An Expert’s Perspective On The Pandemic

coming to you from lockdown. As now, even since the last time we spoke, the seventh and eleventh largest economies in the world have gone on lockdown California and New York. Now, Senator, thank you very much for doing that cold open, because not only are you doing my job on the cold open, you're also doing the job of the booking producer. You have brought along one of your friends, Senator Barrasso from Wyoming, who has expertise not only as a senator but also

as a physician to help us try to understand this pandemic. Well, John, welcome. John Barrasso's Senator from Wyoming, but he's also doctor Barrasso, and so he is wearing not only as Senator had as the number three Republican and leadership at head of the Republican Conference. But also someone has been a medical doctor for many decades now, and so welcome John. Glad

to have you. Great to be here. And I'll tell you this is such a popular show, certainly in Wyoming Verdict people turned it on every night during impeachment and well, but remember four years ago you were the choice of Wyoming and we were big Trump territory. Now, but I'll tell you you were the pick of the people of Wyoming who went to the Republican Convention in twenty sixteen. Well, John, thank you. I will say you're the second Senator to

join us on this podcast. The first was Lindsay. And Lindsay and his typical understatement, walked in and said, what in the hell is a podcast language? I think I'll also point out he looked at these gigantic microphones, He looked at this shag carpet out of the nineteen seventies, and he said, if you guys are the number one podcast in the world, who the hell is number two? Some guy in a park outside of that. That's so you've got a high bar to reach, because said Lindsay's

blazed the trail. Well, he is must see TV. He's a high wire act and people are always waiting to see which side of the wire he's going to fall off of. But he's amazing. Well, Senator Brussel, I'm so glad you could join us today because I know that typically senators are able to go home for the weekends. It looks like that will not be happening now. There are multiple bills that have been voted on. We're waiting

on the next bill to come forward. I was wondering if maybe we could talk as Senator Cruz, as you mentioned, from your viewpoint as a physician, so much of this is focused on getting more respirators produced, getting them out to hospitals. Just from the medical perspective, where do we stand right now? Well, I'm happy to talk about all of those things, because you're right. I go home every

weekend to Wyoming. Was home last weekend, talked to a number of folks who were physicians, as I continue to do now by phone, but was there in a number of events around the state of Wyoming last weekend. And we have changed dramatically as America's economy in America as essentially shut down, as has the world. And when you think about last weekend, we went from a day in Las Vegas where the one day they were going to close down the buffets to two days later they closed

down the entire town. So this is moving very quickly, and so it is as well medically talking to folks at home, I talked to the hospital administrators, do you have enough respirators? Well, they have eighteen. Now I've practiced medicine there since nineteen eighty three, so thirty seven years. They've never used all of them at the same time. So by any stretch of the imagination, we have more than we need at our hospitals and around the state

of Woming. But if this pandemic goes full blown, as we're concerned about and what we're seeing in other places around the world, there may not be enough. But to just put it into perspective, and Ted and I were talking about this at lunch. If you take a look at England, the whole country, fifty or sixty million people, they have five thousand of these ventilators. The machines that you're breathing, machines that you can hook people up to. We have one hundred and sixty thousand, So for everyone

they have. In England we have thirty two, but we only have about five to six times the population that they have. So we are the most prepared country in the world to deal with this. Do we have enough? I hope so, but we may not. But if we don't,

no one does. And that's the concern, and that's why we're working so much with social isolation and separation and keeping people distance, trying to do the proper things with hygiene, all in an effort to prevent more rapid spread and a prevention of the on going concern that we have about the capacity, not just with respirators, but what I hear when I talk to folks at home is are there enough tests? Can we get people tested who have symptoms?

And then are there enough personal protective equipment available? So, John, let's let's unpack this a little bit. And you and I were discussing this over lunch. So the ventilators are these big machines for those of us without m d s, the big machines that breathe for you if you're you're either in surgery or you've got severe respiratory problems in

an intensive career. In intensive care, and so the challenge is that you look at some of these countries, and I think Italy has seen it the worst, where we're reading stories out of Italy where they've run out of ventilators and they're sitting there with multiple patience in respiratory failure and they're having to make triage decisions of this person gets a ventilator, we're going to save this person's life, and this person we're not going to save this person's life.

