 Hi, y'all. Welcome to the COVID crisis impact on communities of color, a medical perspective with Dr. Clyde Yancey. I am going to pass him the mic and thank him so much for joining us today. COVID-19, or more recently, speaking about the very important issues of racism in our society to a number of different kinds of audiences, predominantly healthcare ward audiences, physicians, cardiologists like myself. I've also spoken to other enterprises, churches, businesses, jazz clubs. Any number of groups of people want to know, tell us about COVID-19, what does it mean, what happens next? And now so many people, so many people need to have an opportunity to ventilate, to understand, to feel, to react to these stark issues that have been exposed so painfully to all of us about racism. Let me start by thanking you as a community. It strikes me that over your history for decades, theater has been where we go to find the truth. You have used your stories to entertain, to engage, but you've also used your stories, your persona, your skills to communicate, to impact, to influence, to insert emotion. Part of the reason why I'm a patron of the arts is that I never leave a good performance without feeling something. And it's you in the arts community that really help incite those feelings. I was really emboldened to look at the number of entities that support your theater group and to realize that at their core, what brings them all together is telling stories. And I think it will be the way in which we craft, tell, and then promulgate those stories that will be part of our healing, part of our way to come back. I'm supposed to say good morning to those that are the West Coast or here in the Midwest, or good afternoon to those that are on the East Coast. But I'd rather say let's spend the next 30 to 40 minutes having not necessarily a good morning or a good afternoon, but an important morning or important afternoon. The things that we need to consider are likely going to be very different than any other session that you've experienced in TCG. No PowerPoints, no PDFs, but really an honest conveyance of information to really help expand your awareness and to entertain your questions. I have deliberately truncated what I intend to say so that I can preserve sufficient time to receive your questions, respond to your questions. If I don't know an answer, I'll tell you I don't know an answer. If I do know the answer, I'll share it with you in a very plain spoken way and if necessary retrieve an answer and communicate via the liaisons that I've been working with over the last 24 to 36 hours to stand up this program. So again, thank you for the invitation. As a physician, as a communicator, as an educator, I like to think in threes. And so the three big themes I want to convey. First, I think we all would love to know, okay, can you just give me the summary? Tell us about COVID-19. What is that all about? Happy to do that and happy to expand that and share with you how it has impacted very important populations. I've heard people talk about special populations. I'd rather emphasize important populations because they are your patrons. They are your actors. They are the essential workers that keep your theaters moving. So let's call them important populations. Next, I really would like to help you from a medical perspective. Understand some highlights and points that I've shared with your organizers already that I think are seminal critical in the successful re-engagement of your patient community, but also in the successful engagement of your actors, your performers, the persons who make your industry thrive. And then as a third piece, I will share with you what I think are some important themes about social justice and how all of this intersects. Let's begin. Beginning sometime in the fall of 2019, we began to understand reports of a very peculiar viral illness, a viral illness that was similar to SARS, the severe acute respiratory distress syndrome virus that generated so much havoc 17 or 18 years ago and then struck Toronto just about a decade ago. That alerted us to the fact that there are these mutated viruses that may appear and outmill you for lack of a better word that may have great consequence. What was so peculiar about this virus is that it started off with something that I suspect every one of us has seen before. If you've had the common cold, it's a good chance you've had coronavirus. But this was a novel, N-O-V-E-L novel coronavirus because it developed a peculiar mutation, a mutation which gave it a unique proclivity that means a unique point of entry into lung tissue. And the consequence was devastating. Lung failure, respiratory difficulties, and ultimately, ultimately, it really has led to an unwarranted and unimaginable toll on life and health. What we know about it is this. It is a respiratory illness at the outset. It propagates by human to human transmission. It is particularly onerous in people that are older over the age of 60. I'm 62, so I've been decidedly careful over the last three months. Those with underlying hypertension, those with underlying heart disease, obesity, diabetes, maybe a slight predilection for men, these are the risk factors that we've seen. We know that this virus is ubiquitous now. About 1.5 million infections in the country and we're still testing. We unfortunately eclipse 100,000 deaths. This is with us and it will likely remain with us. I won't say there's good news, but there is a lesser iteration, a lesser version of this, and that's the version that younger persons experience. It is tantamount to flu-like illness, and after some number of days or weeks, the symptoms pass. But for the older patient, the older person, the consequences can be dire. Let me continue to populate this primer on what we're dealing with, because if you're like me as a citizen, I would have these questions and I suspect you have these