Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of five
Speaker 1: Heart Radios. How stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the
Speaker 1: Global Nightmare. I'm Josh, there's Chuck, there's Jerry over there,
Speaker 1: and we are stuff you should know. It was, uh,
Speaker 1: that's an Alice Cooper song. Right, that's welcome to my Nightmare.
Speaker 1: Oh I think it. It is my nightmare, isn't it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: But he should have thought bigger. Yeah, you really should have.
Speaker 1: It was kind of excited. Yeah, well, put we saw
Speaker 1: him in concert once, remember that's right, big shout out
Speaker 1: to Anita Strouss. Yes, guitarist, extraordinary for Alice Cooper among others.
Speaker 1: It's enthusiast what enthusiast science? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah for sure.
Speaker 1: So we should uh. I think everyone knows right now
Speaker 1: that we are now set up to record apart from
Speaker 1: one another. Chuck. Um, So my first question before we
Speaker 1: have to get serious is what are you wearing? I
Speaker 1: knew it. Can I tell you seriously what I'm wearing? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you. Okay, Um, I am wearing
Speaker 1: an apron and that's it. Wow? Yeah what about you?
Speaker 1: So your cosplaying is sexy chef? Yeah? Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: I like to think of myself as it's not really cosplay,
Speaker 1: that's kind of normal life stuff. Yeah, I am wearing
Speaker 1: um and this is not a plug, but it is
Speaker 1: what I'm wearing. I'm wearing me and these I'm wearing.
Speaker 1: I'm wearing my mac Weldon. Uh. I don't know what
Speaker 1: they call him. You know, kind of the warm up
Speaker 1: pants that you can go to the grocery store in sure,
Speaker 1: but do not go to the grocery store, Chuck, not not.
Speaker 1: And I'm wearing a Max fun Con two thousand and
Speaker 1: twelve T shirt and my slippers. So basically this is
Speaker 1: your UM I got all this free outfit, boy, it
Speaker 1: really is. I paid for the slippers, Okay, but I
Speaker 1: mean if you name dropped the slippers, maybe you can
Speaker 1: get a replacement for him. I don't want to do that,
Speaker 1: even though they're super comfy. Maybe we can get a
Speaker 1: slipper sponsorship. Did you did you ever stop wearing slippers
Speaker 1: out of the house? Uh? Well, what do you mean? So?
Speaker 1: I think it was our five second Rule episode where
Speaker 1: we talked about the point of slippers is to just
Speaker 1: have these things that are house bound and never leave
Speaker 1: your house, and then you you just wear them in
Speaker 1: your house and then instead of outside, so the outdoors
Speaker 1: germs never come inside on the bottom of your feet. Boy,
Speaker 1: that's you're calling out like a nine year old episode.
Speaker 1: Uh you know, I may go get the mail or something. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, well before you were going and like getting
Speaker 1: ice cream at the convenience store in those things if yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I feel like the fact that you're not doing
Speaker 1: any more, you may have forgotten, but that's my influence, chuck.
Speaker 1: Or I may have just gotten gained some self respect,
Speaker 1: right there you go. I like to think both of
Speaker 1: those from my influence. Okay, uh yeah. So at the
Speaker 1: head of the show, I think we should announce we're
Speaker 1: doing an episode on COVID nineteen. It is Tuesday. I
Speaker 1: don't even know what date it is. And this will
Speaker 1: come out on the right, that's what Jerry's promising right now.
Speaker 1: That remains to be seen though, so it'll be sort
Speaker 1: of up to date. But two days a lot can change, um,
Speaker 1: as we all know. Uh. And the other thing too,
Speaker 1: is it I think we are going to stay out
Speaker 1: of sort of the politics and the economics of the
Speaker 1: of this, because that's an almost separate podcast in itself
Speaker 1: that I have no interest in ever doing I Well,
Speaker 1: I'm surprised to hear you say that last part. I
Speaker 1: was figuring that that would be one we do, like
Speaker 1: years from now, like go back and look at the
Speaker 1: coronavirus pandemic of because I think so many weird, remarkable,
Speaker 1: in interesting things are going to grow out of this
Speaker 1: and are already going on. I could totally see us
Speaker 1: doing that. But I get what I can vibe on
Speaker 1: what you're saying, because after recording this, like I'm hoping
Speaker 1: that we can finish this episode and never talk about
Speaker 1: coronavirus again. Like, I get what you're saying. That would
Speaker 1: be great. Yeah, I'm tired of knowing about it, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And we you know, we debated quite honestly whether or
Speaker 1: not to even do this, but it seems like we
Speaker 1: had more people asking for just a level headed take
Speaker 1: on it from us than people saying, I would really
Speaker 1: rather be distracted, so we'll distract you after today. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And we're also, I mean, we're not riding that wave
Speaker 1: where we're like trying to feed your news addiction that
Speaker 1: like you can't get enough breaking information about this global pandemic.
Speaker 1: Like like you said, we're just trying to add just
Speaker 1: trying to do a stuff you should know on coronavirus,
Speaker 1: on COVID nineteen specifically, and we we got we got
Speaker 1: some big help, a big assist from Dave Rouge, who
Speaker 1: initially pushed back. We had to convince him to do it. Remember,
Speaker 1: he's like, you sure if people want to hear this? Yeah,
Speaker 1: We're like, yeah, we're pretty sure. We'll find out though.
Speaker 1: So thanks a lot, Dave Rouse, you did good. And also, um,
Speaker 1: a big shout out to the grabster to who's been
Speaker 1: under the weather so hanging their grab stir. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: let's let's get going. I learned a lot in the
Speaker 1: last couple of days. Uh. And the first kind of
Speaker 1: dumb thing that I learned was that COVID nineteen stands
Speaker 1: for coronavirus disease two thousand nineteen, which I didn't even
Speaker 1: know that until two days ago. Is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean it's not talked about a lot, and I
Speaker 1: didn't bother to look it up. So yeah, and I
Speaker 1: guess it's not intuitive looking at it if you think
Speaker 1: about it, But um, there's other names for it to
Speaker 1: the who so so what you just said coronavirus disease
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen COVID nineteen. That's the name of the disease, right,
Speaker 1: there's another name for the disease that the who calls
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen and cove okay, and then the virus
Speaker 1: itself if you want to really show off at your
Speaker 1: next online dinner party. Um, the virus itself is is
Speaker 1: technically named stars Cove two. Yeah, dash big seed, little
Speaker 1: old big vas too. That's right. And as we'll see,
Speaker 1: the reason that it is called stars Cove two is
Speaker 1: because it bears a striking genetic resemblance to stars Cove one.
Speaker 1: I guess you could call it or the stars the
Speaker 1: stars virus that um that swept the swept the world
Speaker 1: not too long ago too, Yeah, And I can't help
Speaker 1: every time I hear of stars I still the first
Speaker 1: thing I think of is the Saturday Night Live sketch
Speaker 1: with Peter stars Guard when he developed the Stars Guard
Speaker 1: stars Guard. Yeah, when did we talk about that before?
Speaker 1: Was it the virus is one or the Spanish flu episode? Maybe?
Speaker 1: I don't think we did one on stars did No,
Speaker 1: not as far as I remember, huh, Because because I
Speaker 1: don't know much about coronaviruses, or I didn't until we
Speaker 1: really started researching this. But um, that is what covid is.
Speaker 1: It's a coronavirus, and coronaviruses have been around for a while. Um.
Speaker 1: They're a family of viruses that typically cause upper respiratory
Speaker 1: infections in humans and chickens and pigs and cows. Coronavirus
Speaker 1: is usually cause um diarrhea or intestinal infections. Um, but
Speaker 1: in humans it's usually the upper respiratory tract. Although we
Speaker 1: have seen now that coronavirus can cause pig or cow
Speaker 1: like infections in humans too, we've seen that recently. But
Speaker 1: but for the most part, you've probably been exposed to
Speaker 1: a coronavirus. You've probably been made sick by one. And
Speaker 1: normally coronavirus is just give us something that we would
Speaker 1: take as a cold or a common flu. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: the corona means crown in both Spanish and Latin. And
Speaker 1: these images that you've seen, the illustrations of what it
Speaker 1: looks like under a microscope, Um, those little spikes protruding
Speaker 1: from the surface, those are kind of what I guess
Speaker 1: how it got its name as corona. Yeah, Dave puts
Speaker 1: it here like it reminds him of Pinhead from the
Speaker 1: Hell Raiser movies, who, by the way, has a really
Speaker 1: good backstory. I was reading about him just happen by
Speaker 1: happenstance the other day. Yeah, he's a really interesting guy.
