 Good morning, everyone. I want to start by recognizing the incredible work to get us through this once-in-a-generation crisis. A global pandemic has caused incredible economic challenge and damages. It's taken the support and effort of just about every agency in state government, plus local and federal partners, and has had an emotional toll that will never be fully measured, all while we've been physically separated for far too long. For this in mind, I think it's important to take a moment and reflect on this difficult work and commitment of many across the state. And I'd like to thank a few groups for their service today. I'll start by thanking the legislature, which ended its session on Friday night, at least temporarily. And while we haven't seen eye-to-eye on everything, I want to thank the Speaker and Pro Tem and the entire legislature for their efforts to keep moving forward while navigating incredible challenges. Like so many others, they've had to find new ways to do things, and they did so while fulfilling their commitment serving Vermonters who elected them. Next, I want to thank the many state employees who've been working incredibly hard throughout this pandemic, and much of that work started before some Vermonters even heard of the coronavirus. It's hard to believe, but it's been a little over five months, 159 days to be exact, since the Health Operations Center opened to track this new virus. And we're now approaching four months, 109 days, since we fully activated the SEOC, the State's Emergency Operations System. This entails a team of over 100, and the extended team of several hundred. So I want to recognize the entire public health, safety, and emergency response teams for their dedication to Vermonters, their expertise, and their perseverance. Now we know this challenge extends beyond just the emergency response. So I also want to recognize our employees at the Departments of Labor, Finance, Financial Regulation and Public Service, as well as the agencies of administration, commerce, education, digital services, human services, transportation, agriculture, and natural resources who have been there on the front lines helping their teammates out when needed with economic or health recovery efforts. They've all been doing double duty, dealing with unusual challenges brought by the coronavirus while helping Vermonters with their day-to-day lives. And of course, I continue to be so grateful to all Vermonters, our business owners, utility companies, nonprofits, municipal leaders, and so many others who stepped up to help their neighbors sacrifice to save lives as they united against this virus. This has not been easy for anyone. And while we come a long way, we know it's not over, and it will be a while longer before we're truly back to normal. But if we continue with the same spirit and commitment we've been going through over the last four months, I know we'll get through this and be stronger than we were before. But to do that, as a reminder, we're going to have to continue to stay home when sick, keep physically separate, wash our hands, and wear our masks when around others if you can. So with that, I'll turn it over to Dr. Levine for an update. Good morning. Just to give a quick recap of our current data, 1,208 total cases, 949 recovered. There's been no change in the 56 deaths in quite a number of weeks. This is the curve, and as you could see, similar slope to where we've been previously. And then over the weekend, in the last three days, there were a total of 10 new cases in the state. None of these 10 new cases that are represented here were part of the outbreaks that we have been following. So there's really no new news to report regarding the outbreaks. This 10 cases is in the setting, though, again, of abundant testing. And again, because we're doing so much testing, the number of positive cases is but a small fraction. So it's that positive of all the test as well. I'd like to add that with regard to one of the outbreaks, we did specific community testing in Fairhaven over the weekend, and well over 200 tests were all negative. And I show you all this data at a time that, as you know, our country is actually seeing an upsurge, about a 65% upsurge in the last two weeks, with over something in the range of 40,000 cases a day, and recent single-day records in a number of states, including Florida, Nevada, South Carolina, and previously Texas and California. On the day that we had six cases, Florida had 10,000. The governor of Texas was asking the population once again to stay at home. Bars that were considered to be a significant contributor, and many of the high-profile cases, have been closed. And hospital and ICU capacity has been stressed in Mississippi, Houston, and Arizona. And again, those under age 40 seem to account for half of the new cases in Florida and even a state like Washington, and most of the new cases in Texas. Now, I'm saying all this not to make comparisons with Vermont and certainly not to say one is better, one is worse, but really to try to look at some of the lessons that we can learn and to point out why we take such pains in reinforcing the four core messages that the governor just repeated. Many of these messages, it appears from the data that's coming out of some of these states, reflects, we're not adhered too strictly in those states as they reopened, specifically the social distancing and the facial covering. We also, of course, continue to talk about all of the considerations people should have with regard to close contact and the concept I introduced last week of the exposure budget. Because really, the virus is still here and it really preys upon the ability of human beings to spread it through the air that we all breathe and share. I want to spend a few moments discussing a couple topics that came up at the last press conference. First was the issue of what is recovered. How is that defined? To meet that definition, you can do this in one of two ways. If an individual that we at the Health Department have been following reports to us directly that they have recovered during a follow-up call, they are regarded as recovered. And secondly, if greater than a 30-day period has elapsed since the onset of their illness. Next thing I wanted to touch on was that all-important issue of health care workers who have tested positive with COVID. Overall, almost 20% of cases have identified themselves as health care workers, one in five or more. 35% of the health care workers were associated with an outbreak. Of those not in an outbreak, 70% were identified as cases later March and early April when we had the predominant increase in cases in the state. These individuals appear to be somewhat younger than the non-health care workers with COVID. 