 Good morning everyone. Secretary French is here to provide our weekly education update. I want to start with a few announcements and comments. First, as you may have seen yesterday, we announced the reopening of three more DMV branches. Offices in Bennington, Newport and Springfield will now be open for in-person transactions by appointment only. This is in addition to the Montpelier, South Burlington and Rotland offices we opened last month. I want to remind folks that many services have been and still can be done online, over the phone, or through the mail. We encourage people to continue using these options when possible, but for those who need in-person help, this is very good news. Next, I want to take a few minutes to let Vermonters know I understand how stressful and troubling this time is for our country, including the news that President Trump and the First Lady have tested positive for COVID-19. My thoughts are with the President, his family, and the many people he may have come in contact with recently. It's a reminder that this virus knows no boundaries, and we have to remain vigilant in order to remain safe. With all this uncertainty, it's up to each of us to try to find a way to come together, as Vermonters and Americans, and help one another during these difficult times. This pandemic has tested our strength over and over again. The fear for our own health, and the health of our families and friends. The economic impacts that many have been put out of work, making it difficult for family and businesses to make ends meet, and seeing the closed doors on too many of our small businesses. And all this is happening while, for weeks, we had to stay home to stay safe. And unfortunately, we still need to limit our get-togethers and keep our distance from one another. I know this has taken a toll on many. Adding to this is the national atmosphere that's so polarized, leaving some feeling like we'll never heal. But we will, because we're strong, our institutions are strong, and there's still so much more that unites us than divides us. So let's focus on the areas where we agree, and stop dwelling on where we don't. Let's give each other the benefit of the doubt, knowing we all bring different experiences and perspectives to the table. Let's listen to and learn from each other. And above all else, even if you can't set your differences aside, let's be kinder to each other. There's no doubt about it. These are unusual times, but we can get through them by coming together, rising above our challenges and lifting each other up. Fortunately, we all live in Vermont, and it's one of the most beautiful times of the year for us. So I hope many of you can take some time this weekend before it comes to an end, which will be all too soon. Maybe get yourself a maple creamy. Enjoy the foliage. Visit a state park. Climb our beautiful mountains. Whatever you can do to take care of yourselves because your mental health is important as well. I'll now turn it over to Secretary Fletch for his update. Thank you, Governor. Good morning. Our schools are now operating at step three. Step three requires schools to implement, still, the strict mitigation strategies that we created to offer in person instruction, but step three gives them greater flexibility in doing so. Our transition to step three has gone smoothly. We are still seeing only a few cases of COVID-19 in our schools, and the move to step three, I think, can be seen as a natural progression in operations. As anticipated, we're also seeing schools move to more in person instruction as they become more confident in implementing our health requirements. This week, we launched our first monthly survey to understand how schools are offering in person or remote instruction or some combination of the two under a hybrid model. We will use the data from the survey to observe the trends and to make decisions about possible future guidance. The results of the survey will be published on the Agency of Education website. The move to step three allowed interscholastic competitions to begin for fall sports this weekend. My impression was that these competitions went very well. I just want to remind everyone that it's important that spectators and participants follow the required health guidance when attending these competitions in support of our students. This week, I met with members of our school nutrition association. Under step three, schools may begin to use their cafeterias again. Our school meals programs have been doing excellent work during this emergency. The governor's initial order closing schools in March specifically addressed the necessity of continuing to pride school meals during the emergency, not only for nutrition purposes, but also for the economic and social stability these meals bring to families. Our school meal programs have been in continuous operation since March, including school in summer vacations and when schools have been operating under remote and hybrid models. To date, our school meal programs have provided over 5.5 million meals during this emergency. Continuous operations of our meal programs have not only been easy, has not been easy from a regulatory standpoint. We have needed regulatory flexibility to distribute meals to the homes of students, to access federal reimbursements and federal supplies. In total, the Agency of Education has submitted over 35 waiver requests to the USDA to ensure the needs of our students can be met. I will say our school nutrition staff are well known for their innovation and problem solving abilities since on a daily basis. They have served meals to thousands of students. During this emergency, the frequent changes and regulations coupled with the significant logistical challenges related to implementing our health guidance have tested their abilities to the max, but their dedication to our students have been nothing short of outstanding. Moving to step three provides them some additional flexibility to meet the needs of our students. I had a question at last week's press conference which asked essentially about what comes after step three, inferring that there might be a step four or step five. Our health guidance only has three steps. Step one is when the state closes all schools like we saw in the spring. Steps two and three speak to schools being open with some form of in-person instruction. With step two having the highest levels of precautions and step three providing additional flexibility. It's a fair question however about what are the next steps or where we go from here in our education system now that we have safely reopened our schools. Certainly a big part of what we will continue to do is to focus on implementing our health guidance. This remains a precondition for any educational activity since all schools must be able to operate in a safe manner. Another component of our ability to maintain safety is flexibility. As a state, Vermonters have demonstrated their ability to work together to suppress the virus, but we have designed our school reopening plans based on the assumption that these conditions could change at any time. By design we include the ability to toggle between step levels in our mitigation strategies, engage school districts the additional flexibility to move between and among in-person remote and hybrid learning based not only on a consideration of the health conditions but also on their unique logistical situations. So safety will remain the most important job right now particularly as we start to move indoors with the advent of flu season. And just by way of reminder please ask everyone to get a flu shot this year to help our schools stay open. We will continue to refine our health guidance and related procedures. The few cases we have seen have allowed us to work and better understand how schools and department of health will work together to contain the virus and communicate with families in their communities. While continuing to address safety considerations we'll now put a renewed focus on the essential work of educating our students which is why in-person instruction is so critical. We have heard from Dr. Bell and other medical experts about the importance of in-person instruction from a health perspective but there are also compelling educational reasons why in-person instruction should be a priority in our next step or what I would call phase three in our emergency response and education. The first phase of our response in March was a true emergency response. We had to take swift action and literally shut down our schools overnight. That work was successful. The goal back then was not necessarily educational however it was about preventing our healthcare system from being overwhelmed and suppressing the virus. We know the remote learning systems we rapidly deployed back in the spring were imperfect at best and the learning needs of all students were negatively impacted but that rapid action allowed us to achieve a high degree of suppression of the virus which bought us the important time necessary to plan over the summer to move to phase two which was the reopening of our schools. The planning work over the summer to reopen our schools was significant and required all of our capacity to focus on this important work. This meant that in many cases our typical summer educational programming to support the learning needs of students