Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day seventy two
Speaker 1: since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic our main story.
Speaker 1: When lockdown measures went into effect in countries around the world,
Speaker 1: many expected to be trapped at home for a few weeks,
Speaker 1: but months into the pandemic, people are now looking for
Speaker 1: a way to make social distancings sustainable while tentatively returning
Speaker 1: to some of their old activities. State and local governments
Speaker 1: are having a hard time helping people navigate those gray
Speaker 1: areas because there are few clear answers. But first, here's
Speaker 1: what happened today. Yet another study is showing the dangers
Speaker 1: of antimillaria drugs touted by US President Donald Trump for
Speaker 1: treating COVID nineteen. Hydroxy chloroquine and chloroquine were linked to
Speaker 1: an increased risk of death and heart ailments. The drugs
Speaker 1: don't benefit patients with the coronavirus, either alone or in
Speaker 1: combination with other drugs, according to a study published today
Speaker 1: by the Lancet Medical Journal. Trump's endorsement has led many
Speaker 1: people to take the medications without scientific proof of their benefit.
Speaker 1: An experimental vaccine developed by Chinese company Cancino Biologics is
Speaker 1: showing promise. An early study shows that the vaccine was
Speaker 1: safe and generated an immune response. That's according to another
Speaker 1: report out today from The Lancet. The researchers from the
Speaker 1: Beijing Institute of Biotechnology and other organizations said further study
Speaker 1: is needed to show its effectiveness against the virus. And finally,
Speaker 1: coronavirus is having another direct health effect, this one on
Speaker 1: very small children. The pandemic has kept parents from taking
Speaker 1: their children to routine doctor visits. That means, according to
Speaker 1: the world's top health agencies, that more than eighty million
Speaker 1: children under the age of one are at risk of
Speaker 1: life threatening diseases like polio and measles. That's because routine
Speaker 1: vaccinations of children have been substantially hindered in at least
Speaker 1: sixty eight countries, according to data from the World Health
Speaker 1: Organization UNICEF and other organizations. The agencies called on countries
Speaker 1: to resume campaigns against vaccine preventable diseases and made recommendations
Speaker 1: on how to safely deliver shots. Amid the pandemic and
Speaker 1: now our main story, there's a growing public health argument
Speaker 1: about how people should calculate risk when it comes to
Speaker 1: social distancing. Many U S States are now lifting stay
Speaker 1: at home restrictions. Summer is around the corner, and people
Speaker 1: in the third month of what many hoped would be
Speaker 1: a week's long disruption are desperate to visit friends and
Speaker 1: get outside. That means we will be socializing a lot
Speaker 1: more in many cases without clear guidelines as to what's
Speaker 1: really risky. As we learn more about how the virus
Speaker 1: spreads and what constitutes risky behavior, messaging from experts will
Speaker 1: have to become a little more nuanced than just stay home,
Speaker 1: stay safe, reports Kristin V. Brown. Here's Kristen with more
Speaker 1: on how we can make social distancing work for the
Speaker 1: long haul. A few weeks ago, I did something that
Speaker 1: broke social distancing rules. I live in Oakland, California, and
Speaker 1: on March seventeen, my county enacted a strict shelter and
Speaker 1: place order That means no hanging out with friends or
Speaker 1: family you don't live with, or spending time outside of
Speaker 1: the house unless it's necessary at all. Like many people,
Speaker 1: I coped by moving my social life to the screen.
Speaker 1: I had lots of Zoom happy hours and Zoom game nights.
Speaker 1: My best friend I would go for runs while chatting
Speaker 1: on the phone. But a few weeks ago I hit
Speaker 1: a wall. I just wanted to have a drink with
Speaker 1: a friend in real life, so I suggested that my
Speaker 1: best friend and I meet for a drink in her backyard.
Speaker 1: We were careful, We stayed six ft apart, weight chips
Speaker 1: from separate bowls. It seemed really low risk, but still
Speaker 1: I felt guilty. Julia Marcus is an epidemiologist at Harvard University.
Speaker 1: She calls what I've been experiencing quarantine fatigue, and she
Speaker 1: says I am far from the only one feeling it today.
Speaker 1: The public health health messaging right now has been um
Speaker 1: stay at home, and of course that is the safest
Speaker 1: option right now, staying at home, either on your own
Speaker 1: or with your family, But it's not sustainable for the
Speaker 1: long term. Julia is among a growing number of people
Speaker 1: in the public health world to think the messaging around
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen needs to change. At the beginning of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: the idea was that we would all hunker down for
Speaker 1: a few weeks or even a few months until the
Speaker 1: virus was more under control. But now we're at an
Speaker 1: inflection point at states reopen. On the one hand, we
Speaker 1: still don't have a vaccine, and the threat of a
Speaker 1: new outbreak of disease is very real. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, forcing people to continue to exclusively stay inside
Speaker 1: it's unsustainable and taking a real psychological toll. Julius has
Speaker 1: all of this means we need to make a plan
Speaker 1: for the long haul, and now that that's become clear
Speaker 1: that this is a long term proposition, we have to
Speaker 1: rethink how we're going to do this so that we
Speaker 1: can do it in a sustainable way and people can
Speaker 1: live their lives such that they have things to look
Speaker 1: forward to and they have joy, and they're not oppressed
Speaker 1: and isolated. And it's not going to look the way
Speaker 1: it did before. But you know, we have to adjust
Speaker 1: to a new normal that balances people's need for human
Speaker 1: contact with keeping the risk of transmission as low as possible.
