Le Show; 2020-06-14

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I'm still undergoing self-isolation, but we don't have the time for the thing, for the song, for the thing. Did you know that as of now, the Confederate battle flag could still be flown on the facilities of the United States Army, Navy, and Marines? I don't know about the Air Force. I don't know if they can fly it. I don't know if it flies. Yeah, that's the country we're living in. It became public knowledge, if it wasn't already this week, when the services began suggesting they were going to change their ways on that particular subject. It became known as part of the discussion between military officials and President Trump regarding the renaming of at least 10 Army bases currently named after Confederate generals. You know, the guys who seceded from the Union, this country we have here, of course, he's indicated his objection to the renaming. Don't they have better things to do?

He apparently said in one meeting, according to the Washington Post, but the Marines had announced they were going to change the policy and ban the display of the Confederate battle flag at Marine installations. And then the Navy, top official in the Navy Admiral Michael Gill Day had announced in Tuesday this week he's planning prohibitions on Confederate battle flags of the Air Force plan to release a policy this week to prohibit the display of that flag. They have now held back, according to the Washington Post, after the President's rebuke of the Army over the renaming of the bases. And while that's the state of the American military, one of the staunchest supporters of the way of life that you might think is represented by that flag and the President's. Did I say the supporters, NASCAR, this week announced they banned the Confederate battle flag from NASCAR events.

You know, as has been observed on this program before, you can say it's about heritage, you can say it's about racism, you can say it's about slavery. One thing there can be no argument about the Confederate flags, meaning it is the flag of the side that lost. Losers don't normally get to fly their flags. I don't think any civil war loser in any country in the world has gotten to fly its flags 150 years after they lost and surrendered. But you know, you gotta be fair. You can't fly your flag anymore, but you can have an anthem. Hello, welcome to the show. Southland, land of cotton and loam. Losers got to have a place to call home. Succession. Well, it's the source of our pride, because our kin folk were run.

The losing side. Yeah, our kin folk were run. The losing side. Oh, the stars and bars will never be forgot. On our state flag, the X marks the spot. It took bravery to fight for slavery. That's how we're inclined, because we're just the losing kin. Always left behind, because we're just the losing kin. Jackson, it's Anglo-Saxon no more, making you be shaken.

When you go to the store, throughout our states, there is this deep divide, because our kin folk were run. The losing side. Yeah, our kin folk were run. The losing side. Oh, the stars and bars will never be forgot. We're Johnny Red and not some hot new top. Yeah, it took bravery to fight for slavery. You can't be colorblind when you're with the losing kin. The sick would be designed, because we're just the losing kin. Oh, we love our flag, it says just who we are. We got no fancy house, we got no fancy car.

It took bravery to forget about slavery. We don't watch, we rewind, because we're just the losing kin. The renders and what we sign, because we're just the losing kin. Ladies and gentlemen, about four months ago to the day, we had on this program a guest who brought a wealth of background and experience to the then new subject of COVID-19 and the coronavirus that causes it. And in the intervening weeks and months, it's been stunning, but not surprising to go back and realize in a welter of myths and other types of information, just how on the money the information he gave us in February was.

So I've invited him back now, as we're entering phase one, phase two, phase three, who knows what phase. He's John Barry, a friend of the show, I'm proud to say, his latest book is Roger Williams and the creation of the American soul, church and state and the birth of liberty. And a damn fine piano player too, by the way. That's a finalist for the Los Angeles Times books prize. And known for his seminal book on the 1927 Mississippi River flood, which I'm just finishing rereading, rising tide. The quote that I'm going to take away from that book, by the way, John, is the quote from then Mayor O'Keefe as the then new, the petite theater of the French quarter was being dedicated on its opening. And he said, this is the sort of thing that makes this city proud, this and the new garbage and generator.

