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Speaker 1: we're living through and a historical event. So how about
Speaker 1: we talked to one of the world's greatest historians. It's
Speaker 1: Armstrong and Getty extra large because four hours simply usn't enough.
Speaker 1: This is Armstrong and Getty extra Large. Neil Ferguson is
Speaker 1: the Millbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford
Speaker 1: University for twelve years, the Laurence ay Tisch Professor of
Speaker 1: History at Stanford, among other credentials, and more importantly, is
Speaker 1: a hell of a good conversation. That's been too long, Neil,
Speaker 1: how are you, sir? Very well? Indeed, I'm happy to report. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I'm excited to talk to you because Joe and I
Speaker 1: were throwing us around the other day. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: you're a professional historian, so it's good to ask you
Speaker 1: where word amateur history bubbs buffs? Are we living through
Speaker 1: like a top ten world event? I mean, because by
Speaker 1: a number of measures, it seems to me it would
Speaker 1: rank pretty high in world history, maybe below the meteor
Speaker 1: that killed the dinosaurs, but certainly above Prince Harry moving
Speaker 1: to Canada. Somewhere in that range. Yes, I certainly think
Speaker 1: it beats Prince Harry, So I'm not sure we're quite
Speaker 1: at the extinction event level. I think if it were
Speaker 1: just a pandemic, it wouldn't really be top ten because
Speaker 1: it's clearly not up there with the Black Death of
Speaker 1: the fourteenth century. I don't think it's as a dangerous
Speaker 1: disease actually is the influenza of eighteen nineteen. But what's
Speaker 1: making it world historical is the extraordinary economic consequences, and
Speaker 1: particularly the ways in which government mandated lockdown, the causing
Speaker 1: that the biggest economic shocks since the Great Depression, much
Speaker 1: bigger than the two two tho nine financial crisis. I
Speaker 1: think that's really the differentiating factor here. We're really in
Speaker 1: the midst of one of the biggest economic shocks in
Speaker 1: history well, and similar to the still shocking lack of
Speaker 1: knowledge about the specifics of the virus, how it infects,
Speaker 1: how it spreads, how it kills. We don't have the
Speaker 1: slightest idea do we what the aftershocks are likely to
Speaker 1: look like or how long the last Well, that's right,
Speaker 1: because we know more now than we did back in
Speaker 1: January when I started writing about this warning that the
Speaker 1: Woolhan coronavirus was likely to become a global pandemic. But
Speaker 1: but we we still don't really know the critical things
Speaker 1: we need to know. We don't really know what the
Speaker 1: infection fatality rate is because the case motality rates are
Speaker 1: very skewed. We don't really know how many people have
Speaker 1: been exposed. For testing is getting up to the level
Speaker 1: where we can start to get a fix on it.
Speaker 1: We have no idea when a vaccine will be ready.
Speaker 1: It certainly won't be this year and can't even be
Speaker 1: relied on to be ready for next year. So for
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of imponderables here. But history can be
Speaker 1: in some ways of helpful, if not more helpful than
Speaker 1: epithe theology. One thing is very clear from the great
Speaker 1: pandemics of the past. This will not be one wave
Speaker 1: and done. And I think we've been letters of public
Speaker 1: to believe. But as alably flattened the curve and the
Speaker 1: great phrase of the year, we'll be fine and we'll
Speaker 1: be looking back on this by July fourth saying gee,
Speaker 1: that was rough but over. That's not the case. Almost
Speaker 1: all the great pandemics are multiple waves. The second wave
Speaker 1: was bigger than the first one, and I think it's
Speaker 1: it's only a matter of time. It could be soon
Speaker 1: trying to get the economy back to work. It could
Speaker 1: be after the summer, but there will be a second wave,
Speaker 1: and I think it's time that people face that realistically,
Speaker 1: rather than kidding themselves that it will all be over
Speaker 1: by July four. Your opinion piece in the Boston Globe,
Speaker 1: the economic legacy of a coronavirus lockdown, the old battle
Speaker 1: between security, um uh, you know, security and safety and
Speaker 1: your economic security and your health and all that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. The way it's playing out here, it seems
Speaker 1: like it transferment to flatten the curve. As you said,
Speaker 1: it's the phrase of the year, flatten the curve. But
Speaker 1: originally we're going to flatten the curve to try to
Speaker 1: keep the hospitals from being overwhelmed. Now all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: we've gone to it seems, flatten the curve to make
Speaker 1: sure nobody dies from it. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: I'm willing to trade how many tens of thousands deads
Speaker 1: for something worse than the Great Depression. I think that
Speaker 1: this trade off has has sometimes been over sympathized in
Speaker 1: the way that some politicians are said, we should be
Speaker 1: ready to satisfice the elderly to get the economy back.
