Yeah I feel the same way too the data that masks don't work is so overwhelming that the whole debate is boring and pointless.
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US CDC Says Wearing Double Mask Reduce COVID by 95%. Sam Leong very Angry, Red Faced
- Thread starter Kraken
- Start date
Yeah I feel the same way too the data that masks don't work is so overwhelming that the whole debate is boring and pointless.
I think you really are stupid
https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/...le-of-masks-in-preventing-covid-19-infection/
Mayo Clinic research confirms critical role of masks in preventing COVID-19 infection
November 24, 2020
Please note: Mayo Clinic is sharing pre-published data on masking efficacy to help highlight the importance of masking and social distancing over the upcoming Thanksgiving Holiday.
ROCHESTER, Minn. — New, unpublished data from researchers at Mayo Clinic found that physical separation reduces the exposure of respiratory droplets and that three feet is helpful but 6 feet separation reduces particle counts to near baseline levels. The findings strongly support the protective value and effectiveness of widespread mask use and maintaining physical distance in helping to stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
Watch: Dr. Elie Berbari and Dr. Matthew Callstrom discuss mask study.
Journalists: Broadcast-quality soundbites are in the downloads at the end of the post along with b-roll video of the mask containment study. Please "Courtesy: Elie Berbari, M.D./Infectious Diseases/Mayo Clinic" and "Matthew Callstrom, M.D./Radiology/Mayo Clinic."
"This was an experimental study where we emulated the production of respiratory droplets by using mannequins, that were masked and other mannequins that were unmasked and measured the spread of those droplets at various distances," says Elie Berbari, M.D., chair of the department of infectious diseases at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
Watch: See the mannequins in action.
Researchers measured how effectively masks blocked the number of aerosol particles from a masked source, simulating an individual with a COVID-19 infection, and they simulated the risk of an individual contracting COVID-19, when they were masked.
"We found the most important measure for reducing the risk of exposure to COVID-19 is to wear a mask," says Matthew Callstrom, M.D., Ph.D., chair of the department of radiology at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. "We found that both disposable paper medical masks and two-layer cloth masks were effective in reducing droplet transmission and we did not find a difference between mask types in terms of how well they blocked aerosol particles emitted by the wearer."
"The most common mechanism for COVID-19 transmission is through respiratory droplets which are larger than aerosols and are more easily blocked with masks," says Dr. Callstrom.
A second part of the study measured aerosol particle counts from a source to a target from one foot to six feet apart, at one-foot intervals. Researchers found that overall, particle counts were reduced with increasing distance which supports current CDC guidance of maintaining physical separation of six feet from others.
"I think we had some knowledge about the importance of masks and there's been a number of studies that have showed masks are effective in blocking viruses, but what's really important here is just how effective masking is when done by both parties," says Dr. Berbari.
He says additional measures to reduce the risk of transmission include frequent hand washing and use hand sanitizer before and after meals, and after removing masks, and honoring posted room capacities in busy areas.
"We found objectively that masks are critically important for protecting yourself and the people around you," says Dr. Callstrom. "If you're wearing a mask, you're protecting others. If they're wearing masks, they're protecting you."
###
About Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit organization committed to innovation in clinical practice, education and research, and providing compassion, expertise and answers to everyone who needs healing. Visit the Mayo Clinic News Network for additional Mayo Clinic news and Mayo Clinic Facts for more information about Mayo.
Media contact:
- Joe Dangor, Mayo Clinic Public Affairs, [email protected]
I think you really are stupid
https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/...le-of-masks-in-preventing-covid-19-infection/
Mayo Clinic research confirms critical role of masks in preventing COVID-19 infection
November 24, 2020
Please note: Mayo Clinic is sharing pre-published data on masking efficacy to help highlight the importance of masking and social distancing over the upcoming Thanksgiving Holiday.
ROCHESTER, Minn. — New, unpublished data from researchers at Mayo Clinic found that physical separation reduces the exposure of respiratory droplets and that three feet is helpful but 6 feet separation reduces particle counts to near baseline levels. The findings strongly support the protective value and effectiveness of widespread mask use and maintaining physical distance in helping to stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
Watch: Dr. Elie Berbari and Dr. Matthew Callstrom discuss mask study.
Journalists: Broadcast-quality soundbites are in the downloads at the end of the post along with b-roll video of the mask containment study. Please "Courtesy: Elie Berbari, M.D./Infectious Diseases/Mayo Clinic" and "Matthew Callstrom, M.D./Radiology/Mayo Clinic."
"This was an experimental study where we emulated the production of respiratory droplets by using mannequins, that were masked and other mannequins that were unmasked and measured the spread of those droplets at various distances," says Elie Berbari, M.D., chair of the department of infectious diseases at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
Watch: See the mannequins in action.
Researchers measured how effectively masks blocked the number of aerosol particles from a masked source, simulating an individual with a COVID-19 infection, and they simulated the risk of an individual contracting COVID-19, when they were masked.
"We found the most important measure for reducing the risk of exposure to COVID-19 is to wear a mask," says Matthew Callstrom, M.D., Ph.D., chair of the department of radiology at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. "We found that both disposable paper medical masks and two-layer cloth masks were effective in reducing droplet transmission and we did not find a difference between mask types in terms of how well they blocked aerosol particles emitted by the wearer."
2-micron particles represent an aerosol particle that could contain many coronavirus particles.
"The most common mechanism for COVID-19 transmission is through respiratory droplets which are larger than aerosols and are more easily blocked with masks," says Dr. Callstrom.
A second part of the study measured aerosol particle counts from a source to a target from one foot to six feet apart, at one-foot intervals. Researchers found that overall, particle counts were reduced with increasing distance which supports current CDC guidance of maintaining physical separation of six feet from others.
The graph shows percentage of particle counts across various distances of 1 foot to 6 feet when the source, target and both are masked using disposable and cloth masks.
"I think we had some knowledge about the importance of masks and there's been a number of studies that have showed masks are effective in blocking viruses, but what's really important here is just how effective masking is when done by both parties," says Dr. Berbari.
He says additional measures to reduce the risk of transmission include frequent hand washing and use hand sanitizer before and after meals, and after removing masks, and honoring posted room capacities in busy areas.
"We found objectively that masks are critically important for protecting yourself and the people around you," says Dr. Callstrom. "If you're wearing a mask, you're protecting others. If they're wearing masks, they're protecting you."
###
About Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit organization committed to innovation in clinical practice, education and research, and providing compassion, expertise and answers to everyone who needs healing. Visit the Mayo Clinic News Network for additional Mayo Clinic news and Mayo Clinic Facts for more information about Mayo.
Media contact:
- Joe Dangor, Mayo Clinic Public Affairs, [email protected]
Yes I have seen thousands of all these studies but the problem is that they don't translate into an effective measure in the real world.
If masks worked then there would be an obvious difference between infection rates where mask usage is high vs countries/states where masks usage is very low.
However all the data shows no appreciable difference.
Trump on Fauci: 'I listened to him, but I didn't do what he said'
Dylan Stableford
·Senior Writer
Tue, 23 March 2021, 12:17 am
Former President Donald Trump says he didn’t heed the advice of Dr. Anthony Fauci in his response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has left more than 500,000 Americans dead and nearly 30 million infected, including Trump himself.
"I listened to him, but I didn't do what he said," Trump told Fox News personality Lisa Boothe on the premiere episode of her podcast, which went live Monday.
Boothe asked Trump if he regretted "elevating" Fauci — the nation's leading infectious disease expert, who rose to fame as a member of Trump's coronavirus task force — because of his refusal to back the former president's dubious claims about the virus.
"I didn't really elevate him," Trump said. "He's been there for 40 years. He's been there forever." Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), had worked under Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Trump, and is now President Biden's COVID-19 adviser.
Trump said he liked Fauci "personally" but cast him as a self-promoter.
"He's a great promoter," Trump said. "He's really a promoter more than anything else."
President Donald Trump looks on as Dr. Anthony Fauci answers a question at a coronavirus task force briefing in April 2020. (Leah Millis/Reuters)
The former president seized on Fauci's recommendations during the early stages of the pandemic when little was known about the novel virus, which originated in Wuhan, China.
"He didn't want to have China stopped from coming in," Trump said. "If we would have done that, we would have had hundreds of thousands of more deaths in our country."
Trump has repeatedly made this claim while dinging Fauci’s credibility, but according to PolitiFact, Fauci was generally supportive of the Chinese travel ban imposed by Trump in January 2020.
In an interview with Yahoo News earlier this month, Fauci admitted, "We didn't get good eyes on what was going on until late," and suggested the United States could have been more aggressive with China but that Trump "was not interested in doing that.
"He was complimenting them on what a good job they were doing," Fauci said.
Fauci also said he became a "persona non grata" within the Trump White House for what he was saying publicly about the administration's response to the coronavirus.
"But I had to say it, because it was the truth," Fauci said.
Trump listens as Fauci speaks during a briefing on the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Trump was hospitalized for three days in October after suffering complications from the virus.
“I learned so much about coronavirus,” he said in a video posted to Twitter that he filmed at the White House upon his return. “And one thing that’s for certain: Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it. You’re going to beat it.”
According to Johns Hopkins University, there have been more than 542,000 deaths in the United States, by far the most reported in any country in the world. There have been more than 29 million confirmed cases of COVID-19.
shut up you asshole. just go fuck yourself already
Update, just checking in and yup your forum still sucks, and we see the PRCs have still paid you off. Just rubbing it in there, in case all the EDMW crowd is getting on your nerves, like you cock and bull mask thing.
Hope you enjoy sucking on PRC dick.
Sure if you want to go there, no prob. Masks work.
We start with common sense, something you dont seem to have
https://www.nih.gov/masks-save-lives
Masks Save Lives
Submitted on August 25, 2020
Reminding others that “masks save lives” isn’t just sound advice. It’s a scientific fact that wearing one in public can help to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. I’m very careful to wear a mask outside my home whenever I’m out and about. I do it not necessarily to protect myself, but to protect others. If by chance I’ve been exposed to the virus and am currently incubating it, I wouldn’t want to spread it to other people. And any of us could be an unknowing superspreader. We owe it to everyone we encounter, especially those who are more vulnerable, to protect them. As my NIH colleague Tony Fauci recently demonstrated(link is external), it’s possible to wear your mask even while you’re outside exercising.
But there are still skeptics around. So, just how much does a facial covering protect those around you? Quite a bit, according to researchers who created a sophisticated mathematical model to take a more detailed look [1]. Their model shows that even if a community universally adopted a crude cloth covering that’s far less than 100 percent protective against the virus, this measure alone could significantly help to reduce deaths. These findings, funded partly by NIH, were published recently in Nature Communications. They come from Colin Worby, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, and Hsiao-Han Chang, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan.
The researchers noted several months ago that recommendations on wearing a mask varied across the United States and around the world. To help guide policymakers, the researchers simulated outbreaks in a closed, randomly interacting population in which the supply and effectiveness of crude cloth or disposable, medical-grade masks varied. Under different outbreak scenarios and mask usages, the researchers calculated the total numbers of expected SARS-CoV-2 infections and deaths from COVID-19. Not surprisingly, they found that the total number of deaths and infections declined as the availability and effectiveness of face masks increased.
The researchers’ model primarily considered the distribution of medical-grade, surgical masks. But because such masks are currently available in limited supply, they must be prioritized for use by health care workers and others at high risk. The researchers go on to note that the World Health Organization and others now recommend wearing homemade face coverings in public, especially in places where the virus is spreading. While it’s true the ability of these face coverings to contain the virus is more limited than medical-grade masks, they can help and will lead to many fewer deaths. Another recent paper also suggests that while wearing a mask is primarily intended to prevent the wearer from infecting others, it may also help lower the dose, or inoculum, of SARS-CoV-2 that the wearer might receive from others, resulting in milder or asymptomatic infections [2]. If correct, that’s another great reason to wear a mask.
