 We live in difficult times. This is Think Tech and it's Corona Watch. I'm Jay Fiedel and joining me is Stephanie Dalton and Winston Welsh. Hi, guys. Hello. Good morning, Jay. We're going to take a break from our 24-hour cycle of talking about Corona. Instead, this morning, we're going to talk about Corona because we really can't get enough information about Corona. So the first question is, how are you guys feeling about Corona and about yourselves? Everybody okay? Winston? I am feeling physically okay. You know, I think like everybody else on this planet, we're kind of corona-ing out a bit and it's sinking in deeply that we are going to be under lockdown for the next two months minimum. And so that's having an effect socially, psychologically, emotionally, physically. And we're just beginning to explore the ramifications of that. Oh, yeah. Well, it occupies your entire consciousness 24 by 7. This morning, I went for a walk. Walks are important all by myself. I went for a walk and I get to the first intersection and there's a guy there that I know not well and he says hi to me. And you know, I'm counting the feet, right? It was a good safe six feet. It was probably eight feet. And he said hi. That's all he said. But as he said it, his mouth opened and air came out. And I said, oh my God, I got to check this out. So I started measuring the feet and then I started measuring the direction of the wind to be sure that when he said hi, you know, the little globules, you know, were not being blown by the wind in my direction. My wife thinks I'm losing it, but actually I made this analysis and I'm here to say I don't think the wind carried his high in my direction although I'm not certain of that. Now, is that paranoia? Okay, anyway, all right, Stephanie, your turn. How do you feel today? Well, thank you, Joe. And I wanted to share that I have been informed by somebody of a study in email that was done in elsewhere in Korea or maybe China. But the fact of the matter is the droplets do sustain their vital nature for much more than the time we thought. So they're there for more than 30 minutes. And also the droplets go further than the 6 feet. So it is possible and they're still viable, you know, across that space into the greater space of maybe up to 10 to 12. So I saw that study report and expected it to go quote, viral unquote, but I haven't heard much more about it. But I just raise it as another alarming piece of evidence that this killer virus has started to trick. Well, how do you feel? Yesterday Chris Cuomo said that he was tested positive and his brother Andrew made a very nice comment about their brotherly relations. How do you feel? Well, I have sympathy for them and I hope that things go well. He has been diagnosed. That puts you in a different category. I'm having flu symptoms, which is the pre-category and trying to get tested to see if I have actually the corona. But I did find out in my searching and talking to people yesterday that the regular flu is actually still around and about and that people are having some complications or that makes it more complicated because you've got maybe the regular flu that looks like the corona. But so both of those things are in play and it goes along with the difficulties we're having and not expanding the testing opportunities. So clearly the recommendations are to increase the testing, expand the testing certainly for that kind of a situation. Well, let me ask you guys, you know, what is going on here with testing? We've been talking about testing since day one. Josh Green has been pushing on testing. Department of Health has been resisting that. Trump is all confused about testing. He's confused about everything. And I don't mean that in a nice way. So, you know, what's going on? Why can't I just have a little package all by myself and test to see if I'm pregnant? I mean, to see if I have coronavirus. Maybe they'll tell me both. But I need to know if I have it and I need to be able to do this quickly. It should be just like a pregnancy test. Why don't I have that? This is the 21st century and we know already and we have all this big pharmaceutical industry that makes billions of dollars with all these things. Why don't we have it? Your turn, Winston, why don't we have it? Well, I think you probably have, unfortunately, a higher chance of getting coronavirus and getting pregnant in today's world. And part of that is a lack of testing. I have to agree with that, yeah. And if you're pregnant, then we've got other issues to worry about, but I'd say we don't where, you know, I know on here in O'odham who you can go to the Queen Care which was Island Urgent Care before. You can drive right up and get a test. I think you have to call in advance and they come out and they swap you while you're there. They have one in Kapa Hulu, one maybe in Aqua and some other locations. But it's not, you got to go through some rigmarole to get a test. You got to get a letter from your doctor and other things because I just think that there's probably not enough tests because otherwise basically everyone should probably get a test. Well, sure, that's what's happening. That's what's always happening. We don't have enough test kits. We never did, you know, and then you don't have any confidence in CDC. I'm sorry, I don't have any confidence in CDC. Now they're changing the view of mask. We can talk about later, but you know, I make joke about the pregnancy because you should be able to have a test in your house that you can administer yourself and know in 15 minutes if not sooner, you know, when you're pregnant, you should know immediately if you have the coronavirus. They've isolated the genome by months already. Why can't we have a test? Stephanie, do you have an answer? Well, I think the answer is the president is not pushing this far enough and I'm hoping the latest data point that came out from people on experts on TV is that 20 to 50% of the people with the virus are