The promise of college in America is the promise of a clear path to the future, of a reward for all the sleep deprivation and soul-deadening competition of high school, and, most of all, of instant adulthood. This is a stunningly resilient myth. It survived the financial crisis of 2007-08. It persisted even as more and more young people moved home after graduation and never left, because they couldn’t afford to. It has continued to beckon teen-agers even as student debt came to dominate the lives of their older siblings and parents. Every year, more people have competed for spots in colleges and universities, waiting for letters that promised a steady route: arrival at a Disney-Gothic castle; eight semesters, one of them abroad; two or three summer internships; a festive launch of a lucrative, or at least secure, career. They waited, too, for the elaborate succession of celebratory events that precedes college: senior prank, senior skip day, prom, yearbook, graduation, and more. As of April, 2020, none of that is happening: not the celebrations; not, for many, the college; and, most important, not the adulthood—at least not as they imagined it.
As a professor, I see my students on Zoom now, in class or during what now passes for office hours. They are usually sitting on their beds, in their childhood bedrooms or in their dorm rooms on mostly deserted campuses. I know why some of them couldn’t go home: a parent has had a transplant; a sibling has cystic fibrosis; the family kicked them out for coming out as gay. I know some of their worries: a student has been sick with covid-19; another student was living off campus and working full time but has now been laid off; a student stayed at the college while two family members were ill; most summer internships and study programs have been cancelled (and some universities are talking about an online-only fall semester). As a parent, I am sharing a house with one college student and one rising freshman, neither of whom planned to be living with me this spring. As a journalist, in recent weeks I have talked to more than a dozen young people whose future and present have been swallowed up in the fog of the pandemic.
Saminah Haddad, a seventeen-year-old senior at Long Beach Polytechnic High School, wasn’t expecting her college offers until later in the spring: she runs track, and recruiters look at the spring season, she told me over Zoom. This year, there will be no spring season, which for Haddad means no four-year college. She is considering Long Beach City College, which is free for state residents. She also lost her job at an amusement park. All of the senior-year milestones that Haddad had been looking forward to have been cancelled: prom, graduation, and an event called the “Pursuit of Excellence Awards,” where she would have been recognized for perfect attendance. She doesn’t yet know if she’ll still be working this summer for her father, who was about to open a juice bar in Brooklyn.
In the meantime, Haddad’s school is offering some online instruction, but in her case the course load has dropped to just two classes: A.P. Literature, which meets virtually, and a government class, which consists of written assignments that she receives by e-mail. Her other classes, which were electives, “aren’t really doing anything,” she said. Haddad is planning to take her A.P. exam, though she finds it hard to imagine what the forty-five-minute, cell-phone-friendly version of the test will be like. No one knows how prospective colleges will view it, either.
“Online classes are boring,” she said. The descriptor she used perhaps most often in our conversation, in fact, was “boring.” Life has been drained of content, and the plot is lost. She texts with friends. She argues with her mom and stepdad a lot. “It’s bringing us closer together,” she half joked. “But it’s O.K.”
E.,an eighteen-year-old Barnard freshman, is scared, not bored. E., who is nonbinary and isn’t out to their parents, was adopted at age ten, along with their two siblings; their biological mother had abandoned them, and their biological father was struggling with addiction. At first, Barnard was everything E. needed: a beautiful campus, a sense of community, counselling services, and, through the office of disability services, the academic accommodations that E. needed.
E. went home for winter break but decided to come back early because, they told me over Zoom, their parents were being emotionally abusive. A complicated bureaucratic procedure awaits any Barnard student who attempts to return to their dorm when school is out of session, so E. stayed with an alumna in Brooklyn until the spring semester began. In March, when Columbia, which is affiliated with and adjacent to Barnard, abruptly closed its campus after identifying a member of the community who had been exposed to the coronavirus, E. didn’t ask to stay on campus and never considered going to their parents’ home. Even though E. is financing their education through loans—E.’s parents have no real relationship, financial or otherwise, with the school—e-mail messages about the end of in-person classes and the closure of campus went to all students’ parents. “We are trying to get away from our parents, but, unfortunately, the college system doesn’t really allow dependency overrides,” E. told me. “If your parents make a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year but they are not willing to help you pay for college, there isn’t a lot of sensitivity to that.” E.’s parents wanted to know why E. wasn’t coming home, and E. couldn’t really explain to them that college was supposed to be E.’s way to escape, once and for all, their parents’ homophobic comments and the constant blare of Fox News. “I’d been trying to go to a college far enough away that they wouldn’t visit me,” E. said.
