Pandemic Creates Budget, Economic Woes, COVID-19 Could Have Lasting Psychological Effect And Local Hospitals Still Bracing For Coronavirus Surge

Speaker 1: 00:00 Deep budget cuts for San Diego is revenue plummets and sand eggs efforts to determine the economic hit to our region. I'm Mark Sauer along with Alison st John. This is KPBS mid day edition. Speaker 1: 00:23 It's Thursday, April 16th our top story on Midea edition as governor Newsome continues assessing California's response to the COBIT 19 crisis. Mayors and local planners across the state suddenly faced severe financial hardship and that's certainly true here in San Diego. Tourism is way down. Beaches are closed, the Padres are idle and many thousands of businesses are shuttered. It all means a massive revenue hit for the city of San Diego. Mayor Kevin Faulkner is responding with an austere budget trying to fill an anticipated $250 million hole. Here's Faulkner on his budget plan. His budget, of course, is a snapshot in time, but it's based upon what we know right now and what we know is that every minute that our economy is closed, our budget challenges grow deeper. Joining me to discuss the cuts is KPBS Metro reporter Andrew Bowen. Welcome Andrew. Hi, thanks. Mark will walk us through some of the most significant reductions that the mayor is proposing. Speaker 2: 01:22 I think one of the biggest changes that folks will notice, um, you know, if this budget is approved by the city council as it is, is the reduction in library hours. So the mayor is proposing a five day schedule for libraries, closing them on Sundays and Mondays, which he says is when the libraries get the least amount of traffic also reducing rec center and pool hours. You know, we're just coming up on the summer. So that's going to mean a lot of folks don't have places to take their families. Um, you know, to, to recreate the grants that the city gives to arts and cultural organizations. Think the bed that ballets, the theaters, the museums and arts education foundations, things like that. The mayor is proposing to cut that grant funding in half, um, which is a significant reduction. Um, the slight footnote to that being that the mayor is supposed to announce some sort of news related to arts and culture this evening at his four 30 press conference. So maybe another shoe could drop there. Um, the city council is also fought for arts and culture funding in the past, um, to not reduce it quite as much as the mayor's proposed. So, um, you know, I think we'll, we'll probably see a bit of back and forth between the mayor and the city counsel on that issue. Speaker 1: 02:29 And do we know how many city jobs this might add up to? Speaker 2: 02:32 Yes. He says that he's proposing 354 positions be eliminated and that, uh, the biggest numbers are in unsurprisingly the library and the parks and rec department since they're having their hours reduced. Um, but he's also proposing job cuts to the police department to transportation development services department. Almost every city department is, is being touched with a job cuts. What is not clear at this point is how many of those 354 are currently filled, meaning somebody will have to be laid off and how many of them are vacant, meaning basically the money that they budgeted for hiring somebody will just go away. Speaker 1: 03:09 Infrastructure has been a major priority for the mayors that spending effected Speaker 2: 03:13 it is. So, you know, the, a lot of, um, communities have been waiting for a new library or a new fire station or uh, you know, repairs to their police station for many, many years. Uh, in the past, you know, in years of plenty, let's say. Um, the mayor has been, you know, adding a bit more, uh, money to all of those accounts that that are, you know, they're saving up to buy, you know, build a new library, let's say, um, that is virtually ground to a halt where he is preserving quite a bit of, um, infrastructure spending is with road repair. Uh, also the city's pure water project, um, to, to start recycling wastewater and um, uh, you know, add that to our drinking water supply. Um, that's being preserved. Uh, largely. Uh, what's interesting about the, the infrastructure spending that the city does year to year is that some of the money comes from sales tax and hotel tax and property tax revenues. Speaker 2: 04:08 Um, those projects, you know, like repairs to libraries or new libraries, things like that. Those are what are being hit the hardest where, uh, the city's infrastructure spending is actually staying the same or going up are in, uh, areas where the city has more control over the revenue and the revenue is not being hit as hard. So think the waste the water and wastewater department, the city will still be able to, uh, be repairing the broken pipelines, um, throughout the city because all of that spending is funded by people's water rates and the revenue from water rates is not being hit in the same way that, you know, sales, tax and, and revenue from tourism is being Speaker 1: 04:46 yeah. And that's