asymptomatic. So I'm relieved to know that I'm not one of those because I know that that falls right into my point, Stephanie. It falls right into my, I saw that too. I'm sure Winston saw that. You know, a huge percentage of the people who have the virus are asymptomatic and yet they can spread it. Not only are they asymptomatic, but they are asymptomatic apparently through the course of the disease. So they actually never know. If they don't know, the people around them don't know. Nobody knows. A medical community doesn't know, but they're spreading and they're shedding and all this and that's really deadly. And that's the biggest argument you can possibly make for testing. We need to know who these people are, right? With the test, an immediate pregnancy type of test so that we can isolate them so they don't spread. Otherwise, they will spread. So why don't we have that? I mean, we know this already, studies, it's come out, it's clear, and the whole thing about, you know, the spray and the airborne issue that stays in a room for a while, travels on the wind, whatever it may be, we need to test if we're going to put this thing down. And I don't, you know, the Defense Production Act, for example, he was going after GM and who knows what else about ventilators. And that's very nice. Ventilators are very important. But we could nip this much more in the bud. If we could test, there is no universal American US test. Korea is way ahead of us and we need to test now that we found there's this huge number of people who have it asymptomatically. Winston, am I right? Yeah, you are right. But from what I've read, there's a number of tests out there and they vary in their truthfulness that I've read somewhere that there could be up to 30% false negatives and others that are false positive. So there's more intense tests, but even those can take eight days was the last thing I read to get back to you. So even if you have it, everyone still needs to be on lockdown right now. It doesn't matter whether you have it or don't have it, but we do need tests out there, especially when you have 50% of the people that study in Iceland, they know it was 50%. What did you say? What did you say, Stephanie? Stephanie, would you step back from me? Would you step back from the camera for a moment? We need a look at the six feet. Thank you, I'm only kidding. Yeah, yes, yes, actually 12, 10 to 12. All right, thank you. But you know, the thing about, I'm mad as hell about this because I think we have a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry rather and he has not applied the Defense Production Act to them and nobody in this country is making tests. Tests are ubiquitous in Korea and other countries, but in this great nation of ours, it's not so great to be great again. That's my phrase lately. It's not so great to be great again. We can't do tests. And let me take that a little bit. It's really critical if we're gonna put this pandemic down to have tests, we have to know. There's no other way to know, but a test and have bureaucracy stand in a way that's ridiculous. The other one, and I would like your opinion on this one too, is the masks. You know, masks are not rocket signed. I mean, greeting card manufacturers can make masks. Anybody can make a mask. You know, they got all these things where you can make masks at home now out of toilet paper, but there's no, I'm sorry, there's no toilet paper to make the mask out of. You know, I'm really, I'm mad as hell about this. Why can't this great United States of ours, which has been made great again, but it's not so great, can't make a bunch of masks. We should be able to flood the world with masks and we're not doing that. We're getting them from Russia, Russia, China. I don't know if this will give you any greater peace, but the experts were saying in response to questions about that and the failure again of administration to make this happen through the production act. But the hand washing and the physical distancing are the ways that will work to kill this virus. So the masks should be worn when you're outside, should be worn when you're sick, but they're down the list after hand washing and physical distancing. So the consensus was that we are strong in using those strategies even without the mask. You know, Stephanie, you saw what happened yesterday. All of a sudden the CDC, after a month of telling us that we didn't need masks, we didn't need masks, now they're telling us we should have masks and then you come and find the reason they were saying the first thing that we didn't need masks was because they weren't enough masks and that's the way of pacifying the public. What kind of business is that? You know, they're lying to us. I'm sorry, I mean that in the nicest possible way. They're lying to us and now when it's really getting nasty, I hate to use that term. That's a term that's much too often used in the Rose Garden. Now when it's really getting bad, okay, they tell us that masks would be helpful. I'm really getting confused. Who do I believe? You know, even Fauci is standing there next to Trump. I mean, I believe Fauci a lot more than Trump, but who do I really believe? Winston, where do I go? I can't go to social media. I can't, you know, the New York Times maybe or the Washington Post. There's so few places you get the straight skinny and you really have to organize your information so you know which one to believe and you know, you use your critical thinking apparatus to try to figure out how to save yourself because the chances of getting it now because we don't know the hidden invisible carriers, chances of getting it are pretty good. And you know, do you believe the, what is it, 100,000 to 240,000? Has Trump told us the truth yet? So is it more like, you know, millions? I suspect it may very well be millions. What do you think Winston? And it's like you said, the CDC was coming out and Anthony Fauci standing there, but he's thinking probably to himself, I have to balance so many things. Like I want to be here and get this information out, but I've got to deal with this man next to me who is saying exactly the opposite of what I need. I know the country doesn't have enough mass. I know that already. So how do I, how do we balance all of these competing interests? And so they say, okay, and maybe, maybe, let's just, let's just give benefit of the doubt that they didn't think that this was more airborne and we are getting more information out recently. And I don't think there's been any suppression of this exactly, but that idea that we don't need mass Asians have been wearing them for decades and it seems to help over there, both from transmitting and from receiving, but more from transmitting. You got a choir in Washington state. I think there were 60 people, they were singing. No one was symptomatic. 