ANNOUNCER: Now, from CBS 4 News,

this is Facing South Florida

with Jim Defede.

♪♪

Good morning, I'm Jim

Defede, and welcome

to Facing South Florida.

Later in the show we'll

talk to Broward Sheriff,

Gregory Tony, about his efforts

to hold deputies accountable

when excessive force is alleged.

First, with the growing concerns

here in the United States about

the spread of the Coronavirus,

I spoke late last week with

Congresswoman Donna Shalala.

She has a unique insight, having

served eight years as a health

and human services

secretary during the

Clinton administration.

I start by asking, how serious

of a threat is the Coronavirus?

Serious.

There's no question that the

Coronavirus is here in the

United States, and

it's going to spread.

CDC has told us

it's going to spread,

and so we have to be prepared,

and of course our hospitals have

experience both our great

public hospital as well as the

community hospitals in Miami

have experience in isolation and

in treating patients.

The big challenge is going to be

that we're in flu season and our

emergency rooms and our beds

are going to be occupied by flu

patients, and that's a good

reason to tell people to go get

their flu shots right away,

because they don't want to end

up in the hospital

when we need those beds,

most likely for

victims of Coronavirus.

How prepared do you believe the

federal government is to handle

this crisis right now?

Well, let me say that we have

first rate physical scientists

leading the efforts at

the CDC, at the FDA,

at the Public Health

Service, at the IH.

They're now being coordinated

for the first time by the White

House, led by the

Vice President,

and he's just appointed

a deputy, Debra Burkes.

Colonel Burkes, who holds

the rank of Ambassador,

has been running

the big AIDS program,

and she's an immunologist.

She is first rate, so

I'm very comfortable

with who is leading it.

The problem is that we have not

been giving the resources to all

of these agencies, or to

local governments and to state

governments over a

sustained period of time.

In fact, we put in resources

during emergencies and then we

start to cut them when

we're not in emergencies,

and so our infrastructure

constantly has to be rebuilt as

we deal with emergencies.

Did you ever deal with anything

like this on this sort of scale,

potentially, while you were in

the Clinton administration for

those years?

Yeah, you know we

dealt with SARS with BRS,

with the chicken virus,

what the Hantavirus,

and every single time we were

totally dependent on states and

on local governments on the

training and hospitals of

doctors and nurses to both

identify the disease and we had

to figure out

treatments as well as vaccines,

but you know we ought to be

anticipating this as opposed to,

just funding it periodically.

And I really cannot

criticize this administration,

when every administration has

been lax in continual funding.

JIM: You know it seems as if,

even in the midst of the

Coronvirus spreading

around the world,

the President's budget, still

had major budget cuts up towards

20% budget cuts

for the CDC, NIH.

Does that sort of show you a

disconnect between how this

administration should've been

looking forward to this project?

Absolutely, but the Congress is

not going to put up with that,

both Democrats and Republicans

have made it very clear that we

intend to provide

supplemental funding,

and we never tended

to accept those cuts,

but what is even more serious,

is the President is saying

something different

than his scientists.

The one thing we have to do

is to speak with one voice,

and I think the administration

is starting to pull it together.

I would've put the

President in front of a camera,

to talk about science, because

in his last two appearances,

he stepped all over the message

and actually gave the American

people the impression that this

was somehow miraculously miss

the United States, and that

was the opposite of what the

scientists were saying.

We must listen to these

scientists/physicians.

They're world class, and the

rest of the world is listening

to them, and it's very important

that political appointees step

out of the way.

I never spoke about the science.

I always put these

physician/scientists in front of

me, made sure that they had a

clear message that they all

agreed on, put them

in their white coats,

and let them talk to

the American people.

Now one of the things that you

said you have confidence in the

number two person that

will directly under

the Vice President.

Do you have confidence

in the Vice President,

in terms of I know

they're not calling him a Czar,

but in terms of

leading this effort,

and also having all the

messaging going through

the Vice President's office?

Are you okay with that.

We'll see rather

we're all okay with that,

but everything's

at stake, and Jim,

this is a case where I think

we should be very careful,

not to politicize this.

We have to be supportive of

both the leaders of the country,

but in particular these

scientists/physicians that are

going to lead us through this.

This is not going to

end in six months.

We're in this for

the long fight.

We will not have a

vaccine for one to two years,

which means that we're going

to have drugs to treat the

patients, we need hospital

beds, we need diagnoses test,

and we need testing

facilities all over the country,

so I think this is a time

when all Americans ought

to pull together.

This also points out one of the

issues that we have here in the

United States, so

many of our drugs,

the elements of our

drugs come from China.

That now may be disrupted.

Is, does, will this focus do

right in attention on where we

manufacture drugs, where

the drugs are coming from the

ingredients, and should we

bring more of that home to

the United States?

Not only to the United States,

but maybe to other places,

so there are

multiple sources, but look,

the drug companies, the

pharmaceutical industry has

never been interested

in vaccines.

You don't make a lot of

money out of vaccines,

so we have to use a wide variety

of enticements to get them in to

the vaccine business.

In this case, we'll be doing the

vaccine development pretty

much ourselves.

The distribution will have to

be done by the drug companies

themselves, but again, we've got

to put the resources in place,

we've got to make sure we

have a national strategy,

and more than anything

else from my point of view,

we have to make sure that

states and local governments are

properly funded.

The Health Commissioner, the

Health Department in Miami-Dade,

has been underfunded for

centuries as far as I can tell.

We need to get resources

right down to our local sources,

and we need to reinforce the

resources in our hospitals so

that we have the beds, and

the personnel to take care

of patients.

Let me ask you this.

We've done it before.

Let me ask you to be a

media critic for a second.

Has the media

handled this story well,

or have we created more

anxiety than should be

generated for this?

I heard a doctor on one of

the TV stations recently,

say, we should be more

about being on alert

and not being anxious.

Well, you know it's

a delicate balance.

You want to tell people the

facts and you don't want to lie

to them, but you also have to

be even-handed to make sure that

you're not increasing the

anxiety level beyond where it

should be at this point in time.

That's the importance of

the steady hand of these

physician/scientists,

because they're not excitable.

All right, last question

that I want to ask you,

and then I'll let you go.

What practical suggestions

would you have for the public to

protect themselves?

You talked about

getting the flu shot.

What are other things?

I've heard some people

say that you should've be

shaking hands anymore.