20 to 50-year age range. 70% have been female, 84% were symptomatic, and the majority, 92%, were not hospitalized. It's been hard to find states to do comparisons with that have the same data, but at least one Washington state where 13% of their population is employed in the health care sector had 37% of their positive cases reporting employment in the health care sector. Why do we see these kinds of phenomena? I think everyone recognizes these are frontline workers quite often that increases their risk. They're also potentially more frequently tested. And finally, though I don't have the exact percent, they do comprise a significant proportion of our workforce in Vermont. So I'd like to end with recognizing the entire health care workforce who on a daily basis try to deliver the highest quality, most compassionate care while avoiding becoming one of these statistics. They're dawning PPE in often very challenging climate circumstances. And they're frequently worried about passing the virus on to others, including their families. They truly deserve our gratitude and appreciation. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Levine. With that, we'll open it up to questions. All right, thank you, Governor. So as you mentioned, the legislature on Friday passed some north of half a billion dollars of business relief, broadband, education funding. I guess I was wondering if I could just get your thought sort of on maybe what's in the bills or what you think about it. And maybe if you had any concerns. We'll determine that over the next couple of days. We haven't received the bills, obviously, at this point. But we want to get a side-by-side in comparison to what we had promoted versus what they had passed. Again, my concerns have been not enough economic relief for businesses. But that doesn't mean we can't come back in August and September to deal with that. And we'll have a better idea of the fallout from this over the next month or so. We received 14 bills from the legislature that were passed previous to Friday on Friday. So this takes up a great deal of time for our staff, our general counsel in particular, in going through the bills, making sure they're technically correct. And then whether they have the content that I can support. So hard to say. It's going to be a tremendous amount of work over the next few days to get all these compiled and then determine whether I'll sign them or not. But from what I've seen so far, the vast majority of them will be able to do pass. I don't know that there's anything serious in terms of my reservations. And when the speaker, she held the press conference this morning and she said that when everything is said and done between your plan and the legislature's plan, in terms of the business relief, there really wasn't much of a difference in terms of the dollar amount. Well, I think there's $100 million difference if I have that right. But we'll see $100 million, a lot of money to me. But we'll see if that's, again, we'll get a side by side and be able to give you the exact numbers when we get that comprised. And then the last follow-up question. So your administration will be tasked with rolling this out if the ACCD will be distributing these funds. When will Vermonters and business owners start seeing cash? Should be very soon. As we had said from the very beginning, it would be by the time the bills got to us, we'd need a couple weeks to put whatever plan in place to distribute the funds. And it all depended on what they had included in the legislation. They made it a little bit more difficult in some of their provisions, but we're working our way through that. We should be able to announce the first round on Wednesday. So we can look forward to that. And then maybe the second round the following week. Liz? This question might be for Dr. Levain, but he might want to weigh in as well. We've heard some report reports that over the weekends, there were a couple of throw-in bars that were in violation of the capacity requirements. Specifically, people weren't social distancing inside. And again, there were more people inside than were allowed. I don't know if you just want to weigh in on how you were concerned about that. I know an athlete saw the incidents. This particular bar was fine by the moment the police department. So just to again reiterate the importance of those capacity requirements, and if you have a message for bars and restaurants. Well, again, we're seeing across the country where this is in Texas in particular, Florida, where this is problematic. So we're very concerned about this and we'll take whatever action we have to to make sure that we don't encourage the spread of the virus. Dr. Levain? Makes me feel good that I began my discussion this morning calling out bars, not that I'm anything against bars, but in the states that have had the most dramatic change that's been clearly recognized as part of the problem. And the problem, of course, is not having a bar. It may not even be the owner of the bar. It's just the behavior of those who are in the bar. So we have to be very, very conscientious. It's all about the physical distancing. And the way that the restarting Vermont process has started out, we're paying attention to physical distancing all the time. And that's why there are always things in percentages of full capacity, making sure that an individual has the opportunity to be distanced in the appropriate way, et cetera. So that's critical. And