where the revenue losses are really coming from, right. Tourist and sales tax. Speaker 2: 04:51 That's right. So the mayor estimates that between the current fiscal year and the next fiscal year, the city is expecting, um, the transit occupancy tax or the hotel room tax to drop by $121 million. They're not expecting any revenue from the, uh, tot and April, um, sales tax in that same timeframe expected to drop by $55 million. So that's really where the bulk of this, um, revenue shortfall is coming from. Speaker 1: 05:17 And after the governor announced mass gatherings this summer are unlikely until there's herd immunity or a vaccine San Diego County fair was canceled along with San Diego pride and city officials must believe the budget situation could get way worse the longer this drags zone. You know, we didn't really hear any, any Speaker 2: 05:33 predictions from the mayor on that topic. As the mayor said, this budget is a snapshot in time. So we're essentially, uh, the city finance officials are trying to predict where the economy will be, uh, from July of this year all the way through June of 2021. That's an extraordinarily difficult task, uh, given there's so much uncertainty just in the next week or two. So it's really tough to put together a budget with all that uncertainty at this point in time. What that's probably going to mean is that we're going to have a much bigger change to the proposed budget in may when the mayor always puts out his may revise. Um, typically it's, you know, a few million dollars here and there, but, um, given the new information that will have, you know, several weeks from now or a month from now, it's likely that may revise will be pretty significantly different than what he originally proposed. And also as the year goes on, we may see even more budget revisions because, you know, predicting a 12, 13, 14 months into the future is really tough right now. Speaker 1: 06:32 And what's been the response so far to this proposed budget? Speaker 2: 06:35 Well, several city council members have put out statements, uh, reacting to the proposed budget. We're not hearing much dissent from them so far. I think everyone is acknowledging that these are, uh, unbelievably tough times and every decision that we're going to have to make will be painful. Um, as you know, as folks get deeper and deeper into the budget, it's several hundred pages long. Uh, I think we might start hearing maybe, you know, some descent on, well, this department's being cut in this much, but that department isn't taking its fair share. So maybe we'll see a bit more discussion about, um, how appropriate all of these cuts are. The union that is the largest union that represents city employees, the municipal employees association, you know, has been, they've basically said we're not stupid. We know that layoffs are, are probably coming. So I think that they're, you know, they've been preparing all of their members for, uh, this kind of budget. Um, but we still got a lot of details to learn. Uh, so we'll be keeping an eye on it and continuing to analyze as the time goes on. Speaker 1: 07:36 And very fluid. You mentioned the may revise this coming, but a I'll, all sorts of things can happen. Speaker 2: 07:42 Yeah. And so the, what happens next is that the city council is going to start their budget review committee meetings. All nine council members get together and go through, uh, the entire budget department by department and look through all of the different spending cuts. Um, it's a, it's a pretty long process, very deep and wonky and everything. But you know, that's how it goes every year. And then we'll get the may revise. The, the council will ask for some additional changes probably and the, the council vote ultimately is uh, in early June. Speaker 1: 08:15 Well, we'll be watching the stories a undoubtedly a lot of this is a yet to unfold here as we work through the weeks and the months ahead. I've been speaking with KPBS Metro reporter Andrew Bowen. Thanks Andrew. Speaker 2: 08:26 Thank you Mark. Speaker 3: 08:33 Now that the curve is a new Kovac 19 cases is beginning to flatten in San Diego County. The pressure is on to lift restrictions and get the economy going again. So now we've been focusing on public health data and stopping the pandemic from spreading. But the other side of the equation is now coming into focus the economic data on how much the economy is suffering. Joining us now is Ray major chief economist for the San Diego association of governments. That's the regional body with a representative from 18 cities in the County of San Diego. Ray, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you for having me. So right off the top, what in your view is the biggest risk to our economy? If we were to push the quarantine from two months as it currently is to three or four or even five, Speaker 4: 09:21 there are several factors that really impact how quickly we can get back to a normal economy. And what you're referring to are things like the length of disruption for instance. And uh, right