questions. What do we do about this? Several points, and I'll be very, very specific here. Point one, it's not over yet. That means that we have to continue to practice the right preventive measures. Social distancing without social isolation. Strict hand hygiene. We have a little bit less sensitivity about surfaces, although that's still possible. So reasonable environmental hygiene is important, but not at the level of rigor that we thought two or three months ago. So the first thing we do about this is remember, it's not over. Continue to take the right preventive measures. The second thing, we need to be very aggressive about testing. Any symptoms, any concerns of exposure present for testing. If you test positive, let those in your immediate vicinity know that you tested positive. It only takes about eight to 10 minutes of close human exposure, not necessarily even physical contact, particularly if someone is sneezing or coughing. So do have an egalitarian approach here and let others know if you've been exposed, and particularly if you test positive if you're young and healthy, respect the 14 days of quarantine. Next, we are working very diligently through all of medicine to find treatments for COVID-19. Coronavirus is viral vector that causes the illness, but the illness is COVID-19, named for the occurrence of this respiratory illness in 2019. I, many of my peers, are working on highly structured, highly organized, well-designed, clinical trials, different from the things you've heard in the news to answer these important questions. In fact, I'm leading one of these trials, and it's what I do every day, trying to desperately find an answer. We will find something that works. We do know that an antiviral agent, I pause when I say this to a lay audience, but it's called remdesivir, but we do know that for the right group of patients, it appears to at least minimize some of the illness, but it's not a cure. We remain very encouraged that if we capture the plasma from persons who have developed their own antibodies and have responded to the COVID-19 illness, we might be able to repurpose the antibodies in that plasma as therapy. What that means is that all of us, if our immune systems are intact, have the ability to generate these proteins. These proteins are uniquely targeted towards this novel coronavirus, and they do something in medicine that we call neutralize. That means they actually eliminate the consequences of that virus being in our system. We're beginning to understand that we can take advantage of that property and use it therapeutically so we can harvest the plasma from those that have recovered and then use it to treat those that are still ill. That is a work in progress. What we all wish for, and I hope I have your rapt attention right now, what we all wish for is this phenomenon of herd immunity. Now, if you're not a scientist, it's like, what the heck does that mean? Because herd makes you think of things that are in agriculture or livestock, but what it really means is just like you think of a herd of animals. We are herd of people, and the way that we don't suffer the consequences of this again is if our herd is relatively immune from this illness. We know that the threshold for herd immunity is at about 60%, maybe 70%. So once we get to that threshold where we are protected, then we know that the consequences of a recurrent outbreak would be much less, not zero but much less. Now, how do we get to herd immunity? There really are two fundamental ways. We call them active and passive, but what it really means is that if you've had the disease and you've recovered and you've developed antibodies on your own and they are neutralizing antibodies, then you have some measure of immunity. To what extent remains to be tested, but you have some measure of immunity. So one part of the herd will have immunity because they've had the infection. The other part of the herd is waiting for a vaccine. I've had an opportunity to review the primary data in vaccine development. I have a close working relationship with the National Institutes of Health, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, and I spend a lot of my Saturdays on conference calls with my peers at a national level understanding what do we do next. Quietly, we are very enthused with the progress that's being made with certain vaccines up to an including vaccines that are already entering phase three. Now again, if you're not in my world, phase three means absolutely nothing to you. But think about phase three as your pre-production theater event. Almost ready to go. You're testing it in front of a live audience, making certain that everything clicks, everything works. In medicine, phase three means that we've gone past the hypothesis. We've identified the risk and benefits. We've assured ourselves that there's reasonable safety. Now we're seeking proof that it actually works. Phase three will take us into the next flu season because in humans, we have to show that the vaccine is being developed will prevent those who get the vaccine largely from getting the infection and those who don't get the vaccine or get the placebo will still be exposing the infection. If all goes well, it's conceivable that in 2021, we will have a candidate vaccine. But here's the other challenge. There are many people who have some misgivings about receiving a vaccination. We know this from my experience with the flu vaccine. If we don't reach that threshold of 60%, then we're still at risk for having a calamitous collapse of our economy, our society once again if this infection occurs. Now let me do a pivot and I hope that you're still following along with me because what I'm going to share with you now is about those important populations I told you about before. We have learned and I have helped to bring this information to the attention of the medical community and now the lay community that certain groups of people are uniquely affected. And it's those people whereby their life and living circumstances prevent them from being able to practice social distancing, working from home, even good hygiene, not having access to sanitizers, not being able to get testing on demand. Those communities are our poor communities, our minority communities, the communities on the south side of Chicago just 10 miles from me, the communities in New Orleans, Louisiana where I lived five years, the communities in Detroit, Michigan where I frequently go to serve as a consultant for institutions in Detroit. These are unacceptable observations. In blacks, the infection rate here in Chicago is two to three times higher. 