And I'm not sure if it actually is going to work to save that person's life, because on average, some of these people are on these machines for ten to fourteen days, and at what point do you know, You know they've been there a week and you don't know which which way it's going to turn. So one of these machines gets tied up a long time with a

patient who is on the machine. Which is why they're working so hard with medicines that are already available worldwide that may help shorten the amount of time that somebody would need to be on the machine. The President talked about that with a malaria medicine, there's an HIV AIDS medicine. Things that we think may be helpful also hepatitis medicine. You were chief of staff at a hospital in Casper, Wyoming. You said they had eighteen ventilators, and your whole time

there you never used all eighteen. Yes, what happens if at that hospital one hundred people show up with coronavirus and with severe symptoms. What happens then? And next thing you do after those eighteen is the machines that you can use in an operating room for anesthesia if you put somebody to sleep. But that takes additional manpower, personnel that know how to use them. Anesthesiologists know how to use them as they do during a surgery. But that's

not fourteen days. So you'd have to have huge amount of resources, people and personal protective equipment to keep those people safe while taking care of the folks with coronavirus. And that's the big concern is that we may overwhelm and tire out the staff as well. They're already working significant overtime hours and if any of them get the disease and some of them are, then they're taken out of the fight. Well, I know, Senator Cruz, you made a point of writing a letter about this. In terms

of getting these machines. Obviously, as Senator Bross says, we're in a much better position than other countries, but we could use more. You have suggested that the administration invoked the Defense Production Act. This is a law from nineteen fifty that would turn our manufacturing capacity toward government ends, especially in times of war, times of a pandemic. You requested that the administration invoked this, and it looks like

today they have. Well, that's right, and so I wrote a letter this morning to the Secretary of Health and Human Services Alexasar and I urged him to use the delegated authority from the President to direct the building of critical medical equipment and in particular, ventilators. I don't want to see us in a situation like horrifically they're seeing in Italy. I don't want to see doctors having to make a choice of who gets to live and who has to die because they don't have the equipment to

save their lives. And you can't build a ventilator overnight. And if we wake up two weeks from now and instead of eleven thousand cases, we've got two hundred thousand cases or a million cases, it might be too late then, And so I believe that that that the President of the administration ought to direct the manufacture of these ventilators and end masks and other equipment that is needed. We ought to be directing it right now so that we can meet this crisis. This is everyone recognizes this as

a public health threat. We need to do everything on the front end to make sure we're not forced into an impossible situations. On the back end, and military opportunities to use the equipment there as well, and the VA hospitals and other sources. So there's there's some additional capacity,

but it can still get stretched to the limit. And listen, you don't necessarily have to have the hospital in Wyoming doesn't necessarily need to go from eighteen ventilators to a hundred, But there needs to be a central repository where ventilators are being constructed where you can surge that if there's an outbreak in a region and ventilators are needed, that you can get them there, and you can get them

there in real time where the need is. You know, some conservatives have asked about this, They say, is this a government overreach? Is the invocation of for instance, the Defense Production Act as something that is unprecedented, but it is worth noting this law has been invoked many, many times over the year, as it was invoked during the Obama administration. So while there might be concerns about how the government is handling this on this particular front, it

seems sort of like a no brainer. Well, and it's also how America has overcome virtually every major challenge we've seen is the incredible economic might of the American free enterprise system. I mean, it's how we won World War Two, as we directed. Remember, World War two for us started with Pearl Harbor. Started it with a kamikaze attack, a surprise attack that took out a vast percentage of our naval fleet, and we leaned in and rebuilt. And it was the power hour of this economy that enabled us

to win World War Two. We can mobilize that same economic power to make sure you know, it was a striking thing. John. I don't know if you watched any of the debate between Bernie and Joe Biden. Yes it was painful, but I did. I only endured about thirty minutes of it. There really was just sort of there were no sports on Sunday night, you know, the NBA was shut down. So, but it was very interesting when Bernie was pointing to this crisis as justification for socialized

medicine and what he calls Medicare for All. I thought it was striking that Biden jumped in and said, well, you know, Bernie, Italy has socialized medicine and we're seeing

that it isn't working there. I mean that in a Democratic primary, was this sort of startling moment of sanity that stood out for how different it was from almost everything else in the primary, and even Washington Post, not known for being a conservative voice, have the challenges of coronavirus to countries with socialized medicine, and the statistics that I just gave you about respirators and ventilators, Michael, the

breathing machines that caused fifty thousand dollars a piece. That's where all the statistics come to as to how few they have other places compared to the United States, and why, according to JOHNS. Hopkins, University of the United States is the most prepared country in the world to deal with this threat. That were you describe the US versus England, and you said, we're much better prepared than England. They have socialized medicine in England. Yes, How does the US

