Sen. Josh Hawley says China should be made to foot the bill for global suffering from coronavirus pandemic

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Sen. Josh Hawley says China should be made to foot the bill for global suffering from coronavirus pandemic

We an international investigation to hold China accountable for covering up the virus, says Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, Republican member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," March 19, 2020. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

TUCKER CARLSON, HOST: Good evening and welcome to "Tucker Carlson Tonight." America this evening is frozen in place. People aren't working. Schools are closed. Planes are empty. Businesses are shuttered. Millions of Americans aren't even leaving the house.

This is what it looks like to fight the spread of a pandemic, everything stops. How long will we have to live this way? How long can we? Those are the questions every adult in this country is thinking about right now.

All of us are desperate to keep the ones we love from being infected and possibly dying. At the same time, we know there's a very high cost to shutting down America.

No one wants to wake up a year from now in a bankrupt nation struggling through a depression.

Staying safe and staying prosperous -- those are the goals. Unfortunately, they often conflict with each other, that's one of the reasons his whole experience has been so awful and so very anxiety producing.

But there may be a solution to it and the solution is science. If we can cure this disease or meaningfully treat it, lives will be saved and so will our economy.

The chances are we can do that. This is the country that invented the airplane, the transistor, the polio vaccine, the atom bomb, and many other things.

More than any other place in America, any other place in the world, America made the modern world modern. Just 25 years ago, people lived in terror of HIV. Today, antiretroviral drugs made the disease manageable. Fear receded.

Already, there are promising signs that medicine could beat coronavirus. According to F.D.A. Commissioner Stephen Hahn, a fully working coronavirus vaccine could be approved within the year.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN HAHN, COMMISSIONER, F.D.A.: The President mentioned that there is a vaccine trial currently being performed. It's a Phase 1 trial, so it's the earliest study that gets done. We expect that to take 12 months to get to completion to actually a time where we could approve a vaccine.

But that's -- these are all things to bridge to the prevention part of this with a vaccine. It's exciting work and the President is right. This is record time for the development of a vaccine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So that's great news for stopping another outbreak, another pandemic, but for the epidemic in progress, though, a year is too long.

Fortunately, other drugs are showing promise as treatments for the disease. Remdesivir, a drug first developed to combat Ebola is already being used in clinical trials right now.

The most promising drug of all though could be chloroquine. It's a cheap antimalarial drug that's been around for decades. Some say it has the potential to cure coronavirus. We told you about it last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GREGORY RIGANO, STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOL ADVISER: Hydroxychloroquine has been in the market for over 50 years with a quality safety profile. And I'm here to report that as of this morning, about five o'clock this morning, a well-controlled peer reviewed study carried out by the most eminent Infectious Disease specialists in the world, Didier Raoult, MD, PhD out of the South of France, in which he enrolled 40 patients, again a well-controlled peer reviewed study that showed a 100 percent cure rate against coronavirus.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: We were skeptical of that description last night because we're skeptical of everything. It's our job to be. Then we discovered the drug is already being used in clinical settings in the United States to treat coronavirus.

Today, the president explained the drug's potential and promised to make it widely available very soon.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: So chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine, now, this is a common malaria drug, and it's been around for a long time. And it's very powerful. And it's shown very encouraging -- very, very encouraging early results.

We're going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Amazing. So just how optimistic should we be about this and why would a drug created to treat malaria be so effective against a completely different illness.

Dr. Mihael Polymeropoulos is CEO of Vanda Pharmaceuticals and he joins us tonight. Doctor, thanks so much for coming on tonight.

This is for -- even for people are paying attention a little bit out of the blue, non-doctors, most people haven't heard of this drug. Tell us what it does and why it might beat coronavirus.

DR. MIHAEL POLYMEROPOULOS, CEO, VANDA PHARMACEUTICALS: Thank you very much, Tucker for having me on. And the President is right, that we need to pay attention to chloroquine and the work that is being done around the world and the adoption of guidelines for the treatment of the COVID-19 infection.

As you said, chloroquine is an older drug that was discovered actually in 1934 in Germany and used to treat successfully malaria for all this time.

What we know about this drug is substantial evidence over the last 10 years that it can indeed attack coronaviruses, and that includes the SARS virus, the MERS virus -- the Middle East Respiratory Syncytial virus and now COVID-19.

