 Come back to Think Tech. This is Community Matters. I'm Jay Fidel. It's the one o'clock block With Dr. Michael Dewart. He's our chief scientist and he's been looking at gee the infection and the epidemic the pandemic Since March we've been following it, but it's worse now than it's ever been. Hi Mike I'm sad to have to ask you about this Yeah, me too. I had expected we'd rounded the corner in October, but no it's getting worse So yeah, as you said, I've been fall. I've been actually following this in February and Did make some well because we've been following since February and I saw in February how bad it was I like scheduled all my elective surgeries like my cataract surgery before the shutdown happened and Glad I did But yeah We're Position where 47 million people in the world have had the disease We've had a going to hit 10 million people in the United States have had the disease sometime in the next week We've killed a quarter of a million people in the United States alone with this disease and it's just it's increasing It's the rate of in the rate of cases is actually Increasing now and it looked like there's going to flatten out back in September But now we're back on to an exponential curve The rate of doubling right now on that curve is every 10 weeks every 10 weeks will Add will double the number of people have had the disease So right now we'll hit 10 million people and this week we're gonna hit 20 million people by mid-January And that's that is really sad because it's unnecessary. We could have taken aggressive measures to control the disease Had everybody hunkered down like during the Great Depression say we're all in this together. Let's pull together. Let's Wear a mask that's social distance. Let's wash our hands and We could have greatly reduced the toll and right now it's like the third leading cause of death in the United States and that Going to just continue If not get worse Well, it gets scary tell you that Yeah, yeah Yeah, it's scary when the government and the executive branch says we're not even going to try to control it anymore You know we we need to be slowing it down so the when the vaccine comes We have a chance to get the vaccine to people in time to save the lives Because we're not going to have a vaccine widely distributed for at least a year Even if they had the vaccine ready to go tomorrow Wrapping up for manufacturing distributing it getting people vaccinated We're looking at at least a year from now That's a year more of agony and unnecessary death because we're not doing this stuff. We need to do to control it now in Hawaii We had a scare back in august when we were up to 300 cases a day or so now we're at 80 cases a day We're not on an exponential growth path right now. We're just increasing at 80 cases a day That could change Once you let the tourists in and we have a lot of people from the mainland seating Our idols with this disease we could go back to an exponential growth rate Um, I hope that doesn't happen Is we're not right now in a fortunate position. We're still manageable We're not overwhelming our health care system There's places on the mainland where hospitals just pull the covid patients now and places where they didn't expect it In north and south dakota now the highest higher per capita rates than new york city did at the height of the pandemic And that was largely because north and south dakota Decided they weren't going to try to control it. No I don't want to blame just one event, but the Sturgis motorcycle rally was a good example of an event where there were insufficient controls insufficient social distancing and masking and It ceded the disease all over the dakotas and also other places there's estimate I read that the At least 30,000 covid 19 cases can be traced straight to the Sturgis motorcycle rally and that's just one of many examples um People need to realize that this is a contagious disease the laws of nature don't care what your politics are um The disease that this fatal will kill you no matter who you vote for And uh, it could have been very different Yeah well What establishes a few, you know basic basic truths to go forward number one is You've got to have an active plan by government This is not something where you know the individual even the individual community or City or state can can handle it. You've got to have a national government actively involved. Don't you worry? Oh, I agree and and we we could have had that and I understood there's a There was initiative of the post office that's been two masks to every us household That would have sent the right message And they quashed it for I don't know whatever reason Um, I mean they could have printed donald trump's name on the mask and said stay safe donald trump cares about you And that would have sent the right message I don't know how it got to the position where the masking is a political statement because it's just laws of nature We want to be safe. Um We could have had You know if you had seized if we had the government had seized the initiative early on say look the chinese screwed up The chinese made a mess of this but we're the united states of america were the richest For the smartest were the best nation in the world We can control this disease show the rest of the world how it's done And instead it's taiwanese and south koreans and the senaporeans and the new zealanders are showing the rest of the world how it's done And the united states is pitied Which is astonishing to me. It's not the country. I grew up in We were the envy of the world and now we're pitting by the world Yeah, because of our inept response Um, and it's like it could have been different It could have been so different and it could have been different the way that would make donald trump look like a hero Well, I mean certainly He