#1439 - Michael Osterholm

All right, here we go. Uh so what you said when you sat down was absolutely perfect, that the timing could not have been better. Well, tell everybody what you do. Well thank you. I'm uh for lack of a better term, a medical detective. I've spent my whole career tracking infectious diseases down, trying to stop them.

Trying to understand where they come from so we can make sure they don't happen in the first place. But most of all, trying to respond to situations just like this. Just like this. And um Just o off the bat, how serious is this? Is this something that we need to be terrified of or is this

Overblown or how how do you stand on this? Well first of all, you have to understand the timing of it in the sense that it's just beginning. And so in terms of what hurt, pain, suffering, death has occap uh happened so far is really just beginning. Um this is going to unfold for months to come yet. And that's I think what people don't quite yet understand.

Um what we saw in China, uh, I'm convinced as are many of my colleagues, as soon as they release all of these uh social distances, these mandated stay in homes, haven't left your home in weeks and weeks kind of thing, when they go back to work, they're on planes trains, subways, buses, crowded spaces, manufacturing plants, even China is going to come back again.

And so this really is acting like an influenza virus, something that transmits very, very easily through the air. We now have data to show that you're infectious before you even get sick. and in some cases quite highly infectious, just breathing is all that you need to do. So from this perspective I can understand why people would say, Well, wait a minute, flu kills a lot more itself every year than this does and I re remind people this just was beginning.

Probably the best guesstimate we have right now on what limited data we have would say this is going to be at least ten to fifteen times worse than the worst se seasonal flu year we see. Yeah, yeah. We uh conservatively estimate that this could And uh require forty eight million hospitalizations, ninety-six million uh cases actually occurring, over four hundred and eighty thousand deaths.

that can occur over the next three to seven months with this situation. So this is not one that to take lightly. And I think that's what I can understand if you say there's only been ten deaths or twenty deaths or fifty deaths. Just remember, two weeks ago we were talking about almost no cases in the United States, and now that we're testing for it and watching the spread as it's unfolding.

Uh those numbers are going up astronomically. Three weeks ago Italy was just living life just fine. Now they're literally in a virtual shutdown in the northern parts of Italy. And that's the challenge with an infectious disease like this. It can spread very quickly and it also can affect people. I think maybe to put this into modern terms, because this is something we think of often when we think of of, you know, pre antibiotic days, you know, the old time medicine.

Um we have an employee at our Center for Infectious Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, and she has a dear friend who lives in Milan, Italy, and she works at a hospital there, and she texted us to this employee of ours last night. And this was an email that came out yesterday from one of their physicians in Milan at the largest hospital there, and he said

I just got a very disturbing message from a cardiologist at one of the Milan's largest hospitals. They're deciding who they have to let die. They aren't screening the staff anymore because they need all hands on deck and they have very small areas of the hospital dedicated to non COVID patients.

where they still screen doctors. Everybody else is dedicated to COVID patients, so even if they're positive, meaning that they're sick, they don't and but they don't have a severe cough or fever, then they have to work. Uh he says that w that they're seeing an alarming number of cases in the forty something range range, and is ho these are horrible cases. So we need to stop thinking that this is only an old person's disease.

Th this is what's um gonna unfold not just in Wuhan, it's unfolding in Milan, it's unfolding here in in Seattle, and this is what's gonna continue to rollingly unfold throughout the world.

Yeah, where did this rumor come from that it's uh an old person's disease? Is it just because the majority of the people that have died from it so far have been older? Yes. In fact that's the primary risk factor for dying is being old and then having certain underlying health problems. For example in China. Uh those me men over the age of seventy who also smoked were eight to ten percent of them died. Sixty-five percent of older Chinese men smoked.

The uh case fatality rate or the percentage of people who die in women in that same age group is only about two percent. In that case, w very few women smoke. Now the challenge we have is that that's the Chinese data. But there are a series of risk factors that we worry about that if they overlay on this disease are going to cause bad outcomes. And we happen to be right at ground zero for one of the major ones here in this country and that's obesity.

Uh we know that obesity is just like smoking in terms of its ability to really cause severe life-threatening disease, and forty-five percent of our population today over the age of forty-five in this country are obese or severely obese. And there's men and women. So one of the concerns we have is we're gonna see more of these uh what I guess I would call very serious and life threatening cases occur in our country because of a s different set of risk factors than we saw in China.

Now y you mentioned that there's some sort of incubation period before people become sick, they're still contagious. What is this incubation period and how do we know about it? Call something an incubation period. We're talking about from the time you and I got exposed, meaning I was in a room breathing the air that somebody else who was infected uh with the virus was expelling out, I breathed it in. How long from that time period till the time period that you get sick?

And what is that? And that's what we call the incubation period. So that's when case numbers can double or triple in every so many days. In this case, it's about four days. So and we actually have data there from people who are exposed one time or one time only and we know when they were exposed, where they were exposed, and how soon do they get sick afterwards. So the chauffeur in the car where an individual was sick or showing symptoms then the chauffeur gets it four days later.

You know, they were there one time and one time only. And if the chauffeur does not show any symptoms, he's still contagious. No symptoms. That virus would appear well that's not a very strong virus, but in fact when it infects us, it could kill us. So we've seen cases of of fatal disease that were exposed to people that had minor symptoms themselves. Wow.

And this is what's unfolding here and and this is where I think is such an important and I said why the timing is so important because you know, Joel, we really've got to get information out to the public. There is so much misinf information right now.

And you know, we're gonna be in this for a while. This is not gonna happen overnight. And I worry I keep telling people we're handling this like it's a corona blizzard, you know, two or three days, we're back to normal. This is a coronavirus winter.

And we're gonna have the next three months or more, six months or more, that are gonna be like this. And you know, so far this thing has been unfolding exactly as we predicted it. We and our center put out a piece uh on january twentieth and said this is gonna spread worldwide. Yeah, yeah.

It's just China. We put out a piece the first week of February and said this is gonna pop probably the last week of February, first week of March, because what happens is it has what's called an R naught or a doubling time of of of these every four days, so two increase is doubling every four days. So if you go from two to four to eight to sixteen, it takes a while to build up. But when you start going from five hundred to a thousand to two thousand to four thousand

That's what we're seeing happen in places like Italy. We're beginning to see it in some ways up in Seattle. It's what happened in China. And uh, you know, when people are confronted with that, suddenly this low risk phenomena that everybody talks about isn't so low anymore. And that's when you need to prepare people.

Now what can be done? Like what what can the average person do? I see people walking around with masks on, wearing gloves. Is that nonsense? Largely. Yes. First of all, um let's step back. The primary mechanism for transmission is just the respirator route. Um in studies in Germany which just have been published literally in the last twenty four hours

Um they actually followed a group of people who had been exposed to somebody in an automobile manufacturing plant. And then they had nine people that with this exposure they said, if you have any symptoms at all, contact us, we want to follow up and they all agreed. Well, they got infected and so in the very first hours, just feeling bad, sore throat, they went in and sampled the throats, their their saliva, their nose for virus, they did blood, they did stool, they did urine.

And they found that at that very moment when they first got sick they had incredibly high levels of virus, sometimes ten thousand times that we saw with SARS. in their throats, meaning they were infectious at that point already and they hadn't even had symptoms yet of really any nature. They were coughing.

Wow. And and that's where we're concerned because that's the kind of transmission it's try you know, I always have said trying to stop influence, virus transmission likes trying to stop the wind. You know? We j we've never had anything successfully do that other than vaccine and we don't have a vaccine here.

So what's happening is that people in public spaces are getting infected. And the way you need to address that is unfortunately if you're older, over fifty five, you have some underlying health problems, which unfortunately a lot of Americans do, we have uh obesity.

Then right now you don't want to be in large public spaces and trying to potentially get infected. So you can take care of that part. As far as what can public health do? We're not gonna we can talk about this, we're not gonna have a vaccine anytime soon. That's happy talk.

Um what we you know we can close schools. One of the big challenges we have right now, if we close schools, what do we accomplish? In influenza, When you we close schools during outbreaks because it turns out kids are get infected in school and they're like little viruses. You know, they come home and they transmit it to mom and dad and brothers and sisters. And uh so we close school sometimes and s Christmas breaks are always great for kind of putting the dampening effect on flu.

In this case, kids are not getting sick very often at all, which is one of the really good news features of this disease. In China, only 2.1% of the cases were under eight, nineteen years of age. Why is that? You know, we don't completely know. Uh and and I'm going to come to that in a second because they're getting infected, it turns out. One study showed that they still get infected with the virus, but they don't get sick.

And we have that happen. There's a disease called infectious hepatitis, hepatitis A, where we have outbreaks in daycare. And the way we know I have an outbreak is because it's transmitted through the stool, fecal oral, is mom and dad and the daycare providers all get sick. And the kids those symptoms we go in and test the kids are all positive. So some diseases will manifest my primarily when you're adult, but not as a child. This one appears to be the same.

So do we close schools or not, if we're not really spreading the disease? Because it turns out that if we close schools, we uh a recent study done showed that thirty eight percent of nurses today in this country who are working in the medical care have kids in school. And if suddenly we're closing schools for two or three months, who's going to take care of those kids? One fourth of the American population has no sickness.

If we close schools, they don't get paid if they have to stay home. So when you ask what can we do, we have to really be thoughtful about what we do. Are we doing more harm than good by closing schools, for example, even though everybody will say, Oh, we gotta do everything we can Or do we just tell people, you know, it's going to be limiting your contact as much as you can, and that's really about what we can do. And limiting the contact, is that really gonna help?

It does because it's like putting rods in a reaction. If you if you don't have as much close contact you can, you know, not transmit as much. If I'm if I'm sitting in a room with a hundred people and we're kind of sharing air, the transmission's remarkable. Right here off the coast of California, you've got your cruise ship. Cruise ships are notorious. for recirculating air inside the inner cabin.