E. has a rent-free place to stay, with a lesbian activist in Harlem, until summer. E. is applying for internships and trying to raise money to rent their own apartment; another summer option they considered was to stay with their biological father, who, E. said, is now clean and sober. Concentrating on coursework, meanwhile, is difficult. All of E.’s four classes are now on Zoom, with additional assignments and recorded lectures. E. hasn’t been able to finish many assignments. “I’m really trying to stay afloat this semester,” E. said, and so are their classmates. “I know a lot of people are having trouble focussing.” E. finally scheduled a Zoom meeting with disability services, more than a month after in-person classes ended and less than a month before the end of the semester.
Many colleges have set up a petitioning process to allow certain students to remain on campus during the shutdown: international students, students who have health conditions or whose family members have health conditions that preclude their travelling home, and students whose home situations are precarious or unsafe. Exemptions are not usually granted to students who ask to stay because they have a job near campus. Cassidy Shannon, a nineteen-year-old sophomore at Emmanuel College in Boston, had a job at a burger joint that synced well with her class schedule. Now she is at her mother’s house in Westborough, Massachusetts, working as a server at a retirement home. “This retirement home is really fancy,” she explained to me over Zoom. Residents used to take their meals in a dining hall, served by high-school students; once the pandemic took hold, the old staff “had to stop because their parents didn’t want them working there,” Shannon said. Now she is one of just three or four young people who deliver meals to the residents’ rooms. Shannon’s mother, a preschool teacher, is also still working— providing child-care services to first responders—and her seventeen-year-old sister, a high-school junior, has kept her job at Chick-fil-A.
Two of Shannon’s classes are now given as pre-recorded lectures, available online, but the other two meet by Zoom at six in the evening, which means that she can’t take as many shifts at the retirement home as she needs to. She is financing her education through student loans: she borrowed twenty-two thousand dollars for her first year and thirteen thousand dollars for her second, when her financial assistance was increased as a reward for good grades. “I’m such an in-person learner,” she said. “I’m paying all this money for something that isn’t the same.”
It’s unclear what Shannon, other students, and their parents are actually paying for. Put another way, what exactly is a four-year college? “It’s a hedge fund that teaches classes as a tax dodge,” one Twitter user posted, after Harvard announced, in mid-April, that it was cutting salaries and other expenses, despite its endowment, which reached more than forty billion dollars in 2019. “And they’re barely even doing the ‘teaches classes’ part anymore now.”
Of course, most smaller colleges have modest endowments, or barely any endowments at all, and depend on income from tuition and student fees to keep going from year to year. Room and board fees make up a large and growing portion of college investments and income. Emmanuel College, where Shannon studies, recently unveiled an eighteen-story residence hall that cost a hundred and forty million dollars to build, or roughly the equivalent of the college’s entire endowment. Most colleges, including those that used to be known as commuter schools, such as Manhattan School of Music, in New York City, now require freshmen and, often, sophomores to live on campus, even if their families live nearby. Colleges might be called landlords of sorts, except that dormitory tenants don’t have leases and can be evicted at will. It might be more accurate to say that colleges are in the hospitality and catering business, except that a hotel that kicked you out of your room or a restaurant that cancelled your reservation would be expected to refund the entirety of your payment. Some colleges have refunded the room and board fees for the unused portion of the semester, others are refunding a portion of that portion, and still others have not yet committed to refunding any money.
Most faculty, students, and administrators don’t actually think of colleges as hedge funds or hoteliers; they think, rather, that colleges charge students for teaching them. Before the coronavirus pandemic, professors would grouse that their students acted like customers who expected faculty to provide services. But it’s impossible to argue that online instruction, even when exceptionally well-executed, delivers the same quality of education as in-person teaching. I’ve been lucky: all of my students have high-speed Internet access, I have relatively small classes, and my students had a chance to get to know one another during the first six weeks of the semester. (Some of my friends who teach on different timetables met their students for the first time online.) I have done my best to compensate for what students have lost: learning by discussion, by engaging with one another and with me in ways that simply cannot be replicated online. Still, they are certainly not learning as much as they would be in person.
Students at some universities have started organizing to demand tuition refunds, and some have sued, arguing that online classes aren’t what they paid for. In an extraordinary step, Southern New Hampshire University has announced full-tuition scholarships for incoming freshmen—but not for returning students—and a sixty-one per cent tuition cut starting in 2021. Most colleges will not take such drastic steps, and many simply cannot afford to without overhauling their entire model. With worries about fall enrollment and a growing understanding that the fall semester, if it happens at all, will likely be taught at least partly online, colleges will have to argue that what they are delivering onscreen is worth as much as what students would have received in the classroom. This, in turn, may force a conversation about what the colleges are actually selling. Although the service they provide is education, the product for which they charge is the college degree—the piece of paper that promises a student will earn eighty-four per cent more in their lifetime than if they had only a high-school diploma. This and similar statistics are what allow so many college students to think of their loans not as astronomical debts but as investments in their future. Now that future is changing in ways none of us can really apprehend.
