Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day fifty one
Speaker 1: since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Our main story.
Speaker 1: Researchers and scientists are moving at unprecedented speed to add
Speaker 1: to what we know about the pandemic. That speed is
Speaker 1: warranted because understanding the virus is the only way to
Speaker 1: eventually contain it. But it's also leading to confusion and
Speaker 1: challenging the public's faith in science. But first, here's what
Speaker 1: happened today. There are many unanswered questions about coronavirus. One
Speaker 1: of them how long will all this last? Now has
Speaker 1: a possible answer. A group of experts say the pandemic
Speaker 1: is likely to be with us for as long as
Speaker 1: two years. A report from the Center for Infectious Disease
Speaker 1: Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota says the
Speaker 1: fact that people without symptoms can spread the virus makes
Speaker 1: it harder to control than the flu, and people maybe
Speaker 1: at their most infectious before any symptoms appear. After locking
Speaker 1: down billions of people around the world to minimize COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen spread, governments are now cautiously allowing businesses and public
Speaker 1: places to reopen. Yet the report predicts the coronavirus pandemic
Speaker 1: is likely to continue in waves that could last be
Speaker 1: on twenty twenty two. We'll need about two thirds of
Speaker 1: the world's population to become immune before we can control
Speaker 1: the virus, the authors said. And about that immunity, one
Speaker 1: way to get it is through a vaccine, which is
Speaker 1: still a long way off. Another is by having the
Speaker 1: antibodies one develops after fighting off the disease. But some
Speaker 1: have questioned whether everyone who has had the virus develops
Speaker 1: these antibodies, which would make it more complicated to target
Speaker 1: certain people for immunity Today, Anthony Faucci, the scientist who's
Speaker 1: leading the u S response to the pandemic, said that
Speaker 1: most people who have had the coronavirus probably would have
Speaker 1: the antibodies. Fauci, who was the director of the National
Speaker 1: Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said it would be
Speaker 1: extremely unusual if patients did not develop antibodies. He said
Speaker 1: it would be almost unprecedented. Different states in the US
Speaker 1: vary in the cautiousness of their approach to restarting businesses.
Speaker 1: Florida Governor Ronda Santis said the state would re open
Speaker 1: state parks on May fourth. Meanwhile, New York Governor Andrew
Speaker 1: Cuomo made it official that schools would remain closed for
Speaker 1: the duration of the school here, and New York City
Speaker 1: Mayor Built A. Blasio said the city was making some
Speaker 1: progress toward fighting the outbreak, but not enough to justify reopening. Finally,
Speaker 1: the virus continues to take its toll around the globe.
Speaker 1: Russia had a surge in new cases a day after
Speaker 1: Prime Minister Mikhail ms Houston said he had tested positive.
Speaker 1: Hubei province, the epicenter of China's outbreak, will lower its
Speaker 1: emergency response, while Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he
Speaker 1: would probably extend the emergency by about a month. And
Speaker 1: now our main story. On April, a New York hospital
Speaker 1: system reported a stunning eighty eight percent death rate among
Speaker 1: its COVID nineteen patients unventilators. Two days later, they put
Speaker 1: out an update. Actually, only twenty four point five percent
Speaker 1: of patients on ventilators had died. How did this happen?
Speaker 1: Which number was right? The answer is complicated and has
Speaker 1: to do with different ways of slicing the data, But
Speaker 1: it is just one example of how quickly guidance about
Speaker 1: coronavirus can change. Scientists are facing unparalleled pressure to provide
Speaker 1: information about the virus as quickly as possible, and when
Speaker 1: every day it brings forth new data. What was clear
Speaker 1: one day maybe confusing the next. Conflicting reports on the
Speaker 1: benefits of wearing masks, how the virus spreads, and even
Speaker 1: the efficacy of promising new drugs like rumdesvie are all
Speaker 1: products of the global race to provide answers about the coronavirus.
