 Okay, we're back. We're live. It's Coronaville. What next? I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech the guy who just sat down That's Winston Welch and Stephanie Dalton is with us. Okay, and Cynthia can't make it today But we send our regards in any event. This is a Coronaville and we have a lot to talk about let me throw a Let me throw a Ringer at you guys. I got a cold five or ten minutes ago from an old friend of mine kind of Republican And he's he's criticizing both Republicans and Democrats and he's worried about Both federal and state making mistakes so that we have, you know This horrendous situation on our hands and it reminds me as we discussed before the show of the comments by general horror Where he suggests I'm gonna have civil unrest here if we don't have food Or even if we do we may have civil unrest and can get your comments on that Winston What do you think about that? I Mean anything's possible, but I don't we're not Seem to be there and as long as people have you know food and shelter and and their needs are being that which we can do by disbursements and by You know cash payments for the while until things start going again. There's no reason for that to happen It's just it's his job is emergency management You know Planning and seeing what would happen in worst-case scenarios We need to have people like that But we don't need to manifest that here or anywhere else in this nation certainly Yeah, hope so hope so, but of course right now we have so many confusing signals that There are people who could get angry or feel liberated in some way if you feel liberated about You know crashing into the Michigan State capital and you may you may feel liberated about other things like with weapons So what is what is your thought about this Stephanie? I? Am terrified frankly I heard I heard about that yesterday, and I just never expected anything like that to come up here But then I'm not enough obviously in touch with the people who are out at Aloha Stadium today getting food because they can't buy it Don't have enough money to buy it So I guess we need to have more of a scan about how people are doing here And what it wears the break point and how can we avoid that break point? What can we do? I mean, I'm happy to help if Well, yeah, I mean if the if the food system doesn't hold up and that means the free food because that's the ultimate You know bottom line of it when people have no other choice and they need to have free food You know that is that's gonna be really serious And I wonder if we have a metric on that. I had discussion yesterday before With our chief scientist Mike to work and he said, you know the thing missing in this whole examination of the reopening is a any kind of metric to determine, you know the moral dilemma here the moral dilemma being You worry about people dying from a failure of the economy. You worry about people dying from from covet and and if you decide That there are more people more suffering going to be from the economy Then maybe that's the priority If you decide that there's fewer people who die and have suffering from the economy the failure of the economy You know, then you focus on that Since we you know, we have all these numbers going on about the about covet Uh, I don't know if our analysis is all that good, but we do have numbers What we don't have is numbers on how well we might do In reopening the economy and that's that's really important and it's not beyond analysis, you know, you can use various ways to analyze the state of the economy And and the key to that by the way according to our chief scientist Mike to work Is that you have to examine parts of the economy and see how well they're doing We have the ability to do this. So if I tell you that, you know reopening the restaurant saved so many jobs But not reopening the theaters cost so much money And if I tell you that this results in suicides It results in in the the The The kind of disease that comes from stress for not having money You know, then then you got to factor that in of course you have pre-existing conditions And you have to factor that in you said the key to Metrics on this was to compare the number of people who died from stress Today as against the number of people who died from stress a year or six months ago And using AI you can actually make metrics on this You could have an index of stress related illness or suicide Because of the failure of the economy and you could compare that to deaths from covid I mean, you know, it strikes me as a really interesting way of looking at it We are not looking scientifically, you know at the the effects of the degradation or resurrection of the economy And we should be we haven't really analyzed that when trump gets up and says we're going to open the economy He doesn't know what he's saying and the cdc makes a report Maybe with some wisdom in it and he shelves that so the public has no clue what it means And I frankly think a lot of the governors don't have a clue. What do you guys think Stephanie? What do you think? How do we make this moral decision? Well, frankly, I think that a lot of people have done some analysis about that certainly not You know with with the tools of statistics and and that kind of analysis, but I believe that there's a lookout there because I I was Fighting to figure out why anybody would go to a restaurant as we've seen all these people go to in the last few days or weeks But I I figure that what people have done is they've seen that the majority of the cases are poor people The majority of the cases are people of color The majority of the cases are those who already have Underlying health conditions and they're looking at themselves as in the prime of life and they're not affected And they and that's why it's not a belief. They've done an analysis. They are Inune to a certain extent. I agree with you. They have been doing