Radiolab - Dispatch 1: Numbers

Episode Date: March 27, 2020

In a recent Radiolab group huddle, with coronavirus unraveling around us, the team found themselves grappling with all the numbers connected to COVID-19. Our new found 6 foot bubbles of personal space. Three percent mortality rate (or 1, or 2, or 4). 7,000 cases (now, much much more). So in the wake of that meeting, we reflect on the onslaught of numbers - what they reveal, and what they hide.  Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate. 

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From W. N. Y. Let's see. See?

Cool. Do we have everybody? Okay. No, I don't see Dylan. Oh, Dylan. Are you all there? We don't have Tad. Oh, no, there's Tad.

It does not feel like enough people. Our Brady Bunch doesn't feel much enough. No, it seems too small. Did Jad just disappear? Oh, Jad says his audio hijack short-circuited everything. There's D.K. I'm sure Jad will be back in a sec. All right, well, we wait for Jad to log back on.

Okay, it's Jad, I am here. It's funny, like, at the beginning of all this, I think we all felt a little robbed. Not we specifically, but I think all of us felt like we had all of these plans for our lives, and now they had to be put on hold. But then as the sort of gravity of things has kind of set in, that feeling has thankfully given way to, I think, just a lot of other feelings. Worry, anxiety, but also gratitude for the people that we get to worry about.

There's been a lot of change here at Radio Lab, even before this. Robert retired. We launched a whole series about Guantanamo Bay, where Latif Nasser took the helm. And meanwhile, we were preparing all of these stories that were going to feature the rest of the team. We were getting ready to say a thing, which I think you probably know, that over the years this show has shifted

from being just about the two guys hosting it and talking to being really a collective of these incredibly talented producers and reporters. And we wanted to say that and show it, really, in the stories we were going to put out. And then this happened. And now did we lose Dylan, too? And so, you know, every day, I guess like everybody, it's all about Zoom.

We get together at 12 o'clock, a giant Zoom meeting, and we... Can we all do a common motion and make the grid, like, do fun things? Kind of hang out a little bit in a Brady Bunch grid of video windows. You want to do a wave? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Wait, but in my wave, David, I'm right next to see. Orders.

We need a whole screen of jazz hands right now. Let's go for it. So partly it's just about trying to keep some sense of community going. But also it's about trying to figure out what how do we do for you right now. I mean, how do we balance the need to stare directly at this global crisis that's unfolding and report on it? While at the same time giving you moments where you can escape that, which also feels important right now. I don't know. Like, obviously, like, things are changing for us in terms of, like,

even how we think about stories or what stories to make. Thorne Wheeler. I mean, I think first things first, partly just so we can share with each other because we care about each other, but also maybe as fodder for, like, what's in our heads right now. Like, I remember, like, I remember talking to David a little bit about, like, you're just like, all suddenly you just have this window to look out on. Like, what are the possible things that could, like, that could.

Yeah, and I have one. I have one tree in front of me. David Gable. I did a different angle today. And one is blooming and covered with blossoms. One is not. I don't know why. And then I did wonder whether there's a blossom for every single bud or do they all make it?

I don't know. I don't know enough botany. I'm so interesting. I'm thinking a lot about people that are on the front lines that have to go to work. Susie Lectenberg. That can't stay home. my sister is an ER doctor and just thinking about the increase of patients coming in. And then thinking to myself that I have no idea how many patients come in on a regular day

versus a day like now and what that level of stress, like how that goes up based on the more people that are coming in. So much of the coverage like is lots of no sir. For good reasons is like about these like life and death human stories. But I just like find myself wondering about all these objects. You have the masks or you have the like the toilet paper and the supply chain or like I'm also like you I also wonder like a lot about the virus itself like like from its perspective like is it alive? What does it want? Like what is its internal monologue like right now? Totally unrelated to all the important things people are saying. Simon Adler. I have put in a press request with Corona.

