WEBVTT - Episode 7: The Person Who Knows 0:00:15.276 --> 0:00:22.596 Pushkin. Well, I'm going to take you back to two 0:00:22.636 --> 0:00:26.116 thousand and five, the winter November December of two thousand 0:00:26.156 --> 0:00:29.076 and five. In two thousand and five, the team was 0:00:29.196 --> 0:00:33.636 just assembled to begin writing the National Plan. This is 0:00:33.676 --> 0:00:36.756 a doctor named Carter Metscher. The team he's talking about 0:00:36.916 --> 0:00:39.516 was in the Bush White House, and the national plan 0:00:40.276 --> 0:00:43.196 was for what to do in a pandemic. Back in 0:00:43.236 --> 0:00:45.116 two thousand and five, the White House asked Carter to 0:00:45.116 --> 0:00:49.196 help answer a big question, how do you minimize disease 0:00:49.276 --> 0:00:52.596 and death between the time a new virus starts to 0:00:52.676 --> 0:00:55.796 spread and the time we might have a vaccine for it. 0:01:00.556 --> 0:01:03.716 You know, an analogy we use is fire and thinking 0:01:03.796 --> 0:01:06.756 of the exponential growth in a fire. Just like an 0:01:06.756 --> 0:01:11.796 epidemic grows exponentially, a fire, grow exponentially. Slow a fire 0:01:11.876 --> 0:01:13.916 and you give yourself a chance to put it out. 0:01:14.516 --> 0:01:17.916 Slow a pathogen, and you buy time to save lives 0:01:18.556 --> 0:01:21.876 because you can stock up on medical supplies, learn about 0:01:21.876 --> 0:01:24.476 the new disease and how to treat it before lots 0:01:24.476 --> 0:01:28.436 of people get sick. Carter Metcher really wasn't a political guy. 0:01:28.876 --> 0:01:31.716 He was just an ICU doctor with a reputation for 0:01:31.796 --> 0:01:35.956 thinking about problems in unusual ways. The White House had 0:01:35.996 --> 0:01:38.956 called him up totally out of the blue, and at 0:01:38.956 --> 0:01:41.596 that moment it was not at all obvious how to 0:01:41.596 --> 0:01:44.756 slow a new virus, especially a virus that can spread 0:01:44.756 --> 0:01:51.316 through people without symptoms. Public health experts still had the 0:01:51.396 --> 0:01:55.756 year nineteen eighteen in mind. Back in nineteen eighteen, different 0:01:55.756 --> 0:01:58.356 American cities that tried various ways to slow down the 0:01:58.396 --> 0:02:03.756 Spanish flu. They close saloons and churches and ban large gatherings. 0:02:04.476 --> 0:02:10.156 None of it seemed to make any difference. Carter teamed 0:02:10.236 --> 0:02:12.316 up with another doctor brought in by the White House, 0:02:12.956 --> 0:02:17.556 an oncologist named Richard Hatchett. Together, Carter and Richard went 0:02:17.596 --> 0:02:20.316 back and looked more closely at what had actually happened 0:02:20.596 --> 0:02:26.796 back in nineteen eighteen. And so what we began doing 0:02:26.996 --> 0:02:31.716 was pulling daily newspaper accounts from a number of cities 0:02:32.356 --> 0:02:36.116 to be able to identify when they were reporting their 0:02:36.156 --> 0:02:42.076 first cases, when interventions were being implemented. The two doctors 0:02:42.076 --> 0:02:46.876 were looking for what they called NPIs, or non pharmaceutical interventions, 0:02:47.836 --> 0:02:50.596 the various things that cities had done to distance people. 0:02:51.796 --> 0:02:55.436 They were also looking for death tolls. Back in nineteen eighteen, 0:02:55.596 --> 0:02:59.436 Philadelphia had been an outlier in this regard. People died 0:02:59.476 --> 0:03:01.756 at a greater rate in Philadelphia than in almost any 0:03:01.836 --> 0:03:06.676 American city. And as we looked at Philadelphia closer, what 0:03:06.756 --> 0:03:10.116 we realized is that they did eventually implement you know, 0:03:10.156 --> 0:03:13.916 the the NPIs trying to slow transmission, but they implemented 0:03:13.916 --> 0:03:17.996 those measures awfully late in the course of the disease outbreak. 