 Welcome back to Think Tech. I'm J5LC, 11 o'clock block here in a given Thursday and we're talking about Coronaville coronavirus. What's next with Winston Welsh, Cynthia Sinclair, Kim Apachele, Stephanie Dalton and we have a very important point to make. That's why we call the show lots of shiny objects but no soap on COVID. So Winston, what's your interpretation of that? What are we supposed to talk about here? You know, it's almost, it's true as Jim was saying earlier before our show that yesterday COVID's not even coming up anymore because there's so much other noise out there about the election, about cheating the Russians, Steve Bannon, whatever, that this has just become sidelined. In Hawaii I think it's become a little bit louder because we had this sort of weird scandalous corruption of where did our $50 million go that we got for testing and for monitoring and tracking and all of that and that and the oversight committees that really haven't been oversighting they've been doing what they say is great but the results are we've had an explosion in this state that is not going anywhere but up and out and so for me it's the state that's more important right now because we had zero cases and we could have controlled the sink and become New Zealand and now we are going towards to New New York. Yeah so Cynthia, where is it fit in the priority scale honestly? We have the Democratic Convention that's important, what's going on with the post office that's important, we have Steve Bannon, he's creating a lot of news with his $5 million bail. What is where does COVID fit on those two priorities right now? Well I heard Dr. Fauci being interviewed this morning on CNN and he is concerned about that very same thing. We need people to be constantly aware of this especially when we're sending our kids back to school. We've had these great statistics for kids not really getting it and not getting it badly. We've got to remember that the first thing we did when all this started was take our kids home get them out of school and bring them home where they're safe so they weren't exposed so we really don't know how it's going to affect kids and so to just you know send them back to school to me is so dangerous and we know that everything is on the rise everywhere here in Hawaii we had what we have 5,000 cases now and 40 deaths just over the last month it's gone up so high we have two to 300 a day and then we have over a thousand people a day dying in this country. It's more than that Cynthia. See so it's 175,000 people that have died that's just a huge number that I'm afraid people have become desensitized to and so they don't really it doesn't affect them anymore and even for me I used to cry at every death every new 10 you know number 10 of deaths that happened I would just cry way back when it was only a couple thousand people that had died I was just crying over the fact that a couple thousand people have died and now it's almost 200,000 people that's it's almost more than I can handle to cry about even because it's so overwhelming and I'm sure that a lot of other people feel the same way that I do. Stephanie she talked about education you like education where where are we in education who's doing what and what is the right answer? Well there is a right answer because one country has no COVID cases out of its schools and all the kids are in school and they've been there for five months okay so this this is being publicized because I know it but I don't understand why it's not being referred to for instance the country happens to be the Viking place okay it's Denmark and they did not they their kids are in school they do not wear masks they do not take temperatures what they have done is they have expanded their spaces okay cost a little money they had to get manpower once they figured out what they were going to do so that they can have the kids broken down into smaller groups so they've got them in these little cohorts I think they're maybe from five or not too many more than five and they're using every space they possibly can and they keep them together so the the kids are somewhat egg-created in these different cohorts all day on the regular schedule doing the regular things and what their intervention is in the case of an infection is immediately remove the child and have definite criteria for what that infection is if it's a temperature they feel good a coughing or something what then they take them immediately out and then they work with the parents there's tremendous transparency in all the plans and policies that they have they're constantly in touch on this and the kid goes out and then there is him would you do that here I want to do that I want to I'm sorry yeah Tim would you do the answer is yes I think it's the only responsible thing to do and and and I think parents are going to resent the fact that their children through a political agenda is being used as a political pawn to get their kids in school when the schools aren't safe yet and I know the teachers aren't very happy about it as well so yeah I agree with Stephanie wholeheartedly well let me let me go over another question for you and that is you know Trump has been saying we're we're doing really well I think that's is we're doing really well on COVID and it always it just goes over my head when he says that what are we what is the national government doing can you identify what it is doing on COVID well I could identify what it's not doing much easier you know I'm sorry but I'll just use the quote lies damn lies and the people that tell them Donald Trump has been saying we're getting through