Le Show; 2020-02-16

from deep inside your audio device of choice. Deep and cold. It's the apologies of the week. Max Stasi says he wishes he had done the right thing when he learned about the Houston Astros sign stealing scheme is a baseball thing laid in their World Series Championship season way back in 2017. The former Astro catchers new teammates with a Los Angeles Angels also aren't happy with their rivals as they report just bring training Stasi apologized for his minor part in the Astros cheating after he was recalled by the club in August 2017. He played in just 14 games that season and didn't participate in the postseason yet still won a World Series title as part of their roster. You apologize to those around the game the people that were affected by it Stasi says the fans coaches

especially the kids who look up to us. You're supposed to set an example and do the right thing and we didn't do that. I haven't heard about the kids since the Clinton administration. Stasi said he was surprised to learn the extent of the Astros schemes when he joined the club late in the season. He was also unaware of any scene stealing sign stealing. I do scene stealing by the not really in the subsequent seasons it was wrong. He said I feel terrible. Another Astros sign stealing apology for a super utility player Marvin. Marvin Gonzalez issued his apology. I feel regret and I'm remorsefully says he now plays for the Minnesota twins. He also said it's impossible to know if the Astros would have won the World Series in 2017 without stealing signs. Play it again. What the hell? We got all the time in the world. Dayline Minneapolis target admits a one Z it carried in some stores misidentified the mascot for the largest university in

its home state Minnesota. The Minneapolis based retail giant apologize to the University of Minnesota golden golfers fans for carrying a baroon one Z with the words Minnesota Badgers. Badgers is the nickname of Big 10 rival Wisconsin. I get those two states confused all the time. Dayline Thomas River New Jersey. Thomas River School District officials are investigating allegations from a student about a teacher's classroom lesson on slavery. We're getting a lot of these ladies and gentlemen district spokesman Michael Kenny confirmed that Lawrence Cuneo a social studies teacher at Tom's River. Intermediate East is the subject of the students complaint. Cuneo the teacher is also the mayor of nearby Pine Beach. We were recently alerted by a Tom's River Intermediate East student of alleged incident that took place at the school regarding a lesson on slavery. Our district is undergoing a third their investigation. Yeah, thorough investigation into this matter. The lesson

allegedly included having students pretending to pick cotton like slaves while Cuneo made sounds like a whip cracking and kicked students. The intent of this lesson was to show how degrading and despicable the institution of slavery was in our history said the teacher. Slavery existed in our country in the lessons learned even if uncomfortable need to be told at no time was my intention to harm the sensitivities of any student. If this lesson did that I apologize to those affected. Now there's school apology. It's a thing. A Washington state high school principal who called former LA Lake or Kobe Bryant a rapist on her Facebook page on the day he died has resigned. The post which was deleted and now or later said not gonna lie seems to me that karma caught up with a rapist today. Lisa Secora now former principal of a high school in Comis Washington resigned after being placed on leave. She wrote a letter to the parents and students of the school. You may be aware that a copy of a

social media post I made in my personal Facebook page is circulating digitally in our community today. I apologize to my staff and now I apologize to you. I'm want to apologize for suggesting that a person's death is deserved. It was inappropriate and tasteless. Further I apologize for the disruption because to our learning environment today my emotions and past experiences got the best of me in that moment. We teach our students that what we share online has permanency. Well what I wrote was posted on a private Facebook account to people are my friends and was quickly removed. I acknowledge that private does not always mean private. Unquote the teacher. The teacher just taught us all a big lesson. If we don't know that yet. You know what I'm saying? I think you do. The New Jersey governor Phil Murphy apologized to those. We failed the middle allegations that his 2017 campaign for governor was a toxic place for women to work. This is a thing. Democratic governor also said his administration will

soon unveil new policies to better protect women from harassment in New Jersey politics and government. Like keeping him keeping Michael Bloomberg out. Any promise that any future campaign he has will be a part of will lead the nation in progressive workforce policies and be a model of a respectful workplace. A former top advisor Julie Bruginski publicly said his 2017 campaign was quote the most toxic workplace environment I've ever seen in 25 years of working on political campaigns. Other women on the campaign made similar complaints. To those we failed in the mission of equality just as fairness and respect for all I apologize. Governor Murphy said we must absolutely get better moving forward and we will. Will we get better or will we just move forward? Radio station in Netherlands has been forced to apologize after it played a parody song about coronavirus that encouraged listeners to avoid Chinese food as it might be spreading the disease called prevention is better than Chinese has been played this tune at Dutch carnivals and be by the artist