We've had a number of outbreaks. That's why they're having these outbreaks on cruise ships? And then you leave them on there. I think the the cruelest human experiment we've done in a long time with humans is leave them on these ships, get'em off right away.

Should they get them off right now? Absolutely. What should they do with them? Well they can put them in quarantines of some kind if they want and follow up on them, but you're guaranteed they're all going to keep getting infected day after day. It seems like we're not really prepared for something like this, although the the CDC has been telling us for a long time that we should be.

You know, we are uh not prepared at all in the sense. You know, I uh wrote the book uh Deadliest Enemies that was published in two thousand and seventeen. Thank you. Go get it. And panic. Chapter thirteen, the title of the chapter was SARS and MERS, a harbinger of things to come. You know, we've predicted this. And then I wrote a chapter on there what a flu pandemic would look like if it emerged in China.

And if you read it, it's exactly what has happened. The supply chains went down, China locked down the country, it spread to other countries, people all pointed fingers. And you know it's it's The kind of thing where we hear it and hear it but we don't get prepared. You know, five years ago I gave a talk at the Mayo Clinic, uh first time I talked about this, I talked many times afterwards, and I showed a slide of Puerto Rico, a picture of Puerto Rico, and then I showed the map and

Then I showed a picture of a building in Puerto Rico, a nondescript building, and I said, this is our next big disaster. It turns out that 85 percent of all the world's production of IV bags. with saline that we need desperately were made in these plants in Puerto Rico. And all we needed was one one Category five hurricane to come through and take it out. Maria came through a year and a half ago and the world went into a major crisis with a shortage of IV bag.

Now that was so obvious that was going to happen. And yet we don't prepare. That's so foolish. I know, I agree. And that's what hopefully this is a wake up call. The business community I hopefully will wake up. You know, one of the other things we're doing right now, uh Joel, this is really One of the things that has me most concerned about this whole situation is our group has been studying.

for the last year and a half with support from the Walton Family Foundation looking at critical drug shortage. It turns out that we identified 153 drugs in this country that people need right now or they die. I mean it's on the crash card, it's acute critical drugs, 100 percent of more generic. All of them basically are made offshore of the United States, and large part of'em are made in China and India.

And at this point we have shortages anyway every day. Just before this crisis happened. Now these supply chains have gone down. Our group is actively helping the United States government try to figure out, you know, where they're gonna get these drugs. Now just think of this.

If I came to you and said the Defense Department was gonna outsource all its munitions production to China, you'd look at me and say, Come on. You know what? The US Defense Department has no more access to these drugs than anybody else. They are beholden to China for these drugs. Six hundred and ninety thousand Americans have in stage renal disease right now? Most of their primary drugs are coming from China.

And now with the shutdown and what's happening with this, and this is what I talked about in the book, why I was so concerned, because we are at risk. So even the situation as it unfold, it's not just about what the virus does to you, it's about what the entire system is rigged up to be and what this virus does once it gets into it. You're making me nervous.

Well but that's before we get done here we're going to talk about what we can do to get people not nervous. No no no what I mean is we're we're gonna we're gonna bring you around to take you know it's my job is not to scare you out of your wits, it's to scare you into your wits. Sorry. Let me ask you something about sauna use. One of the things that I read was that if you are in contact

that twenty minutes in a sauna in a a really hot sauna is uh very good for killing some of the virus. Is that bullshit? Yes. Jesus Christ these people. Yeah there was uh some sauna fact thing that was being um pushed around that it's great for flu and all sorts of infectious diseases. Actually it's great for you. I mean it makes you feel good, but we don't have any evidence it makes any difference in infectious diseases.

Why is so it doesn't have any impact at all? The the idea was that the breathing in of the very hot air, uh hundred and eighty degree air for twenty minutes. Aaron Powell See if that temperature of 180 degree air got really into your lungs, your lungs would be fried. You'd be dead. Well how's it going to be? It's kinda like taking a a cup of hot water and putting it into a bathtub of cold water. And so what happens by the time you get done, it's not that hot.

And so in this case your lungs couldn't stand even 110 to 20 degree heat without causing real severe damage. And so it doesn't kill the virus at all. So it would the virus would have to be like just in your mouth. Even then no? No, no. Jesus, Michael. That's unfortunate. Don't stop using the sauna. It's a good thing to use for your skin and everything else. But uh yeah, but it's not going to help you with this one. So how does it cool the air down? What's what's happening?

Yeah. Well you you basically it's a mixture of you you know when you breathe out, you don't breathe all the air out. Okay, I mean you're you you that would you'd almost be dead. You couldn't do the tidal volume. So what happens is every breath? Well in other words, you have so much air in your lungs already, when you breathe out you breathe just a little bit of it out, and each time you bring more in out, in and out.

And so when this mixes in, the hot air like that, or the very cold air, you know, in Minnesota when you're Forty five below zero we have the same problem. We don't freeze our lungs, okay you know, when we breathe in. May feel c

And so it's just there's so much in there that it mixes with the other air and it ultimately doesn't the temperature of your lungs don't change. Even if you're doing like some crazy deep breathing exercises where you slowly exhale all the air out to there's nothing left and then breathe it all the way in.

I my I I'm giving you my best shot at it. It's not gonna make much difference. Sorry. I've always wondered that about like people that are in like Alberta and it's like fifty degrees below zero. Like how do they do that? Yeah. Well we do it all the time in Minnesota. Well, we don't anymore in Minnesota. It's getting warmer there every winter. But uh we surely

Noah Cold Air's like well so much for that myth. Um myth number two, well I don't say myth, I should say rumor was that this was something from some sort of a biological weapons thing that was leaked. Right,'cause Wuhan is some area a part of China that they actually do work on biological weapons.

And uh we've heard that loud and clear. And let me just give a a little bit of background and more to my career. Um back in the early nineteen nineties I got very involved in the whole area of biodefense and bioterrorism, bio warfare. Uh it turned out I was involved with helping to uh in interview and get information from some of the Russian bioweaponeers after the wall fell and Russia collapsed. We had all these experts coming out who had been spending their whole lives making bioweapon.

And it became very clear to me this was really a serious challenge. And as part of my work I I spent a lot of time in this area and I actually uh through a series of uh serendipitous events became a personal advisor to his Majesty King Hussein of Jordan before he died on this topic. I got really into it.

Um I wrote a book that was published uh in nine eleven of two thousand called Living Terrors, What our Country Needs to Know Does Five the Coming Bioterrorist Catastrophe and I think I bought eight of the twelve copies that were sold in that year afterwards. And then when nine eleven happened, of course, then it became really prominent.

Um and then I went on to serve on a group here in the United States that was basically the National Science Advisory Board on Biosecurity, safety issues. So I've had a lot of experience in this area. And so I bring that to the table and I tell you there is no evidence whatsoever that this is a bioweapon or that it was accidentally released from the Wuhan lab.

Um, today with the genetics we have on these viruses and how we can do testing, we can almost date them almost like carbon testing. You know, so radiocarbon you wanna know how old a a block is or something like that. This thing clearly jumped from an animal species probably the third week of November to humans. And pangulants, you know, these scaly anteater like animals are are a very good source because we have coronaviruses just like those in these animals.

And it got into a human. So, you know, we've surely had a lot of challenges with that, but I don't believe that there is any evidence linking this to one an intentional release, an ac or an accidental release, or that it's an engineered bug. It's not.

My friend Duncan and I did a show back uh in two thousand twelve ish, somewhere around there with um Uh sci-fi where we went to the C D C in Galveston and we talked to them about that very thing and they said the real concern the real concern is just n actual diseases, it's not man-made diseases.

And just naturally occurring diseases. That's exactly it. I mean look at we're you know, we could not have crafted a virus like this to do what it's doing. I mean, we don't have the creative imagination or the skill set. If somebody said, Okay, I want to find a virus that'll take out a lot of people, okay?

This one mother nature does it so much better than we could ever do it. And you know, whether it was Ebola, whether it's this one or it's antibiotic resistance, any of these things. I mean, you know, right, you and I were talking only about the pinch forconic wasting disease to be a problem for humans. You know, Mother Nature's doing it pretty well on her own.

The chronic wasting one really scares me because there's so many people that have a vested interest in dismissing it. Um I had uh our good friend Doug Durin on the podcast with uh I don't remember the gentleman that he brought with him. Brian Richards. Thank you. Brian Richards who uh explained the science behind it. And there are so many people that are dismissing this because either they enjoy deer hunting or they they want uh captive servids to be something that are are still

Uh uh uh something that you could be released on private property. Does people grow and breed deer and then sell them to ranchers who want deer on their properties, particularly large deer. And um I mean guys that I have talked to that are dismissing it, I can see the chain of events that they want it to be not a concern. But if you see what it's doing to deer, it's terrifying. It's a hundred percent fatal. Um it the the DNA exists on plants for years.

They they leak it out of their saliva, they leave traces of it everywhere, and w in Doug's area there's some some near somewhere near there that's like fifty percent infection rate. Right. I I listen, I think this is really a a significant challenge. I um was involved back in the nineteen nineties. uh and into the eight nineteen eighties when Mad Cow first emerged in England.

And at the time uh was asked to give an assessment when this was all this bovine spongiform encephalophy, another prion. These prions are what causes disease. And you know, people wanted to dismiss it that people weren't gonna get sick. Well then we realized ten years later all these human cases started to show up that were from those exposures ten years before.