went wrong. He didn't he didn't pursue a national initiative here. That's you know, he he just never got there He never actually got there. He was Deflecting every every call for a national initiative or right down to having the post office send masks to you Um, and now he's threatening to fire fauci. I mean really incredible things Yeah, so given where we are, you know working to go there That there are places where the disease is so prevalent that now contract tracing may not be possible Fortunately, hawaii is one of places where we can still do contact tracing And still find that people have been exposed to the disease And isolate them before they can spread it further And there's a lot of places on the mainland us where you can still do that There may be a few where you can't but it's no reason not to try You know, we have the national guard. We have a lot of money a lot of resources. We just need to Have a coherent unified national plan to go do it You know it's And you know a stall on you know when people were dying of starvation russia said ah fun death One death is a tragedy a million deaths is a statistic And that seems to be the attitude a million deaths is just a statistic Yeah, I guess that's not the country I thought I was living in A lot of people I don't think people in general even nice, you know Well educated people fully understand the magnitude of a million deaths Or even 250,000 I mean how long would you have to count if we started counting now To 250,000 it would take us weeks to get there And you know and and and then people they don't realize I mean I think some of the media makes an attempt to show us I'm thinking of the news hour where they they give you a little praise sees about People who have lost relatives and all that About the experience and the experience for the individual and for the family it's it's gruesome And you know and if you if you put yourself on that spot It's something like all of a sudden You come up, you know, especially people who are compromised in some way all of a sudden you come up with these symptoms You take a test you find out you're positive it gets worse Now you're in the hospital. That's the last you see your family by All finished. You know, it's sliding under the waves. It's sort of like that awful scene in uh in orwells 1984 Where you march off to neverland and nobody ever sees you again That's that's what we've got here. Nobody thinks about you The other thing is, you know, I I I'm working on a theory here dead people don't vote If they had a chance to vote You know what they say history is told by the survivors And voting is done by the survivors Yeah, but the the virus doesn't care who you would have voted for It will kill you no matter who you would have voted for it's true And our cripple, you know, I don't so scary almost as the death rate the one to two percent death rate from this disease is the unknown long-term effects Already in the big 10 if athletes Apology athletes young people who are testing positive from myocarditis after about with covet Myocarditis is a heart condition that can kill people And we've got, you know, one in 200,000 athletes young athletes die of it every year anyway Which works out to a couple hundred athletes every year die in the United States as it is now Without the covet 19 induced myocarditis We can greatly know that that's not a lot of people may be dying of it But the point is that Everybody who gets myocarditis is cardiac compromised, you know, they will be have shorter lives They'll be more limited in what they can do less productive at work Then you've got the neurological effects long term increases the sensitivity for alzheimer's and parkinson's are not sure how much yet But that's going to be a hit to gdp when people knowledge workers Forget covet can't be knowledge workers anymore That would take a big hit out of our gross domestic product and it only takes a few percent to slower growth right down to less than the third world countries or Less than Europe listen anybody's controlling the disease We we could have controlled the disease and I think we still can it's just going to take a lot more work now A couple a couple thoughts on yeah go ahead. Yeah No, I'm just saying is that Like the long-term effects are an unknown unknown. We're beginning to know it and We we shouldn't be cavalier about this And I can see a lot of cavalier attitude towards the long-term effects Yeah, that's one of the interesting things about Trump's a sensible recovery at Walter Reed or all his experimental drugs and All the care and attention they gave him I guess But you know, he's he's not really out of the woods If you if you go by all the medical findings on this Every time they look they find some other long-term effect of this disease Yeah, you know and what he was telling everybody is oh, no you get through the disease. You have no effects. Look at me I'm really healthy. No problem. Yeah. Yeah, you know shed it off my shoulders. No problem Yeah, it's nothing I survived it Right, right. He had the best care ventilator support right away. He didn't wait a week You know to get health care the way a lot of Americans would have to And uh, and they touted this drug remesivir, you know, it turned out the World Health Organization statistically speaking It's not a health drug There are no really helpful drugs so far, you know, hydroxychloroquine, you know You want to think it would have treated it hydroxychloroquine and bleach injections, you know what he wouldn't be saying now, but Um, the point is there's no every every time we tout a new miracle drug to shorten the course of this disease It fizzles out There are there are no good drugs yet Um, there's no vaccine yet. They keep putting vaccine trials on hold because of side effects We don't know what the