That is a classic. And also, more to the point, author of the great Influenza about the 1918 Influenza epidemic pandemic to which this current thing is constantly being compared. He's distinguished scholar at Tulane's by water institute and a professor at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. John Barry, John, welcome back. Thank you. Good to talk to you once again. Thank you. So it's been four months. What do we know now that we didn't know in February? You know, hell of a lot, which will eventually turn out to be very useful. But we're still stuck largely where we were. Then, you know, we don't yet have a therapeutic drug. That's quite true. We do have been dissevered, which is not a magic potion, but it's helpful. Unfortunately, in very short supply. It's the only one that's proven itself yet. We still, of course, don't have vaccines, but we have probably roughly a hundred vaccine candidates in various stages of development.

And we know now, for sure, what we actually did know, then I don't recall what I said four months ago. But that social distancing masks hand washing, staying home when you have the slightest symptom that if everyone in the country did those things, we would be able to control this outbreak with public health measures. Unfortunately, that's not the case. And, you know, throwing also important would be testing and contact tracing. Well, let's let's go a little deeper into each of those. First of all, the one that I recall from way back then that nobody mentions anymore is or very few people mention anymore is don't touch your face. But I'm sure that still applies, right? That's still a big part of it.

It does seem clear and clear, though, that the transmission is from droplets, which can be quite small and from even smaller airborne virus. So the hands are still important. We don't know exactly what percentage of transmission occurs from hand to your eyes or your mouth or your nose, including something like a yawn. But less so than perhaps an influenza. It's breathing in the virus is the primary mode of transmission by a significant margin. Breathing in the virus from the environment. Correct. And, you know, a face-to-face conversation. A close contact is defined as less than six feet away and more than 15 minutes of face-to-face. That is close contact. The most important thing remains social distancing. Stay at least six feet, maybe a little bit more.

And if both people are masked and they're more than six feet apart, it's fairly low risk. It's not zero risk, but it's low risk. Your masks are not going to stop the smaller airborne particles. Think of a chain-link fence in a mosquito. The virus is pretty small. It's not going to pay a lot of attention to the chain-link fence, but if somebody throws a baseball at you, that fence will protect you. So the larger droplets would be somewhat comparable to a baseball thrown at a chain-link fence, but there's still airborne virus that could get through the mask. So don't get within six feet of somebody with a baseball. Particularly if they have a baseball bat. Let me just poke away at some of these because in the news today, as we're speaking on Thursday before the program airs, the BBC had a fairly long report on the discussion inside Britain over whether to reduce the mandatory or recommended social distancing from two meters to one meter.

Now, I'm not really good on the metric stuff, but I'm sure you are. One meter is less than six feet, right? Yeah, the WHO seems to talk in terms of one meter, lots of times. There's no question six feet is better than three feet when two meters is better than one meter. The six feet standard goes back. I think the 1930s, actually, when there were some tests running on stuff, and even way back in 1918, they ran some pretty good tests on how far they laid out. Petry dishes filled with medium and so check how far it would be before bacteria would grow and so forth, how far away.

Now that, of course, bacteria are not virus, but the principles are same. I would prefer the six feet to the one meter, but you know, they have to. I don't understand the reasoning behind. Lowering that. I think the discussion, as I understood it from the BBC report, is two meters is difficult for a lot of economic players to factor into the way they do business like restaurants and pubs. pubs are a lot more important in the British economy than they than bars are here, but and certainly the government health authority, I believe independent, but talking to the government, agrees with you that the numbers say there's a lot more protection at two meters than at one, but the British government is pointing to France, Canada, I think Australia, a lot of other countries, which have adopted one meter possibly for the same reason for

economic reasons. Certainly, as they discussed at this morning on the B, it's almost twice as effective to have two meters as one. Well, you know, the British government has been one of the worst performing in the world in their per capita death toll. It's one of the highest in the world. Although Brazil is catching up on them, right? Brazil is not doing very well. You know, they have the worst president in the world in terms of taking this seriously, even considerably worse than Trump. But the British government got a very slow start. They were talking about herd immunity. Of course, Sweden has been experimenting with that, and that experiment has not gone very well.

