Dr. Josh Umbehr of Atlas M.D., Dr. Lee S. Gross, President of Docs 4 Patient Care Foundation and Founder, Epiphany Health Direct Primary Care, and Dr. Marc Siegel who is a Professor of Medicine at New York University School of Medicine, a Medical Director of Doctor Radio at NYU and SiriusXM, and a Fox News Medical Correspondent will give us what they have learned from the CDC and HHS about the Coronavirus and the President’s address today declaring a national emergency.The Sean Hannity Show is on weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
To unleash the full power of the federal government in this effort today, I am officially declaring a national emergency.
Two very big words.
The action I am taking will open up access to up to 50 billion dollars of very importantly, very important and a large amount of money for states and territories or localities in our shared fight against this disease.
In furtherance of the order, emerging every state to set up emergency operations centers effective immediately.
You're going to be hearing from some of the uh largest companies and greatest retailers and uh medical companies in the world that are standing right behind me and inside of me.
I'm also asking every hospital in this country to activate its emergency preparedness plan so that they can meet the needs of Americans everywhere.
The hospitals are very engaged.
All right, that was the president declaring in a making his emergency declaration, freeing up as much as 50 billion dollars in money to go full force and and really shift change paradigms the way that we have historically, frankly, ineffectively, uh embarrassingly so in many instances, uh dealing with disease.
Let me let me back up and say a couple of things here.
This, what this president just outlined can only happen in a country like ours.
I have spent a lot of time on this program expressing my belief that we have the best pretty much of everything.
I often quote Barry Farber, my friend, one of the great pioneers of talk radio.
There's never been a country in the history of man that has accumulated more power and abused it less than this country, the United States of America.
And I added to it, not you know, because I I learned from my friend, there's never been a country in the history of mankind that has accumulated more power and used it for the advancement of the human condition than this one.
It is because of something called freedom.
It is because of a uh a system known as capitalism, which has under fire like never before.
Now, what do I mean by this?
What what what am I getting at here?
Hannity, what are you getting at?
So if you go back and you know, we we can start at the beginning.
The president the timeline matters, and uh this part is gonna be a little repetitive, but the rest is not.
December 30th, the World Health Organization, they recognize that there is a virus with pneumonia-like symptoms emerging in the Wuha Wuhan province area of China.
We we are able to recognize and name it on January 7th of this year.
This timeline matters greatly.
By January 31st, the president puts in place his travel ban, and the quarantining of Americans coming back from the region begins as well.
As the virus, and and I am not as complimentary to China as the president was being somewhat gracious today.
Um, and and I'm sure there are reasons for it, probably because we need information, and it's better to have at this point an alliance than creating an enemy, although China's been all over the place spreading conspiracy theories that we invented the virus because they don't want to take responsibility, because they did not do the world a favor by trying to hide this and not being helpful and not inviting in the world's best scientists to assist them.
It's a virus.
It's not China's fault.
It's China's fault is that they were misleading and they were not forthcoming.
And frankly, they lied.
Uh that has since changed, and I think that is it's important to be able to get this data for the American people.
Um let's see, I asked Sean that it was a hearing sending it in a letter to stay in session.
Okay.
Uh.
So I want to just I want to just explain.
Then the president did this, and let's look at it through the prisma politics and old school thinking.
Because there's there's new ways to think, and there's always to think.
The new way to think is what Donald Trump has been able to put together.
This did not happen overnight.
You know, and this is what, you know, very interesting the comments of the president saying, I understand a lot of the behind the scenes actions, the last couple of weeks have been invisible to the press and the American people.
He didn't want to raise expectations that they could pull this off.
That's what that means.
But when the president then allocated the $8.3 billion, when the president said to those industries that were going to be impacted directly because of this, the airline industry, the cruise line industry, hourly workers, etc., and that we were working with the CDC and working with our medical professionals.
There were little crumbs being laid out here, there, and pretty much everywhere as they were putting this all together.