45 people got the disease. So when you talked about your neighbor and walking on the street, yeah, that's common sense. So there's a good article in the Atlantic Monthly says everyone thinks they're right about mass. It has both points in there. But basically one lady, which I thought was pretty salient advice, she says, just think of people being around people who are smoking. If you would be in a small room and there's smoke, you're going to smoke. If you're going to be down with a smoke, you're going to be breathing in the smoke. If you're going to be within eight feet of someone or coughing at like a smoke plume when they exhale, you're going to be in the smoke. So in the same way, think of it like someone smoking, you just want to avoid smoke. I know what you mean, but I'd like to offer this thought that if I had to choose a lung full of virus particles and a lung full of somebody else's third-party smoke, I'd take the smoke anytime. Sorry, that's the way. It's just an analogy of where to stay. I know, I'm just making fun. So Stephanie, what are you doing to protect yourself? You know, the thing about it is you can wash your hand. I do. I wash my hands every 10 minutes. I mean, if I feel the slightest need to wash my hands, I wash my hands. And then I do something a lot of people don't do. I wash my face after I wash my hands because my face may have those particles that drop down into your respiratory system. So it's good to wash your face and it's going to take a shower a couple of times a day and change your clothes, all that stuff. But I don't know if that's working. I have no metric on whether that's working. I could be a secret carrier. That's why we need to test. So Stephanie, what have you been doing? Well, that's what I'm doing probably not enough but I have my Clorox wipe. So I'm also even putting that on my face after I've been to the shop or something like that and always wipe down everything with my Clorox wipe. But and I'm trying to wear my mask because in Italy, 60 doctors are dead. And that was mostly because they didn't have the protective gear and certainly part of the protective gear is the mask. And of course, they're closer up to the patients. But I think what is important about your point and your diatribe is that we have coming after this, we have the second wave and there's possibly a third wave. So Fauci's mentioned a little bit about this because if we don't get control of it to the point that we could protect ourselves in the second wave, then the second wave could possibly wipe us out. And I think there's much hope in pushing whether I don't know how much hope there is. But the testing needs to go not just for the Corona but also the new test that's under development and being used in studies is the test for the antibodies because I want to know in addition to the Corona victims who have no symptoms, there are those that had no symptoms and then afterwards and did have symptoms but afterwards they all have antibodies and there's the test to find out who's got the antibodies so that we can follow that. I'd like to move on for the lack of time to something else and it's called supply line. So going down to the food store, you don't go too often. Probably should wear a mask when you go and be careful to clean up when you come home and let the groceries sit quietly for a little while or wash them and all that. So you're gonna have food, gotta have electricity, gotta have water, right? Did I get it all? Well, I don't think that medical services, sort of run-of-the-mill medical services is something we can depend on long-term. I have a couple of doctors who have had routine appointments with, they cancel and I perfectly understand that, agree. They don't want to expose their staff or me or them or anybody. So if it's not essential, no appointment. But it gets much more serious when you're talking about food. And there was an article in the New York Times this morning about how the supply... In fact, there were two of them. How food was in the Washington floods of matter. Food, the supply lines of food, we should not assume that they're gonna continue forever without disruption. This is a great concern because in order to keep civil order, in order to keep people from not freaking out entirely as the death toll increases daily into hundreds of thousands, we really need to have food. For one thing, it's psychologically helpful because you do compulsive eating and gain weight at home sitting watching the tube. But for the other thing, you know, you need to have food. Winston, what are we gonna do when you go down the safeway and the shelves are bare? I mean, on essentials, this could happen. And there are people who speculate that it might happen soon. What do you think? I'm not gonna go down that route. I think our supply lines are fine right now. There's going to be food coming to the streets. Toilet paper's back. You know, they may be saying, okay, our cocoon has come in the morning. There's going to be food. Of course, nothing will last forever if you be kidding. But this isn't a forever situation. This whole