Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything - Herd Immunity (Social Distance Learning part v of v)

Episode Date: June 11, 2020

As the island (and the world reopens) your host tries his best to join the celebrations, Dr. Lauren Powell explains the risks of protesting during a pandemic and ToE’s special correspondent Chris brings us inside the COVID19 task force!

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Episodes every other week at neverpo.st and wherever you find pods. This installment is called herd immunity. So I want to know what the lockdown was like for you. Well, for the first few weeks, I was doing the same thing everyone else was. I was like sitting in my apartment and checking out the news on my phone and, you know, wiping down the groceries and stuff. But then in mid-April, I got a gig working on the coronavirus task force. The task force.

Like the one with Dr. Fauci. Yeah. How the hell did that happen? Well, the outfit I'm working for has a contract out with DIA, and they do a lot of work with the office of the vice president. And so I ended up at the table. Like at the table with the Dr. Fauci. Well, I was at more like the support staff table, but yeah, you know, I spent some time with him,

especially at the beginning. So what's he actually like? He's funny as hell. He loves cracking jokes. And, oh, you're going to like this. He's a total Woody Guthrie fan. And how do you know that? Well, Dr. Fauci always wears two masks.

He's always got them doubled up. So there's a white one on the outside, but underneath he wears a custom mask. He showed it to me once when Trump was blathering about hydroxychloroquine during one of our meetings. He was like, Chris, check this out. And I looked, and he lifted the front mask, and the one beneath says, this mask kills fascists. Where do you get a mask

like that? He makes it himself with a marker. But wait, you said you're interacting with the president too? Well, kinda. When he's with us, he has a bunch of guys who hold up this special plastic shield in front of him. No. Yeah. Yeah.

In the early days of the task force, we all had to get tested hourly. He really is a germaphobe. Hourly. Hourly. So that's where all the tests went. Yeah. He wasn't messing around. He was, like, hyper aware of the testing issue. Like, he got it from day one.

He understood that we can't beat the virus unless we throw some serious resources at testing. Come on. If Trump cared so much about testing, then why the hell did he totally drop the ball? Katie Miller. Okay. Okay, now, most people point to April 6th as the day Trump lost interest in testing. And there is some truth to this, right? Because April 6th is the day we showed him all the racial data. So even though Blacks and Latinos are a minority of the population, they comprise the majority of people getting COVID and dying from it.

And when this was explained to him, Trump's whole outlook changed immediately. I think we're paying too much attention to this thing. But I can assure you, OK, a robust federal testing initiative was still on the table. But then on May 8th, Katie Miller, Kansas spokesperson and Stephen Miller's wife, tested positive. That's when Trump told us he didn't want to talk about testing anymore. In fact, he made it clear that even if one of us tested positive, there was no way he himself was ever going to take a test. Why? Well, I have a buddy who works in Stephen Miller's office,

and he witnessed something that might explain things. He says on May 8th, Miller gets a Zoom call from Trump. And Trump is like, Stephen, Stephen, I'm so sorry about your wife, okay? I'm sorry about your wife, but listen, I gotta ask you something. Can you tell me about Katie's heritage? Like, you know, her heritage, like what is her ethnic

background? And according to my buddy, Stephen Miller gets really embarrassed because, you know, this is on Zoom and everyone can hear it. And he's like, Mr. President, my wife is white. She's white American. And Trump's like, OK, OK, thanks, Stephen. But then 20 minutes later, Stephen gets a call on his cell phone. It's Trump again. He's mad.

Come on, Stephen. Don't lie to me. This is serious. You got to tell me the truth about your wife's heritage. Maybe there's a story her family just doesn't like to talk about. Steven goes beet red and he's like, Mr. President, no, I had Katie vetted. Trust me. She's white. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So you're telling me the COVID task force fell apart because Trump became scared he might test positive for what he now sees as a racial purity test. Yeah, I know.

It's hard to see any other alternative, right? But the task force didn't fall apart. We were just rebranded. On May 10th, we became the Reopen America Task Force. And you're still at the table.

Yeah. In fact, I made a pretty major contribution. Really? Oh, yeah. When Trump told us his top priority was for the beaches to be open in time for Memorial Day weekend, the health experts, especially Fauci, they were like, oh, hell no. So I offered up a suggestion.

And the president liked it so much, he kind of stole it and made it his own thing. And what's that? The super duper soaker. Okay, the idea is simple. If you want to come to the beach, you have to let a lifeguard or any other essential beach worker hose you down with a big water gun, which could be loaded with, you know, like a mix of sanitizing chemicals. So you wouldn't have to take your clothes off. But in order to get on the beach, you would have to get hosed down. With bleach.

Well, it wouldn't be bleach per se, but Trump loved the idea. He saw it as like the ultimate wet t-shirt contest. He loved it so much, he put Kushner in charge of coming up with some initial designs for the water gun part. And that's why we haven't seen or heard any evidence of this super duper soaker, I guess. Well, yeah, but there's a positive here. I was actually pretty psyched that Kushner and Trump ran with the super soaker because it allowed the rest of the committee to, you know, focus on the crisis. So, like I said, I think I made a contribution. To what?