then it's that time indoors again. When you're indoors, if you're in close contact with people, if you're there for a long period of time, and if there are a lot of people there in the room, no matter how good the ventilation, you need to begin to think twice about is this too risky for me? Did I just spend my entire exposure budget in the last 20 minutes? And I ought to be very careful now. So again, we're not asking people to stop having fun in life and to stop doing things they enjoy to do. But again, you've got to have that sense of a little bit of conscientiousness about how you go about your life now in a different way than we did previously. And until we get a vaccine and things are improved for the whole population. So thanks for bringing that up. All right, we can go to the phones now, starting with Chris Roy at the Newport Daily Express. Yes, good morning, a couple of questions. Given the uptick of the increase of virus, would you consider tightening the spigot a little bit? And we've also seen a lot of places for moderate-state folks in this area over the weekend. And how can we be assured that those individuals are following the guidelines that said social distancing and quarantine and for the 14 days? Well, a couple of things, Chris. First of all, you know, we haven't really seen an uptick here in Vermont. Our positivity rate is amongst the lowest, if not the lowest in the country. So we feel good about where we're at. So I'm not contemplating tightening the spigot at this point in time. But if we did see the numbers rise, then that would be a concern for me and we'll take action as a result of that. But right now we feel good about our numbers and the approach that we're taking watching the data and the science and making sure we're doing opening for the right reasons. In terms of those coming in from other states, we have opened up the ability to come to the state without quarantining if you come from a safe county as we talked about on Friday. Won't be talking about this Friday, but we'll continue to watch the other counties in the expanded states that we discussed on Friday. So it's perfectly okay for them to come without quarantining, but it's really important that we all adhere to those safety measures I talked about in my opening remarks, you know, just stay physically separated and wear a mask if you can. So wash your hands a lot. And if you're sick, stay away from others, stay home. So those that adhere to people, whether they're visiting here or coming here or those who live here, so it's all the same. Okay, thank you. Greg, the county courier. Thanks for that one. Governor. You don't sound too good there, Mike. Yeah, probably in 2021, a breeder just for once, you've been told about whether the car is still getting called up in light of COVID-19. Are they going sooner or later or what's the latest time table? Mike, I didn't get the first part of that. Could you just repeat the first part of the question? Yeah, the Vermont National Guard was alerted last year that a major deployment of troops was coming probably sometime maybe early 2021. And the reader and court just there wants to know what's the latest time table on that if they're still going or what? Yeah, let me get with General Knight on that, get back to you. Last I heard, I believe that's been delayed, but I just want to make sure that I have my facts straight. That was a while ago. There's been a couple of deployments contemplated, but I believe that may be delayed at this point, but I'll check it out and get back to you on that. Great, thank you very much for your time. Go ahead, Greg. Hi, Governor, I was told on Friday that I'd get these questions over the weekend. It's not Friday, but I think you demanded them on Monday, but. Hey, Greg, I think you should have gotten an email from Ethan giving you the contact. Well, I was told that I would be sent the information. I'm looking to find out how a case turns from a positive case to a recovered case. And I'm still wondering why the state isn't putting out information on current cases per county or municipality, instead of just overall cases for the last now five months. Dr. Levine, do you have any of the answers to that at this point? I should have received an email over the weekend regarding the second half from the first half I just presented in my opening comments. Maybe you should repeat that. I believe the first part of your question, Greg, I answered in my opening comments what constitutes a recovered case. And the second part, I believe, our communications division emailed you over the weekend. Okay, thank you. I'll go back and look with having trouble connecting with you guys, so I missed part of your statement. So I'll go back and look. Thank you. Sure. Yeah, everybody. Two questions. One, for the governor, you talked about some of the stuff that was passed by the legislature on Friday night. And I'm curious what you think of as 219th. I use the number rather than try and characterize it because I don't think I could characterize it quickly. And secondly, speaking about the recovered cases, et cetera, and this is for Dr. Levine, I guess, since Vermont is now using active cases in those counties to decide who can come here, can we get active cases in Vermont listed on our daily COVID homepage or whatever this thing is called? I mean, it would be interesting to compare what's going on here with those. And those are my two questions. Wilson, S219, I'm just not familiar with what that is. If it was passed on Friday night, it will take probably a week or so, at least maybe a two weeks before we receive that from the legislature. And then I'll take a look, but I just don't know what that bill is. That's the police reform bill. Oh, I see. Okay. Got it. I mean, again, I was trying to avoid the buzzword. You're calling it that, but yes, the idea of that bill. Yeah. Again, I think, I haven't spoken to Commissioner Scherling about this, and I plan to, we had some concerns with the bill, but the majority of the bill we had no problem with. So unless there's something that has changed, I wouldn't expect that we would