tune. Rough translations say the song appears to contain lyrics that say we don't need the virus in our country it's all by caused by the stinking Chinese people. The radio station radio 10 apologized for airing the song they've since removed the show from their playlist what was meant a satire joke appears to be experienced as very painful by many the radio station said apologize for this do they and remove the relevant videos from all channels. The DJ who played the song also issued a personal apology explaining the song should never been played they'd like Montevisto Colorado a man was caught on camera be rating a woman because she can't speak English at an Elk's lodge in Montevista Southwest of Canon City near Alamosa for those of you who know where any of those things are woman and her friends were at the Elk's lodge for bingo

night the argument started when she asked the man for a card to play and sing and sued he ends up saying why don't you get the hell out I don't have to learn I live in America I live in America I speak English the he well the Elk's organization apologized for the incident the first in seropology the vitriolic actions and words of the involved individual are inexcusable intolerable and totally unacceptable his behavior is not representative of the Elks organization or its members or their beliefs that Elk has tendered his resignation is no longer an officer has been discharged from the bingo committee out I mean out the person at whom those hurtful words and actions were directed was personally apologized to that evening and apology was also made to everyone in attendance what about the Elks who weren't there the absent Elks investigation launched Monday after a Nazi flag was found hanging in

a classroom window in Maryland public high school resulted in an apology school officials responded to the incident the principal Daniel lippy right wrote an email we immediately responded to the concern remove the flag there was a lesson involving World War II the flag was left hanging after the lesson was over we pride ourselves at accepting all members of our society this message is central to we who are patriots the flag should have been taken down after the lesson and it was very poor taste have been left up in a window I know it will be used as a learning lesson for staff and students I apologize on behalf of the school for it happening and soccer star Delay Ali that's apologized for a video he posted on Snapchat about the coronavirus outbreak about which much more in a moment the Tottenham Hart spur midfielder deleted the video in which he filmed himself wearing a face mask and appeared to mock an Asian man I just

wanted to apologize on my behalf who better for the video I posted it wasn't funny and I realized that immediately and took it down he's 23 years old ladies and gentlemen I let myself down and the club I don't want you guys to have that impression of me because it wasn't funny and I realized that straight away and took it down it isn't something that should be joked about I'm sending all my love and all my thoughts and prayers with everyone in China please come see our games when we play there he didn't say that but I think that's what he meant the apologies a week ladies and gentlemen copyrighted feature this broadcast In this corner, go read, on read,

Bend it and notes to make your heart bleed. When you thought you had heard everything, I'll go to the rubble begins to sing. It's easy to check it on Jackson Square. The porch cuts hits while the people stare. Sun is low, the mood is right. Two bands roll in on the streets tonight. Two bands roll in on the streets tonight. Two bands roll in on the streets tonight. Two bands roll in on the streets tonight. On the other corner is Andrew's bone, Keepin' at six wardin' his toe. Open his mouth and you hear a sound. Open his mouth and you hear a sound. Open his mouth and you hear a sound. Open his mouth and you hear a sound.

Open his mouth and you hear a sound. Open his mouth and you hear a sound. Open his mouth and you hear a sound. Open his mouth and you hear a sound. Open his mouth and you hear a sound. Open his mouth and you hear a sound.

