How COVID-19 Works

It was kind of excited. Yeah, well, put we saw him in concert once, remember that's right, big shout out to Anita Strouss. Yes, guitarist, extraordinary for Alice Cooper among others. It's enthusiast what enthusiast science? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah for sure. So we should uh. I think everyone knows right now that we are now set up to record apart from one another. Chuck. Um, So my first question before we have to get serious is what are you wearing? I

knew it. Can I tell you seriously what I'm wearing? Yeah, I'm going to tell you. Okay, Um, I am wearing an apron and that's it. Wow? Yeah what about you? So your cosplaying is sexy chef? Yeah? Yeah, that's what I like to think of myself as it's not really cosplay, that's kind of normal life stuff. Yeah, I am wearing um and this is not a plug, but it is what I'm wearing. I'm wearing me and these I'm wearing. I'm wearing my mac Weldon. Uh. I don't know what

they call him. You know, kind of the warm up pants that you can go to the grocery store in sure, but do not go to the grocery store, Chuck, not not. And I'm wearing a Max fun Con two thousand and twelve T shirt and my slippers. So basically this is your UM I got all this free outfit, boy, it really is. I paid for the slippers, Okay, but I mean if you name dropped the slippers, maybe you can get a replacement for him. I don't want to do that, even though they're super comfy. Maybe we can get a

slipper sponsorship. Did you did you ever stop wearing slippers out of the house? Uh? Well, what do you mean? So? I think it was our five second Rule episode where we talked about the point of slippers is to just have these things that are house bound and never leave your house, and then you you just wear them in your house and then instead of outside, so the outdoors germs never come inside on the bottom of your feet. Boy, that's you're calling out like a nine year old episode.

Uh you know, I may go get the mail or something. Okay, all right, well before you were going and like getting ice cream at the convenience store in those things if yeah, yeah, and I feel like the fact that you're not doing any more, you may have forgotten, but that's my influence, chuck. Or I may have just gotten gained some self respect, right there you go. I like to think both of those from my influence. Okay, uh yeah. So at the head of the show, I think we should announce we're

doing an episode on COVID nineteen. It is Tuesday. I don't even know what date it is. And this will come out on the right, that's what Jerry's promising right now. That remains to be seen though, so it'll be sort of up to date. But two days a lot can change, um,

as we all know. Uh. And the other thing too, is it I think we are going to stay out of sort of the politics and the economics of the of this, because that's an almost separate podcast in itself that I have no interest in ever doing I Well, I'm surprised to hear you say that last part. I was figuring that that would be one we do, like years from now, like go back and look at the coronavirus pandemic of because I think so many weird, remarkable, in interesting things are going to grow out of this

and are already going on. I could totally see us doing that. But I get what I can vibe on what you're saying, because after recording this, like I'm hoping that we can finish this episode and never talk about coronavirus again. Like, I get what you're saying. That would

be great. Yeah, I'm tired of knowing about it, you know. Yeah, And we you know, we debated quite honestly whether or not to even do this, but it seems like we had more people asking for just a level headed take on it from us than people saying, I would really rather be distracted, so we'll distract you after today. Yeah.

And we're also, I mean, we're not riding that wave where we're like trying to feed your news addiction that like you can't get enough breaking information about this global pandemic. Like like you said, we're just trying to add just trying to do a stuff you should know on coronavirus, on COVID nineteen specifically, and we we got we got some big help, a big assist from Dave Rouge, who initially pushed back. We had to convince him to do it. Remember,

he's like, you sure if people want to hear this? Yeah, We're like, yeah, we're pretty sure. We'll find out though. So thanks a lot, Dave Rouse, you did good. And also, um, a big shout out to the grabster to who's been under the weather so hanging their grab stir. Yeah, so let's let's get going. I learned a lot in the last couple of days. Uh. And the first kind of dumb thing that I learned was that COVID nineteen stands for coronavirus disease two thousand nineteen, which I didn't even

know that until two days ago. Is that right? Yeah? I mean it's not talked about a lot, and I didn't bother to look it up. So yeah, and I guess it's not intuitive looking at it if you think about it, But um, there's other names for it to the who so so what you just said coronavirus disease

two thousand nineteen COVID nineteen. That's the name of the disease, right, there's another name for the disease that the who calls two thousand nineteen and cove okay, and then the virus itself if you want to really show off at your next online dinner party. Um, the virus itself is is technically named stars Cove two. Yeah, dash big seed, little

old big vas too. That's right. And as we'll see, the reason that it is called stars Cove two is because it bears a striking genetic resemblance to stars Cove one. I guess you could call it or the stars the stars virus that um that swept the swept the world not too long ago too, Yeah, And I can't help every time I hear of stars I still the first thing I think of is the Saturday Night Live sketch with Peter stars Guard when he developed the Stars Guard

stars Guard. Yeah, when did we talk about that before? Was it the virus is one or the Spanish flu episode? Maybe? I don't think we did one on stars did No, not as far as I remember, huh, Because because I don't know much about coronaviruses, or I didn't until we really started researching this. But um, that is what covid is. It's a coronavirus, and coronaviruses have been around for a while. Um. They're a family of viruses that typically cause upper respiratory

infections in humans and chickens and pigs and cows. Coronavirus is usually cause um diarrhea or intestinal infections. Um, but in humans it's usually the upper respiratory tract. Although we have seen now that coronavirus can cause pig or cow like infections in humans too, we've seen that recently. But but for the most part, you've probably been exposed to a coronavirus. You've probably been made sick by one. And normally coronavirus is just give us something that we would

take as a cold or a common flu. Yeah. And the corona means crown in both Spanish and Latin. And these images that you've seen, the illustrations of what it looks like under a microscope, Um, those little spikes protruding from the surface, those are kind of what I guess how it got its name as corona. Yeah, Dave puts it here like it reminds him of Pinhead from the Hell Raiser movies, who, by the way, has a really good backstory. I was reading about him just happen by