But then you look, okay, the one day the president's meeting with the pharmaceutical industry.
Uh one day the president is working is meeting with all the health insurance companies.
Uh, then he's meeting with business leaders.
You see where this is going?
This has been in the works the entire time.
Now, what did it result in here today?
Not only the $50 billion that the that the president is now allocated to $50 billion, as he said is important, which opens up access to large amounts of money for anywhere, any place in the country to set up these emergency operations centers.
But more importantly, just like the president has been doing since he took office, he's looking at these government regulations and he's saying, okay, this is ridiculous.
Let's move up the approval process so we can save lives.
Let's put in a travel ban so we can save lives.
He'll be called xenophobic by Joe.
He'll be called hysterical by quid pro quo Joe.
Uh Bernie Sanders will say, No, I would never have put the travel ban in effect.
And it's the difference really between old establishment swamp thinking versus outsider, entrepreneurial business people getting together for answers.
Now, to look at the companies that were bringing together here, LabCorp, uh Quest, uh Roach, Roach, the pharmaceutical company, Google, Google, setting up a website for people so they can apply online if they if they think they need a test, uh, then setting up in parking lots, areas and Target and Walmart and Walgreens and CVS.
These are the biggest companies in the country.
Now, think about how many times you've heard Walmart demonized over the years.
Smelly, Walmart shopper, I I how many times have I said I'm a proud Walmart shopper that voted for Donald Trump.
You know, to be in business, you know what the biggest frustration business people have with the government is not only the high taxes, the burdensome regulation, the red tape, how many months does it take to get a building permit for crying out loud?
And I recently did some work uh on my house, and to get a permit, you know, income the income the permit people, and the next thing they're saying, well, you if you want to build this little you know recording studio up on the third floor, you've got to put sprinklers in on the third floor, and you gotta have uh exit windows for this place, and I had to do it all.
And then they get to the approval, and then you can't get the approval to do any other renovations unless you do this, this, this, and this.
You don't think Donald Trump's dealt dealt with all of this building buildings in New York?
It is a nightmare.
Well, maybe that explains why when these politicians came to him begging for money to donate to run, he didn't really care if they were Democrat or Republican.
He wanted people to move the process along so people could work and buildings could be built.
That is the difference.
And here's what I see where this is going.
First of all, we should praise all of these companies.
All of these people, they are going all in for their fellow Americans.
They're going all in to help the country in a time of panic, frankly, unneeded, and bordering In some cases on reckless media hysteria inducing panic.
I was watching as this was all going on.
I just kept watching the Dow going up, up, up, up, up, you know, nearly recovering all the losses from a historic loss day yesterday, uh, closing up at about, I think it was what, 1985 today.
And what does this mean for we the people?
This means moving forward.
Everything now changes.
The way we have dealt with pandemics, which happened from time to time.
I was criticized recently in the New York Times for saying these pandemics happen.
Everything now will be viewed for this new lens, this new model, this new paradigm, public-private partnership.
And we can thank these companies for working together with their government and pushing over the president for pushing away regulation and the president literally giving us the time by putting in place the travel ban that he was widely criticized for and putting in place the quarantine widely criticized for.
Then expanding it as on a needed basis, and all the while they've been working together with all these companies to pull this sucker off.
Well, you're now going to be able to drive up to a Walmart parking lot at Target Park and a lot of CVS.
I don't want to leave one of these companies out because they all deserve to be praised.
let me just give you a quick comparison because I think comparisons matter the world health organization this is the swine flu h1n1 They identified it in World Health Organization.
I identified it, I guess when was it?
April of 2009.
First detected in America 2009.
Eleven days later, to the credit of the O'Biden-Bama administration, according to Joe, okay, one of their health secretaries, not Obama, said, Yeah, it's an emergency, and they put some funding towards it.
This strain, by the way, another worldwide pandemic represented a combination of influenza viruses never before seen in humans or animals.
Worldwide pandemic.
