Hey StarTalk fans, Neil deGrasse Tyson here.
I just wanted to give you a quick update on the episode you're about to watch.
I sat down with Dr. Irwin Redlener, who's Director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness,
that was two weeks ago on March 3rd. And since then the progress of the coronavirus
has continued at a pace that none of us predicted.
In fact, the World Health Organization declared it a pandemic
and many cities are encouraging social distancing either by suggestions or by actual policy.
And so, we recommend everyone follow local authorities, local medical authorities on this.
We want this program to help you
make the best decisions you can when tracking the progress of this disease.
And for all I know, two weeks from now, I might have to give a preamble to this preamble
because of how much things may have changed relative to today.
So, we offer this show in the interest of your enlightenment, your health, and your wisdom.
Hey YouTube-iverse, a Cosmic Queries coming up now.
Disaster preparedness, what you need to know.
This is StarTalk, a Cosmic Queries Special Edition.
focusing on disaster preparedness.
Got with me Chuck Nice.
Yes.
As always.
Boom.
In the house.
Neil.
We're always doing this in front of some befuddled guest.
Yes, who's like why are these two reaching in front of me to bump hands.
Bump hands.
I've got Dr. Irwin Redlener, who is the Director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness.
Oh.
At Columbia University.
Excellent.
And he's a medical doctor by training
and he cut his teeth with, what, the kids...
What did you do with the kids?
It was the Children's Health Fund.
Children's Health Fund.
Exactly, with Paul Simon that we started these mobile units that took care of-
Paul Simon, the performer?
Paul Simon the singer-songwriter and we started in 1987
taking care of homeless kids in New York, now expanded across the country with -
Wow.
- 53 mobile medical pediatric units.
Whoa. Whoa.
That's quite noble.
And, and what a legacy.
Yes.
To have that keep going.
Sure.
Right, right, right.
I look forward to the day when it's no longer necessary.
I've been looking forward for that, to that for 33 years.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And so, disaster preparedness, who would have thought that that's even a thing.
Isn't it just you know get your go-bag? Isn't it just that?
Oh God, I wish it was, Neil. It just, it just -
Go-bag, you know, you have your flashlight.
And you got your radio, or knife, or whatever.
First-aid kit.
Yeah, yeah.
Side arm, or...
The whole thing.
No, hey, ladies and Gentleman, I was just kidding.
Yes.
Irwin has a bit, Irwin has a bit more dystopian view of disaster preparedness, I see.
They know I was kidding, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Depends on what state he's in.
Exactly.
So, yeah that's the individual things, there's things that you can do,
you look online, you go to the FEMA or the Red Cross website, they'll tell you all that.
What we are concerned about -
FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
But what we're, the much more important thing is society ready?
Is our government ready? Is the country ready for -
Are our institutions ready?
Are institutions ready, is the, is their readiness on the level of real serious
preparedness and pre-thought about what we actually need to do
to manage things like a, like a pandemic.
You know. That's kind of -
We know what to do, just, just raid all the shelves of the grocery store, obviously.
Right.
Only if you look like you're in a panic. Yes. but that's right. Yes.
You just buy all the, you just buy up all the mask that you can.
The mask and the Purell.
And the Purell.
And you're done.
And we're done.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We're all saved.
You're prepared.
Right.
In fact, I'm looking around here to see you got your stuff, I don't see anything but okay.
Probably hidden.
But no, but I think really the big thing is what does the country need to do,
what kind of responsible leadership do we need to have in order to do it
and should the country feel anywhere near comfortable, right now, for example when
we're dealing with this coronavirus or getting ready for any other kind of
major disaster, a huge, you know, coastal storm like we saw of Katrina
or hurricane Maria and so on.
So, there's lots of work -
Or asteroid.
That's right.
You can't leave out the asteroid.
You know we actually could.
Got to give them some love, too.
We could actually leave that out.
I hope we can leave that out.
Yeah.
Seriously, should we be worried about that?
That's another conversation.
Ah oh fine, okay.
And the answer is yes.
