 Hey, it's Think Tank. It's a three o'clock block. It's Energy in America. It's Lou Puliarisi, the CEO of E-Princk in Washington, an Energy Think Tank, and he joins us to discuss the question of the day. Is it getting better or getting worse? Hi, Lou, how are you? I'm good. You might argue, why are you Energy in America folks looking at the pandemic and the virus, but so much of the structure of gasoline demand, fuel demand, the future of the aviation energy jet fuel, all the things we worry about are tied to the rate at which we come out of this thing. And we're kind of big data people. We like to look at data. We tend to look at it without prejudice. And so I thought we would take another whack at this thing. We're not epidemiologists, but we know quite a few and we pestered them quite a bit and to reveal what we want to do. So why don't we first, let's just get to it. And the first thing I want to talk about, I've got a series of slides here, but I can just talk folks through them very quickly, is first, how should we think about the pandemic? And before I want to, before we get to this, I want to know that we live in an unprecedented era of access to data. We had nothing like this. In 1957-58, we had a variant of the Asian flu in the US, killed about 100,000 people, depends on the estimate, which would be closer to 200,000 today. We didn't shut down the economy. We didn't know a lot. We fumbled around. But today, of course, people say, well, the epidemic is just a matter of science. Okay, I agree with that. But in practice, it's also statistics, mathematics, modeling, forecasting. And when I say we, I mean all of us because of the internet, because of the widespread distribution of data and access to it, we have unprecedented access to a whole bunch of stuff. Data on hospitalization, ICUs, deaths, recoveries, categories by age, comorbidity geographies. We have lots of stuff on drug studies, past and ongoing, in vitro and in vivo. Studying treatments and therapies. We've got dozens of case studies on complete populations. Where are you looking? You're looking at your screen. Where do you get this from? What do you mean? Where did I get the data? Where did I get these? Yeah. Look, these data's on the, you could go to CDC, World Health Organization, every state public health authority is publishing data, worldometers. I mean, we could spend the next two hours going through a long list of data sources. They're out there. They take some effort to pull together to assemble and to look at them, to discuss them with other experts in the field. We have lots of studies on complete, so-called complete populations, right? Cruise ships, prisons, right? We got data on antibody results, tracking millions of people across the globe. And we have data on the AB, sensitivity and susceptibility, these different kinds of ways we test people. And a lot of the problem with testing is what statisticians call type one, type two error. You could test some people and you have a high number of false positives or a high number of false negatives, right? So the testing is, you know, people say, we just test a lot of people and we can do that, but we have to repeat the test. And then we have alternative data sets that help us reach what we think are unbiased conclusions, right? So that's what I want to talk about today, because I think a lot of this is wrapped up in politics and emotions. And no one, it's really hard to take a hard-headed look at it and say, well, the COVID is here. It's not going away for a while. We'll ultimately get some vaccine. So the question is, how should we think about it? How should we think about it? Is the, you know, we started down with these lockdowns, but even Neil Ferguson and Liam, in the very famous Imperial College study, which said the US would have 2 million deaths and Britain would have 500,000, he did say a lockdown would only say a significant number of lives it was kept in place indefinitely until there was a vaccine, which would be more than 18 months. But for many reasons, a lockdown is unacceptable. It's just unacceptable by the economic damage it causes now. What do you mean by lockdown when you use the term in that context? What is it? Lockdown is don't open the schools, don't let anyone travel, don't open the hotels, stay in your room, stay in your, don't go to work, stay, you know, unless you're kind of a very specialized area. Severe lockdown. We had it here in Washington for a long time. I think a lockdown is, it's a relative term. And I think, you know, originally, I think it signified complete closure. But I don't think it signifies that anymore. For example, there are essential workers here in Hawaii. There are many categories of essential workers. I mean, just to start with, you have the health workers themselves. Well, they're essential. You're not going to lock them down. And then, you know, there are various exceptions to that. And the exceptions, when we first started doing this loop, there were very few exceptions. But then somebody would squawk and say, you know, I really need the pharmacy to be open. I need food, you know, all these essential activities. A list of exceptions has gotten much more nuanced, much more sophisticated. And so when you say lockdown today, I think lockdown is, is capable of, you know, a multiple nuance changes. But it should be based on the science of what's most effective at the margin. Because in the end, there are trade-offs. And there's a bunch of people going around. Obviously, it's okay to go out and you can't have larger, you don't want to have a big stadium event. But of course, we can have massive protests because that's okay. Yeah, but that may be happening, but it's not a good idea. So, but let me just, let's go through the process here, go to the next picture here. So I think that the part of the problem is that there is this sense that there are only two paths out of this pandemic, right? Either we get