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More States Express to Reopen; COVID Isn't Going to Leave Any Time Soon; Mayor Marty Walsh of Boston Was Interviewed About Why They Decided to Extend Their Stay-at-Home Orders. Aired 11p-12a ET

Aired April 30, 2020 - 23:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[23:00:00]

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CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST: Hey, I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome to a bonus hour of Prime Time.

You know, the questionable news, you know, good or bad it's going to be dependent on the outcome. But 31 states are going to be reopening some way by the end of the week. None of them appear to have met the White House benchmark expiring tonight that says they should have 14 straight days of declining cases.

Why are we the only nation that seems to not be able to bend the curve. Or more importantly, because we are bending it. But why aren't we adhering the way other countries that dug out of this did?

Look at the Financial Times chart. It tells you everything you need to know. Death tolls are at their peak. Or falling in many western countries. So many have turned a corner with new case numbers in decline.

We have the highest number of new cases globally. What are they doing right that we're doing wrong or not doing right enough or not doing long enough?

Let's turn to Dr. Ashish Jha. He is director of the Harvard, Harvard Global Health Institute and Jeremy Konyndyk, senior policy fellow -- Konyndyk -- they gave it to me phonetically, Jeremy, I know your damn name. If they just spelled it normally it would have been fine. Konyndyk. Policy fellow with the Center for Global Development. It's good to have you both.

First, Jeremy, from a public policy perspective, am I being unfair to the United States? And looking at how other western countries have dealt with this versus us and looking at the chart that we just put up there. Do you agree with the assessment that we're not doing as well as others?

JEREMY KONYNDYK, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT: Well, I mean, look, it's clear from the data. We have been at a plateau for really the whole of the month of April. On the first day of April we had 25,000 cases in this country. And today in the last day, we have 27,000. And through the entire

month, we have hovered around those numbers. And we've been in that sort of 25 to 30,000 range.

And you know, my fear is that we have in effect wasted April much like we wasted February. And in February we wasted it by failing to prepare for what was coming. I think here in April we have wasted it by not taking all the measures we needed to in order to not merely flatten the curve but actually begin bringing it down.

And so, what we see certain states are making head way on that. New York is making head way. New Jersey. But others are not. Other states are still going up. And as a country we are basically flat. We have yet to get to the kind of, you know, the kind of public health measures and the kind of serious government effort, frankly, that's going to be needed to bring this back under control.

CUOMO: Quick follow to you, Jeremy. You're too harsh a grader. The president says this is a success. Jared Kushner says this is a success and he's in charge of Middle East peace. And the reason they say it is that the projections had this much worse.

And we stopped the spiking. People stayed home; case growth is going down. And people are starting to reopen because we're actually flattening the curve and that's good enough as long as you reopen with smart safety measures. Do you agree with the analysis?

KONYNDYK: No. I don't. I mean, we're in a holding pattern. We have had a transmission number of one. Meaning roughly every case creates one other case. That's better than a reproduction number of three where every case three more cases.

But it's not enough to get us anywhere close to zero. You know, if we are averaging 25 to 30,000 cases and each one of those is producing one more. We can stay at the number for quite a long time. And that would mean that in effect, you know, we've done just enough to freeze it. But not enough to suppress it and bring it down and start getting this country back on the track to reopening our economy.

[23:04:56]

I think we are not yet at a point where we can safely reopen. And I fear with all that we have done, we have gotten that number down to one case per existing case. We need to get it down well below that in order to actually be winning.

CUOMO: OK, let's stay with this Socratic. And let me come to you, Doc Ashish Jha. No, you don't have to get it underneath that. It's hyper conservative. It's not a perfect world. We have to deal with a certain number of cases that's the reality. We're going to reopen in a smart way that will continue to go down because we'll continue to do smartish things and we're going to get a cure soon and we're going to have a vaccine maybe by January. And that's going to really change.

By the way all the numbers are wrong and there's much more of herd immunity than people think and that's a built in X factor and we're going to be OK. Don't be so conservative. We don't have to get any lower and reproductive -- reproduction rate than just the replication than one. We're OK.