now all the indications are that this is going to take longer for us to recover. Then we had originally thought a word today seems to be that we're looking at something like the May 15th opening. With that happening, we then what, how that impacts the economy is that the longer we're in a recession or the longer we're in a disruption, I should say the deeper of a recession is we're more likely to get into. So there's the second factor that we really need to look at is how deep the impending recession is going to be from this disruption. And again, like I said, the longer the disruption, the longer the possibility of a, of a deeper recession. Speaker 4: 10:12 And the third factor, which is really the hardest one to predict is, is the shape of the recovery. You've heard a lot of economists talk about a V shape recovery, and that was predicated on the fact that we had extremely strong economy and that if we shut it down for a couple of weeks, we could bounce right back out of it, maybe in a matter of months. But the longer we keep shut down and the more rules that you hear coming out, things like social distancing that may be in play for a long time. Uh, those types of things are going to disrupt the underlying fabric of our economy. So if you consider things like the restaurant industry, where before you were able to sit in tables next to each other and now those tables are going to be six feet apart and you potentially have waiters and waitresses having to wear masks and gloves, how does that impact the restaurant business? And w we're going to have to wait and see how these rules really play out. But in many cases, these businesses will not be able to remain in business and that's going to have a significant impact on the recovery. Speaker 3: 11:14 Well speaking of restaurants, what are some of the sectors that will be likely most hard hit, which are the ones that are suffering most right now and which are the ones that would take the longest to recover? Speaker 4: 11:26 The, the industry that is going to be hit the hardest from this is tourism. And that I think you can see with the, uh, the reduction in the number of flights that are coming into the San Diego region. Uh, there are events that are being canceled. I believe that vacations, uh, for this summer will probably be canceled also. So not only recreational travel, but business travel is also impacted. So conventions and, and other things that would happen in San Diego are going to be canceled. We just recently canceled the San Diego fair and so tourism is going to take the longest hit even when we come out of the economy, it's going to take them maybe another year to get back to where they were at. The retail industry is also been hit extremely hard as have restaurants. Uh, this is all still going to translate into a hit on the real estate industry. Uh, the entertainment industry, so any, uh, movie theaters or ballparks or concerts or anywhere where you'd be in close proximity with people, those things are going to be hit until we understand how to reopen the economy and have social distancing in place where people, or a vaccine potentially that would allow people to feel comfortable sitting next to complete strangers. Speaker 3: 12:38 And we just heard today that the San Diego pride events is being canceled. That's just an example. And of course many of our cities rely on some of the taxes from the industry, the tourist industry tot taxes. They rely on sales tax, they rely on property tax mirror. Kevin Portner just released his initial proposed budget and it includes over 350 job cuts. Do you have a concern that there may be some cities in San Diego County who risk bankruptcy as a result of all this? Speaker 5: 13:08 Wow. Speaker 4: 13:08 Well I think the, we're going to have to see how deep and how much revenue we lose from these cuts from this recession. But I, I do think that there are some cities that are going to suffer significantly from this. Those that are dependent upon sales tax revenue will be definitely impacted bigger cities like San Diego, although the transient occupancy tax or tot tax, the property taxes and sales taxes are a huge part of the budget. Uh, those larger cities have some reserves and they're going to be able to make it. But, but I do worry about the smaller cities in the region. Speaker 3: 13:44 When you look around the County, are there any cities that you're particularly concerned about? Speaker 4: 13:49 Well, um, I would be particularly concerned about, uh, lemon Grove for instance, possibly a national city. Um, El Cahone has a very large retail base. Uh, and if that's disruptive for a long time they could have issues too. So some of the, some of the outer line East County jurisdictions and possibly some of the North County jurisdictions also. Speaker 3: 14:12 Now, one of the impacts that you analyzed as a big decrease in the Transnet tax, and we heard earlier this week about how this could derail the proposed November ballot initiative to expand bus and trolley service and transit in general. How could