russian vaccine really Does we don't know how effective it is because they're not releasing good controlled study statistics so We're going to be waiting a while for a vaccine And we need to control the disease otherwise they're going to have You know, we're still in the first wave of this thing. I mean, we have not seen a first wave peak yet United States as a whole Um In the 1918 spanish flu, we had no choice but to let the disease take its course, you know We could do the quarantining We could do the social distancing and people got tired of it and ended up killing several percent of the population Which we're not there yet in the united states So we're getting there And there's no excuse for it. We should have learned from 1918 and we should have learned from sars Well, we should have learned from just reading the newspaper Yeah, you brought in our number of people in the country that that that consider the whole thing a hoax And they consider the uh advice to wear a mask uh inappropriate and wrong And social distancing the same thing then they go to sturgis and other places They go to his rallies Then the ignorance is is pervasive Now what strikes me is that um, he has educated Trump has educated millions of people. How do we ignore the science and at their own risk? So you know Interesting question is they they ignore it in the name of the constitution in the name of civil rights and personal liberties Uh, and they go and kidnap or try to kidnap the you know governor of michigan over that And there'll be more such And the question really is Where I mean, uh, let's put him You know out out of history for a minute Which is where he belongs How much control should the government have on this? We attended a uh the program, uh by the harvard club where the aclu spoke, uh on friday And very interesting and so they they considered a balancing of the equities And you know, you don't want to force people to do things they don't want to do And um, yes, there's an interest in making the community healthy, but there's a limit There's a limit and I'm saying to myself that there's no limit as far as I'm concerned If if somebody doesn't wear a mask I'd put him in the slammer. Sorry That now that's not really a violation of of the community civil rights, you know Yeah, you know, it's been established at least at the time of typhoid mary that the government does have the legal constitutional authority To quarantine people or threats to the community because the contagious disease No, and then this was litigated with typhoid mary, you know, she had lawyers who wanted to keep her from being quarantined said no Your threat we can quarantine you And that's not An infringement of civil liberty You know, if you're if you're contagious carrying it even now tuberculosis patients have to quarantine It's just a long because tuberculosis is incredibly contagious fatal disease And We we've forgotten what it was like to have these pandemics like used to be polio when I was a kid My friends must have lived in terror of the summer polio epidemics that sweep the united states Um, we used to have cholera epidemics We used to have all kinds of things that we take for granted are gone now Measles used to kill thousands of people a year We we have a vaccine now and you know, if you want to go out go to public school You need to get vaccinated and that's a well-established legal principle. No vaccine You go to whatever school will take you but it's not going to be the public school And private institutions are when they're right to require you to wear a mask or require you to social distance Require you to hand sanitizer. That's not even a government issue You know and it goes for them. I could go I mean it goes further suppose And this may be wishful thinking but supposed in a year from now Um, the population in general millions of americans have the opportunity to To to take a vaccine There will be those who refuse Um, and I feel the same way about them. They they may say they believe they are at risk And and therefore, you know, or that some crazy thing is going to happen like in the In the uh, the case of the measles vaccination Which was really not true, but some people got up and and uh, you know Popularized the notion that it would get lead to autism. I think That was the case of scientific fraud actually That was out and out scientific fraud. Yes. Yes We don't need to amplify that rumor anymore either. I was just out and out scientific fraud And it gained a lot of publicity for the researcher who claimed it and it Turned out not to be true at all But even if the vaccine has side effects, you have to look at the relative risks, you know Maybe there is a low rate of side effect of the vaccine and it has to be lower than the rate of Threat from the disease So clearly with measles polio smallpox All those diseases are so horrible and there are in their effects and their side effects That the vaccines are much much lower risk And that's that's why we don't have polio now and we're wiped out smallpox, you know We don't have to have measles at all. We don't have to have measles And and the same could be true of the COVID-19 and the worst case with COVID-19 would be People don't get vaccinated and people who get sick don't retain immunity for the long term And it could well be that it doesn't provoke a long lasting immune response every six maybe six months or so If that's the case, then We'll have a wave of pandemic every two years Approximately that's my simulation show And and the reaper will take as told over time And and you'll be weakened with every bout of the COVID you get So the people who are 30 and have it's a mild disease. I don't care. It's a mild disease Well, now they're weaker because they've had cardio Myocarditis from the disease or lung damage from