ASHISH JHA, DIRECTOR, HARVARD GLOBAL HEALTH INSTITUTE: Yes, that's a great story. It's a mix of hope and magical thinking. And unfortunately, that's not the reality we have. The reality we have, as Jeremy has pointed out, is we're kind of flat here. And flat is not good.

We want to bring the case numbers down. Remember, we were flat through all of April and almost 60,000 Americans died during that month. We don't want to replicating that in May, we don't want to be replicating that in June.

I think that we can open up when the data says we can. And that means that case numbers have to decline substantially. Testing has to get up substantially. And then if we open up we can stay open. If we open now, we are going to find ourselves with exploding case numbers, hospitals overwhelmed and having to get shut down again. And that's what we have to try to avoid.

CUOMO: So, the push back becomes harder to make. But let me -- let me bring it this way. Which is, I understand the logic but it has not played out in practice. The hospitals have been able to handle it. They weren't supposed to be able to handle it as long as they have.

And in a lot of places you have New York City, still very hard pressed. A will the of those hospitals are burning the midnight oil. Not Nassau County, not in Suffolk County, not once you get outside the city.

So, there's a relativism that we didn't expect then you are not giving full benefit too. Is that a fair push back? That, OK, we won't open everywhere the same way. But we don't have to do this as conservatively as you want everywhere.

JHA: Well, I'll give you half a point on that one. Here's the thing. There are states, Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, where they have very, very few cases. Their testing is good. Now where it should be. But pretty good.

And if those states open up carefully, I'd say that's probably OK. But large parts of the country, Georgia, certainly not. Texas and Florida, that's not where the data are.

So, are there any places in America that can open up safely and carefully? I think there are. But there are large parts of America that cannot. And this is not just a New York story.

CUOMO: Vaccine in January, Jeremy. Where's the love? Why aren't you feeling that. I mean, that changes the game, doesn't it?

KONYNDYK: No one would be happier than me to see that happen. But I'm not going to -- I'm not going to start counting those chickens before they hatch. I'm glad to see that the government is doing this sort of big push the Warp Speed plan as they call it to generate a vaccine. The New York Times had a really good piece today laying out just how

difficult that would be. I have yet to see a good explanation from the government of how they plan to compress the time line that much.

You know, the hard part to compress here is the human trials. And you just, you have to take a certain amount of time for human trials in order to ensure that you have a vaccine that is both safe and effective. And that's very, very hard to compress. That's a pretty -- that's a pretty fixed amount of time.

You know, I think it's a good idea they are talking about trying to manufacture at the same time or at least build a manufacturing capacity so they're really to go. Great that they're doing that.

What I'm frustrated by is, you know, that they can invest in warp speed for vaccine but they're not investing in warp speed for testing. They're not investing in warp speed for contact tracing.

Those are the things that could pay off now that could begin bringing numbers down now. Not making us wait until January before we get some, you know, hope for a miracle that may or may not pan out.

CUOMO: All right. That I have a problem with. I'm pushing back on. Because I can't believe that the best we can come to the "Rosie the Riveter" mentality of desperate times, desperate measures is one company in Maine, I love Maine, don't get me wrong, but one company in Maine making this swabs with the polyurethane tips. One is all we've been able to figure out. That's just the bad fact. I don't understand why the desperation isn't there on the PPE side and the testing side.

KONYNDYK: It's extraordinary.

CUOMO: But --

KONYNDYK: It's extraordinary.

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CUOMO: Here's your problem, Jha. I'm not going to -- I'm not going have you grade me with half a point. Here comes now. This is where you lose. Fatigue. You guys are not paying attention to the biggest metric. Fatigue. We've had it. That's what the president is banking on.

That if he keeps giving these little suggestions, I don't even know that testing is necessary. You should liberate your states, you know. It doesn't matter what he says about testing being good and tracing being good. When he floats that out there, he's feeding the fatigue.