stand in the way. Dr. Levine. Thank you. For the other question regarding active cases, I'm going to double check this, but basically if you look at our total number of cases and subtract the deaths and subtract the people we already regard as recovered, there's a finite number of individuals in that group who usually are falling within that 30 days. So 30 days have not yet gone by so we can't officially call them recovered. And they would be more akin to the active cases that you're looking for. Okay, is that something that we could all do with the arithmetic test, but since you are using active cases as a way to measure who can come here, it would be interesting to see that laid out in an easier to get format. Yeah, I get it. So we'll double check to be sure that there's no other category of cases in that group and then talk to the team about how we represent them. Okay, thank you. And that answers my questions. Andrew, California record. Traveled certain counties in other states. Do we get a sense though of the demand to travel here? I was speaking with a few folks in the logging industry last week and they said, you know, expanding the map definitely helps, but if people aren't comfortable traveling in the first place, you know, there's really only so much that it can be done to salvage the summer tourism season. So I guess, do we have a sense of how many people want to come to Vermont, want to travel here, and are we doing anything to maybe advertise more broadly that, you know, we are open to business if you're coming from a safe county? Yeah, a couple of things, Kat. Anecdotally, we just heard from Chris and from Newport and his question was about with the uptick and seeing so many new faces in the town and community about, you know, the provisions of social distancing and so forth. So I would say that people are coming. When I look at the data that we're receiving in some of the automated type of approach that we've taken in counting the vehicles coming into the state and leaving, it appears that we are increasing travel. So again, while I don't know where they're coming from, there is an uptick in what we're trying to do in terms of ACCD and I'll ask Commissioner Curley to comment as well, but we're trying to market Vermont to Vermonters first, but I believe that there is still a demand to come to Vermont because of our, you know, low positivity rate and so forth. And so I believe we will be seeing more travelers coming to Vermont. Commissioner or Secretary Curley, do you have anything to add to the marketing? And for people to come here because we're safe, but our team is a market to market the market into those areas as Pat mentioned that we're opening up more broadly within the drive range. So, you know, yes, there's several things we're trying to rely on, but we will be bolstering our activity and trying to reach the areas that are in that 400 or less active cases for one another. I think we'll know better. What does that marketing in Britain look like? I can connect you with our marketing team and get a little more information on that. You know, I will just pull disclosure, you know, they have a way of reaching into those areas and they're working on that plan. So they'll be developed, but I'm happy to, you know, get you connected. Cool. And would I be able to get the data on from the automated approach to counting those vehicles? Yeah. I can see what time we can provide that to you. Awesome. Thank you. Please try to borrow my phone. I have a question for Dr. Levine. I think, can you say whether the positivity rate has fluctuated at all throughout the last month or whether it has been generally either hovered around the same area? Yeah. So we put up a slide of the positivity rate where obviously zero, 14%. So this is in a couple of percent range right here. These are the number of tests performed. These are the number of positive tests. So you will see that there's been a slight uptick at the time we had the outbreaks, as one would expect. But that's quickly come back down again. And none of them have been anything like where we were way back in the beginning of the experience with COVID-19 in Vermont. I don't know if I answered everything you asked, so make sure I did or ask it again. Yeah, no, thanks. That's what you get. Eric, the town's our guest. Yeah, so do we consider the Fairhaven cluster to be contained? Absolutely, Levine. It's way too early in the experience to actually say that. But all indications are it's not growing by leaps and bounds, I can say that. We've had a total of 12 cases associated with it. Two of those cases are actually people who live in Vermont, the others live in New York. We did have some work site testing several days ago. And as I mentioned earlier, we did have some community testing as well. The team is working with the employer to make sure that all those who were eligible for testing and needed to be tested have been tested, so I can give you a better idea about that as well. And as I've said with the Winooski-Berlington outbreak, we're far from even going through one incubation period of the virus yet, so it's very challenging to call something totally contained when it's so early in the course. But clearly, as I said, we're not showing dramatic expansion, which indicates that initial efforts to contain the virus are successful. And in these 900 plus that have recovered, have there been any reports of any kind of complications, maybe lung damage, trouble breathing, anything that might hint at long-term impacts from the virus? Yeah, so so far the answer to that is no, but I think that's a million dollar question that people here and elsewhere in the world want to know the answer to. And the fact is we just don't have that much knowledge at this point in time. I've heard only anecdotal reports from patients as well as physicians regarding what happened to their pulmonary function tests in terms of breathing tests, what happened to their x-rays, and a lot of people feel very comforted by the fact that most of those things have gone well, but I don't want to say that that's the rule and there aren't