a vaccine or we get herd immunity. But we think this is a false choice. And we think the most likely outcome is the third and different path that COVID-19 is, is a reach, they're very approaching what we call a disease breakpoint in the U.S. and Europe, such that the population spread is now, it's kind of on a decline, an inexorable decline. You know, even think about flu shots, I think flu shots is a good one, right? We have, every year we have flu shots and sometimes they hit and sometimes they miss, right? Because you have to kind of anticipate what the variant of the strain is, right? But if we look at flu shots, we find out that even when we miss the strain, right, they tend to collapse at about 10 to 15 percent of the population is infected. By the way, the seasonal flu, which reaches a kind of immunity every year, never reaches what we call herd immunity of 45 to 50 percent. And by the way, even the Spanish flu, right, it had an RO, you know, an infectious rate of 2.0, pretty high, right? So the herd threshold was 55 to 60 percent. But we know from the historical record that the Spanish flu spread collapsed quite quickly when 20 percent of the people had been infected. So let's, a moment on one of those two options you mentioned, and that is herd immunity. You know, people talk about that, they tried that in Sweden, I don't think it worked. Actually, the Swedish data, the Swedish data is not that bad. The Swedish data, I don't have the worldometer, I can pull it up here if you want to, but the worldometer on deaths per million in Sweden is much below ours, much below New York, New Jersey or Massachusetts. Everybody's below ours. But let me say this. That's the first, it's very important. If you're going to use and talk about things, you have to look at the data. It's really bad when people say, oh, whoa, it's me, we're terrible. If you look at the data, we are below many European countries. We are above many other places in the world. We are above every Asian country. Yes, we're above, yes. Including China, by the way. Of course, China, we have no idea. We have no idea what the numbers are in China. And they are different. To go back to the point, I want to make this point. So you talk about herd immunity. Herd immunity assumes that if you have the disease, you will thereafter be immune. That's not true. Wait, wait, wait. What we have found is that you can get it twice. If you can get it twice, then the first time doesn't necessarily prevail, give you immunity. Actually, this is a more, and we could do a program on this, and we could bring it up a few minutes, but this has to do with both T cell and antibodies. Let's go through the talk before we get that. That is a false choice. Maybe a few people didn't have it the right place. But basically, you have a form of immunity. It may fade over time. It may not be long lasting. But the notion that there's widespread recurrence of this disease among people who really had it is actually BS. And the science supports that. All I'm going on is the fact that you can get it twice. It doesn't matter when, it doesn't matter how long the interim is, you can get it twice. And that makes the notion of herd immunity a flawed notion. Well, you don't need herd immunity. That's why we're going to get to it. We're going to take care of this disease way below herd immunity. So let's take a look at some data. So let's look at some specific examples, right? And if you look on complete population surveys, they sort of support this view that the breakpoint is way below 55 or 60% or even your bizarre notion that there's no herd immunity. That lots of people can get it again. This is a ridiculous idea. And this is talking to a whole bunch of epidemiologists. So let's look at some real data. On the Diamond Prison's cruise ship, 51% of the confirmed cases were asymptomatic. On the Greg Mortimer cruise ship in Uruguay, 81% of the confirmed cases were asymptomatic. At the Tyson's food plant, right, 199 infections in one of its packing plants, 198 were asymptomatic. In a documented study in Italy, 4,326 cases were identified via contact tracing. They found that nearly 70% of them were asymptomatic and never developed any symptoms, right? If you look at a review of 3,300 COVID positive inmates in four U.S. jails, right? They had an asymptomatic rate of 96%. So based on these and other data, we can speculate, okay? I don't want to, shouldn't trade on this. This is not medical advice, right? This is kind of what we do as people that handle data, that the COVID asymptomatic rate is probably 75% of infections. So for each symptomatic C19 infection, there are probably four times who are asymptomatic. So if you combine these estimates for symptomatic and asymptomatic, it gives you a multiply anywhere from 24 to 40. We've got about four plus million confirmed cases. It may suggest, it may suggest that over a third of Americans now have some kind of infection-acquired specific resistance to COVID-19. Could be T-cells or it could be antibiotics. What I think I hear you saying in all of that is that if at some point in the course of the disease, you don't show symptoms, then you never actually get to symptoms and you never get to disease such as would kill you. But I don't think that's true. You can be asymptomatic for a while and then the virus builds up in your body and then all of a sudden you have real serious symptoms. So I don't think you could assume that somebody who is asymptomatic at one point in the process continues to be asymptomatic. Right. We can sit here and tell lots of anecdotes about a young person that got sick and died, but that's all, you know, that's interesting, but it's not data. It's an example. I appreciate the data, but I think logic ultimately must prevail. Well, logic prevails, but if the logic is resisting the data, there's something wrong with the logic, you know. If you have a forecasting model and that model is always wrong. Are