thing about staying indoors right now, it's not that people aren't gonna get this thing. From what I've read from the very beginning, we're expecting 140 to 170. I'm sorry, 40 to 70. Let me go back to the supply lines. There was a big scene yesterday in the news about some guy who was fired from Amazon over a dispute on coronavirus and staff and protection and masks and PPE for the assembly line people in a big facility, Amazon processing facility. And of course, that was followed by labor actions in various facilities for Amazon around the country. And if I were Amazon, I'd be concerned. And if I was, you know, if I was me, I would be concerned because I happen to rely on Amazon heavily for a lot of things. And they're not just discretionary things or things I think I need in our household. And there are people in this country who like to kick Amazon in the ankle. It reminds me of AOC back in the day when she was complaining that Amazon should not have a facility in Long Island City, New York because it was, I don't know, the reasons. The reasons are hard to understand. And now there are people that kicking Amazon because they're not protecting their assembly workers enough. Bottom line though is Amazon goes down. Where are you going to go? The mom and pops are closed. The retail is in shambles. If you can't order it by email and I mean by online and get it and have a reasonable chance of getting in a reasonable period of time, if Amazon is not functioning anymore and you know it's not functioning nearly as well as it was. What are we going to do, Stephanie? I don't know how much you rely on Amazon but I'd like your thoughts on the supply line of things that Amazon provides. Very concerned about all of that. I think it's an excellent point and all of us should be thinking ahead about how to support the work that's going on. There are these individual unique efforts to get a food out to the, to the kapuna here in Hawaii and those are laudable efforts and people are spending a lot of time on doing that. So whatever models they are developing that will work and that can then raise revenue for the people supplying them that the state needs to be thinking about that. Certainly the governor, the mayor should be promoting all of that work and I think to some degree they are because they're getting, they're getting some TV time on how it is that they're doing this and identifying them and giving them some credit. So that's one, one area that needs to be embellished and promoted because you're absolutely right Jay. I think this is critical. This is the next, the next point because it's not the problem of actually dying of the corona and people dying of the corona which is no laughing or smirking matter. It's then the survivors then what's left and what do you do? And we've seen the reality. The reality is the people who staff the supply lines whether it be Amazon or food or other critical things they're people and they're just like you and me and except that they're out there. They're working. We should compliment them for that. There are heroes that make things continue even under the crisis. But if they get sick or they get concerned or for one reason or another they're, they wind up at home in a shelter in place program or in quarantine. I mean, it's scary to be on those supply lines because they, you know and maybe as the guy complained maybe they don't have the same the Amazon guy they don't have the same protection right or enough protection to feel good about it. So it's like health workers if we lose the health workers because they all get sick you know our crisis is that much worse if we lose our supply lines because the people who staff them get sick or need to go home you know that makes it you know do you accept what I have to say Winston? Okay, they are going to get sick. Half of us are going to get sick. That's a given 40 70% are going to get sick. The whole point is that we're flattening the curve so that we can take care of the people when they do get sick. So we're getting building up to herd immunity basically. I mean, remember the British came out a week ago and they said, oh, we're just going to let everybody get sick and we're going to build up cured immunity. People said, oh, no, we're not going to do that because it would be devastating. People are going to get sick. Half of the people are not going to be symptomatic for whatever reason they're not they're going to develop immunity. Like Stephanie said, we're going to start taking out their blunt plastic people with that. The economy can function with half of the workers. It's probably already functioning with half of the workers. People that get sick will be replaced in a reasonable manner. We don't have to worry about everything collapsing now. It is not the zombie apocalypse yet. We have very serious issues to face and this is one that does need to be addressed. But as we find that people are not all falling very ill of this and they're just becoming, I guess, seroconverting but without real detrimental effects, we're going to see that we are building herd immunities. We're going to be getting vaccines. It will happen in time so that we won't be facing these. Well, that loops back to the point we were discussing at the beginning of the show. Namely, they should have a lot of people out there who have it but are asymptomatic and asymptomatic to the point where the disease runs its course. They don't know about. They're not much affected by it although they're shedding virus along the place. Those people are part of the herd immunity process. So if you have, I don't know what the percentage is. Say 60% of the people in the world somehow get through this process. Some of them die. Some of them, you know, manage to, you know, go to hospital and come back again. It's not so easy. Then, you know, then you could reach herd immunity but and this is, this may explain the mysterious reduction of the Spanish flu back in the day and other