analyses, but Um, so that The population that demographic has made its decision and they're going to go out. Okay more power to him if that's going to help bring Richard, do you think we can do better on trying to figure out the moral dilemma? Who says we can always do better. Um, I think that Fauci said that Um, what when asked can we do couldn't could could we have done better? We are a nation That always wants to do better. That defines us as the people So that doesn't end. You don't get to just get to the end To a point and say, oh, we did this was perfect and there's it'll never get better. But you know, I Did you use the word perfect just now? There is no perfect. Yeah, we get to the point and then not in the white house then because whenever the word perfect comes up You know, it doesn't mean perfect any alternative realities not included, but otherwise as as americans basically we want to be More efficient more effective more time more whatever we we always want to better ourselves in our society Well, I'll add one to you We've had a lot of discussion with our historian john davidan This is this country is filled with american exceptionalism and that means we're great We we're great as a people we're great as an economy. We're great as a global power We're all great and the problem with exceptionalism is if it ever was true, it is not true now We are exceptionally not exceptional right now So I think the old notion of being great is over and we have to be realistic She's shaking her head. Yeah, you can be realistic and and aspire towards greatness But part of our greatness and exceptionalism and I probably will count myself a little bit in that category is that We have the ability for introspection and we have historically had that and right now We have a little bump in the road and we have bumps in the road. It's towards a more perfect unionist we we are we're in a moment of Existential crisis right now, but we will get through it and we will come out on the other side but your opening question I think is Is important uh that we are looking at we're at the the way that I've been terming it is the uh The beginning at the end of the beginning. So now that we have dealt with this, okay How do we here in hawaii? We have a luxury of being able to do this They have given up in the mainland on the idea of containment. They are going to let the laboratory of america be like sweden and say This virus is just going to go where it goes Let's do the best we can and certain things like old folks home or whatnot, but basically Here in hawaii, uh, you know, there was a great article I thought my cliffs slater in honolulu star advertisers paper on monday on the 11th Of may and he talks about a plan be another approach and it's a It's a it's a way to look at this and say it's not either or it's it's both and maybe we can have an approach that That looks at the as you were saying the devastation To the economy of people's lives as it increase, uh, you know alcohol is drug abuse suicides, uh You know domestic violence and and then just the the rod of the soul not Not having a meaningful Work until that time we can support. I totally agree. We have to be smart Like singapore we have to be nimble We have to you know be aware and we have to be ready to react on what we learn Because we don't know how this works and we don't know how this the social sociology works And so this is a time when you know when think tech can be involved in an important conversation And the conversation is what's going on and and what new um, what new Inventory of of tools can we bring to bear to make it work? I mean for example, UH said it's going to start Physical classes again for the fall semester There was an article to say that most colleges Most of higher education in this country are not going to do that. There's only a handful of of, uh, You know colleges universities that are actually telling you that they're going to start open classes And reopen the classes in september, but you know what? There's a benefit in thinking that you can there's also a benefit in watching everything so carefully And maybe changing your mind You know, it could be that is the kind of strategy that you have to look at To say okay, we'd like to do it. It's aspirational But we're going to be very aware of how things are going because things could go badly as that guy bright said in congress and as fouchy is saying It's it's things could go badly and you'll have to react. You have to be nimble. Stephanie Would you weigh in on this, please? I'm just weighing in on that. There's no reason why we can't do what we want here in Hawaii because we can go outside And have classes outside. We don't and even if we are inside Many buildings are not air conditioned at a qh or I get maybe I haven't been up there lately enough But anyway of the circulation that you're not in a heating system that's recycling So I we could do more and and that's what I say about america We could do more but being in this situation Is unreal and just not of our choosing. We're in this situation because somebody else is controlling Everything including the cdc. Can you imagine? Could you ever have imagined this? There is no reason that we are not exceptional and leading the world on this But well, but we're not though. Stephanie. The reality is NIH has been politicized CDC has been politicized FDA has been politicized and of course, you know bureaucratic they become horrendously bureaucratic What was the last thing it took five weeks to approve? Something that was critical to the the future of public health You know, I mean, it's they're all kind of missing in action These are the agencies we have relied on or believed we could rely on all these years And your friend trump, you know has defused You know, is it his yeah, okay Well, he's he's he pulled the wings out of all of them. And so they're not really functioning And so what is