As of right now, they have more deaths per capita than the United States. Sweden does. And Sweden and the US hadn't done so well, and they have well over 90% of the population still has not been exposed to the virus. So they've had 4,000 deaths. They're more than half in there, only a 10 million population. And it's doubled there. More than doubled their neighbors. Yeah. And they are the Scandinavian countries. Yeah. Next one I want to tackle has been, I think, confusing to a lot of people because a lot of different kinds of information have come out regarding masks and the effectiveness of masks. And there have been different recommendations depending on when you heard them. The state of the knowledge at this point about non-N-95 masks, cloth masks, is exactly what? It's still a little bit confusing.

I probably said on your show, but I don't explicitly remember that masks will protect other people from someone who is not a good person. From someone who is ill, largely because they will collect the larger droplets, but that they're not real good at protecting someone who is healthy from just the general environment. You know, my view on that may have shifted a little bit. I haven't really decided. There have been very few control studies, in fact, basically none. But there are a lot of observational studies that suggest it may be more protective than I had been willing to ascribe. So I'm ready to move my position on that based on the date of the experiments are not great. There was one very well designed experiment dealing with influenza over two-year period, which found an observational difference in masks alone.

But it was not statistically significant. That does not mean that they didn't do some good. They may have. They may not have. It registered as having done good. But again, it wasn't so dramatic a change to be statistically significant. But there seems to be a lot of observational studies that reach that point in the same direction, that it's not huge, but it's noticeable. And since almost all the studies seem to come down on the same side, then that's enough for me to. Some of my concerns about the masks were, although they do prevent people from touching their face, so that cuts down on the hand to mouth and those eyes, well not the eyes, but hand to mouth and nose transmission.

But I was concerned that they make people feel safer than they are, and therefore it cuts down on the social distancing, which is the most important thing. So I thought they may have proven counterproductive on those grounds, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I mean, it is a trade-off, but I certainly now go around wearing a mask myself. You do so. Yeah, I do. So if I do it, of course, then I will be hard put not to recommend that somebody else do it. And in fact, the CDC and the US and plenty of other agencies around the world also recommend masks. And they definitely protect other people if you are sick.

And since we do know it can be spread by people either pre-symptomatic, i.e., they will have symptoms but haven't developed them yet. And also asymptomatic people, people who have never developed symptoms. So it is definitely something you should do, definitely. And were you suggesting that these observational studies suggest that masks wearers are protected from being infected? There does seem, yeah. The data seems to lean in that direction. It's not crystal clear. And may turn out to be the case, actually, friend of mine. Mike Osterholm is embarking upon a careful study where they are done dynamic engineers looking at, you know, he's going to try to find out. And if you follow this situ, Osterholm is, you know, one of the most frequently quoted experts in the area.

He's been studying pandemics and pandemic preparedness for much longer than I have at least 25 years. He runs something called the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. He was intimately involved in pandemic preparedness under George W. Bush and Obama. And, you know, hasn't been part of the process under Trump. Hmm. Strange that. This week that we're talking, there was a flurry of reports, the first of which, through grave doubt on the possibility or on the likelihood of asymptomatic transmission. And then it was walked back within a day or two. That came out of the WHO, right?

Yeah, correct. And what was that? Well, she said based on contact tracing studies that were pretty good. She thought that it was very rare. The scientists who made that statement, it was a passing comment at a press conference, not devoted to the issue. There was a lot of pushback from the scientific community. And as you say, that's been walked back. You know, there is certainly without a doubt evidence about pre-symptomatic transmission. And you don't know that you're going to get sick when you don't have any symptoms. The difference between asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic is a distinction without a difference for all practical purposes. But in addition to that, there, in fact, there is evidence, at least some, that someone who is about to develop symptoms may shed more virus in the two days before they develop symptoms than they shed after they develop symptoms. So they are more dangerous before they have a symptom.

There is evidence suggesting that we don't know definitively. There are a lot of things we don't know definitively. And there is also plenty of evidence of asymptomatic transmission. Again, there are so many things we don't know. Do we set up clear it up a little bit in terms of how things are transmitted? So I said earlier, the so-called foamites, which are things like dornobbs, they seem less involved than we were initially concerned about. Both the CDC and the World Health Organization agree on that. That doesn't mean they are not a factor, but they are less of a factor than we had earlier been worried about. Also, something that is different from saying influenza transmission is this seems more super spreader than is the case in influenza. There are different studies that have said, in one case, 20% of the people responsible for 80% of the spread, there was another study that said 10%.