0:03:19.076 --> 0:03:21.716 After looking at Philadelphia, the doctors moved on to other 0:03:21.756 --> 0:03:26.596 cities and found some really weird stuff. In Saint Louis, 0:03:26.596 --> 0:03:29.836 for example, the death rate there was less than half 0:03:29.836 --> 0:03:33.956 of Philadelphia's. What we found was that the cities that 0:03:34.196 --> 0:03:39.116 implemented these interventions earlier had a lower mortality rate than 0:03:39.356 --> 0:03:43.316 the cities that implemented these measures later. And no one 0:03:43.356 --> 0:03:46.916 had done this before. You know, I don't, and I don't. 0:03:47.036 --> 0:03:51.316 I'm not aware of anyone doing this before. Back when 0:03:51.356 --> 0:03:53.756 I first heard about these White House doctors, I got 0:03:53.796 --> 0:03:55.636 so interested that I set out to write a whole 0:03:55.636 --> 0:03:58.916 book about them, called The Premonition. I just thought the 0:03:58.916 --> 0:04:02.316 whole situation was wild. You had these two doctors, both 0:04:02.316 --> 0:04:04.556 sort of shocked to find themselves in the White House, 0:04:04.916 --> 0:04:07.836 trying to figure out how to save lives during a pandemic. 0:04:08.596 --> 0:04:12.596 Then they earn themselves into amateur historians and find things 0:04:12.636 --> 0:04:16.316 that no historian has ever really noticed. They also know 0:04:16.436 --> 0:04:19.516 that their way out of their depth, so they recruit 0:04:19.556 --> 0:04:26.436 a proper professor, a world class Harvard epidemiologist named Mark Lipsitch. Lipsitch, 0:04:26.676 --> 0:04:29.756 Carter Mesher, and Richard Hatchett publish a paper that will 0:04:29.796 --> 0:04:33.276 one day become famous because it shows in a rigorous, 0:04:33.316 --> 0:04:36.916 academically respectable way that the death rates in the United 0:04:36.956 --> 0:04:40.716 States back in nineteen eighteen had actually been very different 0:04:40.796 --> 0:04:44.396 from city to city how many people died depending on 0:04:44.436 --> 0:04:48.276 how quickly each city had done its social distancing. The 0:04:48.356 --> 0:04:51.236 trick was to intervene before it was obvious that the 0:04:51.316 --> 0:04:54.836 disease was present. Once you see the disease killing people, 0:04:54.996 --> 0:04:58.476 it's too late. There's a lag after people get infected, 0:04:58.516 --> 0:05:01.676 before they get sick, and another lag between the time 0:05:01.716 --> 0:05:05.236 they get sick and the time they die. So MPIs 0:05:05.276 --> 0:05:08.876 were sort of like a fire extinguisher, less useful after 0:05:08.876 --> 0:05:12.356 the fire has reached the roof. If you're trying to 0:05:12.356 --> 0:05:15.636 put out a fire or control a fire, it's much 0:05:15.676 --> 0:05:18.436 easier to do that when the fire is contained to 0:05:18.796 --> 0:05:21.836 for example, your stove you've got a pan with oil 0:05:21.876 --> 0:05:24.636 in it that starts on fire, It's much easier to 0:05:24.756 --> 0:05:28.236 contain or to suppress that fire if you act. Then 0:05:28.796 --> 0:05:30.836 then if you wait for the entire kitchen to be 0:05:30.916 --> 0:05:33.676 engulfed or half the house to be engulfed by the 0:05:33.756 --> 0:05:37.956 time your kitchen's fully ablaze or half your house is ablaze, 0:05:38.196 --> 0:05:40.756 that fire extinguisher is not going to be very effective. 0:05:42.436 --> 0:05:45.196 Carter Metscher and Richard Hatchett wrote the Pandemic Plan for 0:05:45.236 --> 0:05:49.236 the United States back in two thousand and six. Actually, 0:05:49.276 --> 0:05:51.956 this part of the plan was officially written by the CDC, 0:05:52.156 --> 0:05:54.876 but Carter and Richard basically created it with the help 0:05:54.916 --> 0:05:58.756 of a mid level CDC employee named Lisa Coonin the 0:05:58.876 --> 0:06:01.836 plan stress the importance of distancing people at the very 0:06:01.876 --> 0:06:05.956 start of the pandemic to slow a virus down. And 0:06:06.036 --> 0:06:10.596 so when a pandemic actually happened in two t Carter 0:06:10.716 --> 0:06:13.196 Metcher was more shocked than just about anyone that the 0:06:13.316 --> 0:06:16.636 United States ended up playing the role of Philadelphia and 0:06:16.756 --> 0:06:19.276 all these other countries wound up playing the role of 0:06:19.316 --> 0:06:23.196 Saint Louis because a lot of those countries had learned 0:06:23.236 --> 0:06:29.476 pandemic strategy from US. I'm Michael Lewis and This is 0:06:29.476 --> 0:06:33.316 Against the Rules, a show that explores unfairness in American 0:06:33.436 --> 0:06:36.956 life by looking at what's happening to various characters