I can guarantee you that if the dinosaurs had a space program,
they would have knocked that asteroid out of the way.
All right. So true.
So, can I just for a second, just for plain every man here and ask you, number one, what is COVID-19?
What is a coronavirus?
As a category.
Right. It is, it is a category of viruses much like we had with SARS, something called MERS.
MERS.
Right.
Those are acronyms, right?
Those are, well Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome is MERS.
Didn't know that.
And SARS is Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.
Okay.
So, yes, so, they're all acronyms. COVID also is, what COVID is, is coronavirus disease.
Coronavirus disease, COVID-19.
It's called COVID-19 and the 19 just refers to last year when it was first recognized.
I was worried there were 18 others walking around.
Thank god.
And 6 more to come.
Right.
The COVID-25 is really the problem.
That's the one to watch out for.
Right, so, it's a category of virus.
Right.
And how does it differ because you know people hear coronavirus -
Why is it getting different...
What's the big deal?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, all kinds of crazy, what's the big deal?
So, the thing about a virus like this, which makes it ultimately into a pandemic
which is what we're dealing with now is that it's first of all it's a brand-new virus.
Okay.
That we've not seen before. It is a virus that has jumped from animals, some animal source to humans.
Right.
But more importantly it is now able to be transferred.
It jumped. It, it evolved.
It evolved, well if somebody caught it initially from an animal.
Okay.
Plenty of viruses, dangerous ones that animals have, that do not -
Get into human beings.
Correct.
So, this one has already made that leap and its now obviously infecting people but the big
important point about this it actually can be now transmitted from a person to
another person. And, and, and secondly it could be lethal. So, it's a new virus,
it's lethal, its transmissible among person to person, from person to person and
it's spread across international boundaries.
Okay.
All those factors -
That's because we have is airplanes.
Right, exactly.
Right. Right, you know, it's not like, let's walk to the nearest town.
You know, it's like we, we have a level of mobility without precedent in this world.
Yes, so, there's two very interesting things to note one is
there was a, there was a massive avian flu called the Spanish flu in 1918.
Mm-hmm.
And as you'll recall very limited air travel then like nothing.
And at that point we also had very little in the way of medical care.
Right.
Now we have much better medical care even though we don't have a specific treatment
for the COVID virus but we have enormous amount of international travel by air.
So, the ability to transmit across international boundaries is very, very significant.
So, if you really diabolical, you would say viruses invented humans to be smart
enough to invent airplanes so they can travel.
So, they can catch a ride.
Well, they'll never get through security otherwise.
It's diabolical.
And by the way people, there you have it, so, if you want to know
your place in the universe, you're nothing more than an Uber for a virus.
Oh, there you go.
Wow, okay.
So.
So, in 1918, of course, that was the end of the first World War and
there's huge troop movement returning home.
Exactly.
Wow.
Ships, so, that would be the...
Right. The vector, the means.
The vector, yeah.
Right, so, they brought a lot of virus, in fact they went home to wherever they were going
including the rest of Europe and, and back to the US and that was probably a
major factor here. We lost about seven almost 700,000 Americans to the
Spanish flu but between 50 and -
700,000?!
Yeah.
We only lost like, only, lost like 50 or 60,000
In the war?
In all of Vietnam.
In all, right.
It was 58,000.
Yeah, 58,000 in Vietnam.
Wow.
And 700,000 Americans.
And, and the population then, of course, was way smaller.
It was half of what it is now, yeah, or less.
Now if, is this true that the reason why
that happened is because the government did not want to -
You're talking about the Spanish -
The Spanish flu, we're talking about.
Yeah, yeah.
The government did not want to acknowledge the transmission of the flu here in America
and that, that it was happening on military bases.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well...
It could mean morale problem.
Right.
Well...
Is, is that true?
No, you know, it was impossible to ignore.
There were too, I had two great grandparents who were died, who died from that.
You couldn't ignore, there was just people dying constantly
although they didn't know much about the virus behavior or how it was transmitted.
There was and they certainly had nothing to treat it with and there were no vaccines.
Gotcha.