happenstance the other day. Yeah, he's a really interesting guy. The whole reason he got into, you know, being a center byte in Hell was, um, he was disillusioned by the chaos of World War One and lost like all all faith in any meaning to life, so he started to he just ditched this world for hell instead. Oh wow, I didn't know there was a backstory. Oh yeah, there's a bunch of It's kind of been built up over

the course of some of Clive Barker's novels. The movies have contributed to it, some other people have kind of contributed to it. And there's like this robust kind of mythos around that guy. It's it's really interesting stuff. See, I'm appreciated eating our sides more than ever today. Yeah, I mean to it's kind of like, do we have to talk about this? Yeah, let's talk more about movies. Have you seen the new Candy Man that's coming? Are

they remaking Candy Man? Yeah, Jordan Peel's producing it, and I saw trailer looks pretty good. Did you like UM US. I did. I was, and I was not moved entirely by it. I really like get Out a lot more than US. But I'm a fan of Jordan Peel to think he's got a great mind and everything. But I don't know if I was expecting more from US or I was expecting something different. I'm not sure. Well, I like to get Out more. For sure. US got a little wacky, but then I think I appreciate it more.

It's like a sort of a Twilight Zone kind of wacky. Yeah. I guess if I had gone into it expecting that, I think I would have liked it more. Yeah, I dug it great acting too, Oh yeah, for sure, across the board. All right, do we have to talk about this now? Yeah? Back to it, all right. See's said that chances are that at some point you might have had a coronavirus UM. You might have just thought it was a cold UM novel coronavirus viruses. You've probably heard

that in the news lately. This is different because this is an animal coronavirus that evolves and then infects a human and thus rendering it novel or new to us. Yeah, like those other coronavirus is the ones that give us colds or whatever. Who knows how long they've been around, and it's possible they followed the exact same process that

these novel coronaviruses have followed. But this novel coronavirus that causes COVID nineteen, like you said, it's new to us, and we think that it literally just made the jump from animal to human, possibly in a live animal food market in Wuhan, China. Um and as recently as late December two thousand nineteen. Yeah, so there's kind of a lot to this. I think they pretty much are pouse it of that that's what happened. Um. They think that they have a patient zero, fifty five year old man

from the Hubai province, but they're not positive about that. Uh. And now there's some debate about the timeline. UM. Officially it was December thirty one, but now they're saying it may have been first detected in mid November. UM, the

patient zero is not confirmed. Uh. They they've also think they have zero down the fact that it just like in the movie Contagion, it started with a bat and then this animal, this very strange animal that had never heard of before, called a pangolin has served as the intermediate host because they did genome sequencing of the virus and it has identical genome sequence to that of uh

when it's in a human. Yeah, that's it's really interesting to think that if you look at a lot of the research Chuck, that we're hearing about and we're learning and just generally stuff that people walking around know about coronavirus, it has come from China doing an astounding amount of research and um work on examining and trying to figure

out and trying to defeat this coronavirus. So, um, I mean they've they've they've definitely done a lot of work, you could say, for to to to kind of explain to the world what's going on. Even though I believe they're they're pretty roundly criticized for potentially not warning the world and enough time. Um, but I guess that's getting to that political stuff. Yeah, and just to be clear of finding a patient zero isn't so they can, you know, say you did it, you did it, you have to

pay for this. Yeah, it's it's helpful in trying to figure this whole thing out. That's why timelines are important. Tracing it back to his roots is important. Uh. Since that time, China has closed down about twenty wildlife arms to try and curb in part to try and curb the pangul and trade, which is a delicacy to eat

in China. Um, but I just read today apparently in Nigeria they account for about fifty of the pangol in trade and the penalty they already had in place is still the current penalty, which is two dollars and seventy cents for a first time offenders. So there's a lot of pressure on Nigeria right now to shut down their trade as well. And yeah, pangulin is a it's it's a mammal, right, but it is covered in like these kind of dragon like scales, and it looks like a

small ant eater. It looks like a dragon head sex with an ant eater. Yeah, and it's tough to look at, Like it hurts my teeth looking at pangolins for some reason. I can't quite put my finger on why. But it's almost like they just shouldn't be or something. Well, Uh, I'm not gonna say what I was gonna say, So let's talk about the spread of covid. Okay, so UM there the way that it's spread initially or the way

that just about well, any zooonotic virus. I'm not sure if all viruses start like this, but they usually typically start in an animal and it spreads through close contact between an animal, a sick animal, and human who then contracts that it's a zoonotic transmission right from animal to human. It is I'm surprised we haven't hit on it before. UM.

And then so that's an animal to person transmission. From that point on, that person is infected, they get sick, and then they transfer it to somebody who UM, who comes in close contact with them, which we'll talk more about, but these days, close contact for coronavirus and COVID nineteen is considered within six ft for an extended period of time or present with somebody sneezes or coughs in in you know, a small area, and then that person can

get sick. That's person a person transmission. And then the last one, and this is the one that's the hardest to deal with and the one that we're seeing right now the stage that we've entered UM around the world is what's called community spread. Yeah, that one's the scary one, because that's the final stage where people get sick who, as far as they know, didn't have any contact with another sick person. Um. And this is when you know, those very first stages of the outbreak, it was all

person to person after obviously the animal transmission. Uh. And then when it developed into community spread, that's when people started to get UM a little freaked out. I think, yeah, because I mean they can't say, oh, I was around you know Timmy, who's sick with this right now, so I got it from him. It's like, I have no idea where I got this, And that makes the whole

thing scary. It makes people freaked out. It makes it much more difficult to UM to contain when people don't know where they're getting it from, and it it makes you need to take much more draconian measures to to prevent the spread of this stuff. It's where it starts to get out of cont role is when it hits community spread. Yeah. UM. And you know when you see like these graphic maps of of how it's spread, it's really frightening, is the only word that can be used