Speaker 1: The whole reason he got into, you know, being a
Speaker 1: center byte in Hell was, um, he was disillusioned by
Speaker 1: the chaos of World War One and lost like all
Speaker 1: all faith in any meaning to life, so he started
Speaker 1: to he just ditched this world for hell instead. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: I didn't know there was a backstory. Oh yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of It's kind of been built up over
Speaker 1: the course of some of Clive Barker's novels. The movies
Speaker 1: have contributed to it, some other people have kind of
Speaker 1: contributed to it. And there's like this robust kind of
Speaker 1: mythos around that guy. It's it's really interesting stuff. See,
Speaker 1: I'm appreciated eating our sides more than ever today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean to it's kind of like, do we have
Speaker 1: to talk about this? Yeah, let's talk more about movies.
Speaker 1: Have you seen the new Candy Man that's coming? Are
Speaker 1: they remaking Candy Man? Yeah, Jordan Peel's producing it, and
Speaker 1: I saw trailer looks pretty good. Did you like UM US.
Speaker 1: I did. I was, and I was not moved entirely
Speaker 1: by it. I really like get Out a lot more
Speaker 1: than US. But I'm a fan of Jordan Peel to
Speaker 1: think he's got a great mind and everything. But I
Speaker 1: don't know if I was expecting more from US or
Speaker 1: I was expecting something different. I'm not sure. Well, I
Speaker 1: like to get Out more. For sure. US got a
Speaker 1: little wacky, but then I think I appreciate it more.
Speaker 1: It's like a sort of a Twilight Zone kind of wacky. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I guess if I had gone into it expecting that,
Speaker 1: I think I would have liked it more. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: dug it great acting too, Oh yeah, for sure, across
Speaker 1: the board. All right, do we have to talk about
Speaker 1: this now? Yeah? Back to it, all right. See's said
Speaker 1: that chances are that at some point you might have
Speaker 1: had a coronavirus UM. You might have just thought it
Speaker 1: was a cold UM novel coronavirus viruses. You've probably heard
Speaker 1: that in the news lately. This is different because this
Speaker 1: is an animal coronavirus that evolves and then infects a
Speaker 1: human and thus rendering it novel or new to us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like those other coronavirus is the ones that give us
Speaker 1: colds or whatever. Who knows how long they've been around,
Speaker 1: and it's possible they followed the exact same process that
Speaker 1: these novel coronaviruses have followed. But this novel coronavirus that
Speaker 1: causes COVID nineteen, like you said, it's new to us,
Speaker 1: and we think that it literally just made the jump
Speaker 1: from animal to human, possibly in a live animal food
Speaker 1: market in Wuhan, China. Um and as recently as late
Speaker 1: December two thousand nineteen. Yeah, so there's kind of a
Speaker 1: lot to this. I think they pretty much are pouse
Speaker 1: it of that that's what happened. Um. They think that
Speaker 1: they have a patient zero, fifty five year old man
Speaker 1: from the Hubai province, but they're not positive about that. Uh.
Speaker 1: And now there's some debate about the timeline. UM. Officially
Speaker 1: it was December thirty one, but now they're saying it
Speaker 1: may have been first detected in mid November. UM, the
Speaker 1: patient zero is not confirmed. Uh. They they've also think
Speaker 1: they have zero down the fact that it just like
Speaker 1: in the movie Contagion, it started with a bat and
Speaker 1: then this animal, this very strange animal that had never
Speaker 1: heard of before, called a pangolin has served as the
Speaker 1: intermediate host because they did genome sequencing of the virus
Speaker 1: and it has identical genome sequence to that of uh
Speaker 1: when it's in a human. Yeah, that's it's really interesting
Speaker 1: to think that if you look at a lot of
Speaker 1: the research Chuck, that we're hearing about and we're learning
Speaker 1: and just generally stuff that people walking around know about coronavirus,
Speaker 1: it has come from China doing an astounding amount of
Speaker 1: research and um work on examining and trying to figure
Speaker 1: out and trying to defeat this coronavirus. So, um, I
Speaker 1: mean they've they've they've definitely done a lot of work,
Speaker 1: you could say, for to to to kind of explain
Speaker 1: to the world what's going on. Even though I believe
Speaker 1: they're they're pretty roundly criticized for potentially not warning the
Speaker 1: world and enough time. Um, but I guess that's getting
Speaker 1: to that political stuff. Yeah, and just to be clear
Speaker 1: of finding a patient zero isn't so they can, you know,
Speaker 1: say you did it, you did it, you have to
Speaker 1: pay for this. Yeah, it's it's helpful in trying to
Speaker 1: figure this whole thing out. That's why timelines are important.
Speaker 1: Tracing it back to his roots is important. Uh. Since
Speaker 1: that time, China has closed down about twenty wildlife arms
Speaker 1: to try and curb in part to try and curb
Speaker 1: the pangul and trade, which is a delicacy to eat
Speaker 1: in China. Um, but I just read today apparently in
Speaker 1: Nigeria they account for about fifty of the pangol in
Speaker 1: trade and the penalty they already had in place is
Speaker 1: still the current penalty, which is two dollars and seventy
Speaker 1: cents for a first time offenders. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of pressure on Nigeria right now to shut down their
Speaker 1: trade as well. And yeah, pangulin is a it's it's
Speaker 1: a mammal, right, but it is covered in like these
Speaker 1: kind of dragon like scales, and it looks like a
Speaker 1: small ant eater. It looks like a dragon head sex
Speaker 1: with an ant eater. Yeah, and it's tough to look at,
Speaker 1: Like it hurts my teeth looking at pangolins for some reason.
Speaker 1: I can't quite put my finger on why. But it's
Speaker 1: almost like they just shouldn't be or something. Well, Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say what I was gonna say, So
Speaker 1: let's talk about the spread of covid. Okay, so UM
Speaker 1: there the way that it's spread initially or the way
Speaker 1: that just about well, any zooonotic virus. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if all viruses start like this, but they usually typically
Speaker 1: start in an animal and it spreads through close contact
Speaker 1: between an animal, a sick animal, and human who then
Speaker 1: contracts that it's a zoonotic transmission right from animal to human.
Speaker 1: It is I'm surprised we haven't hit on it before. UM.
Speaker 1: And then so that's an animal to person transmission. From
Speaker 1: that point on, that person is infected, they get sick,
Speaker 1: and then they transfer it to somebody who UM, who
Speaker 1: comes in close contact with them, which we'll talk more about,
Speaker 1: but these days, close contact for coronavirus and COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: is considered within six ft for an extended period of
Speaker 1: time or present with somebody sneezes or coughs in in
Speaker 1: you know, a small area, and then that person can
Speaker 1: get sick. That's person a person transmission. And then the
Speaker 1: last one, and this is the one that's the hardest
Speaker 1: to deal with and the one that we're seeing right
Speaker 1: now the stage that we've entered UM around the world
Speaker 1: is what's called community spread. Yeah, that one's the scary one,
Speaker 1: because that's the final stage where people get sick who,
Speaker 1: as far as they know, didn't have any contact with
Speaker 1: another sick person. Um. And this is when you know,
Speaker 1: those very first stages of the outbreak, it was all
Speaker 1: person to person after obviously the animal transmission. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then when it developed into community spread, that's when people
Speaker 1: started to get UM a little freaked out. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean they can't say, oh, I was around
Speaker 1: you know Timmy, who's sick with this right now, so
Speaker 1: I got it from him. It's like, I have no
Speaker 1: idea where I got this, And that makes the whole
Speaker 1: thing scary. It makes people freaked out. It makes it
Speaker 1: much more difficult to UM to contain when people don't
Speaker 1: know where they're getting it from, and it it makes
Speaker 1: you need to take much more draconian measures to to
Speaker 1: prevent the spread of this stuff. It's where it starts
Speaker 1: to get out of cont role is when it hits
Speaker 1: community spread. Yeah. UM. And you know when you see
Speaker 1: like these graphic maps of of how it's spread, it's
Speaker 1: really frightening, is the only word that can be used
Speaker 1: to describe how quickly this thing has taken hold. UM.