exceptions, because I don't think we actually know that at this point. So more to come on that from a much bigger experience than just Vermont, but at this point in time, it'd be hard for me to say, I could give you a generalization about that. Okay, thank you. Seven days? Yeah, I just wanted to confirm that in light of the cases in other states that you referenced, moving tied to bars that you're not rethinking or reexamining the current guidelines in Vermont for those settings that you are in fact so confident that Vermont's got it right. Yeah, I'll ask Dr. Levine to comment as well, but from my standpoint, nothing has given me pause at this point. We're seeing the data continue to stay about normal. We've had two or three outbreaks that we feel as though we have a handle on. So at this point in time, with a low positivity rate, I see no reason to move backwards. I think we'll continue to move forward, but I am concerned about, as was reported, if we're having non-compliance in some establishments, we'll have to reflect on that and see if there's anything we can do to make sure there's compliance, because that is the answer, right? We just need to, in these settings, not to socially distance ourselves and use some common sense. So if we continue to do that, we'll be okay. But we'll have to, again, reflect on that and make sure that everyone is complying in the manner that we had laid out. Dr. Levine. Yes, thank you, Governor. Very little to add to that. The major thing I would add is that we didn't go from closed to open. We went from closed to phased opening of anything in indoor settings, whether it be a retail store or whether it be a restaurant. So I think that approach is definitely paying off. There have been other states where they essentially did go from closed to open. So this gives us the opportunity to look at the data every time a change is made, every time this bigot gets turned to a certain degree. And I think that's been very heartening to us to be able to make sure that our numbers don't dramatically change. But clearly, we have to watch these things very closely and that's what we're doing. Right in to ask, what is the status of commercial testing in Vermont? Like, you know, tests conducted by CVS or kind of commercial, private labs. And I honestly couldn't say whether it was included in the testing recorded in the daily numbers or how many are conducted in the state. I was hoping you could clarify that for me. Again, I'll let Dr. Vienne, we're working on some of those scenarios as we speak, trying to expand our testing in other ways. We're doing a good job in terms of the UVM lab as well as our public health lab and the state lab, but we want to increase that. We want more testing. So we're trying to venture out and encourage some of these commercial entities to do just that. Right, so the main commercial entity thus far has been the Walmart and Derby, I believe. And we've had a lot of discussions with pharmacies. Frankly, the impression of some of us is that the pharmacies think Vermont are small potatoes in the big game, and they've been very focused on more major urban areas around the country. However, we are ongoing in our discussions with them and making sure that we can bring them online because we do think that's going to be an important resource for us over the long term. I'm not aware, unless Secretary Smith is of a particular pharmacy that's actually active right now and doing samples. So we don't have any data to follow because they're not actually involved yet. The only one, the only other commercial enterprise is the Walmart, and that has not spread to all of the Walmarts in the state. Why that particular Walmart, you don't remember asking? I think that was a decision that the company made along with an area of the state that did not have as much testing actively going on. Is this been a challenge at all to get people access to tests in remote regions? Is that part of the reason why you're interested in kind of having kind of commercial entities in existing locations to fill that gap? Oh, there are many, many reasons. You cite one, which I think is a very reasonable one, though we also still do pop-ups, but obviously it's nicer to have something that you can get on the day you want it rather than on the day it shows up to town. So that would be one thing. Plus there are many audiences for testing that would love to have access to as great a menu as possible. So for instance, we've been talking about travelers coming into the state and wanting to get that day seven test after they've been quarantining for a week so they can quickly get on and do what they wanna do and enjoy in Vermont. There's a lot of future opportunities that we have with other populations, whether they be populations of a certain type of worker, whether they potentially be college students returning to the state. There's a lot of opportunities to have as many options available. And I think that's really the fundamental philosophical principle here, is we want to have options available so that people on a relatively unscheduled basis, if you will, can get a test conveniently. Okay, and since it's a partnership in this instance, like you're working on a potential partnership, I'm guessing it would kind of be included in the testing numbers for the state? I think that would be insisted upon. We really do want and need to keep tracking that. It's the only way we have reassurance about some of the data that I showed you this morning that we're doing enough testing so that we are seeing a representative idea of how we're doing in Vermont. And we've exceeded that threshold and we want to continue to. So we need an accurate kind of test every day. All right, thank you very much. Hello, can you hear me? I can. Thank you. A quick one for the doctor and maybe one for the governor if I may. Dr. Levine, I heard a report from somebody who worked in the Stowe area of some folks who just came up from the DC metro area to stay at their condo or something and there was no mention of quarantining or anything. And they like were immediately out and patronizing local