Speaker 1: Problem is, science usually doesn't move this fast. So what
Speaker 1: happens when the slow and steady process of research, peer review,
Speaker 1: and the traditional publication process hits warp speed. I spoke
Speaker 1: with Bloomberg's Michelle fay Cortes and Robert Langreth to learn
Speaker 1: more about why it's so hard to part the science
Speaker 1: and about the danger that the public will lose faith
Speaker 1: in scientific research and reporting. What makes interpreting data so
Speaker 1: difficult when it comes to, for example, case and mortality rates,
Speaker 1: but in general, for numbers we see related to coronavirus.
Speaker 1: Number one, we don't know how many people have coronavirus
Speaker 1: in general. That's a testing issue. And the other one
Speaker 1: on the mortality rates is a lot of the information
Speaker 1: we have is very preliminary. A lot of people haven't
Speaker 1: died from coronavirus who might sadly die in the next
Speaker 1: few days or weeks. So when you're trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what the real numbers are, if you're trying to
Speaker 1: do that very quickly, you have to make this decision
Speaker 1: about are you going to get out what you know
Speaker 1: now or are you going to wait until you can
Speaker 1: be a little bit more definitive and a little bit
Speaker 1: more comprehensive. Scientists are looking to answer a very narrow
Speaker 1: and specific question generally, and they also normally have some
Speaker 1: kind of a base of information that they're working off of.
Speaker 1: When it comes to coronavirus, we don't know pretty much
Speaker 1: anything about any of it. So every time someone has
Speaker 1: a data set, everything in there is interesting. What's different
Speaker 1: about how research is being done now versus before the pandemic.
Speaker 1: The way of doing it normally is there's a back
Speaker 1: and forth process between the researchers who have done the
Speaker 1: work and determined what their answers are to the questions
Speaker 1: that they're asking, and then they go back and forth
Speaker 1: with the medical journal and with peer reviewers to make
Speaker 1: sure that they've honed in exactly the right issue, that
Speaker 1: they've done the scientific analysis and the statistics correctly, and
Speaker 1: that the way they're characterizing it and writing about it
Speaker 1: is accurate in the current situation. A lot of times
Speaker 1: there is no back and forth, which means that there
Speaker 1: hasn't been any review really of the substance of their articles.
Speaker 1: So it is a very very fast process. In some cases,
Speaker 1: they're not even being presented in any print anywhere. We're
Speaker 1: just seeing a press conference, or maybe we've got some slides,
Speaker 1: or perhaps we have the head of n I a
Speaker 1: I d. Dr Anthony Fauci, sitting next to President Trump
Speaker 1: in the Oval Office telling us something that none of
Speaker 1: us have known before, and that we're just getting it
Speaker 1: for the first time with no no notes to understand it.
Speaker 1: We're seeing we're seeing science by press release. We're seeing
Speaker 1: science announced in fragmentary form by politicians so they can
Speaker 1: get credit for what's going on. We're even seeing, you know,
Speaker 1: science being put out and publicized on social media by
Speaker 1: prominent people that then gets wide distribution everywhere. And even
Speaker 1: when the science is published, you know, in a medical journal,
Speaker 1: aren't you're viewed. It's coming out very very fast, and
Speaker 1: you know my senses. In the In the rush to
Speaker 1: you know, get out as much information as possible, scientific
Speaker 1: journals are basically sent to letting it you know, much
Speaker 1: more preliminary information than they're published in the past, and
Speaker 1: the public isn't always you know, full of way away
Speaker 1: of just how preliminary some of these studies are and
Speaker 1: some of this data is. What are some examples of
Speaker 1: how these rushed conclusions have really affected the public's understanding
Speaker 1: of coronavirus in general. There's been just a lack of
Speaker 1: understanding about how the coronavirus is playing out in our country.