And it took a while before those prions obviously changed in the cattle to get to the point where they'd infect humans. Well the same thing is happening with deer. If you look back on the uh deer population that were infected thirty years ago and you look at it today, the prions are constantly changing, they're mutating, they're they're new strains. And they're getting more human like all the time. And one of the things our center is doing is we're looking at working on that very issue

of trying to help people understand that the studies that were done fifteen or twenty years ago looking at how infectious these might be for humans were really well done. They were good, but they had different strains. And over time these strains are looking to be more more like they could infect humans or they could even infect cattle.

Which would be another huge challenge if that happened. And so I think your point's a really good one and we know today that there are probably at least seventeen thousand deer that were consumed in the past year. that were actually uh positive for this prion and people went ahead and ate them anyway.

So I worry about that too. That's terrifying. So these people have these prions in their system now, but then currently they're not they're mu not making the jump to cause uh what is it, uh Juckb's Kreutzfeld disease? Kreuzfeld disease, which is one yeah, it's kind of a

Th we don't know that humans are getting infected. One of the challenges we don't have a test unless you die. And then that's a heck of a way to have to get a test result. Okay. So one of the challenges you don't know this until you actually show up with the signs and symptoms.

And so one of the things that we're looking at carefully is doing surveillance or disease detection among people that might present with this. If it's gonna happen Uh I suspect uh the naturally occurring prion related diseases like Kreutzwelt Yakupp disease you just mentioned occurs typically in older people, over seven.

If you sudden start seeing a forty year old or a fifty year old or sixty year olds even with this disease, then you gotta start thinking what else is going on. And so that'll help us detect it in cases. But then we've already failed. You know, then we've had ten years worth of transmission or more potentially before we get the first human cases like we did with mad cow. And so our message has been right now hunting is really important. It is a very important part of our society.

Frankly, it's it's the way we manage deer herds, thank God. It's a huge economic boon for running the kinds of DNRs etcetera we have. We balance the back, as you know, from sportsmen on these licenses. And so we don't want to stop hunting. But we've got to make sure that we and make sure that people aren't getting infected. And one of the things that our group at the University of Minnesota is working on is tests now that are almost like point of

So if you shoot an animal, could you know very quickly that it's positive or not? And then you'd know not to process that animal or eat it. Well not only that, the the prions what's terrifying is uh the how vul how um invulnerable they are. uh how ridiculously vigorous they are when you can boil them at a thousand degree temperature for hours and hours and they're fine. That's right. When they're when they're sanitizing medical equipment that they've used They've been able to do it three times

So try to sterilize these things. Like the sterilization process, you wear the what what is the temperature that they do it for? Well they do it both t temperature and pressure, but it's in the hundreds and degrees and it's under high pressure. And I've actually been involved with several cases where these very equipment you're talking about were accidentally used on somebody who had Kroisfelt Yaakov disease. They had to landfill it. They couldn't they couldn't even

Yeah that's what's insane. Like you can't kill these things. It's pretty hard. That's why, you know, we we want to make sure that if you're eating deer uh cervids right now, that we have to make sure they're tested. And I think the other point you raised is a good one. We've been very concerned about the movement of this disease by cervid farming.

Yeah. Uh we see f you know, state by state by state slowly getting, you know, picked off because somebody moved a a trophy deer from state A to State B and it was infected and it got out or others got out of the pins and then it affects locals. Yeah. Now has that made the jump to bison or elk or any of those other animals yet? Not yet. Um it's several kinds of deer, as you know, but not not those. Neal deer so far, there has been some cases in the West

Exactly. Yeah. And then there's been a a deer in Korea, a type of deer there and and one in in uh the Scan Scandinavian countries. One. Yeah. I mean I mean uh d different kinds of deer types that are there. Yeah, yeah. So the one we worry about right now is uh getting into the caribou in the northern Canada. Right now the range of the deer that are infected in uh the provinces of Canada is right butting up next to Caribou.

And of course if you're not a hunter you wouldn't know this, but caribou obviously the herds are remarkable, unlike, you know, white tails or for that matter elk. If you got it into caribou the f it would likely spread very quickly and as you know the native populations the caribou are key. They're key to their livelihood. Yeah. So you wouldn't want to see it get in the caribou. Now uh I didn't even know that it was in Canada. What parts of Canada has it been

Throughout a number of provinces. I think there's four provinces now it's in. It's it's and it's gonna spread. It's it's the same phenomena that uh a combination of a deer movement with cerved farming and then Once it's in an area it'll keep migrating a bit and a bit as these animals move somewhere. But you know, as we know, deer don't fly four thousand miles every season. Okay. So it's not that kind of movement. If humans if we're gonna see a big movement, it's humans are doing.

Um uh as our good friend Doug Durin has been doing all this work to try to alert people about it and also they're they're putting up these testing places where hunters can bring in a deer and have the deer tested. Um how much of that is available to people around the country though. Not nearly enough.

And that's what we need to work on is if you don't make it easy and convenient as you know it's not going to get done. And so we you know, it's hard enough to convince people that there's really a problem because people don't want to believe it even if they know that there's, you know, C W D in deer in the area and we have some like that.

But I think the tide is changing. More and more people are sensitive to it. They want to have access to testing quickly. But if it's going to take you a month and have to get the test back, you know what it is about processing. Well in some cases they get so busy because you know unlike

laboratory testing for an entire year where I do s one twelfth in January, one twelfth in February, et cetera, et cetera. You know, deer season typically is very c concentrated in just a couple of weeks to a month in the fall. And so the problem is all the animals come in at that time, so your lab capacity has to handle that huge surge all at one time. And so sometimes it takes a while to get it back. So these higher stuff.

During that time. Yeah, and and we hope that these prions don't ultimately infect people and jump. And but if they do, you know, I worry what will happen to uh deer hunting as we know it because Probably a lot of people will, you know, not continue and we need that desperately for herd management. I mean it's the way we do it. Well what they're doing in Doug's area is they're they're actively

trying to eliminate um a lot of deer and try to lower drastically lower the numbers particularly of bucks which I guess they wander more. Yep, they do. It's all really scary stuff.'Cause if they do make the jump to humans, I mean it has made the jump to I believe mice. Well what happened was i originally it didn't and so that was some of the data that was used to support uh it's not a problem. Right. Now these what we call humanized mice or mice that are basically

much more like a human, we're now seeing that jump occurring. And these new strains, see the strains that again were around twenty years ago are not the same ones today, because as these prions continue to pass from animal to animal to animal, they go through these little minor mutations. and they're getting more and more and more like what a human Transmissible prion might look like. So in these mice studies now that are really made to mimic a human, we're starting to see that jump.

Yeah, and folks if you've never seen a deer with C W D, you should go and Google it'cause it's terrifying. The idea that that could make that jump to human beings and People pouring saliva out of their mouths and their whole body just wasted away to skin and bones. Right. That's what we're looking at. I mean that's why it's called chronic wasting disease. Cause the animals literally waste away.

We actually have a major resource center on our website, free of charge, open and it's all on chronic waste and disease. So people want to go there it's w w dot sidrap, c. I. And you can go there and all these pictures W W dot. Sidrax. C I D R A P Sid Rapid. Yep, just Center for Infectious Research and Poly CIDRAP dot UMN dot EDU.

And we have a lot of information. There it is. That's it. And we've got a lot of information on there also about coronaviruses. We have a whole resource center just for the coronaviruses too. Novel coronavirus. There you go. Um For the average person that is uh sitting around reading these d articles that say don't worry or reading these are there's articles that say this is the end of humanity

What what what what could these people do? Like what what could they do and what do they do if they get infected? Well first of all, uh neither of those kind of articles are correct and we have to make sure that we get that message out to people that it's there. We need straight talk right now, you know, and and part of it is it's so hard to you hear from people who suppose experts what's this gonna happen or not happen.

You know, uh and and let me just give you an example because we've heard a lot about well it's gonna go away with the the crun uh the coronavirus with the seasons. Okay, when it warms up it'll go away. Well, you know, the other coronaviruses that we have that we've had to worry about was SARS, which appeared in two thousand and three in China.

came out of China in February two thousand and three, it took us a little while to figure out that these people really aren't that infectious till day five or six of their illness. And then they really crash and burn and many of them would die. Um, but what we did was basically by knowing that identify these cases in their context quickly. And so if they had symptoms, brought'em in.

put them in these isolation rooms so they wouldn't infect anybody else. And it took until June to bring that under control. That had nothing to do with the season. MERS, which is another coronavirus that's in the Middle East, it's in the um Arabian Peninsula, i the natural reservoir for that is is camels. In Chi and by the way, SARS it was palm civets and we a type of animal food road that we got out of the markets there.

In the Arabian Peninsula we're not gonna euthanize uh one point seven camels, you know, to try to get rid of myrrh. And there it's a hundred and ten degrees out and this virus is transmitting fine things. I mean it goes from animals to people, it goes in the hospitals. So that's a good myth to expose right away. This is not something that's gonna cure up when it gets warm.

Uh it you know, if it does, it won't be because there's a model for it. What will it be? Because how does a how does something like SARS run through a population and then stop being around anymore. Well it wouldn't have but had we had good public health. Had we had uh you know the same kind of transmission we're seeing with this coronavirus where you're infectious before you ever get sick, where you're highly infectious.

Remember with SARS now you didn't really get infectious till you're in six or s you know, six days of illness and you knew that you were in trouble. And then you could isolate you. And we didn't understand that at first and we trans you know virus transmitted. So that's why SARS stops. MERS stops because we don't get rid of the camels so it keeps hitting humans day after day. But then when they go to the hospital we no longer allow those

individuals to transmit to others in the hospital because we do what we call good infection control. As soon as they get there, they're in special rooms with special masks and all this kind of thing. And so in that regard, uh these coronaviruses can be stopped. This one's not. As I said at the top of the program, this is uh like trying to stop the wind. Info winds of transmission. You never hear anybody saying in a bad flu seasonal flu year

Um, you know, we're gonna stop this one. If you don't have a vaccine that works, you don't. Um it's just breathing. That's all it is. So what's best case scenario here? Well I think as I laid out to you before, uh you know, this could be ten times worse than a really bad seasonal flu year. And uh i I grant you it will it will hit, you know, primarily the older population and those underlying health problems. But as I mentioned also

You know, we have a lot of people who have other risk factors. Obesity, high blood pressure is another risk factor where you can have a really bad outcome with this. And so we don't quite know what it's going to do yet. I think uh you know we've we've been right on the mark predicting where it's gonna be to today.

