing times, please give us a call and leave a voicemail at six or six four zero. If you leave a voicemail, we might play your message on the show. That was Bloomberg's Chris and v Brown
and that's our show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one and twenty bureaus around the world, visit bloomberg dot com Flash Coronavirus, and if you like the show, please leave us a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more listeners find our global reporting The Prognosis Daily edition is hosted by me Laura Carlson. The show is produced by me To for Foreheads, Jordan Gospoure and Magnus Hendrickson. Today's
main story was reported by Kristen V. Brown. Original music by Leo Sidrin. Our editors are Francesca Levi and Rick Shine. Francesco Levy is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening in the l