The beer company. Did you get any response? Not yet. They might be busy thinking of a new name. One thing I keep thinking about is ring around the rosy. W. Harry Fortuna. How we got that from the Black Plague and how... I've been talking to my parents a lot.

Annie McEwen. And my dad's like, man, I'm just like logging onto Wikipedia every day, checking out that Corona page. So interesting. See all the numbers, all the different countries, like moving up and down, you know, like first Taiwan is doing well, but then like South Korea is really pulling ahead. And I was like, Dad, you're only doing this because the NHL is canceled. And you were like going through stats withdrawal.

And so he's like, oh man, like, you know, Italy is struggling. He's falling behind. But, like, he's like, mom's like, yeah, he's checking it every single day. Like his way of talking sounds like hockey talk. A bunch of stuff is coming out of these meetings. And we're putting feelers out in a lot of different directions while at the same time doubling down on some bigger projects that we already had in motion.

But in the next week or so, I want to put out a couple of short dispatches of stuff that's been bubbling up at these meetings that we're all sort of learning about reporting out as we're siloed away in our separate closets. And just to start with this particular Zoom meeting. I do keep thinking about to like Annie's dad, I do keep thinking about numbers in like... It's Molly Webster. At some level, like I'm sort of obsessed with all the numbers

that are like coming out every day. Then they terrify me. And then I don't understand how to understand them. One of the things just kept coming up was what do we do with all of the numbers that are swirling around this pandemic? The number I'm thinking about is like, Six.

Sarkari. The six feet, like, social distancing rule. Like, okay, like, can I go see my friend and, like, stand six feet away from them? And that's okay. Like, even if, in theory, if one of us was carrying the virus, like, would that be fine? I'm just wondering how the hell of Facebook, just donated 720,000 masks for the government. I'm like, okay. Becca Bresler.

What, they just had them in a closet somewhere? Yeah, they had a stockpile with that and that they just forked over. to the government. Yeah, so in this Zoom meeting, there's a lot of talk about these numbers, these public health numbers, economic impact numbers, and how do we process them?

How do we understand them? How do we wrap our heads around them? We might go deeper on some of the stuff in future weeks, but for the moment, I just want to pull out two number-focused rifts from two different producers that happened organically in the meeting,

but in both cases, I called them up after the meeting, and we talked a little bit more. Okay, here we are. Yeah. First up, Soren Wheeler. I don't quite know how to prompt you with this because I just kind of want to pull the string. Yeah, I don't, I mean, I don't know how to prompt me with this either.

I mean, like, it's that nerd part of me that I don't talk about very much that you still actually like math. Oh, we all see it. And sometimes still does. Although I always kind of like pretend to not. But I don't know. Somehow, I mean, I'll say that I ran across the first. One of the first things that happens was I ran across this set of numbers that CNN had published. And it was like on March 1st, there was this many cases, March 2nd, this many, blah, blah, blah, down the line.

The number is doubling like every two or three days. Right. And I think then I was like, oh, right, because of course, because everything in the news has been, this is an exponential curve. Like, there's that word throwing around exponential, which I sort of know, but I hadn't thought about much. And then I looked at this. I'm like, oh, it's doubling every two days. And I was like, that's right. this is this thing that like,

I think people really don't absorb what that means. I mean, they sort of like, oh, exponential growth. Like, but I don't think like, you know, the sort of visceral sense of what that, what it can do. Yeah, yeah, it's funny. It's like I don't actually. Whether it comes across. What do I think of? I just think it's growing fast.

It's like you just think like it's growing more and more and more. Like, so like, let me. And I remember. this old, and my dad was like a physicist and he's like a super like teach the world about, you know, he wanted like everybody in the world to understand, be literate and like math and science. So he would say things to me like, okay, I want you to mow the lawn every day for the next month. And I'll either give you a million dollars to do that or I'll give you a penny today and then I'll

give you two pennies tomorrow and then I'll give you four pennies the next day. We're going to go, we're going to do this for a month. I mean, like, I don't know. Oh, so it was a choice between like, million dollars now? Yeah, he's like, you could have either this or that, right? My, in my soul, I'm like a million dollars. Give me a million dollars. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

So the, so if you do the pennies, you end up pretty close to $20 million by the end of the month. Whoa. Wow. Starting with a penny. And the, and the, this is the thing about this curve is like halfway through the month. You're like, I got 50 bucks or whatever. But it's the last two days the month. where it's like, cabam.