in 0:06:36.996 --> 0:06:41.716 American life. This season has been all about experts. Mostly, 0:06:41.756 --> 0:06:43.476 it's been about how it's all our fault that we 0:06:43.516 --> 0:06:47.116 don't use expertise better than we do. But this episode 0:06:47.196 --> 0:06:50.196 is a bit different. It's about how much trouble experts 0:06:50.236 --> 0:06:52.636 can cause when they exploit our desire for them to 0:06:52.676 --> 0:07:10.076 tell us what we want to hear. I don't know 0:07:10.116 --> 0:07:11.796 about you, but I feel as if I spent the 0:07:11.876 --> 0:07:15.276 last two years living inside a casino. I've lost all 0:07:15.276 --> 0:07:18.196 sense of time. March of twenty twenty feels to me 0:07:18.276 --> 0:07:21.676 like about ten years ago. Back in March of twenty twenty, 0:07:21.916 --> 0:07:25.356 only a handful of Americans had died of COVID, but 0:07:25.436 --> 0:07:29.156 a surprising number of the early cases occurred in California's 0:07:29.156 --> 0:07:33.996 Santa Clara County. On March the sixteenth, that county's health officer, 0:07:34.116 --> 0:07:37.636 Sarah Cody, issued the country's first shelter in place order. 0:07:38.396 --> 0:07:41.596 She closed schools and banned gatherings of more than fifty 0:07:41.596 --> 0:07:46.316 people and so on. These new orders direct all individuals 0:07:46.396 --> 0:07:50.236 to shelter at their place of residence and maintained social 0:07:50.276 --> 0:07:53.196 distancing of at least six feet from any other person 0:07:53.236 --> 0:07:56.556 when outside their residence. Doctor Cody was basically just following 0:07:56.556 --> 0:07:58.676 the plan that the doctors had conceived in the Bush 0:07:58.676 --> 0:08:02.236 White House, but she found herself way out on a limb. 0:08:02.836 --> 0:08:05.716 At that moment, only two people in Santa Clara County 0:08:05.716 --> 0:08:09.716 had died, and no one knew anything for sure, not 0:08:09.796 --> 0:08:12.996 how many Americans were likely to get COVID, not how 0:08:12.996 --> 0:08:16.916 many of those were likely to die. In March, I 0:08:17.036 --> 0:08:20.316 heard about a study that was happening at Stanford where 0:08:20.316 --> 0:08:22.596 we were going to try to measure the amount of 0:08:22.596 --> 0:08:27.236 antibodies in our community. Malory Harris was a twenty three 0:08:27.316 --> 0:08:30.836 year old first year graduate student in biology at Stanford University, 0:08:31.396 --> 0:08:34.876 which happens to be in Santa Clara County. This study 0:08:34.916 --> 0:08:36.756 that Stanford was about to do was going to try 0:08:36.796 --> 0:08:39.276 to learn the most important thing to learn about COVID. 0:08:39.876 --> 0:08:44.836 Malory jumped into help, and this would allow us to 0:08:44.876 --> 0:08:49.556 figure out these important quantities about how the disease was spreading. 0:08:50.036 --> 0:08:52.876 You need to know how transmissible and how lethal it is. 0:08:53.276 --> 0:08:58.756 Right exactly, the Stanford study would wind up having seventeen authors. 0:08:59.316 --> 0:09:01.236 A few of the names were known in the medical 0:09:01.276 --> 0:09:06.756 research world, especially Jay Baticharia and Johnny Unidis. Eunidas was 0:09:06.796 --> 0:09:10.916 a really big deal. His name. The study instant credibility. 0:09:12.076 --> 0:09:16.996 So I had like this tiny volunteer thing that I did. 0:09:17.116 --> 0:09:20.716 I like handed people their Amazon gift cards after they 0:09:20.756 --> 0:09:25.196 got tested. And at the time, like everyone I knew 0:09:25.316 --> 0:09:28.836 was volunteering on this study, like because it was that important, right, 0:09:28.876 --> 0:09:32.636 Like we all wanted this information. And specifically the information 0:09:32.756 --> 0:09:35.556 is how many people in Santa Clara County have been 0:09:35.596 --> 0:09:39.316 infected with COVID, right exactly, because if you know that, 0:09:39.356 --> 0:09:41.756 then you know how many people have died, so you 0:09:41.796 --> 0:09:44.316 can start to guess what the fatality rate is of 0:09:44.356 --> 0:09:48.076 this disease. Right, So there's that question. There are also 0:09:48.236 --> 0:09:52.396 questions about, like how many people who get sick are 0:09:52.476 --> 0:09:56.236 