The Dangers of Superfast Science

happened today. There are many unanswered questions about coronavirus. One of them how long will all this last? Now has a possible answer. A group of experts say the pandemic is likely to be with us for as long as two years. A report from the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota says the fact that people without symptoms can spread the virus makes it harder to control than the flu, and people maybe

at their most infectious before any symptoms appear. After locking down billions of people around the world to minimize COVID nineteen spread, governments are now cautiously allowing businesses and public places to reopen. Yet the report predicts the coronavirus pandemic is likely to continue in waves that could last be on twenty twenty two. We'll need about two thirds of the world's population to become immune before we can control

the virus, the authors said. And about that immunity, one way to get it is through a vaccine, which is still a long way off. Another is by having the

antibodies one develops after fighting off the disease. But some have questioned whether everyone who has had the virus develops these antibodies, which would make it more complicated to target certain people for immunity Today, Anthony Faucci, the scientist who's leading the u S response to the pandemic, said that most people who have had the coronavirus probably would have the antibodies. Fauci, who was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said it would be

extremely unusual if patients did not develop antibodies. He said it would be almost unprecedented. Different states in the US vary in the cautiousness of their approach to restarting businesses. Florida Governor Ronda Santis said the state would re open state parks on May fourth. Meanwhile, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo made it official that schools would remain closed for the duration of the school here, and New York City Mayor Built A. Blasio said the city was making some

progress toward fighting the outbreak, but not enough to justify reopening. Finally, the virus continues to take its toll around the globe. Russia had a surge in new cases a day after Prime Minister Mikhail ms Houston said he had tested positive. Hubei province, the epicenter of China's outbreak, will lower its emergency response, while Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he would probably extend the emergency by about a month. And

now our main story. On April, a New York hospital system reported a stunning eighty eight percent death rate among its COVID nineteen patients unventilators. Two days later, they put out an update. Actually, only twenty four point five percent of patients on ventilators had died. How did this happen? Which number was right? The answer is complicated and has to do with different ways of slicing the data, But it is just one example of how quickly guidance about

coronavirus can change. Scientists are facing unparalleled pressure to provide information about the virus as quickly as possible, and when every day it brings forth new data. What was clear one day maybe confusing the next. Conflicting reports on the benefits of wearing masks, how the virus spreads, and even the efficacy of promising new drugs like rumdesvie are all products of the global race to provide answers about the coronavirus.

Problem is, science usually doesn't move this fast. So what happens when the slow and steady process of research, peer review, and the traditional publication process hits warp speed. I spoke with Bloomberg's Michelle fay Cortes and Robert Langreth to learn more about why it's so hard to part the science and about the danger that the public will lose faith

in scientific research and reporting. What makes interpreting data so difficult when it comes to, for example, case and mortality rates, but in general, for numbers we see related to coronavirus. Number one, we don't know how many people have coronavirus in general. That's a testing issue. And the other one on the mortality rates is a lot of the information we have is very preliminary. A lot of people haven't died from coronavirus who might sadly die in the next

few days or weeks. So when you're trying to figure out what the real numbers are, if you're trying to do that very quickly, you have to make this decision about are you going to get out what you know now or are you going to wait until you can be a little bit more definitive and a little bit more comprehensive. Scientists are looking to answer a very narrow and specific question generally, and they also normally have some kind of a base of information that they're working off of.

When it comes to coronavirus, we don't know pretty much anything about any of it. So every time someone has a data set, everything in there is interesting. What's different about how research is being done now versus before the pandemic.

The way of doing it normally is there's a back and forth process between the researchers who have done the work and determined what their answers are to the questions that they're asking, and then they go back and forth with the medical journal and with peer reviewers to make sure that they've honed in exactly the right issue, that they've done the scientific analysis and the statistics correctly, and that the way they're characterizing it and writing about it

is accurate in the current situation. A lot of times there is no back and forth, which means that there hasn't been any review really of the substance of their articles. So it is a very very fast process. In some cases,

they're not even being presented in any print anywhere. We're just seeing a press conference, or maybe we've got some slides, or perhaps we have the head of n I a I d. Dr Anthony Fauci, sitting next to President Trump in the Oval Office telling us something that none of us have known before, and that we're just getting it for the first time with no no notes to understand it.

We're seeing we're seeing science by press release. We're seeing science announced in fragmentary form by politicians so they can get credit for what's going on. We're even seeing, you know, science being put out and publicized on social media by prominent people that then gets wide distribution everywhere. And even when the science is published, you know, in a medical journal, aren't you're viewed. It's coming out very very fast, and

you know my senses. In the In the rush to you know, get out as much information as possible, scientific journals are basically sent to letting it you know, much more preliminary information than they're published in the past, and the public isn't always you know, full of way away of just how preliminary some of these studies are and some of this data is. What are some examples of how these rushed conclusions have really affected the public's understanding

of coronavirus in general. There's been just a lack of understanding about how the coronavirus is playing out in our country. We have a lot of people who didn't know about whether or not they should wear a mask. Those rules changed over the course of this virus. When it comes to something like whether or not we're going to have a treatment for coronavirus and whether or not, for example,