The virus spread quickly globally, primarily in this case, unlike this virus, affecting children and adults under 65 who lacked immunity to H1M1.
It was a pandemic not long after, just like in this case.
And between April of 2009 and April of 2010, we lost 12,469 Americans.
273,304 Americans were hospitalized.
It wasn't until October, six months later, that the U.S. began administrating administering a newly approved vaccine to select Americans.
And that was when President Obama declared a national emergency.
The exact opposite of a thousand Americans were dead.
Tens of thousands contracted the H1N1 virus.
And eventually worldwide, we lost estimates now over 500,000 people, half a million people dying from swine flu in the first year of that pandemic.
Was there any new paradigms created?
No.
Travel ban?
No.
Quarantines?
No.
What did anyone give this amount of money ever?
The 8.3 billion now freeing up with this emergency declaration, 50 billion.
No.
It didn't happen.
And you know, to watch how the media has been acting, and what they have been saying and doing as all of this has been going on, is just everything you need to know.
It has just been a continuation of this.
Russia-Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine, impeach, impeach, corona, corona, panic, hype, you know, hyperventilating, Trump virus, you know, if you if you're Trump virus, it's called if you get sick, you know who to blame.
If you feel bad, you know who to blame.
Chernobyl, Katrina.
Every Analogy you can.
That's your that's your corrupt mob, and they are a mob in the media.
And that is that is the modern democratic radical socialist party.
No, we wouldn't have done a travel ban that's xenophobic and hysterical.
Well, what would they have done?
We know what they did in 2009 and 10, and by the way, that's that is quid pro quote Joe.
That was on his watch.
All right.
My medic our medical experts are coming up to react to all of this.
This is transformative.
This is a big moment.
This will change how the world forever deals with these pandemics.
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Straight ahead.
As we bring in our medical team reacting to this new paradigm that the president just outlined today, declaring a national emergency, unleashing the full power of the federal government in an effort to keep Americans safe.
We have Dr. Josh Humber and Dr. Lee Gross with us.
We will do this for the final half hour, but let's just get a headline, Dr. Humber.
Yeah, hi.
Thanks for having us as always.
From today is that I think the systems are getting in place.
We're managing this.
This is a manageable issue.
And if we apply the same common sense to corona that we apply to the flu every year, then I think we'll all get through this pretty well.
And Dr. Gross, your take on it.
Yeah, I think the president laid it out perfectly in that this is an all hands-on-deck moment.
You know, this is a time where there's a paradigm shift where in the past it was all the government solution.
You have to wait on the government and the regulations and the red tape.
And what the president basically did was free up the innovation of the American business and harness that power and go from the ability to take care of you know tens of thousands of people to now being able to take care of hundreds of thousands of people overnight with this declaration.
Quick yes or no, and then we'll get into the details.
Uh post the news in the break.
Is this transformative?
Do you believe lives will be saved and people won't get sick?
Many incalculable numbers, Dr. Umber.
I I think so.
I think uh that this is again a manageable illness.
It's in a family of viruses that we're aware of.
This is it's not doing anything unexpected.
Uh, it's new and different.
Stay right there.
We'll come back on the other side.
All right, 25 to the top of the hour.
800, 941 Sean, toll free telephone number.
If you're just getting in your car, a long press conference, uh, well over what was it, an hour and four, what 20 minutes, Linda?
It was a long time.
Yeah, almost two hours.
The the president declaring a national emergency, uh, freeing up up to what, 50 billion dollars, large amounts of money for territories, every state to set up emergency operations centers immediately.
And then the president announced a lot of other things today.
Clearly, this has been in the works for some time.
He said these emergency orders, he also has conferred new authority to the Secretary of Health and Human Services to immediately be able to waive provision of any applicable laws and regulations that will allow doctors, hospitals, all hospitals, all health care providers, maximum flexibility to respond to the virus and care for their patients.
Uh a huge, a huge hurdle that has been overcome.