this we're doing better than anyone else in the country and anyone else in the world and we've got this thing all locked down and you know he's been lying it's one of the 20,000 lies that he logs up you know since his presidency yeah who would believe Donald Trump anything when it comes to COVID because he's lied you know so magnificently lied so what is the government done um you know the best thing the government has done is Dr. Fauci that's the best thing the government's done is bring him out unfortunately they've muzzled him along with Dr. Bricks and it's a political game it's a political show just so Donald Trump as always uh it wants to ensure his election all things go through that filter Donald Trump's going to be reelected and how we look at COVID how we treat COVID is through that through that lens through that filter you know you know Winston we talk about shiny objects and you know we we certainly have a lot of that I mean today Trump is tweeting up a storm about the Democratic National Convention criticizing everything and anything that anybody said at the DNC and you know we have so many things that he's doing and none of them are relate to COVID it's and people say and the newscasters are saying well he's distracting us the real news is is COVID do you think this is an intentional thing on his part or is he actually interested in all these other things what does he have to gain by by uh trumping up COVID the Trump response to COVID nothing because there's no response that we can discern I mean whatever it is I don't know I don't feel like there's any response that's meaningful at this point I did see that they are bringing back the CDC to count uh numbers again for infections and that sort of thing uh definitely why uh probably just because who knows the intern that was counting in the White House resigned so I don't know why they decided to do that but I just saw pop up in my news feed so that's some tiny bit of good news but again the credibility of our basic institutions has been called into place so what does it matter that the CDC is is in charge again for the diverse whose uh I mean she came out and said that I don't know I I I don't see really any any coherent federal response at all what we need and when we're talking about getting kids back at school or keeping them at home or whatever we need a comprehensive coherent logical response to this we need financial support for people that have been thrown out of work we need a rent moratorium a eviction moratorium and those people that also that are the landlords they need their mortgages guaranteed during this time we need a mass testing we need uh health insurance for people we need to absolutely look at this for the total crisis that it is and it is not going to come from this administration they have no interest in bringing it up it is a it's meaningless when you're basically trying to set save democracy at this point COVID takes a backseat yeah that's what's happening well do you think the public agrees with our you know thought that this should be higher in the priority list or is the public all confused about it I mean you know Trump has been brilliant in confusing the public about everything do you think the public really has a perception of what is going on with COVID well I mean I think since we live in Hawaii we can only talk about what you we can look at the rest of the world and see different things that are going on but we're affected by it here so we have to look at now no gatherings of five people if you go to church no singing and these are common sense that's what I'm talking about really it's that complacency thing you know if you ignore the subject and you have all these shiny objects which are really building is confusion oh and as Tim said no no coherent policy you're really building confusion you're building chaos in the public mind um and you're building complacency which I think that's why and if you build complacency it gets worse well that's why we have had this new lockdown situation is because people have become complacent and I went down to the beach a week before we started out and there were a ton of people just all of each other mostly young people sorry to say I would say between 15 and 30 um and I I don't know what the Russian hole is behind that because they're apparently aware of but maybe they don't I don't know what's behind that but everyone's become complacent and to some degree or another maybe not maybe older people are more aware but um you know the what we so the mayor has finally had to come out and say all we're in an emergency now you can't go out anymore unless you're going for food or medicine or you know just a few exceptions that are out that you can't gather we are going to be very rigorous in our enforcement um so at a local level if this is what it takes to wake people up and say okay it is not business as usual folks uh we need to respond like this the the other half of that coin though is is doesn't exist there what are you going to do if you don't have the job where's the money coming from it's not there so well and for that matter where that where is the health care coming from you know one of the things that I've been thinking about lately is um if you don't have a job and you don't have health insurance and there's no money coming from Washington which is actually the case um then you know what happens when you get COVID what happens when you in Hawaii we're okay in Hawaii we're okay because you can go give free medical care actually it's a certain health care centers uh regardless of income okay so I think we're different