and England how do they compared to Italy? Well, both are better than what's happening in Italy. Now. The virus, it's it's unusual with this virus. They're seeing that it seems to be affecting old not just older people, older people who are smokers. And there's a question of has the virus changed and mutated a bit in ways that it's striking people differently. You know, you look at China, they're kind of over the hump. It looks like in terms of new cases if you believe them. I don't

believe them. And at the same time, you're seeing significant increases in France, a big jump in deaths the other day. So is it actually getting worse in Europe as it's getting better in China? You know, Michael John and I are both members of two informal caucuses I would call them in the Senate. One is the boot Caucus, and they're probably twenty twenty five senators that wear cowboy boots, Republicans and Democrats. And I've joked that if you're wearing boots,

you can't be all bad. Sometimes our colleagues test that proposition. And then secondly, we are both among the senators of Italian American heritage, so as we look at what's happening in Italy, John's ancestors and my and my own trace their lineage there. I'm sorry, I have to say I'm not in the boot caucus, but I am in the Italian caucus. And of course that with a name like Cruz, I wasn't so sure about the Italian, but I'm certainly Cuban, Irish and just a little bit of Italian. That is

excellent moment. Men are happy to have him. But I'm sorry I cut you off as you were saying, no, I remember we uh, it's Ted's right, and we talk about socialized medicine and they're always stretched to the limits, so they really cannot handle the sort of things that are happening here. Globally, the stretch is even greater, and

it's certainly this time of year. British hospitals are always overloaded at this time of year and they have to cancel elective cases, and we are now in the United States canceling elective cases just to make sure the capacity is there, and a lot of it has to do with these personal protective equipment that folks need, in terms of the masks, in terms of the the sterile gowns, the gloves, all of those things, because if there if there's not enough of them, then they shouldn't be using

them for elective procedures. Well, Senators, I would be interested in Senator Brussel your medical perspective and then Senator Cruising your political perspective as well on what the state lockdowns mean. You know a lot of people have written in and they understand that we have a federal system and so the states can do things that the federal government cannot do. But as a conservative, and as someone with absolutely no medical expertise whatsoever, how should I be looking at the

state lockdowns? Are they a good thing? Are they conservative? Are they medically necessary? Well? I'm a states rights guy. I mean that's how I was in the Wyoming State legislature. I am still that way now. And it's the governor of our state that's making decisions. In many states, the governor can't even close down the schools in our state. It's a local decision by various school boards. Local control, local decisions. So I think it's better to have things

done that way. Education is so much a part of this. But the more we can do to have people washing more frequently, staying in terms of the from each other, the distancing all of those things, I think is the better chance to take care of the first crisis, which is the medical crisis that we have, and then deal with the economic crisis that we also have. We just alluded a bit to the economic crisis and this strong and robust economy that we started from and having to

get that all restored again. To get to that point, we have to get the medical crisis behind us, and the best way to do it is the social distancing, the proper hygiene, and all of the things that we can do to stop the spread of the disease. John, let me ask you, as you know yesterday Gavin Newsom, governor California, said that over half of the people in California, over twenty five million people could become infected with this virus.

As a doctor, does that sound credible to you? I hear a lot of people that are not sure the magnitude of the threat. What's your assessment from medical and Angla Merklos said Injury Germany, maybe sixty to seventy percent of the population there, you know, if this continues to spread, and I think there's a difference between having the disease and testing positive or having the virus. So I think there are some people that may become infected and not

even show symptoms or show signs of it. We're seeing it with the younger people with the you know, the children that may be carriers of the disease that they would test positive. Then you worry about them near grandmam or grampap so they could have the virus in the system and they can but not really be effective by

We're not exactly sure why that is. And when I talked about the possibility of a virus mutation and changes now they're seeing in Europe sometimes forty five or fifty percent of the people hospitalized are under the age of fifty five. I mean, we kind of thought of it as an old person's disease, and in terms of those dying, it does seem to be that older group, but some of the people on respirators are now in a somewhat

younger group as well. Now, are they mostly people who have asthma or other significant respiratory illnesses or what I think they're still trying to figure that went out. Because the medical systems in Italy and France are overwhelmed, they're not that able at this point to kind of come back with good research numbers until their fatality rates go

go up. Probably when when the medical systems overwhelmed, you see you see four or five six percent fatality instead of one or two, which is what they expected it to be. The flu, which I think this year in the United States is going to kill about thirty six thousand Americans. That's one tenth of one percent. Doctor Fauci said. You know, if we get everything and do it right here, it would be ten times that. But you're right, across

the world, we're seeing numbers much higher than that. Well, Senator Brosso, to your point, there may be many people who have the virus or who are not showing symptoms, or certainly who have not tested positive. Is there any way that that testing will become so widely available that we'll be able to figure out what the denominator is because we're not going to get a very good sense of the fatality rate if we don't know how many people have it in the first place. Well, that's exactly right.