The president is expanded testing speed and accessibility, uh, accessibility to everybody.
And uh they've been all these people that have been coming in and out of the White House that we have been watching and witnessing, uh, the pharmaceutical industry, healthcare providers, uh, private sector people, pharmaceutical, all these people industries have been going in and out of the White House, obviously leading up to and culminating in what was happening today.
Um, and the president then thus announcing a new partnership with private sector to vastly increase and accelerate any capacity to test for corona.
Now, all of these changes, I would argue right now are going to forever shift and change how we deal with any future pandemics.
Well, that means that fewer people will get sick.
When you couple this with the travel ban and the quarantine, in spite he took the hit, the criticism, you know, the xenophobia attacks, the your stigmatizing people attacks, et cetera, et cetera.
And you know, nobody else had ever done this.
But anyway, it was able to pull together all of these companies, Lab Corp, uh, Quest, uh, Roche, uh, Target, Walmart, Walgreens, CVS, uh, and others, and the FDA now has approved a new test for the virus.
They did that within hours of the application of Roche, a process that would take weeks and weeks, and that they expect uh up to a half a million additional results.
Now, there will be more positives, but there are some cases where it's positive.
Some people will have no symptoms.
Some people will have mild symptoms, some people will have what would be the equivalent of a respiratory-like flu.
Uh, but will most will recover.
The people who are most worried about it, those with underlying conditions, other medical conditions, and those with compromised immune systems or autoimmune disease, or those that have been taking chemotherapy.
Um, and this has uh been the work.
The president now is announced today.
Google, for example, is 1,700 engineers working on a new website that will be done quickly to determine whether a test is warrant warranted, and any American go on there and make an application, and they will start the start in the screening website up facilitated by Google where clients and patients and people of interest can go filling out a questionnaire, move uh down for symptoms, risk factors, where drive-in options would then be available for them.
Now, when you heard the people from Walmart, I know Walmart gets demonized, doesn't it?
And pharmaceutical companies get demonized, don't they?
And drug companies get demonized.
Yeah, they're they're now fully on board to help the American people.
Maybe we should demonize them a little less.
Uh anyway, and the president further waived interest on all student loans to help students and families with a lot of the school shutdowns, et cetera.
The president announced also that he's instructed the Secretary of Energy to purchase with low price of oils right now, large quantities of crude for storage uh in our U.S. strategic reserve, very smart.
Uh also travel restrictions, citizens, permanent residents, families, any families returning for Europe will be subject to extra screening as well as self-isolation for a period of 14 days.
World Health Organization confirming today many things uh that we said were 100% correct, including our designation before them of Europe, and showing again the president is willing to take changes.
Look, first thing I can say, this could only happen in this country.
This is the message, perhaps I've been, Linda, have I been inarticulate and saying that I have so much faith in our medical researchers, doctors, uh, these people that dedicate their lives to viruses for crying out loud.
And in record time, they've been able to pull this off.
Pretty amazing.
Uh, we welcome back uh Dr. Josh Umber, Atlas MD, Dr. Lee Gross, president of Doctors for Patient Care.
Uh we also add to this uh Betsy McCoy, former Lieutenant Governor of New York.
She is uh in charge of uh uh uh what are you in charge of?
Something to do with disease in the state, founder and chairman of the committee to reduce infection deaths.
And we're helping the hospitals all across this country prevent coronavirus from racing through the hospitals, sickening more patients and health care workers and even hospital visitors.
That is one of the biggest challenges ahead.
I agree, and you wrote that in your latest column, which I had referred to numerous times, uh, which makes these drive-up testing facilities that we'll put in Walmart parking lots and target parking lots and CVS parking lots.
Uh, you have been warning the last place if you're sick you want to go is a hospital.
That's absolutely true.
And I have to tell you that I came away from this press conference on so full of optimism because as you pointed out, the pace of scientific innovation, within four months of this virus striking for the first time, we know its genomic structure.