Those who are graduating this year face the worst job market in nearly a century and, by the time they graduate, possibly the worst job market in recorded history. Emilia Decaudin, a twenty-one-year-old senior at cuny’s Macaulay Honors College and the youngest-ever member of the Democratic State Committee of New York, told me that she had planned to start looking for work at a nonprofit this month. But nonprofits aren’t hiring, she said over Zoom, “and even if one was, what’s the point of finding a job that’s likely not to exist by summer?”
Cameron Wright, a twenty-two-year-old senior at Yale, is the rare college student whose employment plans appear to be on track. He is scheduled to begin working as a legal researcher at a tech company in New York this summer; he was planning to spend a year there before going to law school. But the prospect of actually moving to New York has gone from daunting to incomprehensible. For now, Wright is still in New Haven, one of eleven people who remain in his dorm, out of the usual three hundred. He rarely catches sight of any of the others. Twice a day he goes to the single dining hall that remains open on campus, but only to pick up grab-and-go meals. Wright’s home is in rural Kentucky, with his mother, who has a history of pulmonary illness. “I just couldn’t stand the thought of something happening to my mother,” he told me. For a while, he considered renting a car and driving to Kentucky, but he couldn’t find a place where he could self-quarantine before seeing his mother.
“I’m thinking a lot about the unreliability of things,” Wright told me on the phone the first time we spoke. His father, a state-government employee, died when Wright was ten. After his death, Wright’s mother went back to work as a substitute teacher. “I didn’t necessarily fit in at home in Kentucky,” Wright said in an e-mail, “and I did not want to follow the traditional path of graduating high school, attending an in-state public school, and then moving back home.” A combination of his mother’s support, a few good teachers, and, as Wright put it, “the chance nature of college admissions” got him to Yale with a full-tuition financial-aid package. A job as a residential adviser to freshmen paid for his room and board this year, and, in the second half of March and early April, Wright was spending much of his time trying to clarify Yale’s temporary grading policies for his advisees. Some colleges have eliminated letter grades entirely this spring, switching all courses to a pass-fail system. Others have given students the choice between letter grades and pass-fail grades; meanwhile, some graduate schools, like Harvard Medical School, were warning prospective applicants that pass-fail grades would be viewed neutrally only from colleges that instituted a temporary universal pass-fail system. (Yale made pass-fail optional at first, and Wright and other students lobbied successfully to make the policy universal.)
Wright was finishing his senior thesis, on the Soviet dissident Raisa Orlova. “It’s really hard to think about history when you are living through it,” he told me. He was trying to find a connection to his academic work by thinking about loneliness. Might the loneliness imposed by the pandemic help him understand the loneliness of someone who dared to think differently in a totalitarian society?
When we e-mailed a week and a half later, Wright had completed his thesis and had received his passing grade for the spring. He was still on campus but thinking of relocating to a friend’s empty apartment. I asked Wright if he was still planning to go to law school. “One of the things the pandemic offers is the cruelest reminder that anything is possible,” he e-mailed in response. He wrote:
He went on to say that he would try to write more, perhaps try to publish. “I want my work to be incessant in reminding others of our own precarity,” he wrote. And then, he said, he would probably go to law school.
State of Maryland protected Covid Tests with National Guard
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we’re all thinking about our hands and
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right now we’ll need them more than ever
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America’s factories power plants
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government military data transportation
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water waste national security hospitals
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are all fighting they need people on the
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ground to keep them functioning which is
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why we are working hands on around the
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clock
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supporting the larger efforts in every
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state and county because our technology
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is only as powerful as the people
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deploying and maintaining it keeping
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America moving takes more than
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technology alone it takes a human touch
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[Music]
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[Music]
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[Music]
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we’re watching certain metrics and
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looking at a pattern of numbers before
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we make any kind of decisions everything
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is going to be based on the numbers and
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the science we’re not going to do
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anything that’s that’s going to put
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anybody in in more danger
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[Music]
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welcome to Washington Post live I’m Bob
01:54
Costas an a tional political reporter at
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The Washington Post this morning we
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continue our leadership during crisis
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series as the corona virus pandemic up
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ends all aspects of American life our
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guest today is a state executive on the
02:11
frontlines Larry Hogan Maryland’s
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Republican governor he is chairman of
02:15
the National Governors Association
02:18
governor Hogan welcome good morning Bob
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thanks for having me
02:21
good morning so governor what is the
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latest in Maryland in terms of cases and
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the death toll well so we were still
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kind of climbing that curve in Maryland
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we were a couple of weeks behind some of
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the other states because of some of the
02:37
early and aggressive action we took we