Already, more than 175,000 people in the United States(link is external) have died from COVID-19. The latest estimates [3] from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine, Seattle, predict that the COVID-19 death toll in the U.S. may reach nearly 300,000 by December 1. But that doesn’t have to happen. As this new study shows, face coverings—even those that are far from perfect—really can and do save lives.
In fact, IHME data also show that consistent mask-wearing—starting today—could save close to 70,000 lives in the months to come. Saving those lives is up to all of us. Don’t leave home without your mask. References: [1] Face mask use in the general population and optimal resource allocation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Worby CJ, Chang HH. Nat Commun. 2020 Aug 13;11(1):4049. [2] Masks Do More Than Protect Others During COVID-19: Reducing the Inoculum of SARS-CoV-2 to Protect the Wearer(link is external). Gandhi M, Beyrer C, Goosby E. J Gen Intern Med. 2020 Jul 31. [3] New IHME COVID-19 forecasts see nearly 300,000 deaths by December 1(link is external). Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. August 6, 2020. Links: Coronavirus (COVID-19) (NIH) Colin Worby(link is external) (Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA) Hsiao-Han Chang(link is external) (National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan) NIH Support: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Post Link
Masks Save Lives
NIH Blog Post Date
Tuesday, August 25, 2020
Connect with Us
The data does not support this claim. If masks worked we'd see a significant delta between places with mask mandates vs those where masks are not in use. However a comparison between states, countries and counties does not reflect the claim that masks work.
I have no doubt that they may be somewhat effective in a lab setting under controlled conditions but in the real world things are far from ideal and the lack of adherence to important aspects of wearing a mask are not followed and the result is that masks actually make things worse.
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If the data is in error please point me to a more accurate source and I will correct the graphs.
If masks work why doesn't the data support this claim?
Again we find you attempting to whitewash reality. This is just another test you have failed in our assessment you have a serious personality disorder. Every day countless individuals have lost their lives, family members, friends, and associates due to a highly contagious virus. The pain and suffering experienced by these victims of the Pandemic seem to delight you. Death, pain and suffering is no laughing matter. It is what separates us from our inner primordial animalistic self. our sense of propriety.
We do have people like you here, but they spend their time in restraints, and when we release them, they always attempt violence on others.
Get some help while you still can.
kindly contact us for an assessment:
https://www.imh.com.sg/
Institute of Mental Health
http://www.imh.com.sg/
Buangkok Green Medical Park
10 Buangkok View
Singapore 539747
Still no data? I guess my info has to be correct then.
https://khn.org/news/article/lie-of-the-year-the-downplay-and-denial-of-the-coronavirus/
KHN & POLITIFACT HEALTHCHECK
Lie of the Year: The Downplay and Denial of the Coronavirus
By Daniel Funke, PolitiFact and Katie Sanders, PolitiFactDECEMBER 16, 2020
But the infodemic was not the work of a single person.
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Anonymous bad actors offered up junk science. Online skeptics made bogus accusations that hospitals padded their coronavirus case numbers to generate bonus payments. Influential TV and radio opinion hosts told millions of viewers that physical distancing was a joke and that states had all of the personal protective equipment they needed (when they didn’t).
It was a symphony of counter-narrative, and Trump was the conductor, if not the composer. The message: The threat to your health was overhyped to hurt the political fortunes of the president.
Every year, PolitiFact editors review the year’s most inaccurate statements to elevate one as the Lie of the Year. The “award” goes to a statement, or a collection of claims, that prove to be of substantive consequence in undermining reality.
It has become harder and harder to choose when cynical pundits and politicians don’t pay much of a price for saying things that aren’t true. For the past month, unproven claims of massive election fraud have tested democratic institutions and certainly qualify as historic and dangerously baldfaced. Fortunately, the constitutional foundations that undergird American democracy are holding.
Meanwhile, the coronavirus has killed more than 300,000 in the United States, a crisis exacerbated by the reckless spread of falsehoods.
PolitiFact’s 2020 Lie of the Year: claims that deny, downplay or disinform about COVID-19.
‘I Wanted to Always Play It Down’
On Feb. 7, Trump leveled with book author Bob Woodward about the dangers of the new virus that was spreading across the world, originating in central China. He told the legendary reporter that the virus was airborne, tricky and “more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”
Trump told the public something else. On Feb. 26, the president appeared with his coronavirus task force in the crowded White House briefing room. A reporter asked if he was telling healthy Americans not to change their behavior.
“Wash your hands, stay clean. You don’t have to necessarily grab every handrail unless you have to,” he said, the room chuckling. “I mean, view this the same as the flu.”
Three weeks later, March 19, he acknowledged to Woodward: “To be honest with you, I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down. Because I don’t want to create a panic.”
His acolytes in politics and the media were on the same page. Rush Limbaugh told his audience of about 15 million on Feb. 24 that the coronavirus was being weaponized against Trump when it was just “the common cold, folks.” That’s wrong — even in the early weeks, it was clear the virus had a higher fatality rate than the common cold, with worse potential side effects, too.
As the virus was spreading, so was the message to downplay it.
“There are lots of sources of misinformation, and there are lots of elected officials besides Trump that have not taken the virus seriously or promoted misinformation,” said Brendan Nyhan, a government professor at Dartmouth College. “It’s not solely a Trump story — and it’s important to not take everyone else’s role out of the narrative.”
Hijacking the Numbers
In August, there was a growing movement on Twitter to question the disproportionately high U.S. COVID-19 death toll.
The skeptics cited Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data to claim that only 6% of COVID-19 deaths could actually be attributed to the virus. On Aug. 24, BlazeTV host Steve Deace amplified it on Facebook.
“Here’s the percentage of people who died OF or FROM Covid with no underlying comorbidity,” he said to his 120,000 followers. “According to CDC, that is just 6% of the deaths WITH Covid so far.”
That misrepresented the reality of coronavirus deaths. The CDC had always said people with underlying health problems — comorbidities — were most vulnerable if they caught COVID-19. The report was noting that 6% died even without being at obvious risk.
But for those skeptical of COVID-19, the narrative confirmed their beliefs. Facebook users copied and pasted language from influencers like Amiri King, who had 2.2 million Facebook followers before he was banned. The Gateway Pundit called it a “SHOCK REPORT.”
“I saw a statistic come out the other day, talking about only 6% of the people actually died from COVID, which is very interesting — that they died from other reasons,” Trump told Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Sept. 1.
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, addressed the claim on “Good Morning America” the same day.
“The point that the CDC was trying to make was that a certain percentage of them had nothing else but just COVID,” he said. “That does not mean that someone who has hypertension or diabetes who dies of COVID didn’t die of COVID-19 — they did.”
Trump retweeted the message from an account that sported the slogans and symbols of QAnon, a conspiracy movement that claims Democrats and Hollywood elites are members of an underground pedophilia ring.
False information moved between social media, Trump and TV, creating its own feedback loop.
“It’s an echo effect of sorts, where Donald Trump is certainly looking for information that resonates with his audiences and that supports his political objectives. And his audiences are looking to be amplified, so they’re incentivized to get him their information,” said Kate Starbird, an associate professor and misinformation expert at the University of Washington.
Weakening the Armor: Misleading on Masks
At the start of the pandemic, the CDC told healthy people not to wear masks, saying they were needed for health care providers on the front lines. But on April 3 the agency changed its guidelines, saying every American should wear non-medical cloth masks in public.
Trump announced the CDC’s guidance, then gutted it.
“So it’s voluntary. You don’t have to do it. They suggested for a period of time, but this is voluntary,” Trump said at a press briefing. “I don’t think I’m going to be doing it.”
Rather than an advance in best practices on coronavirus prevention, face masks turned into a dividing line between Trump’s political calculations and his decision-making as president. Americans didn’t see Trump wearing a mask until a July visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Meanwhile, disinformers flooded the internet with wild claims: Masks reduced oxygen. Masks trapped fungus. Masks trapped coronavirus. Masks just didn’t work.
In September, the CDC reported a correlation between people who went to bars and restaurants, where masks can’t consistently be worn, and positive COVID-19 test results. Bloggers and skeptical news outlets countered with a misleading report about masks.
On Oct. 13, the story landed on Fox News’ flagship show, “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” During the show, Carlson claimed “almost everyone — 85% — who got the coronavirus in July was wearing a mask.”
“So clearly [wearing a mask] doesn’t work the way they tell us it works,” Carlson said.
That’s wrong, and it misrepresented a small sample of people who tested positive. Public health officials and infectious disease experts have been consistent since April in saying that face masks are among the best ways to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
But two days later, Trump repeated the 85% stat during a rally and at a town hall with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie.
“I tell people, wear masks,” he said at the town hall. “But just the other day, they came out with a statement that 85% of the people that wear masks catch it.”
The Assault on Hospitals
On March 24, registered nurse Melissa Steiner worked her first shift in the new COVID-19 ICU of her southeastern Michigan hospital. After her 13-hour workday caring for two critically ill patients on ventilators, she posted a tearful video.
“Honestly, guys, it felt like I was working in a war zone,” Steiner said. “[I was] completely isolated from my team members, limited resources, limited supplies, limited responses from physicians because they’re just as overwhelmed.”
“I’m already breaking, so for f—’s sake, people, please take this seriously. This is so bad.”
Steiner’s post was one of many emotional pleas offered by overwhelmed hospital workers last spring urging people to take the threat seriously. The denialists mounted a counteroffensive.
On March 28, Todd Starnes, a conservative radio host and commentator, tweeted a video from outside Brooklyn Hospital Center. There were few people or cars in sight.
“This is the ‘war zone’ outside the hospital in my Brooklyn neighborhood,” Starnes said sarcastically. The video racked up more than 1.5 million views.
Starnes’ video was one of the first examples of #FilmYourHospital, a conspiratorial social media trend that pushed back on the idea that hospitals had been strained by a rapid influx of coronavirus patients.
Several internet personalities asked people to go out and shoot their own videos. The result: a series of user-generated clips taken outside hospitals, where the response to the pandemic was not easily seen. Over the course of a week, #FilmYourHospital videos were uploaded to YouTube and posted tens of thousands of times on Twitter and Facebook.
Nearly two weeks and more than 10,000 deaths later, Fox News featured a guest who opened a new misinformation assault on hospitals.
Dr. Scott Jensen, a Minnesota physician and Republican state senator, told Ingraham that, because hospitals were receiving more money for COVID-19 patients on Medicare — a result of a coronavirus stimulus bill — they were overcounting COVID-19 cases. He had no proof of fraud, but the cynical story took off.
Trump used the false report on the campaign trail to continue to minimize the death toll.
“Our doctors get more money if somebody dies from COVID,” Trump told supporters at a rally in Waterford, Michigan, on Oct. 30. “You know that, right? I mean, our doctors are very smart people. So what they do is they say, ‘I’m sorry, but, you know, everybody dies of COVID.’”
The Real Fake News: The Plandemic
The most viral disinformation of the pandemic was styled to look as if it had the blessing of people Americans trust: scientists and doctors.
In a 26-minute video called “Plandemic: The Hidden Agenda Behind COVID-19,” a former scientist at the National Cancer Institute claimed the virus was manipulated in a lab, hydroxychloroquine is effective against coronaviruses, and face masks make people sick.