this affect how we keep San Diego moving? Speaker 4: 14:30 Well, I think it's important to remember that the sales tax that SANDAG collects for transportation improvements is really the, uh, money that goes to the longterm infrastructure that we're building. And this disruption is bad as it is right now. And this is, you know, of historic proportion. Uh, we will overcome this and we, we will come out of this at some point. I will be disrupted for a matter of months and in, in a year or two or three, we'll be back to where we were at before. So the infrastructure projects that we plan, which are really measured in decades in terms of, of their construction, um, won't be significantly impacted and those things still need to be built. Um, there will be a short term disruption of course, because sales tax revenues are down and we aren't getting as much money from that particular source. But then we also take a look at these stimulus packages that are coming from the federal government and there are PO potential, uh, dollars that are going to be able to offset the losses from sales tax revenue, uh, to fund other transportation projects for us. Speaker 3: 15:35 Overall. Ray, what is your message to decision makers who are trying to decide when to lift the quarantine restrictions? Speaker 4: 15:43 My advice to them would be not to lift them too early, but also don't be too conservative about when you lift them. We have to get the economy back to work. We have to find a way to have some industries get back to work, maybe uh, come up with, uh, schedules that are, that are flexible, come up with ways of opening up, uh, one department or another within a business. Um, we, we have to be able to get back to work. There were a significant amount of San Diego ans who are impacted by this. And the longer that we keep the economy shutdown, the more businesses there are that will not be able to weather this, uh, downturn. And you'll see restaurants going out of business. You'll see small businesses who weren't able to get loans from the federal government going out of business. And those will have longterm effects on the San Diego economy. So whatever the leaders can do to safely open up the economy again, come up with the rules that we need to follow. Uh, that would be the thing that would really help us get going. Again, Speaker 3: 16:48 come up with the rules we need to follow. That's a good one. I've been speaking with Ray, major, chief economist of SANDAG. Ray, thank you so much. Thank you very much for having me. Speaker 1: 16:59 I'm Mark Sauer along with Alison st John. You're listening to midday edition on KPBS. Hospitals across the region have geared up converting more rooms to handle the very sick stockpiling personal protective equipment, postponing elective surgeries, but so far the expected surge and the COBIT 19 patients, which is overwhelmed medical facilities in New York, Michigan, and other hot spots hasn't really hit hospitals in San Diego County. Joining me to discuss the situation here is Scott Evans, CEO of sharp Grossmont hospital in LA Mesa. Welcome to midday edition. Thank you. Well, as of Wednesday, 488 people have been hospitalized with coronavirus in San Diego County since mid February. That's far below what it would take to inundate the hospital system in the region. How would you describe the experience at sharp Grossmont so far in terms of the volume of coronavirus patients you're seeing? Speaker 6: 17:55 Sure. So, uh, certainly the, the number at this point has not been overwhelming. Uh, to date we have about 83 patients that have been admitted, uh, to sharp Grossmont hospital with a positive coven diagnosis. A lot of these patients are in fact, uh, treated in the intensive care unit, which does require some additional resources. But our overall census in the hospital has been somewhat suppressed. And so, uh, obviously you, you mentioned we, we have not had elective surgeries, et cetera. And so that certainly, uh, increases our ability to care for patients. But the overall census has been much lower than what it normally is Speaker 1: 18:37 now, given that local public health officials are saying there's signs, San Diego's curve is flattening. Does that mean the surge is passed or Sharp's still preparing for a possible surge of COBIT 19 patients? Speaker 6: 18:49 No, we are absolutely, uh, gearing up for a, a possible surge. I think that, uh, we're starting to see some of those numbers increase in the South Bay region and not necessarily here in East County, San Diego, but we have been asked to create an additional 40% over our normal licensed, uh, acute care bed capacity. And so that's, uh, we are working diligently and in order to do that, most recently we have added additional ICU beds. And so normally we operate with about 48 ICU beds. Today we are operating with 75 and I can tell you that we are already, uh, overflowing into those, uh, additional ICU beds. Speaker 1: 19:32 And why do you think some of those worst case scenarios aren't panning out? Speaker 6: 19:36 So I think