Roll back the calendar to mid March, with the rate of coronavirus cases starting to pick up in California and across much of the country, both state and county officials ordered all of us to go home, and stay home.

Fast forward to the present day and after what was arguably an early reopening of the economy, COVID-19 is once again spreading at a rapid rate---except we're in far worse shape today than when we were back in March. So what's preventing that from happening again?

And if we're all ordered to once again stay at home, how will businesses survive?  And how will the finances of cities, counties and states hold up?

There is growing evidence that the coronavirus outbreak in the United States is far worse than we realize:  there could be hundreds of thousands of people out there who were infected with the virus and never knew it, or received false negative test results.

A handful of California churches are suing to challenge the ban of singing during services, we'll talk with the lead lawyer in the case who argues it's a freedom of religion issue.

And Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is getting chemotherapy after a recurrence of cancer. This...again setting up understandable intrigue about the future of the highest court in the land.

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It's a point that's been made early and often on this program over the course of six months:  there's a ton about this novel coronavirus that we still don't know.  And that really applies to how COVID-19 may impact young children.

There are new reports suggesting that children infected with COVID, even those with mild cases or who are asymptomatic, can suffer long term lung damage.

What we do know ... is that face masks seem to work to slow the spread, and that was driven home by a remarkable study in Missouri where a pair of infected hair stylists managed to *not* infect a single one of their clients who were exposed -- we'll head there for details.

Speaking of hair salons, there's a campaign underway here in California to allow stylists to move their operations outside so they can keep on working.

We're going north of the border where Canada seems to have managed a FAR more effective response to the outbreak than we have here in the U.S.

And it was a good day for hackers -- one group was breaking into the servers of researchers working to develop a coronavirus vaccine; another managed to take down much of Twitter.

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It's likely a first during this pandemic:  an unborn child has been infected with COVID-19 from his mother, thought to be the first time a pregnant woman with COVID passed it on to her baby in-utero.  What could the long term health consequences be for both the mother and child? 

The Trump administration is ordering hospitals across the country to report their coronavirus data to the Health and Human Services Department, bypassing the CDC...which usually acts as a clearinghouse for that type of information.  Does this leave invaluable data open to political manipulation?

Face masks remain an intensely polarizing issue, even with scientific evidence firmly in the corner of masks cutting the risk of infection.  So... two Orange County skater dudes ventured out to Huntington Beach with a box of free masks to give away.........and the reception they got says a lot about where we are in this pandemic............we'll talk to those good Samaritan bros.

And while no one we know particularly enjoys wearing face masks, we'll talk with an infectious disease expert who says we should prepare to be wearing masks and staying socially distant for at least the next two years.

 

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Contact tracing and widely available testing:  two elements of this nation's response to the coronavirus pandemic that were promised months ago.  Well, here we are in mid July, with COVID infections and hospitalizations surging in most parts of the country............and neither contact tracing or testing have been widely established.  Why not, and how much would this help squash the current resurgence? 

Face masks have been endlessly debated, but the science has been pretty clear:  masks save lives.  Now there's new evidence we'll tell you about that says wearing a simple cloth mask not only protects the people around you, it just might save *you* from a bad COVID infection.

And as we're learning more about the virus, here's a grim new likelihood:  people can be RE-infected, and the second time around might be even worse than the first.

2020 has not been a great year to own a small business.  Just as tens of thousands of mom-and-pop operations in California were reopening, after spending months closed down, fighting for survival.........they're ordered closed again.

In the second half of the show we're going to take a long look at whether small businesses, especially hair salons and gyms, can hold on.  And we'll ask what the government can do to keep these small shops up and running.

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It's back to the future for most of California:  Governor Gavin Newsom just announced that in counties where coronavirus infections and hospitalizations are surging, the shelter in place order is back in business.  That means malls, in-restaurant dining, stores, gyms, salons and more.........for most California counties.......will be closed again.  We will go In Depth.

More coming up on that breaking news, including how California which seemed to be competently managing its response to COVID-19, ended up having to go back to using the extreme step of a shelter in place order.

Also coming up on the program........while one Disney World reopens, another closes down...........we'll go to a small school district in Arizona mourning the loss of one of their teachers to coronavirus, as the debate over reopening schools rages..............and we'll look at changing presidential pardon powers after a very controversial commutation by President Trump.

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In so many ways we are right back where we started from as we stare down surging infections and hospitalizations from the coronavirus.  And here's one that we haven't discussed much since the early days of the pandemic: can COVID-19 live on frozen food?  Health inspectors in China discovered the virus on imported frozen shrimp!  As if you  needed more things to be anxious about.