And most recently work that started in China in publications with clinical trials and patients saw that chloroquine can have a significant place in the treatment of patients with the coronavirus.

And the way it works, the coronavirus is a virus, it's not the parasite that causes malaria. But the way this drug works, it appears that it interferes first with the entry of the virus into the human cell and then interferes with the machinery that allows the virus to replicate.

So you can see why there can be a lot of excitement. That it can be an effect therapeutic and it could be a prophylactic agent as well.

CARLSON: So this drug has been described as inexpensive and common. Is it being used in every American Hospital to treat flu patients?

POLYMEROPOULOS: Absolutely, it is not. And a big gap is that in the U.S., unlike, China, Japan, South Korea, Poland, Belgium, Italy, we do not have recommended guidelines.

So what we saw today is the patient leading in bringing this to the forefront of the United States, but what we see is that it is not enough. What doctors who are currently fighting for patients' lives in hospitals, ICUs, clinics, emergency rooms, what they need is guidelines. Whom to treat, with how much, for how long? And that is not available in the U.S. yet.

CARLSON: I know someone personally who is receiving it in a hospital in New York, so I know it is being used maybe on some limited scale, why would it be hard to take the guidelines currently in use in Poland and Spain as you said and apply those here?

POLYMEROPOULOS: Yes, absolutely, we can. It just takes leadership. Because at the same time, the individual doctors, the individual hospitals are not free to make their own decisions whether it is going to be on the formulary.

And of course, there is a significant liability if they do something outside of what is allowed by the F.D.A. So a step that can cure all of that is what Poland did, introduced on the label of chloroquine in that country the indication of the treatment of COVID-19.

And we hear the F.D.A. that they may want more data. But again, there has to be a balance. And once everybody understands that, we don't know if this is going to be the ultimate cure, but when we have patients in the hospitals of all ages, dying with a catastrophic pneumonia, and we do not have any other option, chloroquine looks pretty good.

And especially because if the safety profile is understood, it is mild, and especially for the short term years, it should be fine.

CARLSON: Europe has fewer lawyers than we do. That may be the real answer. Once again, the trial bar kills Americans. Doctor, thanks so much for coming on and for explaining that. It's amazing and amazingly promising it sounds like. Thank you.

POLYMEROPOULOS: Absolutely. Thank you, Tucker.

CARLSON: Quick updates on where we are with coronavirus in this country and around the world.

Confirmed cases in the United States have surged past 10,000 tonight. In fact, more than 4,000 cases were confirmed just today. Our death toll is now over 200.

For now that we remain far more fortunate than Europe is, Italy suffered another 427 deaths just today. Spain had close to 200. France is well over a hundred as well.

And remember, all of those countries are much smaller than ours. The rising death tolls are frightening, but remember this, too, the virus can be beaten, and in some places that appears to be happening.

China's outbreak is still the largest by far, of course, it began there. But today that country announced just 34 new cases and eight more deaths. They could be lying, needless to say, but South Korea probably isn't lying.

From a peak of over 800 new cases a day, they are down to barely 150. So that is good news. If those countries can do it, of course, we can as well and we'll keep you updated on this battle as long as we have to.

So we've learned a lot in the past couple of weeks during this crisis, one thing we've learned is that America is dangerously dependent on Chinese manufacturing. We've also learned about China's sinister intentions toward the United States.

The Chinese government lied to cover up the spread of coronavirus earlier this year. When it became a pandemic they blamed it on the United States. They said we created it.

Chinese leadership then threatened to kill large numbers of Americans by withholding life-saving medicine from our population. That behavior is criminal. China is a massive threat to the United States. No one could deny that now.

So how are some in Congress responding to all of this? Well, some are working to reward the Chinese.

At this very moment, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is pressuring the White House to respond to this epidemic by passing out residency documents to rich Chinese; nearly all of whom, by definition, have ties to our enemies in the Chinese government. This is actually happening right now.

Something called an EB-5 permanent resident visa is available to foreign nationals who start businesses here that employ at least 10 people.

The current investment threshold for this is $900,000.00. Now at the moment, most of these EB-5 five visas go to Chinese nationals in order to finance real estate projects in our cities. One of the reason housing costs are so high.

According to congressional investigators, fraud and criminal activity are rampant in the program. Often, it's a little more than a money laundering scheme. A few people get rich by selling a path to citizenship for Chinese nationals and their children.