Speaker 1: And you know this is stuff that everyone knows unless
Speaker 1: you've just been under a rock or like my friend Clay.
Speaker 1: About a week before this happened, he went to Nepal
Speaker 1: for a two month piking trip. Yeah. I was like, well,
Speaker 1: that's your new home, buddy, I hope you like it.
Speaker 1: Is he there still? Yeah, he's still there. Oh my gosh. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's good. He's not sick or anything. He's just hanging out. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't think he's seen a lot of people. I
Speaker 1: think he's deep, you know, into the woods and stuff. Well, man,
Speaker 1: that's about as good a place as you could possibly
Speaker 1: be right now. Yeah, And he was planning on being
Speaker 1: there for two months anyway. Uh, yes, he had a
Speaker 1: plan a trip. It may not have been two months,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure. I mean, I am concerned about it, obviously,
Speaker 1: But he says everything's cool. Yeah. It sounds like your
Speaker 1: friend Clay maybe one of the luckiest people in the world. Maybe. Wow, Well,
Speaker 1: keep it, keep at it, Clay. You're doing social distancing right.
Speaker 1: Just go to Nepal and stay in the woods. Should
Speaker 1: we should we take a little break here? Yes? We should.
Speaker 1: All right, let's break and we'll talk about some of
Speaker 1: the symptoms right after this stuff. You should know. Gosh,
Speaker 1: sh stuff you should know. Okay, chuck. So we're talking
Speaker 1: about symptoms here, um there. It turns out so the
Speaker 1: there's like a classic set of symptoms that they now
Speaker 1: recognize as if you have these, there's a really good
Speaker 1: it's right now that you you have COVID nineteen. Um.
Speaker 1: The the cluster of symptoms are a fever. It's usually
Speaker 1: a high fever m hm. A dry cough is a
Speaker 1: really dead giveaway. And a dry cough is you know
Speaker 1: where where you it's almost like the back of your
Speaker 1: throat is tickling and you can get no relief from it,
Speaker 1: and you're not like coughing up flim that can help
Speaker 1: get rid of that cough or that sensation of needing
Speaker 1: to cough. It's like a dry cough. Yeah, which is
Speaker 1: really troubling right now because it's pollen season here in
Speaker 1: the United States and dry cough for a lot of
Speaker 1: people is a is a regular thing every spring, So
Speaker 1: it's especially worrisome I think for a lot of folks
Speaker 1: with allergies, Yeah, for sure. Um and and I keep
Speaker 1: getting like I don't normally get allergies, but it's pretty
Speaker 1: bad this year. And I'm like, I've got not a
Speaker 1: dry cough, but you know, a little tickle here there,
Speaker 1: my nose is maybe a little running here there. So
Speaker 1: I'm like always really paying extra attention to that stuff.
Speaker 1: It's it's exhausting basically. Yeah. And then the third one
Speaker 1: is UM. So you've got fever, dry cough, and then
Speaker 1: difficulty breathing, shortness of breath, that kind of thing. And
Speaker 1: from studies they they've found according to the Journal of UM.
Speaker 1: Uh what is JAMMA stand for? I used to know, oh,
Speaker 1: the Journal of the American Medical Association, duh, so jama
Speaker 1: UM found that on average, people start to display that
Speaker 1: symptom of shortness of breath within five days of the
Speaker 1: onset of the rest of their symptoms. So if you
Speaker 1: have a fever, if you have a dry cough, and
Speaker 1: after a few days you start to develop a shortness
Speaker 1: of breath or difficulty breathing, you're a really good candidate
Speaker 1: to get tested for COVID and maybe need to go
Speaker 1: to the hospital. Yeah. And I've seen um, I've seen
Speaker 1: the chess thing described from people who have coronavirus or
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen is everything from you know, fifty pound weight
Speaker 1: on your chest too, to a belt strapped around their
Speaker 1: chest that keeps getting tighter and tighter that you can't.
Speaker 1: That sounds awful, Yeah, it sounds very specific. Um. If
Speaker 1: you feel actual severe pain and pressure in your chest. UM,
Speaker 1: if you have bluish lips or a bluish face, if
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you're confused and you normally aren't
Speaker 1: confused mentally, then those are signs that they say you
Speaker 1: really need to get to the hospital right away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. I mean that's anytime your skin or lips
Speaker 1: are blue, that's that's a bad sign. But that's one
Speaker 1: of the big um signs of COVID is is that
Speaker 1: difficulty breathing leads to a lack of oxygen, which is
Speaker 1: why everybody keeps talking about this need for ventilators. Um.
Speaker 1: Part of this process of a really bad case of
Speaker 1: COVID we're talking about a bad case here, UM, is
Speaker 1: that you may need a ventilator to help you breathe
Speaker 1: because you're not getting enough oxygen into your lungs breathing
Speaker 1: on your own. So that's why ventilators have been kind
Speaker 1: of like sole pretty stars, um, really sought after in
Speaker 1: this in this pandemic, right now, yeah, and why the
Speaker 1: shortage of ventilators is super scary because you've got in
Speaker 1: that situation and we'll talk more about, um, the biggest fear,
Speaker 1: which is overwhelming the medical system. But uh, then you
Speaker 1: have potentially mild cases that develop into more serious and
Speaker 1: even fatal cases, right, Yes, and that typically seems to
Speaker 1: be in seen most in people who are older. I
Speaker 1: think uh sixty five and over is at uh graduated
Speaker 1: increased risk from that age forward. People who have compromised
Speaker 1: immune systems already. I think people with diabetes are are
Speaker 1: at risk. UM. But for the most part, something like
Speaker 1: eight percent of cases of COVID are relatively mild and
Speaker 1: are going to appear to you to be just like
Speaker 1: a seasonal cold, running knows, cough um, sore throat um,
Speaker 1: just just something that you would wouldn't even need to
Speaker 1: like do anything more than take some medicine at home.
Speaker 1: For the vast majority of cases of people who are
Speaker 1: who have are going to get COVID nineteen are going
Speaker 1: to experience a mild case. It's actually it's I guess
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to say is don't be freaked out.
Speaker 1: It's very rare to get these extreme cases, Yes, statistics
Speaker 1: are on your side, UM, and that's how it's treated
Speaker 1: as well. In mild cases, it's treated sort of like
Speaker 1: the flu. You get rest, you have a lot of fluids, UM,
Speaker 1: you try to manage your fever, and generally in the
Speaker 1: side of a couple of weeks, you will recover. In
Speaker 1: mild cases, right, one of the problems that I saw
Speaker 1: the chuck is that when the case becomes more advanced
Speaker 1: and you have difficulty breathing, it's it's um. It just
Speaker 1: kind of like reeks havoc on your lungs and the
Speaker 1: air sax and your lungs avioli um start to become
Speaker 1: damn it. And when they become damaged, they can very
Speaker 1: easily get infected and filled with fluid, and then you
Speaker 1: have pneumonia. And that's an entirely different co morbidity that
Speaker 1: is um difficult to manage that that can kill you,
Speaker 1: but also isn't necessarily going to kill you. But it's
Speaker 1: it's another problem that they're finding can arise out of
Speaker 1: a COVID nineteen infection. Yeah, I think uh Dave has
Speaker 1: here down. The latest statistic is about one to three
Speaker 1: percent of infections get to the secondary pneumonia, and if
Speaker 1: that happens, you have what's called ARDS, acute respiratory distress syndrome.
Speaker 1: And the scary part about ARDS is thirty of those
Speaker 1: cases end up proving fatal. Right yeah, even if you
Speaker 1: have ever been a later right um. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that's kind of confounded people UM studying this
Speaker 1: pandemic has been like that every once in a while,
Speaker 1: a young, healthy person will will die from this, and
Speaker 1: it's very puzzling. It doesn't make a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: And I saw that there was a an article in
Speaker 1: The Lancet from January that talked about a study that
Speaker 1: found that in cases UM where people were severely ill,
Speaker 1: they found what's called the cyto keine storm, which I
Speaker 1: know we've talked about before, but basically, your body throws
Speaker 1: everything it has at this infection, and it's actually an
Speaker 1: overblown immune reaction, so so much so that your body
Speaker 1: attacks its own organs and you can die from multiple
Speaker 1: organ failure. Again, this is in the worst case scenarios,
Speaker 1: but it does explain why some younger, healthy people have
Speaker 1: mysteriously died from this. They think that it's their body
Speaker 1: just overreacted to the to the illness yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: and I know that they have to report accurate findings.