But our response was for 80% of the spread. And there certainly are super spreading events in influenza. But that seems more so in COVID-19. So the obvious thing is, well, if you can identify the super spreaders, then we can go a long way to, well, the problem is identifying that. We know from SARS and MERS, which I'm sure you know, both coronavirus, that some people shed a lot more virus than other people. Now, we know that definitively, so that's a good chance that's the case here, and that that would account, at least partly, for the super spreading.

So they're super spreaders as well. Exactly. You got it. Other things that I think we think we knew that we don't know the same thing about it now. That's a bad construction of an attempted sentence. But we were told at one point, children don't get this disease. We know that some children or few children have and do. It was when we last talked, basically, a disease of the respiratory system. And now we know there's, in some cases, kidney damage, neurological damage. Right. And Ed Young, and the Atlantic this week, talks to a bunch of people who, for whom the symptoms have never gone away so far, long termers, they call themselves. So these are new facets of the story, right? Right.

You know, it's funny. It's remarkably similar to the pathology in 1918, remarkably, the way people die, side of kind of storms. And the 1918 virus could, in fact, practically every organ, neurological symptoms were, according to studies, after the pandemic, quote, second only to pulmonary, unquote. Wow. And that seems to be quite common now. So, apparently, the virus of the 1918, and today could cost what's called the blood brain barrier. The, I think we probably knew at the time I was on the show of earlier, in fact, I think, probably mentioned it, or there can be your old vehicle transmission. I think public toilets are dangerous. You know, someone can go to the bathroom, you know, bowel movement, flush the toilet, and create airborne virus, which are quite different, if a gold obviously, to clean,

depending on the ventilation in the bathroom. But, you know, wiping down the sink, is not going to take care of that airborne virus. Right. So, public bathrooms are not great places to spend time, anyway. Anyway, yeah. That's, you know, I probably mentioned that four months ago. No, you didn't. That's a new contribution to our knowledge. Okay. Okay. Larger picture. I don't think it can be denied that the two agencies you've quoted in this conversation and earlier, have come in for an awful lot of criticism, and certainly don't have nearly the widespread public credibility that they did before this all started. I'm referring to the CDC and the WHO.

What can you say about those two agencies at this point? Well, the CDC certainly had, you know, opening debacle with the testing. You know, they bear a significant amount of responsibility for getting us off to a bad start. Now, let me just poke at that for a minute. What I think we knew was that the WHO had come up with a test and the CDC or somebody in the United States government decided no, we're going to use the CDC's test instead. Is that really what happened? I believe so, but, you know, that would not be unusual. The unusual part is that the CDC test had problems. That's the part that's unusual. Right. That and the decisions to limit testing to people would recently travel to China or had contact

with people as a result of those limitations. You know, we did not know that there was community transmission in the United States when it was happening, where we were going blind. I mean, you know, going around like trying to make decisions without information. And, you know, I mentioned like Oster home earlier, I wrote an op-ed in January, and the working title was this virus cannot be contained, although I ended up saw here when it was published to something like Candace virus be contained, probably not. That was the title. But we're talking about mid-January, and I was talking to Oster home then, and he kept saying, well, he was very frustrated because he said, well, we don't know whether it's here, because we're not testing. Those were the days when we had a tiny handful of patients in the according to the official count. When, in fact, it was circulating in the community already.

