Frontline Releases New Documentary ‘Coronavirus Pandemic’ | Morning Joe | MSNBC

PBS NewsHour's Miles O'Brien discusses the new Frontline documentary 'Coronavirus Pandemic'. Dr. Leana Wen also joins the discussion. Aired on 4/20/2020.
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Frontline Releases New Documentary 'Coronavirus Pandemic' | Morning Joe | MSNBC

87 comments

    1. @Lisa Carr How come it was never mentioned by the candidates in the Dem debates mid Feb? Yeah, blame America first.

    2. @Dive Bar Casanova It is not their job, but it is Trump’s job and he is clueless, incompetent and dangerously ignorant.

    1. Newtek Im not so sure there are “just” Republicans anymore. As far as Trumpublicans, I believe they want a new normal (you’re probably sick of hearing that phrase). The Coronavirus coupled with the Trump administration has created an environment in which only big businesses like Amazon, Walmart, and McDonald’s can survive. The small business fund just dried up and it is estimated that 70% of restaurants will not survive once the crisis has ended. Chances are the percentages for other independent businesses are not favorable for them as well.

  1. It’s the working citizens that make America, no matter how hard the wealthy and republicans try to trample them into the dirt.

    1. In the eyes of Republicans, Americans are nothing more than a resource they can exploit…….once you realize this, you can clearly predict every action the GOP will take, going forward. They willingly sacrifice Americans, if it meas more profit. And they will burn us at the stake if needed, to ensure they continue to make profits at our expense……….yay capitalism……

    2. You silly people bashing rich people, what does every poor person have in common ? They are all trying to get rich. Rich people aren’t the ones playing the numbers

  2. In a few weeks’ time, when the banks take everything away from the defaulting payers (houses, land, condominiums, boats and cars), prices will fall to bottomless levels and drag all consumers down with them. America first ( Donald brainless)

    1. It’s not Trump’s fault but you are correct. Gonna be a whole lot of evictions, foreclosures, and bankruptcies over the next year or two.

    2. There will be nothing to tax or make loans on, just expensive vacant lots with weather worn unmaintained building structures. Very sad future.

    3. @Eldon Janzen
      Then you’ll see a lot of local and state gov employee layoffs. That’s coming next year.

  3. Sadly, we are lacking any leadership at the Federal level. Let’s be honest, Republicans steal from us….outside of that, they aren’t equipped to do anything else, other than blame Democrats…………

    1. @gigi schultz Right, I should bash myself in the head a few times until I start thinking like a Conservative?

      Most Americans know, an educated Republican is a Democrat. It’s hard to rid one’s self of an education, without some form of brain damage. And you can’t be sane or educated and still be a Trump supporter…..so are you encouraging me to Trump my head in with a brick until you nut jobs start making sense?

    2. @Jeremy Backup lol, I was a democrat, o am an independent now, will never be a dem again, I was fooled thinking they really wanted to help people, u do realize 9/11 happened under bush, u do realize they all the same, can care less about u, and msm tells u lies, all of them including fox

    3. Republicans work for living and Dems don’t seem to be the reality…..Dems take all the tax payer money away and use the pandemic bill to feed there pork bellies but you think Repubs steal… your blind to the obvious

    4. Everybody please WAKE UP!!
      When the State tells you it’s safe to go to Home Depot to buy a sponge but dangerous to go and buy a flower and when the State shuts down millions of private businesses but doesn’t lay off a single government employee, it’s not about your health.

    1. @Randy Phillips And what, exactly is that truth you speak of? The media is lying to us all, it’s their job.
      “Out of Shadows Official” on YouTube. Learn the TRUTH.