I think from here on out I can tell you it's gonna stay around for months. It's not gonna go away tomorrow. We gotta stop thinking about if we just get through tomorrow, that's it. So if we're gonna go to schools, we're gonna tell people not to go into public, we're gonna cancel big events. How long are we prepared to do that? What are we going to do? We have to ask ourselves that.

I think the big thing is is eventually enough people get infected where it'll be like putting reactors in the rods, you know, rods in the reaction I should say, and then that stops it by itself. But uh how so? Because if you're if If two of the three of us in this room were immune right now to it because we'd had it and recovered and had protection, because natural protection, then I couldn't transmit to any. So that's what's gonna happen if you get enough people who get infected.

Ultimately, uh then it'll s slow down and stop transmission that way, but that's a heck of a price to pay to get there. Is it safe to say that we're fairly fortunate that this isn't something like the Spanish flu or something that's really ruthlessly deadly? Uh that's where I think we have to be really careful. Um just to back up, about point one percent of people who get seasonal flu die. And grand shoots mostly older or younger people, okay? That's one out of a thousand.

With this one right now in China, we're seeing between two and three percent of the people die and some say, Well, that's way too high. It's not gonna be that high, it's gonna be lower. Uh but again uh and they say that because we didn't pick up all the milder illnesses, okay? Um but on the other hand, we have a lot of additional people in countries like ours that have even more risk factors for having bad outcomes than China.

And so uh Spanish flu, the one you mentioned in nineteen eighteen, that was about a three to three point two percent case fatality rate. Now it did preferentially impact eighteen to twenty five year olds. They they were the hardest hit group. Yeah, why was that? Well, you know, it has to do with your immune response again, we think. That uh what happened is when this virus got into you, it created what we call a cytokine storm, which is an antibody of response in your body that's out of control.

And it basically you destroy yourself. And it sets this thing up to trigger it off. So the healthier people had the more adverse reaction to it. Exactly. Or the other group that has had a real challenge with that are pregnant women. And pregnant women have a very unique issue. Um one is of course they have some constriction of their lungs just by the very physical mass.

But also their immune system is really at at a heightened state at that point. There's a part of that immune system and that woman says, This is not all me, get rid of this. It's like a rejection of a graph. And the other part saying this is the most precious cargo I'll ever carry, you know, I gotta make sure I don't lose it. And when that virus got in between those two, it started again that same kind of cytokine storm.

Now the thing that concerns us about this, which we saw in in in nineteen eighteen, I mentioned just three plus percent. This one could be as high as two percent. So it's somewhere between a really bad flu year at point one percent and it could be as high up here, you know, getting closer to nineteen eighteen like. And that's those numbers I just gave you a few minutes ago from the

uh American Hospital Association of, you know, four hundred and eighty thousand deaths here in this country over the next six to twelve months. What can someone do to shore up their immune system while this is all going on?

Well, a couple of things. Um first of all, just being as healthy as you can be. You know, wait, wait. You know, I'm I'm getting up there right now where, you know, it becomes more and more of a challenge to stay, you know, in good shape. You know, the more you can do to do that, um something you know all about, you know, is keeping in shape is really important.

Uh second thing is if you're on medications like for blood high blood pressure, don't don't miss them. Take those drugs because they're really important. Even though they may not appear simp you know, you don't have any symptoms of high blood pressure or something like that. And then I think just, you know, getting sleep and eating a healthy diet. And that's about what we can do today to help get you prepared for this.

Um is there anything else someone could do, like maybe I V vitamin drips or d anything that's gonna really boost your system? No, you know, uh When you look at all the things that might be there and I'm happy and willing to accept any and all that might help, but we don't really have any data that those substantially impact on your your immune system to make it that much better. No, actually there has been studying.

Um I mean a g a good example is uh you know, and I and I was one of those people that thought, boy, this is a great thing, probiotics, you know. It turns out that we've studied this with regard to antibiotic resistance and does it help your gut, et cetera. And it turns out that the probiotic users were no different than the non probiotic users. In terms of recovery from antibiotics?

No, and th the issue of if you're gonna kinda compete out the bad bugs so by getting the good, healthy gut flora the bugs there, you would actually reduce the chance of picking up a bad bug. And it turned out there was no difference. But how would they do a study like that? The only way I think they would do a study like that accurately is to infect someone that is the the same person. Like have the same person with no

probiotics and then have them with probiotics. What and and the studies that have been done are very close to that. But what they did is they used two different groups of people. This people use probiotics, this group Right. And then they looked at all their illnesses and they got stool samples on everybody and they got to the group?

Oh, I don't have the numbers in front of me. They're pretty sizable. Um because I was disappointed. I mean I was taking some myself. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean I think though but I think the key message here is is that, you know

We're we're gonna get through this, but right now we do have some real challenges before us. What we can't tell people is it's all safe. You know. I I I I every time I hear people say the risk is low right now, it reminds me of what would happen if the uh there was this huge low pressure system, you know, five days off the coast, uh the Gulf, and there was ninety degree water between that system and the beach.

And there was no wind shears in the northern hemisphere that's likely gonna knock it off. But we tell the people standing on the beach that day we have low risk of anything. Well we know five days from now it's coming. Right. And so what we need to do is help this American population or the world for that matter understand we're gonna be in some hurt for the next few months and we have got to get

better prepared. How are we gonna how are we gonna work? Where are we gonna work? We we c we can't stop working. We need we need our lights on. We need health care. We need food. So th a bunch of things people should do that's gonna boost their immune system that we know of, right? Like uh get sleep. Uh-huh. Um drastically lower your alcohol intake. Drink a lot of water. Mm-hmm. Take vitamins. Those kind of things. Things that are gonna keep your body healthy.

So in that sense, sauna will help you a little bit because it does not be a little bit more than a little bit What relaxes you're going to do? Relaxes you, it also boosts up your heat chalk proteins and now if you're in Minnesota we'd say there's a two part requirement of that. You gotta go from the sauna to the ice water, back to the sauna. You gotta do both. Yeah. People love that, right? We do it all the time. Well the Russians invented that, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Um yeah. Does that have you ever done that? I have. My son has a uh and daughter have a beautiful lake place up in northern Wisconsin. They got a son at Lake Literally twelve feet from the lake. And there's a spring right there. So in the wintertime the lake actually stays open. So we go right from the sun and the hot tub right to the water and back. Oh wow, even when it's frozen? Oh yeah. So you literally can go right into it. So and then you run right back into the

Hot tub. That's when you sleep well. When you've done a couple of those rounds you sleep really well. Yeah, I would imagine. Your your body's freaking out. Yeah, I I love the sauna but I haven't had the opportunity to jump into a lake right afterwards. Okay, well we'll we'll have to uh no just not any lake. You had to have an ice covered lake. Yeah, yeah. Then you really got then you gotta yeah. That's the real feeling. Yeah. Well um

What else can people do in terms of all this hand sanitizer jazz and masks? Is that all The hand sanitizers actually are a great thing for stopping a lot of infectious diseases. They actually are really good. They're good for your hands, uh you know, in terms of the skin. They kill the bad bug.

The whole issue of using your hands touching your face that people all concentrate on. Yes. The data's actually very weak that this kind of virus is going to be transmitted that way. So I wouldn't tell you to stop using hand sanitizers, but don't think it's going to have a big impact on this. Do you see that viral video that's going around that woman who was uh giving the address at the behest of the White House?

And uh she she they she tells people not to touch their face and then immediately licks her finger and turns the page. Yeah, I saw that. I saw that. Well why is she telling people not to touch their faces?'Cause you know well sh the the thought was is that there are receptors around your eye right here that actually for this virus could get in and then get into your body. And you know, the data we have on this is so sparse to say that that's the case.

I think the primary thing about hand washing is is legitimate, but one of the things we want people want to do something. They want to be able to feel like they're doing something and so we tell'em, wash your hands often and to present this d prevent this disease. And I feel like we're not being really honest with the people that the data and and we've looked at this very carefully really is about just breathing air. And that's a hard thing to stop.

So keep doing the hand washing but don't think that that's gonna stop this disease. But you asked about the man's gonna stop other stuff. Yes, yeah. There's two kinds. Right. Basically the surgical mass, which just fits over and the reason it's called the surgical mass is because it's loose fitting, just fits, you know, kinda ties behind you. It was worn worn by surgeons so that they don't cough or drip into your wounds.

And it was never made to protect you from bugs coming in. So those little spaces on the sides, that's not a problem if I'm breathing into the cloth right in front of my nose. But in terms of the air coming in on the side, they're not they're not effective at all. So people wear'em, they look like they're doing something.

Now if you are sick, they may help a little bit from you transmitting because if you cough, then you cough right into that cloth and it'll some of it'll embed in there and knock it out around. The other one though is called an N ninety five respirator, but for all intents it looks like a mask. It's just tight face fitting. It has a seal, even at the nose, etc. That's an apocalypse mask.

I it could be. I don't know what those are, but that could be okay. I'm just saying that that's how I look at it. Okay, okay. Well they're actually we use them all the time in healthcare all the time. And in they use them in actually about ninety percent of them are used in industry. So when they're grinding things or asbestos, et cetera, you know they don't breathe in all these parts. So if we have one of those, that'll do something. The problem is we have a big shortage.