to describe how quickly this thing has taken hold. UM. And you know this is stuff that everyone knows unless you've just been under a rock or like my friend Clay. About a week before this happened, he went to Nepal for a two month piking trip. Yeah. I was like, well, that's your new home, buddy, I hope you like it. Is he there still? Yeah, he's still there. Oh my gosh. Okay, that's good. He's not sick or anything. He's just hanging out. Yeah. I don't think he's seen a lot of people. I

think he's deep, you know, into the woods and stuff. Well, man, that's about as good a place as you could possibly be right now. Yeah, And he was planning on being there for two months anyway. Uh, yes, he had a plan a trip. It may not have been two months, but I'm not sure. I mean, I am concerned about it, obviously, But he says everything's cool. Yeah. It sounds like your friend Clay maybe one of the luckiest people in the world. Maybe. Wow, Well,

keep it, keep at it, Clay. You're doing social distancing right. Just go to Nepal and stay in the woods. Should we should we take a little break here? Yes? We should. All right, let's break and we'll talk about some of the symptoms right after this stuff. You should know. Gosh, sh stuff you should know. Okay, chuck. So we're talking about symptoms here, um there. It turns out so the there's like a classic set of symptoms that they now recognize as if you have these, there's a really good

it's right now that you you have COVID nineteen. Um. The the cluster of symptoms are a fever. It's usually a high fever m hm. A dry cough is a really dead giveaway. And a dry cough is you know where where you it's almost like the back of your throat is tickling and you can get no relief from it, and you're not like coughing up flim that can help get rid of that cough or that sensation of needing

to cough. It's like a dry cough. Yeah, which is really troubling right now because it's pollen season here in the United States and dry cough for a lot of people is a is a regular thing every spring, So it's especially worrisome I think for a lot of folks with allergies, Yeah, for sure. Um and and I keep getting like I don't normally get allergies, but it's pretty bad this year. And I'm like, I've got not a dry cough, but you know, a little tickle here there,

my nose is maybe a little running here there. So I'm like always really paying extra attention to that stuff. It's it's exhausting basically. Yeah. And then the third one is UM. So you've got fever, dry cough, and then difficulty breathing, shortness of breath, that kind of thing. And from studies they they've found according to the Journal of UM.

Uh what is JAMMA stand for? I used to know, oh, the Journal of the American Medical Association, duh, so jama UM found that on average, people start to display that symptom of shortness of breath within five days of the onset of the rest of their symptoms. So if you have a fever, if you have a dry cough, and after a few days you start to develop a shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, you're a really good candidate to get tested for COVID and maybe need to go

to the hospital. Yeah. And I've seen um, I've seen the chess thing described from people who have coronavirus or COVID nineteen is everything from you know, fifty pound weight on your chest too, to a belt strapped around their chest that keeps getting tighter and tighter that you can't. That sounds awful, Yeah, it sounds very specific. Um. If

you feel actual severe pain and pressure in your chest. UM, if you have bluish lips or a bluish face, if all of a sudden you're confused and you normally aren't confused mentally, then those are signs that they say you really need to get to the hospital right away. Yeah, for sure. I mean that's anytime your skin or lips are blue, that's that's a bad sign. But that's one of the big um signs of COVID is is that difficulty breathing leads to a lack of oxygen, which is

why everybody keeps talking about this need for ventilators. Um. Part of this process of a really bad case of COVID we're talking about a bad case here, UM, is that you may need a ventilator to help you breathe because you're not getting enough oxygen into your lungs breathing

on your own. So that's why ventilators have been kind of like sole pretty stars, um, really sought after in this in this pandemic, right now, yeah, and why the shortage of ventilators is super scary because you've got in that situation and we'll talk more about, um, the biggest fear, which is overwhelming the medical system. But uh, then you have potentially mild cases that develop into more serious and even fatal cases, right, Yes, and that typically seems to

be in seen most in people who are older. I think uh sixty five and over is at uh graduated increased risk from that age forward. People who have compromised immune systems already. I think people with diabetes are are

at risk. UM. But for the most part, something like eight percent of cases of COVID are relatively mild and are going to appear to you to be just like a seasonal cold, running knows, cough um, sore throat um, just just something that you would wouldn't even need to like do anything more than take some medicine at home. For the vast majority of cases of people who are who have are going to get COVID nineteen are going

to experience a mild case. It's actually it's I guess what I'm trying to say is don't be freaked out. It's very rare to get these extreme cases, Yes, statistics are on your side, UM, and that's how it's treated as well. In mild cases, it's treated sort of like the flu. You get rest, you have a lot of fluids, UM, you try to manage your fever, and generally in the

side of a couple of weeks, you will recover. In mild cases, right, one of the problems that I saw the chuck is that when the case becomes more advanced and you have difficulty breathing, it's it's um. It just kind of like reeks havoc on your lungs and the air sax and your lungs avioli um start to become damn it. And when they become damaged, they can very easily get infected and filled with fluid, and then you

have pneumonia. And that's an entirely different co morbidity that is um difficult to manage that that can kill you, but also isn't necessarily going to kill you. But it's it's another problem that they're finding can arise out of a COVID nineteen infection. Yeah, I think uh Dave has here down. The latest statistic is about one to three percent of infections get to the secondary pneumonia, and if that happens, you have what's called ARDS, acute respiratory distress syndrome.

And the scary part about ARDS is thirty of those cases end up proving fatal. Right yeah, even if you have ever been a later right um. And one of the things that's kind of confounded people UM studying this pandemic has been like that every once in a while, a young, healthy person will will die from this, and it's very puzzling. It doesn't make a lot of sense.