    2. @Shawn Corbin I am sorry my poor deluded friend. I fear there is no saving you. You may go away now

  4. Fighting the spread of Covid-19 is similar to fighting a wildfire. A wildfire needs fuel to spread, so you make a fire break by removing fuel in front of the wildfire to keep it from spreading. For the Covid-19 virus, a human host is the fuel that keeps it spreading, so you isolate and keep social distancing to create a “Human Fire Break”. Another tool in fighting a wildfire is to drop fire retardant chemicals or water in front of the spreading wildfire on trees and plants to slow it down so it will burnout. In fighting Covid-19 it would help if we could vaccinate healthy individuals to prevent them from getting the virus and spreading it. In a wildfire they use spotter planes to identify hot spots for places where to best use the fire break or drop chemicals to impends the wildfire since resources are limited and look for flare-up in areas thought safe from the wildfire. In fighting Covid-19 testing individuals helps identify virus “Hot Spots” where an isolation zone around the hot spot can be created to keep the virus from spreading since there is no vaccine. Without a sizable amount testing and using just isolation and contact tracing, a resurgence is likely. Testing is not a one time occurrence, it must be done continuously and to high risk individuals in high risk sectors of the population since it would become unmanageable to test all of the general population continuously.
    If a positive is detected, the individual is interviewed to see where the individual has been who they where in physical contact with. People in contact with the infected individual might have just been in casual contact and not aware of the individual; like riding the same bus, plane, in the same room or building, etc;. There is no plan on hiring public health workers to trace down these possible contacts to isolate the Covid19 virus from spreading. What happens to contact tracing when the lock down is lifted and people leave the state or come from another state who might have the virus? There is no national coordination.

    1. If the only weapons in your arsenal to fight the Covid19 virus nation wide is 1) Testing, 2) Contact Tracing, and 3) Isolation or quarantine, then you need a massive coordination effort. With limited resources, a comprehensive plan must be in place. With limited supplies, testing is normally done on individuals showing signs of infection. By the time any symptoms are displayed, the infected individual might have already spread the virus to the environment. Contact tracing has to back track who the individual had been in contact with and where the infected individual had been. Extensive nationwide databases must be created to cross reference physical location, date, and individuals that might have been exposed to the virus based on testing results to identify hot spots.

      Testing indicates at the time of testing, wither an individual is positive or negative. If an individual has a positive result, the individual must be isolated. Contact tracing must be done to quarantine others who might have been exposed. Computer algorithms can be used to identify locations where individuals with anti-bodies are located or with high negative test results for a possible safe zone Possible hot spots can be identified to conduct testing of non-systematic individuals before a major flare-up occurs based on computer algorithms. With the possibility of non-symptomatic Covid19 carriers not knowing they have been exposed and incubating the virus and spreading it, this becomes highly problematic. Without using computers and having thousands of trained public health workers collecting and analyzing the data, a second wave of infection will occur if the stay at home order is lifted.

    2. Reecom98 I wish you could have put this comment on Facebook. Everyone needs to read your comment. I love your comment and the analogy you shared!

    3. The problem is gargantuan, it’s going to take years to get to the point that you suggest. The facilities, means of production, and materials are not available now to produce the number of tests, respirators, PPE etc…to fight this like the fire. God forbid, but a forest fire eventually stops when it burns itself out. This happened during the Hong Kong Flu in 1968, the Spanish Flu in 1918, and the Black Death in 1355. Our only choice may be the only choice humanity has ever had, let it burn. Terrible as it may be this is our fate.

    4. I like your analogy of fighting a wildfire. If it’s as contagious as it seems, then anyone who’s flown in a plane cross country during the last few months is a potential carrier / infected. The airlines must be involved in contact tracing with passenger lists, and it goes on and on from there. Contact tracing is exceedingly difficult – it is hard to be as meticulous as needed – heck, I was potentially exposed back in February at a Walmart store when a guy sneezed in the next checkout lane behind me – do I know who he was, or he me? Hardly. Contact unidentifiable. This was back when the advice was only stay 6 feet apart, and public use of masks was discouraged in order to keep that item for the front line hospital workers. Sorry to say, but I think the advice to begin easing lockdowns after 2 weeks of declining new cases is not enough. To continue the analogy, you can restart a potentially large fire from a single smoldering coal. I think we must isolate for at least the duration needed for the disease to burn down to a very very low number of cases nationwide and then quarantine those locations and individuals remaining with the disease. What is the length of time that an asymptomatic carrier is contagious – we must isolate everyone for a minimum of that, from the time the lockdown occurs – have we achieved that? Is a month enough time for the asymptomatic carriers to recover and go non-contagious? Seems to me backward the thinking at the moment: we need to isolate the asymptomatic carriers, not merely differentiate those having COVID from seasonal flu. We must test individuals without symptoms before they re-enter the shared workplace. Establish a safe population to begin work. Those with symptoms could be assumed to be infected and should isolate obviously. When has this ever not been our policy at work – if you feel sick, don’t show at the workplace. It is inevitable that those with the virus will either recover or get worse and must isolate for the period of contagious shedding. If I were an employer, I would not permit workers to re-enter a work premises until I knew they had tested negative, or recovered significantly past the contagious phase. It may be inevitable that this thing just keeps migrating from individual to individual for years to come if we don’t identify the asymptomatic carriers.