businesses and stuff. Is the word getting out about quarantining to these newly arrived visitors and how can people in local businesses protect themselves if not? I would hope that the word is getting out, especially because we've tried to make it easier if you will on people. And I think nationwide now the notion of quarantine as a rule that a state can set is out there. We just had the New Jersey, New York, I believe Connecticut kind of trio talk about that and publicize that widely. There are many other states that have been doing something very similar to what we're doing. So I think it's hard to be a traveler now and not think of that. And these folks that you're anecdotally reporting were coming up from DC and they were going to a condo that they owned perhaps. I would think that they would be aware of what's going on in the state. But I think again this is now and I'm not trying to create a police state where people are getting a little too aggressive with watching out, but we all have to be watching out for each other in this pandemic and all trying to adhere to best practices. And best practices include all of the things we've been preaching and making sure that people try to adhere to, but they also include making sure that people don't come into the state and unwittingly perhaps bring virus with them that we would not have seen otherwise. So gentle conversations with one another can go a long way and making sure that people allow themselves to be courteous and respectful, but at the same time if they're concerned to be able to discuss these issues freely. Okay, thank you. And Governor, a couple if I may, do you support defunding the police? And did you admit on Friday that it was your office who had changed the AOT's for beauty policy? Well, two things. One, I think I answered the defunding question. I think it was either Wednesday or Monday when I was asked the question and I don't support defunding of the police. I believe that we should do things differently, that we have an opportunity to do that, but if anything, we might need more funding for public safety. In terms of emitting, I think I did tell you that in consultation with the Governor's office, it wasn't with me directly, but we did issue guidance with VTRANS on what we'd like to see in light of the circumstances throughout the country and just to be a little bit more acceptable of that First Amendment, right? Sure. How about reparations? Reparations, yeah, no. I mean, I think that's a question that's been out there for quite some time and I answered this as well. I don't know if you were on the call or not maybe a week or two ago. And it really is a question of, how do you do that and who's affected and how do you distribute the money and where does it come from? So there are conversations that we may have in the legislature or nationwide, but again, there's a lot of questions to be answered. I know and right out my front window, I can see a memorial to all the people in this area who had left their the fields and farms and gone to fight in the Civil War. And I don't think they should be forgotten either. But anyways, thank you very much. All right, thank you. Joe Barton Chronicle. Hello, Governor, as often happens with me, I realize I've been hearing some words that I may not fully understand and maybe you or Dr. Levine can clarify them for me. In the past few weeks' slides that Dr. Levine has been presenting, there's a page that is headed, Vermont is starting to flatten the curve and maybe I don't really understand what flatten the curve means. I can see that the number of cases is going up. Obviously it can't go down because that's already happened. What will we see when we have flattened the curve? Yeah, you bring up a good point, Joe. In some respects, you know, the curve is always going to go up because we'll continue to have positive cases and so forth. But it's just a measure of how do you flatten it out from there? I'll let Dr. Levine try to explain it as well. So we've had two experiences to flatten the curve. When the virus first presented in Vermont and we started to accumulate cases, we quickly recognized this is not the slope we wanted to see and that this was approaching that exponential growth pattern that the virus is capable of. So all of the mitigation strategies were put into play which included reducing the mass gathering sizes dramatically, which included social distancing of course, which included closing schools eventually, closing restaurants, and eventually staying at home. So here's the result. That curve is way flatter than this curve. Most recently, we've had a couple of outbreaks. So the curve did not assume the slope that it was previously, thank goodness, but it didn't assume a slope that was different than where we had been. So now we are flattening that again. But we're not doing it through all those same strategies. We're now able to do it through the containment strategy, the testing, the isolation of those positive, the contact tracing, and the quarantining of those who are contact traced. We don't need to necessarily go back and shut everything down and stay at home again, like unfortunately a couple other states are now having to do. So we have the contact tracing capability and the testing capability to flatten the curve again with this containment strategy. So that's the notion. We probably should label the graph as starting, Vermont is again flattening the curve. So the goal then is to, I know this is a big goal, is to have no cases at which point the curve will be flat. Right, and we know that in the United States, no matter where you are, there will be virus and there will be cases. So it will never be totally flat, but flattening is the concept. And again, the reason is not only do less of us become sick and less of us have the potential for serious complications, but our healthcare system doesn't experience the kind of surge that would overwhelm it and lead to all kinds of disasters because we had so many cases going on that the system couldn't handle their care. I understand, thank you very much. Secretary Kondo said in a recent hot