We're already designing vaccines and antivirals.
It took us two and a half years to get that far with AIDS.
And the ingenuity of drive-through testing and being able to apply for a test online, that is the American way.
And mostly what the president said today also is putting us on the fast track to beat this disease.
Only one other country has done it so fast Hong Kong.
They really pushed back on coronavirus even though they're next door to mainland China.
And we're doing the same thing.
Like Hong Kong, we closed the borders right away, thanks to the president.
And now social distancing which is just a wonkish way of saying canceling everything, asking Americans to stay home, take care of the elderly, avoid crowds, avoid going to work if you can work from home.
All of that done very early.
I don't know whether you've talked about this on the show or not, but one of the biggest lessons and I'm so glad that President Trump is clearly very cognizant of it is taking action early is so much more effective than waiting till you see that big curve of cases going up because we had a flu in 1918, the Spanish flu, the worst one ever.
And the city But that went away for a while and came back which made it you know more devastating but with this in place it just is now a new system and this is what I'm trying to get at here I I think future pandemics is in spite of all the criticism on the ban and the quarantine and he took a lot of heat especially from his political rivals and all that oh he's not doing enough.
Correct and Dr. Umber this is to me what makes this a game changer and I would anticipate that any future pandemic we're going to go right to this model this new model.
Well I you know it's it's definitely very effective and I echo those comments uh I I think there's a a layer of frustration that we haven't done more but I think that's just because people don't always appreciate just how much we've done how fast we've done it so I think uh if it like she said before it took two and a half years to just get to the genomic structure on the last one and four months on this one it'll be four weeks on the next one.
So I think hopefully the in the future won't have to be quite as extreme.
That would probably be more likely to give us a treatment first sort of Tamil flu-ish if I can use that analogy a layman's analogy.
It'll get us closer to those kind of things vaccines and treatments or know which available medicines might uh you know be effective so that even there'd be an option to use something already created and not have to go through the uh you know uh de novo process of creating a brand new medicine for it.
Um so yeah I think I think this will be a a great way to you know show the American people just how well we can respond.
But I mean this public private partnership I mean again this had never been set up before but I still stand by the president's gutsy decision again we identified corona January 7th Dr. Gross January 31st the travel ban's in place the president's being called hysterical and a xenophobe and every name in between and everybody's lashing out at him was that the single best most decisive decision and pr protecting Americans from potential infection?
Absolutely that's what separates this you know from what's happening in Europe.
I mean Europe with their open borders and then people just flowing back and forth across those borders you see a rampant running through running through Europe.
But I I want to emphasize the point that you know this went from a disease that's never existed on the planet to a test that's going to be available to half a million people every single day in the course of 90 days.
And the the fastest approval in the history of the FDA of this this test by Roach you can't uh under under emphasize the importance of that development that's been happening here.
You know but you you're innovative both of you with your concierge medical care for everybody and for those that don't know Dr. Umber, Atlas MD, Wichita, Kansas.
It's now been duplicated around a thousand times around the country where people have unlimited medical care available 24 hours a day, 50 bucks a month for adults, 10 bucks a month for kids unless you've raised your prices.
You couple that with a catastrophic plan.
The higher the deductible you can afford, the better.
And that would mean if you have cancer or a heart attack or God forbid an accident or God forbid any of them, that would be covered under the catastrophic plan.
And that too has been innovative, uh, Dr. Umber.
And I was so frustrated with Republicans that they weren't ready to go with that idea or a combination of your idea in health savings accounts.
Let me let me ask this.
This is important.
Look, with the new testing, we're gonna have we're gonna go through a short period here where dramatic increases in numbers, people quote, have contracted the disease.
Now we're gonna we're gonna get those numbers in.
That'll be helpful for people to stay away from people that are susceptible that could really be harmed by this, the elderly, those with compromised immune systems, those with underlying medical conditions.