Um, you know, right now we have hospitals that are down to just a couple of days worth of uh these masks uh th the s the respirators, and it's because we don't stockpile anything in this country. You know, we don't have the hospitals don't have the money to do that. Those preppers right now are so excited.

Yeah. I knew it, I knew the day would come. Yeah, well they are they are bottled peaches and well this is really important because how healthcare workers go is how the country I think will see we're going. You know, there have been over four thousand healthcare workers in China who are infected, many of them on their jobs. And uh a number of them died.

And if in this country we have a real challenge delivering health care because we're overwhelmed and then we have healthcare workers picking up the infection like we talked about the group in Milan Um and we don't have the protection for them, I really believe that's when the public will say, wait a minute, what's going on here?

And and that's where I think the challenge. So we really have to protect our healthcare workers. They are the frontline people. And and the biggest problem we have is a lot of these cases need intensive care medicine, which we only have a limited number of beds for. Um but this is really sophisticated medicine.

So when one of those people get infected, a doctor or nurse working in intensive care, it's not like you just took out another soldier. You took out a special forces person. You just can't bring somebody in from family practice or wherever and put'em in there. And so we've got to protect these workers and w I'm really concerned that that's one of the areas we've not done.

Nobody stockpiles. Uh we have no uh you know, capacity to make lots of them all of a sudden. You know, th the prior to this event the hospital purchasing agent would go online, click a button, send me five thousand of these and it would be there the next morning. Has anyone contacted you uh before this or since in particular and uh asked for your advice?

as to how they can better prepare. Like in terms of like the president. Oh the president hasn't, but I know a number of the people who are working in the White House uh And they've contacted you? Oh yeah. I've served roles in the last five presidential administrations. I worked for two Republican governors, two in uh Democratic governors, as you appreciate one independent wrestler. I worked for too, when he was Governor, Jesse. And and

That's right. Yeah. And so, you know, I I've never had a partisan you know, I've I'm just a private in the public health army. And so I actually served as a science envoy for this administration in the State Department last year, you know, I was still my in my full time job at the university.

And so I've never been I mean, I'm there to give the best advice I can. And so I've talked to a lot of these people there at the C D C um at uh at Health and Human Services, et cetera. So yeah, we've given a lot of advice. And do you think there's anything that you could do now that could help them make sure that we don't have these shortages?

of masks and shortages of medicine and I V bags and something that could be done to I mean, you obviously you've laid out all these problems. And you laid it out in your book here that people can buy right now. Go pick it up. On Amazon, right? Is there an audio version of it as well? There is. Alright. Do you read it? I d the book? Yes. Yeah, in fact you know you know, you know I have. I don't I don't know, I don't read it myself. No, there's actually a really good voice. It's not mine.

Well it should be you, man. That drives me crazy. Someone else does it. Yeah. No, you know, this is the challenge we have is today in this environment, everything's just in time delivery. I mean, look at when you I mean you go online and you whatever

uh place you're outing from Amazon or wherever, you expect it there the next day. Yeah. People forget that we don't have that capacity today to suddenly make lots of things. So right now, all the mask manufacturers in North America are working 110 percent time. But if they were trying to fill all the orders they've gotten just in the last few weeks would take'em years and years with the capacity they have. And you can't bul build these new machines to make mask overnight.

So this is something that should be set in advance of anything like this, any pandemic happening like long in advance, we should be prepared. You know, think about the issue with defense. You know, we prepare all the time well in advance. We don't build an aircraft carrier at the moment we think we're going to go to battle. We Look at what all do we need.

We don't do that in public health. We've tried. And so you know what? Stockpiling five hundred million of these uh in ninety fives would have been the difference between night and day. And when you look at the price of one of those versus one airplane, not even close. If you look at the things like that, it's like these medications I talk about, think about our own Defence Department.

Employees are at risk of running out of these critical drugs because they get'em from China. I mean what a vulnerability. So what we need to do is take a step back after when we can start now, but we're not going to fix it.

um is to say what are the key things that we should do? Vaccines, you know. If we had been serious about this, we might very well have had a coronavirus vaccine that whether it worked specifically for this strain, whether it worked for SARS or MERS, but right after SARS happened in two thousand and three, everybody was hot on a new vaccine. And then when it went away,

Is it something like the flu where you know sometimes when they come up with a flu a flu vaccine it doesn't necessarily address the current strain? Yeah. It could be. And that's where a coronavirus family vaccine may not match up right here now, but it could.

And and the flu one you've really hit on an important point. There's one where, you know, we do have an in imperfect vaccine, but it still does a lot of good. You know, if fifty percent of the people are protected, that's a heck of a lot better than zero. Yeah. If we had a vaccine right now that fifty percent of the people could be protected against this virus, man, think of all the lives we'd save. So the bottom line message is

We can't wait until the crisis to fix these things. You know what? We spend about point zero zero zero one percent on public health compared to our Defense Department. And yet look how vulnerable the it's the bugs. It's not a war. Yeah. It's not a missile.

It's bringing down the world economy right now. It's a darn virus. And so this is where I think and that's what I tried to say in my book was all about that. I went into what we needed to do. In fact, I hate it when people come up and say, We're screwed. You know, my whole bottom line is well what are you going to do about it then? And that's what I laid out a whole plan in here, like these vaccines, like the stockpiles of mass.

Uh you know, we should have a plan in place already. What are we going to do with our schools when they close? Are we going to really close schools? Let's not try to make this on the fly. You know, I just mentioned if we close schools, we are going to really hurt some people. And people may die in healthcare facilities, hospitals because we don't have enough nurses or healthcare workers.

Why you have to make that decision all of a sudden? We could have planned for that a long time ago. And so I think hopefully this is a wake up call because you know, nobody I think really believed this. I gotta tell you. You know, um The market today, as you know, on this particular day crashed badly. And, you know, I think that up till ten days ago the market didn't even think this was a possibility. They just if you look at it, it was flying high.

On Friday I did a briefing for over four hundred major financial investors around the world. And you know, I you know how I'm talking to you right now, you know, I'm not trying to be scary, I'm just trying to tell the facts and make sure people understand it. The questions I got from these people almost remind me of a six year old who was afraid to have to go through down a dark dark hallway.

You know, and and and I thought I actually said to uh friends and colleagues Friday night, I said, you know what, Monday's market is not going to look good. Because I could hear the fear in these people. Okay? Well, we shouldn't be there. We should be what are we gonna do? We have a problem. You know, it's like a forest fire. Whatever. We got a problem. What are we gonna do about it? Financially, how are we gonna get through this? You know, where are we gonna go with it? No plans again.

He's caught everybody surpr by surprise. I mean you were the one of the few people that wanted to deal with this issue. You know, we set this up several weeks ago. You guys saw it coming. You know, and and I think that's where the country hasn't seen it. Now they're getting it. Well I'm paranoid. Well I I I seek the advice of experts whenever possible and uh what what I was seeing was that there was a lot of weird um

Misinformation and conflicting information. A lot of people saying, Don't worry, and a lot of people that were terrified. I'm like, Okay, I gotta talk to an expert and luckily you were willing to sit down with us and and and help us out. Well and you know and the other thing I think that, you know, I uh maybe it's a function of age, but you know, straight talk is so important to me. You know, pe you know

I I'm so tired of having people say to me, Oh, if you tell them this stuff they're going to panic. And I say, Well what's panic? Have you seen anybody riding in the streets yet? Have you seen cars turned over, smashed? Have you seen people hurting themselves over this issue? They're concerned. But they want legitimate information. And so what you need to do is just tell'em the truth. And we have many experiences like that. A few years ago

When I was at the State Health Department in Minnesota, we had a big outbreak of meningitis, a type of brain infection, bacterial brain infection. A number of high school students were very sick. All of a sudden in one day they were in a hospital. And this community of uh twenty some thousand people were on edge. And so we had a big town meeting.

Several thousand people showed up. And I addressed them and gave them everything I knew about meningitis, what we're going to do about it, etc. And then towards the end of the talk I said, and I just need to let you know about one out of every seven cases of this diet. And people look at me and say, why did you tell them? And I said because they needed to know it. Two days later one of them died.

Wow. And you know what? Everybody in town was terribly sad, very emotional, but they all said, We knew it. We knew it. You told us. Right. We knew it. Right. And then they got on with dealing with it. We vaccinated the whole town, twenty thousand people we vaccinated in one weekend for this bacterial meningitis. But it was because they had faith in us, because we told them the truth.

And we said what we know and what we didn't know. And so that's what we need to do here. We need to just have straight talk. Don't tell'em it's low risk. That's like the hurricane. Okay. You know, I would be really bad at you if I thought you were a f hurricane forecaster and you knew this was coming, but you kept telling me oh it's low risk, don't worry about it. Right.

Yeah, once it hit. Yeah. So that's what we need to do today is just say this is gonna be challenging. And we're gonna get through it though. We are going to get through it. I hope this wakes people up to the value of vaccines too. There's so many wackos out there that think that vaccines or, you know, a scam or they're dangerous or it

I know. And that's one you know, one of your best shows you ever did was Peter Hotels. He's a dear friend of mine. He's a I do too. He's a dear friend of mine, as you. And you know, he is one of the champions out there on this very issue. I couldn't agree with you more. I think that's really an important point. That you know, we gotta get this idea. These vaccines can be life saving. If we had one right now, think how different

the situation would be in that we're in right now. It would be radically different. But then you see the m the measles making a comeback and uh d directly attributed to a lack of vaccines. You know what? And it's not only the vaccines themselves, but it's the I mean uh w you know one of the real tragic stories right now in Africa is we are just

finally bringing to a close. This outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, far northeast part of the Congo. You know, twenty some tho or uh two t twenty eight hundred people have died from this, okay? Bad. It's been going on for almost two years. And everybody talks about that, and I understand why. Ebola is a challenge. But do you know that during that same time period over seven thousand kids in that same area have died from measles?