actually going to have symptoms at all and get detected 0:09:56.276 --> 0:09:59.676 as cases. You know, that number would be helpful for 0:09:59.796 --> 0:10:04.596 us in figuring out how transmissible is this virus? So 0:10:04.716 --> 0:10:08.036 you were excited. I said that this was probably one 0:10:08.036 --> 0:10:10.596 of the most important studies that I would ever be 0:10:10.636 --> 0:10:15.036 a part of. The Stanford students had gathered blood samples 0:10:15.036 --> 0:10:18.916 from thirty three hundred Santa Clara County residents. The Stanford 0:10:18.956 --> 0:10:23.756 professors then tested the samples for COVID antibodies. The results 0:10:23.876 --> 0:10:28.556 were sensational. Between fifty and eighty five times more people 0:10:28.596 --> 0:10:31.996 in Santa Clara County than previously thought had been infected 0:10:31.996 --> 0:10:36.916 with COVID. Thousands of people had apparently survived COVID without 0:10:36.916 --> 0:10:40.156 ever knowing they had it, yet only two had died, 0:10:41.076 --> 0:10:49.996 which suggested that the virus wasn't all that lethal. Welcome 0:10:49.996 --> 0:10:53.276 back America. We have a tremendous guest, doctor John Ionidas. 0:10:54.196 --> 0:10:56.836 At that moment, it really did feel possible that anyone 0:10:56.916 --> 0:11:02.076 reacting to COVID was overreacting. Welcome You are a co 0:11:02.236 --> 0:11:06.756 director the Meta Research Innovation Center at Stanford University. It's 0:11:06.796 --> 0:11:10.756 now April nineteenth, two and twenty. Doctor Unidas is a 0:11:10.756 --> 0:11:14.076 guest of Mark Levine, host of Life, Liberty and Levine 0:11:14.316 --> 0:11:17.156 on Fox News. Tell me what was in your mind 0:11:17.196 --> 0:11:20.076 when you wrote this piece and tell me why you 0:11:20.076 --> 0:11:23.356 were right. I'm a person who's working with data, and 0:11:23.396 --> 0:11:26.796 I'm also trained in infection diseases, so it was natural 0:11:26.876 --> 0:11:32.036 that when the COVID nineteen pandemic evolved, it became a 0:11:32.076 --> 0:11:34.356 top priority for me to understand what was going on. 0:11:35.396 --> 0:11:38.396 Unidus is wearing a white sports jacket. He has the 0:11:38.396 --> 0:11:41.756 air of a man who's descended onto TV. He's a doctor, 0:11:41.996 --> 0:11:45.156 though he doesn't see patients. He's made his name exposing 0:11:45.156 --> 0:11:48.396 the shoddiness of a lot of medical research. It became 0:11:48.516 --> 0:11:51.356 very obvious to me that the evidence that we had 0:11:51.636 --> 0:11:55.436 in the early phases of the pandemic was utterly unreliable. 0:11:56.796 --> 0:11:59.956 Up until now, Unidas's published work has been kind of fun, 0:12:00.916 --> 0:12:03.916 almost crowd pleasing. He once wrote a paper where he 0:12:03.956 --> 0:12:07.796 took the first fifty ingredients in a cookbook and investigated 0:12:07.836 --> 0:12:11.236 with medical researchers that about them. Half of the ingredients 0:12:11.236 --> 0:12:15.556 supposedly cured cancer, half of them supposedly cause cancer, and 0:12:15.676 --> 0:12:18.996 a bunch supposedly did both. I wanted to talk to 0:12:19.076 --> 0:12:22.316 him for this episode, but he didn't return our email anyway. 0:12:22.596 --> 0:12:25.996 In early April twenty twenty, Johnny Unidis might be the 0:12:25.996 --> 0:12:29.676 most dangerous scientist alive to any medical researcher who uses 0:12:29.716 --> 0:12:34.436 weak data to make some sensational claim, but he himself 0:12:34.556 --> 0:12:37.636 is about to make a sensational claim that the world's 0:12:37.756 --> 0:12:41.436 experts in communicable disease, have no idea what they're talking about. 0:12:41.996 --> 0:12:46.196 It is just an astronomical error. And over the last 0:12:46.436 --> 0:12:50.516 several weeks, we have started accumulating data that show that 0:12:50.676 --> 0:12:53.476 there's far more people who are infected with this virus. 