60 percent, 60 percent of all the deaths due to COVID-19 in Chicago, my home city are in blacks, but we only make up 33 percent of the population. I follow a very important data set, the American public media research labs. I said that so deliberately because I would love for you to go to the American public media research labs website, type in COVID-19. What you see will be astonishing. As we speak, the likelihood of death for a black comparator white with COVID-19 is 2.4 times higher. Here is the most startling statistic. If every group actually experienced the same degree of risk due to COVID-19, 14,000 more blacks would be alive right now. That's worth a pause moment. 14,000 more blacks would be alive right now. That is an unacceptable loss. It's a loss that wasn't controllable and this loss has happened for several reasons. First, many individuals that are black or Latino, some Asian or essential workers, they keep the food lines going. They staff the hospital environmental resources. They are the mass transit workers. I worked with public transit organizations in New York City. They reached out to me. 96 transit workers have died. 96, these are the people that worked the subways, the buses. 96 have died and I know the numbers higher now. These are essential workers. The other reason why this group of people is at such greater risk, think about the density of their housing circumstances. These are not homes that were designed to accommodate eight, 10, and 12 people of multi-generational families. So one gets it, everybody has it. So we start with a set of life and living circumstances that generates increased exposure and then the sinister part happens. I told you in the beginning, the people that suffer the greatest consequence are the ones that have high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, known cardiovascular disease, guess which groups carry that burden the most? That's right. Blacks, to a lesser extent, but still in a very real way, Hispanics, Latinx. There's an even worse tragedy here and it's in our Native American population, particularly our Pueblo Indians. I know one of the sponsoring organizations here is in Arizona. My heart goes out to you. Those tribes still in Arizona have a shockingly high burden of COVID-19 that for eclipses, what we see in New York City, the designated epicenter, that's what's happening in your Pueblo nations. So when you bring all this together, you began to appreciate that not only has COVID-19 disrupted our economy, damaged our social network, caused incredible harm in our communities, illness and unfortunately death. It has exposed the deep chasm in health quality in our country. It has illuminated with the spotlight, the underbelly of our healthcare system, there are evident racial disparities that can no longer be argued and this burden is disproportionate and in a civil society as I've written many times in the medical and lay literature, we should not allow this magnitude of disproportionate pain and suffering. I told you there would be three themes that I would talk about. This first theme I've completed, giving you the history of coronavirus, the history of COVID-19 infection in our country, where we're going with treatment, what happens next, please, please, please don't forget this crisis isn't over and prevention is still our best treatment and I've shared with you in a very sobering way what's happening to these important populations. Let's pivot. Like you, I really look forward to being able to reengage in our society. I do not want to go back to normal. I want to seek a better normal but to get there, there's going to be some awkwardness. There will be some steps we all have to tolerate so that we don't lose ground. Let me be very explicit again as I was once before and talk about those steps and I'll be five steps that I will share with you. First, as you think about re-establishing your enterprise, theater performances, it's fortuitous that we're coming up on the early summer. The safest place to congregate is outdoors. We know from the work that's come out of China, I'm also a scientific journal editor and we received some of the very earliest reports from Wuhan, China in March. Those individuals have continued to stand up very nobly, very appropriately and are still educating us. We know from their work that 80% of the infections happen in indoor environments with close human contact. Outdoors where there's ventilation, where it's easier to have some distance between people and particularly with masks, that's your safest venue. It will still require hand sanitizers and masks but if you were thinking about getting up and running quickly, that might be an approach. Second, indoor venues is your core culture. That's where you are. I love going to the theater, having a seat and looking up at the stage and imagining, gosh, what's about to happen now? This is going to be so exciting. But that's going to be a challenging enterprise. A couple of things about that. First, anything you can do to properly ventilate your indoor environments, recirculating fresh air will be helpful. You've heard it again, I'm going to say it again. Distance matters here. You want to create