Speaker 1: But I think one of the things that is certainly
Speaker 1: not helped um with the social distancing is the initial
Speaker 1: news that, um, it's really only a problem if you're elderly,
Speaker 1: are over a certain age. And so now that I mean,
Speaker 1: since then, the messaging has been really ramped up on
Speaker 1: millennials and younger people. Um. There's stories every day now
Speaker 1: where younger people are like, hey, I've got it, this
Speaker 1: is no joke. Please please, please don't take this lightly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've seen some people doing making videos like that, and
Speaker 1: and good for them for doing that. Um. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: got a lot of things wrong early on in this
Speaker 1: in this outbreak in the United States, for sure, Yes
Speaker 1: you could say, you could say that. Um. One of
Speaker 1: the other things I want to point out though, speaking
Speaker 1: about numbers and statistics and everything, though, is that like
Speaker 1: when we when we talk about like the rates of mortality,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about in a second, it's really important
Speaker 1: to remember that, you know, even if the mortality rate
Speaker 1: is as high as three percent, that means that of
Speaker 1: people who get it recover. And one thing I've really
Speaker 1: been heartened to see Chuck, is if just in the
Speaker 1: last couple of days the news agency's have started to
Speaker 1: report total cases, and then next to that are recoveries,
Speaker 1: and then after that our deaths. It used to just
Speaker 1: be total number of cases and deaths. Now there's a
Speaker 1: big old bar in between those two. That's recovered people
Speaker 1: who have gotten the the had come down with COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen and have now recovered and are no longer ill. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean the fatality rate is I've seen four percent, uh,
Speaker 1: Dave has here um. Some people place it below one percent,
Speaker 1: some above two. It's somewhere in that range. Uh. And
Speaker 1: if you want to compare it to Stars, Stars had
Speaker 1: a fatality rate of about ten percent UM, but it
Speaker 1: was much more contained. So that's sort of the main
Speaker 1: difference in what we're seeing here with COVID nineteen. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The reason why no one can say at this point
Speaker 1: what the fatality rate actually is, in part is because
Speaker 1: the UM testing was so flubbed early on in the
Speaker 1: United States that so few people were given tests the
Speaker 1: results were skewed, right, So if you took a test
Speaker 1: for COVID nineteen, the chances are you had such terrible
Speaker 1: symptoms that you went to the hospital and they tested
Speaker 1: you there. Well, that totally leaves out people who had
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen but had those mild cases and didn't go
Speaker 1: to the hospital and so they didn't get a test.
Speaker 1: So this vast number of people who came down with
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen and it was just like the flu or
Speaker 1: the common cold, so that their numbers weren't added to this,
Speaker 1: which makes the number of people who were tested and
Speaker 1: then died really disproportionate to the actual numbers of people
Speaker 1: who die when they have COVID nineteen, at least in
Speaker 1: the United States and in South Korea, which is held
Speaker 1: up as like this model for how to handle a
Speaker 1: pandemic from this point forward. They had plentiful widespread testing
Speaker 1: early on and throughout, and they took a lot of
Speaker 1: really good containment measures. But because they had really good testing,
Speaker 1: um it became clear that the fatality rate, at least
Speaker 1: in South Korea, it was point seven percent, which is
Speaker 1: still higher than a seasonal flu, which usually about point
Speaker 1: one percent, but it's not nearly as high as, like
Speaker 1: you said, four percent. So our our understanding of the
Speaker 1: actual fatality rate is not it's not clear yet, but
Speaker 1: it's probably not anywhere near as high as four percent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what the thinking is, um, and that you know,
Speaker 1: the asymptomatic individuals, they are a simps, is what I
Speaker 1: call them. That's another one of the scary parts about
Speaker 1: it is it's hard to get accurate numbers on even
Speaker 1: the number of people that have it because there could
Speaker 1: be there could be people, uh, there could be far
Speaker 1: more people that have it that just don't develop the
Speaker 1: symptoms and are still spreading it because they think they're great. Right.
Speaker 1: There an enormous problem. And that's one of the things.
Speaker 1: I know we've talked about this before, but like a
Speaker 1: worst case scenario for a virus is one that infects
Speaker 1: a person but takes a while for symptoms to show up,
Speaker 1: because like you said, they're a simps walking around infecting
Speaker 1: everybody else because they can spread it um even though
Speaker 1: they don't know they're sick yet. And by the way,
Speaker 1: Chuck a Simps. Excellent band name, and I see them
Speaker 1: all with matching man chi che haircuts, the whole, the
Speaker 1: whole four or five piece band. Interesting the a Simps
Speaker 1: manchy Chi was that sort of like, uh, I remember
Speaker 1: the song ironically, but I can't picture They're they're little
Speaker 1: fuzz heads, weren't they. They were. They were kind of
Speaker 1: kind of like mop top, like the Beatles with their
Speaker 1: matching haircuts. Early on, it was a little like that.
Speaker 1: I guess, all right, are you saying the Beatles were
Speaker 1: a simps the Yeah? I think that was their original
Speaker 1: the original name with Pete Best in Hamburg. Wow. Uh,
Speaker 1: all right, let's talk about how to how it spreads. Um.
Speaker 1: You did mention earlier, but it bears repeating. Um. This
Speaker 1: six foot rule is because you are most likely to
Speaker 1: get infected by being sneezed around, being coughed around, and
Speaker 1: getting those airborne droplets from an infected person. Even though
Speaker 1: they do know now it can live on surfaces, and
Speaker 1: they're they're rapidly trying to test how long it lives
Speaker 1: on various types of surfaces, because that's that's a big,
Speaker 1: big deal. Yeah. So, and I didn't know this. Um.
Speaker 1: An infected surface is called a foe might Did you
Speaker 1: know that? I don't think so. So. Grocery store cart
Speaker 1: handle foue mic um potentially uh, plastic from a a glove.
Speaker 1: Uh if it's a plastic glove, foe might it's a
Speaker 1: foamte yeah, cardboard. Uh. I know that they're testing cardboard
Speaker 1: a lot right now because a lot of people obviously
Speaker 1: you're getting home deliveries now. And um, just quick little
Speaker 1: non doctor recommendation from Dr Chuck. Here. When I get
Speaker 1: a package, now, I go outside with my surgical gloves on.
Speaker 1: I opened it on the front porch and I put
Speaker 1: a firebomb in that cardboard box. Push it into the street.
Speaker 1: Very smart said I don't bring that outer box inside
Speaker 1: though at all. No, no, no, you send it down
Speaker 1: the street a flame in a wheelchair like um Philip
Speaker 1: Smore Hofman dragon Man. That was one of the creepier
Speaker 1: images in movie history. I think it's great, especially when
Speaker 1: he like hits the wall in like jerks back. Word
Speaker 1: that it was great. Um. The the There was a
Speaker 1: I think a N I H study that looked at
Speaker 1: Foe mies. It found that in the air when somebody sneeze, sneezes,
Speaker 1: or coughs into the air, that aerosolized um air or
Speaker 1: air sulized virus sorry can can survive for three hours
Speaker 1: in the air UM four hours on copper surfaces, twenty
Speaker 1: four hours on cardboard, two to three days on plastic,
Speaker 1: and stainless steel. Um. The thing is, this is really
Speaker 1: reassuring because I too have been super worried about things
Speaker 1: like boxes or touching grocery carts or anything like that.