Maybe you can help me understand something that I'm having a hard time with. Because once it became clear that the administration was not only responsible for this crazy number of deaths, but also responsible for totally screwing up the response, how could anyone like Dr. Fauci not immediately resign? Just like throw up his hands and say, I'm out of here. Well, the thing you have to understand is all of these people, they just want to save lives. So sure, they have to do a lot of cleanup. They have to correct all the stupid stuff Trump says.

But if they're not on the committee, then they can't do anything. They can't help things get better. That's really all it's about for these guys. They don't run when the going gets tough because they want to save as many lives as possible. And especially Fauci. He's absolutely 100% an American hero. He's going to do whatever it takes to save lives. Whatever it takes. Yeah. Both from the inside and from the outside. So the protest started yesterday here in D.C.

And I'm watching the news, and they show one crazy scene. I think it was U Street. There's, like, protesters. There's people setting stuff on fire, looting, cops beating everyone. So it's mayhem. But then I could see in the background this guy, cops beating everyone. So it's mayhem. But then I could see in the background, this guy, this old guy, he's handing out masks to everyone, the people assigned, the people holding hammers. It doesn't matter.

He's like, I'm not going to make any judgment on what you're doing, but please, you've got to wear a mask. At one point, a car goes up in flames and it lights up the area. And I can see that on his mask, it says, this mask kills fascists. Thank you. I'm sorry. France has now officially ended the lockdown. And here on the island, everyone is celebrating.

Deconfinement. I'm sitting at a cafe. For the first time in three months, I'm sitting at a terrace, drinking a glass of wine. And I'm not the only one. All of the tables are full. Overnight, the port is transformed into a bright and bustling party scape. During confinement, I came here to the port every day, but it was always just me, the wind, and the waves.

It's like I've been abandoned by my own solitude, tossed aside for this uproarious mob. It's almost as if I've emerged from a dream, only it's not a dream. The waitress, she's wearing a mask, but she's the only one. Scanning the port, I don't see a single other mask. We met the neighbors. It turns out they fled Paris for the island the same day we arrived, Sunday, March 15th, the day before France shut down.

Last night we had a dinner party to celebrate our new freedom. We drank five bottles. They have a pool, and even better, two boys the same age as Arcto. But when we said goodnight, I leaned in to give our hosts the face kiss thing. Everyone was horrified. This is obviously something you're not supposed to do anymore. I tossed and turned all night long, worried that I blew it and that we would forever now be shunned. But this morning, the boys came over to see Arcto, and a bit later, the parents showed up too. We've got a beach outing planned for later in the afternoon.

It's going to take more than a coronavirus faux pas to break up this friendship, for it is grounded in a shared proximity of loneliness and isolation. I feel the same about the old lady across the street, but she hasn't left her home in days. Even though confinement has ended, she's still getting her groceries delivered, and she's still wearing a mask, even inside her house. And when the boys play together outside on the street, she lowers her electric window shades.

She gets it. She understands she's on her own. She knows that while the elderly may be the most vulnerable, society will not inconvenience itself to protect her. This was my biggest nightmare, that we would emerge from this crisis even more determined to prove our willingness to sacrifice the weak and the vulnerable for the sake of GDP, JOBS, LOL. Arctos Remote Learning is also coming to an end. They're using the final live sessions to observe summer birthdays.

Today, they celebrated Arctos. And after his classmates sang him happy birthday, his teacher asked him what he wants to be when he grows up. Police officer, he blurted out. The silence was deafening. And even though all the other four-year-olds had unmuted themselves to sing, it was still silent.

Then Martina spoke. What about makeup artists, she asked. Isn't makeup artist better than police officer? Arcto has no knowledge of what's going on in New York or America. I don't see the rush to explain police violence to him before we get back home. Or perhaps it's more that here, I feel completely disconnected from what is going on in the U.S. But still, here on the island, during confinement, we had an interaction with the police that should have made an impression on the kid. One morning, we were out on our bicycles, and a cop pulled over in his SUV to scream about how Arcto's bike was swerving from the street and onto the path next to the street, which is forbidden.

This is a provocation! You are provoking me! On the Zoom, some of the other kids started volunteering other possible grown-up ideas for Akto, all qualified as being better than police officer, zookeeper, astronaut, bike mechanic, Mechanic. Fashion designer. Chef. Eventually, Arcturus' teacher jumped in to say that not all police officers hit people. Mortified, I waved goodbye and slammed the laptop shut. We're packing up. Tomorrow we're going to decamp for Burgundy, where we'll spend the rest of the summer. The island has been overrun. The bike paths are now littered with beer cans and soiled masts.