'Cause everybody was preoccupied trying to deal with Ebola. And and that those deaths were totally preventable. Totally preventable. So y I mean I I think that's uh you know, I I have to say, and you know, this I'm already on this show, so I'm not trying to Thank you for what you do say about vaccines'cause people listen to you and we need every positive voice'cause we have so many crazy voices out there right now.

So people are paranoid and d d delusional and they want it all to be a conspiracy. There's been an amazing medical innovation in in human culture and that's vaccines. It's amazing what it's done. And ha have there been adverse effec effects on people? Of course. Everything. Everything that people do. There's some people that are gonna react in a bad way. It doesn't mean it's not a positive thing and

There's a reason why the the cases of polio are so tiny. There's a reason why smallpox went away. It's because of vaccines. Absolutely. And you know, it what that's one of the challenges that you noted. Between the the the anti science misinformation that's out there, but then when they don't see it. Yes. And the reason they don't see it is because we did vaccinate.

until we get enough people not vaccinated and then look what happens. There's a famous photo of two twins um in the from the uh early twentieth century. One of'em has smallpox and one of them was vaccinated. Have you seen that photo? I have, I have, I have. It's a black and white photo. Jamie will find it because it's people need to see it.

That that that is the difference folks. Yep, yep, yep, there it is. Right there. That's it. Right there. That's the one. One kid whose body is just devastated by what looks like he's like pebbles glued to his skin all over his body, his face, his hands.

And then the his brother right next to him with nothing. And you know what's really important to note here is is that in that body all those things are very painful, but what's going on inside the body is equally bad. Yeah. And so you're exactly right. I couldn't agree with you more. That uh You know, this is this is really an important point. The diseases are terrifying. They're really terrifying. Yeah. And when something like this can be prevented.

And the reason why people don't do it is because they're paranoid of vaccines and they get that information from some wacko website or some person who really has no business talking about it. You know, whether it's the people out there that think it causes diseases or that it's a government plot or that it's a medical scam because it's just trying to raise

raise money, it's just all of it. All of it's very, very disturbing. But it's a part of people. You know, the human beings for whatever reason, there's a percentage of us that lean toward conspiratorial thinking and they they lean towards thinking that there's uh some sort of a plot against them or the government's against them and it's just

You gotta listen to the medical experts. You know what? And I I hope that if there's any good to come out of this terrible coronavirus situation is that there's a wake-up call. If we'd had a vaccine for this Or one that even worked partially. Yeah. Think how different we'd be. And you know what? We got new other ones coming like.

We have to use our creative imagination. You know, as I said in the in the book, I the chapter on coronaviruses, the title is SARS and MERS. harbinger of things to come. Yeah. I mean we don't we we can use our creative imagination to say we should be funding these things almost like we pay for our fire department. Imagine if we had to go out and buy a fire truck and when the nine one one call came in. Yes. We need to do it now.

It's kind of disturbing that it's chapter thirteen though. I know it was. Well actually would you do me a favor? Uh you're gonna really be like this. Okay, open up up to chapter thirteen, okay. And when you look at it's uh towards the end there. Uh when yeah. When when you re read the quote that goes with it. Okay. So I ever every chapter started not with uh just a title but a f a quote. And and uh I think you'll find this one quite interesting.

Bio terror opening Pandora's box. That's not it? Yes, chapter 13. You're close. Okay, read that. SARS and Myrrh is a harbinger of things to come. These make me look smarter. Cross the bay. Did you th did you put that in there because you really thought that a lot of this stuff was going to come out of China, or was that just because it's a great thing? Exactly. No. Why do you why China?

Because they have this incredibly large population, two billion. They've got this food supply that is largely wildlife that comes into these markets where there's this incredible contact between people and these animals. and the crowded nature of that society. I mean I think one of the things that surprises people when they go to China.

Fifteen million population cities are common over there. I mean we think of the United States, we think of LA and New York, and that's big, okay? Over there, I mean in Wuhan, a city of fifteen million, the entire metropolitan area is sixty million. And so you have people crowded so closely together that if you add in the bugs coming from these animals,

And then the potential for this kind of of contact where it spreads quickly. China's been a a a you know, a bacterial and viral soup vessel for a long time. That's again why we have to protect ourselves here, because uh a bug anywhere in the world today can be a bug everywhere tomorrow. And in particular when you're dealing with a a massive number like

These kind of cities. So these wet they call'em wet markets. Is that what they call it? So that's what it is. A lot of it is wildlife. Oh, it's incredible. You know. You know, I've hunted my life, you know, I've always I've I love to fly fish. I I love the outdoors, okay? I could never have imagined the animals. You know, I've spent time in these markets.

Uh I remember one day uh spending a a day in the Bangkok Tang Thailand market and it was about a mile by a mile and a half wild big. I mean in these tight is Every animal imaginable to humans, and I swear to God there were some out of the movies I think that were in there. And they're all just Right on top of each other.

And I actually have a picture that I show in some of my lectures. There was a situation where there was all these chickens in a cage. I don't know, fifteen or twenty of them, okay, in a big wire cage, and it sat on top of a wire cage full of ferrets. And ferrets are actually an animal model from flu standpoint that they do really well in getting infected with flu viruses. If you wanted to create the perfect experiment that no lo no university

you know, research group would let you do is you'd put birds and ferrets like that together. And that's just common. That's just common. That's common. And so birds and ferrets together, the uh it's something that's infecting the birds could jump to the ferrets or visitors. Oh Christ.

I I I don't know what's gonna happen here, but for the first time we really saw the Chinese after this outbreak in Wuhan really start to put down some markers on what they're gonna do to supervise these markets. I mean they still have to eat. But I think this is a dangerous practice where we see it. But you know what happens in look at Africa with Ebola. Right. And when they say bush meat, it's basically everything. Everything from bats.

was the uh the primary source of this outbreak in West Africa was uh a human bat that was consumed. They eat'em all the time. Do they really yeah, yeah. So, you know, and some of them are pretty big bats, you know, they're they're literally three feet wingspans. They're they're big. And so um, you know, that's one of the challenges we have with with China. We know that this is gonna happen, it's gonna occur. We think of the flu viruses the same way.

And uh that's why we knew new and better flu vaccines. You know, this could just as easily be flu a flu pandemic, the same thing, like nineteen eighteen. So these wet markets they just have all these animals hanging out and the some of them are still alive? Is that what it is? Many of them are alive. And then they'll they'll actually uh

They they basically kill'em and gut'em and so forth. Bizarre Wuhan West World Market menu shows over a hundred wild animals sold as food linked with virus unclear. Exactly. It's pretty amazing. Yeah. Let's see some images. Whoa, look at that rip look at that list. I know. Peacock. Yeah. People are eating peacocks? Oh yeah, absolutely. Deer, crocodiles, turkeys, swans, eating swans. How dare you? Kangaroos, squirrels, snails, foxes, foxes. And civet cats were the cause of the SARS outbreak.

Ostriches. I've had that. Pretty delicious. Yep. I'm a hypocrite. Look at me eating ostriches. Centipedes, geese, hedgehogs, goats. So yeah, it's not your pheasant, right? That's normal. So w do we have a video of the market? I wanna see what whoa look at that freaky looking salamander. Look at the size of that sucker. Big. Yep. That's a huge salamander. I went lights for you first. The pictures I was

Dark. Yeah? Yeah. Come on. What do you got? Cages of turtles and cages of bunnies and see it also like it. Let's see it. Wow, this wet market is very fine. Very strange. So and these are enormous markets, right? Oh, they're huge. They're huge and the number of people in them is incredible. I mean they're getting the animals.

And are they growing these things and r and farming them or are they just a few years? Some cases both. Some cases both. Like a lot of the seafood today is actually being farmed. So this is really like a giant petri dish. Yeah, yeah. I mean th it's almost wow, weird looking that fish looks not not that fresh. Whoa, what's all that stuff? Rabbits and Yeah. Jesus. But you're getting an idea.

Look at'em all wearing masks. That's hilarious. That was I think with the uh outbreak. Was that that might have been since the outbreak? Are those gigantic things a mollusk? What is that? What are those things? Can't tell. Those look like giant molluscs. Yeah, they are, right? No, because look at the uh ones behind you right. They look like huge muscles. Wow. Look at those suckers behind them. 와우! Yeah. There's a lot of people in China, they gotta eat.

That's where it gets weird, right? It's it's like how do you tell them that they've been doing they've been doing this for who knows how long? How do you tell them to stop doing it? Or is Is that impossible and is it more possible to just accelerate our vaccine program and try to preemptively create something to to address coronaviruses, to address

d various various different what other what other viruses are we concerned about other than coronavirus? I think I think it's both. I think the f next most well not even next, it's still it's a co uh virus you might call it influenza. I mean, you know Uh there have been ten influenza pandemics in the last two hundred and fifty years.

And each one of them was a little different, but some of them have been horribly bad. You know, back in the fifteen hundreds even, uh, there was a a major pandemic that occurred where Spanish cities were described as not almost totally depopulated. And so these viruses pop out and that's why we need new and better flu vaccines and we're all actually working on one now, but it's still a ways off. But

having those would really prevent the big calamities. Meaning, you know, some of the things are gonna happen, they're not good, but they're not gonna bring down supply chains and threaten governments and so forth. And so I think the priority vaccines we need to get are for those diseases that we know could. Is the flu injection the most effective way or is a mist as effective? Like I know that they do the mist up the nose.