you telling me this data that shows that somebody who is asymptomatic at one point remains asymptomatic through the course of the disease? And what percentage of the people who catch the disease? Almost everybody who's asymptomatic probably has what's called a T-cell immunity, not an antibiotic, which is a different thing. Okay. That's why even people who don't test positive for antibodies may have a new innate immunity from their T cells to the disease. That doesn't answer the question though. The question is whether they show symptoms later. I'm unaware that that's a big issue. I'm unaware. I have seen our data that shows that. We don't see that in the data. Okay. Maybe it's out there. I'm sure there's some examples. Okay. So that's not determined one way or the other by the data, is that what you're saying? It is. They would show up as being sick. They have to be. I'm asking whether you have data that shows that somebody who is asymptomatic in one part of the disease remains asymptomatic through the course of the disease. I don't think the data shows that. I think the data actually does show that. If you're asymptomatic, it means that your that your innate immune system is doing the work, not the antibodies. Your T cells are knocking it out. And so now there may be issues of viral load and things like that. But basically we can measure people who are going to the hospital. We have data. We know about hospitalizations. We know how many people go to the hospital. We know what percentage of this growing number that's quote, infected, is showing up in the hospital. Sounds like we need an epidemiologist here. Because you know, the talk about asymptomatic shedding of the virus is certainly related to the epidemiology of it and people getting sick from those who are not showing symptoms. But I also think there's plenty of data to show that ultimately the virus gets in your lungs. The virus propagates in your lungs and you get real sick and then you die. So because you weren't showing you know, any symptoms on point A, doesn't mean you escape it through Z. You very well may die. If it were a serious, if your theory, if that's what it is, or your thesis were correct, it should show up in the hospital data or the death data. Okay. It should show up there. It's not showing up there. Okay. Based on the historical... You don't know when they walk in the hospital that they were asymptomatic on day one and then 10 days later they're sick enough to go to a hospital. You don't know. You can't make that distinction. No, but I mean, I can find that data. I'm almost positive that that... You're going down a black hole here for which there is no support. That the people are... Lots of people have innate immunity to this thing. That's one of the reasons why Asia is doing a lot better, by the way. They have been exposed to these variants in the past and they have T-cell. This reminds me of that movie with Woody Allen and Marshall McLuhan, where these two guys were on a movie line and they were arguing about some sophisticated issue. And Woody says, well, let's resolve this. We'll just... We'll call Marshall McLuhan out and we'll ask him the specific question. And Marshall McLuhan comes right out behind a sandwich sign and he answers the question. That's why I brought with me, Lou. I brought my epidemiologist. Everybody should have one. Next time. Next time. Now we have a little rule, right? If you're going to make an argument, bring data. If you're not bringing data, we don't really want to talk to you because... I'll go with the logic side of this. You can have the data. Okay, so let's look about this issue one more picture here. Heard immunity versus the breakpoint, which this is really kind of good news, right? So herd immunity is a kind of specific resistance in a population required for the disease to fully disappear. COVID-19 is not going to fully disappear. But the disease breakpoint is the level of specific resistance in a population which the spread of the disease collapses, which is one-third or less than herd immunity. And we have plenty of instances of this in the historical record. The next thing is herd immunity assumes what we call homogeneity of actors and outcomes. That infection, specific arrest, social, you know, specific resistance, and individuals are all equally distributed. That's what things don't understand. That's like evenly distributed all through society. We don't have these pockets of people who are immune, pockets who are not immune. So we know that some... Are you saying when you put all this together it's going to go away? It is going to go away. You know what? A year from now, you'll be talking about whether Joe Biden's cognitive skills are up to when he's present. But where's the data on that? I mean that's what Trump says and he has no data for his remarks. It's going to magically disappear. Is that what you're saying? I'm just telling you, a year from now we're going to be talking about something else. Write it on your calendar. Okay, I'll write it on my calendar, but none of us is going to be wrong about that. No, I want you to write it down. I want you to write it down. Loose bag. 2021 in August, no one's going to want to talk about COVID. You're excluding the possibility of a vaccine, is that right? That's not on the table here for this discussion. We're going to have better treatments, we're going to have a vaccine, and we're going to have breakpoint. We're going to have immunity from breakpoint and resistance. I just want to just make sure your audience understands the difference between herd immunity and what we call a breakpoint. A breakpoint is a level of specific resistance in which the spread of the disease collapses. Some, as we say, we know already some populations are highly vulnerable. In fact, I have some data here from the COVID-19 tracker from First Trust. If you look at this, it's still highly concentrated in the geyser population, people