six feet of space between your patrons, whether you take out rows or block seats, that's your choice. The aesthetics may look and feel awkward, that's your choice. But I think for you to allow your customers, your patrons, to feel as though it's safe to come back, you have to anticipate making these kinds of steps. Some might argue that putting up plexiglass transparent barriers intermittently to reduce the possibility of transmission of someone's coughing or sneezing might be helpful. Another strategy would be to screen persons for fever before they come in the theater. I come to work every day and I have to walk past the laser camera every day. And any day that my temperatures elevated hadn't been so yet, I would be sent home. Something for you to think about. We go through a questionnaire when I walk in the building. Do you have any symptoms? If we are honest and you say yes, you turn around, you can't come in. These are the things you might want to replicate if you're thinking about an indoor environment. You hear a lot of conversation about HEPA filters. There's not a lot of evidence yet to convince us that HEPA filters really make a difference. It really is about ventilation. So think about daytime performances with the doors open. It may vary from one venue to the next. So another thought that I think is worthwhile. The next is seating. Seating really should be thoughtfully planned. There is going to be some reduction in capacity. Many of you have theaters with tiers. You may find that even skipping a whole tier is another way to help your patrons feel better about things. The business models for that will be challenging. I understand that, and I can only say I apologize for that, but I think the public toll is even more challenging. So be creative, be inventive. The next thing I think that's important is don't count on your patrons to be fully equipped with masks or hand sanitizers. At some point in time, public statutes about wearing masks will change. I'm already, unfortunately, seeing only about 50% of citizens here in my community still wearing masks. Be upright. Stand up and pass out the mask as people are coming into your theater. You might do clever things. You might have your logo on the mask. You might have some other messaging on the mask, but do provide that extra level of safety so that patrons will feel comfortable coming back. The fifth thing that I will share with you about re-engaging is that I think you have to be very thoughtful about your most precious asset. That's your actors. That's your performers. That's your dancers. That's your musicians. They are necessarily in close personal contact. Take a page from the professional sports organizations. They're going to enact very frequent testing on some occasions daily even. But in so doing, you can be certain that at that moment in time, no one is actively infected. If someone tests positive, you've done them a service. You have given them something valuable. They can then self-quarantine and come back healthy. But do consider that that's not a cost. That's an investment. An investment in your most precious commodity. So the five things that I've shared with you by re-entering, I'll restate because I think they're incredibly important. The first, the safest environment is outdoors. The second, as you re-emerge in an indoor environment, ventilation, fresh air is really, really important. Maybe intermittent plexiglass shields will be important. The third thing, seating will be important. Space, yes, skip rows, yes. Maybe keep certain tiers unoccupied. That seems to make a lot of sense to me. And I would have no seating proximate to the musicians, approximate to the performers. Give them that extra bit of safety as well. My fourth statement to you is be upright and say, we will provide masks and hand sanitizers for our patients. This is not forever because remember, once we get to herd immunity, we don't have to worry nearly as much. But if we're trying to stand up your enterprise over the next weeks to months, this is the advice I'm sharing with you. And the fifth piece is think about what I believe to be your most precious commodity. Those that make us come to our feet and give us standing ovation and it's your performers, your actors, your musicians, your dancers, your production crew. Give them that benefit of saying we want to help preserve your health. That's the second big piece. I told you the first big piece is what is coronavirus? What's been experienced with COVID-19? What about the important populations? The second big piece was as you re-engage your enterprise, what are the things you need to know? What are the things you need to do differently? How can you do this safely? I've given you five steps and I'm happy to revisit those in the Q&A if you wish. The most important part, the most important part of me being with you today is to really share with you my perspective through my physician lens, through my clinical scientist lens, through my public health advocate lens, and through my personal history lens, what is so vitally important about our current crisis, our current strife, recognizing the pernicious, painful weight of racism that is so deeply baked into our society. I appreciate that I started this conversation about COVID-19 and very quickly got to how it impacts important populations and now I'm talking about racism. You know what? All of this tracks to the same root cause. The life and living circumstances of people makes a profound difference in their health and in social justice. Poverty is brutal. It kills people. Lack of an education is sinister. It disables people. Poor food choices is murderous. It causes people to die and die earlier. Living in crime-filled communities, living in housing situations that are not safe or overly dense generates biological manifestations of stress that then becomes evident in the burden of hypertension, the burden of heart disease. It may seem odd, but COVID-19 here and racism here, they intersect on this phenomenon that my world describes as the social determinants of health. This is quantifiable. Whenever the census is taken, and please do fill out your census form, whenever the census is taken, the Centers for Disease Control aggregates 15 verbals in the census and uses that to quantify census tracks according to the SV as in victory, I. I come from Louisiana, so letters like V are really hard for me to enunciate, but the S-V-I is the social vulnerability index. The closer it is to zero, the more resilient your community is for stress, for pandemics, for disruptive events. The closer it is to one, the more vulnerable your community is. Let me be very, very direct now. In downtown Chicago, St. Louis, where my office is, in fact, where my home is, the social vulnerability index is 0.09. 