ad that, quote, widespread voter fraud, including by mail, just doesn't happen, unquote. Over the weekend, the press reported that one in five ballots in a New Jersey vote by mail election were fraudulent. With that news and the fact that Vermont town clerks don't have signatures on file to compare with signatures on absentee ballots. Have you received S-348 yet? And if so, are you thinking about a veto? Did receive it on Friday. It was one of those 14 bills that were presented. And as I stated earlier, I had taken myself out of the equation. It was an urgent matter, something that the Secretary of State was promoting. So I had concerns about different issues in terms of making a two-step process instead of a one-step process. So the legislature took me out of the equation. It can be done by the Secretary of State. And here we are at this point. And I've said that I'm not gonna stand in its way. I don't know what's going to happen in November. I don't know whether there's going to be a resurgence of the virus. I want to make sure that people have the opportunity to vote. And they're the experts in the field. And if they can, if the Secretary of State can give us confidence that there will be no mischief, so to speak, then we have to take him at his word. So he's the expert in the elections. I won't, I know there's a technical aspect of the bill that may be problematic, but the legislature knew about that before it was passed. So, and they didn't change it. So I won't be standing in the way of this bill coming into law. Thank you. Another question, are you or your public safety people aware of any threats to statutes of our historic state leaders? And have you considered an executive order to prevent the facing, damaging, or toppling statutes of say Ethan and our Allen, Thomas Jitman, John Stark? Guy, I am not aware of any threats, but maybe I'll ask our commissioner, commissioner, Sherling, whether he has heard of any. Good afternoon, Governor. I am not directly familiar with any threats. And I would note for the record, if we were, I'm not sure of the extent which we would share them publicly. Any thought given or discussion of protection if there is a threat? Again, Guy, I believe that, you know, we want to protect our history in some respects and protect some of the assets we have in the state. So I'll leave it at that and we'll deal with it if and when it comes. Okay, thank you. Brittany, Local 22. Good morning. Just a quick question. You've mentioned a couple of times already now that you're concerned about, you know, some bars or restaurants maybe not complying with social distancing and all the rules that are in place. I was wondering if you might be able to give any specifics, even if it's just, you know, a town of the bars and stuff that you've been looking at. Yeah, well, actually, Brittany, I'm not concerned about it. I think it was one of the other callers had posed a question and had said that there was a problem in one area in Burlington, for instance, but I had not heard that before. So I'm concerned if it is happening and we'll do what we can to educate and provide guidance for whatever entity that might have been. So we'll look into it. Again, this was, this was posed in a question. So it wasn't something coming from me. Okay, thank you so much. Colin, VT Digger. Congratulations on how quickly you're moving through the list tonight. This is great. Do your part, Colin. Sorry, say it again. Do your part. We know if New York is testing in the community where the folks who tested positive and fair haven list. I know we've been in contact with the Washington County, New York Health Department and they were working with us, but I don't know the specifics, Dr. Levine. The last I was aware, which is just during the weekend, the New York Health Department in that county was doing a lot of contact tracing. They were not specifically doing extra testing, but that's because we had been coordinating the testing already, both in Vermont, but also at the work site itself. And so the employees that might be living in New York that were concerned were going to be tested as part of the work site testing that we were doing in Vermont. And we were told by a state rep who heard heard that through the business owner that a number of these workers actually worked at a work site in Danby, as opposed to Fair Haven. And I was wondering if that's information that you're aware of or whether that's correct? That's not information that I'm aware of. Everett Scott, you know this sort of UCS, the U.S. Citizens Immigration Service has announced a very large round of furloughs across the country, which folks are expecting to hit Vermont fairly hard. I was wondering, are you aware of it? Do you have a sense of how many people might be affected by this in any efforts the state is making to offset those job losses? Yeah, Greg from the County Courier brought this up maybe a week and a half ago and posed the question, and I hadn't heard that before he brought it up. We've since tried to find out a little bit more about it. What we understand is there is going to be furloughs across the country. We don't know what impact it'll have here locally, but we expect that we will be impacted. In fact, we've heard anecdotally, not officially, but anecdotally from some of those workers who received notice that they will be furloughed. Maybe Commissioner Harrington, have you heard anything more that I haven't elaborated on? No, Governor, I think you hit all the high points. I do know that they are, we reached out to them at the end of last week. They weren't aware of the specific number, but had put another request into their headquarters for that information. We, the Department of Labor, are working actively with them to make sure there are systems and resources in place so that impacted employees understand and know what options are available for them for unemployment, as well as re-employment services. So we are continuing to work with them at the state level, but we just don't know what the impact is going to be yet. Commissioner Harrington, do you have a general sense of how