Speaker 1: The CDC says that up to this point, there have
Speaker 1: been no documented cases of infection from foe mines. That's huge, man,
Speaker 1: that's huge, because that means that if if you're not
Speaker 1: around a sick person, at least up until this point,
Speaker 1: at least documented wise, if you haven't been around somebody
Speaker 1: who's sick, you haven't gotten it from touching something. And
Speaker 1: that's a big thing that people have been talking about,
Speaker 1: Like don't touch your face is one way to avoid
Speaker 1: the spread, which we'll talk about, but don't touch your
Speaker 1: face after not only like being around somebody, but don't
Speaker 1: touch your face after touching a car or box or
Speaker 1: touching a grocery cart or something like that, because it
Speaker 1: could be a foam mic. But the idea that no
Speaker 1: one has gotten sick yet from a foam mic I
Speaker 1: found extraordinarily reassuring. Although it's not like we should go
Speaker 1: get cocky now and you can just do whatever, but
Speaker 1: I feel like I can relax a little bit, even
Speaker 1: though I'm going to be just as vigilant, I can
Speaker 1: be a little more relaxed about it. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna go start licking grocery cart handles like
Speaker 1: you usually do. Man, some of the tastes I've discovered
Speaker 1: or it's almost like it's like the impossible colors version
Speaker 1: of tastes, and some some like almost something that HP
Speaker 1: Lovecraft would had have trouble describing. Well, that's how you
Speaker 1: discovered the new form of umami that had previously been undiscovered,
Speaker 1: right right, jumanti um. And to be clear, to this
Speaker 1: whole cardboard box on the porch thing and the surgical
Speaker 1: gloves for me, um, that's a an abundance of caution,
Speaker 1: just being like, you know, wide not just leave it
Speaker 1: on the porch just because I don't know, and the
Speaker 1: surgical gloves thing. And keep in mind, I really literally
Speaker 1: haven't left the house in ten days, I don't think. Um.
Speaker 1: But previous to that, I was wearing the gloves, like
Speaker 1: when I had to run to the store to get
Speaker 1: our stuff, just so I didn't have to sanitize my
Speaker 1: steering wheel and my car door handle and everything like
Speaker 1: that every single time I did anything. It's just smart, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really hard to do too, Like if you're if
Speaker 1: you think about it, you're you're like, wait, but I
Speaker 1: need my hand to touch my credit card because but
Speaker 1: then I need my gloved hand to punch in the
Speaker 1: numbers for my zip code, and like it's like you
Speaker 1: really have to be on point to keep up with it.
Speaker 1: And even then you're just it's impossible to be perfect,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, I mean we've been um again, we
Speaker 1: haven't been out much at all, but when we have
Speaker 1: had to be out, we're sanitizing our credit cards. When
Speaker 1: we come back, we spray our door handle and you know,
Speaker 1: not like Howard use level stuff, but just just trying
Speaker 1: to be smart, right, although Howard hughes level stuff right
Speaker 1: now is not not the worst idea, Like I have
Speaker 1: Peenix boxes on my feet right now. No, no, no judgment,
Speaker 1: of course. Um so, Chuck, we're talking about how it spreads. Um,
Speaker 1: what actually happens with this virus is once somebody coughs
Speaker 1: or sneezes or licks their hand and wipes a elevator
Speaker 1: button or something with it. Um, it's it's that is
Speaker 1: an infected surface. Although apparently people haven't gotten sick from
Speaker 1: it yet but more often than not, apparently you're going
Speaker 1: to get sick if you're around somebody who coughs or
Speaker 1: sneezes and you get it from the aerosolized virus. When
Speaker 1: that when that virus enters your body through your mouth,
Speaker 1: your nose, or your eyes, it sets up shop um,
Speaker 1: usually around in your throat, which is where that dry
Speaker 1: cough starts um. And the reason that those those spiked
Speaker 1: proteins that form the coronavirus is crown are there is
Speaker 1: because that's how it interacts with the cell. And the
Speaker 1: way that it interacts with the cell is through an
Speaker 1: enzyme that's present on the outer membranes of most cells
Speaker 1: in the human bodies, and this enzyme is called furin.
Speaker 1: Furin I say furin fu r I N. Furin activates
Speaker 1: that that protein spike, and that's how the virus can
Speaker 1: pump its its genetic information into the cell, which hijacks
Speaker 1: the cell's functions and says you're making copies of me now,
Speaker 1: and then it just kind of spreads from there. And
Speaker 1: this is why they think that the um that you
Speaker 1: can get things like diarrhea like a cow or a pig,
Speaker 1: or you can suffer multiple organ failure or it can
Speaker 1: go after other stuff. Is because most of the organs
Speaker 1: and systems in your body have cells that contain furin
Speaker 1: on their outer envelopes, and so the the coronavirus UM
Speaker 1: can can interact with just about any cell that has furin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it makes me really uncomfortable for you to talk
Speaker 1: about my outer envelopes and diarrhea and cows and pigs
Speaker 1: in the same sentence. Yeah, it's all pretty bad. Uh.
Speaker 1: The and you know we've talked about touching your face,
Speaker 1: which is tough for me as a nail biter and
Speaker 1: just general oral orally fixated individual. Um that six foot
Speaker 1: distance Uh, disinfecting light switches and door knobs and countertops
Speaker 1: surely doesn't hurt. And uh and I know everyone has
Speaker 1: heard this a gazillion times, but we would be negligent
Speaker 1: if we didn't talk about washing your hands with soap
Speaker 1: and water hot water for at least twenty seconds. Um.
Speaker 1: Pretend you're a surgeon, and you've seen shows about surgeons.
Speaker 1: Just pretend like you're in the match camp and just
Speaker 1: wash like they wash. There was no chance that we
Speaker 1: were not going to reference match in this episode. I know, Uh,
Speaker 1: they there's different songs like the ABC song or I
Speaker 1: Don't want no scrubs. I guess you could sing like
Speaker 1: a surgeon if you wanted to. Oh that's a good one,
Speaker 1: but at least get in there for twenty seconds. We
Speaker 1: have handwashing parties at my house several times a day,
Speaker 1: even though we're not going out. We take our temperature
Speaker 1: every morning, um as a family. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: because I took that trip to Philly, New York and
Speaker 1: d C right as this was launching to see Bonnie
Speaker 1: Prince Billy and uh you know, we went on two trains,
Speaker 1: two planes Penn Station in New York for God's sake,
Speaker 1: which is already the filthiest place on earth. And uh,
Speaker 1: I was not freaking out, but I was definitely at
Speaker 1: a higher risk than the rest of my family. So
Speaker 1: I've been watching stuff. And tomorrow actually will be my
Speaker 1: fourteen day, the end of my fourteen day window. So
Speaker 1: unless something really happens overnight, then I feel pretty good. Man.
Speaker 1: I'm glad to hear that. That's great. That's got to
Speaker 1: be a big relief. It is, you know. I try
Speaker 1: not to focus on it, but um, you know, my
Speaker 1: wife and daughter didn't go to Penn station and didn't
Speaker 1: eat a Philly chee steak at two in the morning,
Speaker 1: you know, I know, and yet they could have suffered
Speaker 1: for it, you know. Yeah. So, um, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people are counting down days. I know. You
Speaker 1: me is from this past Thursday, which is the last
Speaker 1: time her dad went out to get supplies, um from
Speaker 1: the grocery store, and she's like nervously counting, accounting to
Speaker 1: fourteen from from Thursday, just trying to will you know,
Speaker 1: him not to get sick um. And I think that's
Speaker 1: just kind of like it's everybody's got these these little
Speaker 1: countdown clocks going on right now of their own. It's
Speaker 1: just talk about like an anxious thing to do while
Speaker 1: you're sitting around in your home, not not leaving, you know,
Speaker 1: to pass right exactly. You're you're you're counting down the
Speaker 1: days in the hopes that an illness doesn't pop up
Speaker 1: in the meantime. Like what a strange, horrible thing for
Speaker 1: everybody to be doing right now. Yeah. Absolutely, Um, we
Speaker 1: should mention masks really quickly to uh. The c D
Speaker 1: says there's no need to wear a mask unless you
Speaker 1: are sick or you're caring from one for someone who's sick.