Speaker 1: Julia studies HIV and points to the AIDS epidemic as
Speaker 1: an example of why our COVID nineteen playbook needs to change.
Speaker 1: Asking people to not have sex doesn't work, but advising
Speaker 1: people in ways they can have sex while reducing the
Speaker 1: chances that they'll contract the virus does. She says, New
Speaker 1: York City today is setting a good example, It just
Speaker 1: put out guidelines on sexual health during COVID nineteen. The
Speaker 1: best way to avoid risk, the guidelines say is to
Speaker 1: not have sex, but it does recognize not everyone is
Speaker 1: going to follow that advice and suggest some ways to
Speaker 1: decrease the risk of other scenarios. To health is not
Speaker 1: just prevention of disease transmission, and there are other aspects
Speaker 1: to health that we're going to need to consider. We
Speaker 1: don't want to see an increase in suicide, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, It's there. There's a lot to balance
Speaker 1: here that I think needs the more holistic approach to
Speaker 1: health if we're going to do this. The other thing
Speaker 1: is that we know more about COVID nineteen than we
Speaker 1: did two months ago. We have a better idea of
Speaker 1: how it spreads and of who is most susceptible to
Speaker 1: getting really sick from it. Marty Marqueri is a public
Speaker 1: health expert at Johns Hopkins. He says he first supported
Speaker 1: sheltering in place in order to reduce the burden on hospitals,
Speaker 1: but things have changed now that we have flatten the
Speaker 1: curve nationally, now that we have data coming in showing
Speaker 1: that it is it has fallen short of some of
Speaker 1: the more dire projections. We need to evolve our strategy,
Speaker 1: and at the same time, the country simply cannot tolerate
Speaker 1: anymore of a harsh shutdown. Marty says that we need
Speaker 1: to customize public health recommendations to better fit what we
Speaker 1: now know about the virus. For example, we now know
Speaker 1: that the virus is much less likely to spread outdoors.
Speaker 1: Most cases seem to come from people who have close
Speaker 1: contact with each other, so have that socially distanced drink
Speaker 1: in the backyard. Some of this thinking has actually already
Speaker 1: made its way into policy. For example, in California, businesses
Speaker 1: can now open up for curbside pickup that will reduce
Speaker 1: contact opportunities, but will also allow life to inch back
Speaker 1: towards normal. Marty says that businesses might even be able
Speaker 1: to just shift to sidewalk shopping. He says, we need
Speaker 1: to completely rethink many aspects of society. We can actually
Speaker 1: fight this thing with a pretty good toolbox of many
Speaker 1: different interventions and have a lot of success. Now does
Speaker 1: that mean that people can resume summer camps and kids
Speaker 1: can play soccer together? It depends on the local viral
Speaker 1: burden in that community. So there's no one size fits
Speaker 1: all strategy, and the strategy needs to evolve. But not
Speaker 1: every region has taken into account what we've learned about
Speaker 1: the virus in deciding how to roll back restrictions. In Alabama,
Speaker 1: for example, restaurants and bars have been allowed to reopen
Speaker 1: with limited seating, even though the state has yet to
Speaker 1: meet White House reopening criteria. The percentage of positive tests
Speaker 1: in the state has increased, causing concern that a second
Speaker 1: wave of the virus may be on the way. Marty
Speaker 1: says public health officials could create a virus threat level
Speaker 1: for every community. This would change as a virus does
Speaker 1: and help people better make their own risk assessments. In
Speaker 1: the United States now with the pandemic, we have numbers
Speaker 1: of cases, hospitalizations, new intubations, and we can create a
Speaker 1: risk level for every locale, which will actually stratify the
Speaker 1: degree of elective activities, be it um, social gathering, sporting events,
Speaker 1: or essential services. And so we can do this. We
Speaker 1: can figure out, hey, in this particular community, the disease
Speaker 1: burden is so low that it's reasonable for young, healthy
Speaker 1: people to essentially do whatever they want in that community.
Speaker 1: In other areas, we can say, look there's still a risk.
Speaker 1: It's not a severe risk, but it's a moderate risk.
Speaker 1: We're going to ask people to limit themselves to activities
Speaker 1: where they can conduct them selves with distancing hygiene masks
Speaker 1: and redesigned business processes. That's very feasible and that's what
Speaker 1: we should be doing. The big message here is that
Speaker 1: now that the virus spread has slowed, public health policy
Speaker 1: requires more of a balancing act. We need to consider
Speaker 1: not just risk of exposure to the virus, but mental health,
Speaker 1: economic well being, access to other kinds of healthcare, and happiness.
Speaker 1: That said, don't count on shaking hands anytime soon. That
Speaker 1: was Kristin V. Brown and that's our show today. For
Speaker 1: coverage of the outbreak from one bureaus around the world,
Speaker 1: visit Bloomberg dot com slash coronavirus and if you like
Speaker 1: the show, please leave us a review and a rating
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to
Speaker 1: help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily
Speaker 1: edition is produced by Topher Foreheads Jordan Gospore, Magnus Hendrickson
Speaker 1: and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported by
Speaker 1: Kristin V. Brown. Original music by Leo Sidran. Our editors
Speaker 1: are Francesca Levi and Rick Shine. Francesca Levie is Bloomberg's
Speaker 1: head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.