here than in the mainland but uh mainland then uh Waikiki health will take you at regardless of your ability to pay it's a relatively qualified health care center and you know we were a model for a long time and we have to remember like when our friends in the mainland say oh and I got health insurance with my job well we've had that for a long time here even if you don't have a job you should be covered to some degree now will you be able to live in the place where you've been renting probably not when you have very high rates of people not being able to pay their rent uh even in June and July it's only going to get worse since you might have been terrified if you didn't have insurance um and you and you and you had COVID I mean what would you know about the Waikiki health center what would you do there isn't a lot of um exposure or advertising for that and so you don't really know what to do and I read an interesting article from the Atlantic that talks about the long-term effects of COVID so past the stages of pneumonia and I need a ventilator so you've recovered and now you're home and you've got tremors you've got brain fog you've got digestive problems you've got clotting problems there's so many other things that come from this disease that we don't know about and these people are just kind of getting forgotten there's kind of dropping through the cracks so now they're having to farm their own groups to talk to each other and it started actually in a different country even and so now finally starting to spread here in the United States but there are thousands and thousands of people that are still dealing with this disease even though they're not in the acute stages anymore and I that's an important place where we need to start making some studies and getting some official studies going so we can learn more about this disease well it's interesting you you say that because I don't know how many of you I circulated this too but I gotta I got an email from a doctor in Canada and he laid out the lessons that the medical community has learned about how to how to deal with COVID in other words the hospital experience what what palliative drugs are helpful what what treatments what techniques the nurses and healthcare workers would use to make the patient more comfortable and ventilators seem to be out these days in fact I had I saw one article for the proposition that all the trouble with the lungs had to do with with clots microscopic clots and they have learned to use blood thinners now this is you know it's this is like it's ad hoc it's not generally known or distributed I don't know whether the healthcare community in general in the world is circulating this kind of information but clearly the hospitals have learned and the stats should be better however Stephanie what is your prediction for the next month or two or three in terms of deaths where what are we 170,000 now are we gonna hit did I say yeah 170,000 we're gonna hit 200,000 by election day by the end of the year how fast is it going and people don't really concentrate you know after a while you as as Cynthia said you get numb you get numb to the numbers you know my my my old remark is why don't we stop the show now and count to 170,000 just to demonstrate how many people that is fact is I calculated this it would take one week 24 by 7 to count to that number okay what do you think as Stephanie we're going to do between now and election day well I think it's going to get a lot worse and it's because the chaos is going to continue and there's no policy just like you say we don't know the beginning here's the beginning here's the middle here's the next part and here's the other part at the end and then here's the extended part as well where's the research across all of those different segments of this disease where are they pumping out the findings as soon as they have some that are evidence based and at a high level confidence we're nothing this is the point about again saying there's no leadership and that we're just like kittens running around you know with every feather that you put in our face we're running off after that so you know and so there's no way that it can get better and if we get to the election and we have a change of administration that's our hope because then we will feel the surge of a framework coming in that will shape how we go forward wouldn't you be worried we'll have as we get closer to the election we'll have yes we'll have a huge increases in the number of cases and tests but we'll also have a huge increase in the number of shiny objects agree which one will we be faced with no but tim we haven't talked about the economy we haven't talked about how this is affecting the economy and it's hard to get your hands around that because we know that the government is and will continue to close things down except in Denmark maybe um and you know we're gonna we're gonna have a continuing decline of our economy this has got to hurt people they can't eat and when people can't eat they are like unpredictable and they're unhappy and god knows what they'll do what do you think about the economy what do we know about the economy both locally and nationally well i i think donald trump again using this the shiny object says the economy is great because guess what the nasdaq the s and p the dow they're at all-time highs uh before covid and therefore the economy is doing great completely ignoring unemployment completely ignoring the loss of gdp completely ignoring all the things that an economy relies on uh so donald trumps again shiny object to distract us that you must be doing well