like me. Probably not you, you're a young guy, but I mean people are 64 and older. It's the geysers, we need to protect the geysers. So some populations are highly vulnerable, nursing homes, others are highly resistant, young people. We know this, young people are highly resistant to this thing. But they are spreaders, Lou. They have been found to be huge virus spreaders. They're out there on the beach drinking without masks, having a big party, rubbing shoulders, having a wild time, and they're spreading that among themselves and then into the community. That is one of the reasons we have all these spikes in how many most of the states of this nation have these spikes, because the young people are out there ignoring any advice. And the reason they're ignoring advice is they're not getting specific accurate advice. They're getting confusing advice. So I think the reason, let me just get back to my break point. I'm sorry that people are misbehaving themselves. There's nothing I can do about that. But I'm just saying is that the disease break, if you have a disease break point model, it explains how the outbreaks evolve. The system spikes then collapses far quicker than herd immunity model, right? And super spreaders become super suppressants. That's very important to understand. So it can't spread anywhere because they're these super suppressants, people who do not get it and do not transmit it. So you got data on that? We do have some data on that and we need to do more work on this, right? So if you look at Europe and the U.S., we've probably reached the disease break point in March and April. And it's peaked and I think actually I can argue that it's on a revocable decline. That's a revocable decline. I want you to go back to the SARS 2003 outbreak in Hong Kong, right? And people are all out there saying, I'm looking for when you're going to flip the switch and it's okay, right? But what happens is it's not a flip the switch moment or that we have a vaccine or we reached herd immunity. Instead, there's a gradual realization in the population that things are okay again and we can finally bit by bit just come out into the light. That's what's going to happen. When will we know? When will we know? There's not going to be, it's just going to be a gradual thing. Now governments can screw it up. Governments like the state of Hawaii can continue to postpone tourism and they have a view that they can lock down this thing and disrupt millions of people's lives and blow up the state economy. They can do that, but it's not an effective strategy. I can just tell you, I'm absolutely convinced of that. So you don't think we want, we think we're going to open it up then. I have no problem. We're going to pay attention to getting the economy going again, is that what you're saying? Absolutely. It's a huge mistake. Before we've solved the COVID problem. You want to wait? We're all going to be poor. Listen. Well, I like to go on record about that. I'd rather be poorer than dead. Dead is not nearly as much fun as being poor. Right. But if you think living in a cave with your, living in a cave and your whole economic welfare has been destroyed, if you think that's an outcome the American people really want, when we've had these, we've had these epidemics in the past, I think you're mistaken. And I think people who believe that are mistaken. Well, that's why I want to go back to the definition of lockdown. I think all these things can happen at the same time. You can, you can tune lockdown so that it's really not that threatening. You can make enforceable rules about mass and social distancing, about testing and tracing, which we have not done. We have not done that. And so I find the whole discussion of reopening inappropriate and way premature, way premature. And that's what got us into this trouble in the first place. I will never forget how surprised I was when I saw your president get up there and say, time to reopen. We're all done. We're all finished. We've licked this thing when there was no indication of that, no data at all to support that. And then of course reopening is what led us to where we are now. And we still haven't solved the public health problem. We're still in crisis. There's no evidence that the lockdown's been that effective. Any lockdown anyway. Social distancing, washing your hands, perhaps wearing a mask in the right kinds of conditions. The lockdown, I'm sorry, I think it went, and I hope we have a national commission to study this thing, independent national commission to look how we got it, how it came here, what measures we were taking. So time for that. We're in an emergency. We're in crisis. I've thought that, but eventually this is going to go away. Okay, I'll tell you what. Why don't you frame up where we are? And take a minute. We're kind of out of time. Where we are as far as your data, your analysis. If you look at the very last picture, you can see that in the U.S., about 14 states account for 68% of the new cases in the seven days through August 4th. But the seven day moving average is on the decline. None of this data to me suggests this is an epidemic blowing out of control. It's starting to hit its breakthrough. And I believe over the next six months, as I said, I'm predicting now I want you, I want to go on the record. Next August, no one's going to even want to talk about COVID-19. They're going to be talking about Joe Biden's attempts to close down the Keystone pipeline or something else. This is going to be old news at this time. If I'm wrong, I'll buy you a steak dinner, but I am so sure that I will be right and you'll have to buy me a steak. As you are sure, I am sure. Thank you, Lou. You may notice, the audience may notice that Lou and I do not necessarily come at these issues from the same direction, but we so enjoy testing each other. Thank you, Lou. Always great. I know we're going to be talking about this again. Always. Thank you so much.