But we weren't testing, so we didn't know. But the testing remained. It's no longer CDC's fall that's gone well beyond that, but that initial flying spot was partly the CDC's responsibility, partly FDA's, but it's gone well beyond that since then. You know, we don't have enough tests still. We're in terms of raw numbers. We're testing a lot of people, but a lot of those are, for example, everybody walks into a hospital for any reason these days gets tested. The number of actual community tests out there, I mean, if you look at the total number of people being tested on any given day, it looks like a lot of people, but a lot of those tests are accounted for by people who are teenly tested as opposed to the general population,

who may or may not be sick. We don't have the contact tracing in place in most places. We're not getting enough cooperation from the public with the contact racers as we need. And we are, I won't say we're on the verge of losing control. Yeah, and not that we've been in control. We made a lot of progress. I would say if we had not intervened in the United States as we did in the middle of March, that by now we would, without a doubt, have half a million people dead. And we would be well on our way to surpassing the worst-case projections. If we had done nothing, the projections were about two million dead, based on various models. And as I said, if we hadn't done anything, we would have been moving toward that pretty rapidly. We did intervene. I think most states loosened up too soon a little bit.

And I can understand the pressure. There are a lot of people out of work and a lot of people suffering those are real problems. But we should have come out smarter. We haven't learned best practices from other countries, which can be applied, which should be applied. You can keep the economy going, and you can save lives. They are not usually exclusive. But at least at the national level, we seem to be behaving as if they are. And I am on a daily basis amazed by the lack of leadership from this White House, particularly because it's in their own self-interest, politically, to get a handle on this. And it's doable. That is the great tragedy that we can save a lot of lives

going forward without stopping the economy. Well, we're not doing it. One thing that I think doesn't get said enough is that testing numbers have just thrown out like that. Okay, we tested so many people on this day. It assumes that people once tested, that's the end of it. But people can be tested one day and get infected the next. So you're not calculating the number of tests just by the population times one. You have to test. Everybody has to be tested fairly regularly for a period of time. Isn't that not true? Yeah. And again, I mean, yes, you're right. Because you can even be infected and the test will be negative even if it's a good test, if it's very early in the infection.

It's quite possible. Yeah, we're also hearing a lot about false negatives now, right? Right. I mean, there have been a lot of problems with the testing. And they continue to be problems so they're beginning to be ironed out but the number of testing the right people and even more of the contact tracing. You know, these things work. You know, the South Korea has a different culture. More people are going to wear masks there and so forth. But even so, you've got a country of 51 million people and you have fewer than 300 people dead. We are, you know, six times the size but we have 110, 112,000 people dead. That's a lot more than six times 300. So it's very frustrating to anybody who knows anything about public health or that people are going to die who don't have to die.

Thousands of people have died in the United States. We did not have to die. Let me double back to that. One of the organizations that I wanted to get your reading on and that's the WHO, which has been subject to a lot of political hectoring in the United States. The United States has threatened us. Now it's going to pull out of the WHO. Are any of the criticisms justified or is it just a whipping boy? Well, it's primarily a whipping boy. I think that publicly they were in a difficult position with China and I should say I almost have a conflict of interest. One of my closest friends is a assistant director general, WHO. You know, privately they were pushing as hard as they could to get information and we're not getting very far. I believe that they were afraid if they publicly started to attack them, they'd get even less information.

This is almost like the Washington journalist's problem of access versus honest reporting. That's true. So they knew that they weren't getting what they needed. The question is how do you get it? What was the best way to proceed regarding China? China has simply not been forthcoming. There was no question about it. Or at least not in my view. I think the WHO statement the other day there was not an official policy statement for the one we talked about earlier about a symptomatic transmission. I think that was a, you know, a serious mistake. Messaging in a pandemic is extraordinarily important when you're in an entire approach to controlling the disease depends on public compliance with your advice. Then you've got to be very, very careful in anything you say

that might affect how people respond to that advice. And, you know, that was a mistake. So I was disappointed in that. We're living in a time when there's a widespread skepticism to put it mildly about authority and expertise. So going forward, if somebody asked you, John, I'm hearing all this stuff about this. And I don't know who to believe. What would you say? Well, I would still rely on the CDC's website, particularly when it came to disease advice. I guess the CDC has been under such political pressure from the White House. Maybe the most disturbing thing occurred about two weeks ago when the CDC withdrew its guidance about church choirs. That really bothered me.