You saw what happened to Michigan today, Dr. Jha. People are scared. They want to get back to work, people die. People get sick. It's part of reality. We're not all going to die. We're not all going to get sick. We'll past the fear. And we want to get back to life so we can take care of our families. That could be tough to overcome no matter what the numbers are. Thoughts on that?

JHA: Yes. So, you know, you give me the president and those protestors in Michigan and I'll give you the American people as my response.

Latest surveys, 80 to 90 percent of Americans say there are not comfortable going back to work. They're not comfortable sending their kids to school. They're not comfortable going to a restaurant without additional testing, without additional evidence that it is safe to do so.

So, I see the small minority that's loud that says let's get going. And I even sympathize with them. But the vast majority of Americans are saying not until it's safe. And it's not going to be safe until we have a testing regime that can identify people who are sick and isolate them from the rest of society. So, everybody else can go about their daily business.

So that's where the American people are and I think they are being really smart about this.

CUOMO: All right. Gentlemen, thank you very much. Jeremy Konyndyk, not nine, but six months they are saying we may get a vaccine. We'll see if that happens and if it changes it. And Dr. Jha, thank you very much. You do rightly cite the polls. But patience wanes. And often outrage gains. And we'll see if that comes to play in this situation in terms of pushing action.

I appreciate your perspective, thank you very much, guys. Stay blessed, stay healthy.

All right, a region that is exercising caution as others are relaxing their rules. You are going to see these kinds of dichotomies, these kinds of splits. And we have to examine them as to why they're happening and what the net effect is.

Massachusetts extended its stay home orders. Why, when everybody else is pushing to go in a different direction? Twenty-one states reopening. Why not them. The mayor of Boston, next.

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CUOMO: All right. So, this is an interesting piece of information that goes against the reopen now trend. The Massachusetts governor, Governor Charlie Baker extended the stay at home order until May 18.

Now even before that was announced Boston's mayor had made clear the city wasn't going to open -- reopen any time soon.

We have the mayor. Marty Walsh joining us now. Welcome to Prime Time, sir. Thank you for taking the opportunity.

MAYOR MARTY WALSH (D-MA), BOSTON: Thanks, Chris. Thanks for having me.

CUOMO: I know the city. I know the anxiety level there is real as well. And they are hearing people and watching people reopen. Why do you not feel the fervor? WALSH: Because it's not the right thing to do. And my job right now is

to keep people safe and keep people alive. And rushing what's happening in other states around the country quite honestly in talking to a lot of those mayors as you had one on today from Atlanta, they know it's the wrong thing to do.

People are afraid. I heard your other guests prior to me being on as well. They make some good points. But at the end of the day my responsibility as mayor of the city of the Boston and our responsibility as governors is to keep the people safe. We're in the midst of a pandemic like we've never seen. None of us have ever live through. And it's our responsibility to do the right thing.

CUOMO: But the president is beating a drum that people are listening to. Packets, but angry enough to, you know, do what they did in Michigan today which is a pretty ballsy move by protest, you know what it means. Going right after the governor's office.

My money is short, I need this for my family. Life isn't perfect. Don't make the cure worse than the disease. What's your response?

WALSH: Well, that's why the stimulus bill or Recovery Act came through Congress with extended unemployment benefits for three months. That's why our legislature and governor are passing legislation around moratoriums on evictions for the next three months. And I think that there has to be a well thought out plan on how we move, how we get business back going here.

I understand the small businesses, the restaurants, the golf courses, the flower shops. All of those businesses that are hurting in my district and my city. I know my businesses of color are disproportionately affected by this as well because they have less operating cash.

But it really, we have to be very careful because one of the previous guests said if we do this wrong and I hope to God down those states that doesn't happen to them, that the second surge is worse where our emergency rooms in our hospitals will be overwhelmed.

I mean, Boston, Massachusetts, we dealt extra space in our convention center. Like New York did for additional capacity. We have people in there. We've been able to come up with a plan to kind of shelter our homeless folks so that as they get COVID they have a safe place to go.

We've been able to send Chromebook home with our kids and teach them e- learning. But if we get it wrong, the next September and October, we're in a situation that's even worse. It's going to be even more detrimental to the economy. And the president is going to wish at that point that he shut things down a lot earlier and kept it a little extended because it's going to be right up -- right up to his election.