Interesting. Well, when you were a young boy and your dad was telling you this, like, did it make any kind of sense to you? I mean, I think at that point, and maybe still now, it just made me always like, one, always, whenever anybody says anything about doubling pennies, take that one. You know, it just gave me a trick for dealing with the world, which is to say, I knew then that this thing that seems like not a big deal could be a big deal. And I just used, you know, like I just, it's not like I intuitively understood exponential curves from then on, but I just knew that the things turn out bigger than you think, like way bigger than you think. And so that was the feeling I got when I was looking at the CNN numbers, like, oh, this is the penny thing. This is going to go like that.

Or it could go like that, really, if we don't, you know, like, there's a whole big thing here about we step in, we can change this. So I started thinking about like, how, like, my main thing is like, I don't think people get this. And even after I talk for a while, I don't think people get it. What they get if they're, you know, the only thing you really get is like I got when I was a kid, which is like, look out or be worried or this is tricky. Yeah. Yeah. But you don't actually, you know, so I started thinking like, oh, are there things you could do to actually feel it? Yeah, like, feel it in your bones. So I was thinking like, I, you know, I work in this little shed that I built in my backyard in Wisconsin.

Yeah. Or have quarantined myself. Not, I don't mean that quite literally. But it's 10 by 10 or so. It's like the size of a rich person's bathroom. Yeah, you would, this would, wow. Now I'm looking around like, yeah, this would be a luxurious bathroom. But it does not feel like a luxurious office.

I mean, it's 10 by 10. It's not that much. It's slightly big than a cubicle, basically. Yeah. But anyway, this is my little office. It's nice because it's 100 square feet. It's an easy bit of number to deal with. So I'm like, oh, what if I was just doubling the size of my office every day?

We'll do the same thing with the pennies, like every day for a month, right? today it's 100 tomorrow is 200 third day of the month it's 400 800 all that like the fifth day of the month is about the size of my house I think by day 12 it's like an average city block at the end of the month

it's New Jersey wow yeah dang actually wait no I think day 32 it's the first day of the next month it's Jersey but whatever but you know the weird thing is that Like for most of the month, I was like, yeah, it's getting big. But then all of a sudden, you're just at Jersey.

And like if you go like, go a couple more days. Let's go into the next month. By the 10th day of the next month, you're bigger than the United States. And by the, let's see, is it the 13th, 14th of the next month? Maybe the 15th is the surface area of the earth. So a month gets you to Jersey. and another half month gets you to the earth. And then also I just kept thinking about, like,

what are all the different ways that you could do this to almost like literally sense the curve? Like, you know, could I do it with touch? And I tried that with air pressure, but it got weird and it didn't really work. And then I was like, oh, I mean, we could do it, we could do it sonically, right? I don't know, music is frequencies, right?

We can hear 20 hertz. That's as low as we can go as humans. And we can hear up to about 20Khertz, so 20,000 hertz. And so if you did, you just double that once a second, 20 hertz, 40 hertz, 80 hertz, and you just go smooth up. It's about 10 seconds or so before you're out of hearing range. Okay. I don't know how impressive that is, but maybe more immediate than that.

It's like, and the thing that everybody has experienced is like feedback with a microphone and a speaker. If like when the speaker comes up to think, you know, like that horrible, awful, everybody goes, out. That's an exponential gross situation. I mean, you're right. It's like, if you're feeding the speaker back through the mic and into the speaker, then the speaker has doubled, and then it's being doubled again, and then it's being doubled again. It's exactly like the penny, but in sound.