Turns out that uh what research we have and our group was involved with some of it, the flu mist in the nose works really well in children most Because they haven't been infected yet themselves, they don't have any protection and so that virus really multiplies in the nose. Remember this virus is adapted not to multiply in your lungs because the nose is colder than the lung. And so it'll grow here, it won't if you swallow it, it won't grow in your lungs. If you've already been infected once.

Then you actually have some interference in your nose. There's a little bit of protection there. So it works well in kids who haven't been infected before, adults not so well. For us the injection works best. And you know, I'm happy to report that although I'm not happy to report being an old man now I can even get the high dose vaccine over age sixty.

So so they they are actually, you know, the best we have. The high dose vaccine is better? Yeah, it's better than the regular vaccine in terms of hitting a certain age. Yeah. Yeah there's a high dose of Where do you get it? Like where if a person is listening to this and they're like I mean any doctor's office. And they will usually say that to you if you're over you know

sixty you c you can get this vaccine. So they'll actually do that for you. So yeah. So run out, get a get a vaccine.'Cause to now it's pretty much over. The flu season's waning. I mean we sh if you hadn't gotten it, you should have had it a couple of months ago. Okay. This one's waning now. We've had a bad flu season, a really bad one, but for the last couple of weeks the numbers are coming way down. So what what can a person do other than the vaccine to prevent getting the flu?

That's primarily it again, it's a issue of who you're around, you know. And your your body's overall health. Yep.

And you'd have really bad muscle aches. One of the things about in real influenza is not just sniffles. You feel like you got hit by a macro. If after several days you still are really feeling bad, really bad. Um and you haven't seen a physician by then you should because that's when you get the complications occurring, the bacterial pneumonias that occur subsequent and if you get those treated earlier than later, you can actually do a lot to keep somebody from dying.

So, you know, if you don't feel a lot better in two days, I mean if you if you catch it really early you can get a medication for flu. There's actually a medication that will reduce your illness a bit. But if you're if you're sick for more than a couple of days, not better, you absolutely should see a doctor so you don't have these other complications.

Any family family practitioner would know what to look for and whether or not your lungs are starting to fill up. You know, if they'll they'll listen to your lungs to make sure you're not developing pneumonia. And what would they do for you?

Uh they would l likely give you an antibiotic based on what you had because you are then the s the problem with flu is it's not just the flu virus but then you get secondary bacterial pneumonia from the damage in the lungs and so they can prevent that. A lot of older people in particular will die from actually what we call secondary pneumonia. um to having had influenza. They wouldn't have gotten the pneumonia

if they had not had flu, but then they do. Now we were talking earlier about probiotics. Do do is there a benefit of probiotics once you've taken antibiotics to reflourish your gut b uh flora? You know, that's where the studies really at this point have demonstrated that it's very temporary. In other words, if you're taking probiotics you can get a boost initially.

But it doesn't sustain itself over time. And then the natural flora comes back. I mean the g the the gut microbes will come back as as they've been reduced. But what I'm saying is uh is it beneficial to people if they do take a probiotic After antibiotics.

'Cause antibiotics do have a devastating effect on your flora. Yeah. Kills the bad stuff but it also kills a lot of the good stuff, right? Yeah. So is it beneficial for people, once they have taken an antibiotic, to take probiotics to sort of reflourish? Yeah. S there's the data don't support that it stays. In other words, you get a short term boost uh of and it gives you some of the new good bacteria, but they don't stay around. But what if you just keep taking it?

Even then they they just don't stay around. Your normal gut flora will come back and take over.

So the probiotics in of themselves are not giving you that long term boost that So you don't think there's any benefit to having even even a short term boost? Well, you know, it's again uh I I Surely I'm not gonna profess to be the expert on probiotics, but I'll tell you that the data we have doesn't show that they have a big boost and and that they actually help you long term or short term, meaning that it makes any difference.

Now there's one exception to that where I would say and this is a very different thing than probiotics, but Um we actually have a disease called Clostridium difficile, which is an an uh a bad bacteria that happens when you've taken way too many antibiotics and and it colonizes your gut'cause you don't have

competing organisms there and then you can die from this. There are treatments for that called actually fecal transplants. Yeah, I've heard of that. And that's where actually there you take it in little capsules, but it's actually You drink it in poop.

Well swallowing. Purified, purified bugs from the poop. You're right. But you take that and then that's that's that kinda is what you're talking about. That does have a real benefit. And there is clear evidence that if you take those, those fecal transplants as opposed to just probiotics as such. that that can have a major positive impact on your recovery from things like clostridium difficile infection. And so more and more institutions now actually are doing fecal transplants.

Which you'd never thought that that would be one thing you do one day. But for those who've had this problem, they're they're life saving. They're amazing. Although on the other hand, it i you don't forget it if you Right. You don't forget if it's a fecal transplant, but that's what's gonna be nerve wracking to people. Yeah. Yeah. You know, once you're that sick, boy, it feels good to take Have you done it? I've never done it. I've never had a a problem where I've had to, but

But for the I've known people who have been desperately sick who have taken'em and have really done much better. Much, much better. I want to ask you about Lyme disease. Sure.

Lyme disease is a scary one, right? And uh I mean so many of my friends on the East Coast have it. It's really terrifying that that th that part of the country in particular seems to be like really badly infected with these these t that uh carry this disease. What can people do to prevent that? And what what can we there's no vaccine for Lyme disease and I know there was at one point in time but people were having an issue with uh I mean uh uh a good friend of mine, her dad actually got

Lyme disease from the vaccine before they discontinued it. Um, what can someone do to sort of uh Yeah.

Lyme disease in of itself is a fascinating story. I've actually been involved with it since its early discovery in the nineteen eighties. And Minnesota, Wisconsin was a big focus of the upper Midwest. And this is a story that I think you'll find interesting is is that Even though it was discovered primarily in the eastern part of the United States, named after Lyme, Connecticut, um, it's a disease that actually probably originated in the upper Midwest.

And I tell you that because uh it turns out that there is a focus in northern Wisconsin and and east central Minnesota. where there's Lyme disease, there's another disease called anoplasmosis, there's another disease Babesia, etcetera, that all seem to have a similar kind of tick human deer kind of component. And back in the uh C C C days of the nineteen thirties, the whitetailed deer population had been virtually totally depopulated from the northeast.

And so they actually trapped deer in northern Wisconsin. and took'em out and deposited'em in New York and Connecticut and so forth. And most of those deer are actually deer that, you know, today their great great great great great grandfather came from Wisconsin. Wow. And guess what? When you move deer you move to In fact I was involved with a study that the Wisconsin Division of Health did and a a colleague of mine, the late Jeff Davis, where up in northern Wisconsin

Those deer would come into the check station, uh, they would actually measure the number of ticks that were attached to the nape of the neck, okay? And they had a lot of thing drawn. And they asked hunters who were driving back to Madison and Milwaukee.

if they would be willing to check in at a station down there for just a second and then they were gonna count the ticks again And it turned out that as the vehicles come rolling down from Highway fifty one from northern Wisconsin, get on the interstate ninety ninety four and go to Milwaukee or Madison, the ticks just kept falling off.

By the time they got to Madison or Milwaukee, the ticks were almost all gone. Well, guess lo and behold, where all the Lyme disease and so forth started to show up. right along the interstate corridor. Wow. Because the ticks were coming off and then they were getting into the local deer in that population. And so it's exactly what you said, the ticks are moving. They're moving. Okay, they've moved. And they're now infected.

So I think that that this Lyme disease issue is a key one. Lyme disease is really an important disease. It's real, no question about it. The challenge we have is is that there's a lot of people that assume that they have chronic Lyme infection. And you know the data on that is just really, really not there to support that these people are chronically infected, but they do have an immune response likely that occurs where it sets up this trigger.

And so they're sick. They actually have something. But it's not treating it again for the bacteria infection. It's the fact that this body your own body's immune system, as we've talked about several times today, uh starts attacking you. Sight I think it's a similar picture we see with chronic fatigue syndrome, same kind of thing. These people really are sick. They really do have problems.

But it's not something you can treat. So when people I I have a challenge because when people take IV antibiotics at extended periods of time for Lyme disease, You know, the data sh there's four different studies now that have been done where people have had what we call a double blind uh control uh placebo controlled trial where half got the drug, half got uh IV, but no drug.

And it turned out all four of these studies in Lyme disease, the people who got the just the placebo did just the same as the people who got the drug. And I worry that we're using antibiotics a lot there and this is where I just mentioned earlier about closturum difficile. We actually had a patient in Minnesota that died from the IV treatment.

for what was chronic Lyme disease and wouldn't have been helpful. And so we need a lot more research in this area to figure out what are these people getting? What is it that we can shut off so that they don't have this chronic Lyme disease picture? Knowing that it's not actually just you gotta treat them Treatment's not going to help them with the antibiotics anymore. And so I think that that's uh an area that uh

Uh we just need a lot more work in and and the numbers are growing as you know. Yeah. So we don't we don't know what's happening. Well, there's a l we have enough data to say your immune system is really cranked up. Right. Your immune system is you know something. Yeah, it's like rheumatoid arthritis, a lot of things we you know, we uh y you know, thank God for our immune system. It's what fights off all the bad things we have. But sometimes that immune system gets turned on too much.

Yeah. And and but goes back to the coronavirus. That's why a lot of these people are dying right now, is this over vigorous immune response. And Lyme disease is kind of that insane inciting event where we have evidence now that You could be infected with the bacteria, but if we treat you it's not like it's like every other bacteria, you can really get rid of But you still have this chronic illness that's occurring and what I think is hard is is that

We see people who have this who are desperate to have somebody understand what they have and they end up going to people who take real advantage of'em, clinicians who charge'em an arm and a leg for things that are not going to help'em. And what we need is a lot more research on what is actually going on and what kind of drugs can we use to reverse this immune system disorder.