So, it was happening, it was bad, they knew was being transmitted one way or another,
they were trying to do what they could, but it wasn't much in that...
Wasn't much in that era. Yeah, okay.
Wait, so, so, now with COVID -
Yeah.
- 19, it had, it can travel, so, all right.
So, wouldn't that be true for any virus.
Right.
What would again, what distinguishes -
What COVID-19 -
- from any other virus that want to accomplish the same goal?
Right. So, what, for one thing, it, it's lethal.
Mm-hm.
The second thing is we don't know enough about the -
Rather it can be lethal.
It can be lethal, of course.
Yeah, in fact, the lethality rate is a big controversy
right now because we don't know the denominator, always a problem when we're
trying to figure out the percentage of something, so, right now the, the World
Health Organization as of this morning was saying it's a, it's got a 3.4%.
Just to be clear, the denominator is the total number of people infected in any given moment.
Exactly.
Right, and then, you know who dies because they're dead.
Yeah.
But you don't know everybody who has the disease.
We know, we know a fraction and we don't know, we don't even know
whether it's a big fraction or a small fraction whatever it is
but, so, given the number of people that we know have the disease worldwide
which is around a hundred thousand at the moment and the fatality rate, what we
know about that, so you make that, just a division and you find out that we have a
3.4% fatality right now, which also means by the way and
but it's probably way less than 1%, but even if it was 3%
that means that 97% of people get this virus will survive it.
Mm-hmm.
So, this is not a, you know, you don't, it's not a death sentence if you get this.
It's not the zombie virus.
It's not the zombie virus. No.
Cool.
No.
Notice he didn't say, 'there is no zombie virus.'
When I say that, you're supposed to say, 'noooo...'
You're supposed to deny.
I thought you knew there was a zombie virus.
Of all people you would know that, but apparently not.
All right, we're going to pick up more on this when we come back
to a Special Edition of StarTalk Cosmic Queries: Disaster Preparedness
Viruses
We're back.
StarTalk
Cosmic Queries
Disaster Preparedness
There's one person in the universe who's, that's in his job title.
Dr. Irwin Redlener, Director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness.
Put that on your business card.
Yeah.
People get out of your way right there.
Exactly.
Either that or they're always calling and asking you to help get them prepared.
How did you know that?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's got to be annoying.
No, it's...
So, you know, in any given moment, the seasonal flu...
Yeah.
No one is taking these kinds of precautions,
COVID-19 precautions to not get the seasonal flu, why?
Well, 45%, only, of people actually get the flu shot every year, which is kind of crazy
since we have between 35,000 and 50,000 deaths every single year from the seasonal flu.
That's, that's 100 a day.
I will never understand it, never.
That's a 100 a day.
Okay.
All right.
So, why isn't all of this outcry that we are now getting with COVID-19
applied to the seasonal flu?
Washing the hands and all those normal things would also protect you -
It would certainly protect you.
From the seasonal flu.
You know and, and I, I just I can't explain it.
Something about the fact that this is a new thing.
Right.
It came from China, which is scaring people.
It's like some other mysterious thing that came
you know like the H1N1 and other kind of, and SARS in fact -
H1N1 was 1918?
2019.
2009. 2009.
2009.
Swine flu, right?
Swine flu. Yeah, exactly.
So, this is a, this is actually a mystery
why people are so worked up about this and I think it has to do with the fact
that it is new, it's getting a lot of attention, we don't know quite what to do about it.
Have we been able to track a virus with this level of daily updates before today?
Before this level of internet and social media access?
Well, it's, not really, you know, there's a lot to, and by the way there's a lot that we don't know about.
We're getting hourly updates.
It's crazy and part of it is we just don't know a lot of key information.
What's the incubation period of COVID-19?
Yeah. So, we're telling people it's 2 to 14 days, probably 3 to 4 weeks actually for some people.
Wow.
So, you can be carrying this for a long time.
You can carry and transmit it, while you're carrying it?
Yes.
Even though you don't have symptoms.
Exactly.
Oh my god. So, asymptomatic transmission for 3 to 4 weeks?!
It's possible. Possible.