such epidemics. But last question for us because we don't have a limited time. That's kind of, we don't have a limited time. None of us have a limited time. None of us have a limited time. So the question is, you know, we have various information coming to us about when this is all gonna cool off. So, you know, I've heard it, you know, from Easter that's ridiculous to a couple months maybe or as much as four months. Her, you know, June, July, August, September. I mean, there are so many opinions you can shake a stick at it. And, you know, the government is really not giving me any confidence that it is at a specific time or even period of time or range of dates. But I'd like to know how you guys have integrated all the information they've thrown at us, you know, as to when this is gonna cool off when we can have a reasonable expectation of going outside again without a mask and going about our lives. So, Stephanie, when you shake it and bake it what's your feeling about that? I think we, you raise all of the challenges that everybody is going to grapple with. If not now, they will be. And unless the administration can turn itself around or we get a new one that will be responsive to these difficulties, we are in for a pretty rough time individually. So, I understand this is- Two months, four months, six months, eight months. And it's also- Are you not willing to give me a number? I'm saying, well, I'm hearing like next month, next year, June, we may get somewhere back to getting our feet on, getting some traction on this thing. But until then, because we have guaranteed a second way, guaranteed, and then there's a possible third. But that depends on how good we are now and how much better we've gotten by the second. So, the big frustration is, of course, this majestic country with all of its talent has not stepped up to the plate or can't step up to the plate. It's not so great to be great again, you know what I mean? So, Winston, give me a number. Okay, University of Washington came out with their study. You can go state by state, very interesting tool. Of course, it's very conservative or maybe liberal, I guess, I don't know, in their interpretations. This is where you get to $200,000. You can go by state. They say Hawaii is going to peak at the end of April and that we will peak with a certain number of deaths and that by the mid-June, we should be down to about one death per day again. This is the first wave. I think this thing is with us for a year and a half, couple of years, and there will be different waves coming. So, like Stephanie said, this is the first wave. It's here, it's with us. We just have to deal with our best way that we can to cope with it, keep sharing a lot of aloha with people, share aloha with yourself, mentally, physically, spiritually, all in all ways. Take care of yourself so that you can take care of others when the need arises. Well, what I hear you guys saying, and let me throw this at you, what I hear you guys saying is, okay, it's going to be roughly 18 months before we can feel comfortable. And I think baked into that answer is going to be 18 months before we have a vaccine, which is what they said at the beginning. And I would tend to agree with that. I mean, maybe it's earlier, but that'll be the miracle if it's earlier. Mostly it'll be 18 months. And the question is, you know, until there is a vaccine, seems to me that as a personal matter, we'll want to have that, you know, quick test at home, rabbit's foot kind of testing. We'll, the 15 minute testing at home, we'll want to have mess, everybody with lots of mess. And we want to stay out of crowds and maybe even restaurants because we don't want to get sick. And so we're going to be in a limited lifestyle. We'll call it that just as now, or maybe a little modified for what, another year and change. That's, I think that's all very reasonable expectation, but it may change in the next seven days, you guys. And so I'm so excited to tell you that we're going to do this show again next Wednesday, okay, at 12 o'clock. And we're going to explore the, well, not the same questions, but the questions that arise in the meantime. What do you think, Stephanie? Well, I'm thinking it's exciting and it's hopefully the service to our audience that we're trying to make it be. And I think on the state of the state of Hawaii, we're going to have some consideration for small business owners and especially the dental community, which I didn't always consider. Yes, yes. All business owners. Very important point. That's a new, and that's a new part of their lives that they're finding out about. And how important that category is and what is coming out of the administration to help them and the layers of that and the unemployment and the people that are suffering after being in such a secure industry and as many of the small business. And Winston, what's top of mind for you going forward to the next week of this great adventure of ours? Oh boy, it's going to be, I think Donald Trump was right. In this case, it's going to be a grim couple of weeks. It's going to be a grim month. And so we need to kind of steal ourselves and just limit your exposure to social media, to all kinds of media actually. And just to the amount that you can take in that's not going to harm you because you're probably not going to change a lot. If you don't already know what to do, figure it out and share that with people and then otherwise find something that you love doing whether it's reading or working in your garden or walking your dog. So call them people you love. So just yeah, for me, for me, it has turned out to be Andre Segovia. I pull them up in my Amazon music and I listen to him play his songs and it comforts me. Well, thank you, Stephanie. Stephanie Dalton and Winston Welsh. Thank you so much for doing this. It is, as you said, Winston, it's a great contribution. Let's do it again. Let's do it every Wednesday at noon. Thank you so much. Aloha.