Judy Mikovits’ conspiracies received more than 8 million views, partly credited to the online outrage machine — anti-vaccine activists, anti-lockdown groups and QAnon supporters — that push disinformation into the mainstream. The video was circulated in a coordinated effort to promote Mikovits’ book release.
Around the same time, a similar effort propelled another video of fact-averse doctors to millions of people in only a few hours.
On July 27, Breitbart published a clip of a press conference hosted by a group called America’s Frontline Doctors in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. Looking authoritative in white lab coats, these doctors discouraged mask-wearing and falsely said there was already a cure in hydroxychloroquine, a drug used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.
Trump, who had been talking up the drug since March and claimed to be taking it himself as a preventive measure in May, retweeted clips of the event before Twitter removed them as misinformation about COVID-19. He defended the “very respected doctors” in a July 28 press conference.
When Olga Lucia Torres, a lecturer at Columbia University, heard Trump touting the drug in March, she knew it didn’t bode well for her own prescription. Sure enough, the misinformation led to a run on hydroxychloroquine, creating a shortage for Americans like her who needed the drug for chronic conditions.
A lupus patient, she went to her local pharmacy to request a 90-day supply of the medication. But she was told they were granting only partial refills. It took her three weeks to get her medication through the mail.
“What about all the people who were silenced and just lost access to their staple medication because people ran to their doctors and begged to take it?” Torres said.
No Sickbed Conversion
On Sept. 26, Trump hosted a Rose Garden ceremony to announce his nominee to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court. More than 150 people attended the event introducing Amy Coney Barrett. Few wore masks, and the chairs weren’t spaced out.
In the weeks afterward, more than two dozen people close to Trump and the White House became infected with COVID-19. Early on Oct. 2, Trump announced his positive test.
Those hoping the experience and Trump’s successful treatment at Walter Reed might inform his view of the coronavirus were disappointed. Trump snapped back into minimizing the threat during his first moments back at the White House. He yanked off his mask and recorded a video.
“Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it,” he said, describing experimental and mostly out-of-reach therapies he received. “You’re going to beat it.”
In Trump’s telling, his hospitalization was not the product of poor judgment about large gatherings like the Rose Garden event, but the consequence of leading with bravery. Plus, now, he claimed, he had immunity to the virus.
On the morning after he returned from Walter Reed, Trump tweeted a seasonal flu death count of 100,000 lives and added that COVID-19 was “far less lethal” for most populations. More false claims at odds with data — the U.S. average for flu deaths over the past decade is 36,000, and experts said COVID-19 is more deadly for each age group over 30.
When Trump left the hospital, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 was more than 200,000. Today it is more than 300,000. Meanwhile, this month the president has gone ahead with a series of indoor holiday parties.
The Vaccine War
The vaccine disinformation campaign started in the spring but is still underway.
In April, blogs and social media users falsely claimed Democrats and powerful figures like Bill Gates wanted to use microchips to track which Americans had been vaccinated for the coronavirus. Now, false claims are taking aim at vaccines developed by Pfizer and BioNTech and other companies.
- A blogger claimed Pfizer’s head of research said the coronavirus vaccine could cause female infertility. That’s false.
- An alternative health website wrote that the vaccine could cause an array of life-threatening side effects, and that the FDA knew about it. The list included all possible — not confirmed— side effects.
- Social media users speculated that the federal government would force Americans to receive the vaccine. Neither Trump nor President-elect Joe Biden has advocated for that, and the federal government doesn’t have the power to mandate vaccines, anyway.
“People are anxious and scared right now,” said Dr. Seema Yasmin, director of research and education programs at the Stanford Health Communication Initiative. “They’re looking for a whole picture.”
Most polls have shown far from universal acceptance of vaccines, with only 50% to 70% of respondents willing to take the vaccine. Black and Hispanic Americans are even less likely to take it so far.
Meanwhile, the future course of the coronavirus in the U.S. depends on whether Americans take public health guidance to heart. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projected that, without mask mandates or a rapid vaccine rollout, the death toll could rise to more than 500,000 by April 2021.
“How can we come to terms with all that when people are living in separate informational realities?” Starbird said.
PolitiFact staff researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
Note: Readers can find the detailed source list for this story, as well as PolitiFact’s related coverage, or vote in the Lie of the Year Readers’ Choice Poll at PolitiFact.com.
That's not data that's just a sob story conjured up by journalists with an agenda.
The data is on sites like https://www.covidtracker.com/ and it tells me that Covid is way less lethal than air pollution which kills 3x the number every single year.
Around 11,000 people a day are dying of Covid. It sounds like a lot until you realise that more than 150,000 humans die every single day so Covid is only 7% of all deaths and many of those who died were about to die anyway which is why total mortality has hardly changed.
You can keep track at https://www.medindia.net/patients/calculators/world-death-clock.asp
If you go to the above site you can actually watch them dying.
That's not data that's just a sob story conjured up by journalists with an agenda.
The data is on sites like https://www.covidtracker.com/ and it tells me that Covid is way less lethal than air pollution which kills 3x the number every single year.
Around 11,000 people a day are dying of Covid. It sounds like a lot until you realise that more than 150,000 humans die every single day so Covid is only 7% of all deaths and many of those who died were about to die anyway which is why total mortality has hardly changed.
You can keep track at https://www.medindia.net/patients/calculators/world-death-clock.asp
If you go to the above site you can actually watch them dying.
View attachment 106701
https://www.statnews.com/2020/12/23/put-straw-man-pandemic-denial-out-of-its-misery/
Let’s put the straw man of pandemic denial out of his misery
By Jacob Hale Russell and Dennis Patterson Dec. 23, 2020
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Listen to the chorus and you’d come to think that our biggest problem in responding to the pandemic comes from Americans who think Covid-19 is a hoax — the so-called Covid denialists.
But the claim is a straw man: there is no epidemic of pandemic denial. Polls since March have shown that Americans overwhelmingly aren’t in denial: They believe the threat of Covid-19 is real, they are reasonably good at identifying medical misinformation, and they are largely complying with public health recommendations. Compared to their peers in Europe, Americans are more willing to get vaccinated against Covid-19, similarly likely to wear masks, and no more prone to believe common conspiracy theories about the pandemic’s origins.
The U.S.’s response to Covid-19 has been bungled in many respects, but widespread public denial doesn’t explain why.
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The obsession with denialism isn’t just inaccurate. It’s corrosive for at least three reasons. First, it needlessly alienates the interested public with false accusations. Second, by conflating reasonable dissent with unreasonable misinformation, it stifles debate, even about issues that genuinely warrant discussion. Third, the myth of denial deflects blame from the policy failures of politicians, who use it to claim they’ve done all they could, leaving only the denialists (and cheesecake eaters) to blame.
Related:
The months of magical thinking: As the coronavirus swept over China, some experts were in denial
Mislabeling dissent over serious policy disagreements as denial has contributed to the extended closure of public schools, which could ultimately be viewed as the single biggest policy blunder in the pandemic. Early advocates of reopening schools were routinely accused of Covid-19 denial — or worse. Today, public health advice increasingly favors keeping schools open whenever possible, in part because the consequences of closed schools are serious. But it is a hard message to get across now that the issue has been so badly politicized.
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We must stop labelling every valid disagreement as denial, which tends to censor legitimate differences of opinion. In seeking to discourage bad-faith claims, we are also damaging good-faith discussion. It is possible to rationally disagree with many policy choices that have been made throughout the pandemic, based both on scientific uncertainty, and because many of the hardest choices rely on values and tradeoffs that do not have a singular answer. “Follow the science” just begs the question about how to balance conflicting considerations.
The relevant question in labeling someone a denialist isn’t “Do I agree with him?” The question should be, “Does the person have a good faith basis for his belief?” Many elites — journalists, academics, pundits, and the like — seem to believe their answer to the first question determines their answer to the second one. This is as unscientific as it is undemocratic. As philosopher Michael Sandel notes in his critique of meritocratic culture, it is an elite fantasy that dissenters are just misinformed about the facts. Debates over which facts matter, and how best to describe them, have always been central to political discourse.
Skepticism is not the same as denial. Misdiagnosing it encourages unhelpful blaming and shaming. Lockdown fatigue, for instance, is fundamentally distinct from denying the pandemic’s significance. It is instead a natural, if problematic, phenomenon that public health scholars have warned us to anticipate since the spring. The failure to incorporate predictable human behavior into pandemic policy is an error of policy design, not the moral failing of Americans.
In a similar fashion, vaccine hesitancy is better overcome by sincere engagement instead of name calling. Consistent with the rational evaluation of information, more Americans are expressing confidence in Covid-19 vaccines as more data become available about them.
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Comparing the Covid-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson
The accusation of denial rarely wins debates. Much of the skepticism toward lockdowns is grounded in genuine concerns about the relative costs and benefits. Many of the most strident opponents of lockdowns, such as businesses who have refused to close, have consistently acknowledged the seriousness of the pandemic. Their pushback has focused instead on the failure of politicians to provide needed economic support or to justify the logic behind inconsistent measures. How likely are skeptics to be convinced of the value of strategic lockdowns if their views are alleged to amount to a denial of the pandemic’s existence, or of science itself?
As an example, many scientists unhelpfully focused their replies to the Great Barrington Declaration, which criticized lockdowns, on ancillary questions about the authors’ potential ties to libertarian funding. Not only does that fail to articulate a substantive objection, it fails to explain the motivation behind the document. After all, the authors of the document have expressed similar views since the beginning of the pandemic, and the foundation of their views is more easily found in the authors’ past writing than in the possibility of funding-induced bias. Alleging shadowy links to science denial is neither effective or honest as a response.
Those who proclaim an epidemic of pandemic denial routinely misrepresent evidence. Those who called the economy the most important issue in November exit polls were tendentiously termed “Covid-19 deniers” by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a sentiment echoed by other public health elites. A JAMA essay on denialism last month claimed as its central evidence for the problem that most Americans refused to wear masks in public, citing an article that contained no such statistic. In fact, almost all evidence suggests that the overwhelming majority of Americans have routinely worn masks since spring.
Another story, about patients calling the disease a hoax with their final gasps, failed to hold up to mild scrutiny — but only after it had already gone viral. Other stories on denial rest on inapt statistics about Americans who have questions about the pandemic’s origins. However poorly founded, those views hardly demonstrate a denial of the public health crisis.
Some may say this is just an issue of semantics, or that we are being unfairly literal in interpreting the rhetorical use of “denial.” Its usage certainly sounds literal: Dr. Anthony Fauci recently said that his biggest obstacle is the “group of people who don’t even believe that this is a phenomenon … They think it’s fake news. They don’t believe it’s real.” Even if it is just a rhetorical flourish, denial is a serious charge.
Accuracy is essential, and we applaud those who check facts and call out inaccuracies, especially when amplified by prominent figures — be they President Donald Trump or Governor Andrew Cuomo. But the charge of denialism should not be casually levied against a wide swath of Americans, most of whom have spent this year diligently complying with confusing, changing, and occasionally irrational guidance.
Jacob Hale Russell is associate professor of law at Rutgers. Dennis Patterson is professor of law and philosophy at Rutgers. They are writing a book on skepticism, expertise, and elites in American politics.
Wow law professors are also experts in medicine. I guess they found an alternative use for the hot air lawyers spew on a daily basis.
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/29/9290...-an-intrinsic-part-of-an-epidemic-doctor-says
Denial And Lies Are 'Almost An Intrinsic Part Of An Epidemic,' Doctor Says
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DAVE DAVIES, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies in today for Terry Gross. Our guest, Nicholas Christakis, says the virus that causes COVID-19 will circulate among us in some form forever. Christakis is both a medical doctor and a sociologist and in a unique position to understand the science behind the coronavirus and place the current pandemic in the context of past attacks of deadly pathogens.