Speaker 1: If you're healthy, if you're not sick, if you're keeping
Speaker 1: yourself clean, masks aren't necessary. You shouldn't go out and
Speaker 1: buy hundreds of these things. Um. I mean, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna judge in one. If they had some and they
Speaker 1: want to wear them out, more power to you. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some people say that they wear them to keep from
Speaker 1: touching their face because they're really fixated, so that you
Speaker 1: know there's something to that. But um, the rush on
Speaker 1: buying things like surgical masks has um put a dent
Speaker 1: in the medical supply chain, which is not cool. No,
Speaker 1: And I have to say, like, I know we're not
Speaker 1: getting political or whatever, but I've read a New York
Speaker 1: Times article with with this guy. It was about masks
Speaker 1: and the masks shortage, and there was this one man,
Speaker 1: you factorer in Texas, who said, man, short of setting
Speaker 1: myself on fire in front of the White House, I've
Speaker 1: done everything I can to warn the government that we
Speaker 1: are in a really precar precarious position. He said. I
Speaker 1: told that the Bush administration, the Obama administration, and the
Speaker 1: Trump administration that we rely on like of our medical
Speaker 1: masks from overseas, and if a pandemic happens, we're gonna
Speaker 1: be reliant on other countries who are dealing with their
Speaker 1: own stuff to send us masks. And he said that's
Speaker 1: even the case with American manufacturers who moved their operations
Speaker 1: overseas for cheaper labor. And in fact, there's a company
Speaker 1: that makes medical masks and it's an American company that
Speaker 1: moved their jam to France, and France under this pandemic
Speaker 1: said well, by the way, we've taken over your factory
Speaker 1: and none of these masks are leaving France. You can't
Speaker 1: send them anywhere. It's illegal there are though you're an
Speaker 1: American company, this is in France, and we just Nash
Speaker 1: realized everything. So, um, this guy has been warning any everybody.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine what that's like to be to have
Speaker 1: seen this coming so clearly, uh, and to to just
Speaker 1: not be listened to, you know, because exactly what he
Speaker 1: predicted his panned out. Oh boy, All right, well, let's
Speaker 1: take another break and we'll talk about containing the spread.
Speaker 1: Everyone's favorite two words these days social distancing and um,
Speaker 1: a little bit more about COVID nineteen. Right after this
Speaker 1: stuff you should know, Nash, stuff you should know. So
Speaker 1: I just want to say, everybody, I think it's laughable.
Speaker 1: Anyone including me who thought that I wasn't going to
Speaker 1: get political at all in this episode. Well, you indicted
Speaker 1: the past three administrations. So that's okay. That seems fair
Speaker 1: and balanced, fair and balanced. So, uh, until we have
Speaker 1: a vaccine, we can only contain COVID nineteen. It is
Speaker 1: about twice as contagious as the seasonal flu. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a big, big big deal. Yeah, it's very contagious. Um.
Speaker 1: And like we said, the big fear right now obviously
Speaker 1: is loss of life. But the real, real big fear
Speaker 1: is that the medical system becomes overwhelmed and treatable infections
Speaker 1: UM can become deadly because we don't have the resources
Speaker 1: that we need. Right. So the in addition to social distancing,
Speaker 1: if that one isn't the Oxford English Dictionaries word of
Speaker 1: the year, oh yeah, then flattening the curve has got
Speaker 1: to be. It's one of them. They're they're gonna tie
Speaker 1: for first probably, and I we should probably blame what
Speaker 1: flattening the curve is for like the three people who
Speaker 1: aren't already familiar with it, shall we? Alright, so flattening
Speaker 1: the curve is this idea that, um, we're going to
Speaker 1: get x number of infections because this is a pandemic,
Speaker 1: A lot of people are going to get infected by
Speaker 1: coronavirus and become sick from it, right, But what we
Speaker 1: can manage is the time scale that that number of
Speaker 1: infections takes place over. So let's say we know that
Speaker 1: an area is going to get just statistically speaking, a
Speaker 1: thousand infections from this pandemic. It's way different to have
Speaker 1: those thousands and thousand infections all at once over the
Speaker 1: course of one week than it is to have that
Speaker 1: same number of infections one thousand over the course of
Speaker 1: ten weeks because of the strain that it puts a
Speaker 1: medical staff and medical equipment. We have a limited amount
Speaker 1: of of medical staff and medical equipment, and if they're
Speaker 1: all called for at the same time, that's problem. But
Speaker 1: we can reuse that medical staff, we can reuse that
Speaker 1: medical equipment over the span of time. So a ventilator
Speaker 1: can support two patients who need it for a week
Speaker 1: each over the course of two weeks, but it can
Speaker 1: only support one patient of those two if they need
Speaker 1: it on the same week. So flattening the curve is
Speaker 1: all about making this this this number of infections that
Speaker 1: were surely going to see spread out over time rather
Speaker 1: than happening all at once. And the main mechanism for
Speaker 1: flattening the curve is social distancing, which is just stay
Speaker 1: away from one another to cut down on that rate
Speaker 1: of infection. Yeah, and you know what, we we try
Speaker 1: to remain judgment free on the show and tell people
Speaker 1: to live their life. But this is one instance where um,
Speaker 1: if you are not social distancing, if you are going
Speaker 1: out to bars and restaurants and having gatherings, then you're
Speaker 1: doing a very very bad thing right now. You're doing
Speaker 1: something extraordinarily selfish, full stop. And I know a lot
Speaker 1: of people are like, well, I'm young, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: doesn't it's not gonna get me. And even if it
Speaker 1: does get me, I'm young and healthy, I'll be fine.
Speaker 1: It will be like a cold. The problem is is
Speaker 1: you're the same person who's going out in public and
Speaker 1: then touching an elevator button and making that person sick.
Speaker 1: Or if you're sick and you're out running around, you're coughing,
Speaker 1: you're sneezing, you're being gross, and you're aerosolizing the air
Speaker 1: with the virus. Which can stay via viable for three hours.
Speaker 1: So you're getting other people sick, and those other people
Speaker 1: might not survive that COVID nineteen case that you've given
Speaker 1: them because they're not young and they're not healthy, and
Speaker 1: the idea that that you're just flouting that that is
Speaker 1: just it's I think maybe blood boiling is the right term. Yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: It really really has been pretty upsetting to see, even
Speaker 1: in my own super cool neighborhood where people seem to
Speaker 1: do the right thing most times. Uh And on the
Speaker 1: the neighborhood page is on Facebook, people are talking and
Speaker 1: doing the right thing. But you know, even up until
Speaker 1: like a few days ago, I was driving through my
Speaker 1: little neighborhood area where the bars and restaurants are, and
Speaker 1: some of them are still full of people, and I
Speaker 1: just like, I want to, like I put a loud
Speaker 1: speaker on top of my car like in uh and
Speaker 1: oh jeez, why am I in Slacker in the Link
Speaker 1: Ladder film and just drive around saying very bad things
Speaker 1: to people in public. When I think allowed speakers in cars,
Speaker 1: I think of Blues Brothers. Yeah that too, and that
Speaker 1: was that was probably Slacker was probably stolen from that anyway,
Speaker 1: did they use a cop car and slacker? No, it's
Speaker 1: at the very beginning of slacker. There's this guy. Actually,
Speaker 1: he probably in Steel because I think it was a
Speaker 1: real dude in Austin that would just drive around sort
Speaker 1: of preaching to the masses from inside of his car. Uh.
Speaker 1: But we need that guy right now to get people
Speaker 1: in their houses. Man. It's it's like it's a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks. Just do it. Just it. It's it's easy,
Speaker 1: especially for two guys who can continue to work from
Speaker 1: home to say that. So I don't I don't want
Speaker 1: to give the impression that we don't have any sympathy
Speaker 1: and our hearts don't go out to people who who
Speaker 1: do work at those bars and restaurants and need that
Speaker 1: money to survive. And so staying at home, and if
Speaker 1: everybody else stays at home like really deeply affects their
Speaker 1: potential to hang in there and survive. Like like that's
Speaker 1: not lost on us, That's not lost on anybody, I
Speaker 1: don't think. And I think the thing that is the
Speaker 1: most blood boiling or people who who are going out
Speaker 1: and like not doing anything that that has any economic impact,
Speaker 1: they're just being jerks. They're like playing basketball, or they're
Speaker 1: just going to the beach, you know, like like that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff is what drives me the most crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just knock it off. Um it had. The heartening thing
Speaker 1: to see has been how many people are stepping up
Speaker 1: to uh contribute to their local favorite restaurants and bars,
Speaker 1: whether it's a go fund me or supporting their curbside pickups,
Speaker 1: or or just then mowing your favorite uh server some money. Um,
Speaker 1: that's happening all over the place to try and keep
Speaker 1: people solvent while this is going on. But the big
Speaker 1: picture is if we don't do this now, it's just
Speaker 1: going to be more drawn out and people are going
Speaker 1: to be more affected economically. Um, So the right thing
Speaker 1: to do is just to shut it down for a
Speaker 1: little while. That I mean, from everything I've seen, what
Speaker 1: we're doing now, this kind of half hearted approach to
Speaker 1: social distancing and quarantining. Like we're getting all of the
Speaker 1: negative economic effects but little to none of the public
Speaker 1: health benefits. So we're doing it in the exact possible
Speaker 1: worst way right now. Yeah. I saw one doctor say
Speaker 1: that if you could literally just a pause button. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the United States right now, there would be no
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen in two weeks. Yeah, if we could freeze
Speaker 1: everybody just six ft apart for fourteen days, the virus
Speaker 1: would stop in its tracks. And we've seen this is
Speaker 1: the thing. This isn't like conjecture, This isn't philosophy or
Speaker 1: modeling or anything like that. This is based on what
Speaker 1: we've seen in other countries like Singapore, Hong Kong, UM, China,
Speaker 1: even UM Japan has done a really good job of
Speaker 1: quarantining where they have they've they've basically figured out the
Speaker 1: way to contain this is extensive and widespread testing for
Speaker 1: the disease and then really strict and um uh really
Speaker 1: well followed and meticulous social distancing and quarantining people taking
Speaker 1: it seriously so that you can test the people to
Speaker 1: see who have it um and and and isolate them,
Speaker 1: quarantine them, treat them to keep them away from everybody else,
Speaker 1: and test other people as as time goes on, so
Speaker 1: that you can have people living a normal life because
Speaker 1: they're not sick, and the people who are sick have
Speaker 1: been identified and are being quarantined and isolated while they're
Speaker 1: being treated. Yeah, I mean, it's it's very easy to
Speaker 1: look at a place like Singapore and look at a
Speaker 1: country like Italy, Um, who did not do it right
Speaker 1: In America. Italy was just before us. UM. These are
Speaker 1: two great examples of the difference that this can make.