Everyone is acting with the conviction that the war is over and that the virus has been totally defeated. No one wants to bother with even the slightest of precautions. But, dear listener, is it truly over? When we're caught in the rain, we open up our umbrellas in order to keep ourselves dry. But we don't delude ourselves into believing anything other than the umbrella is responsible for us being dry. That's what it feels like now. Research shows that these shutdowns have prevented three-plus million deaths in Europe and 60-plus million infections in the USA. Yes, by locking ourselves away for three months, we did it. We flattened those curves.

But this super infectious disease is still out there, circulating. The storm, it's still raging. Why is it raining? Why is it happening? It's raining! It's raining! It's raining! What's this? What's this happening? Shit! My biggest fear early on was that another shooting of an unarmed Black person would lead to protest and that we would still be in the middle of a pandemic. And I was just so worried about that.

I was just despondent about the murder of Mr. Floyd. I actually could not bring myself to watch the full video. It's just too traumatizing and, quite frankly, triggering for me. And so I was in that space first. And it actually took me some time to realize, like, okay, this is my nightmare. Wow, this is my nightmare. This is Dr. Lauren Powell, head of health care at Time's Up. Her greatest nightmare about the pandemic has become real.

People are coming together in massive numbers to protest police brutality and American racism. The protests actually ramped up kind of quickly. It went from, you know, a couple of protests to then it was like global unrest. And I was torn as a Black woman because while I understand the outrage, I also understand the very serious pandemic that we're in that is disproportionately impacting the Black community. And it is racism that is at the root and the core of why George Floyd was murdered. And it is also racism perpetuating the inequities of COVID-19.

There continues to be ongoing frustration about the lack of transparency and the lack of data. Even after there were some cities who said 60% and 80% of their fatalities were African American. Even after that, we still don't have clarity and transparency in being able to know how many people who have been tested are Black or African American, how many people who have passed away have been Black or African American. That would help us pinpoint where CARES Act money should perhaps go. And so to not have that information, that means we are invisible. That means our struggle is invisible. That means our cases and our deaths are invisible. That means our lives are invisible. And so that is another way of adding to the underlying dehumanization and the stripping of humanity from Black lives. To me, that underscores the issue that we have with racism in medicine. And I think it is, quite frankly,

incumbent upon our public health systems to really step up in this moment. So provide masks, provide hand sanitizer, even. It's the job of public health to protect the public's health. But it's also incumbent upon our state and local leaders to ensure that protesters remain safe, right? So that is rethinking whether you should use pepper spray and rethinking whether you should be using tear gas, both of which would cause people to cry or cough, increasing the likelihood of spreading COVID-19. I'm not seeing

enough officers, quite frankly, really not seeing any in masks, in gloves, like they should be doing that as well. And then the worst case scenario is, do they actually need to go to jail? We've heard of so many outbreaks across the country inside of our jails. Yeah. But unfortunately, it's very clear that right now the police are not prioritizing the health and safety of the protesters. In fact, I saw online the other day one police department bragging about some masks that they had confiscated from some protesters. So I'd really like you to maybe speak to how people who want to go out and protest and demonstrate could maybe deal with the risks on their own. Yes. How do we keep them safe in the middle of a pandemic?

I've gotten a lot of questions about, like, is it good that people are protesting right now? Like, should they be protesting right now? I don't know if it's my role. I don't feel like it's my role, quite frankly, to tell people whether they should or should not protest. And I think it's actually a point of privilege is to sit in a seat of privilege

to be able to sit back and have a intellectual and logical conversation about the two. Because sometimes we don't get that choice. I think that it's really important to still remember that we are in a pandemic. You know, there is a risk to protesting. But at the same time, there was a risk to protesting

in the civil rights era. There is truly never a convenient time to work towards dismantling racism. We have to remember we're trying to dismantle a system that is over 400 years old and is working perfectly. So that takes strategy and it takes real action. But there's something very powerful about this moment. Yeah. So, Dr. Powell, I really want to know, have you gone out and protested yourself? I actually have gone out and I have done my version of protesting, which is probably not the traditional definition of protesting. I followed the route and I stayed about 500 feet away. I had my mask on, double mask. I had gloves on and I recorded it so I could share it with

other people in my family who were not comfortable leaving the house at all. You know, that was my version of standing in solidarity. And I also think, you know, we should think about resistance and protesting. There's a spectrum to that. While everyone may not be able to physically go out, right, I work towards protesting and dismantling racism every day in the work that I do. And I think we can all do that where we are. So whether you feel comfortable going out to protest physically or not, you can show your solidarity for anti-racism, even in the work that you do every day, wherever you are. you have been listening to benjamin walker theory of everything this installment is called herd immunity Walker theory of everything. This installment is called Herd Immunity.

This episode was written and produced by me, Benjamin Walker, and Andrew Calloway. It featured Dr. Lauren Powell and TOE's special correspondent, Chris. The COVID-19 health crisis is far from over, but this is the final episode in our social distance learning series. You can find more information and links to all of the other episodes in the series at theoryofeverythingpodcast.com. The Theory of Everything is a proud founding member of Radiotopia, home to some of the world's best podcasts. Find them all at radiotopia.fm.