And Ted and I were to lunch with the President last week and Tony Fauci and others, and when they said, well, we're going to have more and more tests available, I said, well, then you're going to have a lot more positives just because they're already positive, they just don't know it. And we're now at that phase where I think we're over seventeen thousand positive tests in the United States. Over two

hundred have died. But if you could get to the point where more and more people are tested, we may know that denominator as well as a numerator, and I think it would be more helpful to see. Well, I know that both of you are going to be in town to vote on this next part of relief for coronavirus. Already, we've seen some announcements from the White House today, closing the border with Mexico, closing the border with Canada, putting

off student loan payments for sixty days. I mean, there have been a number of provisions that have already come out. What can we look forward to, as you guys quarantined in Washington to see voted on over the next few days, and how will it help? So I think we'll probably vote on Monday. Right now, where we are is that Mitch McConnell has has filed a bill, and right now there is active negotiation with the Democrats. I don't know

what's going to come out of that negotiation. As I look at the bill, I think it is important that we see strong action from Washington to provide economic relief. I'm very concerned that we are going to see in coming weeks millions and millions of job losses. Yesterday I predicted over a million job losses. That the numbers I'm saying now are even two and three million coming up in just a week or two. I mean, it's it's there are a lot of layoffs, there are a lot

of people hurting. There are a lot of small businesses. There are a lot of restaurants and bars and hotels that are that are just really hurting. The bill right now that that has been introduced, has really two important components to it. One is the individual leaf, and that's basically sending a twelve hundred dollar check to just about everybody, just about everybody who makes less than ninety nine thousand dollars a year. That's individual relief, just to provide a

check and some help. The second component is focused on loans for all of the small businesses, for all of the big businesses that are you know, the airlines are losing billions. It's focused on loans to help those businesses survive so people have a job to come back to, so that that you know, when you're if you're a waiter, you work at a restaurant and your restaurant is shut down right now, you sure do hope that when you can go back, that that restaurant hasn't gone out of business.

And so you know my view, Look, I'm worried about what the Democrats are going to insist upon, and it is possible this bill gets to be such a mess that I vote no. I mean if if if they put a bunch of garbage in there, that's possible, I will say I would characterize myself as pleasant lea surprised as a conservative about where the bill is right now, in that it is not It is not like the

Obama stimulus. We talked last night about how TARP, for example, was very different because there you had financial firms whose own misconduct had caused much of the crisis. This is different. This is more like a natural disaster, more like a hurricane or a fire, where it's not the fault of the restaurant that's shut down. Right now that this is happening, I'm glad that it's structured as loans. I think loans are the right way to do it. But it is

still very fluid and up of the air. I mean, what do you think, John, Yeah, I agree with you. I voted against TARP and I'm happy with that vote. The small business component of this piece, I think is very important because it's a loan. But any money that's used to keep the payroll going out to the workers, any money that's used to just keep the rent paid and the electric bills paid, would be a forgiven loan.

They wanted to use it for other things, that's different, so then they'd have to pay back with interest, but it would be it would basically be a forgiven loan if it's used just so that the doors can open three weeks from now or whenever those businesses have come because and that'll be done through the Small Business Administration. Seventy percent of the jobs in Wyoming, I'm sorry, seventy percent of jobs nationally are small through the small through

small businesses less than five hundred employees in Wyoming. It's almost ninety five percent of the jobs through small businesses. So we want to make sure that the small businesses can reopen once we get the medical component of this behind us. You know, Michael. One thing about John, he was one of the first senators I got to know, and the reason is that he and I flew together when I was just brand new elected in twenty thirteen.

We flew together to Israel and Afghanistan. And one of the things really amazing about John it is he's got a real heart for our troops and for our soldiers and sailors and airmen and marines, and he travels all over the world. How many trips have you taken abroad to visit our troops? Well, I go every Thanksgiving, no matter when where our Wyoming National Guard. I go every Thanksgiving.