the disease or neurological damage to the disease So the next time a couple years later the wave comes around they'll be vulnerable even worse So let's hope the vaccine comes sooner rather than later. Let's hope the vaccine means only be given once But it has to be given every year like the flu Well, this disease is much worse than the flu And so I get a flu vaccine every year. I would definitely get a COVID-19 vaccine every year. That's what it took to And stay away from this disease It's an interesting ethical question So you say to somebody, I want you to take the COVID A vaccination because we want to stamp it out so that, you know, the community doesn't have any more infection And it's it's it's wrecking havoc on the community. So we want you to take it Then the guy says, well, yeah, but but I believe that I'm going to have side effects from from the vaccine And so it's my right not to take it That's an interesting legal question when you have a pandemic And all these people, you know millions and millions of people we've proven It has been proven that they're at risk. So what what happens to this fellow who decides that I want to do it because You know, I I believe that the risk to me personally is greater than the risk to the community Somebody has to decide that And I mean, I think the government has to step in and say no, you may have a risk You may have side effects from the vaccine. You may even die from the vaccine But we're talking about 300 million people You have to help out You have to take that risk It has to be a very the safest effective vaccine we can get on the risk The risk of dying from the vaccine has to be like one in millions Right for it to be acceptable, right and that's possible. It's probably possible to do that Whether we can get it this year or next year is another question But it's been well established that the public schools can say you must have your vaccinations for you go to school The army can say you must have your vaccinations before you can join the army But anybody who runs an organization can say, you know, if you want an organization to have to be vaccinated Hospitals do this routinely with doctors who do contagious diseases You need to be vaccinated again that you're going to come to our hospital to work because you don't want to spread any contagion Oh, yeah, what about the opera? What about the opera, Mike? You like the opera? What about the What about going to a movie theater or even a restaurant? I would I would say you have to prove to me That you've taken the vaccine and you can't get in you can't get into the opera the symphony You can't get into a movie theater or a restaurant for that matter Well, those places could require legally that Level of proof they could require it. There's not the government. They could require you to show that you had your shots That's not likely to happen but if there's a contagious disease going around And people are passing around at the opera the movie theater the restaurants people won't want to go to the opera the movie theater the restaurants and Society will either accept not having those things anymore Or people will apply peer pressure to get everybody vaccinated Um Yeah, it's hard to say. No, I mean the government could require you to have a vaccine You know, if you want to operate a motor vehicle, you got to get your shots first or something. I mean Yeah, if you want to go to public school, you got to get your shots if you want to Go to the dmv You got to prove you had your shots before you come in and renew your car license something like that Uh for you and the government buildings can require you to show you've had your shots at the end of government building So you could do that um They should do that Yeah, they should make sure everybody takes the vaccine because that's the way you stamp it out You know, yeah I wanted to talk with you about is the is the is the social psychology aspect You know until now we have a substantial number of people in the country that do not believe it's real And that do not believe the, you know, in any of the scientific methodology for dealing with masks and Social distancing tracing tracking whatnot And I you know Now if trump loses this election tomorrow, hopefully, um, you know, we won't have any more irrational blame game things But if he wins the election, we will I suspect that the first thing he's going to be looking for Are scapegoats Who are at fault for this? I mean, he's he'll ignore it all I mean, yeah You get to say, yeah, we're not going to bother with it anymore. I've won my election I'm not going to bother with this disease anymore. Let's move on Right. I can see that happening. That would be a horrible outcome It collapse the healthcare system that people won't be able to get um Say coronary bypass surgeries because the surgeons dead Because there's such a long wait because you've got to have all these proofs that you don't have the covid before you go in vaccine or no We could be the point where in european union will have a vaccine in japan will have a vaccine in china will have a vaccine in the united states It's about in the cold because we've been ignoring it that would be A horrible outcome, but we would deserve that Well, you got to have some kind of compassion for the ignorant people who People who have trusted certain leaders to say things and have been misled They're not trying to do evil the people who are true and they're trusting these leaders They they think they're doing right And so you have to have some kind of compassion for them You don't want people to and and even if you don't have compassion for them You got to realize that they couldn't affect other people who don't think that way Um, they can affect the elderly who maybe can't be vaccinated because of too frail or something