I'm sorry. You know what, I'm going to calm down.
The panic has begun.
I know, it's like...
I just wrote him a prescription. He'll live.
Yeah, no.
I can settle this, don't panic.
Right.
There you go.
Neil, he always knows the right thing to say.
I feel so much better now.
Yeah, so...
Well, under what condition does anybody ever tell you, don't panic.
Right.
Yeah. All day long.
It's when you have to panic.
Exactly
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's a good point.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You're right, no one ever walks into a room and says, ladies and gentlemen the building is not on fire.
Don't panic.
Yeah, yeah.
Right.
Yeah, it's like calm down, right.
Right.
Yeah.
So, yeah, and this is, this is really a problem now, I just want to clarify something.
You obviously spread more virus when you're coughing and sneezing.
Correct.
But still when you're asymptomatic, you're still able to transmit it
and that's something that people should be aware of.
Mm-hmm.
Okay so, again compare it to a normal seasonal flu.
Right.
Where all these same precautions would prevent that, but we're not
undergoing those same precautions for the seasonal flu.
Correct. This is actually a Keystone Cops level of incompetence in the federal government.
There is a delay, you know, the thing is, when did we get started?
Because it does take at least a year to year and a half to make a vaccine
because you have to figure out the right combination and understand the
DNA of the virus, you have to make it, you have to do animal trials, you have to
then do expanded human trials, and you have to manufacture, and distribute it.
However...
Okay, so, total overhead.
Yeah. The, the -
It adds up.
Yeah it does and if you add to that
two or three months of inexplicable delays and screw-ups,
if I can use that on this podcast, by the federal government
you have a really, really bad situation.
Did you just worry whether you can say the word screw-up?
I did.
You know we got to take him to the hood.
I appreciate it.
I'm ready to go. I had to control myself but okay.
He said, I'm ready to go. That's awesome.
But yeah so. Yeah, and I, I just, we've never seen the CDC this dysfunctional.
So, now with that in mind, let's just talk about for because there is, you know,
mixed messaging happening at the highest levels of government,
what can we do knowing that a vaccine is like a year away?
Yeah.
What can we do without, as Neil told me, without panicking?
Well, what we can do is, first of all, we could actually use the
old tried-and-true contact your representatives and your, you know,
people in Congress and tell them we want everything accelerated, we want enough
money appropriated to and to deal with this, we want staff rehired at the CDC.
That's not going to stop you from getting the disease.
No, no. I misunderstand.
No it's fine, too. I mean, yeah.
So, after he just told us a story about how dysfunctional it was.
Right.
So, that's what...
Well no, I meant what can we do to not get the disease
but I was liking this answer as well.
Okay fine, so, then basically the thing is while we're waiting for the vaccine,
we're doing the things that Neil mentioned before,
we're, a lot of frequent obsessive hand-washing,
we're using hand sanitizers, if you can even get it now,
which you can for about $500 a little, for a little bottle on Amazon.
Yeah, I saw that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The price gouging.
Oh wow.
You noticed?
Yes, yes, yes.
So, no, no that's really unfortunate
but you take care of yourself, you make sure that if you're sick,
if you got respiratory symptoms, please don't go in public, stay home.
We want businesses to really gear up,
including this one, for example to be able to work remotely
as much as possible if things really go to hell and we have them lots of spread.
Fortunately, remote working is, is more real than ever.
Absolutely.
In the history of the world.
Absolutely.
Right, for more people. Not everyone.
Right.
You can't flip hamburgers remotely but for a lot of other jobs you can.
You can, exactly, right. And so, people should be, right now, assessing
their abilities to do that and making sure their staff know what to do and
that they've got all the equipment they need to do this kind of remote working
and teleconferencing and so on.
And you do this until when?
Until I don't know when actually,
I'm sorry to say because we don't know how long it's going to last.
You're the D irector of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness
and I say, 'what, how long do we do this?' 'I don't know.
But don't panic.'
Well, how about this, when is the asteroid hitting us?
You know that?
Touché.
Was going to say that's a snappy comeback.
Yeah, that was a snappy comeback.