Speaker 1: I don't think we should think about it like that.
Speaker 1: I think that the truth is that we just have
Speaker 1: a lot of uncertainty about the disease, and therefore we
Speaker 1: need to err on the side of caution. We certainly
Speaker 1: needed to err on the side of caution right at
Speaker 1: the beginning when we knew nothing about it. Unfortunately we
Speaker 1: did it. But I think the projections that were so
Speaker 1: crucial in March in leading to lockdowns implied that up
Speaker 1: to two million or more Americans would die if we
Speaker 1: did nothing, and I think that was all was certainly
Speaker 1: wrong because it implied or it was based on an
Speaker 1: assumption that the infection fatality rate was about point nine percent,
Speaker 1: in effect, to the epidemeologists, who confusedly included somebody with
Speaker 1: the same name as me, Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, London,
Speaker 1: were saying, this is as bad as nine and I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure it's not. I think we now know enough
Speaker 1: to see that it is not as deadly. It's more
Speaker 1: like actually the ninety seven fifty eight pandemic, which not
Speaker 1: many people remember. And the reason they don't remember it
Speaker 1: is that killed quite a lot of people around the world,
Speaker 1: including many Americans. It didn't lead to they can lockdown.
Speaker 1: It didn't need to this kind of man made depression.
Speaker 1: So I think, although I'm going to be careful here,
Speaker 1: I think we're starting to see that we actually went
Speaker 1: in for overkill in the face of a disease that
Speaker 1: was highly contagious, certainly, but not as injurious as we
Speaker 1: at first thought. And that's why I think it would
Speaker 1: be very, very urgently desirable for the US to switch
Speaker 1: to a more subtle form of containment of the disease,
Speaker 1: of the sort that we've already seen in countries like
Speaker 1: Taiwan and South Korea, which haven't had to lockdown their economies.
Speaker 1: We used a very blunt instrument based I think on
Speaker 1: an exaggerated fear of the excess mortipality that was going
Speaker 1: to be It can like lockdown. I don't think have
Speaker 1: been especially affected compared with social distancing, which is something different.
Speaker 1: And I think the lesson that we can learn from
Speaker 1: successful countries like Taiwan and South Korea is that with
Speaker 1: testing and contact tracing, you don't need to create your
Speaker 1: economy to manage this disease. Well, and we're discussing the
Speaker 1: trade off between the lives of the old in your
Speaker 1: example and versus the economy. I think it's brutally under
Speaker 1: discussed the fact that if the economy tanks or is
Speaker 1: left in rubble, there will be many, many deaths of poverty, despair,
Speaker 1: lack of medical care, suicide, depression, addiction, etcetera, etcetera. And
Speaker 1: I could easily see a two hundred thousand deaths of
Speaker 1: despair being sacrificed to save thirty thousand lives of Wuhan flu,
Speaker 1: which is obviously not to sort of bargain anyone would strike.