especially some of our most vulnerable students did not occur. Phase two or the reopening of our schools has so far been very successful since we have seen very few cases of the virus and not only have we reopened our schools safely but we also have prepared them to operate in the dynamic conditions of the months ahead. Our schools have the tools and now they have the operational fluency to respond to changing conditions of the virus in their operations. Safely operating our schools in these dynamic conditions is a necessary precondition for the next phase phase three which is about addressing the educational needs of our students and all that this implies including feeding them attending to their emotional needs holding athletic competitions celebrating the arts and of course academics. Meeting the educational needs of our students is now the priority we cannot afford to lose another six months of instructional time. This is why in person instruction is so critical everything we have done to date in phase one and phase two is about getting to this point where we can safely operate our schools so we can begin to address the needs of our students. In the coming weeks our teachers will begin to assess the impact of this emergency on the education of our students. This assessment to a large extent depends on the daily in-person contact between students and their teachers. These in-person relationships are not only critical for academic success but also for the healthy development of our students. Our school districts are also now starting the work of modifying academic programming to meet the needs of students where they are and to chart a course for the coming months. This iterative process of teaching learning and adapting curriculum is also highly dependent on in-person interactions. In summary we have learned a lot in the last six months. We have learned how to suppress the virus. We have also learned how to operate our schools safely in these conditions. Now we will apply what we have learned to address the educational needs of our students during this pandemic. Thank you. I'll now turn it over to Dr. Levine. Thanks Secretary French and thanks for the plug for public health as well. So as of this morning we are at 1,768 total cases. We continue to have small numbers of new cases in the setting of thousands and thousands of tests thus we continue to have a low test positivity rate. We remain at 58 deaths with zero deaths recorded in 66 days. We're not currently following any significant cases, clusters or outbreaks in colleges or school settings. There are no updates regarding the skilled nursing facility in Rutland County nor any correctional facilities. And earlier this week we were relieved to learn that the Vermonters currently housed in Mississippi who had been COVID-19 negative remained so in follow-up testing. I put this graph up today to illustrate a point. You'll notice in the past week we're very low in the single digit numbers of cases with a spike overnight. And you'll see historically over time we have long periods with low numbers of cases and then occasional spikes. Every time we see something like that these are almost always associated with cases that are in congregate living settings or like now group activities. In this case a golf tournament in Bennington which has led to a small number of cases in Vermont and across the New York State border. There are five total cases associated with the event held over the weekend of September 19th. Three of them in Vermonters. Possibly more from overnight. These cases are now being reconciled in terms of the data and we'll know more about them later today. Many of them not being Vermont residents. Our health teams have provided isolation guidance for those people who were cases and they've identified close contacts so they can quarantine to prevent further spread of the virus. We consider others who attended the event to have a lower risk of being exposed to the virus but because of the number of people involved we did reach out yesterday evening to everyone who attended to let them know of this low risk exposure. We're working closely with the organizers of the Fall foliage tournament at Mount Anthony Country Club who were able to provide us with contact information for those who attended. More than 80 people who attended the event both in Vermont and out of state received a text from the Department of Health linking to a letter with health information and guidance. That's a tool that we use regularly in outbreak investigations as it is an efficient way to get people the information that they need directly from the health department. We're asking the attendees to closely follow our prevention guidance including staying home if they feel sick and calling their health care provider if they develop symptoms. We're also asking them to consider getting tested for COVID-19 even if they don't have symptoms and we're working closely with other state health departments to provide information they need. I'd like to take a moment to thank the organizers of the event for their cooperation and support in the investigation. As I've said before no matter what the facility or the event we know that sometimes we will see cases it is just the nature of the virus but this is a reminder as Dr. Fauci told us that despite all of our good work here in Vermont things can change quickly if we're not careful. Just look at what's happened with the wedding event in Maine to be instructed further by that. The bottom line is whenever anyone is planning to go out or attend an event take a moment to think about where you're going and assess your own level of risk and your comfort with that level. It's important to know if you'll be able to maintain six foot spacing if everyone will indeed be wearing masks and if the event will be crowded even if it is outdoors. Keeping all of these factors in the front of your mind will help you lower your own personal risk. For those on either side of the southwestern Vermont border who are concerned about their risk or any symptoms please connect with your healthcare provider and please know there will be testing available at Bennington Rescue on Monday and through our partners who are great partners in the testing effort at Southwest Vermont Medical Center where there will not be a separate pop-up but where I've been told they will have their usual hours and extend them further. The last topic I'd like to discuss today is antigen testing. For some time we've been discussing the role of antigen testing in Vermont. Yesterday we at the health department provided guidance to the Vermont clinical community regarding these technical terms. In technical terms antigen tests detect specific proteins on the surface of the virus as opposed to the tests we usually talk about PCR tests which actually detect the ribonucleic acid the RNA of the virus that causes COVID-19 SARS-CoV-2. We continue to adhere to the updated definition put forth by the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists for cases. This case definition states that detection of SARS-CoV-2 by an antigen test is considered presumptive laboratory evidence of infection and that detection and that detection using PCR is confirmatory laboratory evidence of infection. This policy is similar to many other states. In other words we treat a positive antigen test as a probable case of COVID-19. As I've said before antigen tests are intended for people with symptoms of COVID and though they are less sensitive than PCR tests meaning they can have a higher false negative rate they can be very helpful during the first five or more days of symptoms depending upon the test as this is when the viral load is generally the highest. They perform best when the individual has the symptoms that are most consistent with COVID and when the prevalence of COVID in the community is high which means that the pre-test probability of the disease is high at that time and of course the speed of getting a result makes the test potentially advantageous at times like these. For these reasons the appropriate uses for antigen testing could be for symptomatic patients in a primary care setting or also for patients being admitted to a hospital that has limited access to rapid PCR testing and needs to make a quick decision regarding triage and PPE. Now one of the reasons these tests are in the news at this time has to do with the federal government's announcement that they have procured both antigen test instruments and tests on a large scale and are distributing them to long-term care facilities across the country including Vermont. Now in these settings they could have two potential uses. If a skilled nursing facility is in the midst of an outbreak of COVID-19 in a high prevalence area and had staff or residents who developed symptoms compatible with COVID-19 the use of rapid antigen testing could allow immediate isolation and quarantining to occur and indeed the first states to receive these machines for these purposes were states that were undergoing a surge in cases. The other use the government has advocated for is screening which is using it for residents or staff who don't have any symptoms. Now we believe if done correctly such tests could be valuable here as well. However this must be done as part of a regular screening program that is testing with sufficient frequency at