There you go.
Snappy, I don't know but...
But, is there a point where, this is not an unrealistic scenario, let me imagine...
Yeah.
That everyone does get the message, you don't go out if you have a little
respiratory thing, if you're sneezy, you stay in, you wash your hands all the time,
you clean surfaces, is it possible if the COVID will just lightly wash over the
country and then exit and then we come out with the minimal damage, is that possible?
It's not out of the question and given the fact this is the whole problem
of these quote, unquote, novel or new viruses that we, we, so much we don't know
about their behavior, what might happen, you could postulate almost any trajectory.
Scenario.
Yeah and you know it's possible that it'll fade away
I don't know why it would particularly.
It could have just become endemic.
It could become endemic.
Slowly just always passing around.
And it could become seasonal.
Like a regular seasonal flu, in which case we'd incorporate the new
vaccine for this into the regular, you know, flu vaccines that you get every year.
So, then, then it becomes not really an issue and the second thing is that we might
actually develop an antiviral medication that's specific for this and that would
be good too. But right now we don't really have those things, so, we're trying
to really do all the containment we possibly can.
Would you say that the public has been overreacting based on everything you've seen?
Well, the public, it's hard to say.
The empty shelves in the grocery store.
Yeah, well that's, you know, this panic buying stuff is not good idea,
and plus the general hope is that people will get ready for disasters anyway.
They'll have a certain amount of food and water at all times in case some other kind of thing happens.
And, and of course, that, that hasn't really happened, no, there's been no penetration of that message
particularly either but maybe, well, this will kind of stimulate people to do that,
but we don't want to go crazy, but I'll tell you there's a couple key things
that people need to be reminded about when they're stocking up in case they have to be self-quarantine.
One is if you have a pet, what's going to happen? You're going to be able to walk the dog?
You have cat litter? Do you have all the stuff you need for the pet?
Secondly your baby. Baby, if it's, if you have a very young baby who's being breastfed, that's fine.
An older child who's on either formula or needs other food or baby food, make sure you have that.
Make sure you have diapers and all that, and all that stuff.
Supplies. Normal supplies.
But the third thing, which is maybe most important, is that if you have a chronic illness
and you're dependent on daily meds, for life, you know, like you have diabetes
or serious heart disease, make sure that you have enough stock of those medications
to see you through whatever period of quarantine that we're getting ready for.
That's the thing where the supply chain by the way could be most problematic
because if we can't get this stuff and you can't go to the drugstore.
The transportation grid.
Right.
Everything, everything is problematic about it.
I rather have you have it in your medicine chest in, on a shelf someplace so that you have it available.
Problem is will the insurance companies -
I was about to say.
- allow you to get this ahead of time.
Right.
And what about all the uninsured people in general, by the way, even getting a test is a problem.
That's a whole another, another.
12 million undocumented people who are really fearful, legitimately so,
of even going to a doctor or hospital because they might get deported that afternoon.
So, we have all sorts of social-economic problems that really keep us from being optimally prepared.
That said, the majority of people need to do the kind of things we were just talking about.
Why don't we do what we did when I was a kid where, when we were kids, we're about the same age
where you know someone has the mumps, everyone brings the kids in
to get the mumps and then we're all immunized by our own -
Or chickenpox.
Or the chickenpox, yeah, yeah, maybe not the mumps.
COVID party at my house.
Yeah, so, so...
Well, I'm asking.
So, so there, there's some people who had only mild symptoms and presumably
when those symptoms go away, they have an immunity.
Well, that was the presumption.
Oh.
But here's the problem, as this virus mutates, you may have been
you know, resistant to getting it again today but if it mutates enough, so, it
doesn't really evoke the same immune response in your body.
So, your antibodies were ready for what it used to look like -
Yeah if it changed.
- yesterday and not what it looks like tomorrow.
So, it does like a Tom Cruise Mission Impossible reveal.
It was me!
The coronavirus all along!
Ha ha, I fooled you, immune system.
Right, well okay. So, yeah, so the worst case is it's...
It's endemic.
