 Survival now is a team sport and life is a team sport. It's the whole world versus a virus. It needs to be beaten together. Welcome to World Versus Virus, a podcast from the World Economic Forum that aims to make sense of the COVID-19 outbreak. Every week we bring you expert advice and analysis of the global crisis and look at what might be done to fix it. I'm Robin Pomeroy. This week, as the richest nations in the world struggle to cope with COVID-19, we look at the even greater risks faced in developing countries that lack sound healthcare infrastructure. One ventilator in Sierra Leone, six in Burkina Faso, 13 in the huge Democratic Republic of Congo. This disease can't be allowed to run riot until it overwhelms an already weak health system. We hear from Bangladesh. When I read about people in the West working from home and applying for unemployment wages, it's unheard of. These are all luxuries in this part of the world. And from this Somali refugee in Kenya. They get access to water once a week. Once a week. How do you wash your hand? As the world prepares to celebrate Easter, Passover and Ramadan, we hear the one about the Imam, the priest and the rabbi, who tell us how they see religion's role in combating COVID-19. You know, this isn't the first time for Passover that we've had to shelter in place. The very first Passover, God commanded the Israelites to shelter in place so that the plague does not destroy you. And we all know what coronavirus looks like, but have you ever wondered what it might sound like? A professor from MIT plays us his COVID symphony, which is not only surprisingly pretty, but could also help us defeat the disease. But first, some stories you may have missed. I'm joined now by Linda Lasina in New York. Linda, how are you? Hi, Robin. How are you? Yeah, not bad. Thank you. Linda picks out three really interesting stories from the coverage on WeForum.org every week. What do you pick for us this week? My picks for this week, they all deal with one question, and that's what's next. People are eager to know when the lockdown will end, when we'll get a vaccine, and what will our lives be like when it's all over. The first, when will the lockdown end? So, Guido Van Ham, a prominent virologist, he spoke to that in a piece this week. He said that one of the key signs to look at is the number of active cases and the number of severe or critical cases. He said, as long as those numbers are going up, hospitals are likely overcapacity, and you can't really expect measures to be relaxed. Those numbers that we get every day aren't any use unless you're putting them into some sort of context. So, it's helpful as we see those statistics coming through. That's called a virologist's rights to his family to explain Europe's lockdown. It's by Guido Van Ham, who is the father of Peter Van Ham, who works at the World Economic Forum, and is a very useful source to us. What's the second one, Linda? The second one deals with that when we'll get a vaccine, a colleague of ours, who is a project lead for Precision Medicine. She broke down the phases of the critical trial and a piece for us, and it's a process that usually takes around 10 years, but thanks to efforts by governments and industry leaders who are expediting efforts, we could get a preventative option in record time, possibly even next year. That one's called why a coronavirus vaccine takes over a year to produce, and why that is incredibly fast. What's the third story of pick, Linda? I think everyone is wondering what life is going to be like when this is all over, and the editor of HuffPost Japan, he wrote a really interesting essay for us tackling that very question, and he was talking about how Japan has already changed a little bit thanks to the virus with more companies than ever allowing remote work and families giving up household work in ways that they never had before. He had a really fascinating statistic, and the piece that said that wives and Japanese couples spend around 263 minutes on chores each weekday, and husbands spend only 37 minutes, and he said these numbers were kind of already changing in the day to day, so if you are wondering what life might be like after corona, you can look at some of the new habits and patterns that you're building now because those are likely to have some really long-term implications. The story is called how can we prepare for the post-coronavirus era of view from Japan? All of those three stories are live on our website, weforum.org. Linda, thanks very much. All right, thanks so much, Rahman. I'm joined by Anna-Bruce Lockhart. Hi, Anna, how are you? Hello, Robin. I'm fine, thanks. How are you? Fine, thank you. You spoke to someone who knows a lot about how the COVID-19 outbreak is affecting the developing world. Who was your guest? It was David Millerband. He is the president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee. He and his teams are committed to protecting vulnerable populations in refugee camps, especially in the developing world. Let's hear what he has to say. If you think it is really terrifying to face the prospect of COVID in an advanced industrialized country, if you're worried about ventilators in New York City, if you're concerned about the health system in Italy, just imagine what it's like to face the prospect of a virus where there isn't running water, where there isn't a proper health system, where densities of population are not just the 25,000 people per square mile that New York City has, but the 40,000 to 70,000 people per square kilometer that are packed in to Cox's Bazaar in Bangladesh where there are a million refugees from Myanmar. So our concern is with using the gift of time that we have in regions of Africa, in