that? Is it leaving to the individual governors? Some of whom are republican and they follow trump And you know and do bizarre things You leave it to the you know the the individual communities Don't you think for a national and international epidemic pandemic? We need leadership We need the world health organization to lead us. We need the white house to lead us. We're not getting that How can we possibly achieve national testing? For example Or making a PPE with the defense production act if we don't have any leadership and ps I think we can all assume we don't have any leadership We have whistleblowers. We have whistleblowers, but not leadership Let's see if we have leadership. There's example of a potential leadership Let's see if the leadership picks up on this and it's out of the house. It's representatives They want to use an americorps model to hire hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people to get out there and do Uh track and trace. Okay, so they believe that Yeah, they can put that model into play and start picking up on these hundreds of people that have to be tracked every every day And that's an enormous task and that's the only way it's going to be accomplished is with numerous Worker bees and and at the same time that would pull in jobs just like this The conservation corps the ccc of the new deal area Okay, well, what do you think? I saw you shake your head Winston, but I couldn't tell whether it was left to right or up or down who's gonna let it The uh We do have leadership j it's just maybe not in the traditional places that we expected We're having governors form packs inside of the nation We're having leadership from say, I don't know the prime minister of new zealand from the chancellor of germany from mayors from From companies, we're having it pop up all over the place and The reality may be that as as we evolve as america and americans and we have always evolved that we That donald trump is forced to sent to a new um regionalism and federalism and that may be It's a new testing ground of what's going to work and what isn't going to work and Certain companies are going to say you have to do this and others are going to say you don't and Certain states are going to say you have to do this and others don't and they will And judging on the basis of how their population reacts Hopefully we'll be able to look at each other and say that's working there Maybe we should do adopt that here or that wasn't you kind of have somebody making the decision Winston somebody who has got to be Cogent and aware and logical and even well educated about such things making that decision Just being aware is not enough you have to actually be able to make a decision It is it's happening. I mean look at hawaii. We we we Even when we may want to criticize certain government actions are lack thereof. We have shut down the virus in the state to One one new case a day there was no But now we're reopening We're reopening tomorrow. We're reopening everything is going to get reopened here And we're going to have tourists by the thousands and we learned from that And and we will learn and if we start saying wow, you know what there was just this entire whatever nursing homes or Shopping centers that that everybody works at gets infected and then we say that death rate is not acceptable So what did we learn from that? We learned that we have to implement this policy of that policy And we don't have time to learn slowly here You're going to have one patient comes in and infect infects a whole bunch of people you have Wuhan all over again So the learning has to be very quick. It has to be 24 by 7 Okay, and the decision process has to be 24 by 7 and you have to use every tool So I want to I want to go to testing for a minute and talk about two myths Okay, the first myth is and Stephanie you mentioned this is Let's try to get herd immunity And that means arguably 60 of the people in the given community have to have the disease But if you have 60 it's a myth 60 of the people and who knows whether that's the right percent Then uh, then they will be infected That's that's the assumption of herd immunity and if they will be infected that x percent and a higher percent for seniors Okay, will die Die die is that what we really want? Is that a solution? Are we serious about herd immunity? Isn't it better to flatten the curve and wait for a vaccine? Well, well j we have no indication that there is any such thing as herd immunity with this virus As I mentioned the black plague has no herd immunity. The whole the whole village is is consumed They're all dead you walk through it's empty So we don't know what this Walked through in the aftermath and it's so we don't know if that is a viable Uh condition. Okay. I'm with you. Where where are you on this for the most thing? 5 t's also in the newspaper testing Tracing tracking technology and training These are not do we have that? We are going towards that we're going towards that that was from carl kim as a derp professor at new age We're moving towards that show about this Yeah, we're we're a smart we are we do have smart people. We do have we nimble They are going the cream is going to rise to the top. I mean eventually it's the the truth will get out and The best truth will get out and there may be more than one truth I mean the way that that south koreans are doing it. They didn't close down restaurants They didn't close down a lot of stuff But what they did find was they opened up the disco and people got infected. So What did they learn? Don't open up the disco right now, but you can still have your restaurants open and you can do Let's take that example That really works if you're quick, you know, you see that the the disco is a problem You close it down But you also have to prevent whatever you saw as a problem from propagating, you know from doing contagion How do you do that? What do you