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just surpassed 21,000 cases and sadly we
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just went over a thousand deaths here in
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the state but we’re we’re certainly in a
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much better position than we would have
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been we not taking aggressive action so
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you’re in a much better position but are
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you ready to set a date about reopening
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your state so we laid out a very
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detailed plan just last week and we’ve
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had a coronavirus response team made up
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of some of the smartest scientists and
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epidemiologists and public health
03:13
officials in our state from places like
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Johns Hopkins and some of the leaders of
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this pandemic response really nationally
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advising us we developed a plan that
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took into consideration the president’s
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own corrupt coronavirus plan the mga
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plan that we put out the week before for
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the recommendations for all the
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governor’s along with some Hopkins
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reopening plan and the American
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Enterprise Institute plan put together
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by dr. Scott Godley who was the former
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FDA commissioner and our plan is as soon
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as we see a flattening or a plateauing
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of these key numbers like
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hospitalizations and ICU bets or the
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things that we’re really focused on the
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number of cases is going to rise as we
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do more testing and so and and sadly the
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deaths lag a couple of weeks behind
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what’s actually happening now and so the
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numbers that
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most closely following on a daily basis
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our hospitalizations in ICU beds and
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we’re not seeing as much of a spike
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we’ve got a couple of days up a little
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bit but it’s a it seems to be leveling
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out which is a good sign it seems to be
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leveling out so you’re still in a
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wait-and-see period about those metrics
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we’re looking at those metrics and we
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wanted to make sure that we before kind
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of key building blocks that we wanted to
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have in place we want to make sure we
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had robust testing which we have ramped
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up dramatically we want to make sure we
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can do contact tracing we have a enough
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of a supply of PPE which has been a
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difficult thing for most of the states
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to deal with and we’re constantly
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bringing in more and more supplies to
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support our hospitals and and then you
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know the last thing we’re dealing with
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is hospital surge and we’ve added six
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thousand beds to our hospital capacity
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and have been acquiring ventilators to
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make sure that we can be prepared so
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those things in place we have a phased
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plan to start implementing just as soon
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as we can because we’re anxious to get
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our economy back on track and put people
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back to work but we want to make sure we
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do so in a safe effective and gradual
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way let’s talk about the supplies you
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just mentioned last week it was big news
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Marilyn bought 500,000 tests from South
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Korea but you saw the Washington Post
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this morning they have not been used yet
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what’s the holdup well I announced when
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we acquired the test a little over a
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week ago it was a it was a huge
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accomplishment it’s like this more than
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a month after the president said the
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states were kind of on their own and had
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to go out and get their own testing we
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searched all over the country to find
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tests and we finally through some
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international diplomacy we were able to
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get this half a million tests in from
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Korea at the time when that plane landed
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that half a million tests was more than
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the all of the testing added together
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for four out of the top five states in