0:12:53.836 --> 0:12:57.156 The vast majority of them don't even realize that they 0:12:57.156 --> 0:13:00.196 have been infected. They are asymptomatic, they have no symptoms, 0:13:00.596 --> 0:13:02.996 or they have very mild symptoms that they would not 0:13:03.076 --> 0:13:08.196 even bother to do anything about. This was such an 0:13:08.196 --> 0:13:11.956 important moment. No one could be totally certain about COVID, 0:13:12.316 --> 0:13:14.596 how many Americans would get it or how many of 0:13:14.636 --> 0:13:19.356 those might die. But Professor Johnny Unidas of Stanford University 0:13:19.796 --> 0:13:24.676 sounded certain in the big picture, the risk is much 0:13:24.796 --> 0:13:27.476 much much lower compared to what we thought before. I 0:13:27.516 --> 0:13:32.356 think you and your team have developed a growing consensus. 0:13:32.396 --> 0:13:36.036 I think among experts and certainly among the people. Take 0:13:36.076 --> 0:13:38.836 care of the vulnerable, but let the rest of us 0:13:38.876 --> 0:13:44.556 go free, that we have lives to live. No more 0:13:44.596 --> 0:13:48.116 than ten thousand Americans will ever die of COVID. That's 0:13:48.116 --> 0:13:51.076 the claim unit is put in print. He became a 0:13:51.116 --> 0:13:54.196 regular on Fox News, a go to expert for other 0:13:54.276 --> 0:13:58.436 media outlets. He and his co author Ja Bodicharia offered 0:13:58.476 --> 0:14:01.396 their views to the Trump White House, and the Trump 0:14:01.396 --> 0:14:05.196 White House listened to them. Scott Atlas, who ran Trump's 0:14:05.196 --> 0:14:08.076 COVID response, wound up talking to Johnny Unidis and Jay 0:14:08.116 --> 0:14:14.676 Bodicharia nearly every day for a year. America had a 0:14:14.716 --> 0:14:18.196 pandemic plan, much of the rest of the world was 0:14:18.196 --> 0:14:22.716 effectively using it, but we hesitated. And here was a 0:14:22.716 --> 0:14:27.236 big reason why this Stanford study and these important experts 0:14:27.556 --> 0:14:30.356 shouting to anyone who would listen that we didn't need 0:14:30.396 --> 0:14:34.556 a plan. Why socially distance anyone? We were looking at 0:14:34.596 --> 0:14:40.836 ten thousand American deaths max And just then in mid 0:14:40.836 --> 0:14:45.076 April twenty twenty, that statement felt plausible. I remember talking 0:14:45.076 --> 0:14:46.916 to a scientist friend of mine about it, who was 0:14:46.996 --> 0:14:51.236 also sure that this Stanford professor had proven that COVID 0:14:51.316 --> 0:14:54.636 was just way overblown and we were all way overreacting. 0:14:55.316 --> 0:14:57.836 We were both totally pissed off that our kids schools 0:14:57.836 --> 0:15:01.636 had closed. What neither of us knew was what other 0:15:01.676 --> 0:15:05.476 people were making of the Stanford study. Here it is. 0:15:05.836 --> 0:15:09.956 Here's my original posts from April nineteenth, twenty twenty. Someone 0:15:10.476 --> 0:15:14.556 emailed me Andrew Gellman's a professor at Columbia University and 0:15:14.636 --> 0:15:19.476 one of the country's leading statisticians. What I focused on 0:15:19.516 --> 0:15:25.116 in that my first analysis was accounting for uncertainty in 0:15:25.196 --> 0:15:28.316 the false positive and false negative rates of the test itself, 0:15:29.476 --> 0:15:35.036 and there I concluded that their data are consistent with 0:15:35.196 --> 0:15:41.476 a zero rate, in which everything is false. In plainer English, 0:15:41.676 --> 0:15:45.316 the antibody test used by the Stanford professors was unreliable. 0:15:46.076 --> 0:15:49.156 So unreliable that you could have just as easily concluded 0:15:49.196 --> 0:15:54.396 that zero people tested by Stanford had actually had COVID. Therefore, 0:15:54.476 --> 0:15:57.636 all the confirmed cases of COVID were in dead people. 0:15:58.636 --> 0:16:00.996 You could take the same study and argue that COVID 0:16:01.116 --> 0:16:05.316 was actually extremely lethal. Basically, Andrew Gellman showed that there 0:16:05.396 --> 0:16:08.236 was no useful new evidence in anything in the Stanford 0:16:08.276 --> 0:16:14.756 study was total garbage. I said that they owe an apology, 0:16:14.836 --> 0:16:18.196 not just to us, but to Stamford. Stamford has a 0:16:18.196 --> 0:16:23.476 world leading statistics department, and they could have easily got 0:16:23.516 --> 0:16:26.236 on the phone with these people. They also have some 0:16:26.276 --> 0:16:31.036 great epidemiologists at Stamford. Everyone makes mistakes. I don't think 0:16:31.036 --> 0:16:33.596 they should apologize just because they screwed up. I think 0:16:33.636 --> 0:16:37.236 they need to apologize because these were avoidable screwups. These 0:16:37.276 --> 0:16:39.636 are the kind of screwups that happen if you want 0:16:39.676 --> 0:16:42.316 to leap out with an exciting finding and you don't 0:16:42.316 --> 0:16:45.156 look too carefully at what you might have done wrong. 