Speaker 1: I think the risk in terms of potential mortality due
Speaker 1: to code of mountin was was higher than a thousand
Speaker 1: if we if we'd really done nothing, I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: I meant going forward really bit higher. But you know,
Speaker 1: we're in a situation now when it's quite hard to
Speaker 1: say what the result would have been if we if
Speaker 1: we've done nothing. But the distinction I want to draw
Speaker 1: is between a rational policy of social distancing that tries
Speaker 1: to minimize the exposure, especially vulnerable groups to this virus
Speaker 1: under very blunt instrument of economic lockdowns, which I think
Speaker 1: have almost certainly done more harm than the net public
Speaker 1: health benefit. I mean, in the end, we're using a
Speaker 1: lot of quite confusing metrics, and the result I think
Speaker 1: has been to lead ordinary Americans to to feel very
Speaker 1: uncertain about what they should do. I think the best
Speaker 1: way of thinking about this is just excess debts. Are
Speaker 1: we seeing right now much higher mortality than we would
Speaker 1: expect at this time of year? And that's I think
Speaker 1: a good way of thinking about it. And the answer
Speaker 1: is that we're starting to although at the moment it's
Speaker 1: still very confined into states such as New York. In Europe,
Speaker 1: there's excess mortality certainly in countries like Italy and Spain,
Speaker 1: and it's clear that it would have been much higher
Speaker 1: if if they done nothing, and if we've done nothing,
Speaker 1: So I don't think we should underplay this. It was
Speaker 1: always a mistake to say, oh, this is just the
Speaker 1: seasonal influenza. That was a terrible uh, that bad bit
Speaker 1: of analysis that that attracted a lot of comment pators
Speaker 1: on both the left and the right back in January, February,
Speaker 1: in the first half of March. So I don't think
Speaker 1: we should underestimate this, but nor should we While be exaggerated,
Speaker 1: this is really not as dangerous of virus as the influenza.
Speaker 1: If if you actually imagine that virus coming back today,
Speaker 1: then we'd be looking at death death count potentially up
Speaker 1: to two million. But I really don't think that was
Speaker 1: the mere scenario we faced. I think it was much
Speaker 1: closer to being something like ninety seven fifty eight, with
Speaker 1: maybe maybe five a thousand people potentially at risk. So
Speaker 1: it's a very fine balance that governments have to strike.
Speaker 1: I think the mistake that we may have made was
Speaker 1: to say, our first we'll try in cicions, why why
Speaker 1: shouldn't we worry, And then let's try what the Chinese
Speaker 1: did in Coupe problems, which was economic lockdown, and we
Speaker 1: failed to see that actually there was a much smarter
Speaker 1: policy being done in the other China, iwan we're testing
Speaker 1: and policing enabled them to avoid the contagions spreading far
Speaker 1: the god very few deaths, and they haven't had to
Speaker 1: lock down their economy. I think, guys has to be
Speaker 1: why did all those people in the federal government whose
Speaker 1: job this was failed so badly. It's not like we
Speaker 1: didn't have a plan for a pandemic. We had I
Speaker 1: think at the last count, six different plans. We had legislation,
Speaker 1: we had task forces, we had people inside the Department
Speaker 1: of Helping Human Services whose one job it was to
Speaker 1: deal with the pandemic, and for some unexplicable reason almost
Speaker 1: brought completely failed. That's the conversation I think we need
Speaker 1: to have when this finally is over, which I don't
Speaker 1: think we'll be until next year. We need to ask
Speaker 1: why big government failed so ethically in the United States
Speaker 1: this year. Yeah, I hope that's looked at um UH
Speaker 1: and by people being nonpartisan, just trying to get to
Speaker 1: the bottom of it. I've read about the first half
Speaker 1: of your Henry Kissinger book just absolutely fantastic. And the
Speaker 1: reason I bring that up as I was reading an
Speaker 1: opinion piece from Henry Kissinger just the other day, in
Speaker 1: which he thinks this is really going to have an
Speaker 1: effect on the world order, particularly um the power struggle
Speaker 1: between US and China. How do you feel about that?
Speaker 1: How gool with that? I mean, Richard half of the
Speaker 1: Council on Foreign Relations wrote a kind of alternative piece saying, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's not going to change that much except to accelerate
Speaker 1: existing trend. I think I think that that's definitely wrong.
Speaker 1: This is a huge shift that is going to happen.
Speaker 1: I think in some ways it is laying bare what
Speaker 1: I've already called Cold War two, revealing that there are fundamental,
Speaker 1: irreconcilable differences between the United States and China. Perhaps I
Speaker 1: should say the Western China, because Europe's in this too.