In fact, the program is so rotten that last year, Democrats and Republicans actually came together to reform it, to make it more restrictive. Consider that. Democrats making it harder for foreigners to get citizenship, but they did, because the program is that corrupt.

But Senator Graham loves it. He's trying to use the current national crisis to rollback reforms to the EB-5 visa program. He'd like to increase the number of visas to 75,000 a year, that's a jump of more than seven times the current number.

He'd also like to lower the investment requirement to just $450,000.00. How could anyone be for that? And why is he for this? And for God's sakes, why is he pushing it at the very moment the threat we face from China has never been clearer or more imminent.

Presumably, he is getting paid by donors to do it. We don't know. Just to guess, but that's usually how it works in Washington. But it only works if nobody notices it's happening, if it's done in secret. Let's hope a lot of people notice now.

Selling American citizenship to Chinese oligarchs isn't the way to preserve America's economy and protect our most vulnerable. But what is? Well, the administration and Republicans in the Congress are considering many options tonight, including cash handouts to every American and bailouts for American companies.

If we go forward in this and we bail those companies out, should we have strings attached to the tax dollars they're receiving and what should they be?

Saagar Enjeti is chief Washington correspondent at The Hill. He is author of "The Populist Guide to 2020," and we're happy to have him with us tonight. Saagar, thanks for coming on.

SAAGAR ENJETI, CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, THE HILL: Thanks for having me, Tucker.

CARLSON: So something is going to happen. There will be a plan. And I think most people would agree there ought to be some strings attached to this money, what should they be?

ENJETI: We need to have strings attached to this money, Tucker, because we need to highlight the crisis that we have right now, of which we do not currently live in a country where we manufacture critical medical supplies at a time of national security crisis.

And when we are dependent on China for 90 percent of our pharmaceuticals, it's an untenable situation in a global pandemic.

And so that means that we're going to give hundreds of billions of dollars U.S. multinational based corporations that the strings attached that money should ensure that they have to tell us that they are going to repatriate as much of their supply chain to the United States as possible because if they are going to take the public's money, then they need to act in the public interest.

And what we have learned now is that in this situation, that the corporate interest is not necessarily the American interest, especially whenever it comes to critical supply chains for pharmaceuticals, but pharmaceuticals just represents, Tucker, what the broader American economy is, is that a country that is incapable of providing for itself in a time of need national crisis is not a great country anymore.

CARLSON: So you might apply the same standard that you would to pharmaceuticals. I couldn't agree with you more, to automobiles or jet engines. I mean, imagine a company where a country where you couldn't make vehicles. And my understanding is a lot of those products are dependent upon Chinese parts.

ENJETI: That's exactly right, Tucker, which is so much of our international supply chain is bogged down in China. And what we have seen as you just laid out, is that they are threatening to kill American citizens at a time of need by withholding pharmaceuticals.

Now, in a time of conflict or a time of war, at a time of escalating tension, do you allow the most critical industries for manufacturing arms and for keeping your populace a thriving populace to be based in the territory of your enemy? It's absolutely absurd.

CARLSON: No, of course not.

ENJETI: So again, this is one time -- right.

CARLSON: Yes. Well, is it going to address it? Do you think this plan, this package will address that concern that you just outlined.

ENJETI: As of right now, there are no strings attached to some of this money.

Now look, there are people like Senator Josh Hawley, who has said that anybody who needs any multinational corporation that wants to come and ask for the public's dime has got to come with an explanation about how they're going to move their supply chains out.

And again, if they're going to take the public's money, they have to act in the public interest.

CARLSON: I think it seems very simple and it's hard to see a counter argument. Saagar Enjeti, thanks so much.

ENJETI: Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: Pharmaceutical drugs are the single most promising way to beat coronavirus, but at this moment that industry is dominated by the Chinese government. How much control do they have? We will investigate that just ahead.

Plus, Dr. Siegel is here to unravel the most common coronavirus myths now in circulation, the ones you're getting by text eight times a day. He'll tell you if they're true or not. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Well, you've heard it over and over and over and over, if you've got a television set at home, viruses don't have a nationality said the tiny brains on TV. Linking any disease to where it came from is bigotry. Does anyone really believe that though? Or is that something that someone that invented just the other day for political reasons?