the Middle East outside Iran, in South Asia, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, where we know that the disease has not yet hit with full force to do the preventative work. Because if we don't get the prevention right, there isn't the health system to take care of people, and there's going to be death on an absolutely appalling scale. We now know that the disease is being recorded in the world's conflict hotspots. It's being recorded in Syria, it's spiking in Afghanistan, it's being seen in Somalia, the conflict zones of the world, which in the main have the worst health systems and the greatest danger to public health, and now seeing recorded cases of the disease. So we're talking a matter of weeks before this disease, if unchecked, becomes really rampant. So Anna, you asked David Millarband about international aid. Well, we were talking about how the United Nations has been calling for $2 billion in humanitarian aid to help tackle the outbreak in developing countries. But it's clear that, you know, the world is going, it's facing a global recession. So I asked him where the money is going to come from. Well, money we have discovered in the last few weeks is one thing that we're not short of, because when governments determine that they will turn on the spigots in order to meet a crisis, money they can find. The tragedy is it's not being spent in a fair way. It's not being spent in the countries where the disease could run absolutely rampant. What people should never succumb to is the idea that this disease is so big that it can't be hindered in its path. We know that the basics really matter. And for want of hand washing, the disease takes root. For want of triaging, the disease affects a whole family. For want of an isolation centre, the disease hits a whole community. And that's what we're fighting at the moment. I asked him if you could tell us a little bit about the state of health care infrastructure in developing countries. I really want to call out to people what it means to lack a health infrastructure. One ventilator in Sierra Leone, I believe in Burkina Faso 13 in the huge Democratic Republic of Congo. There's a very clear lesson in this that universal health coverage is a million miles away for the people that we're talking about. But also that this disease can't be allowed to run riot until it overwhelms an already weak health system. David Miliband used to be British Foreign Secretary, so he has a good idea of how the international community tends to react to global crises. What did he say about the international response to COVID-19? He said that this was a problem facing the connected world. And he was very interesting on the matter of the coordinated international response. It's risible that the countries of the world are not able to come together in the face of a global pandemic. And I think it's right for us as citizens to say that, yes, the scientists need to be connected, but the politics needs to be connected as well. This is not a time for global political game-playing. It's not a time for geopolitical point-scoring. It's a time for protecting humanity. And I am very concerned that the wrong lessons are being learned. We cannot live in a world of a network of fortresses, that phrase of Yuval Harari. We've got to live in a world where the common elements of humanity are properly recognized. And I think it's time to call out the short-sightedness, the myopia that is governing too much of this response, because it needs to be beaten together. A survival now is a team sport. And life is a team sport. And it's time that the governments of the world showed that they understood that. David Millerband was talking to Anna Bruce Lockhart, and you can hear an extended version of that interview on our website. Anna, thanks very much. Cheers, Robin. Lockdown isn't easy for anybody. But what about Bangladesh, a country no bigger than New York State, with a population of more than 160 million people? Many of the poor live in slums, and there's something like a million people who fled neighboring Myanmar, packed into the Cox's Bazaar refugee camp. I spoke to Asif Saleh, who runs BRAC, a big non-governmental organization, down the line from the capital, Dakar, just a few days into a national lockdown, that he said would fail to keep people at home. He told me 90% of workers there are in the informal sector, and most would have no choice but to go out to seek a living. The people who are getting hammered by this, your day laborers, who actually depend on the local economy to make their living. When things are closed, people are not out on their street. You know, the rickshaw pullers, the van drivers, small businesses. It's happening at a time when our New Year celebration is about a week and a half away. Ramadan is starting. The biggest celebration is about a month and a half away. And so the daily wage laborers and others, they're all getting absolutely nothing. And there's also a vast group who are sort of domestic workers. So with the COVID-19, then they're being asked not to come. We don't have health insurance. We don't have sort of social protection in this part of the world. So that means that you don't have any safety net to fall into. And when I read about people in the West working from home and applying for unemployment wages and other things, it's unheard of. These are all luxuries in this part of the world. So how is a rickshaw driver or van driver going to survive? How are they going to feed themselves and their families? They can't. They absolutely can't. So unless the government comes forward or other groups comes forward to provide them emergency cash assistance, like we have from our organization, those are the things that need to be in place if we don't want them to be starving. So oftentimes in countries like ours, because you don't have these kinds of social protection in place, if you don't pair up economic support or resistance with the lockdown, it's not going to work. And for countries like ours, the government cannot afford this. In Bangladesh's case now, you have a major impact on the garment sector. 