Speaker 1: As of today, Singapore has five and fifty eight cases,
Speaker 1: and despite that, I just saw a new announcement today
Speaker 1: that they are closing schools and closing entertainment venues just
Speaker 1: because they're really trying to be super proactive and get
Speaker 1: out in front of it. UM. Italy the infection the
Speaker 1: infection rate was almost nothing throughout February, and then in
Speaker 1: March it spiked to twenty five thousand new cases a
Speaker 1: week two weeks later. This is uh, these are numbers
Speaker 1: that should speak for themselves and you shouldn't have to
Speaker 1: talk people into social distancing. Yet here we are, you
Speaker 1: know it is. It's saddening. Um. The one other problem,
Speaker 1: or I guess the big problem again is the idea
Speaker 1: that if a lot of people become sick, if you
Speaker 1: have a spike in cases like Italy saw, where it
Speaker 1: suddenly goes up to twenty five thousand new cases a week,
Speaker 1: a lot of those people have to be hospitalized, and
Speaker 1: it stretches and over taxes and eventually overwhelms the health
Speaker 1: care structure in the in in the country, and in
Speaker 1: the United States, like every town has a brand new,
Speaker 1: gleaming hospital and lots of doctors. But it turns out
Speaker 1: if you look at the statistics, the United States has
Speaker 1: a paltry number of hospital beds per one thousand people. Um,
Speaker 1: we have two point eight hospital beds per one thousand people,
Speaker 1: which even sounds small, but if you put it in context,
Speaker 1: really small. Um. Japan and Korea have the most. They
Speaker 1: have thirteen point one and twelve point three hospital beds
Speaker 1: per thousand people. Next is Russia at eight point one,
Speaker 1: in Germany at eight point oh, and then you go
Speaker 1: there's a lot of countries in between Germany and the
Speaker 1: United States, which finally pops up with two point eight
Speaker 1: hospital beds per one thou people. The problem is that's
Speaker 1: just hospital beds. That's just a bed to put people,
Speaker 1: and that's not specialized hospital beds, like people with a
Speaker 1: bad case of COVID nineteen frequently need like an I
Speaker 1: see you bed, And so already in the United States,
Speaker 1: in hard hit areas like New York, we're starting to see, um,
Speaker 1: I see you rooms that were meant to hold one
Speaker 1: patient starting to be tripled and quadrupled up with patients
Speaker 1: who all have COVID nineteen um, and just to just
Speaker 1: to try to give them the the advanced level of
Speaker 1: care that they need. Um, because we don't have enough beds.
Speaker 1: And so that's why that that not social distancing. Why
Speaker 1: just going out and carrying on like nothing's going on
Speaker 1: is just such a ridiculously arrogant thing to do at
Speaker 1: a time like this. Yeah, And I feel like every
Speaker 1: day it's gotten a little bit better. Um, Like you
Speaker 1: really have to be pretty uh selfish and um, what's
Speaker 1: the word. There's a word that I can't say on
Speaker 1: the air for when you've got a lot of gumption
Speaker 1: to do something despite everyone's saying you shouldn't. Guts not
Speaker 1: guts because that impites bravery. Nerve there you go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like as of today when we're recording this, which is
Speaker 1: two days before release, if you're still out doing things
Speaker 1: like that now, then you really have got a special
Speaker 1: brand of nerve. Yeah. And and and conversely too, we
Speaker 1: should point out to self quarantine is a gift. That's
Speaker 1: a gift you're giving other people. Nobody's telling there's no
Speaker 1: martial law, you're not going to be shot on site
Speaker 1: or arrested or whatever if you leave your house if
Speaker 1: you've been exposed to COVID nineteen. But the official guidelines
Speaker 1: from the CDC and the World Health Organization is, if
Speaker 1: you know you've been around somebody who has tested positive
Speaker 1: for COVID nineteen, they ask you to self quarantine for
Speaker 1: fourteen days, because fourteen days is the longest as far
Speaker 1: as we know that it takes for symptoms to show up.
Speaker 1: That's why people are counting down fourteen days. Right. So
Speaker 1: if you hang out by yourself, isolated away from everybody
Speaker 1: else like you were doing for fourteen days, and you
Speaker 1: don't get sick, you don't have COVID and you're not
Speaker 1: spreading it, you're not you're not a risk factor any longer.
Speaker 1: So but to to stop your life and to say
Speaker 1: I'm not going outside because i don't want to risk
Speaker 1: other people getting sick because I'm not sure if I
Speaker 1: have it or not, that is an enormous gift to
Speaker 1: give to people. And I mean, it's what you did. Um.
Speaker 1: My friends Mitch and Patrick, you know dirty Mitch from
Speaker 1: the scabies episode. He he and his husband Patrick were
Speaker 1: um exposed to somebody with COVID nineteen. They have no
Speaker 1: idea if they had it or not. But the first
Speaker 1: thing they did was self quarantine, and they just committed
Speaker 1: to giving up fourteen days of their life of going outside,
Speaker 1: of interacting with other people, of doing whatever, just because
Speaker 1: they didn't know, in part because testing is not widely
Speaker 1: available in the United States. So this is the alternative.
Speaker 1: It's on It's on us to to make that decision
Speaker 1: in that choice, and it is a really kind thing
Speaker 1: to do. So hats off to YouTube Chuck for doing that. Well,
Speaker 1: hats off to everyone doing the right thing. Um, and
Speaker 1: you're right, unless you're rich and famous, it can be
Speaker 1: hard to get a test right now, which is another problem.
Speaker 1: But we're not going to go down that rabbit hole either. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: we've been at it for close to an hour. Maybe
Speaker 1: let's wrap up with some talk of vaccine. Um. Obviously,
Speaker 1: a vaccine is the ultimate end goal for all this.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of organizations working all over the
Speaker 1: world rapidly trying to develop and test vaccines. The National
Speaker 1: Institute of Health, Walter Reid, Army Institute of Research, and
Speaker 1: countless others are trying. Um. They apparently there. The government
Speaker 1: is trying to cut a lot of red tape to
Speaker 1: speed things up, but it's still has to go through
Speaker 1: clinical trials. You can't just rush rush something to market,
Speaker 1: as much as everyone would like that, and it could
Speaker 1: take a long time, could take up to a year
Speaker 1: to get results of these trials. I saw that the
Speaker 1: NIH vaccine trials could could be in full swing by
Speaker 1: the fall. UM and that one has promised UM the
Speaker 1: m A m RNA DASH twelve seven three because it
Speaker 1: was being developed for MERS, so they kind of had
Speaker 1: a head start. Remember, MERS is a type of novel coronavirus,
Speaker 1: so they're like, this might work for this UM this
Speaker 1: stars Cove two coronavirus. Will we'll find out UM, So
Speaker 1: hopefully by the fall that one might be UM just banging,
Speaker 1: who knows, that's what we need as a banging, robust vaccine.