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CUOMO: What do you say to the push back that, you know what, it turns out this wasn't as bad as they said it was going to be? Do you believe that there's a basis for that suggestion at this time?

WALSH: No. Too many people have lost their lives. There's too many people in the hospitals right now that are seriously ill. Too many families have buried loved ones. It's just, you know, you look at it if we didn't do the social distancing and the physical distancing the numbers certainly would be worse.

If we didn't have the world class hospitals that we have in the United States of America the numbers would have been worse. And I think that, I think that a lot of work has been done to actually spare a lot of, save a lot of life.

And I think if we don't continue down the same path that we're doing here in Boston and Massachusetts and across the country, then we're going to be in a worse situation. And at the end of the day for me, you know, I made the very beginning of this I made decisions cancelling the parade, St. Patrick's Day parade.

We cancelled the marathon. We cancelled school. We did a lot of things that some people might not have been supportive of. But certainly, now fast forward not that long, eight weeks later. We have nearly 10,000 cases of coronavirus in Boston, Massachusetts. And we have over 300 people have lost their lives. Why would I now change course and open things up when all I can see it getting worse down the road.

CUOMO: What do you pick up in terms of the shift in feel? You mention something that may fly past a lot of people. But not me because I have been following this.

People are starting to make homeless a touchstone for their frustration. I hear too many people talking about homeless like they were rats.

WALSH: Yes.

CUOMO: In New York City they're talking about how many homeless are on the trains. Because the shelter is breaking down and there's no capacity and they can't be in the hospitals right now. There's nowhere for them to go in New York City.

You made special accommodations for the homeless.

WALSH: Yes.

CUOMO: And that was a humane thing but also tactical thing. Because start using that as an index that things have gone too far. What are you picking up in your city in terms of people's feelings about how long this has gone and what the right thing to do is?

WALSH: You know, I think there's definitely no question the segment of the population that wants to go back to work and some people think that this isn't as serious as it is. But I think the greater majority of people are really concern.

You made a point with the last guest talking about schools. One of the things that I saw happen really fast here in Boston was as soon as we got to five or six coronavirus cases, people started panicking about having kids in school.

Well, let's quick news flash. By September when schools restart that would have been six months where our kids have not been in physical school in Boston. And if we don't take all the precautions today, well, you know what there's going to be more coronavirus in September. And there would be a chance that our kids don't go back to school.

And that's not going to help our society, that's not going to help our children, that's not going to help a whole lot. And I think that we have to continue to take this very seriously right now.

We don't have that negative necessarily, you know, labeling of our homeless population because we did build out space for quarantine, for additional space in those shelters so they could self, kind of, physical distance. And we have at the convention center and at Boston Medical Center we have some hospital beds with healthcare for the homeless for our homeless that are COVID positive.

CUOMO: Well, you guys are in the hash tag Boston strong. And this is a very different kind of test than the one you already showed amazing, amazing endurance to make it through.

But we'll be watching your city. Because once again, you are doing things that call for strength during a time of great fear. And frankly, weakness. Mayor Walsh, stay blessed, stay healthy. And please be aware you have this platform. It's a phone call away to tell people how it's going and why you're doing what you're doing.

WALSH: Thanks, Chris. Good to see you better. I'm watching you go through this. This is really interesting to see. And hope you and your family are bless and safe as well. And God bless you.

CUOMO: Thank you. It became proof positive that I am the weak link in my family. Because the missus and my son blew right through it. And it knocked me down like I was nothing.

So, thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate the good word.

All right. Thirty million Americans have a filed for unemployment. Thirty million. All right. That is obviously contextually the biggest number that we've seen since the Great Depression. It's 20 percent of the work force.

So that's why I keep saying I'm not trivializing the desire to come back. I'm not saying it's about a burger and a beer. That's part of it. But I get it. Money is tight. I get that people's families are jeopardized by this. Not just their health. But wellness as a function of their financial stability. I get it.