10 miles from here on the south side of Chicago, the social vulnerability index is 0.99. It's a tenfold difference. You know what? The life expectancy between downtown and the south side is 30 years. We all had the deepest, most painful emotive response when we saw a need to the neck of another human being for nine minutes. This morning, I participated, in fact, led a silent 10-minute moment of observation on our medical campus, attended by over a thousand healthcare professionals wearing their white coats. And all we did at 8.30 this morning was to just simply kneel for 10 minutes. And as I was kneeling, I thought, how can that be 10 minutes of your entire weight on another human's neck? How could that be? But then understand the metaphor for many persons who look like me to be very candid now. There's been a knee on our neck for decades. I was born in 1958 in the deep south. You can only imagine what my cultural history was like. There's been a knee on our neck for decades. And that's what needs to change. And if there's anything, if there's anything that comes out of what we've experienced as a society, it's just some semblance of fairness. Move the knees. That would make the biggest difference. So I have kept my word. I told you that I would speak with you. I would truncate my comments to about 20, 25 minutes. I think it's been nearly 30. But we still have designated time, sufficient time, that I would enjoy answering your questions. There's a chat function. Please enter your questions in the chat function. A number of your aligned staff, peers, or committed to help me navigate these questions, but I'm going to open the chat function right now and do my best to answer the questions. So there'll be a pause as I'm reading through this. So give me just a moment and I will start answering these questions. So the first question is to repeat the five things that are critical for reopening. Very important point. And this is a point of emphasis that I'd like to make with you. The safest environment is outdoors. Many of you are adept at outdoor productions. Even with outdoor productions, face mask and sanitizers. Spacing will be easier to achieve outdoors, but don't be lax. Spacing is still important. The second, for indoor performances, I think it is obligatory that it's a well ventilated environment. Consider if you can, intermittently positioning plexiglass shields just to halt the transmission from speech, from voice, from coughing, from sneezing. Do some sort of simple screen as your patients come in, whether it's for temperature or just for symptoms. Just that pause moment to get people to reconsider. Hey, if you got a symptom, if you're not feeling great, how about you come to the next performance? Don't come to this performance. Number three, seating. Look at your own venue. There is no one guideline that's going to work across the country for all your multiple different theaters. But some of you that have chairs that are not a fix to the floor, you can spread them out. Some of you that have multiple tiers in your venues, you can keep one tier empty. Seating in the space in the seating is important. That's number three. Number four, stand up, provide the mask, provide the hand sanitizers. Have fun with the mask. My goodness, they're all kinds of symbols I'm seeing on mask right now. It can be even a mass that matches the performance that afternoon, that evening, so have fun with it. And then E is incredibly important. Protect your most precious commodity, protect your talent, facilitate their testing, help them if they need quarantine, keep their jobs if they have to step away for two weeks, give them the comfort to be honest about their symptoms. So thank you for bringing that question up. Those are the five things. Shout out about Feinberg School of Medicine. Someone in the audience has been there. Thank you very much. Chad has been funky. I'm sorry about that. Somebody's working on that. That's good. Okay, here is an incredibly important set of questions. It's a very thoughtful question. We don't yet know, but we are concerned that there may be some long term consequences of COVID-19. I've got patients of my own that have been struggling with COVID-19. We will get them through. I say that candidly, we will get them through. But they will have consequences. Scarred lungs, perhaps even some cardiovascular injury or damage. But what I'm most worried about is this. The emotion of being isolated, not just isolated, but being segregated. People not wanting, not being able to come in your room. Imagine not being able to engage with your loved one during a point of crisis. When you know that you're ill, when you know that the outcomes may not be good and you can't even feel the human touch. I read an essay this morning, early this morning. My days are very long. Nights are short. Mornings start early. But I read an essay this morning about the fact that we are biologically wired to respond to human touch. Think about people have gone weeks without human touch. So I really