Speaker 1: I think prior to the pandemic, a lot of people
Speaker 1: wanted to pretend this wasn't happening and that somehow we
Speaker 1: could resurrect the old relationship between the US and China
Speaker 1: that I used to call chi America. But ch America
Speaker 1: is dead and Cold War two is very much with us,
Speaker 1: and I think the pandemic has has revealed that very clearly. Chinese,
Speaker 1: of course, they're trying to bend the narrative and say oh, well,
Speaker 1: this may possibly have started in China, but actually it
Speaker 1: might have started somewhere else. But hey, anyway, we're here
Speaker 1: to save the world, and that that I think is
Speaker 1: a pretty ill conceived propagandam move from China's part that's
Speaker 1: probably going to backfire on them. It's certainly not playing
Speaker 1: well in Europe as I understand it. So no, I
Speaker 1: think this is a big moments of truth for the U. S.
Speaker 1: China relationship. But it's a moment that has revealed all
Speaker 1: that is rotten at the core of the People's Republic
Speaker 1: of China's governance. But there's other stuff to be looked
Speaker 1: at too. I don't think it could be without consequences
Speaker 1: that the price of oil has essentially collapsed to zero
Speaker 1: or even in some cases into negative territory. For countries
Speaker 1: like Russia or for that matter, Saudi Arabia that rely
Speaker 1: primarily on these revenues from oil, it's it's got to
Speaker 1: be an existential threat that they face. So I think
Speaker 1: the political consequences, or maybe I should say the geopolitical
Speaker 1: consequences of the pandemic, will be enormous, much closer to
Speaker 1: kissing to the Richard hearts, and that changing direction just
Speaker 1: a bit. Those of us of a libertarian banter are
Speaker 1: concerned about a couple of aspects of this power. Once
Speaker 1: grasp is not easily taken back, and right surrendered are
Speaker 1: not easily regained, And there seems to be an awful
Speaker 1: lot of uh, you know, too too easy acquiescence to
Speaker 1: We're putting you essentially under house arrest, and we're not
Speaker 1: even going to indicate that we understand how serious that is.
Speaker 1: You have no right to peaceably assemble, but it's because
Speaker 1: there's an emergency, and again it could be necessary. But
Speaker 1: the fact that the powers that be don't even say, look,
Speaker 1: we understand, we're asking you to surrender your most precious rights.
Speaker 1: Were very sorry, We'll get back to normal as soon
Speaker 1: as we can. The casualness of it is bothersome to us.
Speaker 1: Any thoughts on that, Yeah, I think the United States
Speaker 1: has a bit of a public actually with the way
Speaker 1: in which emergencies operates. They have a tendency to get
Speaker 1: declared and never undeclared because the National Emergencies Act, which
Speaker 1: dates back to the nineteen seventies, has essentially being abused
Speaker 1: by sess of administrations. Again, this is not a partisan point.
Speaker 1: Emergencies get declared and then they kind of stay in force,
Speaker 1: and I think it would be very very dangerous indeed,
Speaker 1: if certainly the emergency measures that have been introduced since
Speaker 1: the pandemic came along became a permanent feature. I think
Speaker 1: it's urgently needed that the National Emergencies Act be reformed
Speaker 1: so that there is an expiry mandatory expiry of sticks
Speaker 1: of emergency, because otherwise we end up in a situation
Speaker 1: which I think is very troubling that a whole range
Speaker 1: of different statutory provisions supposed to be for emergencies only
Speaker 1: become permanent features of of American life. And I don't
Speaker 1: think any president should be in a position to play
Speaker 1: a permanent state of emergency. Frankly, that's how the publics die.
Speaker 1: Don't really matter who the president is. My final question
Speaker 1: is how long do you think there will be reverberations
Speaker 1: economically worldwide out of this? But I don't think the
Speaker 1: public health crisis is going to be over for quite
Speaker 1: a while because the virus is not going away. We
Speaker 1: don't have therapy is we don't have a vaccine, were
Speaker 1: nowhere near to her immunity. A great proportion the population
Speaker 1: hasn't even been exposed to it yet, We're still going
Speaker 1: to be playing some game of whack a mole with
Speaker 1: covered nineteen inter next year and beyond become a regular
Speaker 1: teacher of life. In fact, if it turns out that
Speaker 1: you don't get more lasting immunity once you've had it,
Speaker 1: which I think is quite possible. So that's the that's
Speaker 1: the public health problem. It's certainly not going away in
Speaker 1: a hurry. But the consequences of what we've done really
Speaker 1: traveled me more because we have inflicted an enormous shock
Speaker 1: to our economy. That's there in the data that you
Speaker 1: and I can see every day. Soaring unemployment, business is
Speaker 1: teetering on the brink of insolvency, relying on checks from
Speaker 1: the federal government to steer This can't continue for much longer.