That's the question we had for chief breaking news correspondent Trace Gallagher, who joins us now. Hey, Trace.

TRACE GALLAGHER, FOX NEWS CHIEF BREAKING NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Tucker. It was at the end of World War I in 1918 when the globe was hit with the deadliest strain of influenza in modern history. It was known as Spanish flu. Not necessarily because it originated in Spain, but because much of the information about the disease came from Spain and a Spanish King was also infected. The exact origin is still debated.

Rubella or German measles also did not originate in Germany, but it was a German scientist who discovered the virus was different than measles, hence the name.

On the other hand, West Nile virus did originate in East Africa in the 1930s and did spread when a mosquito bites an infected bird and then bites a human.

MERS or Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome is also a coronavirus that was first identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012. And although we keep hearing that coronaviruses are made unstable by heat, Saudi Arabia's extremely hot climate did little to slow the spread.

And finally, Japanese encephalitis is also spread by mosquitoes, and it did originate in Japan in 1871. There is a vaccine, but no cure -- Tucker.

CARLSON: Trace Gallagher, thank you for the perspective on that.

Well, all over television you're watching people downplay China's role in spreading the coronavirus and downplaying at the beginning and lying about it.

But on CNN, that's not enough. They always go the extra step over there. Some CNN contributors have practically become emissaries for Beijing. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): It was China that came to the rescue as Italy shock, sending medical personnel, nine pallets of ventilators, electrocardiographs and tens of thousands of masks, all desperately needed by a healthcare system in crisis, and appreciated by Italians stuck at home singing China's praise.

Europe had few other options. Donald Trump's America first policy has seen a gradual worsening of the Transatlantic Alliance over issues like climate change, trade, and most recently, over Trump's failure to consult Europe over the coronavirus travel ban.

With China now stepping into the global leadership role long abandoned by the American President.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: It's almost unbelievable that they ran that on the air. It was just pure bootlicking, flacking for the Communist Chinese government.

By the way, if they ever take over, Jeff Zucker will be there serving them.

Senator Josh Hawley represents the State of Missouri. We're always happy to have him on tonight. Great to see you, Senator.

SEN. JOSH HAWLEY, R-MO.: Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: you've been one of the relatively few people in the Congress who has been sounding the alarm on China for a long time. The coronavirus, I think, has highlighted the reasons why that's an important story. Where should we go next?

HAWLEY: Well, I think one of the things the coronavirus has done, Tucker, is just like bare the fact that our globalized economy is an economy that really works for China first and foremost, and not for the United States. Certainly, not for American workers.

Our supply chains -- where are they now? In China. Our medical devices, where they made? China. Our pharmaceuticals, where they made? China. Our Big Tech companies, who do they want to do business with? China.

I think it's time that we asked ourselves what kind of an economy have we allowed to be created, and what is it doing for American workers? We need some structural reform.

CARLSON: I think that's exactly right. In the short term, though, the country is paralyzed by coronavirus, which came from Eastern China, of course. What do we know about the Chinese government's cover up of this virus in its early days?

HAWLEY: Well, we know that they suppressed the actual news and we know that they ordered the whistleblower doctors to keep silent. Of course, one of those doctors, at least, lost his life because of that.

We know that they delayed global response to this virus by weeks, weeks that represent thousands of lost lives, Tucker.

There are studies out there that show that if we had had more time to deal with this, lives -- many, many lives could have been saved.

So listen, the Chinese Communist Party has systematically lied to its own people who paid the price. They lied to the world. Now, we're all paying the price. And that's why I think we ought to have an international investigation about where this originated.

We know where it was, it was China. China ought to be held to account and they ought to be made to foot the bill for what the world, including the United States is now suffering.

CARLSON: I agree with that. Absolutely and completely. But sort of off topic, but I have to ask you, are you heartened by the economic support plan taking shape in Washington right now? Do you think it's good or bad?

HAWLEY: You know, I think -- I think that I'm heartened by the President's aggressive response here. I'm heartened by his desire to go big.

CARLSON: Me too.

HAWLEY: I am heartened by idea that we ought to be giving direct relief to families in particular, families need relief. I do think that it's important that the low-income families not be left out and not be punished. Any kind of relief shouldn't be regressive, Tucker.

Families -- working families need relief and they ought to get it.

CARLSON: Amen. Senator, thanks a lot for coming on tonight. Good to see you.