And I saw that there was a an article in The Lancet from January that talked about a study that found that in cases UM where people were severely ill, they found what's called the cyto keine storm, which I know we've talked about before, but basically, your body throws everything it has at this infection, and it's actually an overblown immune reaction, so so much so that your body attacks its own organs and you can die from multiple

organ failure. Again, this is in the worst case scenarios, but it does explain why some younger, healthy people have mysteriously died from this. They think that it's their body just overreacted to the to the illness yeah, and you know, and I know that they have to report accurate findings. But I think one of the things that is certainly not helped um with the social distancing is the initial news that, um, it's really only a problem if you're elderly,

are over a certain age. And so now that I mean, since then, the messaging has been really ramped up on millennials and younger people. Um. There's stories every day now where younger people are like, hey, I've got it, this is no joke. Please please, please don't take this lightly. Yeah, I've seen some people doing making videos like that, and and good for them for doing that. Um. Yeah, we got a lot of things wrong early on in this in this outbreak in the United States, for sure, Yes

you could say, you could say that. Um. One of the other things I want to point out though, speaking about numbers and statistics and everything, though, is that like when we when we talk about like the rates of mortality, which we'll talk about in a second, it's really important to remember that, you know, even if the mortality rate is as high as three percent, that means that of

people who get it recover. And one thing I've really been heartened to see Chuck, is if just in the last couple of days the news agency's have started to report total cases, and then next to that are recoveries, and then after that our deaths. It used to just be total number of cases and deaths. Now there's a big old bar in between those two. That's recovered people who have gotten the the had come down with COVID nineteen and have now recovered and are no longer ill. Yeah.

I mean the fatality rate is I've seen four percent, uh, Dave has here um. Some people place it below one percent, some above two. It's somewhere in that range. Uh. And if you want to compare it to Stars, Stars had a fatality rate of about ten percent UM, but it was much more contained. So that's sort of the main difference in what we're seeing here with COVID nineteen. Yeah.

The reason why no one can say at this point what the fatality rate actually is, in part is because the UM testing was so flubbed early on in the United States that so few people were given tests the results were skewed, right, So if you took a test for COVID nineteen, the chances are you had such terrible symptoms that you went to the hospital and they tested

you there. Well, that totally leaves out people who had COVID nineteen but had those mild cases and didn't go to the hospital and so they didn't get a test.

So this vast number of people who came down with COVID nineteen and it was just like the flu or the common cold, so that their numbers weren't added to this, which makes the number of people who were tested and then died really disproportionate to the actual numbers of people who die when they have COVID nineteen, at least in the United States and in South Korea, which is held up as like this model for how to handle a

pandemic from this point forward. They had plentiful widespread testing early on and throughout, and they took a lot of really good containment measures. But because they had really good testing, um it became clear that the fatality rate, at least in South Korea, it was point seven percent, which is still higher than a seasonal flu, which usually about point one percent, but it's not nearly as high as, like

you said, four percent. So our our understanding of the actual fatality rate is not it's not clear yet, but it's probably not anywhere near as high as four percent. Yeah, that's what the thinking is, um, and that you know, the asymptomatic individuals, they are a simps, is what I

call them. That's another one of the scary parts about it is it's hard to get accurate numbers on even the number of people that have it because there could be there could be people, uh, there could be far more people that have it that just don't develop the symptoms and are still spreading it because they think they're great. Right. There an enormous problem. And that's one of the things.

I know we've talked about this before, but like a worst case scenario for a virus is one that infects a person but takes a while for symptoms to show up, because like you said, they're a simps walking around infecting everybody else because they can spread it um even though they don't know they're sick yet. And by the way, Chuck a Simps. Excellent band name, and I see them all with matching man chi che haircuts, the whole, the

whole four or five piece band. Interesting the a Simps manchy Chi was that sort of like, uh, I remember the song ironically, but I can't picture They're they're little fuzz heads, weren't they. They were. They were kind of kind of like mop top, like the Beatles with their matching haircuts. Early on, it was a little like that. I guess, all right, are you saying the Beatles were a simps the Yeah? I think that was their original the original name with Pete Best in Hamburg. Wow. Uh,

all right, let's talk about how to how it spreads. Um. You did mention earlier, but it bears repeating. Um. This six foot rule is because you are most likely to get infected by being sneezed around, being coughed around, and getting those airborne droplets from an infected person. Even though they do know now it can live on surfaces, and they're they're rapidly trying to test how long it lives on various types of surfaces, because that's that's a big,

big deal. Yeah. So, and I didn't know this. Um. An infected surface is called a foe might Did you know that? I don't think so. So. Grocery store cart handle foue mic um potentially uh, plastic from a a glove. Uh if it's a plastic glove, foe might it's a foamte yeah, cardboard. Uh. I know that they're testing cardboard a lot right now because a lot of people obviously you're getting home deliveries now. And um, just quick little

non doctor recommendation from Dr Chuck. Here. When I get a package, now, I go outside with my surgical gloves on. I opened it on the front porch and I put a firebomb in that cardboard box. Push it into the street. Very smart said I don't bring that outer box inside though at all. No, no, no, you send it down the street a flame in a wheelchair like um Philip Smore Hofman dragon Man. That was one of the creepier images in movie history. I think it's great, especially when

he like hits the wall in like jerks back. Word that it was great. Um. The the There was a I think a N I H study that looked at Foe mies. It found that in the air when somebody sneeze, sneezes, or coughs into the air, that aerosolized um air or air sulized virus sorry can can survive for three hours in the air UM four hours on copper surfaces, twenty four hours on cardboard, two to three days on plastic,

and stainless steel. Um. The thing is, this is really reassuring because I too have been super worried about things like boxes or touching grocery carts or anything like that. The CDC says that up to this point, there have been no documented cases of infection from foe mines. That's huge, man, that's huge, because that means that if if you're not around a sick person, at least up until this point, at least documented wise, if you haven't been around somebody

who's sick, you haven't gotten it from touching something. And that's a big thing that people have been talking about, Like don't touch your face is one way to avoid the spread, which we'll talk about, but don't touch your face after not only like being around somebody, but don't touch your face after touching a car or box or touching a grocery cart or something like that, because it could be a foam mic. But the idea that no one has gotten sick yet from a foam mic I

found extraordinarily reassuring. Although it's not like we should go get cocky now and you can just do whatever, but I feel like I can relax a little bit, even though I'm going to be just as vigilant, I can be a little more relaxed about it. Yeah, I mean, you're not gonna go start licking grocery cart handles like you usually do. Man, some of the tastes I've discovered or it's almost like it's like the impossible colors version of tastes, and some some like almost something that HP