do that with testing and tracking, right? So still today We have a problem in testing and we have a problem in tracking despite the fact that some people are going to be hired We need to hire them right now. We need to train them right now And we need we need to have testing right now and furthermore and this is the myth I was referring to Everybody says oh, we tested x number of people today. Whether it's hundreds or thousands And we have a cumulative testing, you know, we've cumulatively tested x number of millions of people around the country That that's that's wrong thinking in my opinion Because you have to keep on testing them You have to test them surgically. You have to test them quickly. You have to test them with a non-invasive test So that they come to you And you can't have the you know this kind of A Parameter where you're only going to test them if they come to you and tell you they got they got the gross symptoms You know cdc has added double the number of symptoms That that take place with with cove it and the testing is based on the old Minimal symptoms like fever and can't breathe and whatever else just like three or four things So my point is are we really being nimble on testing and are we willing to test again and again And we're willing to track so that we know who to test and who's got it and who's giving it to this We have the science that we're not doing And if we don't do it we risk an infection out of the disco Well, I think we're not doing what korea did at all and we're missing an entire Piece of that act and that's going to keep us from containing this thing For instance, they find the per they they hear about the breakout or their reports come in or people say it They go immediately and get them as you say jay they go after Where the virus is and do the testing and if you're positive you do not go home You do not go home. In fact, you don't go home waiting for your test result You sit on the chair for three days until it comes back and then if you're positive You were isolated We have a guy coming on the show tomorrow who was a researcher an empty researcher at Michigan State University and he's got a test which is non-invasive a swab in the mouth That that takes minutes okay And and I I understand that it's accurate too He's and it's new technology. I don't know if he's patented it or whether he's going to give it away And he's been waiting on approval for this test for over a month Um, and there must be others like that But then like my concern is you know, if this is really an emergency if it's really a war Let's fight it Let's do this stuff right away once you identify testing as important that you must Test and analyze and determine the the the parameters for testing Um, so don't you agree with tonight? I don't see you shaking your head up or down now Don't you agree that that's true? And if you want to do the korean thing if you want to do the smart nimble Awareness thing you've got to have testing and you've got to have new systems for testing Well new systems certainly and part of that does include testing but We don't know what does the testing mean that means that you were exposed to it and you had it and does that mean you can't get it again We're seeing people that are testing positive again after they've had it So maybe they're getting another strain of it or we don't know exactly what that means But we do know agree with me that you have to test over and over again And that when somebody says, oh, we have done five million tests in the country that is not probative I see very easily Jay. I mean first of all We're protected on this island. Basically We're you know, we're down to single digit cases every day one two We at this point we can test everybody who you've been around by by your apple phone or your your samsung You see who you came into contact with within six feet and they get a notice that says hey You were around this. We're not telling you who it was go get tested It can be wiped out here. But then we have to test everybody I don't know if they rolled it out. Yeah, but at this point we can Anybody coming into the state they get three tests 40 hours before they get on the plane Right before they get on the plane at the departure lounge in a 10 minute test And then after they get here maybe four tests and then another one three days later Is it is it? something we're not used to as Americans you know having to say where we're staying it sounds kind of You know soviet Well, it's a pandemic. So we're not trying to infringe on people's civil liberties We're trying to keep people Safe and alive and there's ways that we can do it that are better And that that allow us to keep our liberties But also that protect the public health and because we're in hawaii We have a very unique laboratory just like new zealand does South korean another way because they're basically an island You know cut off as they are so We have different laboratories where we're going to see different things We're going to see the mainland go with these ideas of seeing how herd immunity works We're going to see sweden versus norway We're going to have a lot of data sets to come to compare with and we're going to see How it's all going to come out in the wash and there's no answer. That's right right now 100 we're learning we're learning fast and we're we can adapt as we move along We better we better do that We better do that in hawaii especially because we have all these potential Infectious people coming around we better test them and we better enforce the quarantine You know, it's not clear to me what we do if we find we have somebody infected We send them home that we put them in a hotel room There was one thing about we find them five thousand dollars But does that mean he stays in a hotel room plus he pays the five? I mean we have really got to discourage this and we got to control it And we got to do something when