Open his mouth and you hear a sound. Open his mouth and you hear a sound. Open his mouth and you hear a sound. Open his mouth and you hear a sound. In any case, he is the only non-scientist

member to have served on an advisory board on endemic or pandemic diseases for two presidents. He's on the faculty at Tulane and adjunct professor of public health. And as I say, he's a friend of this program, John Barry. John, welcome. Thanks for having me back. And also author of the book, The Great Epidemic, The Great Influenza, about the epidemic of 1918, as well as rising tide, the iconic and authoritative book about the 1927 Mississippi River flood. Having dispensed with your credentials, you sent out an email to some folks explaining your thoughts a couple of weeks ago on the state of this virus, the novel coronavirus. Right. So let's start with some of the facts that you laid out. Like, how do we measure the power of this thing without having experienced it yet? Okay. First, that was actually the email was an unedited version of an op-ed

that ran in the Washington Post a couple of weeks ago. And what I was trying to do was provide some context to look at the coronavirus outbreak. So anybody wants to go to the Washington Post? Certainly find it online. You know, my name, coronavirus, I'll pull it right up on hopes. And I was comparing it to, there were two other coronaviruses that have invaded the human population having jumped from animals in the past couple of decades. The first was SARS. I'd give it further background. It was probably everybody already knows by now if you follow the news at all, coronaviruses are also one of the main causes of the common cold. So they're not necessarily deadly whatsoever. But SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, did jump from bats to humans in 2002.

There would be bats biting humans? No, probably passed through or may have, not clear, may have passed through an animal called a civet that was sold in Chinese markets. And for eating? Correct. For eating. They eat civets. People eat a lot of strange things. I know. Anyway, SARS killed about 10 to 15 percent of the people who were infected. That was completely contained and essentially eliminated from the human population, although there have been a few isolated cases in the last few years. That was pretty relatively easily eliminated. It was quite scary for a time. And it might well have erupted into a full scale pandemic. But the key was that people were most infectious

when they were most sick. So you were not walking around and infecting people. If you were contagious, you were already flat on your back unable to move. So it was self limiting disease then. To a certain extent. Yeah. And most of the by an overwhelming majority of the cases were actually. It was a self limiting disease then. To a certain extent. Yeah. And most of the by an overwhelming majority of the cases were actually contracted in hospitals and largely among healthcare workers. And there was a relatively long incubation period. So that made it. Containable. And it was in fact contained. Although it seemed like a close call. And then about seven years ago, another coronavirus called the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, which kills. Right. Which kills approximately 40 percent of those people, infected, which would be very scary. That erupted in the Middle East.

That's actually a camel virus. And that is somewhat similar. And most of the cases, it has not spread to the general population. It wasn't that easy to catch. It needed fairly close contact. And most of those cases have also been in hospital situations or spread of the disease, or a lot of them anyway. So that has not been eliminated. It still circulates. But it does not seem to be a threat to cause a widespread pandemic. Unless you get too close to your camel. That'll do it. But this one is a little bit more scary. Fortunately, it has nothing like the case fatality rate of either SARS or MERS. We don't really know what the case fatality rate is, because we have no idea how many people really are infected with it. They have reported about 40,000 cases worldwide,

almost all of them in China, although it has been in, I think, 24 countries now, including US, Canada, and so forth. Great Britain, I think. Most of the European countries. And it is potentially scary. What we do know is that the people in the hospital die roughly. The people are sick enough to be hospitalized, because a lot of them do have very minor outbreaks of the disease, similar to the common cold. But those who are sick enough to get hospitalized, roughly 10 to 15% of them die. And if you want to compare that to influenza, that's roughly double the case fatality rate of influenza people who are sick enough to get hospitalized. The other thing, epidemiologists refer to what they call the R-NOT, which is the reproductive number. How many people are infected by one person?

This disease seems to have a reproductive number in R-NOT of 2.2, which is very, very, very high. Seasonal influenza, which is generally considered about 1.28, so about 1.3. And seasonal influenza can easily second between 10%, and 20% population any given year, with a reproductive number of as low as 1.3 compared to 2.2. In 1918, a pandemic that killed between 1,500,000,000 people in a world population that is only 1-quarter of 10%. Say that number again. The 1918 influenza pandemic killed between 1,500,000 people. And if you adjust for population, that would be between 225,450,000,000 people today who are more than four times the size, population-wise. And most of them died within about 14-week period.

But that reproductive number was 1.8. The current coronavirus outbreak is higher than that. As scary as that sounds, the reproductive number for SARS was also well over 2. And MERS was also pretty high, and both of the SARS was essentially eliminated and MERS is controlled. So that's not the only thing in play here. But it is scary. It's difficult to see how this disease will be controlled. As I understand it from the piece you wrote, one of the differences is that it is infectious before it's symptomatic. Do I have that right? Influences generally considered to be infected yourself and pass a disease to somebody else before you have any symptoms whatsoever, so you have no idea that you're sick.