HAWLEY: Thanks for having me.

CARLSON: Well, from the beginning of all this, as you know, if you've been watching, we're trying to bring attention to the stranglehold on global medicine production that China has.

The country doesn't just make many of the world's drugs. For the drugs they don't make, they often make the relevant ingredients. Just how profound is China's dominance of this sector? Well, we found the definitive expert on that question.

Rosemary Gibson is a Senior Adviser at the Hasting Institute and the author of the book "China RX: Exposing the Risks of America's Dependence on China for Medicine." She joins us tonight.

Thanks so much Rosemary Gibson for coming on. So we've been focused a lot on antibiotics. China makes 97 percent of the ones that we use, but broaden it out a little bit for us. Just how dependent are we for medicine on China?

ROSEMARY GIBSON, SENIOR ADVISER, HASTING INSTITUTE: Tucker, China makes thousands of the ingredients for our generic drugs, even the medicines to care for people who are hospitalized with coronavirus, 90 percent of those ingredients come from China.

We're talking about basic medicines to take care of people who have infections, who have to be on ventilators. And by the way, Tucker, the story about ventilators. Here's why we have a shortage of ventilators in the United States. China stopped shipping the circuit boards to make them.

So we have to bring our production back home of medicines and all of our medical supplies.

I was at a hospital a couple of weeks ago, talking about antibiotics, and they said there are some antibiotics they just can't get, and others they're rationing.

We are rationing antibiotics in the United States of America, because we have lost our industrial base and we lost our industrial base because China cheated. And American companies have to compete with the Chinese government, not Chinese companies, because those companies are subsidized by their government. How can American companies win against that?

CARLSON: It all happened so fast. It seems like just the other day that most of our pharmaceuticals were made in New Jersey.

GIBSON: Well, there's been a land slide, Tucker, and it began right after we opened up free trade with China. And I document this in "China RX." It was absolutely fascinating.

Once we opened up free trade, that's when we lost our last aspirin plant in 2002. So we can't make aspirin in the United States. That's when we lost our last penicillin plant which closed in 2004. At the same time, we lost our ability to make vitamin C.

These are basic things we need for life. This is about survivability. So we have to bring that manufacturing back home to this country.

CARLSON: Well, you just put a fine point on it. Rosemary, thank you for that. I appreciate your coming on.

GIBSON: Thank you, Tucker.

CARLSON: Well, anyone can get the coronavirus, obviously, you know that and anyone can be harmed by it. But for the elderly, it is a deadly disease. That's what we're being told.

But is the virus more dangerous to the young than we thought it was? A doctor from the frontlines treating this disease in Massachusetts joins us next.

Also Dr. Siegel here to strike down the many myths about coronavirus that may be flooding your inbox. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: For pretty much everyone in the United States, life is on hold because of this pandemic. You've probably heard though that a large majority of severe cases and deaths are in the elderly, really clustered among the very old.

Does that mean the young people are safe? Well, a doctor from Massachusetts recently got in contact with us, disturbed by the evidence he was seeing in Boston.

Dr. Michael Deninno is an Emergency and Critical Care Physician from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He's also a Professor at Harvard Medical School. We're happy to have him on tonight. Doctor, thanks for coming on.

DR. MICHAEL DENINNO, EMERGENCY AND CRITICAL CARE PHYSICIAN, BETH ISRAEL DEACONESS MEDICAL CENTER: Thanks for having me.

CARLSON: So you are concerned, and I think this is right. You're concerned that people believe that this virus is not a threat to the young, is that correct?

DENINNO: Well, I mean, I think the concern is -- and it is true that the majority of people between the ages of 20 and 60, who don't have any previous health condition will be -- will just have mild disease. That's a true statement.

CARLSON: Yes.

DENINNO: The issue is looking at the minority, and that within that minority, and this is not Boston, this is looking at the world, looking at Italy, looking at China looking at colleagues of mine from across the country. So this is not a Boston issue. This is just -- this is just looking at the disease process.

That minority, a number of them will have some substantial critical illness and could potentially be on mechanical ventilation or what we life support.

So the key is in understanding is that, you know, even if you're 20 to 60, you still can have -- you still can have critical illness. Now, the reason -- and it's important to note that -- you know, I don't raise this to cause panic. We don't want undue concern in that type of area, but it's important to know that because folks need to be able to take the appropriate actions and to follow all the instructions with the social distancing and all of those types of things.