It's seasonal, you get it but you guys figure out a vaccine and we just move on.
Medication.
Anti-viral and we just live with it.
Yeah.
Well, when we come back we're finally going to get to questions that
we've solicited from our fan base on disaster preparedness and the COVID-19 virus.
When StarTalk returns.
We're back.
StarTalk
Cosmic Queries
Which side of it says that.
There we go.
Cosmic Queries
StarTalk
Special Edition
Yes.
We're talking about disaster preparedness and viruses, in particular, the COVID-19 virus.
I've got Dr. Irwin Redlener.
He's actually an old friend.
Chuck, I don't if you knew that.
I did not.
He goes way back.
I know it now.
You know a friend we had in common by the name of Carl Sagan.
Oh wow.
Yeah, yeah.
He worked with Carl on some humanitarian projects.
Is that, right?
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
In fact, he was on the board of the Children's Health Fund, my foundation.
Yeah excellent, excellent.
So, good to hear that and you've been, he's just a good guy, the whole, the whole time.
What do we have to show for that.
So, Chuck, let's get some questions out here from Patreon members.
All right.
Start with them.
Go for it.
This is Morgan Gilem from Patreon, of course.
Do we really need to be so worried about this virus that's killing less people than the common flu?
It seems it's just hype by the media.
So, two things kind of baked into that question.
How much of this is clickbait?
Yeah.
Because if I saw a news story that said outbreak in a new place, I'm clicking on it.
Right.
So, how much of it is just on not, I don't want to call a dishonest reporting,
but just sensationalist reporting?
Yeah, sort of over-the-top.
Over-the-top reporting.
You know it's, it's really,
it's gotten so muddled now in terms of this that it's really, it's hard to know.
I would say that we need to be cautious, we need to make sure that the
systems are being developed to allow us to prevent and treat this thing and when
there's serious outbreaks, we need to pay attention because we actually don't want
to get this even though the fatality rate may not be, you know, great it is a
new virus that we can't really treat and so, you want to do what is appropriate
without, without panicking, as we're talking about before.
So, you want to stock up in case somebody says, 'you got to be quarantined.'
And by the way, that's no joke.
If you're told to quarantine, there's actually police authority -
Right.
- to enforce that.
So, you want to be able to do that comfortably but you, you know,
you, we're going to take this, it's sort of every day, every, one day at a time here
but the fact is that paying attention, this is not inappropriate,
going over-the-top and panicking is not appropriate.
How about domestic travel?
So, domestic travel, I came back from Denver a few
days ago with my wife and one of my granddaughters and one row ahead of me
on the other side of the aisle was two guys who were wearing face masks, which
got my attention and one of them starts coughing like crazy and sneezing,
lifts up his face mask to blow his nose, blows his nose in a tissue,
puts it in the seat pocket in front of him.
By the way, I get up and I go to the purser.
Did you eject him from the emergency exit?
I said, excuse me sir, but these guys, you know,
and he said, listen there's nothing we can do about it.
I said, are they screened?
The guys are walking around the airplane with face masks, should we check their temperature?
Do we get, you know, were they just coming back from Wuhan
and now going from, for some reason from Denver to New York with us?
We can't ask them, we don't know anything.
Blah, blah, blah.
Okay.
Okay, all right.
Next question, go.
Okay, here we go.
This is a David Hemsath and he says, I don't expect the following to be read on the upcoming show,
it's too long and there's no question and I just wanted to say, David, you're right.
So.
Our next question.
That was cold.
That was harsh.
Oh man.
Wow.
And you read the guy's name.
Just called him out.
What can we say...
This is Matt Harefield, who says, according to Dr. Redlener, what is the
most important aspect of disaster preparedness when it comes to virus
outbreaks and what is the U.S. currently the best or worst at affecting?
Oh.
Well, good questions.
And so, first of all, let's just start with this in general it is always
a good idea to be attentive to appropriate sanitation, I mean sanitary habits,
you know, hand-washing frequently, cleaning off surfaces on places like
airplane trays and things like that.
Okay.
Now, are there some surfaces where last longer than others, yes.