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America it was quite a step but when I
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announced it 10 days ago I said it was
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still only a part of the puzzle because
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we still needed swabs and reagents there
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are about nine different steps in this
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that was a big chunk of it the rest of
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it we’re continuing to work on and prove
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on but the story really wasn’t you know
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I hate to take a shot at the Washington
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Post but it really wasn’t that accurate
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of a story because we are utilizing the
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tests we have thousands of them that are
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being deployed but we have to ramp up
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our lab capacity which we’ve been
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working with the federal government on
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trying to get some assistance on there
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had been a shortage of lab of swabs all
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across the country which the president
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just instituted the defense production
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act on all of these things are part of
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being able to deploy those half-million
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tests but we have a poultry outbreak on
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the Eastern Shore we have thousands of
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those tests over there now and produce
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stadium in Salisbury we’re putting them
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out in our we put out a report yesterday
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that we’re going to do mandatory testing
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of every single patient in every single
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nursing home first state in America in
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America to do that and we’re doing that
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with those Korean tests that we’re just
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talking about to the point about the
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Washington Post story I’ve heard from
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Governor Pritzker of Illinois for
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example a similar point that you just
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made that it’s not just enough to have
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the test you have to have the supplies
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that go along with the test when are you
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going to feel comfortable that Marilyn
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has those supplies to use the tests you
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got from South Korea well so we’re using
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as many of them as we can and as the
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additional supplies come in we’re
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utilizing more of them but when we when
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we acquired the test we said that was
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helping us on a long-term strategy so we
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always intended this to be over several
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months that we would utilize those
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half-million tests not in the first week
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that we acquired them so but where it
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all depends on the ability of to get the
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swabs the reagents all of the steps in
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the process and the lab capacity so you
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know we’ve got private labs involved
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that have to get it ramped up we’ve got
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the University of Maryland where we
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invested in robotics just so that they
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can produce 20,000 tests per week which
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is a major improvement we’ve been
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getting reagents we were able to ramp up
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I think you know 40,000 more tests as
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about a week or so ago and swabs
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continues to be a problem but it seems
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like and that is something that the
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federal government is helping with and
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hopefully we’re gonna get more supplies
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in but right now we’re using all we can
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possibly use and we’re hoping to be able
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to keep up with demand as we need them
you say the federal government you want
it to be a partner with Maryland
but based on my own reporting you had
some concerns about whether the feds
would cease these tests when you brought
them over from South Korea is that true
were you concerned that the federal
government would try to take those tests
out of your hands was a little bit of a
concern about trying to get these things
and it was a very complicated process
you know we we spent about 22 days and
nights dealing with this whole
transaction with Korea dealt with the
Korean embassy and folks at the State
Department in Korea eight different
state agencies and our scientists on
both sides trying to you know figure out
these tests and that at the last moment
I think 24 hours before we got sign-off
from the FDA and border and customs to
try to make sure that we landed this
plane safely we made sure it landed at
BWI Airport instead of Dulles so the
first time a Korean Air passenger plane
has ever landed at Baltimore Washington
International Airport we landed it there
with a large contingent of Maryland
National Guard and Maryland State Police
because this was an enormous ly valuable
payload it was like it was like Fort
Knox to us because gonna save the lives
of thousands of our citizens and there
had been reports of for example in
Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker
told the story of his plane load that
came in with with masks was basically
confiscated by the federal government
and he had to then get Robert Kraft the
owner of the Patriots to fly a second
mission with a private plane to try to
bring some of that equipment in for a
couple of other states that had similar
stories so we were just making sure that
that was so important to us that we
wanted to make sure that that plane took
off from Korea safely landed here in
America safely and that we guarded that
cargo from whoever might interfere with
the US getting that to our folks that
needed it the national guard protecting
test is the National Guard in Maryland
still protecting those tests they are
the National Guard and the State Police
are both guarding these tests at an
undisclosed location these things are
being distributed they’re helping us
distribute the test they’re also helping
in all kinds of other humanitarian
we have about 1,300 members of the
Maryland National Guard who have been
activated another 800 that are kind of
on standby ready for activation within
an eight-hour period but they were just
tremendous they’re helping us distribute
supplies and PPE helping us with the
distribution of those tests they’re
helping provide meals for hungry kids I
mean they’ve just done an incredible job
and we were utilizing them these are
citizen soldiers that are really
stepping up to help their says there’s
fellow citizens in need are we seeing in
Maryland a racial disparity in access to
testing generally not access to testing
in fact we’re actually most of our tests
are deployed in our high population
areas which also happen to be more
racially diverse so we’re doing more
testing in the areas with higher
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concentrations of minorities but we’re
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also there is a disparity in I mean
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there’s no question that that minorities
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are more impact they didn’t have a
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higher percentage of people that are
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that are both getting the virus and
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dying from the virus and so it has to do
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with you know our population centers and
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in in the inner Beltway and the
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Washington suburbs and in Baltimore City
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where we have highly dense populations
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and people that are you know riding
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public transportation or working and
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living in closed environments and
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there’s definitely there we published
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all the racial data which does show that
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that minorities are more impacted by the
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virus but we’ve spent more time more
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resources and done more testing and put
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more of a focus on those areas than
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anywhere else people in minority
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communities people across Maryland
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they’re also struggling not only with
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access to testing but access to
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unemployment benefits and you’ve
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apologized acknowledged problems in that
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effort the beacon portal so what are you
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doing right now today to speed up access
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to debit cards and checks well so this
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has just been an enormous first of all
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my heart goes out to all the people that
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are struggling and suffering there’s so
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many so much unemployment I think
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nationally as of today you know 30
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million people filing for unemployment
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some of these benefits are brand-new
12:53
I want to thank the federal government
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and Congress and everybody for moving so
12:57
quickly to add these additional benefits
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folks that are not w-2 employees but gig
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workers and 1099 none of the websites
13:05
could handle these types of these new
13:08
types of benefits number one and the
13:11
volume was so unprecedented we had in a
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five-day period something like 250,000
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people try to file which was more than
13:20
the entire year of 2019 we created a
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brand-new website for this brand-new
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program to try to handle that and we
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were one of the first in the country to
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do so in many places they aren’t even
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able to provide the benefit so you can’t
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get through on a phone a couple of
13:34
states their entire system crashed and
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it’s been down for days ours has
13:39
continued to run and we’ve been able to
13:40
help a couple of hundred thousand people
13:42
but it’s frustrating to me that some
13:44
people were waiting way too long and the
13:46
system was not able to help handle the
13:48
speed so I you know I said look this
13:52
it’s unacceptable as the governor of the
13:54
state I you know I have higher standards
13:57
of that and I’ve been demanding from the
13:59
contractors that are developed aside
14:01
from our all of our state workers we’ve
14:03
brought in hundreds of people to try to
14:04
fix it working around the clock 24 hours
14:06
a day as of this morning it’s working
14:08
and functioning much better you have
14:11
about a three minute wait rather than
14:13
waiting for hours but we expect that
14:15
volume when people start filing if the
14:17
file every week so Sunday and Monday the
14:19
massive volumes are gonna come in again
14:21
we’re hoping it’s gonna work much better
14:22
but it’s a difficult every state in
14:24
America is having difficulties
14:26
processing the massive volume and we’re
14:28
trying to get people every penny of the
14:31
money that they deserve and that they
14:32
desperately need as quickly as we can
14:35