we find a live case that could be it could infect the you know, the whole state It only takes one It only takes one and we have to be really really nimble So we're kind of relying on our leadership on david higay on josh green and uh curco well On general hara for that matter We have to do exactly what you're saying and we have to do it right away We can't do this in retrospect We have to be really smart when we you're shaking your head Stephanie Well, yes, I am because you're right on the mark right after what Winston says has to happen That's complex enough But then you have to do something with these infected people You can't just say hello I'll go on out about your business And they because that's why we need to test again because we got to find out if if they get reinfected But my point is that It's costly because where are these people going to go who's going to isolate them And they did that in the in asia But what we need to do is we need some partnership with big business here Most of these hotels in waikiki are not local operations. These are huge big chains. They are multi billionaires They need to kick in to to take care of some of this because we can't say go to your hotel room For 14 days and sit there or stay in the hotel because we can't put the hanalu polis department All down in waikiki to make sure all these visitors are staying in their hotels. We need some cooperation. Oh, Stephanie You're right on the money literally So here here's the state with a billion dollar shortfall at least I I would venture to say it's way more than that And then and the legislature just came back in and they got all these You know propositions and initiatives and bills and they got to deal with it and all that and query Whether they have the money and Stephanie's idea is a pretty good idea because we have we The tourist industry the state with the engine of its economy being in waikiki We have to spend a lot of money to make winston's things come true Winston, don't you agree with Stephanie? There must be a way to get that from the guys who Who tend to make them, you know tend to benefit but most that is these big You know global corporations that own these huge hotels and generally speaking of huge profits And we'll have huge profits again if we succeed Don't you think they should chip in to paying this enormous? You know bill we're gonna get for doing what you're saying Well, we all need to chip in this is not an epidemic that's only affecting hotels or workers at hotels or anybody else Everybody needs to step up to the plate. There's a great place for hotels right now. They're 99 empty They should be housing the homeless if nothing else There's a lot of hotels there that that we can solve a couple problems right now and say hey You know what we're done with being homeless right now. It's a public health threat on many levels social moral political economic just people showing up in emergency rooms with them, you know The diabetic infection we can solve a lot of things right now. Yes, people do need to be housed in these things But somehow it could be a tax levy on Business coming in that we say Sorry, you've tested positive But for local people if you've got that that's why we have a tax base as far as getting back to your in earlier point We could very easily give every person in this state who needs it above Below a certain income level who's not working right now an ebt card that says here is you know 500 bucks a thousand bucks a month for you to spend on food Here's a voucher for your rent until we get the sink up and floating Now people will say oh, well, why should they work then people want to work j they want to contribute They want to be productive members of society Uh, there will be some that that aren't certainly but for right now We stabilize people with support that is common sense that's compassionate and that's that's that's sane While we get through this together. This is not a uh only them only us And you know It's complex we have The whole legislature is listening to you and us. So Stephanie. We're out of time. I'm I'm really sorry I'm more sorry than I think I've ever been that we're out of time, but we are out of time So why don't you take a minute and close? Well, I'm afraid that if you're asking me to close or you You have one minute to close don't don't fritter away now. All right, I think one minute to close I think we have Covered the the course here We have absolutely done a very good analysis from multiple point of views On this program and and we've pointed out the the very challenging daunting tasks that hawaii has without even We also address the national crisis But uh here in hawaii We certainly do and we have a chance to lead the nation because as for instance we're pointing out we're isolated We we have a lot of control of our situation if we want to use it So that's the question. Are they actually going to apply all of these plans and notions? For containing the virus because if they don't and if the deep pockets of business are not available To hawaii, then we're not going to be able to do the the sufficient job of isolation And uh, so this is okay. All right, and winston you shake your head up and down left to right on that You know what? It's it's complex We need a lot of brains. We need a lot of input. We need as much Discussion and transparency depth so that the cream can rise to the top and we choose Make the best choices and if we make a wrong choice, we make a better choice and we keep doing that Repeat until we have finished with this. Okay. Well, that I guess I what I hear you saying is we have to do coronaville What's next every week? We have to keep on doing this and it's not a problem because I wrote my notes I sent you guys my notes and we covered roughly 20 percent of what was on my notes. There's lots more to discuss Uh, thank you winston. Thank you. Stephanie. Uh, see you next time Yay