Plagues, he writes, reshape our familiar social order, require us to disperse and live apart, wreck economies, embolden liars and replace trust with fear and suspicion. He says they also elicit kindness, cooperation, sacrifice and ingenuity. In a new book, Christakis surveys the course of COVID-19, chronicles some tragic mistakes made by our political leaders, assesses how the pandemic may end, and considers some of its long-term impacts. Among his observations, if a vaccine arrives after two or three waves of the pandemic, it may be too late to make much of a difference.
Nicholas Christakis directs the Human Nature Lab at Yale University, where he is the sterling professor of social and natural science. His latest book is "Apollo's Arrow: The Profound And Enduring Impact Of Coronavirus On The Way We Live." He joins us from his home in Norwich, Vt. Nicholas Christakis, welcome to FRESH AIR.
NICHOLAS CHRISTAKIS: Thank you, Dave. Thank you so much for having me.
DAVIES: You're a medical doctor and a sociologist. And you direct the Human Nature Lab. What is that? What do you do?
(LAUGHTER)
CHRISTAKIS: Well, I am a doctor. I don't see patients anymore for many years. I haven't seen patients for about 10 years. But I was a practicing physician in hospice medicine. I took care of people who were dying. But my primary identity is as a research scientist and as a professor. I teach students. And the Human Nature Lab is my group at Yale. And the part of human nature we're interested in is that part that relates to how we interact with each other.
So we address questions such as the origins and functions of friendship in our society. Why do human beings form social networks? We look at ways that groups function. We look at how the introduction of artificial intelligence into our midst will reshape how we treat each other. We look at the flow of germs through social networks or the microbiome. We have a research initiative that looks at how people interacting allows them to share microbes in ways that reshapes their health, for example.
All of these phenomena, all of these things that move between us are affected by how we interact with each other and, in turn, affect how we treat each other. So the spread of ideas, the spread of money, the spread of germs, the spread of behaviors - all of those things depend on our interactions and, in turn, shape our interactions. It's this sort of network perspective, this sort of recognition that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and that how the whole is assembled affects the experience of the parts. And an epidemic, to understand it optimally, requires a kind of bird's-eye view of the whole human network. And that's, I think, one of the things that network science brings to bear in understanding epidemic disease that's special.
DAVIES: You know, you're right that there are pharmaceutical interventions against plagues and pestilences over the years, typically less effective than nonpharmaceutical interventions - things like masks and social distancing. A lot of people were late in endorsing social distancing and masks. I mean, you noted that the World Health Organization was discouraging people from wearing masks as late as April 6th of this year.
You know, Dr. Fauci said in an interview on February 29 people, you know, didn't need to refrain from going to movies or malls at that point. My sense is reading your book, that you were watching this spread with some alarm because you're looking - you do a lot of research with social networks. Why didn't public health professionals act more aggressively sooner, do you think?
CHRISTAKIS: Well, amongst my colleagues, everyone was greatly alarmed in February. Now, why our political leaders didn't respond, I don't know. And it's the case that many political leaders around the world failed to take this seriously.
One of the arguments that I like to make about epidemics is that it's almost in the nature of epidemics that denial and lies about the - about what's happening is itself almost an intrinsic part of an epidemic, that in other words, everywhere you see the spread of germs for the last few thousand years, you see right behind it the spread of lies. And partly, that's because the person on the street wants to deny what's happening. And partly, it's because our political leaders don't want to take it seriously either. But it's their job to do so.
DAVIES: In the book, you cite a statistic. You say that if 70% of the public had begun wearing masks early on, it could prevent a large-scale outbreak of this pathogen. True? I mean, if we'd gotten on this and gotten really behind it early?
CHRISTAKIS: Yeah. So I think what's important to understand about this pathogen or about epidemics in general is that no single intervention is typically enough to stop an epidemic. And what I - the way I like to think about this and the way many epidemiologists think about this is something known as the Swiss cheese model. So imagine you have pieces of Swiss cheese that you're stacking up, and each of them has some holes in it. And they're random pieces of Swiss cheese, like you're making a sandwich and you're piling up pieces of Swiss cheese.
If each piece of Swiss cheese represents a defense, a layer of defense - for example, one piece is wearing masks, and another piece is closing schools, and another piece is banning gatherings, and another piece is washing your hands, and another piece is, you know, restricting travel or something. If each of those pieces represents some intervention and each of the holes is sort of randomly positioned in each slice, by the time you stacked up two or three or four slices, none of the holes overlap. And so a virus can't get through. It can't penetrate all the layers of defenses. So if you just use masks, you stop a lot of viral transmission, but you don't completely stop the epidemic. You also need to do something else.
And incidentally, this is why there was a super-spreader event at the White House. They relied on just one line of defense, which was testing. Testing was not enough. You need to do testing, let's say, plus masking or testing plus masking plus physical distancing. And this Swiss cheese model also helps us understand why different countries have succeeded in combating the virus using different mixes of interventions. You don't all need to use the same intervention. You can - each country or each region can use a different mix of interventions and still have success.
So, for example, in New Zealand, you know, they had border closures plus testing and quarantining. And in Greece, they had school closures and mask wearing and contact tracing and so on. So this is why masks are helpful, but they're not enough and also why we can understand a great variety of other ways in which our response to the virus among us can and should be optimized.
DAVIES: I've got to ask this question directly. I mean, we're in a political season where, you know, management of the coronavirus is clearly an issue. I mean, by - you know, by March, April, it was very clear that we had a very serious problem. And, you know, consistent national policy would be helpful. How do you rate the administration in its handling since then from - you know, from when that was clear up to now?
CHRISTAKIS: Oh, I mean, I think we clearly needed a national response. I mean, you know, having a patchwork of responses is like designating one part of the swimming pool as suitable for urination, but not the other parts. I mean, we are a whole nation that's bound together. And so we clearly need, in my view, a national response.
In fact, in some ways, you could argue we need an international response. But certainly from our own parochial point of view, we needed a national response. And even though it's the case that many other leaders in European countries made similar mistakes to our leadership, I don't think that lets our leaders off the hook. We're the United States of America. I expect more from us. We have the CDC. We spend 17.7% of our GDP on health care, and this is our level of preparedness? I mean, this is how our great nation is brought this low by this pathogen? You know, I think it's awful, frankly. It's incompetent. And it was, in many ways, unnecessary. We could've done and we should've done, in my view, much better. Why - when the Chinese shut down their country on January 24, why we weren't preparing to manufacture PPE and ventilators is mind-boggling to me. It was as if we were trying to wish the pathogen away.
DAVIES: All right. Let me take a break here. I'm going to reintroduce you. We're speaking with Nicholas Christakis. He is a medical doctor and a sociologist at Yale University. His new book is "Apollo's Arrow: The Profound And Enduring Impact Of Coronavirus On The Way We Live." We'll talk more in just a moment. This is FRESH AIR.
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DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're speaking with Nicholas Christakis. He is a medical doctor and a sociologist at Yale University. His new book about the coronavirus is called "Apollo's Arrow."
The president's adviser, Scott Atlas, has been associated with the idea that the U.S. could achieve herd immunity, you know, without a vaccine, that letting it spread may be the best and safest and quickest course to getting back to normal. Is this a workable idea?
CHRISTAKIS: It's an idea. There is such a thing as herd immunity. Herd immunity is when a large-enough fraction of a population have acquired immunity to the condition, either naturally because they got infected or by vaccination, such that when that large-enough fraction is infected, even unimmunized people get protection. And the gist of the idea is that, look, if the virus has a certain level of contagion and if half the people are immune to it, even if someone by dumb luck were to somehow get infected, they couldn't find anyone to spread it to because many of the people around them would be immune. And as a result, the epidemic would peter out.
And herd immunity is the natural end to epidemics. You know, prior to the invention of vaccines, this is what typically would happen. The virus would spread and spread until some certain fraction of people were infected and - which varied by different germs, have different levels that are required for herd immunity. And once that was reached, then the virus became what is known as endemic. It was still there, but it wasn't - didn't have the same power to cause, you know, a lot of death in an epidemic fashion. So that's what herd immunity is. And so the question is, is that a rational strategy to shoot for? And I don't think the answer to that is yes. I think we can do better than that.
We have better means to prevent death among ourselves now, whether using nonpharmaceutical interventions to slow the spread of the pathogen and give us time to invent and deploy methods to preserve our lives or most importantly, to invent a vaccine because that is a safe exit from the current crisis. The reason we're flattening the curve right now, the reason we're engaging in masking and physical distancing and all the other stuff is to buy time so that we can invent a vaccine. And therefore, we can have herd immunity through vaccination, not through, you know, natural acquisition of infection and immunity.
DAVIES: I was interested to read in your book that in other cases where we've developed vaccines for infectious diseases like tuberculosis and measles and - that often by the time the vaccine arrives, the infection rates have already naturally lowered dramatically. What does that tell us?
CHRISTAKIS: Well, that's a general principle in public health, which is sort of in the background of all of the conversation. That's called the McKeown hypothesis, which was a very powerful idea from about 50-or-more years ago where Thomas McKeown the medical historian observed that if you plotted on the X axis time and on the Y axis, the number of people dying from any given infectious disease - tuberculosis or measles or diphtheria or whatever - and then you plotted the deaths, you have this sort of steep New England sled run of a graph, you know, where the mortality is high and then sort of drops precipitously. And then, there's, like, a long straightaway, you know, when you get to the bottom of the hill and the sled is just sort of coasting along.
And what he did is he generated these graphs for all these conditions, and then he put an arrow on the time point at which the specific treatment had been invented to treat that condition. So in the case of tuberculosis, it was isoniazid. In the case of diphtheria, it was, you know, antitoxin. In the case of measles, it was a vaccine and so on. And what he found was that, ironically, that moment when the specific treatment was invented typically was on the flat straightaway of the sled run long after mortality had disappeared or had declined substantially.
And his argument - correct. His correct argument was that really what causes the disappearance of infectious diseases is rising wealth and living standards and community and public health interventions. So the principle there is that what really matters in the control of infectious disease is not so much the pharmaceutical interventions, but the kind of way of living that we have. And that same principle in a smaller scale also applies with respect to the epidemic disease that we're currently facing.
DAVIES: Yeah, so let's play this out. You know, we're being told that a vaccine, you know, is being developed at warp speed. And maybe, that comes in a month or maybe six months or maybe a year. Are you saying that it may not affect the infection rate that much?
CHRISTAKIS: No, I'm not saying that because this is a bit of a different situation with an epidemic disease and the kind of acute, like, you know, novelty of the pathogen that's just striking us right now. And we're all vulnerable to it. I do think the vaccine is going to be very important. And if it arrives in time, I think it could play a role. Honestly, I'm a little pessimistic, however, that it will arrive in time to make a difference. And so we talked a moment ago about herd immunity. One of the things that's going to - you know, while we're trying to develop a vaccine, the germ is - the virus is still spreading among us. Only about 10 or 11% of Americans are infected. Probably about 45 or 50% of Americans need to be infected before we reach herd immunity. And the virus is going to come back in waves over the next year or two. And more and more Americans are going to get infected. And eventually, we're going to reach that critical threshold probably sometime in 2022.