Then if the China model holds uh uh Betsy, then that would mean there'll be a leveling off in a few weeks after that, and then a uh dramatic reduction of any new incidences, and then we're on our way towards where we want to be no new cases.
That's right.
And the point is that no matter how many cases test positive, we know that at most about 20 percent, and this is a serious number, 20% may need hospitalization.
So the best advice that we can give to all our listeners here is unless you have an emergency, don't go to the hospital because if you're planning something like an elective surgery, a hip replacement, a knee replacement, this is not the time to be anywhere in a hospital.
Our hospitals in the next few weeks may be under extreme stress.
The hospitals with whom I've been talking, they're already busy converting single double single rooms into double rooms, taking closets and making them into isolation spaces, building up capacity with tents in the parking lots, and even buying motels because they're so so short on space, they're short on equipment, and most of all, they're short on staff because some of their health care workers, doctors, nurses, therapists are already succumbing to this disease.
So you don't want to be in a hospital.
If you've scheduled if you can avoid it, but you I don't want to scare people away if they're really sick.
I mean, it's a fine line we have here.
So um Dr. Umber, do you agree with that?
Yeah, I mean, I think uh you know it's an exciting time.
Well, let me ask you this.
What what if I called you today?
Uh I have flu symptoms.
What would you tell me?
Well, well, we'd probably say you can avoid testing because most of the time we make the diagnosis by your symptoms and your vitals.
Uh the test is a little painful.
It doesn't necessarily change what we do all the time.
Um the uh main treatment is treat the symptoms, Tylenol, ibuprofen, plenty of fluids, daquil, nyQL.
You wouldn't tell me to raise to a hospital.
I would not tell you to raise to a hospital.
And while you're telling all of our patients is use that same common sense for the Okay, what if I'm eighty years old and I just finished chemotherapy?
Then we would be much more aggressive.
We talk about uh either Tamil fluid or you'd come to my house because I'd I'd I if you didn't, I would go down there and I'd drag you up here.
Well, that is the beautiful part about direct care is that.
That's the beautiful part about our relationship.
I you know I have that kind of relationship with you.
You can drag me up to New York anytime.
Absolutely.
Dr. Gross, I call you, I have flu symptoms.
What do I do?
Um, I think the one of the important things with with that website that's being set up, and I think the things that were brought up in today's press conference is just because everybody can get tested does not mean that everybody should get tested.
And I think it really is important to individualize those choices.
That's why it's important to set up that website.
And I think what they told you today in state's press conference is that two percent of these tests are coming up positive.
That means that 98% of the tests are negative.
Um so 98% of the people that are tested have something else.
Those are the people that are symptomatic.
So your patients that are not symptomatic, they're gonna even be lower than that two percent uh so there's really little need to do that.
Dr. Fauci told me he believed the real numbers about one percent.
So uh in terms of of those that actually uh we have to be concerned about the m uh in terms of mortality.
Do you agree with that?
Maybe less than one percent.
Uh that that's probably about about right.
And you know, so again, the question is if every person that calls up and says, I want to be tested, you know, that's where the physicians have to be allowed to be physicians and be able to make recommendations.
Uh and that's what's wonderful about these direct primary care practices like like Dr. Umber and I have here at Epiphany Health Down at Florida is that we don't have to bring patients into the office in order for us to make money.
We can triage up the telephone, we can do telemedicine visits, we can do things by texting.
There's a lot of stuff we can do to keep the patient at home as opposed to getting them out in the community exposing other people.
We're exposing them to sick people in our offices.
There's no reason to do that.
All right.
I want to thank you all.
Dr. Josh Umber, Atlas MD.
If you're in Wichita, he's your doctor.
Dr. Lee Gross, President Doctors for Patient Care Foundation.
Uh our friend Betsy McCoy, former Lieutenant Governor of the Great State of New York.
And she is also the chairwoman of the committee to reduce infection deaths.
Thank you for being with us.
All right, full coverage of all the breaking news tonight on Hannity 9 Eastern.