least once or twice a week as this helps offset the lowest sensitivity in such a setting and the potential to have false negative results. When used in this way at a time when the pre-test probability is actually pretty low any positive result would require confirmation by a subsequent PCR test. Though of course the person with the positive antigen test would be treated at that time as a probable case and isolated while awaiting that further result. Now as I've noted all along antigen tests do have a potential role in Vermont's testing scheme. They may play less of a role in our current low prevalence state than they might at a time when the prevalence is higher and of course that's a circumstance we're all trying hard to prevent. Either way if the clinical community uses them in an informed manner like any test for any disease they can be very helpful tests in our overall management of this pandemic. And with that I'll turn it back to the Governor. Thank you Commissioner Levine. We'll now open it up to questions. You know that's to be determined this has hit us very very quickly as a country. You know again our thoughts are with his family and all those who he came in contact with over the last couple of weeks and certainly hope for their speedy recovery. But we'll see you know a lot I don't know about the the campaign events in terms of the debates and so forth so we'll uh we'll just have to wait and see I mean it's happening in real time. I believe we still are the plan is still in place and we're still continuing with that but let's Secretary Smith answer that. Calvin we we never really dismantled the program that we had recognizing that we housed a lot of individuals in the Hotel Motel program as you know we have a program where we're trying to move people into permanent housing but that's not going to happen overnight so you will see the Hotel Motel program continue through the winter months and then the easing off of that program as we move into the Governor's the Governor used coronavirus relief funds to build more housing in order to to move people out of those hotels into more permanent housing so that's where we are right now. Sure I can give you a glimpse of it you know we're still about 40 to 45 days out from when we're going to be sort of working with the other partners there's there's obviously three signatories to that agreement there's the Secretary of the Agency of Human Services myself the Governor and the Green Mountain Care Board and I have to work with it to make it successful I should work with all three of those individuals. I think what you'll see is that we're looking into sort of three buckets of what we need to examine the first bucket is at the federal level what do we need from the federal government to make this successful there may be some adjustments that we have to do there may be some things especially in the Medicare program of what we have to do number two what would do we have to do internally in terms of those those sort of structural and operational aspects internally both at AHS and across state government to to enhance the success of the all-payer model and then third what do we have to do externally and when you talk externally I think you know I'm talking about the ACO one one care what do we have to do in that aspect so without you know that's how we've broken up the work in order to look at this over the next you know 45 days and we think you know well we'll come together with a plan that's going to be um redirectional I think is is the word reboot is what I've used but you know it's it's a good word we just really need to take the theoretical and I've said this before and many times I've seen the all-payer model work during the height of the pandemic it was probably the single most effective instrument that we had in order to get prospective payments out to uh the healthcare institutions to avoid any collapse of healthcare during the time of the pandemic so I've seen it work so what we need to do now and I've said this before is take the theoretical and make it better operationally and I and that's what we intend to do still waiting to sign the marijuana bills wondering if there's a chance that you want well the good news is I signed the budget came in early this morning and went through that and and signed the budget so that's done but there are a number of other bills that are on on my desk so to speak that I have until I think it's Tuesday or Wednesday some maybe Monday but there's another couple on Tuesday or Wednesday so I'll have the weekend to reflect on that and determine what I do from here it sounded like there were 13 new cases today if I have that right were all of those from the drop event in Bennington and if not do you know how many cases are confirmed from that specifically so out of the 13 six were tests performed in Bennington county so we can only conjecture if they actually were from the event or had nothing to do with the event we have the five original cases that I mentioned in my presentation today and then we have whatever percentage of these additional ones are related to the event and again these are not all Vermont and they require cooperation and work in tandem with other states so I can't really give you much of an update because literally these labs are done at night they go in the report and then all the investigation occurs the next day sure are you able to um of the Vermonters who've tested positive from there so far say if those are at least um contained to the southern part of the state or or speak regionally to that at this point I can't really tell you the place of residence no and one other question following from something yesterday I was working on there's a private company garnet that's working on what I believe if I have it right is droplet digital PCR testing VPCR did they would like to if they get a approval offer for people that would be willing to pay for it if somebody came into Vermont was required to quarantine and got a negative result from a DPCR test would that be satisfactory to the health department to shorten their quarantine yeah I found out about that yesterday and started looking up that test and my impression of that test is it is not one that is rapid so I have to find out more about it because the reading I did show that required the same kind of turnaround going to a lab but I know that much of what garnet does is point of care so I have to reconcile those two things so I can't give you a firm answer on that but if it's you know it is an FDA EUA approved test and if it's of the traditional type that would that would qualify for sure but I don't know if it's a point of care one and that's what I have to find out more about David I just pulled the exact date we received the marijuana bill yesterday so it's not due until Wednesday actually Dr probably gets you since you were talking about there and they're the ones who are supposed to be in the if you will retail space up in the early airport just in in talking with their representative yesterday they were saying something about they're going to have super quick turnarounds you know within 24 to 48 hours but it is a paid pay service if you're jumping on an airplane or you're getting off an airplane to try to shorten up your is that something we're going to see down in the future if folks are okay with it you know sort of retail shops around the state yeah again you know we're giving the clinical community the kind of guidance they need to understand how these tests are best mobilized and used one of the tests they're going to be offering is antigen tests and there may be valid reasons to use it on people who are walking through to that want to access that test right at that time we just need to be careful with the interpretation of the results I don't believe we are as much in charge of approving if it goes in the airport as the city of Burlington is to be honest and just like when urgent care or primary care practice wants to have a certain technology as long as they go through the proper clear and other regulatory processes that's what's required for them to do so you may be seeing more of this my hope is that pandemic doesn't last so long that we need to continue to see more and more of this but there's certainly opportunities for people to try to provide testing you know we've been inviting people to help us part partner with us for testing knowing that at some point if there were surges in what have you we need to protect our own capacity in the state lab and some of the labs we're using like at UVM and want to have as many partners as possible offering authorized tests that could be useful to the population so I've no I've no problem okay and and just a quick follow-up the public will be able to trust these things going into these testing facilities and aren't necessarily the possibilities yeah I mean I think again as long as the they are aware of themselves do they have symptoms do they not have symptoms is this the appropriate test for them at that time I'm sure that the processing of the technical aspects of doing the test they can be very trusting these are made pretty user-friendly and I would think that that would be trusting at all so again I think they're going to be offering flu testing too which is something that labs and health care facilities use you know I just caution the public and this is not