The White House predicts a rocking economy by July. How? How the heck could that ever happen. One of our great financial minds, next.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK) CUOMO: All right, tomorrow is going to bring a terrible new meaning to mayday. For many families across America it's going to mean almost panic. As people have to file for unemployment. And money is short. And feeding family is a challenge.

Again, this is not just about wanting to reopen for a burger and a beer. That is unfair to families all over this country.

Now somebody who can put in perspective what this means for our economy and how fast you can get it back, what that would take and what the need is right now for those families. She's actually working not just on an analysis but on answers.

[23:30:01]

Financial expert and a lot more, Alexis Glick. It's great to have you back on Prime Time, my friend.

ALEXIS GLICK, FINANCIAL EXPERT: It's great to see you, Chris.

CUOMO: So, 30 million, 20 percent of the workforce, filing unemployment, most since the Great Depression. What are these numbers mean in terms of economic impact and hardship?

GLICK: It just demonstrates, Chris, the degree of the catastrophe that we have truly witnessed in our economy. It's completely unprecedented times. We have never seen anything like this. The rate of job loss is completely unprecedented.

To contextualize it, Chris, just to give you an idea, during the Great Recession in December of 2007 through June of 2009, we lost about nine million jobs. It has taken us since June of 2009 up until early last month. Twenty-two million jobs were created in that time duration, in about a decade.

So to contextualize the idea of losing 30 million jobs in six weeks, and the belief is, for many economists, that we are actually short changing that number, that there are upwards of maybe 10 million more who have not been able to file claims or who have given up, the expectation, of course, is those numbers are going to rise in the coming weeks and that we will see an unemployment rate like we have never seen since the Depression.

CUOMO: But it's going to be rocking in July.

(LAUGHTER)

GLICK: Yeah. I wish -- you know, rose-colored glasses look awfully great when you put them on. But the reality is we're not living in rose-colored glasses environment. As you and I both know, right now, this staggered return back to work and the risks that you just talked about with the mayor of the second or possibly a third wave are going to live with the economy for quite some time.

Most economists do predict that we saw the economy contract in the first quarter by 4.8 percent, that we will see a double digit contraction in Q-2. As I mentioned, the worst since the Great Depression may be even worse, but then we will see an uptick in growth in the third and fourth quarter. But that is contingent, Chris, on us continuing to pump money into the economy.

We just listened to Federal Reserve Chairman Powell speak two days ago. He said we are putting out a fire. We are trying to continue to win the battle. This means that more stimulus may very likely be needed. As you know with the governor, states right now are in trouble.

So, right now, the critical thing is let's get the unemployment benefits out to the people as quickly as possible, the Paycheck Protection Program, which is helping small businesses.

Those things are critical because when you look at just those who are employed in the United States, 50 percent, over 50 percent of the private sector jobs come from small businesses. We need to get those guys back in action. But the notion that this economy is going to be booming in July is just not accurate.

CUOMO: All right. Let's check a couple of boxes real quick about not just outlining the problem, which is what I do, you find ways to solve it. You have a huge resource that you guys launched today to make it --

GLICK: Yes.

CUOMO: -- easier for families to feed their kids. Schools, as you explain to the audience and you taught me before that, it's not just about education, it's about nutrition. And what is the new resource that families can use to help find a place to feed their kids?

GLICK: Well, so as you and I have talked about before, there's a great misnomer that U.S. public schools are closed. Ninety-eight thousand U.S. public schools in this nation remain open to feed kids. Thirty million kids rely on meals daily. And now, that is millions more due to the job losses we have seen over the past six weeks. So today, we launched a resource locator. It is at sap.com/sap4kids. What it is? It's a national representation --

CUOMO: Say it again.

GLICK: -- of all 50 states. Sorry. All 50 states --

CUOMO: Say it again. Nobody can think as fast as you just did. What's the address again?

GLICK: OK. So --

CUOMO: We will put it on the screen.

GLICK: OK. So it's a mobile-enabled web application and it is available, as you can see on the screen right there, it is at sap.com/sap4kids. What it enables is, you can see on the screen right now, is wherever you are in the country, it is using Google maps to recognize to where you are. Yo log on, it knows where your location is, and it can tell you any and all school feeding sites in your community.