If it's a very porous surface, less so than on a hard surface but that's variable.
Whatever it is, you get on an airplane I would use some sort of Clorox infused wipe
and I clean off the trays, I clean off the TV screen, I clean off the arm rests.
These are typically touch screens, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So, you don't want, try not to put your hand in the pocket seat in front of you.
Seat pocket in front of you.
You might find a very, a very unfortunate surprise but yeah,
I wouldn't put your hand there but...
A quick thing, we're of a generation where the gentleman always had a cloth
handkerchief in their pocket and would offer it to other people to blow their nose.
So nasty.
Isn't that completely nasty?
Yeah, I would try not to do that.
Are you asking personal question?
No, look at old movies.
They would hand handkerchiefs.
Yeah, no I wouldn't do that.
Yeah, but so, the second part of the tummy tuck again what...
He said, what are we best at doing in terms of this country.
So, what, what should we do and -
China had drive-through...
South Korea.
Oh sorry.
South Korea, they have drive-through testing.
Yes.
And how about us?
Wow.
So, let's start with what we're not very good at, it seems and I was, I'm surprised
by this myself, which were not very good apparently at developing the
technologies to start paying attention early enough.
We completely missed the boat on this.
I'm surprised because it's in some ways transcends whoever's in political power at the White House.
This is, this is something that through all administration's we depended upon
really world-class experts in the CDC and NIH and so on.
Certain things at all times should transcend politics.
Probably most things should.
Would that be fair to say?
Yeah.
I think.
Yeah.
I was trying you know...
Yeah, I know you are.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
All right. Fine.
Go.
But anyway, so, here we are at a time that we were really, we're hoping
for way, way especially professionals in my field
public health, in general, we expected much, much more from the NIH in the CDC
and that those those parts of the permanent -
Is that incompetence or is that low budget?
I...
Or both?
We, I don't think it's incompetence, certainly not at the high levels.
Mm-hmm.
But we may have kind of strangled the ability for the organization's to function
as they usually do by, by, you know, by dropping staff or whatever but, but -
So, what do we do best, then?
Give me some hope here.
You know I was -
Otherwise this is the last time I'm inviting you all right the show again.
All right, fine, fine.
Well, this show itself is a source of hope, isn't it?
Oh.
He's right.
There you go. Think about that, yeah.
That was a good comeback.
Yes.
Oh man.
What do we do best, in terms of this kind of viral thing?
Yeah.
I guess we're pretty good at communications until we get to
be over-the-top, which is where we're on the verge of right now.
Mm-hmm.
On the other hand we don't know where, where the top is.
Yeah.
We don't -
Is the top where the number, the cases stabilize or they drop?
What is the top?
Do you, will you know the top when you're there?
Yeah, well the top is when we start seeing spread and we start
seeing a serious persistent diminishing of the number of cases.
Gotcha, right.
Okay.
All right, so, this is Anthony Taylor and he says, and I read this for specific reason that I'll attach to the end,
how big or small is a virus compared to an atom or a molecule?
With that, the reason why I asked this question, what is the efficacy of
wearing a mask when it comes to staving off the transmission of the virus
whether you're transmitting it or receiving it?
Right, so, viruses are very, very tiny.
Okay.
And they are much smaller than say bacteria.
Okay.
Neil could probably tell you more about the -
In fact, we have an exhibit here.
Yeah.
In the Hall of the Universe.
Yeah.
That has a physical model of a, of a red blood cell.
Yeah.
And then on the next scale you see the size of a virus
which is like, it's minuscule.
Compared to the red blood cell.
Correct, correct.
Gotcha.
So, masks, this has been, of course, controversial and it's been a rush on masks
you can't even buy one now but there's two basic kind of masks.
Mask one is called the surgical mask, it is more porous than the other mask,
which is what's called a respirator mask or an N95.
N95s are worn by people that are dealing with a lot of high-risk patients.
They have to be changed every four to six hours actually.
Okay.
And they are, they will stop a much smaller particle getting through
but they're also very hard to breathe through.
You, you, you would have a lot of trouble wearing one of those all day.