look at your 401ks you you you put your faith into 401k you put your faith in the donald trump there put your faith in my vote and so but this is going to come crashing down this cannot be sustained and these numbers the unemployment the gdp all these numbers are going to finally hit the economy or excuse me the stock market and it's going to come tumbling down why it hasn't come tumbling down before i don't know i don't have an answer i just think that maybe americans are going hey working i put my money i mean i get one tenth of one percent on a cd that's safe fdic insured i can't live on one tenth of one percent so i am forced to put my money in the stock market and ride the risk train and and no one likes that and at some point it's the train's going to come off the tracks and the fed doesn't have much room in its toolbox to keep funding zero percent and uh you know throwing free money into the economy i mean you can get a 30-year fix at two and a half percent that's darn near free money but what good is that money if no one has a job so as far as the economy i think i i think it's in a pretty um precarious place and i think of course locally our economy's on the skids yeah so let me ask you an unfair question this this crash in the market when is it going to happen could you give us a day for example yeah november 4th you think it'll hold up it'll hold up through election day because there are people out there maybe some supporters that want to see it maintain till then remember institutions are made of people and the institutions are the corporations that are the institutional investors in the stock market it's not it's not in the mom and pop people that are are floating this market it's the institutions well when the institutions have lost their fearless leader they're going to bail and when they bail it bails yeah so winston you know in in the 30s we had the depression and i remember studying that in school and my first reaction is what are they talking about depression why the use of that term what would Freud say about the use of the term depression and and i think that we have to we have to take a look at that term because it means that people get depressed what do you think the public state of mind is these days you can include your own you can talk about mine if you want i mean this is getting worse and how you know people are fatigued we've got corona fatigue you talked about complacency before but complacency is because people are getting exhausted and i imagine that this is something like like you know a long-term war or the depression or something where we've settled in now and we realized this thing isn't going away anytime soon and we've got a whole bunch of bad news in front of us no matter how there's light at the end of the tunnel a year down the road a year and a half down the road that's a year and a half down the road so we've got to hold out hope for then well people got to pay their rent right now they got to go give food right now so naturally they can't see their friends they can't hug their moms you know they're they're naturally they're going to have a fatigue and exhaustion and depression and if you're not you're probably not doing corona right because or you're doing it really right because you're so mindful that you're able to transcend it which is great and we all probably need to be meditating and praying more and all of that but i think that for most people our normal social supports have been have been reduced or cut down so these types of things where people can beam in and and see like-minded people sharing ideas we have to rely on on these electronic things but it's also getting out and you can talk to your neighbor six feet away and and say how are you doing you need any milk you can still do all of those human things actually the latest is 16 feet but i don't want to interrupt 16 feet you can you can yell at mrs not you can you can call her on the phone too say how are you doing i think people are but isn't isn't a population that is depressed isn't a population that is worried about the future a perfect opportunity for a dictator to emerge isn't that exactly what happened uh with hitler in germany after world war one he saw it as an opportunity and he moved into it and he took power by reason of it well i i mean that's a corona is just one more thing on to that list so i don't you know this is just we don't i think as we go forward everything will be dated obviously pre and post 2020 but we need to do the best that we can individually i've mentioned this many times we need to reach out on our own we need to contact our friends family relatives appointances touch base be a human as best as you can while we get through it together let me move on to health care you know one of the things that's clear and this is happening even in queen's hospital here in hawaii um is that the the beds that might be available for other illnesses and medical treatments are being are being taken by the covid case i heard that where queen said two floors dedicated to covid now they have three uh and so this is this a trouble it means that if you have some other and when we get older in fact in the normal course of human life experience things go wrong right um it means that when you have some other non-covid problem and you try to get into the health system there's no room for you have we have we arrived at that yet sinthea what do you think we will arrive at it we're very close and in my own experience with being a patient an inpatient at queens um and when i was there it was just two floors like you said yeah now it's a whole mother