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GLICK: So it will help families and kids find the nearest feeding site near them. The other thing is, over time, we are going to be entering in more available resources, which will include things like financial assistance, things like TeleMed, all these resources that will be for free, available to kids and families.

We started today. The app right now has 27,000 feeding site locations. By next week, we'll have upwards of 40,000 feeding site locations. And so it's an available tool for families and kids, which anyone can use through their cell phone, online digitally.

And the other thing, Chris, there's a place where businesses can share their available resources so that we can match that with the needs and demands of kids and school buildings at this time.

CUOMO: Money. It takes money. Last time you were on, you were asking for money. You still need money. You had a record number of schools asking for grants. You're working with the Rockefeller Foundation. How do people get involved and help these places have food, have resources, have people, so that people can find those places and get their kids fed?

GLICK: Well, as you just referenced, today was a great day for us not just because we announced this digital platform, but also we announced the partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation, one of, you know, the biggest investors in the nation, and making sure that no one goes food insecure.

But as you referenced, when I joined you four weeks ago and we launched our COVID-19 emergency school nutrition fund in which we are allowing school buildings to apply for up to $3,000 of grants to get the resources that they need to deliver vital meals safely, today as I sit here, Chris, we have over 11,000 applications from schools, over 30 million in requests for school buildings, we have been able to provide $5 million in resources.

But unfortunately, we still sit here with a $25 million deficit. Our front line workers are the school nutrition professionals, the school bus drivers, the volunteers in the school building. They are the one taking the food out of the cafeteria, giving it in a grab and go, putting it on school buses to deliver to homes. And right now, those front line workers need the resources and protective equipment to deliver those meals.

CUOMO: Give us the place to go to donate.

GLICK: They can go to GENYOUthNow.org/donate or they can text schools to 20222.

CUOMO: Schools 20 -- what?

GLICK: 2022 schools or go to GENYOUthNow.org/donate. Chris, we are not going to stop, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for letting me continue to share this story. Because number one, we need to show families where the nearest school feeding site is.

CUOMO: Right.

GLICK: And now with this SAP website, we can do it. Now, we have the resources, the vital resources that we need to help schools with Rockefeller Foundation. But we need a lot more help.

CUOMO: I'll put it out on the social media so people can get it. Alexis Glick, thank you very much for helping us to understand the situation and more importantly thank you for fighting to help solve it. By the way, Alexis has been doing that while she has been dealing with COVID in her own household. She has been working and figuring out the solutions while dealing with the illness in her house, as well. She is a special person.

All right, as we battle one pandemic, health experts are working to help us understand the full scope. I know I have been banging this a lot here, but we have to. Mental health is part of overall wellness. We're seeing it. Cities across the country are having record increases in suicide attempts, all right? Why? What can we do about it? What can you and I do about it? I have an expert who knows it better than anyone, next.

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CUOMO: Facts are not in dispute. Cities across the country are reporting jumps in 911 calls for suicide attempts. The national distress hotline is getting 900 percent more calls compared to this time last year. The only discussion is about how we respond.

Kelly Posner Gerstenhaber is the founder and director of the Columbia Lighthouse Project. I rely on her often for perspective on how we deal with mental health in moments of crisis. We have never seen anything like this, doc. What should we be doing right now?

KELLY POSNER GERSTENHABER, FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR OF COLUMBIA LIGHTHOUSE PROJECT: Well, we need to put this in the perspective that it deserves. So, 900 percent increase. What does that tell us? People are suffering, right? They're suffering a lot. But let's understand what we -- what we know. We know the good news, Chris. I'm always starting with the good news.

Suicide is preventable. This is not an inevitable outcome. Mental health issues like depression and anxiety are treatable. So, what have we learned, what do we know about how do that?

[23:45:02]

GERSTENHABER: Let's remember, in terms of the magnitude, where we started. What our baseline was before this pandemic? It took -- suicide takes more firemen than fire, more police than crime, more soldiers than combat, more lives than car accidents. Depression is the number one cause of global disability. But again, the good news is we know how to treat.