83% of Bangladesh's exports actually come from garment. The factories are planning on shutting down. The government just announced a bailout, but that's only for up till June. Another big pillar of our economy is migrant workers who actually send back their remittance money. So that also saw a steep decline. It has not only just the poor and the low income now, even the middle class is also filling the pinch. Another peculiarity about Bangladesh, but it will be fairly normal in many countries, intergenerational households. This is seen as one of the reasons that Italy was hit so hard, is you've got whole families from very young children through to grandparents or great-grandparents living together. That's an extra risk for you. Yeah, absolutely. And it's culturally very, very difficult to do social distancing. It's a very small country. It's the size of New York, but the population is almost two-thirds of the US. So when you think about that, then the idea is non-existent. We have slums which are so densely populated. 60% of Dhaka's population actually lives in slums as well. You also have a lot of refugees. It's a huge worry because that's the largest refugee camp in the world right now. It's even more densely populated. So we have close to 800,000 people packed in 6,000 hectares of land. So if anything happens there, that is a very, very major worry. We need to think of something which actually works locally and figure out what works, engaging the community, changing their behaviors by intense engagement campaigns and other things. We need to figure out what is the best solution beyond shutting down the economy completely. When people are hungry, when people are starving, that often results into social intuition, social unrest. That happens very, very quickly, right? So it can unravel very, very quickly in countries like ours. That was Asif Saleh, a member of the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders Community. You can read his article which is called In Bangladesh COVID-19 Threatens to Cause a Humanitarian Crisis on our website weforum.org. So what's it like as a refugee in the time of COVID? Mohammed Hassan Mohamud is a Somali who is living in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya but left to seek work in the capital Nairobi. He spoke to Max Hall. You said you left Kakuma three months ago. Why was that? I thought that if I come to Nairobi I might be able to do something to support myself and to also support my family. Nothing has come through yet. This whole coronavirus just makes everything that much worse. The government's policy is to have the refugees be in the refugee camp. So me being in Nairobi looking for a job is so risky for me and for my family. What do you mean by risk? Economic risk? Physical risk? Health risk? If I see the police I have to run away and I cannot go to the health workers at the moment because people ask you what is your status? What is your documented status? Even though I grew up here and I've spent my whole life here considered as part of the society there's a curfew at 7pm and the police are just walking around and if they see you as a refugee it's a whole another issue now. You ask yourself if I get sick where do I go? Because the hospital is the police station who do you report anything to? Because that fear what will happen to me? Will I be deported? Will I be put in prison? People with refugee status how are they able to access information? Are they getting information on the virus and how it affects them? So mostly what they hear is word of mouth someone tells them something and especially now with this fake news you know people they have all of these ideas people cannot clarify what is right and what is wrong. In what way does the coronavirus make things much worse for you? At the moment for example the people I live with in this building they get access to water once a week how do you wash your hands every day? How do you buy even soap? The refugee community in Nairobi was relying heavily on religious leaders for example the local mosque or the local church people would reach out to them they would get assistance, they would get support but now even the mosques are closed the churches are closed and you know everybody now is just retreating back everybody is becoming an individual and now is the time to be supporting one another I think people should be open now I think people need each other now more than ever As the world prepares to celebrate Easter Passover and Ramadan we were wondering how these three religions were faring in the face of COVID-19 I'm joined by my colleague David Knowles David how are you? Very well thank you How are you? I'm alright thanks Now you looked into this tell us what you did So we invited a rabbi a pastor and a Muslim cleric to talk to us on the same zoom call about the ways they and their congregants are changing their behavior and adapting their behavior to do their worship through their major festivals Great so that's the old joke of a rabbi an imam and a pastor walk into a zoom chat room okay alright let's hear what they had to say I'm Rabbi Bartwasowski I'm the Appleman Professor of Midrush and Inter-Religious Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York where I direct the Milstein Center for Inter-Religious Dialogue mainstream Orthodox and