anything against what's going on it's often very hard to isolate out doing something like getting a test from your overall health care and being looped in you know appropriately with the health care system so that you can get advice as to what might be the most appropriate course of action for you to take so that's the only concern I have with any kind of testing that's set up anywhere and again I don't want people to think that testing is prevention the message is really all of the practices I talked about are prevention with a six foot spacing avoiding the crowds wearing a mask having a test at a moment in time is not unfortunately a prevention practice thank you hi this question is likely for Secretary French does the state have any broader assessment of our school air handling systems and they did this summer and are you concerned about how adequate these systems are for in-person learning in the winter months and then I'm going to have a follow-up question after that thank you now we don't really have an assessment it does vary as you know from school to school we do have a program under the coronavirus relief funds that are being administered by Efficiency Vermont so we know I think the original pot of money for that program was 6.5 million dollars and the legislature subsequently added some to that but we know that that really is to do exactly kind of what you're alluding to which is this assessment of the condition of a lot of these systems I think to your question about do I have concerns yes I think as we go inside more as the winter comes and you know temperatures get colder indoor air quality is one of the elements that we address in our health guidance but it's just one of the elements so there's ways that districts can address that certainly make attending to their mechanical systems is important but they also have windows fans and so forth that can be utilized as well but it is it's going to be an increased cause for concern as we get into the colder weather and people are inside more and you mentioned that care of that money how many schools apply for it and is all the money gone I don't have the specific numbers with me I will say there we did a sort of the survey around the 1st of September to get a broader assessment of what the need was and that resulted in the legislature putting more money into into that pot so to speak and as you just heard the governor sign the budget so we'll be we'll be working with districts to ensure that money gets out to them and is that money still with a deadline at the end of the year yeah it's crf or coronavirus relief funds currently the federal limitation on that is December 30th thank you welcome Lisa the AP thanks this is also a question for Secretary Brent as we move towards from phase 2 to phase 3 will this affect hybrid models that some schools are using right now thank you for the question I think you know we will see an increased focus on in-person instruction as I mentioned I think it's we understand any education community that that in-person is is is more effective and I outlined a couple reasons why today you know firstly this this aspect of doing an assessment of student learning and that refers to I'm say broadly the more general assessment activities just teachers exercise in their professional experience and wisdom so I think you know yes I think over time we'll see hybrid learning still certainly be utilized but there's elements of it that I think could be leveraged to improve in-person instruction as well particularly what we call asynchronous learning meaning that teachers can deploy resources into their remote learning platforms and utilize those to support in-person instruction so for example as I think I referred earlier the summer the tech center that was filming some of their demonstrations and putting them into the learning management system firstly to satisfy the remote learning interest but that that equally can be important for in-person instruction as well you can say to a student go watch the video and the student can pull that up at their leisure and watch that over and over if they'd like and have have the in-person lessons being reinforced by the use of the technology so there is a relationship but I expect schools as I mentioned have have the flexibility now to deploy a couple new tools and what they have previously that will be helpful in the dynamic conditions in front of us. How quickly do you see this happening is this going to be a very gradual process or moving into phase three? Well I'm using the term phase three just sort of to draw a line between so much of our activity which was about reopening schools and I the way I think about that is you know reopening you know significant logistic wonder taking but it was a means to an end not an end in itself so we're just trying to message the system and point it back to certainly what our purpose is which is education but with the understanding sort of foundationally that in this this situation we have to attend to the safety first but that in itself you know the logistics that are been involved in that but incredible are not necessarily the goal we've been working towards the goal is to reopen the school safely so that we can then begin to address the educational needs of our students. Okay thank you. Eric the Times-Arcus Eric Times-Arcus all right we're going to go to Tim Vermont Business Magazine. I thank Rebecca Governor you probably thought that the Congress the House passed another 2.2 trillion dollar run or read the relief package and it had it would have a lot here for Vermont including state and local government funding have you had a chance to look at that they clearly the economy is stalled both I think it's fair to say Vermont and certainly nationally have you looked at that and what would you say would be the impact if it were to actually get through the Senate yeah well first of all I haven't looked at it in detail but but suffice it to say we're in need the states are in need of more help from Congress in a number of different ways and while I'm encouraged to see this passing the House it doesn't appear to have much opportunity to pass the Senate so at this point in time I'm what I'm hearing from from many in the in the DC's you know aura is that nothing is going to happen until after the election which is unfortunate because we need to start planning now we could use as I've said before more flexibility in the existing cares practice care package that would be helpful to us but again in the future we could use some help in terms of budgetary help municipal budgets as well as with as I've said before with broadband as we've heard and some of the questions today we could we could use some help with infrastructure with air handling devices in our schools so there's a there's still a lot of need out there and and I believe that Congress needs to act in order to to help us in that regard yeah a lot of people probably haven't heard about this but it would restore that 1200 dollar individual payment to 600 dollar coronavirus unemployment and 800 million for one state local government so I guess we'll wait and see what happens there yeah it would be a significant boost obviously to our economy and has been essential to this reaction to the pandemic as well as you know so that we can survive we've done well as a state and and I appreciate the good work of the congressional delegation particularly senator lehi senator lehi was one who put the small states initiative into place before the pandemic in anticipation of areas like this when a lot of small states would suffer if it's per capita so with his good work over the years who we've been able to take advantage of that and it's been really impactful for us as a state and I thank him for that great thanks governor gray the county career gray the county courier hi governor can you find the image yes we can okay governor I want to first ask I know it came up in the debate last night act 250 bill are you at a place where you can say if you're going to find or veto that no I still have some time I'll be reflecting on that over the weekend but but again I was disappointed with the results it really is just a shadow of itself it ended up with just two initiatives one was the forest fragmentation the Vermont Association so travelers it's uh has concerns about that they've heard some some of the landowners where the trails go across their property who are threatening to shut the trail system down if it if it moves forward the other part of the bill was just a an extension of time for the trails the light mainly you know kingdom trails would be affected by this but it's just a one-year extension it doesn't do anything to help our initiative was to allow for trails to be developed without act 250 and this really just gives an extension more time to determine that so I don't think that's effective but I'll look it over over the weekend I know that there's a lot of concern obviously for kingdom trails in particular but but I don't think it was a good deal in the long run and we need to we need to have let the legislature go back and and take the at least start with the house bill and improve from there because they really didn't address all the issues that we had a lot of buy-in from the environmental community on in terms of the downtowns and and some of the help there to revitalize the