they could infect You know people who are immunocompromised from other things that can't be vaccinated um A lot of people could die innocently and then there's a lot of people who We simply need to either educate Or or somehow bring them around to realizing that we're all in this together the science is clear um You know, it's it's it's kind of like smoking. You know people know the cigarette smoking kills them anybody who Doubts the cigarette smoking is is a dangerous activity simply has not been listening. It's generally accepted so People who doubt that Walking around under vaccinated for cove at 19 would be dangerous But it should become the minority. I mean it's just you need to you need to control this disease I mean said that a lot of people choose to smoke Yeah, but that's That's not catching It's true. It's not this is this is catching Yeah, but you can forbid them to come into your office space into your building and smoke You can forbid them to be within 30 feet of the front door or whatever and smoke Yeah, and then it minimizes the risk to anybody else that has happened here I remember when downtown You know began to adopt that policy in general then the city adopted But you know on the social psychology level Mike it seems to me that one of the takeaways from this whole discussion is we're not going to be able to lick this thing Until a we get the government to take a position on it and the government hasn't Under trump b b we have to educate the people so they're all together You know you you said you know, we've got to begin this all together And and that's the same thing that happened in the plague When when people, you know realized that there was a problem and that they had to take Actional action to deal with it only then were they able to beat it back It's the same thing here. It's exactly the same thing here. We all have to be in the same boat We all have to be in it together and until we educate everyone and get everybody in the same boat We're not going to be able to do it. Don't you agree? Yeah I agree and No part of the problem of the 1918 flu the reason we forgot it so quickly Some sociologists in the region, you know Speculated the reason we forgot about that pandemic so quickly as horrible as it was that people were ashamed of the way they behaved During the pandemic They were ashamed of their denial the shame that the death told it it ultimately led to And we're going to have a similar phenomenon with this disease That once you get the vaccine get past this people are going to be so ashamed of how they behave They're going to want to just forget the whole episode And we may well be doomed to repeat this again because of that And this isn't going to be the last world pandemic. No, it'll happen again. Yeah, it will happen again special You know one thing that strikes me from some of the things you've said is So a person a person gets you know, kovat and he survives or she And uh, that's good. However, um, you know, it's it's become clear in the in the public conversation That kovat has long long lasting effects. Even if you're on all on waller, you know, we don't show You can still have these long lasting Effects like, um, you know your acuity for example, that would be very troublesome And also your vulnerability to other diseases your your body is is weakened and forever Um, and so now you go you go and apply for a job. Okay um Have you had kovat? Okay, now I suppose hippa would prevent you from saying that Um, you know answering that question But but the fact is that if the prospective employer knew That you've had kovat he would not offer you a job. He'd be That is a problem I mean if they can ask you if you had kovat they can ask you if you ever had cerebral palsy or epilepsy or A whole number of diseases that we now we consider medically private You can't be denied a job because you have a pre-existing condition as long as you can do the job Yeah, now they may require you to pass a cognitive test To get the job. That's normal. You know, not the About a cold test most places. Yeah. How about a call? Well, they might require you to take a kovat test too I mean you got a You could I mean they might be able to say you should have had a vaccine Or you should have proved that you're immune to kovat um Before you can Take the job. I mean they can they can do that. Yeah um, you you gotta it's kind of A pre-existing condition can't Be a use as an excuse alone for losing a job Um, it's got to be relevant to the job That's my insight from what I understood so far about the medical privacy issues You know, all those things may be changing COVID has changed that world in so many ways and people are so at least some people are so terrified of it and others are so ignorant of it You know, there's a huge disparity of knowledge and appreciation about what it can do Anyway, so um, but what is what is your takeaway for everybody? Uh, you know, what what do you want them to remember about this conversation on the eve of election day, Mike? Wow That's that's a good question. Oh, I want everybody to remember that, you know, wear your mask social distance wash your hands Take care of the people around you um And we're going to get through this One way or another the species will survive this But we have a chance here that side of the united states of america stays a world leader Or becomes a world laughing stock and that's what's taking this election. We're going to be pitied If we make the wrong choice by the world and by history and We have a chance to become world leaders example the shining light again Or to be the laughing stock and the object of pity Good luck to us. May god bless us everyone Yeah, thank you so much mike to where our chief scientist discussing the thank you. Thank you jay day before the election Yeah You