Just to be clear.
An actual virus can fit through any mask.
Yeah.
We're talking about a virus that's part of a particle.
Right.
A vapor particle.
It would have to attach itself to something else.
A droplet. A water droplet. And stops a water droplet and with the virus in it.
Right. But, but Neil's point is very important because if the
virus became really aerosolized on its own, it could get through any mask.
Any mask?
Yeah, right.
So, but -
So, you're kind of going back to the hygienic techniques that you talked about.
Right.
For making sure, for being preventative, taking preventative measures.
Exactly.
You're still getting right back to that, even with the masks and all that.
Yeah.
It really comes down to the obsessive hand-washing and you know personal space and all these other things.
And really don't shake hands -
Don't shake hands, touching surfaces.
The elbow bumps and all that stuff, that's, that's exactly right.
Gotcha.
But you know you see people -
That's why black people never used to get sick because we all did the fist bumps.
That's right, fist bump.
And elbow bumps and bro hug.
That's right.
Right, see.
That's right.
That's why.
Yeah, that's why he's a known social commentator.
Yeah, yeah.
So, yeah.
We should probably go deeper here but I want to say something about...
Go ahead, please go ahead.
It is useless to walk around the street in a mask unless you have yourself respiratory symptoms.
So, in other words -
And then you, it's not to prevent you from getting it, it's to prevent all the people getting it from you.
Exactly right.
That's a, that's a, that's an important point, so, don't wear a mask walking around the
streets of New York or anywhere else and don't even bother trying to deal with an N95 mask and then -
And if you have on a mask and you want to sneeze, don't remove the mask to sneeze.
Thank you very much, sir.
Okay, okay.
Neil deGrasse Tyson, MD. That is my advice.
Oh man, that's hilarious.
So, so, give us some hope before we wrap this up.
Yeah so, the hope is that we've now gotten our act together.
I think the message is out.
And we need to, you know, pay attention to what's developing.
We can hope that, in fact, it will level out and we won't have a major global problem
and it'll end up having a fatality rate as low or lower than the seasonal flu.
It'll become part of the regular flu vaccines that we get every year and that will go about our business.
But there is definitely hope, it's just that it's a new thing and people are,
you know, obviously distressed about it and it's a big news story
but, you know, focus on the primaries, I think that's better.
Okay, there you go.
Yeah.
So, to summarize some of what you said, but put an extra little twist on it.
There was a day when we would elect politicians who were our leaders
and if there was some kind of outbreak or some kind of a disaster, you would say,
I wonder what my leader says and I will do what the leader tells me
but we're at a time now where trust of politicians is not what it used to be
and so, but we do have access to institutions and expertise through the internet.
Mm-hmm.
And so, the politician no longer needs to be the conduit between us and the scientific results.
And by the way a good leader, a good political leader can find
that balance between complacency and panic
and say truth and speak about with transparency about what we know.
Here's what we know, we don't think you should panic.
Here's what we need to know and we're looking for it, but in the meantime,
do what's precautionary, what's appropriate and,
and, but you know some leaders have, do that naturally and we can tell that and we elect them.
All right, I think we got to end it there.
Yeah.
Irwin, thanks for coming, I haven't seen you in years. Don't be a stranger.
Can we fix that or no?
Yeah, no we'll find another excuse to get you back on this show.
Sure.
Maybe for an update in a few months.
Sure.
Just to see...
Any time.
If we, if it gets worse will want more of you, but so will everyone else.
And if it gets worse, we'll do it via Skype.
Yeah, just don't come over to my house, that's all.
All right Dr. Irwin Redlener, the Director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness,
Columbia University.
You also went to medical school, is that correct?
Yeah.
That's a double title there.
Yeah.
Excellent.
And Chuck always good to have you here.
Always a pleasure.
I'm going to fist bump that, no shaking hands.
Here we go. Boom. Boom. Look at that.
All right, no COVID-19 there.
Yeah.
You've been watching, possibly listening to
StarTalk Cosmic Queries: Disaster Preparedness Edition.
I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson.
As always, bidding you, to keep looking up.