All levels of sports, from the professional to the amateur, have been disrupted by all this. But it's the young players who have arguably suffered the most, and that will continue: California has called time out on all playing, practicing and training for youth sports leagues.

And Disney World is reopening this weekend in Orlando, Florida........which also happens to be a major hot spot for COVID infections. So, would you go?

Many of the biggest medical centers in the country are starting to reach critical patient levels. We're going to take you inside the emergency medicine department at UC Davis where they're not only battling the virus....but trying to keep their doctors and nurses from getting sick.

And while we wait - and hope - for a vaccine....we might want to set our sights on lower-tech treatments.......which might prove to be the key to finding a way to live with this.

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Technically, President Trump lost both of the cases in front of the Supreme Court today over different groups of investigators that want to get their hands on his tax returns and financial records.  However.... that doesn't mean we'll be seeing those documents any time soon; in fact there's a lot more arguing to be done.

Still, the much anticipated rulings were a victory for the right of Congress and prosecutors to investigate a sitting president.

And how will all of this play out on the campaign trail, especially if the mysterious Trump tax returns are likely to stay a mystery past election day?  

Think back to the start of this coronavirus pandemic...when there were urgent cries from hospitals and first responders that they were running dangerously short on personal protective equipment.  Months later, and with time to restock and prepare..........not only are there still shortages...but they might be worse.

Teachers are going to be needing a lot of PPE if they're called back to work in the Fall but, increasingly, they aren't thrilled with the idea of being back in classrooms --- we'll check in with the nation's largest teacher's union.

And small businesses, which already took a beating during the first shelter-in-place orders, are bracing for a second round that might just lead a lot of permanent closures.

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The decision on whether or not to send millions of kids back to their classrooms in the Fall is a massively complicated one:  it's not just the health & education of the kids that's at stake, but the health of teachers and faculty.......daycare considerations......and the economic standing of parents.  So as President Trump ratchets up the pressure on schools to bring kids back, we will go In Depth.

Universities are facing the same complex challenges to how they'll manage in the midst of a pandemic; we'll look at how inequalities among colleges will play a role.

And before President Trump's niece spilled her family secrets in a tell-all book, she was the source of a major New York Times investigation into the president's long and controversial family history; so we'll talk with the reporter who first used Mary Trump as a source.

The Supreme Court today issued a major ruling on whether businesses must be forced to cover birth control, but that decision was a bit overshadowed by major speculation and intrigue around the high court.  Tomorrow a hugely anticipated ruling on President Trump's taxes is due; and then there's the health of Chief Justice John Roberts.

And then we're going to Sweden, which was one held up as a model of a country that refused to close down its economy to slow the spread of coronavirus, which had been looking like a successful strategy........until it seemingly fell apart.

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Think back to the start of the coronavirus pandemic, roughly 6 months ago, even though it feels like an eternity...........the intense focus was testing: to be able to quickly locate outbreaks and take the necessary steps to quell them.  Now fast forward to the present day, and testing is arguably even more crucial as infections and hospitalizations are soaring.

Testing was a problem at the start, and 6 months later, testing is still a major issue for most of the country.

This latest wave of the virus has predominantly impacted younger people, sending increasing numbers of them to the hospital with critical COVID cases.  Weren't younger people supposed to be able to better resist COVID?

And hydroxychloroquine..........it's back, and President Trump just may have been right about the anti-malaria drug.  

The Trump administration is telling immigrant students that if their host university isn't offering in-person classes in the Fall - during the pandemic -  they'll have to leave the country.  What's the point of this restrictive immigration policy?

And back in April when the Small Business Administration's loan program designed to keep thousands of businesses afloat was coming together, we brought you a segment warning that the loans could easily end up going to the rich and politically connected.  And that's pretty much exactly what happened.

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It's in air.

We already know that the way many people are catching the novel coronavirus is by getting too close to droplets - someone's sneeze, cough or, yes, even spit while they're talking. But...more scientists are now saying the virus can also be airborne....that aerosols can hang in the air and float for periods of time. And those scientists want policy makers to act accordingly.

This is an election year, in case you forgot, and with a pandemic that still rages, both the Trump and Biden campaigns are fine tuning their messaging around COVID.

LAUSD continues to hedge its bets when it comes to how, or whether, it's bringing students back to school classrooms in the fall; but with the clock quickly ticking down, the District has some hard choices to make.

Major universities, though, are already making the call, almost all of them going with heavy use of remote learning.....but if you're a college student or a parent and you're counting on tuition discounts ... because there aren't dorms and there's not classroom teaching.............well don't count on it.

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