And, you know, I'm sure that pressure came from the White House. And, you know, there's a point where I think you say, no, I'm not going to put my name on that if you want to fire me, fire me. And I think that might have been that point. Because if there's one, you know, pretty clearly identified problem area, it would be situations like a church choir, people pretty closely packed, speaking loudly or in that case, singing for an extended period of time. And for them to have withdrawn their guidance on choirs, that troubled me a lot. I think Redfield should have, Redfield should have drawn the line there. I was not happy. The guidance was not go play golf instead, was it? Well, playing golf would be a lot safer than it would. I mean, the transmission outdoors is, there's not a lot of transmission outdoors.

So we shouldn't look for big spike following these weeks of protest, because they're all outdoors. Well, that's a little bit different, because people may be closely packed. And it's hard to say. It depends. You know, I went to in Jackson Square in New Orleans, where I live and where you also have a place. You know, there are a lot of people who were keeping pretty decent spaces at that rally or protest. And a surprising number were wearing masks. I was pleasantly surprised. Well, men, people in New Orleans like to wear masks every day of the year, you know, as part of the culture. Good point. Good point. And it was outside, so it's not clear. But in other areas, if they're singing, chanting, shouting, and they're fairly close, yeah, there's going to be transmission.

Wouldn't be the same that there would be indoors, but there'd be still be transmission. Someone on a beach, I'm not very concerned about. However, you then go to the bar at the beach. That's different now. But lying out there on the sun or jumping in the water, even when beaches are crowded, people are still usually a few. You know, certainly you're one meter away physically. In most cases, more than that. So beaches don't trouble me. I think that concern was a little bit overblown. John, it's always enlightening. I was going to say it's a pleasure. But, you know, when you mentioned public bathrooms, the pleasure went all out of this conversation. But it's always enlightening to talk to you, and especially on the subject where there's so much noise that has to be filtered out before you get in the general din of what we're hearing.

It's a pleasure to hear pretty straight information without the din. So thank you again for helping the listeners kind of figure this all out and always good to talk to you. And I think this is important and worthy of celebration in New Orleans as the opening of a new garbage and generator. Thank you again. Thank you. Always a pleasure. Now the apologies of the week. Oh, a plethora. A shed load of apologies this week had to be kind of selective. Just a sampling. Just a random but sort of representative sampling. A Georgia high school is issued an apology and a promise to reprint this year's yearbook after an inappropriate photo featuring Martin Luther King Jr. and racist language made it into the book. Students at Collins Hill High School in Suwani were shocked to find a photoshopped image of the famed civil rights rights leader posing next to a young man holding a notebook

that said, official n-word pass. The letter of families and staff members Collins principal Karenza wing called the image of inappropriate and racist and unacceptable. The school is investigating who submitted the photo. How it managed to go unaddressed before the yearbooks went to print. I remember the scene at my college yearbook. I was next door doing the humor magazine. They were drunk most of the time, so that may be how it got in. Wing said an initial investigation found that some pages were left unfinished before the school transitioned to digital learning. And the yearbook company replaced those pages with submitted senior selfies. She confirmed the photo was submitted by the yearbook staff. And that school officials were meeting with those involved. I know offensive words and sentiments like the one included in this photo are hurtful and you have my full apology. This has happened, she said. I'm disappointed in the students involved. This is not who we are at Collins Hill High School.

It does not reflect our values and beliefs. Unquote, it's never who we are. We're never who we are. Well, Wing initially said the school would hand up stickers of a replacement photo to all the purchase of your book. She'd later said all your books would be recalled, replaced with new revised ones. The stickers was a good idea. Bayline Melbourne, Australia, Rio Tinto Chief Executive Jean Sebastien Jacques, apologize this week, for distress caused by Rio's destruction last month of two ancient sacred aboriginal caves in Western Australia, and pledged full cooperation with an Australian government investigation. We're very sorry for the distress we've caused, the indigenous people, in relation to Ju Conge Gorge, and our first priority remains rebuilding trust with thee. Indigenous people, the apology marked Jacques's first public comments on the event since it occurred more than two weeks ago. The head of iron ore at Rio Tinto, which is a mining company, Chris Salisbury had previously expressed the miners' remorse,