conservative authorities who normally would say you shouldn't be televising on the holiday or on Shabbat we're all doing zoom satyrs I would normally have a satyr where I had a table full of people and so this year I'm not cooking for everybody because everybody's sheltered at home that's the case in New York but because we're sheltered at home everybody is going to join us nevertheless and share the satyr together and even if I don't have the honor of feeding people food that I cooked at least we can share with one another the spiritual nourishment that a Passover satyr will give us I'm Muhammad Al-Sanusi I am the Executive Director for the Network for Religious and Traditional Peacemakers we go to the mosque like five times a day you know it's not a joke and then Ramadan is coming and usually Muslims really break their fast together in the mosque or in other gatherings and all of that so how we can adjust to all of that these are new realities it's very challenging My name is Bob Roberts I'm the Global Senior Pastor of Northwood Church in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and I lead an organization with an Imam and a Rabbi, a multi-faith neighbors network so the first thing everybody did was to livestream their services but there's so much more churches mosques and synagogues can do online than just livestream their preachers and here's the thing people don't want us because they want our religion they want us because they need help and we need to help them and what a beautiful opportunity for Jews and Muslims and Christians to get together and serve together and this is not only the Abrahamic faith as we are a leader of Abrahamic faith we can see this also in other communities the Sikh community I just saw the United Sikh communities also preparing vegetarian meals for those who are unable actually to get food at this time so this is an effort that the faith community really should come together and move forward because we have to learn from this crisis Earlier this week I was on a call to London and a woman there her name is Miriam Laurie said, you know this isn't the first time for Passover that we've had to shelter in place the very first Passover the one in Egypt when God smote the first born so God commanded the Israelites shelter in place stay in your homes do not go out so that the plague does not destroy you and that's really our prayer that this would be the case this year as well we'll stay in our homes and God willing the plague will not destroy us That's almost all from World Versus Virus this week you can find all our coverage of COVID-19 at reform.org and follow us on Facebook Instagram, LinkedIn, Tiktok, YouTube and on Twitter and please subscribe so you don't miss an episode search for World Versus Virus on Apple Podcasts Spotify and most other good podcast platforms Let's end on an up note If you're looking for soothing music to help you through the stress and distress of COVID-19 you could do worse than this It was created by Marcus Buller a professor of engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology It's no simple piece of ambient music though this is the very sound of coronavirus Professor Buller assigned musical notes to the various parts of the spiky virus to create a kind of sound diagram of what makes up a coronavirus The music is not only haunting it might also have some serious scientific applications Professor Buller explained to me exactly what it is that we're listening to right now What you hear is a musical representation of the virus's spike protein which is the protein that affects the human cells It's sort of counterpoint music where many different melodies are overlaid in different rhythms to represent the structural arrangement of this particular protein We're interested in finding new ways of modeling matter We usually model matter by the position of atoms but of course if you think about materials at the nano scale you look at atoms they don't actually look like they look in a chemistry textbook because atoms and molecules are continuously moving so they kind of look like a vibrating string actually So we begin to think about building models of materials through the vibrational spectrum that led us to exploration at the musical side of things That is something we have been thinking about to use the knowledge of the nanoscopic vibrations as a way of actually disintegrating the structure You can imagine this being the equivalent of the opera singer singing at home when the glass breaks You have seen those videos or those physics experiments where you have certain frequencies that actually excite the resonances in a structure that can break a macroscopic object I do a lot of research on fracturing of materials A lot of times we're trying to prevent fracturing from happening but in this case we actually are trying to find a pathway to deliberately destroy a structure You can imagine finding a matching rhythm or counterpoint to an existing melody to match what we have in the virus spikes Next week's podcast will feature an extended interview with Adam Grant Organizational psychologist and bestselling author who has plenty of advice on how to deal with the psychological impact of COVID-19 At an individual level unfortunately there are some people who are going to face post-traumatic stress That's I think the sad news I would say the encouraging news psychologically is over half of people report a different response to trauma which is post-traumatic growth That's Adam Grant who will be on next week's World Versus Virus But for now we leave you with and this is its full title Viral counterpoint Coronavirus Spike Protein composed by Professor Marcus Bueller with more than a little help from COVID