The Chinese seem to think that that is also the case with the coronavirus. I don't know that that's been absolutely established scientifically yet. Although there is evidence supporting that hypothesis. I also know some people who don't think that's a case or that if it is the case, it is possible but uncommon. That, of course, makes it that much more scary. So the Chinese are doing things that would be absolutely impossible in a free society. Closing down entire cities, for example. And not just that, they are literally their instances where they put a chain and a lock on the outside of somebody's door. So they cannot get out of the house. So if there's a fire, they're done. They die. You could impose a quarantine in a free society, but you couldn't do anything like that.

Well, there's also the case of the doctor who first reported signs of the disease who was censured by the Chinese government. Right. And he has had to essentially confess to spreading rumors and he got the disease and died and created all sorts of right now, a tremendous uproar in a tiny society. SARS became very dangerous as a threat to cause a pandemic because the Chinese government essentially hit it for four or five months. I mean, the first case was November 2002. The first you heard of it publicly was February or March 2003, there are already over 300 cases. And they were not forthcoming whatsoever with facts about the disease until the outbreak was well underway. They learned a lot, one thought. And in terms of the actual scientists, they have been, quote, transparent, unquote.

They have been very prompt in getting virus samples and the genome out there so that other scientists around the world could learn about the disease. We've already got a possible antiviral drug that is being tested. And this is extraordinary. Is this fast? Is that under government auspices or private? Well, it's a company called Giliad. And in California biotech. That's not the only candidate. There are also a vaccine candidates that are already ready for testing. So in terms of communicating scientifically, the Chinese have been, I think, quite good in terms of their bureaucracy and other parts of the government. They've not been so good. As you mentioned a minute ago, Chinese doctor

who died last week, who tried to warn colleagues about it, got himself in serious trouble for telling the truth. You know, just to take a moment on that, it's bizarre to me that an authoritarian government with the economic ambitions of China would not want to be showing off how great they are at finding discovering and finding cures or vaccines or other ways to humiliate such a threat as opposed to pretending it doesn't exist, which makes them look stupid. Well, you know, bureaucrats, their first instinct is CYA. Yeah. And everything's fine. Yeah. I think now we're up to maybe half a dozen different explanations for how this jumped to humans. The original one, I think, was at a seafood market. And then I've heard other, there's another animal that's been blamed for being an intermediary from bats. But what is the one?

Yeah. Neither was it. It had never heard a laponkin or something like that. Yeah, something like that. Anyway, but it was supposed to be an intermediary from bats to us, right? So do we know, for a fact, how this jumped? No. Not yet. Not to my knowledge. Do we get closer to knowing the longer the time passes? I don't know that it'll ever be absolutely definitive, but you can be pretty sure. There's still a little bit of controversy, not a lot, about SARS. You know, most of the viruses that cause pandemics by definition jump from another species. If you're going to cause a pandemic, almost by definition, that means that the human population has not seen this pathogen before. So therefore, the immune system is not prepared to deal with it. That's why influenza is so dangerous because there are reservoirs

and the influenza, in fact, is almost every mammal. And the natural reservoir for influenza is birds. The 1918 virus may have jumped directly for, there are eight genes in the influenza virus. It's clear, seven of them were a very recent avian origin. It still may have passed through a mammal, very possibly a pig in 2009. Of course, we had this flying flu pandemic that sort of wasn't because it was quite mild, but it looks scary for a minute. Scientifically, there's no reason that the next influenza pandemic and there will be another one. No reason that it would be either more mild or lethal like 1918. But going back to China, for example, for a second. In 2009, when we did have an influenza pandemic,

although a mild one, the Chinese health minister said, this is a foreign disease and we are going to keep it out of China. Now, that was a ridiculous statement and a goal that was absolutely impossible to accomplish because of the nature of that virus. Again, even in an authoritarian society, even if it were much more so than China is, that wouldn't have been possible. The steps they are taking today to try to contain the coronavirus are absolutely extreme, as I said earlier. They would not be possible anywhere in the West. And I don't know how good their numbers are. I think most people believe that their numbers understated not so much that they're lying, but they're not testing. For one thing, they have a great shortage of test kits. Which are made in China, right?