Speaker 1: Lots of chains, gold chains, and I swagger to it,
Speaker 1: just banging. Yeah, and I and I don't think this
Speaker 1: is getting too political, although it is a little bit.
Speaker 1: But I just did a little last minute research and
Speaker 1: found out, you know, there's this drug called what's the
Speaker 1: name of it, no uh rim desivere. So this is
Speaker 1: not um f D A approof for COVID nineteen. It's
Speaker 1: still got to go through the clinical trials, but it
Speaker 1: has been used as an emergency emergency measure to treat
Speaker 1: a couple of cases seemingly effectively. Uh. And they're expecting
Speaker 1: some results from a trial in April. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: just learned yesterday. I just kind of dug into, uh
Speaker 1: this this drug. Yesterday the f d A granted the
Speaker 1: company who makes a Guilelead Sciences UM orphan drug status.
Speaker 1: And this is from the nineteen eight three Orphan Drug Act,
Speaker 1: which is meant for rare diseases only. UM. Coronavirus or
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen is obviously not it's speeding up to not
Speaker 1: be a rare disease. But there's a little loophole in
Speaker 1: that Orphan Drug Act if you get exclusivity, which is
Speaker 1: what happened. They granted them exclusivity, uh, for to profit
Speaker 1: exclusively for seven years on this drug. If you if
Speaker 1: you get that in and that designation in before it
Speaker 1: hits that two hundred thousand person threshold, which means it's
Speaker 1: not a rare disease anymore, then it sticks. And so
Speaker 1: yesterday the FDA granted Gilly Head Sciences Um exclusivity for
Speaker 1: seven years, which obviously the fear there is that it
Speaker 1: could lead to a block on supplies for generic versions.
Speaker 1: It could be super expensive. And at the end of
Speaker 1: this article that I read, I found out that a
Speaker 1: man named Joe Grogan, who serves on the White House
Speaker 1: Task Force for Coronavirus Um, lobbied for gilly Head Sciences
Speaker 1: from two thousand eleven to two thousands seventeen, which is
Speaker 1: always a little bit concerning. And these are the guys
Speaker 1: who have come up with an anti viral drug that
Speaker 1: has shown promise to treat COVID nineteen. That's right, and
Speaker 1: they have now as of yesterday, been granted that seven
Speaker 1: year window to profit exclusively UM and block potentially block
Speaker 1: generic suppliers for making this. And here's the real kicker,
Speaker 1: here's the cherry on the rotten cherry on top, is
Speaker 1: that they were developing this for ebola, so it was
Speaker 1: developed with seventy nine million dollars of taxpayer money and
Speaker 1: now they have been granted exclusive status for seven years.
Speaker 1: That's almost as much of a bedtime story as hearing
Speaker 1: about senators who were briefed about the pandemic and then
Speaker 1: went and sold all of their um, sold a bunch
Speaker 1: of stock before the stock market crashed without telling anybody
Speaker 1: about it, while also downplaying the pandemic too. Yeah, send
Speaker 1: them to jail, Send them to jail. There was a
Speaker 1: time in this country, it wasn't long ago, were people
Speaker 1: who did that were stripped of any honor. We're basically
Speaker 1: drummed out of out of town on a rail by
Speaker 1: irate citizens. There was a time in this country. So man,
Speaker 1: that was Grandpa Clark all the way. It's right, I
Speaker 1: suddenly just grew um patches on my elbows. They think
Speaker 1: cardigans about a sprout out of him. Team. Before we
Speaker 1: wrap up, I would like just to know your biggest
Speaker 1: fear and all this, what has been your biggest fear? Um?
Speaker 1: Loved ones dying? That's my that's my biggest fear, um.
Speaker 1: I think you know, economics is a huge one. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm really scared about that in the long lasting effects
Speaker 1: people losing their jobs and and just the setbacks that
Speaker 1: comes from that. But ultimately people, people, people I love
Speaker 1: and care about, dying, especially unnecessarily, you know, like the
Speaker 1: idea that that we could have done some things differently
Speaker 1: and there would have been abundant medical care. That's that's
Speaker 1: my greatest fear. What about yours, Well, I've seen in
Speaker 1: too many movies about like domino effect type things, so
Speaker 1: my I mean obviously worried about friends and loved ones,
Speaker 1: But my biggest fear has been worst case scenarios, which
Speaker 1: is everything from uh, the U. S. Military getting a
Speaker 1: large outbreak and somebody like I don't know, another hostile
Speaker 1: country saying, now's a great chance. Jeez, Chuck, I didn't
Speaker 1: even thought about that, or um medical personnel or police forces,
Speaker 1: um things getting disrupted so much with our health professionals,
Speaker 1: or are people who keep us safe that that things
Speaker 1: become really scary on a citizen level. So like people
Speaker 1: are what scare me? Yeah, and it becoming like the
Speaker 1: urge or something like that, Right, that's what scares me.
Speaker 1: That's great, that's great. That was a good one to
Speaker 1: end on, Chuck, because I mean, the whole reason this
Speaker 1: episode was to reassure people and then just pull the
Speaker 1: rug right out from under him at the last minute.
Speaker 1: But you know what, Having said that, I'm always consistently
Speaker 1: reminded of the ability and the will of not only
Speaker 1: Americans but human beings to do the right thing, and
Speaker 1: the vast, vast majority of people will come together and
Speaker 1: not um not going to attack mode. Yeah, I I
Speaker 1: totally I believe that. I think that that UM people
Speaker 1: are generally good overall, UM, And there are definitely bad
Speaker 1: people out there, but I think the good ones out
Speaker 1: number them, and when pushed against the wall, the good
Speaker 1: ones can fight back pretty effectively. Also Also, I mean
Speaker 1: that kind of raises another point too that I found.
Speaker 1: It's it's really easy to just kind of let your
Speaker 1: mind run away and focus on all of the terrible
Speaker 1: stuff that can happen or all of the terrible stuff
Speaker 1: that is happening, UM, and you kind of have to
Speaker 1: you have to exercise your mind to not do that.
Speaker 1: You have to stay on top of it and remind
Speaker 1: yourself that you can also just as easily think positively too,
Speaker 1: And you've got to try to do that in times
Speaker 1: like these, for sure, and in times like these that
Speaker 1: make it sound like this happens every couple of years
Speaker 1: or something like this is definitely monumental and historic and
Speaker 1: and once in a lifetime hopefully. Yeah. One other thing,
Speaker 1: if you think that you might have COVID nineteen, I
Speaker 1: found there's a self triage tool. UM. They say that
Speaker 1: if you think you have it, you should call your doctor,
Speaker 1: your hospital nine on one and and say I think
Speaker 1: I have COVID nineteen. There's an online tool now at
Speaker 1: g E h R C O V I D T
Speaker 1: R I A G E dot A K I D
Speaker 1: O L A B S dot com, gare COVID triage
Speaker 1: dot Akito labs dot com. And it's just basically a
Speaker 1: questionnaire that says, hey, this isn't a diagnosed this, but
Speaker 1: this might this might give you clearer, um, a clear
Speaker 1: view into whether you're just sitting there freaking yourself out
Speaker 1: or else. If this this is actually something you might
Speaker 1: need to call your doctor or your hospital about. Right.
Speaker 1: Good stuff. Uh, And hopefully all of this will be
Speaker 1: a weird distant memory not too far from now. And
Speaker 1: since I said that it's time for a listener mail, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what I think. Instead of listener mail on
Speaker 1: this one, let's just encourage people to be kind of
Speaker 1: one another, be cautious, be smart, UM, help out someone
Speaker 1: in need if you can, and just hang in there.
Speaker 1: I know we have listeners right now that that have
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen. UM. Statistically that's uh, that's just got to
Speaker 1: be the case. So be well and please take care
Speaker 1: of one another. Yep, and think positive. Everybody think positive. Right.
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch of this while
Speaker 1: you're hanging out socially distancing, being responsible, you can send
Speaker 1: us an e mail. You can wrap it up, spank
Speaker 1: it on the bottom, maybe wipe it off with some
Speaker 1: lightsol wipes or something first, and send it to Stuff
Speaker 1: podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
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