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ANNOUNCER: Now, from CBS 4 News,
this is Facing South Florida
with Jim Defede.
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Good morning, I'm Jim
Defede, and welcome
to Facing South Florida.
Later in the show we'll
talk to Broward Sheriff,
Gregory Tony, about his efforts
to hold deputies accountable
when excessive force is alleged.
First, with the growing concerns
here in the United States about
the spread of the Coronavirus,
I spoke late last week with
Congresswoman Donna Shalala.
She has a unique insight, having
served eight years as a health
and human services
secretary during the
Clinton administration.
I start by asking, how serious
of a threat is the Coronavirus?
Serious.
There's no question that the
Coronavirus is here in the
United States, and
it's going to spread.
CDC has told us
it's going to spread,
and so we have to be prepared,
and of course our hospitals have
experience both our great
public hospital as well as the
community hospitals in Miami
have experience in isolation and
in treating patients.
The big challenge is going to be
that we're in flu season and our
emergency rooms and our beds
are going to be occupied by flu
patients, and that's a good
reason to tell people to go get
their flu shots right away,
because they don't want to end
up in the hospital
when we need those beds,
most likely for
victims of Coronavirus.
How prepared do you believe the
federal government is to handle
this crisis right now?
Well, let me say that we have
first rate physical scientists
leading the efforts at
the CDC, at the FDA,
at the Public Health
Service, at the IH.
They're now being coordinated
for the first time by the White
House, led by the
Vice President,
and he's just appointed
a deputy, Debra Burkes.
Colonel Burkes, who holds
the rank of Ambassador,
has been running
the big AIDS program,
and she's an immunologist.
She is first rate, so
I'm very comfortable
with who is leading it.
The problem is that we have not
been giving the resources to all
of these agencies, or to
local governments and to state
governments over a
sustained period of time.
In fact, we put in resources
during emergencies and then we
start to cut them when
we're not in emergencies,
and so our infrastructure
constantly has to be rebuilt as
we deal with emergencies.
Did you ever deal with anything
like this on this sort of scale,
potentially, while you were in
the Clinton administration for
those years?
Yeah, you know we
dealt with SARS with BRS,
with the chicken virus,
what the Hantavirus,
and every single time we were
totally dependent on states and
on local governments on the
training and hospitals of
doctors and nurses to both
identify the disease and we had
to figure out
treatments as well as vaccines,
but you know we ought to be
anticipating this as opposed to,
just funding it periodically.
And I really cannot
criticize this administration,
when every administration has
been lax in continual funding.
JIM: You know it seems as if,
even in the midst of the
Coronvirus spreading
around the world,
the President's budget, still
had major budget cuts up towards
20% budget cuts
for the CDC, NIH.
Does that sort of show you a
disconnect between how this
administration should've been
looking forward to this project?
Absolutely, but the Congress is
not going to put up with that,
both Democrats and Republicans
have made it very clear that we
intend to provide
supplemental funding,
and we never tended
to accept those cuts,
but what is even more serious,
is the President is saying
something different
than his scientists.
The one thing we have to do
is to speak with one voice,
and I think the administration
is starting to pull it together.
I would've put the
President in front of a camera,
to talk about science, because
in his last two appearances,
he stepped all over the message
and actually gave the American
people the impression that this
was somehow miraculously miss
the United States, and that
was the opposite of what the
scientists were saying.
We must listen to these
scientists/physicians.
They're world class, and the
rest of the world is listening
to them, and it's very important
that political appointees step
out of the way.
I never spoke about the science.
I always put these
physician/scientists in front of
me, made sure that they had a
clear message that they all
agreed on, put them
in their white coats,
and let them talk to
the American people.
Now one of the things that you
said you have confidence in the
number two person that
will directly under
the Vice President.
Do you have confidence
in the Vice President,
in terms of I know
they're not calling him a Czar,
but in terms of
leading this effort,
and also having all the
messaging going through
the Vice President's office?
Are you okay with that.
We'll see rather
we're all okay with that,
but everything's
at stake, and Jim,
this is a case where I think
we should be very careful,
not to politicize this.
We have to be supportive of
both the leaders of the country,
but in particular these
scientists/physicians that are
going to lead us through this.
This is not going to
end in six months.
We're in this for
the long fight.
We will not have a
vaccine for one to two years,
which means that we're going
to have drugs to treat the
patients, we need hospital
beds, we need diagnoses test,
and we need testing
facilities all over the country,
so I think this is a time
when all Americans ought
to pull together.
This also points out one of the
issues that we have here in the
United States, so
many of our drugs,
the elements of our
drugs come from China.
That now may be disrupted.
Is, does, will this focus do
right in attention on where we
manufacture drugs, where
the drugs are coming from the
ingredients, and should we
bring more of that home to
the United States?
Not only to the United States,
but maybe to other places,
so there are
multiple sources, but look,
the drug companies, the
pharmaceutical industry has
never been interested
in vaccines.
You don't make a lot of
money out of vaccines,
so we have to use a wide variety
of enticements to get them in to
the vaccine business.
In this case, we'll be doing the
vaccine development pretty
much ourselves.
The distribution will have to
be done by the drug companies
themselves, but again, we've got
to put the resources in place,
we've got to make sure we
have a national strategy,
and more than anything
else from my point of view,
we have to make sure that
states and local governments are
properly funded.
The Health Commissioner, the
Health Department in Miami-Dade,
has been underfunded for
centuries as far as I can tell.
We need to get resources
right down to our local sources,
and we need to reinforce the
resources in our hospitals so
that we have the beds, and
the personnel to take care
of patients.
Let me ask you this.
We've done it before.
Let me ask you to be a
media critic for a second.
Has the media
handled this story well,
or have we created more
anxiety than should be
generated for this?
I heard a doctor on one of
the TV stations recently,
say, we should be more
about being on alert
and not being anxious.
Well, you know it's
a delicate balance.
You want to tell people the
facts and you don't want to lie
to them, but you also have to
be even-handed to make sure that
you're not increasing the
anxiety level beyond where it
should be at this point in time.
That's the importance of
the steady hand of these
physician/scientists,
because they're not excitable.
All right, last question
that I want to ask you,
and then I'll let you go.
What practical suggestions
would you have for the public to
protect themselves?
You talked about
getting the flu shot.
What are other things?
I've heard some people
say that you should've be
shaking hands anymore.
Well, let me be clear.
The flu shot will not
prevent Coronavirus.
What it will do is make sure
that you don't end up in the
hospital or an emergency room in
the place of someone that gets
sick from Coronavirus.
Wash your hands.
We're going back
down to low tech.
Wash your hands,
and washing hands,
keeping surfaces clean is
the only thing that we
can do as individuals.
If you feel ill, you ought to
stay at home and not go to work,
but we will have
testing devices,
and we will have proper
guidance out to everyone.
Everybody should be
looking at the CDC website,
but also local public
health officials will be issuing
warnings and directions.
We've got to listen to
people that really know
what they're doing.
Up next, Broward
Sheriff, Gregory Tony.