Probably. I mean, so many, that's part of the potential problem that faces us from this disease and not just us, but the world economy. First, in terms of healthcare, well over 90% of the antibiotics that we use in American hospitals come from China or India, and the ones that come from India, the raw materials for them usually come from China. Practically 100% of the hypodermic needles, the surgical gloves, the surgical gowns, the mask, all those things come from China. So, if you have right now that much of that, well, it's a big country. It's roughly 50 million people have been shut down. But if you start having supply chain interruptions, and we're on the verge of that, and I notice that Hyundai has already shut down one of its automobile production factories because of supply chain problems. But if we start having serious supply chain problems,

then the immediate healthcare for many other diseases becomes threatened. But beyond healthcare alone, perhaps we don't have the same percentage of Chinese goods and some other industries, but you do have supply chain interruptions and everything shuts down. And the world could take a very significant economic hit. And SARS took 1% off the GDP of China, pretty significant amount. You're saying this virus could hurt the re-election chances of Donald Trump? The steps that countries are taking. Regarding, as you may know, the National Security Council, you probably do know. The National Security Council used to have a global health unit which looked at things like pandemics and health threats. And it was really one of the best units in the world that looked at these issues.

And of course, Trump eliminated that unit from the National Security Council. Covered a disease, just gone. The steps that countries are taking, the steps that individuals are taking, cutting off flights to China, this seems to reflect the opinion that, while looking at 1918, that killed all those millions of people without the interconnected global society that we have today. So one can just imagine, you know, viruses hopping all these flights, many more than none existed at that point. Hiding in packages, hiding in cargo, not necessarily even being carried by humans on the flight. Is this a sane response? Well, it depends on the disease. If this were influenza, it would not be a sane response. This disease is very strange because in the United States, you know,

we have at this point, 12 cases. And one would have expected a disease that was had an R0 of 2.2 to have infected significantly more people than that. It may well have. I know some, you know, very highly regarded public health people who are convinced that there are many more cases in the United States, but people are not being tested for them. How are doctors supposed to know when somebody presents? That's exactly the point, that if you walk into a doctor's office with the symptoms of a common cold, they're not going to test you for a coronavirus unless you have some history of a contact with China or a person who's been to China. So you might be walking around with that. That may very well be the case.

Obviously, however, if you were to come down with a severe case in viral pneumonia, then people would run a test and so far that has not happened. That is how you would know that you had it for sure if you came down with pneumonia. I mean, I'm talking about somebody who... Well, hypochondriac. So let's say there's a hypochondriac and they start sniffling. How do they know when... Well, they wouldn't know unless they insisted upon a test for the coronavirus. This particular virus infects both the lower respiratory tract, which means lungs and the upper respiratory tract. There was initially some controversy over whether it infected the upper respiratory tract at all. I think the evidence right now suggests that it does, but it primarily seems to have been a lower respiratory tract virus. But if you've got common cold symptoms, that's all upper respiratory tract. SARS infected the lower respiratory tract.

So essentially, if you got a severe disease, I mean, you were starting out with viral pneumonia. If you looked in an X-ray, it was a white out. There was like nothing that you could see. The highly congested lung. That was exactly like the lungs in 1918 from influenza. We really, at this point, still don't know what's going on in this country. As I said in that op-ed, and I emailed you in an unedited version of the op-ed, you know, there were some space considerations as there always are. So they cut some stuff out of it. It's very puzzling that you have a reproductive number of over two, and you've got 12 cases in the United States. Do we know when the first case was identified? I mean, it was fairly soon after, but it was somebody... So sometimes passed. Enough time by that number, sure.

Yeah. Going back to your original question, doesn't make sense in terms of suspending flights and things like that for this disease. And it seems to. Yeah. There's no question that China has made progress in the sense of dramatically slowing the spread of this disease. That is still a long, long way from being in a position to say that they can control it. Personally, I don't think it can be controlled. I think eventually it'll escape and probably become endemic. I don't think that it's the end of the world. I think it's, you know, will be like another influenza season. But influenza is not so nice. People are so used to it that they are likely to take it for granted. But influenza is a serious disease. How many does it kill in this country?