downtowns as well and the the trails a permanent solution to the trail network okay the other update I was going to ask about is it was mentioned a few weeks ago that come October we we start talking about winter sports and in high school I've heard rumors that hockey might be conducted outside I'm wondering what's being discussed at the state level as far as winter sports yeah I know there's there's a team who are active in determining that secretary Moore is leading that but she's not on the call today unfortunately but we'll try and get more information for you next week but but I know that I know they're they're talking and trying to determine where we'll go from here some sports will happen others probably won't but having sports outside is more beneficial but we'll see which ones we'll be able to to continue okay and finally I think that's a quick one I've heard of a few restaurants that are not keeping track of you know documenting who their customers are every time people come in I'm wondering if the state when they do their periodic checks and inspections for restaurants if they are doing a quick audit to determine if these restaurants are actually writing down their customers names and contact numbers I actually don't have the answer to that I don't know if Secretary Curley or Commissioner Sherling is on but maybe one of the two could answer that I am on governor sorry let me go ahead I was just going to say that we haven't done you know any kind of formal auditing but I can say that personal experiences and my own inquiries checking around I think that the restaurants are doing a really great job at taking the name a number of at least the head of the party on the reservation we at KGPD have not received any reports of non-compliance but certainly if there's somebody that has a concern and needs a check in we're happy to provide some education and I would definitely look to Commissioner Sherling to see if anything has come to public safety on that so I enjoyed restaurant in Orleans County yesterday and they did not ask for a name or contact number and so I asked them if they were doing that they said no they were bothering so that's that's what prompts the question and I'll just add that I don't think we've received any reports along the lines relative to inspections that would have been with the health inspections that would be an arm of the health department we can follow up with them but if you want to pass along any information about non-compliance we can certainly go out and do a an educational visitor or work with our health partners to do that okay yeah again I was just curious that but if it was something that was being done in the normal course of inspecting restaurants I think that's it for me today I think uh thank you governor for your time thank you very much I think the Bennington issue with the country club there underscores how important it is for us to maintain some sort of list so that we can contact people if there's some sort of a cluster or an outbreak that we are able to contact those of people who may or may not be affected but they would want to be aware so that just that's why it's so important to follow the guidelines that we put into place John BPR John Dylan BPR right we'll go to ham Davis Vermont Journal this is a question for this is a question for Mike Smith can you hear me he's right here yes the question I have is uh going back to an earlier question of expanded angle a little bit huh which is the question about one care Vermont and the recent movement or pressure to actually kill kill one yeah the what you've said is that you're going to reboot the system and so forth but irrespective of how you reboot it one of the most difficult challenges that that is for various reasons is the question of scale that is to say how many people are attributed to one care and that way getting into fixed price contracts prospective payment contracts my question is this the uh would you would you um bring in try to bring in as soon as possible both the state employees and the state teachers um into into the into the into one care so that they can become part of the all-payer model if the if the uh that decision has to be made by january 1st and you 45 days doesn't give you much time are you moving to are you do you intend to bring in the state employees and the teachers irrespective of how you reboot or take away the system um I'll first answer part of that uh and then let Mike answer all the open ended questions but uh ham you're right on the the mark and in a lot of respects we need more people in the system in order to prove whether it can work or not we happen I know secretary young has been working feverishly with the state employees in order to get them on we haven't got them there yet but we're still hopeful we would love to have the teachers the education portion as well that would be helpful and for those who you know we're three years into this at this point and as secretary Smith said we saw the benefits of the all-payer model in the uh in the pandemic and so we're going to continue to do all we can uh to to see this through uh we're three years in five-year term we're trying to uh we we took five years uh to debate single payer uh and before governor shulman pulled the plug on that I think we owe it to everyone uh to to keep moving forward on the all-payer model for the full five years and and I believe that it can be improved it can work but we have to prove ourselves and uh maybe secretary Smith can add to that ham you bring up a really good point in fact I'm going to be sitting down with the state employees I think it's towards the end of October to discuss this very point and coming into the all-payer model I will reach out to the teachers as well I think it's important as the governor had said that to get to scale we we should have those two entities into the all-payer model so I'll be sitting I think it's been scheduled for the for the state employees in October sometime and I'll be reaching out to the teacher shortly so you're right it has to be part of this um what I call a reboot it has to be part of the reboot thank you can I have one more question to uh dr levine sure go ahead ham uh uh this is about the doctor levine at the risk of being tedious I'm trying to figure out uh you had one little hole in the uh in the question in your uh blanket um proposition of rule or whatever you want to call it your opinion that the antigen test should only be used on people with with with um evidence of the disease symptomatic patients well my question is this it seems to me that the that I understand exactly how if you're going to use it on asymptomatic people that you have to do it regularly than you they need it and needs to happen often but I think both the holidays like giving in Christmas on is a special case because they are singular events that aren't likely to be repeated so you're going to have people whose life ordinary people whose ordinary life wouldn't subject them to very all that might risk especially in Vermont which has such low numbers but on those two days like giving in Christmas the risk can increase dramatically and so it would seem to me that I think it is just let me ask one more time would it be pop would you endorse using a antigen test okay for those two people and I would just say I know this person is a very powerful person in Vermont who might want to know the answer to that also you've made it more intriguing you have a question but at any rate I still think use of the test on a one time basis in person with no symptoms in a place where the prevalence is very low is fraught with challenge both from the false negative and false positive aspect and we know already looking at such examples if you do the math on on it the pretest probability is very low and even with a positive test the post test probability of that test being a true positive is less than a coin toss less than 50 percent so one has to exercise caution at those times and I would suggest use of the PCR test for that kind of purpose so Lisa at the Valley reporter at Airbnb another short-term rental again we've heard from several inkeepers that Airbnb and short-term rentals are not providing guidance on their sites about the travel restrictions when coming to Vermont and they don't put that information to host or guests when those states are booked and with one inkeeper said we know this firsthand as we take some booking via Airbnb Airbnb makes it impossible for hosts to provide links either in their listings or in their messages to guests to share the state's travel guidelines so is the state in contact with Airbnb about this issue go to secretary curly first and then maybe follow up with the commissioner charlie thank you yeah hi Lisa um thank you for the question you know we have worked with uh the private registered um platforms to ensure that they are well aware of our guidelines and our cross-state travel map we know that this is a difficult situation it's not perfect we try to publicize what we do publicize the map weekly over 65 percent of this traffic coming to our website is for that map and we hear we've heard from tens of thousands of people who are interacting with the map and asking us for clarification so um we continue to know that those are trying to follow and understand our guidelines um we do understand that it's difficult to