Background Briefing: April 9, 2020

On By gram

 

Without Testing We Do Not Know Where the Virus is and Who Has It

We begin with the U.S. having close to 500,000 COVID-19 cases, by far the highest in the world, and at the same time one of the lowest rates of testing for the virus with less that 1% of the population tested so far. Dr. Robert Bollinger, Professor of Infectious Diseases at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the founding director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Clinical Global Health Education who has more than 35 years of experience in international public health dealing with HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, antibiotic-resistant infections and other emerging diseases, joins us. We discuss the urgent need for testing since we cannot begin to address this pandemic unless we know where the virus is and who has it. We also address the lack of any nationwide statistics on how many healthcare workers, doctors and nurses have come down with the virus and how many have died. He is the inventor of a new technology eMocha which Johns Hopkins is using that allows physicians and healthcare workers to use their smart phones to monitor temperatures and gather data on themselves and their patients to better track the disease and isolate those that have this incredibly infectious virus that is invading hospitals, prisons and Navy ships while spreading across the country.

 

With the Public and Press Distracted,Trump and Jared Push Their Crooked Agenda

Then we speak with Lawrence Jacobs, Chair for Political Studies at the University of Minnesota who directs the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Political Affairs and whose latest book is Fed Power: Presidents, Public Opinion and Manipulation. He joins us to discuss how in the face of a pandemic, Trump has seized the opportunity to push through his agenda while the public and the press are distracted and preoccupied with a health crisis allowing the president and his son-in-law Jared Kushner to give handouts to cronies and big business while appointing unqualified judges and rolling back regulations.

DeVos Ignores the CARES Act Funneling Money to For-Profit Colleges Instead of Schools for Online Distance Learning

Then finally with schools closed and students trying to get lessons via distance leaning online we look into the disgraceful priority of Betsy DeVos who in spite of the fact that the CARES Act stimulus package excluded new funding for predatory for-profit colleges, she is diverting money to these crooks who use taxpayer money to con students and veterans into signing up for a worthless education which ends up saddling them with a lifetime of debt. Joining us to discuss this cruel an un-Christian priority of our devout Education Secretary is David Halperin, a senior fellow at Republic Report where he has an article “Warren Says COVID-19 Act Denies Aid to For-Profit Colleges. DeVos: Nah”