although stopped short of saying that Rio had done anything wrong when he was interviewed by Australian media. With state government approval, that's Western Australia, the world's biggest iron ore miner destroyed two caves at Ju Conge Gorge that had previously contained evidence of continued human habitation, stretching back 46,000 years. This was part of its mine expansion in the Iron Rich Pilbara region. Australia's Senate is beginning a national inquiry into how the destruction of a cultural and historically significant site occurred. They'll have their report back by the end of September. Oh, sure they will. The world's largest automaker, Volkswagen will step up controls of marketing content and improve training of its personnel to prevent a repeat of the fewer caused by the Instagram. Did I say fewer in Volkswagen? Caused by the Instagram clip last month. Officials said, despite a diverse and international team's erracist video was produced,

said, you're going to Stockholm, head of marketing, at VW in a briefing with journalists. It seems very clear that apart from mistakes in the process chain, there were also shortcomings in creating sensitivity among employees. The clip was produced by Omnicom Groups Berlin-based subsidiary Voltage, sparked widespread and criticism intentions within the company. Voltage was established just last year to handle the VW account. The statement translated from the German Voltage said that an internal audit is underway, but we have so far no evidence that racist elements have been intentionally added to the Instagram video. Nevertheless, no one noticed such elements into diverse quality controls and approval processes. We have to do much better here in the future. They're going to invest in appropriate training. Even when the community made us aware on May 19th, contains racist elements that took too long to recognize the real problem. We are also very sorry for that.

Another business is apologizing Facebook. During an internal presentation there on this week, the company debuted features for Facebook Workplace, an intranet-style chat in office collaboration product, similar to Slack. Let's put somebody else out of business, don't you think? On Facebook, Workplace employees see a stream of content similar to a newsfeed, automatically generated trending topics based on what people are posting about, or the new tools allows administrators to remove and block certain trending topics among employees. The presentation discussed the benefits of content control, and it offered one example of a topic employers might find it useful to blacklist. The word was unionized. It sparked a flurry of posts from Facebook employees denouncing the feature. The following day the company presentation was taken down,

and after the presentation had been deleted, Karen Deep Anand, a product manager for Facebook, Workplace weighed in on an internal company board. He apologized for the unionized example, noting that, quote, censoring users is not the purpose of this feature, and Workplace's ambition is to give everyone a voice while maintaining a respectful work environment. That's a quote. He added that the oversight was likely, quote, lack of context versus bad intent from anyone on the team. Incident is the latest example of a deeply divided office environment at Facebook. The growing number of employees are openly expressing distrust in leadership. My favorite quote of all this, employee noted that many Facebook team members are now questioning the moral compass of Mark Zuckerberg. It took till now owners of Max's tap house in Felds Point, Maryland,

a tourist attraction in Baltimore, of apologized patrons after an employee shared a post dismissing police brutality on the very same Facebook, the post which the restaurant called disturbing asserted, quote, police will leave you alone if you don't do illegal stuff. It garnered criticism, commenters began to promise boycotts of the bar. Spokesman from Max's tap house said in a statement that the employee whom they did not name claimed to have shared the post by mistake. The bar firmly supports peaceful protests and the Black Lives Matter movement. The statement said owners intend to contribute a portion of this week's sales to organizations fighting injustice. Screenshots of the Max employees post to identify him as Jason Hard. But they're sorry now. It's so hard to be Jason Oregon State University's football program has dismissed red shirt freshman tight end of Rocco Carly from the team. This on the heels of an audio file coming to light from three years ago

with him saying derogatory and hateful speech toward African Americans, homosexuals, and Muslims. He issued a statement apologizing for his actions. I'm sorry this does not condone anything of what I've said, but I promise to you all that this video does not represent me. I was doing an accent of a Southern man and giving it a very satirical example of what we all thought would be funny. This in no way shape or form makes what I said right. I'm truthfully sorry to everyone I've heard and offended and I understand that I've not represented me or my family in any positive way during this situation. To my brothers and teammates and everyone of color that I've associated with, I hope you know me well enough to know I'm in no way shape or form a racist. Again, I apologize. Satire by Amateurs, more dangerous than ever. The president of a fraternal order of police chapter along Florida's Space Coast, not Space Ghost, don't get excited, is apologizing for a social media post