speaking of speed another tragedy in
14:38
your state in other states
14:40
nursing homes and you’ve now mandated
14:42
testing for residents staff at nursing
14:45
homes the question is though how soon
14:48
can that be done
14:50
so the nursing homes as you know if you
14:52
remember Bob when we first started
14:55
hearing about this in America was that
14:56
focus in Washington state of Washington
14:59
with that nursing home and I remember
15:01
vividly seeing those those images it’s
15:05
been probably the biggest problem that
15:08
every state has had nursing homes
15:10
because we have that’s our most
15:12
vulnerable population and they’re in
15:15
such a vulnerable position so what when
15:18
the the very first day of our crisis
15:19
they we got our first case in Maryland I
15:23
called in all of the long-term care
15:25
facility operators the nursing homes the
15:27
assisted living all of these folks and
15:29
weeks we brought them in we took really
15:32
aggressive action on day one to lay out
15:35
protocols we didn’t know we cut down
15:37
access so there were no visitors allowed
15:38
this was fifty fifty two days ago we we
15:42
said that staff had to be checked
15:44
temperature checks as they came and went
15:46
no travel for your staff but all kinds
15:49
of protocols we put in place together
15:51
with the industry in spite of all those
15:53
things a symptomatic staff who didn’t
15:58
have a temperature didn’t show any signs
15:59
of anything and there were no visitors
16:01
coming a symptomatic staff would would
16:04
come to work with the virus unknowingly
16:06
and it just went through these nursing
16:09
homes like wildfire we now have over
16:11
4,000 cases in our nursing homes we have
16:15
we have about 130 some nursing home
16:18
centers with outbreaks or clusters and
16:20
sadly 46 percent of all of our deaths
16:23
our nursing home patients so we’ve taken
16:25
further steps to now not wait until
16:28
somebody’s showing signs of symptoms and
16:33
and but we’re testing every single staff
16:36
member and every single patient in all
16:39
those there’s 24,000 of them in our
16:41
state so it takes a while to get it done
16:43
we’re prioritize just started yesterday
16:45
this new program we’re with our new
16:48
tests from Korea but we’re prioritizing
16:50
the ones where we have the outbreaks and
16:52
where we have threats of potential
16:54
clusters where we’ve got a case where we
16:57
already have somebody that tested
16:58
positive and we’re gonna work our way
17:00
down that list until we get to every
17:02
single
17:03
those folks what about prisons should
17:06
testing be mandated there as well we are
17:09
where we’ve taken all kinds of steps to
17:11
reduce our prison population we’ve set
17:13
up triage centers we’ve set up isolation
17:16
sections in the hospitals and we’re
17:18
doing testing of hospital staff that’s
17:20
one of our top priorities and that’s
17:22
included in our kind of clusters and
17:24
hotspots where we’re focusing some of
17:26
these tests first so it’s things like
17:28
prisons it’s things like nursing homes
17:31
also on health care workers they’re
17:35
gonna get prioritized for tests and then
17:37
this issue like I talked about today we
17:39
have a big poultry industry on our
17:40
Maryland’s Eastern Shore we have a major
17:42
outbreak there and interruption of the
17:44
food chain so we’re we’re setting up
17:46
this new thing there for the for the
17:48
workers in the poultry industry at
17:49
Perdue at the Perdue plant and at
17:52
Purdue’s Stadium in Salisbury let’s
17:54
pause on that food issue we got an email
17:57
from one of our readers of the post Milo
17:59
Williams from Maryland she said quote I
18:01
heard there’s no risk to Maryland’s food
18:03
supply train but grocery stores are
18:05
still out of stock of many items I
18:07
switch to having my groceries delivered
18:08
but a lot of times my delivery is not
18:11
arriving because things are out of stock
18:12
what’s being done yeah I think that’s
18:16
there there is no interruption in the
18:18
food chain and that’s not sort of
18:20
unrelated to what I we do have a concern
18:23
with this poultry industry issue that
18:26
same you’ve heard about it nationally
18:27
with pork producers and beef producers
18:29
and now poultry producers to make sure
18:31
there’s no interruption in that food
18:33
chain which is a big national issue here
18:35
locally we’re concerned about the
18:37
workers and the spreading this into the
18:39
community and about our poultry farmers
18:41
and what it does to our economy on the
18:43
this issue that your your reader is
18:47
asking about the stocks not being filled
18:51
that’s a problem that’s we’re continuing
18:53
to try to work with all of these supply
18:56
chain folks to make sure they keep being
18:58
filled some of it is a problems with
19:02
distribution but some of it is simply
19:04
people rushing out and and hoarding
19:06
because of concern about things running
19:08
out so they’re buying too much and
19:10
clearing out their shelves and but it’s
19:13
an issue that we continue to work with
19:14
all the stores in the supply
19:16
to try to improve upon to make sure that
19:19
this shelves remain stocked but there if
19:21
there isn’t a concern so people should
19:23
just buy what they need and not be you
19:26
know wiping out the shelves and taking
19:28
everything we just have a couple more
19:30
minutes here Governor Hogan so maybe for
19:33
some brief answers one we got a note
19:35
from Steve Larson from Maryland will the
19:37
beaches be open in Ocean City this
19:39
summer I know that the Ocean City mayor
19:43
and city council have been meeting and
19:45
talking about this it’s really it’s
19:47
really too early to tell I think there
19:49
probably will be some hope for some kind
19:52
of a season in Ocean City but whether
19:53
it’ll be normal that’s a big question
19:55
about how they’re gonna go about opening
19:57
opening opening beaches in a safe way
20:00
what would you mandate face coverings
20:03
masks during a reopening of Maryland is
20:06
certainly it depends on that’s one of
20:08
the things that our plan and visions
20:10
were working with industry sectors
20:12
depending on what the work is and how
20:15
closely their affiliates certain and
20:16
certainly in some places you are gonna
20:18
have to wear masks until we find a
20:20
vaccine or a cure homelessness is an
20:24
issue rent and mortgage payments are an
20:25
issue 50 Democratic lawmakers on
20:27
Wednesday praised you they also called
20:29
on you to cancel rent and mortgage
20:31
payments for residents and businesses
20:32
hurt by the pandemic will you do that
20:34
haven’t seen the letter yet from the
20:36
legislature legislatures I just I saw
20:39
that clip this morning in the news but
20:42
we have worked very closely to make sure
20:45
that people are suffering during this
20:46
time and we put a pause on evictions it
20:49
was one of the first things I did on
20:50
addictions and foreclosures so that
20:52
nobody came and nobody can have their
20:54
utilities cut off nobody can be evicted
20:56
nobody can be foreclosed on and we’re
20:58
gonna try to work with the lenders and
21:00
with landlords or at work through this
21:02
as we come out of this crisis because
21:04
certainly everybody’s been hurt
21:06
economically you just had a special
21:08
congressional election on Tuesday in
21:10
your state what was that experience like
21:13
and do you would you like to see all
21:15
mail-in voting this fall I just had a
21:19
good call yesterday with Congressman to
21:21