Speaker 1: We have a lot of people who didn't know about
Speaker 1: whether or not they should wear a mask. Those rules
Speaker 1: changed over the course of this virus. When it comes
Speaker 1: to something like whether or not we're going to have
Speaker 1: a treatment for coronavirus and whether or not, for example,
Speaker 1: Gilead Sciences drug ram does it. Here, we're getting some early,
Speaker 1: good preliminary information about that, but we don't know whether
Speaker 1: it's going to hold up once it's been reviewed embedded
Speaker 1: more thoroughly. And the other example that I put out there,
Speaker 1: which there's a lot of debate about right now, has
Speaker 1: a lot of the very preliminary studies on these antibody tests,
Speaker 1: saying you know significant percentage of the population you know
Speaker 1: who haven't officially tested positive for coronavirus and have antibodies
Speaker 1: to it, so that that means they may be exposed
Speaker 1: and may be immune for a period of time. And
Speaker 1: what's not getting out there to the public is that
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of these antibody tests, the results
Speaker 1: are somewhat controversial, a lot of the tests are put
Speaker 1: on the market without much review, and they may actually
Speaker 1: produce a significant number of false positives. Yes, and then
Speaker 1: the issue with that, of course, is that people are
Speaker 1: making decisions based on whether or not they have antibodies
Speaker 1: in their blood. So if that test is not accurate
Speaker 1: and you think that you're safe and you're out there
Speaker 1: mingling in the public without taking precautions that you otherwise
Speaker 1: would to protect other people, you could be doing all
Speaker 1: kinds of damage. Not only that, governments are making decisions
Speaker 1: about how much they can open and what they can
Speaker 1: allow their population to do. And again, if they're making
Speaker 1: those decisions based on inaccurate test results, disastrous consequences can result.
Speaker 1: With the recent announcement of the potential of ramdsevere. Are
Speaker 1: people rushing in the same way to grab onto this
Speaker 1: potential perhaps sooner than necessarily scientific research would suggest is possible. Well,
Speaker 1: it's pretty amazing the level of attention being paid to this,
Speaker 1: as you know, potentially the first approved coronavirus treatment. And
Speaker 1: like even my a some year old mom was like
Speaker 1: literally calling me and asking me about it yesterday. Should
Speaker 1: should I get this from my medicine cabinet, So like
Speaker 1: just everyone is paying attention to it, and the warrior
Speaker 1: is a danger is that people don't realize, you know,
Speaker 1: just how preliminary these results are the main results of
Speaker 1: the government's monster trial. They're basically announced at a prece
Speaker 1: event with the President Trump and Faucian. That an oppression. Ly,
Speaker 1: so we don't have the scientific publication of any of
Speaker 1: the details of this trial, and you know exactly how
Speaker 1: good are the results? You know, these or details are
Speaker 1: really important to now you know whether it should be
Speaker 1: approved and how it should be used. And that's exactly
Speaker 1: the situation that the FDA is planning to take pretty
Speaker 1: quick action when it comes to ram desevere, and we
Speaker 1: don't have an awful lot of information about how the
Speaker 1: drug works. I mean, let's take a beat here and
Speaker 1: realize we've only even known this virus existed for about
Speaker 1: four months. So to go from not even having it
Speaker 1: in existence to having a treatment specifically for it is astonishing.
Speaker 1: And the only way to do that is by going
Speaker 1: at an accelerated pace, the likeness of which we have
Speaker 1: never seen before. So by definition, we're going to have
Speaker 1: to be making decisions based on incomplete data. In general,
Speaker 1: the understanding of the drug isn't isn't widespread throughout the US.
Speaker 1: I keep getting messages from people asking me, is this
Speaker 1: really a cure? And in fact, it's not at all
Speaker 1: a cure. Even the results that we're seeing now suggest
Speaker 1: that it's going to be able to perhaps help people
Speaker 1: get out of the hospital a few days earlier. So
Speaker 1: it does give us perhaps a treatment, and perhaps our
Speaker 1: first treatment for this virus, and that is incredibly important.