over the weekend that encouraged officers linked to departments accused of using excessive force during recent protests, to apply for jobs in Florida. Bert Gammon, president of the fraternal order of police, Lodge and Brevard County, called his post, going poor taste in his statement to local media. Hey Buffalo 57 in Atlanta 6, we're hiring in Florida. Lower taxes, no spineless leadership or dumb mayors rambling on at press conferences. Plus, we got your back. That was the post. Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivy distanced himself from the fraternal order of police post, calling it distracifal and insensitive to current important and critical issues that are occurring across our country. Stanislaus County Superior Court, this is in Northern California, is apologizing for a post on a Twitter account mocking protesters tearing down a Confederate statue, and endorsing President Trump's reelection. The court said it became aware of the post Thursday issued an apology the same day,

saying it had been hacked. Court later said one of its employees was responsible. Hacked from within. That is the worst kind. It hurts so much. AMC Entertainment holding Chief Executive Officer Adam Aaron, as apologized to a financial analyst. He downplayed her February concerns about the coronavirus. That was right before the crisis brought the theater chain to the brink of insolvency. Meghan Durkin, of a financial firm called Credit Suisse, had inquired about the spread of COVID-19 in Italy during the company's previous earnings car. Carl Aaron said, we adore you, Meghan, but there's about 19 questions in there. He went on to say that the economic impact of the outbreak was, quote, de minimus. This week when the company held its latest earnings call, Aaron's tone was quite different. He said to Durkin,

I owe you an apology. You asked me about 15 questions about the coronavirus in Italy, and I think I said something like it's eight theaters in Italy. Two and a half weeks later, it was 1,000 theaters in 15 countries. What he was indicating is that the pandemic forced AMC to close all of its theaters, leading to a loss of nearly 2.2 billion in the first quarter of the year. They're reopening their theaters here in the Los Angeles area. Some locations, though, will close permanently. He went on at the meeting to ask Durkin if she knew of any future crisis that AMC should watch out for. We've got the worst health problems since 1918. We've got the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, and we have the biggest social unrest in the United States since the 1960s. If there's a fourth one the world would like to throw at us, I just want to know if you want to predict what that one is. She said she had no issues on the last call and declined to make predictions. About fourth-coming calamities.

OG, there's an apology by one of the stars of Dance Moms. Nah. The apologies for the week, ladies and gentlemen, a copyrighted feature of this broadcast. . . . . . .

. . . . Who knows, this may be a new feature. They have to copyright it. The non-apology of the week. Secret service this weekend admitted after denying it for about a week and a half. That one of its officers did, in fact, use Pepper Spray as part of removing the crowd of protesters from Lafayette Square to enable President Trump to do his famous, really world famous, photo op in front of a church crossing the White Huns.

Secret service said, no, we didn't use Pepper Spray. Yeah, that was the non-apology of the week, ladies and gentlemen. Maybe the only one, but it's a goodie. That concludes this week's edition of the show. Program it turns next week at the same time on your radio station of choice. And on a time of your choosing on your audio device of choice. It's all about choice. And it'd be just like admitting you used Pepper Spray in the first place. If you'd agree to join with me then, would you? I already thank you very much, huh? A tip of the Lichot shop out of the San Diego desk, and Pam Haustead, and Thomas Walcher W&O New Orleans for Hope with today's program.

The email address for this here, Thang, a playlist of the music heard here on, and you're trans to get Car's Eye Talk T-shirts. Think of the thrill, all yours to enjoy, or not, at harryshear.com. And I'm on Twitter at the harryshear. The show comes to you from Century of Progress Productions and originates through the facilities of W&O New Orleans. Flagship station of the Changes Easy Radio Network.

So long from Santa Monica, California, known around the world as the home of the homeless. Thank you very much.