I have uh a friend of mine who's uh UFC fighter, Jim Miller, and he's ha he's got Lyme disease and it's pretty bad. He takes a stack of pills. I don't know what he takes every day. Yeah. What do you think someone is taking and w what What benefit would they get from that? I couldn't tell.

Um it's not that the bacteria is still growing in him like it might be for a lot of the which is real. I mean that's the other thing is I think these people just want to be legitimized and said, you know, I'm really sick. Right. And I'm not I'm it's not something I'm, you know, mentally ill about, whatever.

But then we've got to figure out what it is it you have. So we really don't know. We don't know yet. We don't know. Wow, but it's been around for so long. I know, but this is where we need a lot more research about this of in terms of what is it that's making these people like this? And this is really important. And is there anything they can do to eradicate the ticks? You know, the this is another thing you'll find interesting. Um in Minnesota Prior to the arrival of the first white man

The Native Americans burnt much of our state all the time. The prairies from much of the territory, in even in northern Wisconsin, northern Minnesota we had the classic, you know, pine forest. Firewood wipes root. And with that it would open up so much of the forest. that the you'd have a very different kind of of of mammal population, deer, etcetera, et cetera.

And with the suppression of fire, what's happened is we now have instead of having these old growth forests, we have all this younger, you know, non pine or any kind of I mean like the oak trees of the upper Midwest are all disappearing because oak trees need sunlight. And fire is what kept they were very resistant to fire and so the old oak forests and so forth would would survive because of fire.

Whereas today with no fire, you know, the elms and the maples and everything else comes in and the buckthorn and all that kind of stuff and takes over. So so what's happening is in in our state of Minnesota is we have a really good example of this is we're losing our mood. And the big primary reason is brain worm. It's brain worm. Brain worm. It's a type of parasite that's common in white tailed deer but causes no problem. In moose it actually causes a brain infection and it kills

And guess why it's happening?'Cause the deer range has moved farther and farther north in Minnesota. I'm sorry, yep. So now where there only used to be moose we're seeing deer and moose and where that intersection is, we're starting to see moose develop this brainworm infection'cause it's from the deer. So the tick population has changed too and it's largely due to the fire. Lack of fire in many places. In the northeast

never used to be like it was. We had fire all the time that would clear out these areas and it was just part of natural everything. So so one of the challenges we have with ticks is they're here. We're not gonna change how we live, suburbs and you know, trees and all of that. They do because what they do is they just don't eliminate the ticks, but what they do is they eliminate for example the white field mice or you know, all these different species that are important to the ticks.

And then they bring in different species that will will be there. So I mean this is a big debate in Minnesota right now. I mean we're we're losing all these moose to brainworm. Ironically, the moose for population is expanding dramatically in Isle Royal. Why? Because there's no deer out there.

And so they're not getting brainworm out there. So people have said, you know, the we're gonna lose our moose. Well it's so it's the deer. So so fire actually has helped the moose. In areas of northern Minnesota where there's been a lot of fire The moose population is growing. Because the deer are not there because exactly those mammals, those rodents and so forth are very different in burnt out areas than they are in fi in non burnt out areas.

Well they do control burns in some states. I got a I had a friend who was hunting in Washington State a couple of years ago and he said it was really weird because there's these massive fires in the distance that were actually being Control they do it on purpose. fuel. Yeah. And you know, if you haven't had a porous fire in eighty five hundred years in an area, the fuel in there is huge. But the problem with the east coast is you're dealing with a lot of these

sorta almost residential areas that have all these ticks. Yeah you can't. Yeah. And there you can't. There we have to find ways that that's that's where we really have to have vaccines and treatments for these diseases. We're not going to get rid of the tick. So what we have to do is figure out uh I mean, wouldn't it be gr incredible if we have a cocktail vaccine for you know, Babesia, for Lyme disease, for animal that's what we need. Is there any kind of an animal that eats ticks?

Birds, yeah, birds will eat'em. But not enough. Not enough. No, they're they're doing very well, thank you. Ticks do very well. And that's another issue, uh you know, for some of the larger mammals, as you know, tick predation can get so heavy, particularly in in in certain times of the year that the that really

Literally takes a lot of blood out of these large animals, even though they're so big. I went down a rabbit hole the other day online and I saw this one deer that was covered in these frisbee sized patches of ticks. Oh so disgusting. And it happens day after day. So th it is a hit on'em. It's a real hit on'em. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty amazing.

Most people their eyes glaze over, they don't even care. It's not affecting me until someone in your family has it. Yep. Um there's a guy that I know who was a former UFC fighter, Marcus Davis, who he put He ha his wife got Lyme disease and he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to trying to help her and and do something about it and treatments and all these different things for it. Yeah. It's a it's a real challenge. It's a challenge. And this is another area again

You know, when you think of the amount of money we lose in just lost time, let alone pain and suffering what an investment to make in this. I mean this this is the kind of thing and this is where infectious diseases really need to run as well. We pulled up a chart of the United States where they showed the areas that are affected by these ticks.

And what what percentage of ticks carry Lyme diseases they have tested. And some places in the Northeast it's in the sixty percent. Oh exactly. Yeah, it is. It's huge. I mean and you I mean you don't understand how wildlife has changed. I mean look at To think that we have all these wild coyote populations in New York City now? Yes.

And it's it's it's a challenge. I mean these are f infectious disease issues too. They're they're very real. Yeah, they have coyotes in Central Park. They do, yeah, absolutely. They have'em in the Bronx, they have'em in I mean it's weird. It's weird to see because This is something that just didn't exist before. Look at that this look at That's okay. That's okay. That's not not that's not the best I've seen, but it's gross enough.

how this came to be and how these coyotes have uh oh look at that all over that poor deer shit. Oh look at that look at the eye. Look at the eye in the fawn. Yeah. Yeah. Um they're disgusting. Yeah. Uh but th coyotes, uh about how when they got rid of the wolves And uh they tried to do the same to the coyote. They just actually expanded their territory. They're sneaky, very clever little animal. Adaptation is

Yeah. Um is there anything else that we should cover? No, I mean I think uh I thank you for covering this issue on infectious diseases. We we uh can use all the help we can to get people to be aware of what's out there and what's coming and just keeping the message straight.

And we're gonna get through this, but at the same time it's gonna be a challenge. You know, if today you have an underlying health problem and you're particularly over age fifty, fifty five, I'd say avoid big crowds if you can and that's gonna be really important and um

Know that uh we're gonna work on the critical drug supply to make sure that people aren't without drugs that save their lives every day? That's gonna be a big challenge. One more question. Uh how long does it take to develop a vaccine for this coronavirus? Well, you know, uh when I'm asked that question I I I don't mean to sound glib again, but I can make a vaccine for it overnight.

The question is is it safe and effective? And that's the challenge. We have right now questions about how do you make immunity to a coronavirus? And what kind of vaccine do you have to have that brings in all the different parts of the immune system? So we don't know that yet. So some of this research is going to have to be basic to that. The second thing we have to worry about is safety. Um there's a condition in humans called antibody dependent enhancement, ADE.

And it turns out that if you have no antibody or an immune response, you'll get the disease. If you have a lot, you're protected. But if you have this in-between level and then you get the disease, it actually enhances the disease immune response that's really destructive.

and in fact there was just uh uh a couple of years ago a major recall of dinghy vaccine, a type of vaccine we use for mosquito infection in the Philippines where kids who got the vaccine actually made just a little bit of antibody and when they got the real disease it made them a lot sicker. And so we found with the two thousand and three SARS vaccine that there was an ADE component to it when we made it in animals. And so we're gonna have to really study this to be sure it's safe.

And as you said earlier, you know, we can surely make mistakes. We don't you know, we need to do everything we can not to. And so I think between getting the effectiveness and the safety data together, we're we're years out. I mean maybe two years. Yeah. This is not gonna happen soon.

Um i you know, it's wishful thinking. You know, every time I mean I go back to SARS in two thousand and three and look at every event, Zika, two thousand and fifteen we said, Oh, we'll have a vaccine for it in no time. Here we are five years later and we have no vaccine. And so this is one of the challenges we have. We have to complete the job. You know, it's like we start on something and then we forget that it's important because it kinda goes away for a while, but only to come back.

And so this is part of that picture we talked about and this is what Peter Jotes talks a lot about. You know, we gotta finish the job on these things. You know, I worry that we'll get through this situation and then people say, Oh, we're done, and then we'll forget until the next one comes. And so so this is where vaccine research and development is really important. How do they test for safety? So once they come come up with a potential vaccine, how do they make sure that it's safe?

Well, you do it gradually. First of all you put it into animals to see and you know enough about them, how their immune response is, what do they do. Then you put it into a few humans. Thirty humans. You know, they volunteer willingly, knowing to see what kind of reactions they have.

Well I I don't know if that's doable here in this country without their informed consent. So I'll just Trump can fix that. If anybody if we have a shot at doing that with any president, it's Trump. Just start with rapists.

Yeah. So anyway the bottom line though is is that then they gradually work their way up to larger studies where you know if something happens one every thousand people, you have to study a lot of people before you know that the chance that you might find that. So that's why it's gonna take a while.

And uh you know, they'll test it on more and more people and they're going as fast as they can. It's not like there's anybody dragging their feet. It's just that you know, I jokingly say it's like uh if the Iowa farmer wanted to harvest his corn in half the time it doesn't mean by planting twice as many acres he can do that. Plant it in April, you still can't harvest till October. That's what this is. It's going to take us this long to get this vaccine.

Well, Michael, uh I appreciate you and I appreciate your time and your book, Deadliest Enemy. People can go out and buy it and thank you for informing us and thanks for being here. It means a lot to us. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thank you. Oh I'd love to