0:16:45.996 --> 0:16:50.196 But the authors of the Stanford study didn't apologize, at 0:16:50.276 --> 0:16:54.356 least not the famous ones. They did the opposite. They 0:16:54.436 --> 0:16:57.556 just kept doing these media appearances, going on podcast, etc. 0:16:58.196 --> 0:17:02.556 Even though scientists were just so vehemently a gas at 0:17:02.556 --> 0:17:08.156 what they've done. That's definitely science. Reporter at BuzzFeed she 0:17:08.276 --> 0:17:12.116 covered the expert reaction to the Stanford study, which just 0:17:12.156 --> 0:17:17.316 got louder and louder. It was the response that you 0:17:17.356 --> 0:17:20.396 were detecting on Twitter really unusual for an academic paper. 0:17:20.756 --> 0:17:24.596 It was unusual in that it was it was so heated, 0:17:24.636 --> 0:17:28.676 and it came from just so many people all at once. 0:17:29.076 --> 0:17:31.956 Help me understand. Is it unusual for a paper that 0:17:32.036 --> 0:17:37.196 has seventeen authors to have these kind of problems? People 0:17:37.236 --> 0:17:41.196 were struck by. Yes, the big number of co authors 0:17:41.196 --> 0:17:45.236 on it, the sort of like caliber of the people 0:17:45.236 --> 0:17:48.156 on its Johnny need is his name, you know, being 0:17:48.196 --> 0:17:51.076 on there definitely made people take a second look. Does 0:17:51.116 --> 0:17:54.476 it not strike you as strange that this person then 0:17:54.556 --> 0:17:58.956 proceeds to produce a paper that's statistically shoddy and amplifies 0:17:58.996 --> 0:18:02.356 its message in spite of criticism about its findings. I mean, 0:18:02.356 --> 0:18:04.356 he seems like he's just done in this paper. Would 0:18:04.356 --> 0:18:07.556 he's accused everybody else of doing for the previous fifteen years. 0:18:08.276 --> 0:18:11.036 That is the APPS salute they on the head. Tragic 0:18:11.076 --> 0:18:15.436 irony of this whole situation is this person who became 0:18:15.636 --> 0:18:20.796 famous for calling out problems of scientific research is now 0:18:21.196 --> 0:18:25.876 seemingly perpetuating those very same problems and not realizing the 0:18:26.036 --> 0:18:31.156 disconnect between those two things. If I sound fixated on 0:18:31.196 --> 0:18:34.236 this one person and on this one moment in time, 0:18:34.796 --> 0:18:37.836 it's because I am right. Then the country had the 0:18:37.916 --> 0:18:42.796 chance to agree on something important, exactly how dangerous COVID was, 0:18:43.636 --> 0:18:46.596 and the answer was about to be available, thanks in 0:18:46.676 --> 0:18:50.436 part to the work of two Australian PhD students, Leah 0:18:50.476 --> 0:18:55.076 Moroney and Gideon Meyerwitz cats I saw all these people 0:18:55.396 --> 0:18:59.396 saying wildly different things about the fatality rate of COVID. 0:19:00.236 --> 0:19:03.196 That's Gideon. He and a colleague got the bright idea 0:19:03.196 --> 0:19:06.196 of taking the dozens of studies made of COVID's lethality 0:19:06.276 --> 0:19:10.276 all over the world and analyzing them to get as 0:19:10.316 --> 0:19:12.916 a group. These studies suggested that COVID's death rate was 0:19:12.956 --> 0:19:16.836 somewhere between half a percent and one percent. So, for example, 0:19:17.156 --> 0:19:20.916 if half the American population caught COVID, somewhere between eight 0:19:20.996 --> 0:19:23.596 hundred and seventy five thousand and one and a half 0:19:23.636 --> 0:19:27.116 million people would die. They released the preprint of their 0:19:27.116 --> 0:19:31.236 study May six, two twenty. We were cited by the 0:19:31.276 --> 0:19:35.076 CDC mid last year in their planning scenarios. We've been 0:19:35.076 --> 0:19:38.276 cited by the WHO and the EU, I think as well. 0:19:38.956 --> 0:19:41.556 Lots of people looked at their work and said, yip, 0:19:41.836 --> 0:19:45.156 looks about right, and it was about right. But right 