make sure that Airbnb and some of the other uh private residential platforms are following the rules um but we continue to try to make it better and be sure that people are well aware of the expectations and the guidelines um and as a follow-up what happened maybe for secretaries earlier secretary charlie what happens with people who go through the process of reporting non-compliant i have a little bit on my screen and it says we're not monitoring this online reporting system in real time what happens when we receive a report from non how does this process so i can take that component to make charlie um what happens once the report is made through the portal is it goes out to uh another entity for follow-up and that could be a law enforcement entity it could be a health officer it could be another entity within a municipality depending on the nature of the report for an educational follow-up and then if there's an indication that a problem exists and it perpetuates beyond that initial educational follow-up and there could be additional contact made and or in rare instances a referral to the attorney general's office for further contact and relative to Airbnb we are aware i've seen uh some of the the postings that they have sent out to vermont hosts reiterating the vermont guidance and i know on their web page i'm actually looking at it right now you can see vermont's guidance um and a direct link to our cross-strait state border guidance and the the governor's executive order thank you both for your time guide cage thank you we can you tell us what discussions your administration had stating rutton county's legendary thomas dairy um i may refer to uh secretary curly on this from i don't know if uh secretary tevitz is not on um that uh that was a bit of a surprise to me as well a guy um but but i'm not sure that unless we were having conversations uh in house with them that i'm not sure that uh we were notified with any length of time but secretary curly do you have any information on thomas dairy um not beyond what you just said governor but i do know that secretary tevitz may have um it may have a better update for you so guy i'm happy to connect you with the secretary tevitz offline that would be terrific thank you uh governor i i don't know the secretary of things but as chief executive can you explain to people what will happen if a voter shows up with the polls in november and the town clerk informs this voter that a ballot was mailed in his or her name uh and the voter alleges that he or she did not complete a ballot i would yeah i don't i don't know yeah guy i don't know for sure uh the secretary's state has made it very clear that he's the expert in elections so i would refer to him but from my understanding and i may have this wrong but from my understanding is uh that uh that as long as you haven't been checked off that you can actually get another ballot but that's a better question for secretary condos okay thank you andrea seven days andrea hi there can you hear me yes we can right um great uh this uh this is uh probably a question for dr levine um and seeing um some epidemiologists who are really advocating for rapid testing as a way to do widespread frequent monitoring of the general population um to kind of proactively catch um cases so wondering um what's the rationale between focusing state monitoring efforts on the sort of um the kind of more delayed result tcr test and under what conditions might antigen become a more key part of the department of health monitoring strategy to guess would it take kind of more information on the reliability of specific tests um any you know of kind of stressing of the state's lab capacity of general higher prevalence disease um i'm trying to understand how the state is wet weighing factors in thinking about antigen as a potential tool so if i could rephrase your question just so we all understand it well it's really um could a part of the state's future testing strategy be to utilize antigen testing in the vast majority of hormoners who are asymptomatic as sort of a uh like an early warning system um so that we would see trends and um make decisions based on using that test regularly in the population at large am i correct on your question yep good okay yep so you know that would be a valid use of the test i can tell you our past experience without that test but just with the pcr test is we have abundant hormoners who've come to pop-ups come to our state health offices uh district offices um and gone to their primary care physicians uh wanting tests either because they wanted to get out of quarantine or because they were in contact or because they were curious about their risk and the rate of positivity is so so small in our experience with the pcr that i'm not sure this would be a valuable exercise to just try it with a different test and and get the same results all over again um i do see it though as potentially useful in the day that i never want to see come which is when our test positivity rate is higher in vermont or the prevalence of disease or the number of new cases on a daily basis is getting much higher because that's a very different set scenario and in that scenario um if we're perhaps trying to figure out regionally if there are differences or uh in different populations or different settings if there are differences then having a strategy like that might be very useful i can't see it playing a role in our current state of affairs going to be distributing um the the um 180 000 habits that are coming in from the federal government yeah so that's a really good question um we have almost none of those tests yet so keep that in mind uh we think we're going to see 12 000 within the next week and then the other 180 000 whatever 168 000 would be some time uh over months so we don't really have a good understanding of when we're going to see all of those um but those are the discussions we're having right now because there there are some settings where they might potentially be useful but that we might not need them in right now because we have other testing strategies in place that are already set up and strategically directed so what we would probably do if we really don't need them for the settings that the government thinks we should put them in immediately like long-term care settings is we would hold on to them and develop a strategy for the future where we could see the use of them being very uh instrumental to our testing strategy we're also looking at uh procurement of these on a long-term basis because the government is giving the first installment if you will but they have promised no further installments and left it up to states to procure them beyond that so we need to have a good understanding of their availability if the manufacturing is up to speed and uh of their cost uh to be able to know how they fit in a long-term strategy because we'd hate to use uh the first set and then find that that strategy just ended because we no longer had access to them either because of cost or because of manufacturing pipeline issues so stay tuned for more on that yes thank you good afternoon um parts of this may be for both Dr. Levine and Secretary French um wondering about reflections on the covid scare at st johnsbury school this week um have there been any lessons learned from the episode uh do you anticipate this kind of scenario with a positive antigen test that ultimately gets proven negative happening in schools again and um do you see any adjustments to how uh this scenario might be managed or or uh adapting messaging that gets delivered to the school when it when it occurs no thanks this is Secretary French I'll let Dr. Levine speak to the antigen justing component of that question um I did meet with the superintendent we're we're following up regularly with superintendents as these cases emerge so we can continue to learn and improve our processes um my my sense from the superintendent was he was very pleased with the response of the Department of Health and it really was very extremely useful for him in communicating with this larger school community and I believe the school really experienced the minimal loss in instructional time uh as a as a that's a good indicator I think of how well things went uh they were able to get right back in business pretty quickly so um I think it reinforced for him that the support structures are in place to continue operate schools safely could you just go through what happened just to give you what what I know and again I'm not the healthcare provider um but this clearly was a case of an antigen test being performed um in a setting actually across our border not even within the state um and we had a sort of medical debrief about this with members of the medical community in that area none of whom were responsible for the initial test uh only responsible for the subsequent PCR test uh because they were a bit disturbed by how all of the events that occurred as well again this is why I talk about testing and its integration into the healthcare system it's one thing to be asymptomatic and want to go to our pop-up and that's fine but for anyone else with symptoms etc we don't want to just have a test be in isolation um when some of the symptoms might not even be the COVID symptoms that we would get the test for or where more evaluation might need to occur for those symptoms