Lovecraft would had have trouble describing. Well, that's how you discovered the new form of umami that had previously been undiscovered, right right, jumanti um. And to be clear, to this whole cardboard box on the porch thing and the surgical gloves for me, um, that's a an abundance of caution, just being like, you know, wide not just leave it on the porch just because I don't know, and the surgical gloves thing. And keep in mind, I really literally

haven't left the house in ten days, I don't think. Um. But previous to that, I was wearing the gloves, like when I had to run to the store to get our stuff, just so I didn't have to sanitize my steering wheel and my car door handle and everything like

that every single time I did anything. It's just smart, Yeah, it's really hard to do too, Like if you're if you think about it, you're you're like, wait, but I need my hand to touch my credit card because but then I need my gloved hand to punch in the numbers for my zip code, and like it's like you really have to be on point to keep up with it. And even then you're just it's impossible to be perfect, you know. Yeah, I mean we've been um again, we haven't been out much at all, but when we have

had to be out, we're sanitizing our credit cards. When we come back, we spray our door handle and you know, not like Howard use level stuff, but just just trying to be smart, right, although Howard hughes level stuff right now is not not the worst idea, Like I have Peenix boxes on my feet right now. No, no, no judgment, of course. Um so, Chuck, we're talking about how it spreads. Um, what actually happens with this virus is once somebody coughs or sneezes or licks their hand and wipes a elevator

button or something with it. Um, it's it's that is an infected surface. Although apparently people haven't gotten sick from it yet but more often than not, apparently you're going to get sick if you're around somebody who coughs or sneezes and you get it from the aerosolized virus. When that when that virus enters your body through your mouth, your nose, or your eyes, it sets up shop um, usually around in your throat, which is where that dry

cough starts um. And the reason that those those spiked proteins that form the coronavirus is crown are there is because that's how it interacts with the cell. And the way that it interacts with the cell is through an enzyme that's present on the outer membranes of most cells in the human bodies, and this enzyme is called furin.

Furin I say furin fu r I N. Furin activates that that protein spike, and that's how the virus can pump its its genetic information into the cell, which hijacks the cell's functions and says you're making copies of me now, and then it just kind of spreads from there. And this is why they think that the um that you can get things like diarrhea like a cow or a pig, or you can suffer multiple organ failure or it can

go after other stuff. Is because most of the organs and systems in your body have cells that contain furin on their outer envelopes, and so the the coronavirus UM can can interact with just about any cell that has furin. Yeah, and it makes me really uncomfortable for you to talk about my outer envelopes and diarrhea and cows and pigs in the same sentence. Yeah, it's all pretty bad. Uh. The and you know we've talked about touching your face, which is tough for me as a nail biter and

just general oral orally fixated individual. Um that six foot distance Uh, disinfecting light switches and door knobs and countertops surely doesn't hurt. And uh and I know everyone has heard this a gazillion times, but we would be negligent if we didn't talk about washing your hands with soap and water hot water for at least twenty seconds. Um. Pretend you're a surgeon, and you've seen shows about surgeons. Just pretend like you're in the match camp and just

wash like they wash. There was no chance that we were not going to reference match in this episode. I know, Uh, they there's different songs like the ABC song or I Don't want no scrubs. I guess you could sing like a surgeon if you wanted to. Oh that's a good one, but at least get in there for twenty seconds. We have handwashing parties at my house several times a day, even though we're not going out. We take our temperature

every morning, um as a family. And uh, you know, because I took that trip to Philly, New York and d C right as this was launching to see Bonnie Prince Billy and uh you know, we went on two trains, two planes Penn Station in New York for God's sake, which is already the filthiest place on earth. And uh, I was not freaking out, but I was definitely at a higher risk than the rest of my family. So I've been watching stuff. And tomorrow actually will be my

fourteen day, the end of my fourteen day window. So unless something really happens overnight, then I feel pretty good. Man. I'm glad to hear that. That's great. That's got to be a big relief. It is, you know. I try not to focus on it, but um, you know, my wife and daughter didn't go to Penn station and didn't eat a Philly chee steak at two in the morning, you know, I know, and yet they could have suffered for it, you know. Yeah. So, um, I think a

lot of people are counting down days. I know. You me is from this past Thursday, which is the last time her dad went out to get supplies, um from the grocery store, and she's like nervously counting, accounting to fourteen from from Thursday, just trying to will you know, him not to get sick um. And I think that's just kind of like it's everybody's got these these little

countdown clocks going on right now of their own. It's just talk about like an anxious thing to do while you're sitting around in your home, not not leaving, you know, to pass right exactly. You're you're you're counting down the days in the hopes that an illness doesn't pop up in the meantime. Like what a strange, horrible thing for everybody to be doing right now. Yeah. Absolutely, Um, we

should mention masks really quickly to uh. The c D says there's no need to wear a mask unless you are sick or you're caring from one for someone who's sick. If you're healthy, if you're not sick, if you're keeping yourself clean, masks aren't necessary. You shouldn't go out and buy hundreds of these things. Um. I mean, I'm not gonna judge in one. If they had some and they

want to wear them out, more power to you. Uh. Some people say that they wear them to keep from touching their face because they're really fixated, so that you know there's something to that. But um, the rush on buying things like surgical masks has um put a dent in the medical supply chain, which is not cool. No, And I have to say, like, I know we're not getting political or whatever, but I've read a New York

