Live from Nashville, Tennessee Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m.– host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Crom Carmichael to the newsmakers line.
At the beginning of the third hour, Carmichael expressed his concern for the hospitality industries who would be hard hit even after the decline of the coronavirus stating that their whole way of doing business would change along with other industries like higher learning. He added that he was hopeful that the virus would show an adverse effect to heat while scientists had time to develop an effective vaccine.
Leahy: We are joined by our good friend and the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael. Crom I don’t know if you saw this, last night on CNN with Anderson Cooper Bill Gates appeared via Skype from Seattle.
And he said that the United States should shut down the entire country for a short period of time to control the spread of the coronavirus. And he predicts that the number of cases will peak at the end of April. What do you make of that?
Carmichael: Well, shutting down the entire country, you know we talked about it before and how our country has a monthly gross national product of about 1.8 to 1.9 trillion dollars. And if you shut down everything except groceries and healthcare you probably are shutting down 60 to 70% of the economy. I don’t know if the country can survive that. Being shut down for so long. And when Bill Gates says a short period of time that’s undefined.
Leahy: Right exactly.
Carmichael: So that’s undefined. That’s an easy thing to say because a short period of time doesn’t sound like very long to anybody. But if he said to shut down for a month that’s a period of time that some people might say, you can’t do that.
Leahy: They can’t survive that long economically.
Carmichael: What’s going to happen though is that this will change the way that we work. And I don’t that means everybody is going to be staying at home in the future. But go to meetings on Zoom and these remote meeting technologies, they will become much much more the way that we do business in the future even after the coronavirus.
A lot of people have used them. But an awful lot of people have never used them. Now they are finding out how convenient they are. And am sure those technologies are being improved so that you can have full-screen meetings and things like that.
I think the restaurant industry is going to be very hard hit. The whole hospitality industry from this is going to be very hard hit. And I think that the hotel industry is going to be hard hit.
The airline industry and I think probably the government will end up owning stakes in the hotel industry. They’ve already said to give money to the airlines. They are going to take stakes in the airlines which they will then later sell and make the money back. Boy, I tell you what, colleges and universities we’re finding out that remote learning works pretty well.
A lot of people who have never done remote learning are now doing remote learning. And so I think that probably 20% at least of higher educational institutions will end up failing in the next 24 months. And I think this is going to fundamentally change many many industries. And I don’t think we’ve reached the peak.
I think that Bill Gates is right that we’ve not yet reached the peak here in the US. We need to hope and pray that this thing is affected by heat. And that it goes away at least for a season to give our scientists the opportunity to first of all find a treatment. And the other is to find a vaccine.
Leahy: The President is signaling he’s going to take a different approach when this 15-day national emergency “slow it down period” ends early next week. And I think what you’re going to see is that he’s going to advise governors not to shut entire states down but only those hot spot counties.
And I think that will give a better chance for the economy not to totally tank. I don’t think that I would agree with those that say if you shut everything down and take no other actions that you’re going to stop the growth. I think that it’s uncertain about how you’re going to stop the growth.
Carmichael: Yes. We are still in the middle of the tornado. We are in the middle of the storm. Lots of things have changed for the rest of my life.
Listen to the full third hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