do worry. Even I'm a cardiologist and a classically trained physiologist. I'm really worried about the cognitive issue, the emotional issue, the neuro issue. So brilliant question about consequences. I think we will deal with the consequences of COVID-19 for quite some time. The next issue and again another insightful question. What about this condition we're seeing in children? We're worried. It looks like it's yet another manifestation of a coronavirus, but it's being experienced differently in children. Here's the takeaway. If you have young children, if you have nieces, nephews, if you're a grandparent, if they're small children in your world, forget about what you heard at the beginning. The children were safe. They were immune. They could not become infected. Yes, they can become infected. And they can become vectors and transmit it to other people unknowingly because they're instinct. They know the benefit of touch and they want to touch mom and dad and uncle and grandparents. Yeah, we got to be careful with that. A couple other questions here. Oh, brilliant question. Oh gosh. I wish I would have thought of this. I would have included it as number six. What about the restrooms? What about intermission? I go to the theater year round for important personal reasons. I'll leave it at that. And as I do so, boy, at intermission, it is a herd. You hear that word again, going to the restroom. It's a herd that's not equitable, by the way, because women wait in longer lines and men. Somebody needs to fix that one day. But nevertheless, you've got to herd of people this close, waiting to get to the restroom, using the same facilities. Lots of recalibration needs to be done there. I mean, lots of recalibration. There's got to be a way to control how many people are going to the restroom. There's got to be a way to make ubiquitous availability of hand sanitizers, antiseptic wipes in those bathrooms. That's going to be a challenge. It's a great question. Even the people that you hire to come into those restrooms and clean them constantly, understand that they are essential workers. The same model I told you about, they will be at risk. Let's all think very carefully about a way to do that. One solution might be particularly if it's outdoors. You just have sufficient portable restrooms at additional expense. Yes. Within a venue, if you are reducing attendance by 50%, that may right correct your load and your restrooms. But here's another thought. Why do you only have one intermission? There's no rule that says you should only have one intermission. In this environment, why can't you have two intermissions? And why can't you trust adults to say we're doing two intermissions so that we can space out access to the restrooms? Be on an honor system. If you go during the first intermission, sit during the second and let those that set during the first go in a second or even do something as ordinary as, hey, you get the purple dot, you get the green dot, purple, you go during the first intermission, green you go during the second intermission. You know, I'm thinking real time with you out loud. Some may giggle at what I just said, but something that simple could decongest the restrooms and make a difference. So great question. Okay. Can you get COVID-19 from using shared toilet facilities? The implication of what I just suggested to you is yes, in theory, it is possible. If you are touching a surface shortly after someone who has COVID-19 has sneezed or coughed, and particularly after you touch that surface, you touch your face, you scratch your eyelid, that could do it. So all of us have to practice a totally different level of personal hygiene. And I don't mean to say that in a fearful way, I mean to say that in a constructive way. Get accustomed to thinking about the surfaces when you're in an unfamiliar place. Do what I do now. Carry this with you. I have sanitizer with me all the time, and I'm constantly wiping my hands down. I touch an elevator button, I'm wiping my hands. I exit my hospital building, I'm wiping my hands. That kind of behavior is something that we need to think about. Elevators. What's most unsafe about elevators, it's not the buttons, actually. What's most unsafe about elevators is the people. You really want to practice safe distancing in your elevators. Many of you have these beautiful, beautiful venues, 50, 60, 70 years old from the Golden Era, with tiny elevators. Whew. That's going to be a challenge. You really can't afford to have more than two or three people in those elevators. And that needs to be a hard stop. You can't look the other way and let eight people get in the elevator. That needs to be a hard stop. Signage at least needs to say only two or three allowed at a time if you've got those small elevators. I'm a cardiologist. Guess what? Stairs are healthy. And so that may be the thing to think about. Oh, this is a great question. For those who are teaching and you're dealing with small groups of people and you're necessarily interfacing, engaging, getting close, how can you be protected? Until we get to the level of herd immunity and understanding that this is just temporary and it won't be very aesthetic. Here's what I would suggest. Wear the mask and wear the shield. The shields are now available commercially for your group of six or seven, your actors, your performers. Wear the mask as well. Get six feet away. You don't need to be in the personal space for the majority of your instruction I would think. So practice the distance for the teacher, mask and the shield for the students, hand hygiene and the mask, six feet from each other. It may be some very different sort of things. Use Zoom for your classes and let people participate in your classwork in their home environment via Zoom. But remember, this isn't going to be forever. These are just the steps over the next several months to get through this and get your