many people the USCIS employees in Vermont? I would have to pull that number, I believe, just pulling it off the top of my head. It includes both federal workers and contracted workers, and I believe it's somewhere around 1,500 if you combine everything together, maybe a little over that, but I will, I can certainly pull the numbers that we have and get back to you. And with the USCIS, USCIS, the compelled to file a warrant notice, are they exempt from that type of thing? As a federal agency, they are exempt from a warrant requirement, both at the federal level and at the state level. However, if they have contractors, which some of their service centers they do, then those contractors, if those employees are impacted, they would have to file a warrant notice. All right, thank you. Thank you. Tim, Vermont Business Magazine? Governor, the Speaker Johnson this morning was pretty complimentary about the way you've handled the pandemic. Now the one caveat she had is, she would like to see mandatory mask wearing, seen across the country where it seems to be the masks official covering to Dr. Lupien first of it, are really, really crucial to holding down the virus. What would it take, I know you have no plans right now to institute the mandatory mask, but what would it take for you to change that stance? Well again, it's difficult, even in the states who have mandated, for instance, New York has mandated and they can't enforce. We're hearing enforcement issues across the country. I want to promote this, I think I believe that wearing a mask when you can, when you can't physically separate yourself from others, when you're out in the public, everyone should be wearing one. But mandating doesn't make itself. I believe that guidance and education is the key and we need to inspire others and we all need to play an active role in doing that. So the numbers would have to change dramatically for me to come to that conclusion that we need to mandate. We've been, our positivity rate is way down. We've been methodically opening up businesses and we haven't seen any tremendous spikes that would change my mind in that respect. But if it came to the point when the CDC was to make it mandatory or we were not seeing compliance in our state and we could find ways to enforce in a different way then might consider it. But at this point in time, I just don't think it's necessary. I'd rather take the other approach and the same approach that we've taken thus far and have been fairly successful, I would say. All right, great, thank you. Howard, VPR? Thanks, I'm wondering if you could tell us anything. You said we had 10 cases this weekend. We've had a couple of small outbreaks, if you will, and Fairhaven and Wyndham County. Do we know or can we guess where they originated the first person through contact tracing? If these people went out of state, if maybe they work in the hospitality industry and might have caught it within, do we know at all where these few outbreaks we've had over the past few weeks originated? I think it'll take a little bit of time for the contact tracing, but obviously they're working on that as we speak. The cases, I think there was two, I thought there was eight to begin with, but maybe there was 10. I know there was two on Saturday and then another six or eight yesterday. But Dr. Levine, do you have anything more to add? That's always the question we get is how did the first person get it? And in spite of all the efforts one makes, it's very, very challenging when there's community transmission of virus like there is throughout the country now. It was much easier when the cases were all imported, if you will, from either China, Italy, some other part of Europe, but that's no longer the case, obviously, with all the travel restrictions. And quite frequently it's not the case that it's even traveled into our state from another state. We just find that we find a cluster in a set of vulnerable people perhaps, a cluster in a set of employees, a cluster in a family, and those either remain an isolated cluster or they grow into a small outbreak. But actually defining how that cluster became a cluster is really challenging. So the contact tracing does a lot of work focusing back in people's history, but generally that helps us with who might also be at risk of getting infected because they had contact with the person you're interviewing. They don't always help us with who was the first person to give the virus to someone else. So I can tell you right now that in neither of these two circumstances you mentioned in Rutland County and in Wyndham County, do we have a firm idea of where it all came from, so to speak? And I think it's interesting because I think a lot of civilians, if you will, are very interested in this, but can you clarify is this just impossible to find so you don't, it's not worth looking for. It's not something you figure into all the decisions you make because it's so hard to figure out? No, no, no. But it involves people's recall quite often and recall is one of those things where you can ask a question five different ways and ask five extra questions and you still may not get at exactly that critical day, that critical event, that critical contact that led to it all. It's just the reality of the situation, especially with a virus that does have a relatively long incubation period. We know the majority of cases will occur within the first five to seven days, but we go out to 14 days because sometimes that's what it takes. So it turns out to be really challenging. But again, in terms of strategies to prevent that from happening, the goal is always, of course, to focus on vulnerable populations and make sure that we're doing everything we can to protect those vulnerable populations and to do appropriate testing of those populations at times. And to make sure that Vermonis try to follow the rules that we've discussed that really are great ways at making sure that you don't become a case and you're not exposed in such a direct way that it would harm your health. All right, thank you. Good time. Thank you very much and we'll see you on Wednesday.