Times article with with this guy. It was about masks and the masks shortage, and there was this one man, you factorer in Texas, who said, man, short of setting myself on fire in front of the White House, I've done everything I can to warn the government that we

are in a really precar precarious position. He said. I told that the Bush administration, the Obama administration, and the Trump administration that we rely on like of our medical masks from overseas, and if a pandemic happens, we're gonna be reliant on other countries who are dealing with their own stuff to send us masks. And he said that's even the case with American manufacturers who moved their operations

overseas for cheaper labor. And in fact, there's a company that makes medical masks and it's an American company that moved their jam to France, and France under this pandemic said well, by the way, we've taken over your factory and none of these masks are leaving France. You can't send them anywhere. It's illegal there are though you're an American company, this is in France, and we just Nash realized everything. So, um, this guy has been warning any everybody.

I can't imagine what that's like to be to have seen this coming so clearly, uh, and to to just not be listened to, you know, because exactly what he predicted his panned out. Oh boy, All right, well, let's take another break and we'll talk about containing the spread. Everyone's favorite two words these days social distancing and um, a little bit more about COVID nineteen. Right after this

stuff you should know, Nash, stuff you should know. So I just want to say, everybody, I think it's laughable. Anyone including me who thought that I wasn't going to get political at all in this episode. Well, you indicted the past three administrations. So that's okay. That seems fair and balanced, fair and balanced. So, uh, until we have a vaccine, we can only contain COVID nineteen. It is about twice as contagious as the seasonal flu. Yeah, that's

a big, big big deal. Yeah, it's very contagious. Um. And like we said, the big fear right now obviously is loss of life. But the real, real big fear is that the medical system becomes overwhelmed and treatable infections UM can become deadly because we don't have the resources that we need. Right. So the in addition to social distancing, if that one isn't the Oxford English Dictionaries word of the year, oh yeah, then flattening the curve has got

to be. It's one of them. They're they're gonna tie for first probably, and I we should probably blame what flattening the curve is for like the three people who aren't already familiar with it, shall we? Alright, so flattening the curve is this idea that, um, we're going to get x number of infections because this is a pandemic, A lot of people are going to get infected by coronavirus and become sick from it, right, But what we can manage is the time scale that that number of

infections takes place over. So let's say we know that an area is going to get just statistically speaking, a thousand infections from this pandemic. It's way different to have those thousands and thousand infections all at once over the course of one week than it is to have that same number of infections one thousand over the course of ten weeks because of the strain that it puts a

medical staff and medical equipment. We have a limited amount of of medical staff and medical equipment, and if they're all called for at the same time, that's problem. But we can reuse that medical staff, we can reuse that medical equipment over the span of time. So a ventilator can support two patients who need it for a week each over the course of two weeks, but it can only support one patient of those two if they need

it on the same week. So flattening the curve is all about making this this this number of infections that were surely going to see spread out over time rather than happening all at once. And the main mechanism for flattening the curve is social distancing, which is just stay away from one another to cut down on that rate of infection. Yeah, and you know what, we we try to remain judgment free on the show and tell people

to live their life. But this is one instance where um, if you are not social distancing, if you are going out to bars and restaurants and having gatherings, then you're doing a very very bad thing right now. You're doing something extraordinarily selfish, full stop. And I know a lot of people are like, well, I'm young, and it doesn't doesn't it's not gonna get me. And even if it does get me, I'm young and healthy, I'll be fine.

It will be like a cold. The problem is is you're the same person who's going out in public and then touching an elevator button and making that person sick. Or if you're sick and you're out running around, you're coughing, you're sneezing, you're being gross, and you're aerosolizing the air with the virus. Which can stay via viable for three hours.

So you're getting other people sick, and those other people might not survive that COVID nineteen case that you've given them because they're not young and they're not healthy, and the idea that that you're just flouting that that is just it's I think maybe blood boiling is the right term. Yeah, it's. It really really has been pretty upsetting to see, even in my own super cool neighborhood where people seem to

do the right thing most times. Uh And on the the neighborhood page is on Facebook, people are talking and doing the right thing. But you know, even up until like a few days ago, I was driving through my little neighborhood area where the bars and restaurants are, and some of them are still full of people, and I just like, I want to, like I put a loud speaker on top of my car like in uh and oh jeez, why am I in Slacker in the Link Ladder film and just drive around saying very bad things

to people in public. When I think allowed speakers in cars, I think of Blues Brothers. Yeah that too, and that was that was probably Slacker was probably stolen from that anyway, did they use a cop car and slacker? No, it's at the very beginning of slacker. There's this guy. Actually, he probably in Steel because I think it was a real dude in Austin that would just drive around sort of preaching to the masses from inside of his car. Uh. But we need that guy right now to get people

in their houses. Man. It's it's like it's a couple of weeks. Just do it. Just it. It's it's easy, especially for two guys who can continue to work from home to say that. So I don't I don't want to give the impression that we don't have any sympathy and our hearts don't go out to people who who do work at those bars and restaurants and need that money to survive. And so staying at home, and if everybody else stays at home like really deeply affects their

potential to hang in there and survive. Like like that's not lost on us, That's not lost on anybody, I don't think. And I think the thing that is the most blood boiling or people who who are going out and like not doing anything that that has any economic impact, they're just being jerks. They're like playing basketball, or they're just going to the beach, you know, like like that kind of stuff is what drives me the most crazy. Yeah,

just knock it off. Um it had. The heartening thing to see has been how many people are stepping up to uh contribute to their local favorite restaurants and bars, whether it's a go fund me or supporting their curbside pickups, or or just then mowing your favorite uh server some money. Um, that's happening all over the place to try and keep people solvent while this is going on. But the big picture is if we don't do this now, it's just going to be more drawn out and people are going