that, um, they, they may still pan out in terms of, uh, coming in the future. Uh, we're not seeing it right now. I do think that, uh, we're not seeing necessarily that surge today, uh, as was previously predicted because San Diego in general is doing a reasonably good job at complying with a stay at home orders as well as social distancing. And, uh, obviously we're seeing a lot of people masking, which is, which has been, which has been helpful and, and I think that's why, uh, we haven't seen that curve, uh, explode yet, but, uh, we certainly do worry about that curve. Uh, certainly increasing. I think we are concerned with, uh, border cities, uh, as well and, and starting to see, uh, some activity, uh, related to what might be happening, uh, in Mexico. Um, and will that indeed spill over into, into the United States? We do. Uh, there are lots of people that go back and forth between Mexico and the United States even for work. And so that remains a concern for us. Speaker 1: 20:44 I wanted to ask about emergency room visits, admin, some reports that they're down significantly in some facilities is they're concerned some patients with, with perhaps serious conditions are just not coming in. They assume the hospitals are getting slammed. Speaker 6: 20:58 Yeah, I think that certainly is a concern. I will validate that for you in that Grossmont hospital typically sees more than 300 patients in a day. We're currently seeing just a little bit less than 200. So essentially one third less visits. Uh, we still are obviously seeing, uh, the, the very sick patients, uh, the patients that are coming in to our comprehensive stroke center or, uh, to our, um, our heart center. Uh, those patients obviously are still coming in, but we're, we're, we are about a hundred down, uh, from, from what's normal now. This week in particular, we are seeing a slight pickup and so normally our hospital would have more than 400 patients in it. Uh, we have been functioning really more around the 320, uh, Mark. Uh, but this morning we are above 360. And so, uh, we are starting to see some patients come through again. Speaker 1: 21:56 Now the governor has laid out six principles this week to help guide the state. When it comes to lifting coronavirus restrictions as the head of a hospital, do you think it's appropriate to maybe start having those conversations? Speaker 6: 22:09 Well, I think we can have those conversations, but I, I definitely think that, uh, there, there needs to be some safeguards in place, uh, in case. Um, we do see more widespread of Corona following this sort of stand down of any of the measures that we have in place to prevent a disease from spreading. So I would certainly like to see a more robust stockpiles of personal protective equipment. I would like to make sure that we are, uh, set in terms of the number of ventilators that we have. Uh, and that we are, uh, very ready for surge capacity in case, uh, any sort of stand down on some of these restrictions does stimulate more of a surge generation. Speaker 1: 22:50 And of course one of the six conditions the governor said must be met before easing restrictions is more testing. Our understanding is that sharp healthcare's testing capacity is around 950 tests per day. Currently you're a averaging far less than that 125 or so. Why is sharp not testing at full capacity? Speaker 6: 23:10 We have been testing obviously for, for some time when we are ramping up on the testing. I think that as that testing capacity becomes available, then we start filling that testing capacity. So, uh, I'll just, uh, say that a couple of weeks ago, our capacity was only 300 a day. Uh, and so, you know, the fact that we were doing now, uh, much more than that, uh, is significant and we're starting to expand our definition of, of what would be tested in terms of some of the outpatient environment. So, uh, when we did have some issues as it relates to capacity, uh, we were having people from the emergency department, et cetera, that that had mild symptoms would go home and self isolate. Uh, we're expanding that testing now to make sure that we are able to, uh, to test those patients. And so I think while there's always a few days lag, I think you'll absolutely see those numbers increase and we are seeing them increase. Uh, certainly at Grossmont, uh, we've, we've already tested more than, uh, I think 1100 patients and I'm seeing that rise every day. Speaker 1: 24:13 So you are, as you say, easing, um, uh, the testing criteria a bit. What's required now to get a test? Speaker 6: 24:19 The clinician makes that decision based on certain guidance. But if the patient has signs and symptoms and they have a known exposures, the physician invariably is, is recommending testing for that. Certainly if they're admitted to the hospital, uh, and they have any signs and symptoms or, uh, they, uh, possibly have come from a nursing home, uh, that has had, uh, an outbreak or are clustering of patients, then they will get tested in the emergency department as well as sharp Grossmont hospital's care