In this past Thanksgiving, talk to President Trump and said, you haven't been to Afghanistan, Love for you to go. Who Wyoming National Guard is there? And he went. We went in Air Force one. He surprised the world, certainly surprised the press, and surprised the troops. And it was really a wonderful reception by the President by the troops on the ground in Afghanistan, but you know, every Thanksgiving wherever they are, I'm with our Wyoming National Guard. Wow,

that's tremendous and it certainly didn't surprise the press. I think they all thought he was playing golf and it was quite a nice reveal. Damn well, yeah, I forget there was one report I had to do a big correction. I think I forget which network had blasted him for playing golf. And I think he was literally in the air at the time. He was well, he was delighted that the surprise worked. He wanted to be He wanted

it worked. There's there were a lot of backstories, but the President and you know, you have to do it that way. When we went, I think it was four or five of us that went and on that trip

in Afghanistan. I mean I still remember, Look, I've been sworn into the Senate three days earlier, so I'm sort of brand new to all of this, and I still remember they're putting, you know, flak jackets on us, and we're in helicopters flying over active war zones and getting instruction about all right, if they opened fire on the chopper. Here's what you gotta do. And look, obviously, when the president is coming in, you see Air Force one coming in.

That has to be done at a high level of secrecy because there are a lot of bad guys would who would love to take a shot at the plane of the president and at night and the windows closed and lights off and only lights were on were on the runway so they could see in land. But it

was very impressively done. And then they kind of a lockdown on communications on the ground until we were on the plane getting ready to go, and then they lifted the restrictions so that everyone could send That are you saying, John, that someone actually managed to stop the president from tweeting, Well, that was impossible. That was well, Well, someone was taking the role of the president as tweeter and continued to tweet during the trip so that the press wouldn't be

suspicious or the public wouldn't be suspicious. So yes, his own phone in job, his own phone was taken away from him for the part of the trip. It was well, it was terrific and the best part for me coming back my daughter who had gone deer hunting that day Thanksgiving in Wyoming, shot this beautiful buck and she had

texted me. I showed the picture to the President and he called her on the phone and yes, mister President, oh it was it was the call of her lifetime to talk to the President as he's looking this picture of my daughter Hadley with the gun, with the buck, with the great with an incredible rack on the buck. It was something that sounds much more exciting than my Thanksgiving. You know, we have just about a moment left here, or a minute left. Rather, I do want to get

to one mail bag question. This is from Roger. Roger asks why was the CDC and the government so ill prepared for this situation? I know the system was obsolete, but what could have been done in years prior to be better prepared. Well, Look, I think there are a couple of things that government bureaucracies are almost always inherently slow, and they've got a bunch of regulatory barriers. So when it came to the CDC, you look at the rollout of the tests. The rollout of the test, as everyone knows,

did not go very well. And a big part of the reason why is the CDC tried to do it all itself. They tried to do it within the federal government, and they had a problem with contamination in the labs, so the first test that came out didn't work. What we've done since then, and it's been a big shift, is that we've been powered the private sector. We've been powered labs like the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic to develop tests, and I think they're good lessons learned.

But look, that's not the first time a government bureaucracy acted like a government bureaucracy. It's not the last time that's going to happen. But the more and by the way, also on the FDA side, removing the barriers. We need to develop a vaccine, We need to develop treatments for coronavirus, We need to develop a cure. And there are a lot of wonderful professionals at CDCFDA and they're doing heroic work right now. But the FDA, they like their rules

and they're hesitant, they're resistant to change. And we don't need a vaccine two years from now. We need a vaccine fast implemented because we need to get out of this this this economic slowdown and get the economy back booming. We need to say people's lives and what do you think, John, I agree completely. I think the CDC had this kind of command in control centralization of everything, including the tests, and I think it didn't do as well as I

would have liked. And the private sector is responding in a way that we know. The private sector always responds, and that's why we have made the advances in the availability of tests that we were behind at the beginning. Well, that is a hopeful note to end on. We will have to leave it there. I note that both of you will have to go back because soon there will be a vote on the next stage of relief from coronavirus.

Senator Brasso, thank you so much for joining us, and thank your CRUs of course, thank you as always for shedding some light on what's going on, because there is a real problem in the flow of information here, so it's really nice to be able to see what the government is doing. We will be back with a whole lot more, but we can't do that today, so in the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security Pack, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations, and cidates across the country. In twenty twenty two, Jobs, Freedom, and Security Pack plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.