 Hi everybody. Welcome back to Facebook for Thursday evening. I hope you're all at home sheltered in place and having a good time with your family or maybe reading a good book or like me maybe out riding your bike. I rode my bike this morning. Today I'm joined by council member Brian Byrd and council member Dennis Schingleton. Welcome guys. Thank you. Thank you mayor. Great to have you with us. We're going to talk today a little bit about the newest of our council committees. These committees are also made up of business and medical professionals with the two council members. This is the core committee, the committee on reopening the economy and it's an exciting plan and an exciting strategy and they're just on the tip of the iceberg talking about it. But before we go into interviews with the council members about the committee I want to give you the daily COVID update. We don't have the total cases for the day but I can tell you that Tarrant County is well over a thousand cases and growing and today we have 19 fatalities that's up to from the night and that's Fort Worth fatalities and Tarrant County has 37 fatalities. Those numbers just continue to break my heart but stay vigilant, stay home and we will flatten that curve and we will be COVID-19. Yesterday I mentioned that we were building a framework of what it might look like as we began to reopen the economy and what you might could see and what data points are we looking at to do that. So that's why council member Byrd and council member Schenbelton are with me today. So Dennis let's hear a little bit from you what the goal of this committee might be. Well this committee on the reopening the economy met earlier this week and it's as the mayor said it's composed of some medical folks, business folks, experts in the field, government leaders, a real montage but we're gaining a lot of experience on that committee a lot of good dialogue this past meeting and I hope that we'll come up with a very very constructive group of comments and group and suggestions on how to make this work. Are you looking at an instant timetable or are you looking for some runway? We're going to be very patient with this whole thing just like we've been patient with the duties of our citizens and the duties of our public we've got to be patient with this it's going to be a very slow insidious process I'm afraid. Yeah the committee's got a lot to look at you can't just flip the switch and make it all come back. So Brian I know Brian Byrd is a doctor and he's been in this field a long time. He's a physician yes he's a physician I've been corrected talking about that I thought it was a sign but Brian is well versed in this and council member shingleton is a pharmacist and public health so they're the ideal two. So Brian why don't you tell us about the principles y'all are using to evaluate. Well thank you mayor and first of all I want to say that you've done a fantastic job leading us and so has the county leadership and all you have to do is look at the fact that our hospitals are not overrun right now you guys have done a great job leading this. I can tell you from a physician's perspective I talk to doctors every day I'm in the hospital pretty much every day we want to see any kind of reopening done in a slow gradual process it has to be done in a way that we can still contain this virus one of the things that we don't want to see and I can tell you this also as a businessman who owns a business here in Fort Worth the worst thing we could do is rush into this do it too quickly and haphazardly and a month or two after that we have a resurgent the virus our hospitals are overrun and we have to go back to where we were and lose all this momentum that we have built up we do not want to see that happen we do not want to see that it is going to be gradual and the data that guiding principles that y'all are going to use have to be solid and grounded in science that that's exactly right mayor there are a number of things that this committee is benefiting from first of all on the other side of the world countries are trying to reopening and we're learning from their experience and sometimes their mistakes there are also a lot of think tanks around the united states that are working on this but there are just a few things to keep in mind one is that we want to see the number of new cases decline for a period of time at least for 14 days before we start doing this we also need a treatment in place our physicians working every day and our nurses our respiratory therapists they need some kind of a treatment that we can rescue people out of a difficult situation I can tell you I've seen it this is a nasty bug do not take it lightly it messes with your heart it chews up your lungs and we're finding out now it even chews up their kidneys in your liver and it's just a bad bad actor one that most of us haven't seen one this bad ever in our careers and a couple other things on this matter before this committee to look at we're going to need broad testing so that we can figure out very quickly where the new cases are and then we can do what's called contact tracing and that's where we track down the first contacts of the people that have been diagnosed and it's just someone from the health department talking to another Texan and saying you've been around somebody who's been diagnosed need to stay in for 14 days all good points people really do need to pay attention to that's right stay home right that's exactly right that's right you got it the Venice these are critical milestones but we hear a lot of talk about PPE and the mask that we're all wearing what are y'all doing considering the questions and things like masks and what citizens need to do and and those questions have come up in a variety of phone conversations to us as singular or singular councilmen but to the groups in general and what are we doing what are the role of the face mask how are we going to continue this do retail businesses have to screen customers we've gotten all kinds of questions like that how long do we have to remain sheltered are we going to narrow it down can we be sheltered five days a week and get out two days it's all sorts of questions like that that precipitate a lengthy discussion in a certain amount of brain power and experience to get it together we are as we have received all along received a direction from on the federal level the state level the county levels uh our our partners uh across north texas how are they handling it so we we have sort of a unified effort here it's a real challenge up and down the line yeah it's a virus that crosses county lines versus state lines and as brian said that the vaccine is it is an essential part but also drugs that will treat this at least mitigate some of this right the essential part if we can get something in the hopper something in our holster that makes this work we're better off and it's just residents the way we're going to treat it is to stay home to help mitigate to wear your mask when you can to wash your hands cough into your sleeve and follow the cdc so core is really looking at guidelines and data answering the big questions going to the epidemiologist going to the medical doctors going to the business community talking to residents and their ideas are to come up to help guide us to pass on to the county and the governor and the white house what we're seeing here there's no exact formula for what core might do but they're going to come up with a lot of good questions and hopefully a lot of good answers i wish i could tell you a set timeline but i can't right now but we are working on it and you need to know that on behalf of port word the overall health and safety of our community is critical to all of us we won't open this too soon nor will we hold it back so long that the economy and small businesses are totally dead so one more thing i want to invite everybody to join us tonight for a city wide county wide and indeed dallas and tarrant county together it's a dfwo ovation it's hashtag dfwo ovation go out on your porch at seven o'clock turn your light zone although it might still be live ring a bell cheer clap your hands to celebrate the medical workers who are on the front line the first responders who really put themselves and their children and their wives and their spouses in jeopardy every day as they work with covet 19 but they sign on for that duty and it's our duty to thank them for all they're doing so as we do every day y'all stay safe y'all stay healthy and y'all stay home stay on your front porch