clinic, uh, which is a, an outpatient department of the hospital. We are seeing, uh, patients that are, uh, being tested more frequently, uh, just based on their presentation of, of mild, uh, symptoms. And so we're starting to see that, that rise. Now. Uh, I'd also would like to see the capacity for rapid testing, uh, go up so that we can get rapid results and that is seen in some health systems now, uh, as, as that technology is allowed to be introduced. And we are very hopeful that we will have that technology soon. But if we can get a test back in 45 minutes or an hour, uh, I think obviously that rapid testing will, will help increase and, and I would support doing that so that we could certainly make sure that we are then, uh, putting patients or, uh, that test positive into isolation to stop the further spread. Speaker 1: 25:42 All right, well, I've been speaking with Scott Evans, CEO of sharp Grossmont hospital. Thanks very much. Speaker 6: 25:48 Thank you very much. Have a great day. Speaker 3: 25:58 Many of us are already experiencing some anxiety from being stuck at home during the crew and a virus pandemic and no psychiatrists at UC San Diego say some code 19 patients may experience psychological conditions from having the virus psychiatrists Susie home. And Emma Troyer who published an article on the subject in a peer review journal this week spoke with KPBS science and technology reporter Srilina. Chet Lani. Here's that interview. Speaker 7: 26:23 So Susie, do you mind Speaker 3: 26:24 kind of giving me an overview of what is the connection between the brain and the body's immune system? Speaker 7: 26:31 Okay, well, let's start with that. The evidence and literature now show that brain, um, constantly communicates with the immune system and immune system communicates back to the brain. And in the sort of cases of virus infections as such as COBIT 19, what we think is that either the virus itself or virus infected cells may truck traffic traffic to the brain and brain is supposed to be really a closely guarded by a barrier called blood brain barrier. Um, so in the case of these types of illnesses or an acute illness or chronic conditions, those barriers can be um, compromise. So that what we call leakage, um, of either the cells inflamed or activated in yourselves can crossover or in the case of an infection virus can crossover. Speaker 8: 27:31 Emma, maybe you can go over what that looks like in a, in a patient that has experienced a viral infection, Speaker 9: 27:38 what Susie is describing is once immune cells or cytokines have entered into the central nervous system, they basically cause inflammation and inflammation in any part of the brain, um, can lead to different symptoms depending on the part of the brain that's affected. So patients who have acute inflammation, um, it can be really confusing oftentimes because they present a lot of highly, highly variable presentations. So you can see changes in sleep, changes in alertness, changes in mood. Um, some people might have depressed mood, some people might have euphoric mood, but you can experience hallucinations where you start to see or hear things that weren't there before or that other people don't see or hear. You can have difficulty thinking. Um, you can have difficulty with sensation, like the lack of taste and smell that's been described with COBIT 19. You can have difficulty moving parts of your body right now. What's what seems to be just being described, um, particularly in some studies coming out of [inaudible] is that um, people who are severely infected and hospitalized have what we call encephalopathy, which basically just means change in mental status. So people are confused, people's sleep schedule is dysregulated, people might be hallucinating, people might have rapidly fluctuating moods. Speaker 8: 29:09 You've mentioned a number of symptoms that are related to viral infections that we've seen in the past and sort of anecdotally from emerging evidence and stories out of Wu Han China. But this article itself is air view of literature around viral infections and how they might have psychological impacts. Why do you think we can take evidence from past diseases even if they're respiratory in nature? Uh, and concludes similar psychiatric responses with COBIT? Speaker 7: 29:42 Um, there is a very good question. Um, generally there is an actively expanding and, and fairly large literature and how the immune system activation and in a way dysregulation and the effect of that on the brain and also a lot of the brain related outcomes and functions and mood. And I may be able to expend some more on that. Speaker 9: 30:07 Yeah. So, um, I think first of all, we do have to have, um, appropriate caution with, you know, extrapolating from past pandemics. Um, particularly because the, the largest pandemic that we've experienced in the most recent history would have been around the early 20th century with the flu pandemic of 1918, which of course is an influenza virus. And not a Corona virus. So we do have to be careful about