So I think it's just important information for people to know, so they can act on it, but not again, you know, create unnecessary panic per se.

CARLSON: So we've seen a couple of cases where people in the prime of life, say 40 to 60, you know, hail people with no underlying health conditions have wound up, you know, really on death's door because of this. Do we know why it hits certain people that way?

DENINNO: We don't. I mean, we don't know -- and that's actually an excellent question. Like, why certain people have mild disease and other people have, you know, a severe disease or severe manifestations?

And so, these are some of the things that we're trying to figure out. I mean, you know, personally, I'm wondering what some of those elements are, as are my colleagues across the country and across the world. But right at this moment, there's a lot that we really don't know.

CARLSON: That's for sure, and I hope as we learn more, as you learn more that you'll come back on this show. Doctor, great to see you tonight.

DENINNO: Yes --

CARLSON: Thank you for that. Thank you. Whether they like it or not, most Americans could be spending weeks inside their homes. So since it's going to happen, most likely, and in some places it already is, what can you do to get the most out of it?

Yes, that's possible. You could be better for the experience. We are going to get advice on that from our friend, Adam Carolla after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: The long-term effects of the moment we're in are hard to know exactly. Restaurants and hotels have a long road back. That's clear. But what about higher education?

The nation's entire college population is at home right now, at exactly the same moment, the economy seems to be heading south. So what effect will that have?

Well, the first thing to know is that whatever happens next, it will not affect Harvard, Yale, Stanford and a handful of schools like those.

These places are richer than some countries. They'll be fine no matter what happens perhaps unfortunately. Big state schools are likely to weather the crisis, too. They have legislators behind them.

But for everyone else on campus, this is a life-changing moment. Consider the confluence of factors right now. First, endowments are likely to shrink as the broader economy struggles. Donations will drop, too, for the same reason. There will almost certainly be a big reduction in students from China, a group whose main appeal has always been their ability to pay for tuition. Take that money off the ledger.

Meanwhile, and most critically, an entire nation has just been shown that it's possible to deliver higher education in an entirely different way.

You don't have to drive to campus, buy textbooks, pay for room and board in order to get an education. You can do the whole thing online.

Now, this fact won't change everyone's behavior. Affluent families will continue on as they always have, 250 grand to send your kids off with their friends to have fun for four years. To people who can afford it, that's not such a bad deal. It's cheaper than four years of touring Europe, which is what our ruling class used to do.

But let's say you're not rich. Maybe you make 120 grand a year. That's high enough to disqualify you from most need-based aid at most schools, but it's low enough that paying 30 or 40 or 50 times thousand dollars a year in tuition hurts a lot.

If you're paying full tuition and many people at that income level are, that means you could be assuming hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to send a single child to college, every child. Imagine if you've got three kids.

Some of you watching don't need to imagine that because that's you.

Suddenly an online education doesn't sound so crazy. Your kids won't like it as much, hanging around a fraternity is a lot more fun than studying on a computer screen. But so what? And actually is that a downside? You might start thinking about that.

You might also begin to wonder, what a college degree is worth these days? And engineering degree from say CalTech will always have value. Medical School or law school might be worth it under some circumstances, but a communications degree from a mid-tier liberal arts school? Totally and utterly worthless. Maybe less than worthless since it signifies such obvious mediocrity.

Colleges know all this of course. They know their value. They've been bleeding the middle class dry for decades and they're self-aware enough to realize it, and that is why Washington is swarming with Higher Ed lobbyists, so that Congress will keep funding this charade as long as possible.

Well, the impossible may have just arrived. The charade is exposed.

Stanford University just kicked students off campus and moved its operations online. That's happening in a lot of places.

But here's the amazing part, Stanford, along with Harvard and some other schools like them has already announced that students will not get a single cent discounted from their tuition, despite being denied everything that makes an expensive college expensive.

Even more insulting and baffling, really, Stanford students aren't even being fully refunded rent for the dorm rooms they were kicked out of.

Keep in mind that Stanford has a $27 billion endowment. They could afford to do this for their kids. They just don't want to because they're pampered and arrogant and indifferent to the suffering of others.

As noted, Stanford and Harvard and Yale and Princeton all have enough cachet to get away with things like this. But other schools don't.