So that's going to happen. You know, that is happening in the background unless we want to be so extreme that everyone lived as a hermit. In other words, if we all just stopped interacting with anybody, we could stop the spread of the virus. But, you know, that's not going to happen either. So - or we could invent a vaccine, which, I think, we're likely to have a vaccine of unclear safety and efficacy - probably more than one vaccine - sometime in 2021. But, you see, that's just the first step. Then we have to manufacture the vaccine in large numbers of doses, distribute it, which won't be easy.
There's something known as the cold chain. Basically, the vaccine needs to be refrigerated from the time of manufacture to the time of injection, which is not easy and, most importantly, accepted - that is to say, most Americans have to be willing to take the vaccine. And that's going to take a year or something. So either way, we get to 2022, in my view. So my feeling is that, unfortunately, during what I consider to be the immediate impact period until 2022, we're going to be living in this changed world where we're wearing masks and doing physical distancing. And, you know, our economy is so adversely affected, unfortunately.
DAVIES: That's really a bummer to hear (laughter).
CHRISTAKIS: It is a bummer. But, see, this is the thing. You know, plagues are also a time of grief. You know, we're grieving not just the loss of people we know, you know, who died or our health, we're grieving our loss of a way of life. We're grieving the fact that we can't have dinner parties with our friends. We can't go to movie theaters. I mean, this - just like we were earlier discussing how plagues are a time of lies, they're also a time of fear and they're a time of grief. And I think, in some ways, as a nation, we just need to - I won't say grow up. That sounds too flippant. I mean, we need to accept this unpleasant reality.
And this is, again, where I think leadership is so important. I mean, one of the things that's crucial is public health messaging credibility, you know, people who get up and tell it to us even if it's uncertain. Say, I'm not sure of exactly what's happening. But I think this is most likely and here's the data, because we need to prepare the nation, in my view, for this reality. I mean, what makes us think that we're so different, you know, that we Americans in the 21st century, in our wealthy country, will be spared this fate? There's no reason we should be spared. And I think that preparing the nation to come to grips with this unfortunate reality is crucial.
And, you know, we will see the other side of it. I mean, one of the things that's also important to recognize is that plagues do end. They have always ended. Even the bubonic plague ended. It's rare that there are so severe that the society is entirely annihilated. Although, that has happened, too. But that's not the situation we're facing. So there is also grounds for optimism in ways we can talk about.
DAVIES: So at some point, you know, several years from now, what will our relationship be with this particular coronavirus? You say it will be among us forever.
CHRISTAKIS: Yes. I think a very likely outcome is that this virus will become like some of the other cold viruses, the other four variants of coronavirus that just cause the common cold. You know, I think over at least - certainly over a century time interval, that's what's likely to happen. And what's likely to happen, I think, is that we will - remember that in this particular virus, if you get it when you're young, it's relatively benign. And then I think you will have some kind of lifelong protection or long-term protection. It's unclear how substantial that protection will be.
But what I think is likely to happen is that people will be exposed to this pathogen when they're young, will have a mild illness, they'll get some kind of protection. And then if they're re-exposed later on as adults, they'll get a mild illness again. As opposed to what's happening now when adults - all the adults on the planet have no immunity. And when they get it, you know, they're likely - they have a chance of dying. In a way, I think, it'll be like chickenpox. You know, you get chickenpox as a kid, it's unpleasant. But you don't die from it. If you've never had chickenpox and you get it as an adult, you could die from it. So I think it's going to be sort of like that is, I think, the ultimate outcome of this pathogen.
But in the intermediate period, I think we're going to have to come to terms with it. I think it will settle down. I think we will reach, as I said, either herd immunity or from vaccination or more naturally. And, you know, it's going to become a fact of our lives. But we're not going to be living as we are now forever. I mean, I think what's going to happen is that the immediate pandemic period will last until 2022, approximately. And then we're going to - will have recovered from the biological and epidemiological shock.
But then, if history is a guide, we'll have a couple of years of recovering from the psychological, social and economic shock. And, you know, the economy is not going to bounce back immediately. People aren't suddenly going to go back to airports or restaurants. So I think we're going to have this sort of intermediate period of a couple of years until, let's say, 2024. And then, beginning in 2024, I think we're going to have a kind of post-pandemic period.
DAVIES: Let me reintroduce you again. We're going to take a break here. Nicholas Christakis is a medical doctor and a sociologist at Yale University. His new book is "Apollo's Arrow: The Profound And Enduring Impact Of Coronavirus On The Way We Live." He'll be back to talk more after this short break. I'm Dave Davies. And this is FRESH AIR.
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DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies in today for Terry Gross. We're speaking with Nicholas Christakis, a sociologist and medical doctor from Yale University whose new book examines the course and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and some of the mistakes made by political leaders and managing it. It's called "Apollo's Arrow: The Profound And Enduring Impact Of Coronavirus On The Way We Live."
If it's likely that we will be with this until 2022, when at some point we'll have a vaccine, but in the meantime, there will, you know, more people will be infected, which will give us something closer to herd immunity. What about the argument that it would be smarter to simply embrace the virus, accept mass and quick infection and get there sooner?
CHRISTAKIS: Well, let me explain why that's not a good idea in a very direct way. So if you had gotten this pathogen back in March, you would have had a higher chance of dying from it than if you get it today. Why is that? Well, because in the last nine months, we've learned how to take care of you. And in fact, we have discovered that a drug called dexamethasone, which is a simple steroid - which incidentally, the president also got - if given to you, if you're seriously ill, can prevent you can reduce your risk of death by 20%. In other words, if you got seriously ill from coronavirus in March, you would have a certain chance of dying. Let's say 25% chance of dying. But if you get it now, you might have, let's say, only a 20% chance of dying. That's a - seriously ill. That is to say now you would only have a 20% chance of dying. That is a big difference, and that's why we flatten the curve. So that's why not to go for the rapid herd immunity strategy right now.
That's one illustration of the reason is that by getting - by postponing the illnesses until a later point in time, we allow our scientists and our health care system to function better. If you get sick from this condition like that's happening now, for example, in Utah and in Idaho and in parts of Texas and in Oklahoma that are - where many of their hospitals in many cities are being overrun, when would you rather go to a hospital, when it's packed to the gills and the doctors are exhausted and the nurses are sick from the condition, or would you rather go when the hospitals are operating normally? Obviously, the latter. So this is why not to let the virus just run loose in our society.
DAVIES: What will be some of the lasting emotional impacts of the virus and the social isolation we've endured?
CHRISTAKIS: I think, first of all, in the long term, you know, in five or 10 years, I think society will have returned largely to normal, although there will be some enduring impacts which - of a variety of fronts, including things like working from home or certain economic impacts, which we can discuss. On the more shorter term sort of emotional things that you were alluding to, One of the things that's very typical - and we're seeing evidence for that in the United States - is during a time of a serious epidemic, religiosity rises. People become more religious. And that actually generally is reversed when the epidemic goes away. You know the saying - there are no atheists in foxholes. Well, we're under a barrage right now. So, you know, people get religious.
But then afterwards, you know, the religiosity sort of returns to baseline. I think there's other habits that are happening right now that are a little unclear how long they will last. But I think there's a lot more independence that's being cultivated. I mean, there's more home cooking and home plumbing repairs and home medical care. And, you know, people are expected to be more independent when, you know, social interactions and the economy, you know, are reduced and the economy slows down. And I think there is, however, a lot of potential harm that's happening to our children from the school closures, from the fear of what's happening, from the job losses that, you know, let's not forget, tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs from this.
I think we're going to have a serious recession that lasts for quite some time as a result. And I think young and other vulnerable members of our society will be preferentially affected. And many young people will carry these marks for a very long time. So there are a host of different kinds of impacts - social, psychological, economic, clinical - on different people - young, old, middle-aged - of different backgrounds - Black, white, different races - different levels of wealth. It's a serious thing that's happening to us, and it is going to have multiple impacts.
DAVIES: You know, you've written that at times of plagues, people look for scapegoats. They sometimes turn on one another. On the other hand, it's a time when people need to come together to battle what's going on. What are you seeing here? Are we becoming more charitable, more empathetic or the opposite?
CHRISTAKIS: I think both of those are true. I think there is - on the one hand, you would, you know, there's this - when there's a serious threat afoot, you can have a kind of temptation to have sort of every man for himself. But it's also in the nature of contagious diseases that we need - that we're sharing a common enemy, so the impetus to band together to confront the common enemy is heightened. And it's in the nature of this enemy that collaborative work is necessary.
You know, if there was an invading army on our frontier, each individual citizen can't do anything about that. I mean, you can, you know, grab your gun and go to the frontier, but you can't stop the invading army. And even if every citizen independently grabbed their gun and went to the frontier, that's not very effective either. You need coordination. You need leadership. You need a way of working together to repel the invader. And that's the kind of invader that we have. That's the kind of adversary we have in this virus. We must and we are - slowly but, you know - working together to confront the virus. And this working together includes things like collectively implementing the non-pharmaceutical interventions. It's almost an oxymoron. You know, we have to work together to live apart.
But it also includes, you know, all this scientific and medical and other advances and public health advances that we're making. You know, we are working together as a species to develop knowledge that we can then use to fight the virus. So I, you know, I'm optimistic in this regard. Like I said, you know, we're going to see the other side of this. I think Americans are going to see that they - that collaborative effort is required. I think as deaths mount in the coming winter, I think the motivation to do this will rise. And, you know, I have hope and expectation that we will do a better job than we have in fighting the virus.
DAVIES: Let me reintroduce you again. We are speaking with Nicholas Christakis. He is a medical doctor and sociologist at Yale University. His new book is "Apollo's Arrow: The Profound And Enduring Impact Of Coronavirus On The Way We Live." We'll continue our conversation in just a moment. This is FRESH AIR.
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DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And we're speaking with Nicholas Christakis. He's a sociologist and medical doctor from Yale University whose new book examines the cause and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. It's called "Apollo's Arrow: The Profound And Enduring Impact Of Coronavirus On The Way We Live."
What are some of the most informative insights that we have from the 1918 influenza pandemic, the so-called Spanish flu, you know, both in terms of science and social behavior?
CHRISTAKIS: Well, it is the last major respiratory pandemic that we've had in the last hundred years or so that was, you know, severe. I think this - the 2019 coronavirus epidemic is probably going to be the second-worst respiratory pandemic we've had, so almost as bad as 1918 but not as bad. And so it is important to look back and see what happened to the people then and how did they respond but at the same time, to recognize that was a different era. That was before antibiotics. It was before modern telecommunications. It was, you know, it was - the economy was much more rural. People lived already in a more spread-out way. There was less urbanization.
So many things were different. But there are other things we can learn that are actually quite informative. We can see the time period that it took for people to bounce back between the 1918 pandemic, let's say, and the roaring '20s. Or we can look at the impact of school closures. And a very nice study was done looking at and showing that the sooner that a city closed its schools, the lower the impact of the pandemic in that city. It's very difficult to discover those things by doing experiments. You couldn't organize a national experiment right now where you closed schools in some areas but not in others. So we have to rely on natural experiments that were done, you know, in this case, a hundred years ago and look at the data and see what can we learn.
So there are quite a number of things we can learn. Masking is another thing. We - very ironically, there were the same fights about masking, if you can believe it, a hundred years ago. In some ways, that's really depressing to me how little we've progressed as a nation that we're still having these arguments. You know, masking is clearly helpful. There were anti-masking leagues, you know, a hundred years ago, people protesting the same thing, using almost the same arguments. So - but there were studies - scientists published studies showing that wearing masks reduces droplets. You know, a hundred years ago we had this work done.
DAVIES: But a lot of discussion about science and the extent to which people listen to scientists and value science. When this is over, will we value science more?