0:19:45.196 --> 0:19:48.836 away they came under attack from this Stanford professor named 0:19:48.916 --> 0:19:58.076 Johnny Unidis who said that our paper had I think 0:19:58.396 --> 0:20:01.716 the precise words were it was overtly wrong, and that 0:20:01.756 --> 0:20:05.516 perhaps this was because we were PhD students. Right. How 0:20:05.596 --> 0:20:08.876 common is the argument that you shouldn't listen to those 0:20:09.156 --> 0:20:13.596 book because they're still working on their PhDs. I've never 0:20:13.636 --> 0:20:19.356 heard it before. I guess people do PhDs at all 0:20:19.396 --> 0:20:21.436 points in their life. Sometimes they have had very long 0:20:21.516 --> 0:20:24.756 careers before their PhDs. So to say that someone is 0:20:25.196 --> 0:20:28.796 only a student is a bit reductive. I don't want 0:20:28.796 --> 0:20:31.116 to be reductive either, and I have found instances of 0:20:31.236 --> 0:20:34.636 Unitas being gracious online with his critics. For example, in 0:20:34.716 --> 0:20:37.636 a comment on the science blog Absolutely Maybe, he wrote, 0:20:37.916 --> 0:20:41.316 and I quote, we need nuance and some distance to 0:20:41.436 --> 0:20:44.036 understand the strong and weak points of the science that 0:20:44.076 --> 0:20:48.556 we and our colleagues produce. This takes time, patience, and goodwill. 0:20:49.356 --> 0:20:51.476 In the meanwhile, I consider my critics to be my 0:20:51.556 --> 0:20:55.956 greatest benefactors. I am always grateful to them end quote. 0:20:56.716 --> 0:20:58.476 Which is nice and all, but it was still weird 0:20:58.516 --> 0:21:01.676 to Gideon. The unit is set out and attacked PhDs 0:21:01.676 --> 0:21:06.076 in general. They are literally the leading experts in a 0:21:06.196 --> 0:21:10.076 certain thing, and they're doing their PhD to uncovenue evidence 0:21:10.116 --> 0:21:16.876 in that specific thing. These important Stanford professors were clinging 0:21:16.876 --> 0:21:20.156 to the meaningless results of their screwed up study. Instead 0:21:20.156 --> 0:21:23.276 of admitting they've been wrong, they tried to discredit those 0:21:23.316 --> 0:21:28.116 who were right by comparing their academic degrees. You might 0:21:28.156 --> 0:21:30.156 think that these Stanford guys would write about now be 0:21:30.236 --> 0:21:33.316 laughed at by every respectable human being on the planet 0:21:33.356 --> 0:21:51.676 and slink away in shame, But you'd be wrong. Okay, 0:21:51.876 --> 0:21:55.316 let's pretend it's still early April twenty, and no one's 0:21:55.356 --> 0:21:58.516 totally sure how lethal COVID will be. And for a 0:21:58.716 --> 0:22:01.516 very brief period at the start of the pandemic, that 0:22:01.596 --> 0:22:04.356 crucial moment when we needed to act, we were hobbled 0:22:04.396 --> 0:22:08.196 by arguments and doubt. But one thing was becoming clear. 0:22:09.276 --> 0:22:14.356 Lots of Americans were suddenly dying all at once, most 0:22:14.356 --> 0:22:18.836 obviously in New York City. It was kind of an 0:22:18.836 --> 0:22:21.876 eerie place. There were two people in rooms meant for 0:22:21.956 --> 0:22:25.156 one person, and they were just motionless in debated bodies. 0:22:26.196 --> 0:22:29.796 Jonathan Howard is a neurologist and psychologist at Bellevue Hospital 0:22:29.836 --> 0:22:32.836 in New York City, but because he was a medical 0:22:32.876 --> 0:22:35.796 doctor living in New York in late April twenty twenty, 0:22:36.076 --> 0:22:37.916 he felt he had no choice but to try to 0:22:37.956 --> 0:22:41.196 save these COVID patients. So you had a kind of 0:22:41.236 --> 0:22:45.076 a ringside seat to the first kind of wave of carnage. 0:22:45.556 --> 0:22:48.676 You saw how serious it was. Absolutely, I mean it 0:22:48.756 --> 0:22:51.516 was you know, everyone in New York did. The sirens 0:22:51.516 --> 0:22:55.116 were wailing throughout empty streets all of the time. You know, 0:22:55.156 --> 0:22:57.716 most people didn't see it. To look at a hospital, 0:22:57.916 --> 0:23:02.676 there was nothing special going on, but the entire hospital 0:23:02.876 --> 0:23:07.036 was COVID and the turnover was massive. I would leave, 0:23:07.676 --> 0:23:10.996 you know, at five or six in the evening. I'd 0:23:10.996 --> 0:23:12.836 come back at you know, seven in the morning, and 0:23:13.156 --> 0:23:15.876 half of my patients had been transferred to the ICU overnight, 0:23:15.956 --> 0:23:21.676 and half of them, you know, were replaced, replaced because 0:23:21.676 --> 0:23:24.796 they were dead. Had you ever seen anything like it? 0:23:25.076 --> 0:23:27.276 There was nothing like it. Every five you know, the 0:23:27.436 --> 0:23:29.476 sounds are going to stick with me as much as anything. 