What We’ve Learned About the Coronavirus

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 15 June 2020

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

States are reopening. Parks are crowded. Restaurants are filling, again, with diners. But is this dangerous? Six months into the pandemic, we reflect on what we’ve learned about the virus — and ask how that knowledge should chart the course forward. Guest: Donald G. McNeil Jr., a science and health reporter for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily Background reading: As New York businesses reopened, Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned that a second wave of infections was almost inevitable if residents did not abide by social-distancing rules. “It will come,” he said. “And once it comes, it’s too late.” Restrictions are easing across the United States, but Arizona, Florida and Texas are reporting their highest case numbers yet. As of Saturday, coronavirus cases were climbing in 22 states.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The pandemic feels different in the US than it did two weeks ago, three weeks ago, a month ago.
0:07.8	It feels, and these are highly qualitative words, and I know you're probably
0:11.9	rolling your eyes. It feels less desperate, and it feels a little less urgent. And I'm not even
0:18.0	quite sure why that is. So what do you make of that? I mean, does that mean we've gotten complacent?
0:24.0	Yeah, I think some parts of the country are not afraid yet.
0:33.7	They see this as something that happened to the other, to urban New Yorkers, to blacks and
0:40.5	Hispanics in the big cities far away. But I also see that even in New York, it's a combination of
0:48.6	well, we survived the first wave, and it didn't get me or the people I knew who got it
0:56.0	survived. And boy, my board infrusted it in lockdown, and I want my job back, and I want my,
1:01.6	hanging out with my friends back. And I think we have gotten used to the idea of death,
1:13.3	of absorbing a lot of death.
1:26.4	From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is the Daily.
1:31.0	Today, my colleague, Donald G. McNeil Jr. returns with an update on the state of the coronavirus,
1:47.8	and what we've learned about the virus, six months into the pandemic. It's Monday, June 15th.
2:08.2	Donald, the last time that we spoke to you was in mid-April, when the death toll from the
2:12.6	coronavirus in the US was nearing 40,000. And various states at that time were beginning the
2:18.4	process of opening back up slowly, but opening back up. Where is the pandemic now?
2:25.8	Okay, well, there are 113,000 dead in the US the last time I looked. Basically, every state has
2:36.9	reopened to some extent in different ways with different phases. In about 21 of those states,
2:45.3	cases are going up as was feared. Hospitalizations are going up. So I would see this as a very worrying
2:54.9	situation. Well, given that, I mean, in terms of how the United States is managing the virus and
3:00.6	it's spread, are we doing better now than we were many, many weeks ago when we spoke? Are we doing
	...

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