Speaker 1: With really sustained UH, you can come a damage that
Speaker 1: will not be easy to recover from. I certainly don't
Speaker 1: see a v shaped recovery under these circumstances. Imagining that
Speaker 1: this is financial prices two points oh, and that you
Speaker 1: just need to throw money at it in the form
Speaker 1: of a large federal deficit and lots of wanted di
Speaker 1: easing is delusional. All those measures are doing is propping
Speaker 1: up the economy that would otherwise be flat on its face.
Speaker 1: But I think it's going to be a long road back,
Speaker 1: even if we successfully begin to unwinder lockdowns in the
Speaker 1: next couple of months. So I'm afraid we aren't going
Speaker 1: to be out of this for a long time. Remember
Speaker 1: how long it took actually for the U. S economy
Speaker 1: to get back to where it was in arnds of
Speaker 1: just an employment after two thousands, more like six years
Speaker 1: before we were really back to where we had been.
Speaker 1: This is worse, and so I think we need to
Speaker 1: prepare our for a slow crawl back to something that
Speaker 1: I don't think we can call the new normal, because
Speaker 1: I don't think it's going to be that normal. It's
Speaker 1: not going to be that normal if we can't go
Speaker 1: to the all game, if we can't go to crowded restaurants,
Speaker 1: if we can't go to the movies, if all of
Speaker 1: those things that involve social proximity are essentially off for
Speaker 1: the indefinite future until there's a generally available vaccine, and
Speaker 1: talking about normal is probably just another form of self delusion. Well,
Speaker 1: and the universe has a funny way of throwing things
Speaker 1: at you as you're recovering from the last shock. To
Speaker 1: Neil Ferguson of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, we don't
Speaker 1: want to be too greedy with your time, but we
Speaker 1: thank you very much for the conversation. Always enjoy it
Speaker 1: in a pleasure sor I'm not more cheerful. Thanks nonetheless. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I understand why he said there at the end. I
Speaker 1: was thinking while he while he was laying that out,
Speaker 1: I thought, I hope he's wrong. I hope he's wrong
Speaker 1: about that. It is not ten years before we get
Speaker 1: back to even where we were before. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: my might comment about the universe throwing things. Actually it
Speaker 1: works both ways too. Sometimes the universe throws enormous opportunities
Speaker 1: your way and and things turn out much better than anticipating.
Speaker 1: You know, tearing down and chaos is the natural state
Speaker 1: of things. That's what you're always fighting against just in life, entropy,
Speaker 1: right and uh and so well, you know, like you said,
Speaker 1: there will be other things come along over the next
Speaker 1: six eight ten years as the world tries to get
Speaker 1: back to where it was three months ago. Um, there
Speaker 1: will be wars and earthquakes and hurricanes and political unrest
Speaker 1: and who knows what. So, you know, the optimist in
Speaker 1: me thinks that a lot of crap that is addling
Speaker 1: our society, that's hurting us is going to be shaken
Speaker 1: out because we don't have time for it anymore. We're
Speaker 1: gonna be a leaner, meaner, more practical people. Then there's
Speaker 1: the other part of me that thinks, no, it appears
Speaker 1: to me bureaucracies are growing. Uh, the the power of
Speaker 1: the government and the bureaucracies is growing in things might
Speaker 1: just end up worse. I don't know. We've got We've
Speaker 1: got a whole generation that's has spent a good chunk
Speaker 1: of their life being taken care of by the government
Speaker 1: because there was no other way to do it. And
Speaker 1: now they that's on the entries. Yeah, oh well, what
Speaker 1: are you gonna do? Extra large? When you're ready to
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