extrapolating, um, data from that. But if you go back in history a little bit, um, you see neuropsychiatrist like Karl Menninger and Constantine Von Economo around the early 20th century, really noting that around the time of the influenza pandemic, they're also describing what they call epidemics of psychosis or epidemics of encephalitis, which basically means inflammation of the brain. And so for a period of about 10 years in the early 20th century, what they saw is, um, individuals with a host of neurologic and psychiatric symptoms at the same time, sometimes following an infection immediately or sometimes weeks or months, even years later now, because that's over a hundred years ago, we can't say for sure if that was related to influenza or if it was related to the inflammation that that infection could have caused. Speaker 9: 31:34 Um, but I think what it does is it gives us reason to pause and say, this is something that we should be looking for. Um, if we've, if we've seen sort of psychiatric epidemics coincide with a viral pandemic in the past, um, and this is sort of a new frontier for all of us and that none of us have really ever experienced a viral pandemic of this magnitude. I think the medical community, um, we want to sort of just be alert to, to this. Speaker 8: 32:05 It does seem like this is sort of an unprecedented moment in our lives and a lot of people are experiencing or range of emotions right now. And so as you had mentioned, Speaker 9: 32:17 you know, do you think there's going to be a larger public health, uh, issue or there needs to be a response? Two psychiatric conditions post Cobin? Um, yes. Um, I'm a psychiatrist, so maybe biased. Um, I, I think that we are, um, going to need a lot of services for the general public, for frontline healthcare workers. Um, and I think it is one of the, the messages of the article that we wrote is that going forward it might be difficult to ascertain if someone is experiencing, um, emotional distress or changes in behavior, et cetera going forward. Is that a result of the psychological distress of having experienced a pandemic or is that related to the effects of the virus or inflammation in someone who is infected? And that's going to be really difficult to tease apart of this article is to really raise awareness and to draw the medical attain medical community's attention to the matter. And, and in order to do that extrapolating again, it's MSN care for the extrapolation from previous cases. Speaker 8: 33:35 And you had mentioned this before, but not everyone who experiences coronavirus will also experience a psychological condition. Right, Speaker 9: 33:47 right. And I would say, you know, not everyone will experience a neurologic condition, psychiatric conditions, psychological distress, any, any of those. Um, an article like ours can certainly be a little bit scary. Um, I think for the public when it says, you know, there might be neuropsychiatric sequella or other symptoms that could follow this and they could be delayed by, um, long periods of time and we're, there's a lot of uncertainty already. And so I, we don't want to add to anxiety or add to panic for the public. Um, but we do hope to, to shine light on this for the medical community. Um, and also for the public to know that if, if you're experiencing changes in mood thinking behavior, um, these are things that we want you to talk about and we want you to share with your doctors, um, because we're going to be learning about this together. Speaker 9: 34:47 Um, I think Chris Cuomo, um, UN news host and younger brother of Andrew Cuomo is a good example of someone who's currently experiencing coven 19 himself and, um, on national television has openly talked about his own hallucinations and his own depression, his own anxiety, his own cognitive fog, um, while experiencing COBIT. And I think those are the types of open conversations that we want to have as a society so we can really face this head on together. Well, thank you both for chatting with me. Of course. Thank you for having us. Yeah. Thank you for talking with us. Speaker 8: 35:26 That was UC San Diego psychiatrist, Susie Hong and Emma Troyer speaking to KBB a science and technology reporter Shelina Chet Lani Speaker 9: 35:35 along with Ellison st. you're listening Speaker 1: 35:38 to midday edition on KPBS today marks the first public radio music day, which celebrates the special role that non-commercial radio stations play in bringing music to our ears in Southern California at KCRW as a GoTo for finding music new and old to enjoy some you won't hear anywhere else. There series private playlist is a listening session with Southern California's most notable musical figures in their private creative environments. Chris Cohen is a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist with an extensive desal graphy as a solo artist, Seidman producer and band member. He spoke with KCRW about clearing the mind with experimental jazz and his own frightening near miss with coronavirus. Speaker 10: 36:34 This is Chris Cohen. I'm