    5. We are like the penguins standing near the water’s edge, needing to go to sea for food to feed our young, while lurking just under the water there might be leopard seals waiting to attack. When is the right time to jump into the water? Do we wait a little longer while looking for signals of leopard seals in the area? Or do we jump in blind and hope for the best. Without testing and the public health infrastructure for contact tracing to locate and isolate Covid19 hot spots, there is no way of knowing how wide spread the virus is in a given area. Like the penguins, someone has to be the first to jump in to see how bad it is. Breaking containment without testing, contact tracing and isolation protocols in place is like the penguins jumping in blind and hoping for the best.

      Covid19 is similar to other virus we have seen, but similar doesn’t mean it will act the same way. It was assume to have spread from a “Wet Market” (live wild animal market in China) to every continent in the world except the Antarctic. From a poor worker in the “Wet Market” in China, it has infected the PM of the UK and the Queen of England’s husband, Prince Philip and killed a teenage boy living in a remote tribe in the Amazon jungle. The speed and spread has never been seen before. Iceland’s extensive testing have shown that a staggering 50% of the confirmed positive had shown no symptoms. Iceland is one of the few countries that tested random healthy individuals and individuals showing symptoms.

      People with no symptom of being ill, would be like having thousands of “Typhoid Mary” spreading the virus in the unprotected population because they don‘t feel sick. There is the hot spot case in Mount Vernon, Washington with a population of 35,741(2018). There had been a choir practice at the Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church in Mount Vernon, there were 60 people at the church that night. Twenty days later on March 10, 2020, two of the singers died from the virus and 45 of the members in attendance had shown signs of Covid19. Twenty-eight of the 45 were later confirm positive They had practiced social distancing and used hand sanitizers given to them at the door. The church said that during the rehearsal, no one sneezed, no one coughed, no one there appeared to be sick in any way. Washington state is one of the states with the better public health infrastructures.

      There is so much we don’t know about the virus because it is so new. Early assumptions and treatments used based on previous treatment for a virus have unfortunately proven wrong in some cases. Young healthy individuals with no history of underlying conditions, but tested positive were sent home to ride out the virus without further monitoring of their condition because no one expected how fast their condition could worsen under Covid19. Patients with low oxygen levels were quickly put on a mechanical ventilator to increase their O2 levels. Data from Europe later showed that there was a higher level of deaths with patients on a mechanical ventilator then patients using other treatment methods for low O2 levels. A mechanical ventilator is now used as the last resort to save a Covid19 patient. The survival rate for a Covid19 patient on a mechanical ventilator is only 20% in New York; the largest hot sport of Covid19 in the US. The mechanical ventilator allows extra time for the patient’s body to fight the virus. Even if the patient recovers from the virus on the mechanical ventilator, there might be long term damaged to other organs in the body due to the lack of oxygenation; heart, brain, muscles, kidneys, etc;.

  5. Our THANKS and RESPECT to all those on the front line of this Crisis like Doctors, Nurses and Volunteers.

    1. blue4me43 what about lineman who maintain power , and communication lineman , why do y’all act like Med people r only essential here🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️you guys r idiots , next time you’d power goes out call a nurse then 🖕🖕🖕

    2. @Vicki Ross Tudor sure wish you could get the murder of 80 million unborn children to zero , but no that doesn’t bother you , murdering the unborn children doesn’t affect you , how about the starvation of a child every 3 seconds in the world , that doesn’t bother you either , so murder and death by starvation doesn’t bother you , but you argue what percentage Trump said or didn’t say , better check yourself

    3. The US is now being held up to comparison by any country who wants to show how well they are doing with their Covid response. They simply need to display a current graph. As a US citizen I feel a sinking feeling of deep despair.