Well, it varies quite a bit, depending on how virulent the virus gets, because the virus mutates changes every year. How many people get vaccinated? How effective the vaccine is? The effectiveness of influenza vaccines have ranged from a best of 62 percent down to a low of 10 percent. And, you know, that's not great for a vaccine. Some vaccines are almost 100 percent effective. Anyway, according to the CDC, influenza kills anywhere from a low of about 3,000 Americans a year to a high two years ago of 61,000 Americans. That's more than double traffic death. I don't know about the traffic deaths, but I'll take your word for that. It's very close to that, yeah. Okay. And, you know, that's a lot of people. So if you have a new disease that is going to add a similar health burden, that's serious. Let me ask you this. You mentioned this peculiarity, at least it's peculiar to me, of this annual mutating of the influenza virus. And our attempt to predict which way it's going to mutate so we can get a proper vaccine.

What if this virus mutates? Well, I mean, that's another question. You know, it's, it does mutate. Yeah. The question is, are the parts of the virus that the immune system recognizes, do they mutate? You know, in measles and influenza, actually, they're both RNA viruses. RNA virus is coronaviruses. RNA virus mutates a much more quickly than DNA viruses. But measles and influenza mutate at the same rate. However, if you have one exposure to measles or a vaccination, you are immune for life. From any mutation of that. Correct. And the reason is the parts of the measles virus that mutate are not necessarily recognized by the immune system. The parts, the measles virus that don't mutate, they can't change.

The conserved portions of the virus is the technical phrase, conserved portions of the virus. If they change, the virus won't function. If you have a sense of how rapidly, and that's the opposite in influenza, and influenza, the parts of the virus that the immune system recognizes, are not really that important to the continued existence and functioning of the virus. So they mutate, and you know, if a single influenza virus infects a single cell, generally between six and twelve hours later, that one cell will expel anywhere between 100,000 and a million new virus particles. Every one of them is different. And 99% of those new virus particles can't function. They're incapable of infecting another virus and propagating. But that still leaves 1% somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 viruses that can. But they're all different.

As I said, the conserved portions of the virus, you know, if they change, which is what happens to 99% of the influenza virus particles that are produced, the virus can't function. So I don't know if it's been resolved, whether the parts of the coronavirus that do mutate are recognized by the immune system or not. When you talk about the speed with which vaccine development is progressing, that answer incidentally, I apologize for not knowing. You'd be graded on a curve. When you talk about the speed with which vaccine development is proceeding, is that somehow related to the fact that this is part of a family of viruses we've had experience with? Yes. You know, I mean, certainly SARS and MERS, there are people that have looked at vaccine development for them. There's no money in it because SARS has been largely eliminated. MERS does not seem to be a major threat, but the fact that it does mutate,

you know, people have studied it. They've studied SARS. There are relations between these different things. So yeah, there is a certain amount of work and infrastructure that exists that could be applied to this one. I was talking, we were talking a moment ago about the sanity of interrupting or canceling, cutting off air travel between countries or among countries to deal with this. On the individual level, I read different things all the time about the steps that individuals can take to face masks to work at all. Let me go back to the plane stuff to canceling flights and things like that. Because of the extreme measures that China is taking, then that helps make sense for not flying to China, or canceling the flights and so forth, you know, with influenza at one work.

And if China was not taking these extreme measures, then it probably wouldn't work as well. You even mentioned things like cargo. I mean, there's evidence. I just saw a scientific article today that the coronavirus may survive outside the body on a hard surface for as long as nine days. So that's a long time, which actually is a good segue into your last question about what you do to protect yourself and Washington's a good one. You know, if someone coughs, covers their mouth with their hand, opens the door, and you come along two days later and the virus is on the door knob, you open the door and then you rub your eyes or you on and cover your mouth, then you have just potentially infected yourself. So that's why hand washing is considered not only for this virus, but you know, for many things, and particularly in the cold season,

when you get colds, influenza, and other diseases, respiratory diseases, a hand washing is a very, very important measure to take to protect yourself. Masks are much more controversial. Even going back to 1918, they ran tests. The scientists in 1918 were first rate scientists, even though they didn't even know what a virus was at that time. But they discovered in 1918 that if someone is sick and you put a mask on person who is sick, that will in fact protect people who are well. It's not a complete protection, but it will be still reasonably effective and well worth doing. That's certainly the case today, whether it's this coronavirus or some of the respiratory disease, putting a mask on someone who is sick will be very helpful. In terms of a well person, you know, there are people who believe in them. That sounds a little theological.