Unless they change radically, a lot of these places are likely to go under in the coming years. There is not enough Federal bailout money in the Treasury to save every pointless university in a bad recession.

They will be gone for good, closed, repurposed, we can hope into much needed efficiency apartments with loads of appealing green space.

Countless Deans of Diversity and Inclusion will be out of work. They'll wail and moan and they will write outraged editorials in "The New York Times" about the end of knowledge and the coming Dark Age.

Yes, ignore them. These people never deserve jobs in the first place. The Higher Education establishment is hurting this country and has for a long time.

Reform is essential. This is a good and needed thing. In fact, it's one of the few bright spots in an otherwise dark moment.

Well, if we put all the other concerns aside, the coronavirus epidemic is a profound shared experience for the country. Everybody is being affected in a big way.

Some people are at the brink of insanity for being cooped up in small apartments all day. Others are having shared family meals for the first time in a long time.

Adam Carolla is a comedian, a podcast host, one of most popular in the world and a general voice of wisdom. He's the author of the new book, "I'm Your Emotional Support Animal." We texted him late last night, asked him to come on to put some perspective on the shutdown we're all living through. We're happy to have him here now.

Hey, Adam. So like -- I don't know if you're in seclusion where you are, but a lot of people are, and it's a bewildering experience. How should we think about this?

ADAM CAROLLA, COMEDIAN: Well, first thing, I'm doing my podcast every day so you can hear it at podcast land and we're going to keep the gears turning.

You know, it's a prison sentence. It's a short prison sentence, and as they say, as a convict say, you can do the time or the time can do you and I figure, you should do the time meaning, go out, build a tree house with your son and daughter, cook lasagna with your wife. Don't let the time do you.

Don't end up with a face tattoo and a toilet filled with prison wine. You go out and use this little snapshot in life to live your life.

CARLSON: People are finding that hard and I'm not criticizing or judging, but it's just -- it's so different. I mean, people seem like they're struggling with being confined and being solitary.

CAROLLA: Yes, well, you know, I have a certain philosophy, which is when has change -- and I'll just say this to all your viewers -- in your life, when has change really been bad, big picture?

You know, the girlfriend that dumped you. The boyfriend that dumped you. The boss that fired you.

But when you look back after a couple of years, immediately, it's bad, like right now, it's bad. In a month, it might still be bad, but two years, I think you look at these little changes in life is a good day. That's the time you learn to play Stratego with your nine-year-old son.

Whatever it is, I think philosophically, change is always good, even negative change is good with time.

CARLSON: So what are the changes you're looking forward to?

CAROLLA: Well, I think just getting off of the treadmill of life, I think we're all sort of funneled toward this treadmill and I know you feel it, I feel it. We all feel it. You have to make hay while the sun shines.

This is a time just to reflect, literally just some quiet time. It's like forced meditation for those of us without a yogi. You know, I talked to Kevin Bacon on my podcast the other day. He said he and his wife did a crossword, oh, no, they did a puzzle like a 5,000-piece puzzle and he said, for the first time ever, my wife --

You know, they've been married for 33 years -- my wife said, let's do a puzzle together. Would that ever happen?

CARLSON: That's amazing. So what do you think we're going to learn now that we're forced to take a pause, get off the treadmill, experience a little silence?

CAROLLA: I think we're going to learn something about ourselves. Hopefully, we're going to learn that it's not all about the bottom line. Hopefully, we're going to learn that family is more important than your savings account. They're both important, but I think we have a chance to like stop and reap, prioritize and shift just a little bit.

CARLSON: Do you think people will do that? I mean, that would require getting off Netflix though, too, right?

CAROLLA: Well, again, do you want to do the time or do you want the time to do you? We really all have to look at this as a small window. We're almost in prison. You want to come out with a great novel or you want to come out with a venereal disease.

CARLSON: So those are your choices, the great novel or the venereal disease? I actually think what you said is about the most hopeful thing I have heard and I mean that since this all began and I knew that you would put it in perspective for us.

Adam Carolla, thank you very much for that. Have a great weekend.

CAROLLA: Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: Well, there are an awful lot of claims flying back and forth across text message about coronavirus. The effects of it, rumors of shut down, what could happen if you get it. It's important to know what's real and what's not.

So the authority, Dr. Marc Siegel Segal joins us next to sort the facts from the fiction.