    4. @Cliff Medina Love your conspiracy fear and you found someone to feed your paranoia! Real Americans believe in Science and are brave…

  6. Follow the money.
    I guarantee the majority of the problems we’re facing can be traced back to cronies of Trump working the system. I also guarantee IF we have fair elections this fall and Trump loses he pardons hundreds of people who’ve been helping him and his family loot the country.
    Ferdinand and Imelda had nothing on this bunch.

    1. I’m kind of skeptical about him releasing a lot of his cronies, because he’s a coward, and he knows if he loses, he’ll lose his presidential protection, and will be drag into court to face his crimes against America, so I seriously doubt he wants to be in jail alone, if you get what I’m saying.

    2. @Chaka Zulu what crime 4 years of investigation and no crime found might want to stop watching this fake news controlled by China

    3. @Mike Vandyke There will be crimes found if we get control of the Senate, and that’s a promise, so get your guns or whatever ready, because we’re going to show you people that the real patriotic Americans run this country😐

  7. Excuse me Joe, but WHEN does Trump get to a good idea? He may say something sane one day that someone has written down for him but then he tweets insurrection. Give me a break. I can see NOTHING THAT TRUMP HAS DONE RIGHT!

    1. The only part of his daily updates that I like was watching him when he goes off script. You can see this blank stare every time just before he does it.
      Then when he starts rambling I think of how cute my grand kids are when they do that..

    2. Trump has done more for the U.S. than all of the last 3 moronic administrations back-to-back. The data and the science is corrupt by politics and big money. Social distancing, quarantining in place, shutting down people’s lives, businesses, families will do more to destroy this country than any other enemy. That enemy is not COVID-19. It’s corruption in the Federal Government’s own HHS who sent out directives to physicians to ALWAYS write in COVID-19 as the cause of death even if the evidence wasn’t conclusive. The death rates have to be pumped up sufficiently. How else can they instill enough fear to turn the U.S. into the U.S.S.R. in just a matter of weeks? It’s shocking how lazy everyone has become getting their media tripe from their favorite bias-confirming trough and swallowing it all without question. Most everyone merrily skipping along with it like it’s some big goddamned adventure!

    1. Trump don’t care if our people are dieing.Repeated WARNINGS our taxes paying for negligence lies deceit.

    2. @isaidme0 They probably want the tax money and proceeds profits.In name of greed so people infecting each other and were they go infecting others.I hope they stay out my state stupid stupid leaders risking lives

  8. Thanks Mika and Joe for getting the renowned Dr. Leana Wen to deliver the harsh reality. The difference between staying alive and getting dead. Love you both. To you and your team – Stay Strong

    1. @Ron Wuerch I have to agree. Trump’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic for the first three months of this year was a bunch of really sorry crap but what could we really expect from an inexperienced reality TV star? Trump’s failure to listen to his own experts and cabinet members helped make a public health crisis a disaster for the US.

  9. My blood brother believes everything Trump says is 100% factual! And he justifies all of his contradictions. His only news source is Fox news and to top it off his works in the medical field but and his does wear masks and gloves at work but insist that there is no danger in the public so he wears no masks when he is in the public. He has told me many times that cova19 is nothing more then a common flu virus! My point: being a Trumper is in some ways worse then catching cova-19!

    1. your brother is not unique. There are millions of brainless cultists out there who just wander around like this in full daylight. America at its lowest point.

    1. The more information that surfaces about the Federal Government working against each individual state is a true indicator that more Americans will die. Individuals, that buy PPE on the black market, as doctors have done only to be seized by the FBI? Who is ordering the FBI to seize PPE bought and paid for by private citizens? This action is deliberate, IMO.

  10. “No, this pandemic is not a war. Nations do not oppose other nations nor soldiers against other soldiers. It is a test of our humanity,” Frank-Walter Steinmeier, German president

    1. @J Rob dang soon we all will be toasted with the number of home microwave ovens and hospital MRI machines.

  11. “ I’ve said it was a pandemic. I thought that from the beginning “ sickening
    Didn’t even know the meaning of the word at the beginning of this.

  12. This is wonderful yet makes me feel as if I live in a third world country, not a supposed super power!

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