Gilead Sciences drug ram does it. Here, we're getting some early, good preliminary information about that, but we don't know whether it's going to hold up once it's been reviewed embedded

more thoroughly. And the other example that I put out there, which there's a lot of debate about right now, has a lot of the very preliminary studies on these antibody tests, saying you know significant percentage of the population you know who haven't officially tested positive for coronavirus and have antibodies to it, so that that means they may be exposed

and may be immune for a period of time. And what's not getting out there to the public is that you know, a lot of these antibody tests, the results are somewhat controversial, a lot of the tests are put on the market without much review, and they may actually produce a significant number of false positives. Yes, and then the issue with that, of course, is that people are making decisions based on whether or not they have antibodies

in their blood. So if that test is not accurate and you think that you're safe and you're out there mingling in the public without taking precautions that you otherwise would to protect other people, you could be doing all kinds of damage. Not only that, governments are making decisions about how much they can open and what they can allow their population to do. And again, if they're making those decisions based on inaccurate test results, disastrous consequences can result.

With the recent announcement of the potential of ramdsevere. Are people rushing in the same way to grab onto this potential perhaps sooner than necessarily scientific research would suggest is possible. Well, it's pretty amazing the level of attention being paid to this, as you know, potentially the first approved coronavirus treatment. And like even my a some year old mom was like

literally calling me and asking me about it yesterday. Should should I get this from my medicine cabinet, So like just everyone is paying attention to it, and the warrior is a danger is that people don't realize, you know, just how preliminary these results are the main results of the government's monster trial. They're basically announced at a prece

event with the President Trump and Faucian. That an oppression. Ly, so we don't have the scientific publication of any of the details of this trial, and you know exactly how good are the results? You know, these or details are really important to now you know whether it should be approved and how it should be used. And that's exactly the situation that the FDA is planning to take pretty quick action when it comes to ram desevere, and we don't have an awful lot of information about how the

drug works. I mean, let's take a beat here and realize we've only even known this virus existed for about four months. So to go from not even having it in existence to having a treatment specifically for it is astonishing. And the only way to do that is by going at an accelerated pace, the likeness of which we have never seen before. So by definition, we're going to have

to be making decisions based on incomplete data. In general, the understanding of the drug isn't isn't widespread throughout the US. I keep getting messages from people asking me, is this really a cure? And in fact, it's not at all a cure. Even the results that we're seeing now suggest that it's going to be able to perhaps help people

get out of the hospital a few days earlier. So it does give us perhaps a treatment, and perhaps our first treatment for this virus, and that is incredibly important. But the idea that it's any kind of a panacea or a silver bullet or a prevention, that's just not even on the table. Do you see a loss of faith or perhaps increasing doubt about scientific research overall because people essentially are getting whiplash? Yes, wear masks, No, don't

wear masks. Do you see an an issue there of the public's essentially loss of faith in in the validity of scientific research because of this, Well, there is this this idea, a theory called truth decay, which is what happens when the general public stops believing what they're hearing from scientific authorities. And we had already been seeing some of that before coronavirus came out, when it comes to things like vaccines and climate change and that sort of

a thing. At this point, we really do see that most Americans are holding scientists in very high regard, and we can see from what's happening with flattening the curve and that type of thing, that people are listening that

most Americans are staying in their homes. Most people in the world are staying in their homes to try to fight this virus, but they're getting very anxious about it, and they're getting upset about it, and we're coming to the end of people perhaps just listening to the scientists.

So that's why we're seeing some of these protests and these efforts to open up more quickly and at some point, if there's more and more questions about the validity of the science and if the virus doesn't continue to operate the way that we expected to, then we might start seeing even more of that truth decay when it comes to coronavirus. What could the public understand better about the science to stop truth decay? And what can science writers

like you to do to help. That's such a great question, and I don't know that there's any easy answers to it. Of course, for consumers, they can make sure that they're listening to really legitimate sources of information and that they're hearing it directly from scientists and scientific journalists who understand

all the nuances. And I think there's a responsibility on us to make sure that when we're writing these pieces, that we're writing it for people who understand perhaps less than we might originally expect, and make sure that we're writing our stories so that people can understand both the limitations of the science and the promise of the science, so that people can have hope, but they won't have

false hope. And I think that the public needs to understand that pretty much everything they're hearing, all the results are hearing about the coronavirus now, all the scientific results about affection rates, death rates, and about a testing rates uh, all that information is very preliminary right now and subjectory vision. It's only going to be a gradual process of converging on the truth, and they just have to understand that process.

You know. It's going to be a bit messy and messier than usual because it's playing out in real time, it's playing out in public, and it is a giant, hard to follow fire host information. But the scientists they are doing their best. They are working around the clock, really and many of them I talked to to try to understand the coronavirus and how to test for it and how to treat it and how to find a vaccine. You know, but right now the process is quite messy,

you know. B B be leery of any one result of that you hear, you know, on TV or in the news, and don't don't assume it's the final word, because it's probably not. That was Bloomberg's Michelle fake Cortez and Robert Langrath, and that's our show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one and twenty bureaus around the world, visit bloomberg dot com Flash Coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave as a review. And a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to

help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is hosted by Me Laura Carlson. The show was produced by Me topher Foreheaz, Jordan gas Pure, and Magnus Hendrickson. Today's main story was reported by Michelle fe Cortez and Robert Langriff. Original music by Leo Sidran. Our editors are Francesco Levi and Rick Shine. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.