in a in a reasonable way with clinical judgment applied before any such tests are ordered uh so I can't give a lot of details on that except that um clearly this was a case where the person uh themselves had to go through some um I'll use the word suffering just to you know get through the the whole episode and uh and the school system and community had to contend with that uh if you look at it from a high level now backwards uh I'm actually again like the secretary very pleased with how things turned out if you think about our schools we've had literally a handful at the most of schools that have had to actually start to make decisions about what what do I do today how do I implement the plan that we said we would implement if somebody in the school was positive um that's a very uncomfortable thing to do for the first time probably will be for the second time too for that matter but no you know when you're doing something you haven't done before uh and you have something of the gravity of a positive case in a school setting um you do what you need to do and often we found out in our experience thus far that means at least take a day to let things sort of settle out and figure them out and most of the time the schools have elected to at least not have that day be an in-person day uh as they begin to formulate their further plan um but obviously everybody in the community suffers in some way when that happens um and are concerned uh even if there really is little reason for them to be concerned because they don't have all the details either so I think this worked out pretty expeditiously uh good judgments were made by all early on and uh then when more information was available subsequent judgments could be made so um again I think the experience our small numbers of schools have had so far has been a good one considering that they're breaking new ground every time for their own school their own parents their own community in large thank you and if there's time if I could shift topics with uh Governor Scott um just wondering if you have any thoughts on the letter from um Senators Hassan and Shaheen and Collins and King um asking the administration to either open the Canadian border at least get greater flexibility um and their argument that it can be done safely in certain local conditions um sure I haven't read the letter myself and I would be curious as to why our congressional delegation wasn't hadn't signed on to it maybe they were waiting to hear back from us but we weren't consulted in that that I know of you know what we're seeing in Quebec right now we we talked about this a little bit on Tuesday their number of cases and I'm watching them again on a daily basis but their number of positive cases has increased dramatically over the last month and number of deaths continues to rise so I uh I myself am a bit concerned about opening up you know another area of opportunity for because we have so many traveling into the state where we could be impacted so at this point I think the strategy is uh is appropriate uh both for Canada and for here uh in the U.S. uh in in particular Vermont so I am um at some point in time I'm you know more than open uh to having that cross-border trade more tourism and our Canadian friends coming to visit us but I don't think it's today and uh and I think the numbers would uh would back that up okay thank you everyone again it's the data and the science that we rely on uh in making these decisions and I think that that should drive the decision-making here all right Joe Barton Chronicle Good morning Governor um we got a call from a reader who asked when adult daycare centers will be reopened the reader said there are a lot of people who can't go to work because they have people at home who would normally be in these settings and they can't be left alone that is a secretary smith question Joe thank you for the question I think what we're trying to do is this is open these as soon as possible obviously we've been assessing the risk but I think it's time and I think everybody has agreed that we need to start opening these centers in the safest and most convenient way that we can I think we've been understandably cautious with how we open these but we are going to open these in the most expeditious way that we can and I think we're in the process of starting to open up these adult care I don't have a specific timeline for your area but we are developing guidelines we are looking at how we sort of fund those adult day operations and I think you'll see more to come in probably in the next couple weeks yeah Joe I think the guidance is prepared I'll have to check on it but it is a priority to get these open in a safe way obviously this is a tricky proposition but at the same time we understand the need to start getting these open so that we don't isolate an entire population thank you we're NBC 5 move to Steve any k tv can you hear me we can hi can you hear me we can great thanks um there's a little bit of a preface here uh this goes back to 1818 with uh a novel by Mary Shelley called frankenstein or the modern permissius and due to a series of uh of lab screw-ups in the u.s. as the cdc the u.s. uh outsourced or did they halted gain of function research on viruses here in the u.s. and in 2014 and in 2015 dr. Fauci had outsourced outsourced to china and he licensed the lab uh to continue to get u.s. funding and even though in january of 2018 the u.s. embassies sent cables warning about the safety of the wuhan land and asked for help the embassy wanted that the researchers show various SARS-like coronaviruses can interact with ACE2 receptors meaning that um back coronaviruses could be transmitted to humans to cause SARS-like diseases and um uh i i guess my question is have we learned we where are the bioethesis uh have we learned nothing uh from from dealing with stuff like this uh and and and and haven't we haven't we're almost lucky that uh i hate to say this but aren't we almost lucky that only 200 000 people have died that this pandemic could have been much much worse i'm not sure who wants to take this um but i would just state the obvious i mean i i believe we have learned a lot during this pandemic uh this was a um unique virus never before seen uh to man and we have had to learn on the fly the cdc has had to work diligently in trying to anticipate what we do about this so i uh again i think we've learned a lot maybe not as quick as we would hope but but but again i think what we've seen so far has been remarkable in our testing ability capacity not just as a state but as a country and those are the highlights the vaccine appears to be moving quicker than anything we've seen in in modern history um so i think we can you know science is trying to catch up but uh but it's it's difficult when you have this unique virus yeah but it looks like it might think that science has brought us this virus and governor um you you say that we're relying on the science the data and the numbers um for reopening um but what kind of science data and numbers would it take to uh to um to stop the state of emergency and what are you doing now that you uh that you couldn't do you know without the state of emergency being in place we wouldn't be able to have all the measures that we put into place uh right now without the state of emergency and we've been through this before steve i mean we look at the model here i mean you you saw it on tuesday it's starting to close in on us again and we're seeing higher uh positivity rates in new york we're hearing uh that they may be implementing stricter measures in other states surrounding us we've seen the the escalation of cases in in canada and kebac in particular montreal i mean they're frequent visitors to us so without the tools we have uh at our disposal right now we couldn't preclude any of that from happening to our state right here today so um i think the uh everything we put into place has been essential it's kept for modern safe it's kept our our number positive low death rate again as dr levine had stated today we haven't seen a death thankfully in over 60 days i no other state can say that so um again i don't want to have this state of emergency anymore than anyone else does but until uh other states who get their number of cases under control and the death rate reduced and and we get back to some sort of normal and a vaccine is produced produced and distributed safely it's it's a tough road ahead with tough decisions but um but i don't know what i do any different than we're doing today but would the when we had the uh we we saw the uh the hong kong flu come through i think it was in 68 and uh it it went around the planet once and and and it wiped out a lot of people and then it came it seemed to come back again in 69 and and took out more and then i'm not sure if it was muller's ratchet or a diminution of the virus or or just you know the the vulnerable had been it had been you know already died off from this but that seemed to uh to ring the planet for like a couple years so i guess like the only thing uh we can do is keep on keep on at this point i i you know and try and get through it mitigate it as best we can and continue to open up the economy a quarter turn at a time like we've done and i think we've been successful in doing that again if we could if we could get others to take the proper proper procedures