floor the floor that i was on no longer exists for regular patients like me i mean i needed those blood transfusions to survive what do i do if i can't get them um so it's a it's a personal issue for me too because it's scary when you know the whole beds are being just overwhelmed by covid patients and you know they're being very careful and when they seal off those wards you have to go through a clean room before you can come out of that ward and before you go into that ward so as far as that goes at least i'm really impressed what queens has done in regards to um keeping it separate and really treating it like the deadly disease that it is we owe them a debt of gratitude for sure uh that they they really uh have done a good job so stephanie you know the election day is coming up there are a lot of people who are afraid to go out to uh to the polls physically um on the other hand they're also afraid uh that um you know that their vote might not be counted because of the machinations with with the post office um and i heard recently that the number of physical polls presently planned for oahu can you guess how many physical polls there will be right now in oahu for the november third election guess two two that's roughly half a million you know people in each one although you're voting by mail obviously you're not in that formula what about you are are you going to be concerned about going to a physical poll maybe having to wait in line maybe having to deal with a lot of people you don't you don't know whether they've been exposed uh are you going to trust the males what is your current thinking about that and how might it change well once again hawaii was very successful in the primary and they put all of their orange boxes out so you didn't have to go to the very poll or uh if you had your ballot you didn't have to put it in the mail if you're just not feeling confident about the mail which might not be at that time but right now i'm still thinking they're fixing it and we'll see what happens after the congress gets more into it but we put all those orange boxes everywhere so you had a place you could go which wouldn't require parking walking and all of that and i say hawaii is a model for that and i mean we we we've had the chance to kind of step up here and do stuff really bright and show it off but you'll have to agree with me that the government hasn't really done a good job here either there's a scandal on testing it's all in the funding yeah yeah and the fact that the vets aren't getting their meds and people are and retires are not getting their social security is horrifying this sends more people into poverty and this is i and i i'm not hearing enough range over this in the um in the media um it's there but really not at a very low and this is exactly what led you know to the depression problem i mean we're gonna have to start thinking about soup lines for all these people because we're there's no money car i think we are already are we can remember no money's coming in uh trump's cockamamie proclamation didn't result in anything and congress is still locked up in the senate the senate is still on vacation there's no money coming in people have no money to eat and various organizations are trying to give them soup kitchens so i have one last question for you tim okay this is also a hard question tim gets the hard questions we we talked about you know projecting how many cases we're gonna have in this country and for that matter of why um but let's assume it's a dark assumption let's assume that that trump is successful in creating chaos in in the voting place uh that he's successful in calling the qanons and and the skinheads and the second amendment people to vote for him and and screwing up the election to a fairly well so that either he wins or he is somehow able to retain power hard question tim what will happen to covet it'll get worse he has gone from february 2020 to where we are today virtually doing nothing and he'll continue that policy because it doesn't serve him and i i believe that um it will be at 200 000 deaths well before december and donald trump will treat it as if it was 15 deaths you know congratulate him say uh himself by saying see it wasn't it wasn't 2 million deaths it's only 200 000 deaths and he'll he'll rationalize to himself he'll rationalize to the nation and unfortunately 38 to 45 percent will take it in and believe it and i don't believe covet will get any better uh the only thing that's going to get us out of this is an effective vaccine and or a possible treatment that prevents you from actually dying from covet but you're able to be treated and you'll you'll have it as a chronic condition until you get a vaccine let me throw one interesting object into the discussion before we close and that is uh mexico uh amlo you know amlo uh lopez obrador um he himself is submitting to the the trials of of putin's vaccine and he is submitting mexican people who would participate in those trials god knows what's going to happen so why aren't russians taking the russian vaccine why aren't they engaged in the trials good question too why aren't the russians taking it they know better they don't want to end up like their opposition now he's been poisoned in his tea and he's now in a ventilator they don't want to end up like that oh there it is okay winston Cynthia, Stephanie, Tim thank you so much for this discussion it really gets interesting and it will continue to get interesting and we really have to keep on this it's very important to us and to the people we know and love and to the world in general thank you so much aloha