Speaker 1: But the idea that it's any kind of a panacea
Speaker 1: or a silver bullet or a prevention, that's just not
Speaker 1: even on the table. Do you see a loss of
Speaker 1: faith or perhaps increasing doubt about scientific research overall because
Speaker 1: people essentially are getting whiplash? Yes, wear masks, No, don't
Speaker 1: wear masks. Do you see an an issue there of
Speaker 1: the public's essentially loss of faith in in the validity
Speaker 1: of scientific research because of this, Well, there is this
Speaker 1: this idea, a theory called truth decay, which is what
Speaker 1: happens when the general public stops believing what they're hearing
Speaker 1: from scientific authorities. And we had already been seeing some
Speaker 1: of that before coronavirus came out, when it comes to
Speaker 1: things like vaccines and climate change and that sort of
Speaker 1: a thing. At this point, we really do see that
Speaker 1: most Americans are holding scientists in very high regard, and
Speaker 1: we can see from what's happening with flattening the curve
Speaker 1: and that type of thing, that people are listening that
Speaker 1: most Americans are staying in their homes. Most people in
Speaker 1: the world are staying in their homes to try to
Speaker 1: fight this virus, but they're getting very anxious about it,
Speaker 1: and they're getting upset about it, and we're coming to
Speaker 1: the end of people perhaps just listening to the scientists.
Speaker 1: So that's why we're seeing some of these protests and
Speaker 1: these efforts to open up more quickly and at some point,
Speaker 1: if there's more and more questions about the validity of
Speaker 1: the science and if the virus doesn't continue to operate
Speaker 1: the way that we expected to, then we might start
Speaker 1: seeing even more of that truth decay when it comes
Speaker 1: to coronavirus. What could the public understand better about the
Speaker 1: science to stop truth decay? And what can science writers
Speaker 1: like you to do to help. That's such a great question,
Speaker 1: and I don't know that there's any easy answers to it.
Speaker 1: Of course, for consumers, they can make sure that they're
Speaker 1: listening to really legitimate sources of information and that they're
Speaker 1: hearing it directly from scientists and scientific journalists who understand
Speaker 1: all the nuances. And I think there's a responsibility on
Speaker 1: us to make sure that when we're writing these pieces,
Speaker 1: that we're writing it for people who understand perhaps less
Speaker 1: than we might originally expect, and make sure that we're
Speaker 1: writing our stories so that people can understand both the
Speaker 1: limitations of the science and the promise of the science,
Speaker 1: so that people can have hope, but they won't have
Speaker 1: false hope. And I think that the public needs to
Speaker 1: understand that pretty much everything they're hearing, all the results
Speaker 1: are hearing about the coronavirus now, all the scientific results
Speaker 1: about affection rates, death rates, and about a testing rates uh,
Speaker 1: all that information is very preliminary right now and subjectory vision.
Speaker 1: It's only going to be a gradual process of converging
Speaker 1: on the truth, and they just have to understand that process.
Speaker 1: You know. It's going to be a bit messy and
Speaker 1: messier than usual because it's playing out in real time,
Speaker 1: it's playing out in public, and it is a giant,
Speaker 1: hard to follow fire host information. But the scientists they
Speaker 1: are doing their best. They are working around the clock,
Speaker 1: really and many of them I talked to to try
Speaker 1: to understand the coronavirus and how to test for it
Speaker 1: and how to treat it and how to find a vaccine.
Speaker 1: You know, but right now the process is quite messy,
Speaker 1: you know. B B be leery of any one result
Speaker 1: of that you hear, you know, on TV or in
Speaker 1: the news, and don't don't assume it's the final word,
Speaker 1: because it's probably not. That was Bloomberg's Michelle fake Cortez
Speaker 1: and Robert Langrath, and that's our show today. For coverage
Speaker 1: of the outbreak from one and twenty bureaus around the world,
Speaker 1: visit bloomberg dot com Flash Coronavirus and if you like
Speaker 1: the show, please leave as 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 hosted by Me Laura Carlson. The show was
Speaker 1: produced by Me topher Foreheaz, Jordan gas Pure, and Magnus Hendrickson.
Speaker 1: Today's main story was reported by Michelle fe Cortez and
Speaker 1: Robert Langriff. Original music by Leo Sidran. Our editors are
Speaker 1: Francesco Levi and Rick Shine. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head
Speaker 1: of podcasts. Thanks for listening.