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CARLSON: There are an awful lot of claims circulating out there about the coronavirus, most arriving by text. So which ones are true and which ones are false and which ones need more evidence?

The doctor we turn to and the country turns to, Dr. Marc Siegel is here to sort them out. Doctor, thanks for joining us. So give us some examples of claims about coronavirus that are banging around the internet that are false or true or that you can verify for us.

DR. MARC SIEGEL, FOX NEWS MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT Tucker, I've been following pandemics a long time and every time there's an outbreak or a big pandemic that comes, people are afraid and then they start clinging to certain myths that they hear or certain ideas that they hear that might not be true.

The first one that I'm going to talk about is that millennials we're hearing now are more likely or higher risk of catching coronavirus, a health official was saying that.

That's actually untrue. But you know where that comes from? It's because we're seeing millennials, unfortunately, not taking the precautions we want them to take. And we need to sit down and have a heart to heart with them, and not, you know, not have an adversarial issue. It's got to be something discussed.

They have to understand social distancing. We have to talk to them about precautions.

But another thing that's a myth, unfortunately, is we heard from China that you weren't going to get really sick from this virus unless you were over the age of 60 or 70 years old.

Unfortunately, I can tell you, we're seeing in our hospitals here in New York and around the country, we're seeing younger people getting very sick from this than before.

It's still predominantly older people and with preexisting conditions, but you're not immune from that possibility if you're younger, so that we need to dispel that myth. You're not more likely to catch it.

But if you congregate too closely together, you might catch it more likely. And if you get it and you're younger, you still can get sick.

The second story I want to talk about is Type A blood. There was actually a single study out of China that said that Type A blood -- people with Type A blood might be more susceptible to coronavirus. That swept over the internet and social media.

The fact is it was based on a single study. It was never peer reviewed, it hasn't been published, and I'm suspect of it. I'm not ruling it out entirely because sometimes your blood type does predispose you to certain reactions. But I'm not taking that as scientific fact. And I don't want anyone out there to say, oh, I know I'm Type A, now, I'm really in trouble.

So that's the second one. Don't think that.

Third one that I want to talk about is the use of Advil or ibuprofen. That's something that we need really need to be talking about because, Tucker, people get high fevers. Ever since you sent me to Nebraska, one of the first things that the Medical Director out there said is this is characterized by high fever.

You know, that's one of the things we look for and that's why screening at airports look for fever, but you know what? They also came up with an idea, people probably searched Google and they said, wait a minute, Advil and ibuprofen in the case of viruses can cause a rare lung side effect of an infection called an empyema.

But Tucker, that's a very rare side effect, and it's not characterizing this. So I would call that a myth, too, with the provision I don't want people pumping a lot of ibuprofen. They have to take Tylenol more than ibuprofen. The main thing is get the temperature down. But this is not something that you absolutely cannot take.

CARLSON: Interesting. So you're saying as a general matter, you'd rather people take take Tylenol, but it's not going to poison you if you take Advil?

SIEGEL: Yes. And I don't want people taking way beyond the amount of Tylenol they're supposed to take. So I would say judiciously mix them up.

Look, this is a time of great fear in our society. People are worried. People are looking for solutions. And I want to tell them to look to your public health officials and follow these guidelines and we will decrease the amount of virus.

CARLSON: Amen. I appreciate that. Dr. Siegel, thank you for clarifying.

SIEGEL: Thanks, Tucker.

CARLSON: So you may have seen the news reports this afternoon. The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee sold more than a million dollars in stock in mid-February after learning how devastating the Chinese coronavirus could be.

He had inside information about what could happen to our country, which is now happening, but he didn't warn the public. He didn't give a primetime address. He didn't go on television to sound the alarm. He didn't even disavow an op-ed he'd written just 10 days before claiming America was, "better prepared than ever for coronavirus." He didn't do any of those things.

Instead, what did he do? He dumped his shares in hotel stocks, so he wouldn't lose money, and then he stayed silent.

Now, maybe there's an honest explanation for what he did. If there is, he should share it with the rest of us immediately. Otherwise, he must resign from the Senate and face prosecution for insider trading.

There is no greater moral crime than betraying your country in a time of crisis and that's appeared -- that appears to be what happened. We will have more in this story tomorrow.

That's it for us tonight, though, we're out of time. Remember to call or text the ones you love. Have a happy and healthy evening.

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