CHRISTAKIS: I would hope so. I mean, I think there's a very interesting sense in which, for a variety of reasons, I think our society has a kind of thinned-out intellectual discourse. You know, I think we have - we sort of see expertise as a kind of elitism. You know, experts are somehow seen as elites rather than as knowledgeable individuals and therefore are to be, you know, to be treated with suspicion. We have politicized and polarized to an extraordinary extent. We've lost the capacity for nuance in our conversations. You know, things are black and white. You're either with me or against me. You know, either you do this or you do the opposite. We don't sort of compromise or see things as having shades of gray.
And all of these features - the loss of nuance, the polarization, the distrust in science, the denigration of expertise - you know, have made us extra vulnerable to the impact of this virus. You know, this virus has struck us when we're weak in this regard. So I would hope that in a way we would learn our lesson. And there are some ways in which, if we see that science is a very powerful tool at our disposal to understand what's happening to us and to develop countermeasures, that this might, you know, lead to a kind of a more sensible perspective amongst the average American towards the utility of science. And we can argue about what policies to implement. We can have our ideological differences. But in an ideal world, we would let the scientists do their job.
DAVIES: Right. Getting past the election probably will help, right?
CHRISTAKIS: Yes, I think so. I think everyone would rather argue. In other words, what I don't understand about our current public discourse is why we would put our heads in the sand. For example, take climate change. There's so much fight - or gun deaths, you know, gun epidemiology or the biology of gender, for example. So both the left and the right, both the far-left in the far-right have their, you know, have their preferred topics which they would rather not have science shed light on.
What I don't understand is why we can't assemble the facts as best we can in using the scientific process and then have our ideological dispute about what to do about those facts. Why one or another side would wish to suppress the facts so as to avoid the ideological dispute, that's what gets us into trouble, in my view. So, for example, the argument about masks. Let's do the experiment. Either the masks help or they don't help. Let's let the scientists do their job. And then we can decide, OK, even if masks are shown to be effective, we're not going to use them because of our ideological commitment. Or even if the masks are ineffective, we are going to use them for whatever other reason. But let's get the science straight first, and then we can have our ideological dispute. Let's not cloud the waters is my concern.
DAVIES: Your most recent book before this was called "Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins Of A Good Society." I haven't read it, but my understanding is it offers an optimistic view of our, I guess, biological capacity to live together in empathetic and supportive ways.
CHRISTAKIS: That's right.
DAVIES: It's a little hard to be optimistic these days when you see all this bitter partisanship in the country. And now we have this dreadful pandemic. What did your research tell you that should give us hope?
CHRISTAKIS: I think we're a remarkable species, honestly. I mean, thank you for giving me the chance to say this. You know, I am an optimist. And I see the good in people. And I like to see the good in people. And it's not - but I'm naive. I'm aware that many people are awful. And I'm aware of all the horrors, the inquisitions and the pogroms and the enslavement of others and the poverty. And I'm well aware of the horrors that human beings can inflict on each other.
But at the same time, we have so many wonderful qualities we humans do that are very rare in the animal kingdom. These include the capacity for love, the capacity for friendship, the fact that we cooperate with each other, that we make sacrifices to even benefit strangers, that we teach and learn from each other. These things that many listeners are probably taking for granted are actually very rare in the animal kingdom. And yet, we do them naturally. We evolved to do them. And I think this is miraculous (laughter). You know, I think that these wonderful qualities that bind us together, you know, that are - that reflect our common humanity are unbelievably unbelievable and wonderful to see. And so this is one of the reasons I'm optimistic.
Let me say something about this that connects the points. One is that you can even - there's even a sense in which the spread of germs is the price we pay for the spread of ideas. What do I mean by that? One of the reasons we have evolved to live socially is to learn from each other. Any animal can learn on its own. A little fish in the sea can learn that if it swims up to the light, it'll find food there. But we don't just learn independently like that. We learn socially. You put your hand in the fire, you learn that it burns. So you - that's independent learning. Or I can watch you put your hand in the fire. And I get almost as much learning and I pay none of the cost, which is incredibly efficient, that capacity for social learning. So we evolved to live socially, in part, to get the benefits of the spread of ideas.
But the irony is that the germs exploit those same qualities. The fact that we live socially, the fact that we make social networks - these are the highways across which the germs travel. That's why I said the spread of germs is the price we pay for the spread of ideas. But the irony is that the opposite is also true - that it's through the spread of ideas that we're going to beat back the germ. It's precisely because we can work together. We can cooperate. We can exchange information. These are the tools we're going to use, ultimately, in my view, to have victory over this virus.
DAVIES: A hopeful note. Well, Nicholas Christakis, thank you so much for speaking with us.
CHRISTAKIS: Thank you so much for having me, Dave.
DAVIES: Nicholas Christakis is a medical doctor and a sociologist at Yale University. His new book is "Apollo's Arrow: The Profound And Enduring Impact Of Coronavirus On The Way We Live."
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https://www.npr.org/2020/10/29/9290...-an-intrinsic-part-of-an-epidemic-doctor-says
Denial And Lies Are 'Almost An Intrinsic Part Of An Epidemic,' Doctor Says
October 29, 20201:43 PM ET
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DAVE DAVIES
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Apollo's Arrow author Nicholas Christakis says we're likely to be living with pandemic-related social restrictions into 2022 — even if an effective vaccine is developed.
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DAVE DAVIES, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies in today for Terry Gross. Our guest, Nicholas Christakis, says the virus that causes COVID-19 will circulate among us in some form forever. Christakis is both a medical doctor and a sociologist and in a unique position to understand the science behind the coronavirus and place the current pandemic in the context of past attacks of deadly pathogens.
Plagues, he writes, reshape our familiar social order, require us to disperse and live apart, wreck economies, embolden liars and replace trust with fear and suspicion. He says they also elicit kindness, cooperation, sacrifice and ingenuity. In a new book, Christakis surveys the course of COVID-19, chronicles some tragic mistakes made by our political leaders, assesses how the pandemic may end, and considers some of its long-term impacts. Among his observations, if a vaccine arrives after two or three waves of the pandemic, it may be too late to make much of a difference.
Nicholas Christakis directs the Human Nature Lab at Yale University, where he is the sterling professor of social and natural science. His latest book is "Apollo's Arrow: The Profound And Enduring Impact Of Coronavirus On The Way We Live." He joins us from his home in Norwich, Vt. Nicholas Christakis, welcome to FRESH AIR.
NICHOLAS CHRISTAKIS: Thank you, Dave. Thank you so much for having me.
DAVIES: You're a medical doctor and a sociologist. And you direct the Human Nature Lab. What is that? What do you do?
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CHRISTAKIS: Well, I am a doctor. I don't see patients anymore for many years. I haven't seen patients for about 10 years. But I was a practicing physician in hospice medicine. I took care of people who were dying. But my primary identity is as a research scientist and as a professor. I teach students. And the Human Nature Lab is my group at Yale. And the part of human nature we're interested in is that part that relates to how we interact with each other.
So we address questions such as the origins and functions of friendship in our society. Why do human beings form social networks? We look at ways that groups function. We look at how the introduction of artificial intelligence into our midst will reshape how we treat each other. We look at the flow of germs through social networks or the microbiome. We have a research initiative that looks at how people interacting allows them to share microbes in ways that reshapes their health, for example.
All of these phenomena, all of these things that move between us are affected by how we interact with each other and, in turn, affect how we treat each other. So the spread of ideas, the spread of money, the spread of germs, the spread of behaviors - all of those things depend on our interactions and, in turn, shape our interactions. It's this sort of network perspective, this sort of recognition that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and that how the whole is assembled affects the experience of the parts. And an epidemic, to understand it optimally, requires a kind of bird's-eye view of the whole human network. And that's, I think, one of the things that network science brings to bear in understanding epidemic disease that's special.
DAVIES: You know, you're right that there are pharmaceutical interventions against plagues and pestilences over the years, typically less effective than nonpharmaceutical interventions - things like masks and social distancing. A lot of people were late in endorsing social distancing and masks. I mean, you noted that the World Health Organization was discouraging people from wearing masks as late as April 6th of this year.
You know, Dr. Fauci said in an interview on February 29 people, you know, didn't need to refrain from going to movies or malls at that point. My sense is reading your book, that you were watching this spread with some alarm because you're looking - you do a lot of research with social networks. Why didn't public health professionals act more aggressively sooner, do you think?
CHRISTAKIS: Well, amongst my colleagues, everyone was greatly alarmed in February. Now, why our political leaders didn't respond, I don't know. And it's the case that many political leaders around the world failed to take this seriously.
One of the arguments that I like to make about epidemics is that it's almost in the nature of epidemics that denial and lies about the - about what's happening is itself almost an intrinsic part of an epidemic, that in other words, everywhere you see the spread of germs for the last few thousand years, you see right behind it the spread of lies. And partly, that's because the person on the street wants to deny what's happening. And partly, it's because our political leaders don't want to take it seriously either. But it's their job to do so.
DAVIES: In the book, you cite a statistic. You say that if 70% of the public had begun wearing masks early on, it could prevent a large-scale outbreak of this pathogen. True? I mean, if we'd gotten on this and gotten really behind it early?
CHRISTAKIS: Yeah. So I think what's important to understand about this pathogen or about epidemics in general is that no single intervention is typically enough to stop an epidemic. And what I - the way I like to think about this and the way many epidemiologists think about this is something known as the Swiss cheese model. So imagine you have pieces of Swiss cheese that you're stacking up, and each of them has some holes in it. And they're random pieces of Swiss cheese, like you're making a sandwich and you're piling up pieces of Swiss cheese.
If each piece of Swiss cheese represents a defense, a layer of defense - for example, one piece is wearing masks, and another piece is closing schools, and another piece is banning gatherings, and another piece is washing your hands, and another piece is, you know, restricting travel or something. If each of those pieces represents some intervention and each of the holes is sort of randomly positioned in each slice, by the time you stacked up two or three or four slices, none of the holes overlap. And so a virus can't get through. It can't penetrate all the layers of defenses. So if you just use masks, you stop a lot of viral transmission, but you don't completely stop the epidemic. You also need to do something else.
And incidentally, this is why there was a super-spreader event at the White House. They relied on just one line of defense, which was testing. Testing was not enough. You need to do testing, let's say, plus masking or testing plus masking plus physical distancing. And this Swiss cheese model also helps us understand why different countries have succeeded in combating the virus using different mixes of interventions. You don't all need to use the same intervention. You can - each country or each region can use a different mix of interventions and still have success.
So, for example, in New Zealand, you know, they had border closures plus testing and quarantining. And in Greece, they had school closures and mask wearing and contact tracing and so on. So this is why masks are helpful, but they're not enough and also why we can understand a great variety of other ways in which our response to the virus among us can and should be optimized.
DAVIES: I've got to ask this question directly. I mean, we're in a political season where, you know, management of the coronavirus is clearly an issue. I mean, by - you know, by March, April, it was very clear that we had a very serious problem. And, you know, consistent national policy would be helpful. How do you rate the administration in its handling since then from - you know, from when that was clear up to now?
CHRISTAKIS: Oh, I mean, I think we clearly needed a national response. I mean, you know, having a patchwork of responses is like designating one part of the swimming pool as suitable for urination, but not the other parts. I mean, we are a whole nation that's bound together. And so we clearly need, in my view, a national response.