Well, you know, if you had someone else as a guest who happened to think that they were a good thing, they could probably be fairly articulate and make a good case for it. I'm not one of those people. You know, they will stop a large droplet. But then you have that, you know, they had to fit properly. When you take them off, you have to be extremely careful, because they'll collect all sorts of nasty things. So taking them off is actually one of the most dangerous things. You think you need gloves to take them off with, isn't it? Yeah, frankly. You know, certainly very careful hand-washing after you take them off. And it varies from disease to disease for influenza, I think, wearing a mask to protect yourself is probably useless. I think most influenza is transmitted through aerosol transmission. Aerosol is sort of a term of art that means the particles are so small. They will float in the air continuously.

They will never fall out of the air as opposed to a droplet, which is big enough and heavy enough that someone will cough or sneeze and it will go out of the air, but then it will fall to the ground. Aerosol is very small. And so they can get through a mask theoretically. Yeah, certainly a surgical mask. And there is another kind of mask in a so-called N95 mask, which is essentially a respirator. Those things have to be fitted very carefully to work. And they're ugly. They're also uncomfortable. You know, we're taping this in New Orleans, both of us live in New Orleans. After Katrina, professionals who went into areas where they feared toxic mold were wearing N95s to protect themselves from the toxic mold. And they were studies that these professionals who were supposed to knew what they were doing, well over 60% of them did not put the N95 on properly or didn't wear it properly, became uncomfortable,

they moved it and so forth, it's had no effect. So, you know, the surgical mask for influenza, I don't think is particularly useful unless somebody's sick again and you put it on the sick person. N95, if you wear it properly, it will give you protection. They're expensive, too, right? When they're not incredibly expensive. Like 200 bucks? No, they're not anything like that. But you... I'll send you one for 200 bucks. But you need a lot of them, because you can't just keep wearing them over and over. Ah, yeah. A less news you can use kind of question. There is, we know, a season for influenza, it's cold or weather, and supposedly the viruses don't do as well in warm weather, which is why you don't have flu epidemics during the summer. Do we know if this coronavirus is similarly seasonal? I don't know. We'll find out, obviously.

Yeah, and that doesn't mean you can't get influenza in the summer and you could go to Australia. Well, going back to 1918, the first, there was a spring wave, which was actually relatively mild, and the virus seemed to get more dangerous as time passed. And the first really lethal outbreak was in July and early August in Switzerland. Wow. And in fact, it was so lethal, according to US military intelligence report from Switzerland. It wasn't actually influenza. It was the bubonic plague of the Middle Ages. Although, of course, it was influenza. So that seasonality certainly influenza tends to be in the winter for the, you know, people are inside, so they're closer together. They're kissing each other at holiday time. Whatever. Yeah. And, you know, as you said, the virus will survive longer in low humidity and colder temperatures. But that doesn't mean that it dies instantly

in higher humidity and warmer temperatures. It just won't survive as long. So I've seen in print predictions that this thing, whatever scale it reaches in the next couple of months, should abate by April, you would not give credence. We don't know anything, but I would say there are too many unknowns. Okay. So a person living in the continental United States who is not flying to China, but may fly to Britain or Canada or other more likely or more common destinations. Is there reason for that person to be... No, fearful? No. Okay. You know, we will know when there's a time to be concerned. And again, at this point, even if it were to become, what, frankly, I probably expect, I think it will become a full-scale pandemic eventually. I mean, it escapes Chinese confinement.