to be more affected economically. Um, So the right thing to do is just to shut it down for a little while. That I mean, from everything I've seen, what we're doing now, this kind of half hearted approach to social distancing and quarantining. Like we're getting all of the negative economic effects but little to none of the public health benefits. So we're doing it in the exact possible worst way right now. Yeah. I saw one doctor say

that if you could literally just a pause button. Yeah, in the United States right now, there would be no COVID nineteen in two weeks. Yeah, if we could freeze everybody just six ft apart for fourteen days, the virus would stop in its tracks. And we've seen this is the thing. This isn't like conjecture, This isn't philosophy or

modeling or anything like that. This is based on what we've seen in other countries like Singapore, Hong Kong, UM, China, even UM Japan has done a really good job of quarantining where they have they've they've basically figured out the way to contain this is extensive and widespread testing for the disease and then really strict and um uh really well followed and meticulous social distancing and quarantining people taking it seriously so that you can test the people to

see who have it um and and and isolate them, quarantine them, treat them to keep them away from everybody else, and test other people as as time goes on, so that you can have people living a normal life because they're not sick, and the people who are sick have been identified and are being quarantined and isolated while they're being treated. Yeah, I mean, it's it's very easy to look at a place like Singapore and look at a country like Italy, Um, who did not do it right

In America. Italy was just before us. UM. These are two great examples of the difference that this can make. As of today, Singapore has five and fifty eight cases, and despite that, I just saw a new announcement today that they are closing schools and closing entertainment venues just because they're really trying to be super proactive and get

out in front of it. UM. Italy the infection the infection rate was almost nothing throughout February, and then in March it spiked to twenty five thousand new cases a week two weeks later. This is uh, these are numbers that should speak for themselves and you shouldn't have to talk people into social distancing. Yet here we are, you

know it is. It's saddening. Um. The one other problem, or I guess the big problem again is the idea that if a lot of people become sick, if you have a spike in cases like Italy saw, where it suddenly goes up to twenty five thousand new cases a week, a lot of those people have to be hospitalized, and it stretches and over taxes and eventually overwhelms the health care structure in the in in the country, and in the United States, like every town has a brand new,

gleaming hospital and lots of doctors. But it turns out if you look at the statistics, the United States has a paltry number of hospital beds per one thousand people. Um, we have two point eight hospital beds per one thousand people, which even sounds small, but if you put it in context, really small. Um. Japan and Korea have the most. They have thirteen point one and twelve point three hospital beds

per thousand people. Next is Russia at eight point one, in Germany at eight point oh, and then you go there's a lot of countries in between Germany and the United States, which finally pops up with two point eight hospital beds per one thou people. The problem is that's

just hospital beds. That's just a bed to put people, and that's not specialized hospital beds, like people with a bad case of COVID nineteen frequently need like an I see you bed, And so already in the United States, in hard hit areas like New York, we're starting to see, um, I see you rooms that were meant to hold one patient starting to be tripled and quadrupled up with patients who all have COVID nineteen um, and just to just to try to give them the the advanced level of

care that they need. Um, because we don't have enough beds. And so that's why that that not social distancing. Why just going out and carrying on like nothing's going on is just such a ridiculously arrogant thing to do at a time like this. Yeah, And I feel like every day it's gotten a little bit better. Um, Like you really have to be pretty uh selfish and um, what's the word. There's a word that I can't say on the air for when you've got a lot of gumption

to do something despite everyone's saying you shouldn't. Guts not guts because that impites bravery. Nerve there you go. Yeah, Like as of today when we're recording this, which is two days before release, if you're still out doing things like that now, then you really have got a special brand of nerve. Yeah. And and and conversely too, we should point out to self quarantine is a gift. That's

a gift you're giving other people. Nobody's telling there's no martial law, you're not going to be shot on site or arrested or whatever if you leave your house if

you've been exposed to COVID nineteen. But the official guidelines from the CDC and the World Health Organization is, if you know you've been around somebody who has tested positive for COVID nineteen, they ask you to self quarantine for fourteen days, because fourteen days is the longest as far as we know that it takes for symptoms to show up.

That's why people are counting down fourteen days. Right. So if you hang out by yourself, isolated away from everybody else like you were doing for fourteen days, and you don't get sick, you don't have COVID and you're not spreading it, you're not you're not a risk factor any longer. So but to to stop your life and to say I'm not going outside because i don't want to risk other people getting sick because I'm not sure if I have it or not, that is an enormous gift to

give to people. And I mean, it's what you did. Um. My friends Mitch and Patrick, you know dirty Mitch from the scabies episode. He he and his husband Patrick were um exposed to somebody with COVID nineteen. They have no

idea if they had it or not. But the first thing they did was self quarantine, and they just committed to giving up fourteen days of their life of going outside, of interacting with other people, of doing whatever, just because they didn't know, in part because testing is not widely available in the United States. So this is the alternative. It's on It's on us to to make that decision in that choice, and it is a really kind thing to do. So hats off to YouTube Chuck for doing that. Well,

hats off to everyone doing the right thing. Um, and you're right, unless you're rich and famous, it can be hard to get a test right now, which is another problem. But we're not going to go down that rabbit hole either. Uh. Well, we've been at it for close to an hour. Maybe let's wrap up with some talk of vaccine. Um. Obviously, a vaccine is the ultimate end goal for all this. There are a lot of organizations working all over the

world rapidly trying to develop and test vaccines. The National Institute of Health, Walter Reid, Army Institute of Research, and countless others are trying. Um. They apparently there. The government is trying to cut a lot of red tape to speed things up, but it's still has to go through clinical trials. You can't just rush rush something to market, as much as everyone would like that, and it could take a long time, could take up to a year

to get results of these trials. I saw that the NIH vaccine trials could could be in full swing by the fall. UM and that one has promised UM the m A m RNA DASH twelve seven three because it was being developed for MERS, so they kind of had a head start. Remember, MERS is a type of novel coronavirus, so they're like, this might work for this UM this