be kwazy and fumet who was elected to
21:23
fill the seat of Elijah Cummings the
21:25
election went very well I was sort of
21:27
surprised it was all done by mail with a
21:29
few exceptions of
21:30
people that didn’t have fixed addresses
21:31
or people that needed to go out in
21:33
person and it went if it came off
21:35
surprisingly well without a glitch and
21:38
you know we’re going to encourage people
21:39
in the June primary that that’s coming
21:41
up for the rest of the state to vote by
21:43
mail there will be the opportunity for
21:45
those who can’t have one polling place
21:47
each county for folks that for example
21:49
like they’re blind or don’t have a fixed
21:51
address that need to get out but most
21:53
people we want them to vote by mail it’s
21:55
the we want to have every vote counted
21:56
but we want people to be expressing
21:58
their vote and making their decisions in
22:00
a safe way final question here the last
22:03
time I visited with you in Annapolis it
22:06
was a for a political story you decided
22:08
not to run for president you were
22:10
thinking through the idea at the time
22:12
this week it was just announced that
22:14
congressman Justin Amash of Michigan is
22:16
considering a third party run would you
22:19
be willing to support him are you
22:20
leaning toward Vice President Biden or
22:23
President Trump you know in the middle
22:26
of the pandemic you know I haven’t quite
22:28
frankly Bob spent a lot of time thinking
22:30
about politics I think I know there’s an
22:32
election going on but my focus is on
22:35
trying to keep the people in my safe
22:36
state and running the NGA which is a
22:38
nonpartisan organization that requires
22:41
me to stay out of politics for a while
22:43
so I’ll pass on that question and we’ll
22:46
figure that out in November I’ll ask you
22:49
about that at some point though in the
22:50
coming months I’m sure about it I’m sure
22:52
you worried Thank You Governor Hogan for
22:55
joining us here at Washington Post live
22:56
we appreciate your time thank you Bob
22:58
thank you and thank all of you for
23:01
watching tune in tomorrow at Washington
23:03
Post live at 11:00 a.m. Eastern to catch
23:05
Post columnist David Ignatius he’s gonna
23:08
be in conversation with Ford Motor
23:09
Company CEO Jim Hackett for more
23:12
information on that and other programs
23:14
go to Washington Post live.com and
23:16
register but for now I’m Bob Costas
23:19
stay well and stay safe
Kushner Announces Doctors HATE Him After He Discovered One Weird Trick To CURE Coronavirus
WASHINGTON—In an official White House press release as the administration’s leading advisor on the viral pandemic, Jared Kushner announced Friday that doctors HATE him after he discovered one weird trick that will CURE coronavirus. “Doctors DON’T want you to know this, but you can DESTROY coronavirus FROM HOME in under 24 hours with this one simple method!!!!” read Kushner’s statement in part, advising all U.S. citizens to visit the website www.KushCures.gov NOW to experience the 100% effective coronavirus CURE discovered by a DAD. “My quick and easy coronavirus solution is helping families everywhere! To learn more, send $100 to the CDC to Find Out Now why Doctors HATE it but Moms LOVE it! Medical experts everywhere were STUMPED by the coronavirus, and they IGNORED me just because I didn’t have a doctor license, but they just don’t want you to know about this AMAZING LIFE HACK that will ensure you never have to visit your hospital for coronavirus—ever again! Plus, not only is my 30-second MIRACLE CURE completely effective at ERADICATING coronavirus, it will also help you Lose Up To 5 Pounds Of Belly Fat—and KEEP IT OFF!!!” Kushner’s official press release reportedly concluded with an exclusive limited-time offer to buy an iPad from the government for under $24.
The Absurd Case against the Coronavirus Lockdown
An irony of the coronavirus debate is that the more successful lockdowns are in squelching the disease, the more vulnerable they will be to attack as unnecessary in the first place.
A growing chorus on the right is slamming the shutdowns as an overreaction and agitating to end them. A good example of the genre is an op-ed co-authored by former Education Secretary William Bennett and talk-radio host Seth Leibsohn. It is titled, tendentiously and not very accurately, “Coronavirus Lessons: Fact and Reason vs. Paranoia and Fear.”
They cite an estimate that the current outbreak will kill 68,000 Americans. Then, they note that about 60,000 people died of the flu in 2017-18. For this, they thunder, we’ve imposed huge economic and social costs on the country?
This is obviously a deeply flawed way of looking at it.
If we are going to have 60,000 deaths with people not leaving their homes for more than a month, the number of deaths obviously would have been higher — much higher — if everyone had gone about business as usual. We didn’t lock down the country to try to prevent 60,000 deaths; we locked down the country to limit deaths to 60,000 (or whatever the ultimate toll is).
By Bennett and Leibsohn’s logic, we could just as easily ask: Why did we adopt tough-on-crime policies when crime rates are at historic lows? Why did we work to find a treatment for HIV/AIDs when so many of the people with the disease now have normal life expectancies?
Of course, it was precisely the actions we took that caused those welcome outcomes.
Consider the perversity of their reasoning a different way. If we had shut down the country a month sooner and there had been, say, only 2,000 deaths, then on their terms they’d have an even stronger argument, i.e., “We did all this, and there were only a couple of thousand fatalities?”
In other words, the more effective a lockdown would have been, the more opposed Bennett and Leibsohn would be to it.
As for the flu comparison, it isn’t as telling as Bennett and Leibsohn believe. The 2017-18 season, with 60,000 flu-related deaths, was particularly bad. But the coronavirus might kill a similar number — with the country on lockdown.
In the 2011-12 season, 12,000 people died of the flu in the entire country. New York alone has eclipsed that in a little more than a month (again, while on lockdown). In 2018-19, there were 34,000 flu-related deaths in the U.S. We’ve already surpassed that number nationally (yet again, while on lockdown).
Why have people reacted so dramatically to this virus? Bennett and Leibsohn have a theory: “New York City is where the epidemic has struck the hardest. The media is centered in New York City.”
New York certainly gets disproportionate media attention, but it is also, as all of us had no hesitation recognizing on Sept. 11, 2001, part of America.
If the disease struck smaller heartland cities such as Omaha and Wichita, would Bennett and Leibsohn hope that the story got ignored?
Bennett and Leibsohn neglect the key fact that the economy began to shut down before there were widespread official orders. People voted with their feet because they were fearful of a highly transmissible, virulent disease. And they acted rationally. If everything had gone on as normal, the outbreak would have been worse, and we would have eventually had shutdowns anyway.
The most objectionable part of the Bennett and Leibsohn posture is its sneering attitude toward “frenzied, panicked” ordinary Americans who have sacrificed so much to protect their families and co-workers (and complete strangers).
By all means, let’s open up the economy as soon as we can, but it will require more careful thought than the most fervent critics of the shutdowns have demonstrated during the peak of this pandemic.