Yeah. It's like a severe influenza outbreak, which is not nothing. You know, as I said, in the United States alone in a bad year, which was two years ago, 61,000 Americans died. That's a lot of people. But it is not going to wipe out civilization either. What? We could hope. No, I mean, I'm a little... I'm a little cynical about this subject of civilization right now. Wow. That's all well. That's a relative tone. You know, that apocryphal quote, attributed to Gandhi, right? He was asked, what do you think about Western civilization? He said, I think it would be a good idea. Well, that's reassuring, I guess, for most folks, that they can tamp the fear down to a low flame at this point. Do you think from what you know both from your work inside and outside the government that the Centers for Disease Control

is at this point a reliable source of information on where this is going? Yes. Most reliable? Oh, easily. Okay. Good. All right, so we'll pay attention to them. Yeah. And, you know, WHO has a more political game. You know, they're a unit of the United Nations. I'm not sure everybody realizes they're essentially part of the United Nations. The head of the WHO is Praise China. I know a lot of people who think that that Praise has been overstated. They have to keep working with them. You know, the WHO and CDC offered the Chinese help from WHO and CDC scientists. Some time ago, the Chinese very recently, a couple of days, weeks after it was offered, said they'd accept WHO help. That's, you know, you have the two levels of the Chinese. You have the scientists on the ground

who have been transparent and have done, I think, a first-rate job. And then you have the bureaucracy that doesn't want to admit any error still or that they need any help, you know, just as earlier I quoted the Chinese health minister a decade ago saying that 2009 H1N1 was the foreign disease and we keep it out of China. That's unfortunately still a little bit of their attitude toward the rest of the world. Cover their ass and so forth and so on. We don't need any help. We can handle it. There's a lot of pressure on them politically now, fortunately. You know, you mentioned the death of the doctor who tried to warn of the disease. You know, we'll see. We'll see how far this goes in China politically. It could be like one of the big snowstorms in New York City which, you know, was good at destroying the political ambitions of certain mayors in the past.

Not just New York. There's a lot of towns first, right? Not getting the snow plows out as a short circuit of the mayors career. One last sort of sci-fi question. And I'm not a fan of sci-fi. But will the era of these kinds of illnesses... Just beginning. Migrating. Just beginning. Really? Yes. I was going to say, will our sometimes predicted transition to lab-grown food interrupt the process of stuff jumping from live animals to humans? Well, that's an interesting thought. I hadn't considered that one. But I think the humans are entering environments that they didn't used to live in. Well, they give us dominion. And we're taking it. Yeah. And that is in that and climate change. They're exposing populations to either diseases

that didn't used to be a threat in certain areas of the world, like dengue, which will probably show up in the United States in full or forced as temperatures rise and entirely new diseases. There was this hypothesis, in fact, that smallpox entered the human population. Actually, it's a human virus. But it came from a cowpox-like virus that infected a lot of mammals. But that was climate-related. About 3500 or 4000 years ago, there was a climate change then. Actually, a huge volcanic explosion. Anyway, it shifted things around. And that cowpox-like virus entered the human population and mutated into the lethal smallpox virus that we fortunately managed to get rid of about 40 years ago.

With huge effort and expense. Yeah. I'm so grateful for you spending this time and I want to end the conversation by declaring that the name of the animal we were trying to think of was Pangolin. Thank you. I'm glad. I wasn't looking it up. Yeah, there was no use of Google. I had my phone here and I was tempted to look it up. But sitting here focused on you. John Berry, thank you very much for spending this time and informing us and tamping down the fear perhaps a little bit. Or not. Thanks. You're very welcome, good to see you again, too. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that's going to conclude this week's edition of the show. The programmer turns next time next week at the same time or next time at the same week

on this radio station and on your audio device of choice any week, any time, any universe. And to be just like, stand well if you'd agree to be with me then. Would you already thank you very much, huh? A typical a show shoppo to the San Diego desk to Pam Hallstead do Garrett Pittman here at WWNO New Orleans and to Graham Robertson at Storyville Sound here in New Orleans. For help with the days broadcast. The email address for this program, you can email me. I'll read it. Your chance to get cars I talk to you shirts and the playlists of the music here on all at harryshare.com and I'm on Twitter at the harryshare. The show comes to you from Century of Progress Productions and originates through the facilities

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