enterprises up again. I've been asked to scroll up for other questions. That's a good point. So let me not cheat those who had immediate questions. Oh boy. Yeah. This is really going to be an important issue. And as I told you in the beginning, when I don't know, I'll let you know I don't know so I can only opine. For those of you that are custom fitters, will you have to get very close? I can't really give you guidance, but I can tell you this. In every state, every department of public health is providing guidance for hair salons, nail salons, massage parlors, etc., where there is close human contact that is necessary to conduct business. I would exactly emulate what your departments of public health say about close contact for business purposes. And I think for those of you that are close fitters, that's probably the best advice I can give you. It's likely it's going to mean one customer or one actor at a time, a short period of time in that encounter as possible. So I would have the usual perfunctory chat virtually. It would be business in the fitting room. I'd get to it, get it done quickly. The actor, fitter, personal protection, but pay attention to the department of public health websites and look uniquely at what's being said about those persons whose work involves close contact. This is very important. Nobody gets a pass. If I've been so explicit and so insistent on protecting the talent, the actors, the musicians, double down for the production crew because they're in close proximity to the musicians, close proximity to the talent. I've had the opportunity to go backstage. I see the environment. They're not well ventilated areas. I would allow, in fact, I would hope that the production crew gets the same access to testing, the same permission to step away if a test is positive, and the same access to personal protection, protective equipment. So that was a very good point that was made. Hey, Dr. Yancey, I want to jump in. This is Amelia from TCG and give a five minute warning and also uplift one of our first questions in the Q&A about where we can access accurate, easy to understand information to share with our communities. And that was a question by Claudia Alec. Ms. Alec, that's a wonderful question. I will tell you that in truth, even though it's been much maligned, the CDC website provides very good information that is plain spoken and it's nicely refereed. So I would use that as step one. Step two, in whatever state you happen to reside, I would visit your Department of Public Health websites. I have been so emboldened by the way in which so many people in public health have really taken a task the responsibility for being purveyors of correct information. I'd be very cautious with indiscriminate searches on the internet. There are those who inexplicably, inexplicably think the pandemic is fake. There are those who, beyond any comprehension, believe that masks and hand sanitizers are superfluous and have no benefit. And I really, really, really worry about those that fall into a camp that dismiss the benefit of any vaccine. They won't take the vaccination for themselves. Take it from me, dead comment. Until we get to 60% immunity, we will not, we will not be protected. That may be contentious for some, controversial for others, but it will be helpful for many. So thanks for that. If you're interested in the data I share with you about the perverse influence on important populations, remember it's the American Public Media Research Labs website. So I've given you three resources, CDC, your own Department of Public Health, and the APM Research Labs website. I think that will be very helpful. I will tell you through the course of this, I have been impressed with some of the national media outlets and their ability to curate really important information. I call out the Washington Post. They have worked really closely with the Hopkins Center. Much of their information is not only accurate, but their first to release it. So that might be helpful. The Atlantic has run a series of unbelievably well thought, well configured, if you will, essays on what we need to know. But we need to all be careful judges of the information that we otherwise extract from internet resources. And I'll leave that statement stand. We've got about two minutes left. Boy, there's a lot of other stuff going on. For those of you that have thanked us for these comments, my thanks actually go to you. You have allowed this information to be introduced into what I would call your curriculum. I'm a teacher at heart. I can't help it. But thank you for understanding the importance of not only having the conversations about coronavirus and COVID-19, not only appreciating what's important about the important populations, not only for embracing the advice that I can share with you about reopening and standing up the enterprise. But thank you, thank you for caring enough about our society and about those people that have been aggrieved for decades and wanting to do something differently. I will end like I began. One of the most beautiful things about theater is that you've always been the voice that otherwise wasn't being heard. You've always had the courage to convey the messages that weren't being shared. And you've always had the resolve even against strident opposition to stay on point and to stay true. And for that, you have a remarkable enterprise, a truly American enterprise that really not only values but champions free speech. Keep doing what you do, guys. It's wonderful. I got to get back to taking care of patients over the telephone. So thank you very much. I appreciate the chance to be with you. Thank you, Dr. Yancey, so much for joining us. I will let you go, Dr. Yancey. I'll keep this line open for a few more minutes if you want to grab resources out of the chat. But I will also post these links in Mighty Networks so we can refer back to them. Thanks a bunch.