In fact, in some ways, you could argue we need an international response. But certainly from our own parochial point of view, we needed a national response. And even though it's the case that many other leaders in European countries made similar mistakes to our leadership, I don't think that lets our leaders off the hook. We're the United States of America. I expect more from us. We have the CDC. We spend 17.7% of our GDP on health care, and this is our level of preparedness? I mean, this is how our great nation is brought this low by this pathogen? You know, I think it's awful, frankly. It's incompetent. And it was, in many ways, unnecessary. We could've done and we should've done, in my view, much better. Why - when the Chinese shut down their country on January 24, why we weren't preparing to manufacture PPE and ventilators is mind-boggling to me. It was as if we were trying to wish the pathogen away.
DAVIES: All right. Let me take a break here. I'm going to reintroduce you. We're speaking with Nicholas Christakis. He is a medical doctor and a sociologist at Yale University. His new book is "Apollo's Arrow: The Profound And Enduring Impact Of Coronavirus On The Way We Live." We'll talk more in just a moment. This is FRESH AIR.
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DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're speaking with Nicholas Christakis. He is a medical doctor and a sociologist at Yale University. His new book about the coronavirus is called "Apollo's Arrow."
The president's adviser, Scott Atlas, has been associated with the idea that the U.S. could achieve herd immunity, you know, without a vaccine, that letting it spread may be the best and safest and quickest course to getting back to normal. Is this a workable idea?
CHRISTAKIS: It's an idea. There is such a thing as herd immunity. Herd immunity is when a large-enough fraction of a population have acquired immunity to the condition, either naturally because they got infected or by vaccination, such that when that large-enough fraction is infected, even unimmunized people get protection. And the gist of the idea is that, look, if the virus has a certain level of contagion and if half the people are immune to it, even if someone by dumb luck were to somehow get infected, they couldn't find anyone to spread it to because many of the people around them would be immune. And as a result, the epidemic would peter out.
And herd immunity is the natural end to epidemics. You know, prior to the invention of vaccines, this is what typically would happen. The virus would spread and spread until some certain fraction of people were infected and - which varied by different germs, have different levels that are required for herd immunity. And once that was reached, then the virus became what is known as endemic. It was still there, but it wasn't - didn't have the same power to cause, you know, a lot of death in an epidemic fashion. So that's what herd immunity is. And so the question is, is that a rational strategy to shoot for? And I don't think the answer to that is yes. I think we can do better than that.
We have better means to prevent death among ourselves now, whether using nonpharmaceutical interventions to slow the spread of the pathogen and give us time to invent and deploy methods to preserve our lives or most importantly, to invent a vaccine because that is a safe exit from the current crisis. The reason we're flattening the curve right now, the reason we're engaging in masking and physical distancing and all the other stuff is to buy time so that we can invent a vaccine. And therefore, we can have herd immunity through vaccination, not through, you know, natural acquisition of infection and immunity.
DAVIES: I was interested to read in your book that in other cases where we've developed vaccines for infectious diseases like tuberculosis and measles and - that often by the time the vaccine arrives, the infection rates have already naturally lowered dramatically. What does that tell us?
CHRISTAKIS: Well, that's a general principle in public health, which is sort of in the background of all of the conversation. That's called the McKeown hypothesis, which was a very powerful idea from about 50-or-more years ago where Thomas McKeown the medical historian observed that if you plotted on the X axis time and on the Y axis, the number of people dying from any given infectious disease - tuberculosis or measles or diphtheria or whatever - and then you plotted the deaths, you have this sort of steep New England sled run of a graph, you know, where the mortality is high and then sort of drops precipitously. And then, there's, like, a long straightaway, you know, when you get to the bottom of the hill and the sled is just sort of coasting along.
And what he did is he generated these graphs for all these conditions, and then he put an arrow on the time point at which the specific treatment had been invented to treat that condition. So in the case of tuberculosis, it was isoniazid. In the case of diphtheria, it was, you know, antitoxin. In the case of measles, it was a vaccine and so on. And what he found was that, ironically, that moment when the specific treatment was invented typically was on the flat straightaway of the sled run long after mortality had disappeared or had declined substantially.
And his argument - correct. His correct argument was that really what causes the disappearance of infectious diseases is rising wealth and living standards and community and public health interventions. So the principle there is that what really matters in the control of infectious disease is not so much the pharmaceutical interventions, but the kind of way of living that we have. And that same principle in a smaller scale also applies with respect to the epidemic disease that we're currently facing.
DAVIES: Yeah, so let's play this out. You know, we're being told that a vaccine, you know, is being developed at warp speed. And maybe, that comes in a month or maybe six months or maybe a year. Are you saying that it may not affect the infection rate that much?
CHRISTAKIS: No, I'm not saying that because this is a bit of a different situation with an epidemic disease and the kind of acute, like, you know, novelty of the pathogen that's just striking us right now. And we're all vulnerable to it. I do think the vaccine is going to be very important. And if it arrives in time, I think it could play a role. Honestly, I'm a little pessimistic, however, that it will arrive in time to make a difference. And so we talked a moment ago about herd immunity. One of the things that's going to - you know, while we're trying to develop a vaccine, the germ is - the virus is still spreading among us. Only about 10 or 11% of Americans are infected. Probably about 45 or 50% of Americans need to be infected before we reach herd immunity. And the virus is going to come back in waves over the next year or two. And more and more Americans are going to get infected. And eventually, we're going to reach that critical threshold probably sometime in 2022.
So that's going to happen. You know, that is happening in the background unless we want to be so extreme that everyone lived as a hermit. In other words, if we all just stopped interacting with anybody, we could stop the spread of the virus. But, you know, that's not going to happen either. So - or we could invent a vaccine, which, I think, we're likely to have a vaccine of unclear safety and efficacy - probably more than one vaccine - sometime in 2021. But, you see, that's just the first step. Then we have to manufacture the vaccine in large numbers of doses, distribute it, which won't be easy.
There's something known as the cold chain. Basically, the vaccine needs to be refrigerated from the time of manufacture to the time of injection, which is not easy and, most importantly, accepted - that is to say, most Americans have to be willing to take the vaccine. And that's going to take a year or something. So either way, we get to 2022, in my view. So my feeling is that, unfortunately, during what I consider to be the immediate impact period until 2022, we're going to be living in this changed world where we're wearing masks and doing physical distancing. And, you know, our economy is so adversely affected, unfortunately.
DAVIES: That's really a bummer to hear (laughter).
CHRISTAKIS: It is a bummer. But, see, this is the thing. You know, plagues are also a time of grief. You know, we're grieving not just the loss of people we know, you know, who died or our health, we're grieving our loss of a way of life. We're grieving the fact that we can't have dinner parties with our friends. We can't go to movie theaters. I mean, this - just like we were earlier discussing how plagues are a time of lies, they're also a time of fear and they're a time of grief. And I think, in some ways, as a nation, we just need to - I won't say grow up. That sounds too flippant. I mean, we need to accept this unpleasant reality.
And this is, again, where I think leadership is so important. I mean, one of the things that's crucial is public health messaging credibility, you know, people who get up and tell it to us even if it's uncertain. Say, I'm not sure of exactly what's happening. But I think this is most likely and here's the data, because we need to prepare the nation, in my view, for this reality. I mean, what makes us think that we're so different, you know, that we Americans in the 21st century, in our wealthy country, will be spared this fate? There's no reason we should be spared. And I think that preparing the nation to come to grips with this unfortunate reality is crucial.
And, you know, we will see the other side of it. I mean, one of the things that's also important to recognize is that plagues do end. They have always ended. Even the bubonic plague ended. It's rare that there are so severe that the society is entirely annihilated. Although, that has happened, too. But that's not the situation we're facing. So there is also grounds for optimism in ways we can talk about.
DAVIES: So at some point, you know, several years from now, what will our relationship be with this particular coronavirus? You say it will be among us forever.
CHRISTAKIS: Yes. I think a very likely outcome is that this virus will become like some of the other cold viruses, the other four variants of coronavirus that just cause the common cold. You know, I think over at least - certainly over a century time interval, that's what's likely to happen. And what's likely to happen, I think, is that we will - remember that in this particular virus, if you get it when you're young, it's relatively benign. And then I think you will have some kind of lifelong protection or long-term protection. It's unclear how substantial that protection will be.
But what I think is likely to happen is that people will be exposed to this pathogen when they're young, will have a mild illness, they'll get some kind of protection. And then if they're re-exposed later on as adults, they'll get a mild illness again. As opposed to what's happening now when adults - all the adults on the planet have no immunity. And when they get it, you know, they're likely - they have a chance of dying. In a way, I think, it'll be like chickenpox. You know, you get chickenpox as a kid, it's unpleasant. But you don't die from it. If you've never had chickenpox and you get it as an adult, you could die from it. So I think it's going to be sort of like that is, I think, the ultimate outcome of this pathogen.
But in the intermediate period, I think we're going to have to come to terms with it. I think it will settle down. I think we will reach, as I said, either herd immunity or from vaccination or more naturally. And, you know, it's going to become a fact of our lives. But we're not going to be living as we are now forever. I mean, I think what's going to happen is that the immediate pandemic period will last until 2022, approximately. And then we're going to - will have recovered from the biological and epidemiological shock.
But then, if history is a guide, we'll have a couple of years of recovering from the psychological, social and economic shock. And, you know, the economy is not going to bounce back immediately. People aren't suddenly going to go back to airports or restaurants. So I think we're going to have this sort of intermediate period of a couple of years until, let's say, 2024. And then, beginning in 2024, I think we're going to have a kind of post-pandemic period.
DAVIES: Let me reintroduce you again. We're going to take a break here. Nicholas Christakis is a medical doctor and a sociologist at Yale University. His new book is "Apollo's Arrow: The Profound And Enduring Impact Of Coronavirus On The Way We Live." He'll be back to talk more after this short break. I'm Dave Davies. And this is FRESH AIR.
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DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies in today for Terry Gross. We're speaking with Nicholas Christakis, a sociologist and medical doctor from Yale University whose new book examines the course and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and some of the mistakes made by political leaders and managing it. It's called "Apollo's Arrow: The Profound And Enduring Impact Of Coronavirus On The Way We Live."
If it's likely that we will be with this until 2022, when at some point we'll have a vaccine, but in the meantime, there will, you know, more people will be infected, which will give us something closer to herd immunity. What about the argument that it would be smarter to simply embrace the virus, accept mass and quick infection and get there sooner?
CHRISTAKIS: Well, let me explain why that's not a good idea in a very direct way. So if you had gotten this pathogen back in March, you would have had a higher chance of dying from it than if you get it today. Why is that? Well, because in the last nine months, we've learned how to take care of you. And in fact, we have discovered that a drug called dexamethasone, which is a simple steroid - which incidentally, the president also got - if given to you, if you're seriously ill, can prevent you can reduce your risk of death by 20%. In other words, if you got seriously ill from coronavirus in March, you would have a certain chance of dying. Let's say 25% chance of dying. But if you get it now, you might have, let's say, only a 20% chance of dying. That's a - seriously ill. That is to say now you would only have a 20% chance of dying. That is a big difference, and that's why we flatten the curve. So that's why not to go for the rapid herd immunity strategy right now.
That's one illustration of the reason is that by getting - by postponing the illnesses until a later point in time, we allow our scientists and our health care system to function better. If you get sick from this condition like that's happening now, for example, in Utah and in Idaho and in parts of Texas and in Oklahoma that are - where many of their hospitals in many cities are being overrun, when would you rather go to a hospital, when it's packed to the gills and the doctors are exhausted and the nurses are sick from the condition, or would you rather go when the hospitals are operating normally? Obviously, the latter. So this is why not to let the virus just run loose in our society.
DAVIES: What will be some of the lasting emotional impacts of the virus and the social isolation we've endured?