stars Cove two coronavirus. Will we'll find out UM, So hopefully by the fall that one might be UM just banging, who knows, that's what we need as a banging, robust vaccine. Lots of chains, gold chains, and I swagger to it, just banging. Yeah, and I and I don't think this is getting too political, although it is a little bit. But I just did a little last minute research and found out, you know, there's this drug called what's the name of it, no uh rim desivere. So this is

not um f D A approof for COVID nineteen. It's still got to go through the clinical trials, but it has been used as an emergency emergency measure to treat a couple of cases seemingly effectively. Uh. And they're expecting some results from a trial in April. Uh. And I just learned yesterday. I just kind of dug into, uh this this drug. Yesterday the f d A granted the company who makes a Guilelead Sciences UM orphan drug status. And this is from the nineteen eight three Orphan Drug Act,

which is meant for rare diseases only. UM. Coronavirus or COVID nineteen is obviously not it's speeding up to not be a rare disease. But there's a little loophole in that Orphan Drug Act if you get exclusivity, which is what happened. They granted them exclusivity, uh, for to profit exclusively for seven years on this drug. If you if you get that in and that designation in before it hits that two hundred thousand person threshold, which means it's

not a rare disease anymore, then it sticks. And so yesterday the FDA granted Gilly Head Sciences Um exclusivity for seven years, which obviously the fear there is that it could lead to a block on supplies for generic versions. It could be super expensive. And at the end of this article that I read, I found out that a man named Joe Grogan, who serves on the White House Task Force for Coronavirus Um, lobbied for gilly Head Sciences from two thousand eleven to two thousands seventeen, which is

always a little bit concerning. And these are the guys who have come up with an anti viral drug that has shown promise to treat COVID nineteen. That's right, and they have now as of yesterday, been granted that seven year window to profit exclusively UM and block potentially block

generic suppliers for making this. And here's the real kicker, here's the cherry on the rotten cherry on top, is that they were developing this for ebola, so it was developed with seventy nine million dollars of taxpayer money and now they have been granted exclusive status for seven years.

That's almost as much of a bedtime story as hearing about senators who were briefed about the pandemic and then went and sold all of their um, sold a bunch of stock before the stock market crashed without telling anybody about it, while also downplaying the pandemic too. Yeah, send them to jail, Send them to jail. There was a time in this country, it wasn't long ago, were people who did that were stripped of any honor. We're basically drummed out of out of town on a rail by

irate citizens. There was a time in this country. So man, that was Grandpa Clark all the way. It's right, I suddenly just grew um patches on my elbows. They think cardigans about a sprout out of him. Team. Before we wrap up, I would like just to know your biggest fear and all this, what has been your biggest fear? Um? Loved ones dying? That's my that's my biggest fear, um.

I think you know, economics is a huge one. I'm I'm really scared about that in the long lasting effects people losing their jobs and and just the setbacks that comes from that. But ultimately people, people, people I love and care about, dying, especially unnecessarily, you know, like the idea that that we could have done some things differently and there would have been abundant medical care. That's that's

my greatest fear. What about yours, Well, I've seen in too many movies about like domino effect type things, so my I mean obviously worried about friends and loved ones, But my biggest fear has been worst case scenarios, which is everything from uh, the U. S. Military getting a large outbreak and somebody like I don't know, another hostile

country saying, now's a great chance. Jeez, Chuck, I didn't even thought about that, or um medical personnel or police forces, um things getting disrupted so much with our health professionals, or are people who keep us safe that that things become really scary on a citizen level. So like people are what scare me? Yeah, and it becoming like the urge or something like that, Right, that's what scares me.

That's great, that's great. That was a good one to end on, Chuck, because I mean, the whole reason this episode was to reassure people and then just pull the rug right out from under him at the last minute. But you know what, Having said that, I'm always consistently reminded of the ability and the will of not only Americans but human beings to do the right thing, and the vast, vast majority of people will come together and not um not going to attack mode. Yeah, I I

totally I believe that. I think that that UM people are generally good overall, UM, And there are definitely bad people out there, but I think the good ones out number them, and when pushed against the wall, the good ones can fight back pretty effectively. Also Also, I mean that kind of raises another point too that I found.

It's it's really easy to just kind of let your mind run away and focus on all of the terrible stuff that can happen or all of the terrible stuff that is happening, UM, and you kind of have to you have to exercise your mind to not do that.

You have to stay on top of it and remind yourself that you can also just as easily think positively too, And you've got to try to do that in times like these, for sure, and in times like these that make it sound like this happens every couple of years or something like this is definitely monumental and historic and and once in a lifetime hopefully. Yeah. One other thing, if you think that you might have COVID nineteen, I

found there's a self triage tool. UM. They say that if you think you have it, you should call your doctor, your hospital nine on one and and say I think I have COVID nineteen. There's an online tool now at g E h R C O V I D T R I A G E dot A K I D O L A B S dot com, gare COVID triage

dot Akito labs dot com. And it's just basically a questionnaire that says, hey, this isn't a diagnosed this, but this might this might give you clearer, um, a clear view into whether you're just sitting there freaking yourself out or else. If this this is actually something you might need to call your doctor or your hospital about. Right. Good stuff. Uh, And hopefully all of this will be a weird distant memory not too far from now. And since I said that it's time for a listener mail, yeah,

you know what I think. Instead of listener mail on this one, let's just encourage people to be kind of one another, be cautious, be smart, UM, help out someone in need if you can, and just hang in there. I know we have listeners right now that that have COVID nineteen. UM. Statistically that's uh, that's just got to be the case. So be well and please take care of one another. Yep, and think positive. Everybody think positive. Right.

If you want to get in touch of this while you're hanging out socially distancing, being responsible, you can send us an e mail. You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, maybe wipe it off with some lightsol wipes or something first, and send it to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H