0:23:29.836 --> 0:23:32.716 Every five minutes, you know, cold blue Airway team to 0:23:32.796 --> 0:23:35.276 this bed. Five minutes later, airway team to this bed. 0:23:36.436 --> 0:23:39.356 Inside of a month, more than ten thousand New Yorkers 0:23:39.356 --> 0:23:43.156 had died. They hadn't just caught COVID. They caught COVID 0:23:43.316 --> 0:23:45.836 early before doctors had a chance to learn how to 0:23:45.836 --> 0:23:49.276 treat it. Here's a shocking fact. If you went into 0:23:49.276 --> 0:23:52.116 an American hospital with severe COVID symptoms in March of 0:23:52.116 --> 0:23:55.796 twenty twenty, you had a twenty five percent chance of dying. 0:23:56.916 --> 0:24:00.076 Three months later, that number had fallen to five percent. 0:24:00.956 --> 0:24:03.436 In the course of three months, your chance of surviving 0:24:03.476 --> 0:24:07.836 severe COVID had gone way up because medicine had figured 0:24:07.836 --> 0:24:11.636 stuff out. But in March of twenty twenty, medicine still 0:24:11.636 --> 0:24:17.476 needed time to figure stuff out. Jonathan Howard wasn't watching 0:24:17.476 --> 0:24:21.036 Fox News. He was watching Americans die of COVID. But 0:24:21.116 --> 0:24:22.916 if it had more time on his hands, he could 0:24:22.916 --> 0:24:26.676 have watched Johnny Unidas staying on message even though the 0:24:26.716 --> 0:24:29.556 American death toll was already twice what he had forecasted 0:24:29.556 --> 0:24:32.916 it would, ever be. The totality of the evidence points 0:24:32.916 --> 0:24:36.316 to an infection that is very common, that typically is 0:24:36.396 --> 0:24:39.316 very mild. Most people have no symptoms, they don't recognize 0:24:39.316 --> 0:24:44.196 that they have the infection. I really respected him prior 0:24:44.236 --> 0:24:48.036 to the pandemic. He is a big proponent of avidence 0:24:48.076 --> 0:24:52.916 space medicine. Jonathan Howard had once considered Johnny unitas something 0:24:52.916 --> 0:24:55.636 of a hero. They shared an interest in the weirdly 0:24:55.676 --> 0:25:00.076 unscientific things that doctors didn't said. Jonathan had actually written 0:25:00.116 --> 0:25:04.636 a book on medical misinformation, cognitive era and diagnostic mistakes. 0:25:04.676 --> 0:25:07.236 It's called which sounds boring, but it grew out of 0:25:07.276 --> 0:25:11.316 stuff that Jonathan saw doctors. So there's a doctor who 0:25:11.316 --> 0:25:13.436 I trained with and knew pretty well and was very 0:25:13.476 --> 0:25:17.636 friendly with who has since gone onto infamy as one 0:25:17.676 --> 0:25:21.556 of the disinformation doesn't These are the twelve people most 0:25:21.556 --> 0:25:25.356 responsible for spreading vaccine misinformation on Facebook. This is someone 0:25:25.436 --> 0:25:30.116 you studied with. Yes, yes, we were professional colleagues and friendly, 0:25:30.516 --> 0:25:35.636 and shortly after she graduated our residency programmed together. You 0:25:35.636 --> 0:25:38.236 know again, she started posting this sort of stuff to Facebook, 0:25:38.316 --> 0:25:41.676 and I became very fascinated after that point, as many 0:25:41.676 --> 0:25:45.636 other people are, about why smart people can believe such 0:25:45.676 --> 0:25:48.836 weird and wrong things. Because she's not stupid. She went 0:25:48.836 --> 0:25:51.716 to Cornell, she went to mt she went to NYU residency. 0:25:52.076 --> 0:25:54.956 She's smart. But how is it that she believes viruses 0:25:54.956 --> 0:25:57.436 don't cause disease? Our coffee enemas. I'm not making that 0:25:57.556 --> 0:26:02.316 up cure mental illness? Jonathan thought of the disinformation doesn't 0:26:02.316 --> 0:26:07.116 as a type people inside medicine who basically rejected science. 0:26:08.196 --> 0:26:11.956