a musician and producer. Speaker 10: 36:41 I was coming back from a show on the 10th of March from Missouri and I got sick on the plane. So that day was like the first day I was like, okay, like something is definitely going on. And um, there were no recommendations coming from the government then and it was really unclear. I managed to get an appointment with my doctor like two days later and he was just like, yeah, you, you might have it. I can't test you. Just quarantine. It was really like weird, like nightmare scenario. Like I'm a paranoid person so I've, I've been waiting in a weird way for this. And then my girlfriend picked me up at Lex, then we moved on the 15th of March. I was planning on just working on new music at home anyway, so lucky for me, I didn't really have to like not do anything that I was planning on Speaker 11: 37:33 [inaudible] Speaker 10: 37:33 not that long before we moved. I was listening a lot to this guy, junior H my neighbors were playing it really loud outside and I was like, Whoa, what? It sounded so cool. And um, I was too shy to go up and ask them what it was. So I Shazammed it. There's this one junior age song can S Ken and I really like his musical. I was listening to him before that trip to Missouri. Speaker 12: 38:23 [inaudible] [inaudible] Speaker 10: 38:24 when I was in my twenties I worked in record stores and stuff. So I have like tons of records. So in the new house we have like the stereo by the couch, like a turntable and stuff. Then we have like a little Bluetooth speaker in the kitchen and we've been listening to a lot of music while we're cooking. Speaker 11: 38:49 [inaudible] Speaker 10: 38:49 do you know this group called Knauss? L? Golan? We've been listening to this record that we have, but there's a really like lifts my spirits up. It's physical and it's really, the songs are long and they have like this kind of like back and forth group vocals and stuff. It's exciting music to listen to you. I really, I love that. Speaker 11: 39:21 [inaudible] Speaker 10: 39:22 the first thing we listened to when we moved into the house, I put on this old David Murray record, the tenor sax player Speaker 13: 39:29 [inaudible] Speaker 10: 39:32 it's called flowers for Albert and it's kind of an early morning clearing your mind kind of song. Speaker 13: 39:46 [inaudible] [inaudible] Speaker 10: 39:47 when I was, uh, I think I was about, I was like 18 or something. I saw an ad in the recycler newspaper that was like jazz records, $3 it said like sun RA Coltrane or something. It just had like clearly there's really intense collection. And I went to this guy's house, my friend of his had passed away. He was just selling hundreds of like really incredible, like rare, avant garde jazz records. I remember like borrowing money from my sister, trying to buy as many as I possibly could. And I bought like a huge box of records from this guy and that was just one of them. And I remember just going through them for like a year or so. Each day I just like pick out anyone and I just kept going back to that one cause I just, it's a live recording and it's just a lot of, there's a lot of space. It gets real like out there, but it's also a very, has a lot of restraint. Speaker 13: 40:44 [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] Speaker 10: 41:01 I bet you're probably going to get this answer from a lot of other musicians, but my routine hasn't changed that much. I live my life like our hermit anyways, so it's not super different. But, uh, my girlfriend is working from home and um, I listen to certain kinds of music when I'm alone and I haven't been alone at all. I think it's like certain music I listened to alone because I know I'm not going to be, I don't want to be distracted from, for example, you know David tutor, there's this pulsars record that I'm like, I love listening to that record but I only listen do it alone really because you're speechless when you're listening to it, like puts you in a different state that's not social Speaker 13: 41:57 [inaudible] Speaker 11: 42:07 [inaudible] Speaker 10: 42:07 there's this collection that just came out like yesterday or day before it's on this label called bongo Joe records. It's a collection of rye music from eighties Algerian people in France in Leone, kind of blending like rye music with other forums. It's got my grab K seven club Speaker 14: 42:26 [inaudible] Speaker 10: 42:43 the way that I listen to music in my new, my new space is really different. We were living in happy Valley in Lincoln Heights and we had like a little back house so I could like, it can be pretty loud and I really am like still kind of figuring out like how to listen to music or how to play music in the house. I moved to piano in here and I'm kinda like nervous about playing piano with my neighbors. So still figuring out Speaker 1: 43:21 that was songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Chris Cohen, speaking to KCRW for the series private playlist. For more of the series, you can find a link on our website. KPBS dot O R G.