But this pandemic brings with it a tsunami of risk factors, you know, the perfect storm. We know that with economic downturns in the past, they track in rate and pace with the suicide rate. We know that isolation and loneliness is a huge risk factor.

Did you know that the CDC tells us that one of the most important things we can do to prevent suicide is connecting? Connectedness. Right? And so it's such a critical thing to remember now. What we have to understand is that social distancing and quarantine does not inevitably mean social isolation.

So what do we need to do? We need to connect. And what we know in terms of mental health issues being treatable, telepsychiatry and telehealth is incredibly effective. But you might only get that once a week. So what does that mean? It means we have to rely much more on peer to peer, peers helping each other.

We have learned that from other wartime scenarios we have been in, from other mass traumas, that peer to peer help and connection is one of the most important things you can do. So right now, we need to reach out. We need to be here for each other. And what does that mean reaching out?

People suffer in silence. The 900 percent increased that are calling the crisis lines have a will to do that. But very often, people won't. We knew before this, Chris, that we had to find people where they live because they often don't have the will to come to you.

So we need to ask routinely. We need to ask our friends, check in with neighbors about and be direct. How are you doing? Ask specific questions about whether they are feeling suicidal. That is what we know.

Let me just give you the perspective. Less anyone doubts the impact of connecting. Do you know there was a study that showed the opposite that loneliness is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day? It can be more lethal than heart disease and obesity, right? So this is the good news. We can connect. We can connect people to the care they need.

And by the way, you know what we have learned from other mass traumas? That's not only going to help them. It is going to help you, as well. We know that in these desperate times, what we can do to help ourselves is find meaning and purpose in our lives and help --

CUOMO: Where do we go to find out the -- how do we learn how to do that? Tell people where to go, because you have already set out the right questions to ask and a series of "if then." Ask this question. If they say this, go to this. Where do people go to get the ways to help connect?

GERSTENHABER: Yes. So you can go to -- it is called the Columbia protocol. It's C-SSRS.columbia.edu, and it gives you very simple questions that anybody can ask and gives you the next steps. In the past, people didn't know what to ask. They didn't know what to do with the answers. They didn't even know if it was going to be harmful to ask somebody. It's actually the opposite. When people are suffering, they want help and they feel a relief and distress when you actually do ask.

CUOMO: Now, Kelly Posner Gerstenhaber happens to be a very close friend of mine and mrs, and one of the things I love about her is that not only is she a psychiatrist par excellence who got the highest civilian honor for her work in this area, but she can interview herself, and that is why we can make so much out of so little time --

(LAUGHTER)

CUOMO: -- because she knows the right questions and the answers. Thank you for walking us through this and doing so quickly. I will put out on social media how to get to the website for the Columbia protocol, and it's only referred to that now because I kept mangling the name of the Lighthouse Project. So now, she just went with that because I kept getting it wrong on television.

(LAUGHTER)

CUOMO: Kelly, thank you very much for helping us to understand how to deal with such an obvious and severe need. We ignored it for too long. We can change it ourselves. Thank you.

GERSTENHABER: Grateful, Chris, to be here.

CUOMO: All right.

[23:49:57]

CUOMO: So, there is an important update on a fight that we showcased the other week for some of our most essential workers. People who are putting food on our tables are among the most vulnerable when it comes to contracting COVID. We have guests who have been heard and there are some big developments, next.

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CUOMO: All right. Here is a fact. More than two million farm laborers are keeping you, me, all of us fed.

[23:55:00]

CUOMO: Now, nearly two weeks ago, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Florida told me, if you might remember, about the lack of health care, jam-packed conditions, thousands of workers they're faced. They don't have the testing. They don't have anything that they need. Time bomb.

Good news. Florida's governor has heard their pleas. A testing site is opening in Immokalee on Sunday. Now, is it enough? We're watching. Why? Together as ever as one. Thank you for watching. Stay tuned. The news continues here on CNN.

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