It's Thursday, March nineteen. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your daily coronavirus update. A little bit of perspective as we faced this coronavirus pandemic. It is a disaster that has no modern parallel. Even some of the worst events that have happened, like natural disasters or terrorist attacks, happen in one place at one time. But this is a health threat hitting the globe all at once, and it will affect us
in many profound ways for some time. Brian Walsh, future correspondent at Axios, joins us for why this is an endurance race with no clear end yet. Thanks for joining us, Brian, Continuing our coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. This is really something that's going on that has no modern parallel for us. A lot of times when you hear coverage of this, people are going back to the Spanish flu of n eighteen. That's one of the earliest things we can kind of
compare this to. Maybe people millennials and surrounding generations have just no experience with anything like this, and we're start and feel the effects of it. There's lockdowns happening in different states and cities. Bars, restaurants are closing. All of this stuff is happening, and this is going to kind of change how we operate for the time being. The economy is going to suffer because of this. There's a lot of stuff that's going to happen as a result
of trying to mitigate the spread of COVID nineteen. Brian tell us a little bit about this, what are we
in for? I actually think you're right that there's really no personally feel actuallyas now witho our modern memory, like we may want to go back to traumatic events like Hurricane Katrina or nine eleven, but the important thing to remember there's those events where geographically limited, limited by time, you know, the attacted the people who were in the disaster area or around New York obviously during nine eleven. But this is truly global. There's no real place to
escape both the direct effects of the virus itself. Eventually it's a continued to spread and certainly no real place to escape the social distancing measures that have to be put in place to combat that spread. So that global nature is really something we have in face. And I go back all the way to the Spanish flood pandemic. Surely they're similar, is there, But it's a very very
different world, much more glibly interconnected. Much we're higher standards of healthcare, so we expect more so what we're in for both. I think however long this actually takes, and then the impact that will have following it, it's not something we have any experience with. You can hear definitely in the way that President Trump is starting to get a handle on this situation and his team. I think the administration is getting better and handling this now. You know,
they have a singular focus. They have a very good team behind them, and they're following the recommendations of the experts, So I think they're starting to get a handle on it. When the administration has a lot of things going on, sometimes things tend to be a little wacky. But right now with the singular focus, I think they're starting to get a little bit better. Obviously, leadership is key and
all of this. You mentioned in your article that something instructive for us could be going back to World War Two and how we operated then tell us a little bit about that. I think that's really what we're two.
Might be the best example you can go back to and that's not much because of the disease itself, but for the total public mobilization that the response to war to really require the American public obviously not just the millions of Americans who were drafted or volunteered when the service and actually fought and they died, but those here at the home of what we had to do in
terms of changing our day to day lives. That we have to deal with, rationing of public goods at gasoline, of food, even here in New York City where I live, gratually the dim out the skyline of the city to reduce the risk of ships being picked up by submarines actually during the war, and that lasted for three or four years, and it was totally transformative, and well, the public did get behind that. It wasn't quite as easy it looks back in retrospect, and it took effort, it
took fighting to really get to that point. But that's kind of what we need to do with And of course what it really requires us right now mostly to do is stay at home, not go out, don't be part of a change of affection. But that's gonna be hard, because it's really going to require us to give up most of the things we think of as daily life, and that's definitely gonna be too. I mean, would just did a story about kind of this quote unquote generational
war that's brewing over the coronavirus. You know, young people feel like it doesn't affect them the same way, you know when you look at mortality rates and how severe the symptoms are. So they're doing lockdown parties and they're still trying to be out and about and do things. And I want to have the faith that everybody will come together eventually, but yeah, it does take a little bit of time there. So what's next in all of this? It seems like the economy is going to suffer greatly
because of this. You know a lot of sectors are closing down and suffering because travel restrictions and all that. So what's next? What are you looking forward? The only global sort of didaster We kind of have that sort of just like this, other than I think more like World War two is actually a big local recession. Something they spread the crown in the world, like a contagion really impacts this changes daily life. Difference here is that
it's going to be incredibly immediate. You're not just talking about the unwinding you get during a downturn slow down. You're talking about just demand job businesses essentially being vaporized over the next few weeks as people stops the new money, stopped going, stopping able to do anything. Really, it's hard
to really even prepare for that. I think. Just what you're seeing from the Trump administration with the measures they've talked about the last day or two, talking about sending out checks to Americans is getting people a thousand dollars is a testament of just how extreme that's going to be. You're gonna really need to float people to keep them going. And while we're only seeing the beginning of that, that's going to really be going hand in glove with the
speed of the coronavirus itself. You know, this one to punch that that's going to be hard to endure, I think, and that's very different even then a hundred years ago, when you didn't have a global economy that was so
connected and so quick to get thick. Essentially, when something this happens, and I want to read the bottom line from your article, it says there's no escaping the public pain to come We're just beginning an endurance test that has no clear end and not to alarm anybody, because the vast majority of cases do experience mild symptoms if you have COVID nineteen and all that, but this is serious. You know, we have to practice all the social distancing
to help mitigate that spread. And you know, we're looking at the health your system in America here people are talking about a ventilator shortage that could be coming. This is one of those things, as you've been saying, kind of how when we operate on the global level like this, or when something is affecting us that way, you know, we can't just necessarily borrow stuff from other countries because they're going through just the same exact thing exactly right.
I mean, this is not again like a hurricane where you can send aid from the rest of the world, the rest of the country, tell people out or shelter them. Everyone's going to need to be looking after their own needs while sort of doing their part for the public. And I you know, I understand that people it takes them time to fully get that because absolutely you're right that the vast majority of people will probably not really
face direct heel threat from this fire. So yeah, I can get why it takes time to realize that, but it really does require that sort of coming together. And this is the endurance test I talked about, because it is simply a certain amount of public pain. It's going to vary from person to person, but we're all going
to have to undergo some of it. And that's where the test will be of us as a public, us as the whole country, really us as a whole world, for whether we can endure that, because it's going to take a lot of time. You know, we don't know how much time. It could be a matter of weeks, be a matter of months. I mean some of the upper limits go beyond that, which is really hard to contemplate. But that's what we have in front of us marathon race that doesn't have a clear finish line, and we
just have to keep running in the meantime. Brian Walsh, future correspondent at Axios, Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. This has been your daily coronavirus update. You don't forget that. For today's big news stories, you can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday Friday. So follow us on I Heart radio or wherever you get your podcast