and protocols and guidance wearing a mask staying socially distance not congregating in in large masses and just being smart about this this is literally in our individual hands and we would get through this a lot better a lot quicker a lot without as much loss of life if we all did this throughout the country so again we're doing the right things here in vermont but but we don't have we don't have much to say as to what other states do and and unfortunately those other states those other countries other provinces do impact us here in in our tiny little state dramatically yeah all right um well thank you very much governor Courtney local 22 my presence i was wondering your reaction to the news of president trump first lady testing positive for from a virus we know over the past several months uh trump has made comments down playing the seriousness of the virus as well as the effectiveness of back um what are your thoughts um you know first of all you know we hope there's a speedy recovery for the president and his family as well as all those who are affected around him secondly i think this can be a teaching moment for for everyone that this doesn't discriminate doesn't matter who you are how powerful you are this can bring you to your knees so to speak so again it doesn't discriminate and and we need to to learn from this and if we adhere to the guidance like i was just explaining before and and and the vaccine is produced and safely distributed we'll get through this but but we all have a role to play here and it's really important for each and every one of us to exercise that because again the actions we take will keep someone else safe as well sorry i may have cut been cut off or still muted in the beginning i was wondering if um dr marzavine could comment on that she said i wish i got to that part i wouldn't have to say all go ahead dr me i echo all the sentiments the governor just stated and it is a teachable moment that's that's really all i can say um if i could add one other item and this is not being critical by any means uh but again reinforces my message about testing is not prevention so embracing all of the preventive guidelines that we talk about many times each each press conference is truly prevention um and i have been told by multiple people both within and outside the white house they do get tested every day there and if you want to go visit there you will be tested uh so i'm quite confident that the president would have tested negative many many days before he was positive but testing is not everything so someone can still get covered even if they're being tested every day so that's about the other lesson i would impart on people erin vt digger we're receiving you know messages from readers expressing a lot about tumbler road holding its annual medical tournament uh this weekend you know given what we're hearing about this um fendington golf events and the cases that resulted from that should we be worried about events like this going on in the future well as long as everyone is following the guidelines that are put into place following the protocols uh that we've asked them uh to to administer um there shouldn't be a problem i know that uh uh this the race track in particular has been uh been going all summer without any issues that i know of at the local track um so again it's always a concern um there's always that risk and we just want them to to be sure that they understand what protocols are in place and what guidelines we're asking them to implement so as far as i know they're doing all that but but again it's like any other event that we're having here in vermont um i also have a question about the weekly spotlight in the department of health which covers syndromic surveillance data um it it is interesting as you mentioned that um you know we were kind of able to see the bump in people with symptoms with covid and that's the public case is actually rising but it also mentions that people with flu-like illnesses are lumped into that same category for syndromic surveillance because symptoms are so similar um with flu coming are you concerned that that particular way of monitoring cases could become less in school or harder to interpret yeah that's a great question um early on when we were showing our slides uh you know months and months ago we actually had two uh pieces of data on one slide one was called covid symptoms and the other was called influenza-like illness but you are correct the more we learn about covid there's so many of the symptoms that can mimic what's in the flu so we aren't definitely concerned about that but we kind of know the general trends we see with influenza over many many seasons and the course of the time course it follows and the time when it becomes most prevalent in vermont and when it begins to decay away so to speak um and so anything with covid would be superimposed on that what the true hope is is that all the protective mechanisms we've got in place to keep people safe from covid will also work to keep them safe from the flu so even though it may be confusing about what one person's symptoms may mean on a population level there may be less of all of those people with those symptoms because of the practices that they're already embracing to prevent covid we also realize that that's going to create a need practically speaking from the clinician standpoint of being able to test for both conditions when that's appropriate which may be many times that that's appropriate and part of the guidance we just sent out to the clinical community at large in our health alert notification yesterday had to do with just that topic about dual testing when one's concerned about symptoms like this so giving you a little more than you wanted for your answer but hope that was sufficient yeah thank you uh that's it a few folks that couldn't get through earlier but hopefully are on now eric the times are guess yes this is for secretary french for these assessments for the students and coming back to school uh what happens if they're all they stick months behind does everything kind of get pushed back or if they're all over the plate how does that work yeah thank you um i was speaking generally about assessment i think you know firstly to say that you know teachers just as a function of good practice are constantly assessing students and then modifying their instruction to meet their needs so that's really what's beginning as your question i think points do we also have commercial benchmark assessments available so we have quite a few tools actually that are in in our schools at this point to begin to do that assessment most of those are not so much geared at you know six months behind per se but they plot students on a specific growth trajectory so it allows teachers once again from a formative basis to begin to modify their instruction to ensure students can grow to the next level so it's not so much about being behind is how to move them forward is there a way to know like when we get through this day a year to now would we know exactly how much this impacted their education yeah i think your that question gets to sort of what we call summative testing or the testing that occurs at the end of the school year and that's still sort of a subject of national debate right now to what extent we'll be offering summative assessments from you know in vermont that's the s back assessment once again districts have other local assessments they could use but we haven't haven't decided yet and it's certainly waiting for some direction from the u.s. department of education regarding to what extent the summative assessments will be used later this spring okay thank you and john dillon vpr oh thank you um governor in light of the news that the president and and the what i saw in a recent debate with uh an in-person debate i was wondering if you think that having in-person debates um are risky and if you would rethink that um and whether you should continue to have those going forward um especially when the person you're debating if the person is supposed to stand in for you to get incapacitated you know my preference would be to do remote debates um we've had a few of those uh or i've seen a few of those over the last few months or the primary and in the general uh so that would be my preference we did have one last night as you know and it was it was handled well there was a health type of screening done before a lot of protocols were put into place no one was allowed in except the two candidates were spaced apart so in some respects they did everything according to the the guidance and protocol but my preference would be to do it remotely great and and i know uh you know two to eighteen about ten years ago in 2020 time but what were your overall thoughts on the presidential debate um yeah it was a low moment in our history and so many different respects uh disappointing uh and it's uh again i i was a bit embarrassed to be an american at that point i think we can do so much better we expected so much more uh and uh these is the the leader of the two potential leaders of the most powerful country in the world and um they can do better they in particular uh the president thank you that's it okay we'll uh thank you very much for tuning in we'll see you on tuesday for an update on the travel map and other models thank you very much for having us