CHRISTAKIS: I think, first of all, in the long term, you know, in five or 10 years, I think society will have returned largely to normal, although there will be some enduring impacts which - of a variety of fronts, including things like working from home or certain economic impacts, which we can discuss. On the more shorter term sort of emotional things that you were alluding to, One of the things that's very typical - and we're seeing evidence for that in the United States - is during a time of a serious epidemic, religiosity rises. People become more religious. And that actually generally is reversed when the epidemic goes away. You know the saying - there are no atheists in foxholes. Well, we're under a barrage right now. So, you know, people get religious.
But then afterwards, you know, the religiosity sort of returns to baseline. I think there's other habits that are happening right now that are a little unclear how long they will last. But I think there's a lot more independence that's being cultivated. I mean, there's more home cooking and home plumbing repairs and home medical care. And, you know, people are expected to be more independent when, you know, social interactions and the economy, you know, are reduced and the economy slows down. And I think there is, however, a lot of potential harm that's happening to our children from the school closures, from the fear of what's happening, from the job losses that, you know, let's not forget, tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs from this.
I think we're going to have a serious recession that lasts for quite some time as a result. And I think young and other vulnerable members of our society will be preferentially affected. And many young people will carry these marks for a very long time. So there are a host of different kinds of impacts - social, psychological, economic, clinical - on different people - young, old, middle-aged - of different backgrounds - Black, white, different races - different levels of wealth. It's a serious thing that's happening to us, and it is going to have multiple impacts.
DAVIES: You know, you've written that at times of plagues, people look for scapegoats. They sometimes turn on one another. On the other hand, it's a time when people need to come together to battle what's going on. What are you seeing here? Are we becoming more charitable, more empathetic or the opposite?
CHRISTAKIS: I think both of those are true. I think there is - on the one hand, you would, you know, there's this - when there's a serious threat afoot, you can have a kind of temptation to have sort of every man for himself. But it's also in the nature of contagious diseases that we need - that we're sharing a common enemy, so the impetus to band together to confront the common enemy is heightened. And it's in the nature of this enemy that collaborative work is necessary.
You know, if there was an invading army on our frontier, each individual citizen can't do anything about that. I mean, you can, you know, grab your gun and go to the frontier, but you can't stop the invading army. And even if every citizen independently grabbed their gun and went to the frontier, that's not very effective either. You need coordination. You need leadership. You need a way of working together to repel the invader. And that's the kind of invader that we have. That's the kind of adversary we have in this virus. We must and we are - slowly but, you know - working together to confront the virus. And this working together includes things like collectively implementing the non-pharmaceutical interventions. It's almost an oxymoron. You know, we have to work together to live apart.
But it also includes, you know, all this scientific and medical and other advances and public health advances that we're making. You know, we are working together as a species to develop knowledge that we can then use to fight the virus. So I, you know, I'm optimistic in this regard. Like I said, you know, we're going to see the other side of this. I think Americans are going to see that they - that collaborative effort is required. I think as deaths mount in the coming winter, I think the motivation to do this will rise. And, you know, I have hope and expectation that we will do a better job than we have in fighting the virus.
DAVIES: Let me reintroduce you again. We are speaking with Nicholas Christakis. He is a medical doctor and sociologist at Yale University. His new book is "Apollo's Arrow: The Profound And Enduring Impact Of Coronavirus On The Way We Live." We'll continue our conversation in just a moment. This is FRESH AIR.
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DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And we're speaking with Nicholas Christakis. He's a sociologist and medical doctor from Yale University whose new book examines the cause and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. It's called "Apollo's Arrow: The Profound And Enduring Impact Of Coronavirus On The Way We Live."
What are some of the most informative insights that we have from the 1918 influenza pandemic, the so-called Spanish flu, you know, both in terms of science and social behavior?
CHRISTAKIS: Well, it is the last major respiratory pandemic that we've had in the last hundred years or so that was, you know, severe. I think this - the 2019 coronavirus epidemic is probably going to be the second-worst respiratory pandemic we've had, so almost as bad as 1918 but not as bad. And so it is important to look back and see what happened to the people then and how did they respond but at the same time, to recognize that was a different era. That was before antibiotics. It was before modern telecommunications. It was, you know, it was - the economy was much more rural. People lived already in a more spread-out way. There was less urbanization.
So many things were different. But there are other things we can learn that are actually quite informative. We can see the time period that it took for people to bounce back between the 1918 pandemic, let's say, and the roaring '20s. Or we can look at the impact of school closures. And a very nice study was done looking at and showing that the sooner that a city closed its schools, the lower the impact of the pandemic in that city. It's very difficult to discover those things by doing experiments. You couldn't organize a national experiment right now where you closed schools in some areas but not in others. So we have to rely on natural experiments that were done, you know, in this case, a hundred years ago and look at the data and see what can we learn.
So there are quite a number of things we can learn. Masking is another thing. We - very ironically, there were the same fights about masking, if you can believe it, a hundred years ago. In some ways, that's really depressing to me how little we've progressed as a nation that we're still having these arguments. You know, masking is clearly helpful. There were anti-masking leagues, you know, a hundred years ago, people protesting the same thing, using almost the same arguments. So - but there were studies - scientists published studies showing that wearing masks reduces droplets. You know, a hundred years ago we had this work done.
DAVIES: But a lot of discussion about science and the extent to which people listen to scientists and value science. When this is over, will we value science more?
CHRISTAKIS: I would hope so. I mean, I think there's a very interesting sense in which, for a variety of reasons, I think our society has a kind of thinned-out intellectual discourse. You know, I think we have - we sort of see expertise as a kind of elitism. You know, experts are somehow seen as elites rather than as knowledgeable individuals and therefore are to be, you know, to be treated with suspicion. We have politicized and polarized to an extraordinary extent. We've lost the capacity for nuance in our conversations. You know, things are black and white. You're either with me or against me. You know, either you do this or you do the opposite. We don't sort of compromise or see things as having shades of gray.
And all of these features - the loss of nuance, the polarization, the distrust in science, the denigration of expertise - you know, have made us extra vulnerable to the impact of this virus. You know, this virus has struck us when we're weak in this regard. So I would hope that in a way we would learn our lesson. And there are some ways in which, if we see that science is a very powerful tool at our disposal to understand what's happening to us and to develop countermeasures, that this might, you know, lead to a kind of a more sensible perspective amongst the average American towards the utility of science. And we can argue about what policies to implement. We can have our ideological differences. But in an ideal world, we would let the scientists do their job.
DAVIES: Right. Getting past the election probably will help, right?
CHRISTAKIS: Yes, I think so. I think everyone would rather argue. In other words, what I don't understand about our current public discourse is why we would put our heads in the sand. For example, take climate change. There's so much fight - or gun deaths, you know, gun epidemiology or the biology of gender, for example. So both the left and the right, both the far-left in the far-right have their, you know, have their preferred topics which they would rather not have science shed light on.
What I don't understand is why we can't assemble the facts as best we can in using the scientific process and then have our ideological dispute about what to do about those facts. Why one or another side would wish to suppress the facts so as to avoid the ideological dispute, that's what gets us into trouble, in my view. So, for example, the argument about masks. Let's do the experiment. Either the masks help or they don't help. Let's let the scientists do their job. And then we can decide, OK, even if masks are shown to be effective, we're not going to use them because of our ideological commitment. Or even if the masks are ineffective, we are going to use them for whatever other reason. But let's get the science straight first, and then we can have our ideological dispute. Let's not cloud the waters is my concern.
DAVIES: Your most recent book before this was called "Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins Of A Good Society." I haven't read it, but my understanding is it offers an optimistic view of our, I guess, biological capacity to live together in empathetic and supportive ways.
CHRISTAKIS: That's right.
DAVIES: It's a little hard to be optimistic these days when you see all this bitter partisanship in the country. And now we have this dreadful pandemic. What did your research tell you that should give us hope?
CHRISTAKIS: I think we're a remarkable species, honestly. I mean, thank you for giving me the chance to say this. You know, I am an optimist. And I see the good in people. And I like to see the good in people. And it's not - but I'm naive. I'm aware that many people are awful. And I'm aware of all the horrors, the inquisitions and the pogroms and the enslavement of others and the poverty. And I'm well aware of the horrors that human beings can inflict on each other.
But at the same time, we have so many wonderful qualities we humans do that are very rare in the animal kingdom. These include the capacity for love, the capacity for friendship, the fact that we cooperate with each other, that we make sacrifices to even benefit strangers, that we teach and learn from each other. These things that many listeners are probably taking for granted are actually very rare in the animal kingdom. And yet, we do them naturally. We evolved to do them. And I think this is miraculous (laughter). You know, I think that these wonderful qualities that bind us together, you know, that are - that reflect our common humanity are unbelievably unbelievable and wonderful to see. And so this is one of the reasons I'm optimistic.
Let me say something about this that connects the points. One is that you can even - there's even a sense in which the spread of germs is the price we pay for the spread of ideas. What do I mean by that? One of the reasons we have evolved to live socially is to learn from each other. Any animal can learn on its own. A little fish in the sea can learn that if it swims up to the light, it'll find food there. But we don't just learn independently like that. We learn socially. You put your hand in the fire, you learn that it burns. So you - that's independent learning. Or I can watch you put your hand in the fire. And I get almost as much learning and I pay none of the cost, which is incredibly efficient, that capacity for social learning. So we evolved to live socially, in part, to get the benefits of the spread of ideas.
But the irony is that the germs exploit those same qualities. The fact that we live socially, the fact that we make social networks - these are the highways across which the germs travel. That's why I said the spread of germs is the price we pay for the spread of ideas. But the irony is that the opposite is also true - that it's through the spread of ideas that we're going to beat back the germ. It's precisely because we can work together. We can cooperate. We can exchange information. These are the tools we're going to use, ultimately, in my view, to have victory over this virus.
DAVIES: A hopeful note. Well, Nicholas Christakis, thank you so much for speaking with us.
CHRISTAKIS: Thank you so much for having me, Dave.
DAVIES: Nicholas Christakis is a medical doctor and a sociologist at Yale University. His new book is "Apollo's Arrow: The Profound And Enduring Impact Of Coronavirus On The Way We Live."
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DAVIES: Coming up, Maureen Corrigan reviews Jess Walter's new historical novel about the Wobblies and a landmark free speech protest at the turn of the last century. This is FRESH AIR.
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All that article actually says is that it will take another year or so before people realise that Covid is no big deal.
It does not matter what sort of label is attached to Covid. Call it a bad flu, a pandemic or a mild disease but regardless of which term is used the fact remains that the infection fatality rate is very low and so far Covid has only killed 0.035% of the world's population and as herd immunity gains hold the number will plunge significantly.
In the meantime HIV kills almost a million people every single year and the death toll so far is 32 million with no vaccine in sight.
The virus was custom ordered by us QANONs. It is Satan's will delivered via Q the redeemer. Q has proclaimed the Messiah Trump will purposely stand back, act like there is no virus, which was our strategy to grow the epidemic into a Pandemic. As you can see, we had a very good year killing many thousands of people whether they be old, young, fat, slim, or Mexican. In the USA alone we got 500,000.
All must die. We would like to extend our sincerest appreciation to you for assisting us in covering up the severity of the virus, and by saying it is a harmless flu, when, in fact we can count the millions dead and the even larger numbers about to expire as a testament to our success.
The only problem we can see is Biden is trying to vaccinate too many people. He just announced 200 Million shots in 100 days, up from 100 Million. Who the hell does he think he is? What makes him think we want to Pandemic to end? Disgusting.
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