U.S. now tops world in confirmed coronavirus cases

The United States now has the most confirmed cases of coronavirus in the world. NYU Langone Health's Alison Bateman-House joins Zack Guzman to discuss the latest developments regarding the outbreak.

Video Transcript

ZACK GUZMAN: But back to the main health pandemic at hand and why we're seeing the house respond to this, the senate respond to this and multiple states respond as well. We got an update from the state that has the most cases here in the US. Of course, the country now with the most cases as a nation.

And New York Governor Andrew Cuomo did say that the COVID 19 cases we're seeing right now-- the latest number 44,000. That's up 7,000 in terms of the actual case total, as well as 519 deaths we've targeted here, or tallied 519, the number out of New York. That's up from 385 just yesterday.

So for more on this in terms of what we're seeing in response to flatten the curve, not just in New York but around the country, I want to bring in Alison Bateman House. She's at the Department of Population health assistant and professor at NYU Langone and Health.

And Dr. Bateman-House, when and we look at this, it is interesting because we did have the president come out with that Easter deadline. Of course, multiple states trying to grapple with this as we see more cases pop up around the US. But I'm curious to get your take on attempts to flatten the curve here because it did seem we were so far behind relatively to some of these other countries trying to play catch-up. What's your take on the way that we've tried to flatten the curve? And where we stand now?

ALLISON BATEMAN-HOUSE: I mean, what we're seeing across the nation is very different. Some places only have a few cases at this point. Other places like New York City, where I live, are in the middle of a mass epidemic. And so the responses that are happening on the ground are very differential, and I think that's disturbing to those of us in the public health world, who do believe that we need to implement social distancing as quickly as possible, especially given the fact that people can spread the virus before they even have the start of symptoms.

ZACK GUZMAN: And the other thing, too, I mean, we've talked about it state by state. It does seem that what we're hearing you had some states move very quickly. California and New York moved very quickly for these shelter-in-place orders, and we're seeing other states enact those now. But if you consider the fact that we might have been behind the curve anyways, it's kind of surprising to see more states wouldn't have followed that and realized how serious this was.

I wonder, in your opinion, if a piece of that may have been kind of China's numbers lulling us to sleep when we think about how many people are actually in that country. We saw their cases plateau. You look at the way things played out in Italy, relatively worse situation there compared to China's numbers.

But some of those measures taken in China-- and when we think draconian measures here and stay at home, are nothing compared to the draconian measures we saw in China, if you think about taking people away from their family if they test positive and making them recover in a recovery center away from their family. That's not necessarily playing out here. That's not something we do.

So I wonder if maybe that actually made are our responses to this global pandemic a little bit more muted because we were watching it play out in China and figured it would have gone better here.

ALLISON BATEMAN-HOUSE: So I think there are probably three factors, and this is just from my personal opinion. When I started to see the numbers coming out of China, I noticed a lot of suspicion. You know, maybe these numbers are not being fully reported, maybe they're being manipulated for political means. So there is suspicion of those numbers from the get go being reported from China.

Then, when we started hearing the numbers from Italy, I think that there was this perception amongst many people, well, you know, that's Italy. It'll be different here. Sort of overestimating how good the US health care system is and how, in comparison, you know, ill-prepared the Italian system was perceived to be. The Italian health care system is actually really great, but I think we had a sort of false sense of comfort that things would be better when they got to the United States.

And now that it's in the United States, I think the most important thing here is to keep in mind that public health is a local government responsibility. It's not a federal responsibility. It is not something that the CDC steps in and tells every locality what to do. So it really is your local, your mayors, your governors, who are making these decisions. And most of those people don't have public health backgrounds, and it's been systematically defunded for years. So you're suddenly trying to build upon a very shaky foundation in a crisis situation.

ZACK GUZMAN: That's a very good point, and that doesn't necessarily instill any comfort when we think about some of those other smaller cities because we've talked about how New York has access and the capabilities to say, as the first mover advantage here, disadvantage depending on how you're looking at it, to say we need ventilators here. We need supplies here because we're dealing with this now. You wonder what that might mean if you do have--

On yesterday's show, we had Harvard's Dr. Ashish Jha weighing in, saying that this is going to be coming-- his fear is that it's going to be coming to every US city. And those that don't have the resources that New York does are going to be in a much worse position. If you look at an Atlanta, or you look at some of the cities in Louisiana, another hard hit state, what's your take on what could happen and how it could accelerate if you're not able to see the curve flattened?

ALLISON BATEMAN-HOUSE: I mean, I'm deeply concerned about where we see spikes happening right now. The latest I've seen is that we anticipate spikes in Boston, which again, Boston has a relatively good health care system. But Detroit, New Orleans-- I mean, these are places that have already been hard hit for numerous reasons over the last decade or so. And now to have a public health epidemic on top of everything, I'm deeply concerned, if you don't have the social system in place that makes people feel comfortable that they can shelter at home, if they feel that they need to get out because they need to go to work, or you know, there there's no social support for them.

You know, I think New York is probably one of the best case scenarios. And right here, I mean, we're in the middle of a terrible, terrible situation.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, and it's why, I guess, as bad it's become, you still see a lot of New Yorkers staying put rather than leaving right now, but we'll continue to monitor this. And Dr. Allison Bateman-House, just want to thank you for taking the time to join us. Be well.

ALLISON BATEMAN-HOUSE: Thank you. Take care.