But, you know, the interesting, the fun thing to do with feedback, which I've done many times, is you can slowly move the mic back from the speakers and modulate how much. Exactly, my friend. You flatten. the curve. You flatten the curve. So you... That's literally what you're doing with feedback when you want to mess with it and put it on the edge of musicality instead of just ear-splitting annoyance is you flatten the curve. That's like you are sitting in your studio right now not shaking hands with people on the street.

Is that? You know, it's like the thing I keep wrestling with pretty much every time Cuomo opens his mouth and he says these numbers. Things like we will very much, we were very likely see 100,000 cases within X weeks or whatever it is. I mean, they make these numbers, which seem compared to the moment, astronomical. Right. And so you sort of seem like, oh, man, they must be talking worst case scenario or they're just trying to scare us. Yeah, and it's like hearing you go through these exercises, it makes me think maybe we're only on day eight or nine of the growth. And so they're already looking mathematically at day 20 and then day 40. I mean, it all depends exactly what number you start with. And honestly, but the totally messed up thing, it doesn't even matter.

I could list the numbers I saw on CNN, but they're irrelevant because they're just cases that have been tested. We don't really know the total number of cases. But regardless of all that, they're all following this kind of curve. And then what I think about is like if my shed just started growing at doubling every day, and I was sort of like, hey, everybody, this thing seems to be growing and I'm kind of worried about it. And if I just went out there as like, what was it? day eight, what did I say? On day eight, day five, it's the size of my house and who even cares about whether it took over my house or not. And I'm going, yeah, but I did the math and in about 40 days, it's going to be the whole earth. People are going to be like, what are you

talking about, dude? The thing is the size of your house. I'm like, yeah, but 40 days from now, it's going to, my shed is going to be the whole earth and everybody's, you know, like, it's just ridiculous to try to be a, to try to communicate that. And so the question is like, I think, think about a lot for, and maybe scientists are thinking about this too. When, when should I talk? At a time when it's not too late to do something about it, but people won't think I'm saying the sky is falling. When will you be able to say it in a way where people will get it and not think you're crazy? Yeah. Yeah. And you don't really don't, I mean, like, also like, you, you want to take the math pretty far out to just be like, this is what happens. But on the other hand,

Our responses are real. And China has flattened the curve and South Korea has flattened the curve. And, you know, it's not going to go the distance of like all these crazy things I was saying about covering the earth or whatever. Because we can flatten it. But not unless we know, we act like we know what this thing is. We'll be back after a quick break. This is Caitlin Bissell calling from Saskatoon, Saskatchew in Canada. Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. For more information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. This is Radio Lab. I'm Chad Abumrod. The number that I keep thinking about is just the fatality rate. You know, whether it's 1% or is it going to be like 4%. Tracy Hunt. Thinking about all the people are losing their jobs a lot. Pat Walters.

22 people here and 500 people there and 600 people here. And there's like projections of 3 million by June. With numbers in general, like I kind of feel like... Rachel Kusick? I personally like short circuit when I hear a number, like if it's a death or something, because it just like loses all of the depth and like hues of what's going on. So I feel like I'm numb to numbers. All right.

Great. Second riff, extended riff, comes from Molly Webster. Yes, that is going, you're going. We're all going. Yeah, we are so going. We're so going. Do you want me to prompt you with what I remember of what you were saying? I don't, I mean, I know what we both remember.

We remember that I keep thinking about, like, what does it mean to wake up with numbers flashing at us and like a ticker tape of coronavirus, like curling on every digital screen that I'm looking at every day, like beating. a drumbeat of like this is a thing that's happening. There's something about just like seeing headlines where it's like 400 more people got this overnight and then the next day it's like 523 people got this overnight and it's like largest caseload yet and then it's like 21,000 people have it in the United States and it's just this state that we're in right now but I also think about because numbers carry such weight I keep wondering about like the psychological effects of that drumbeat every day. I just wonder what it would be like if all of the time in our lives we had numbers just assaulting us repeatedly every day. And the first thing I thought about

was the flu. And knowing that, you know, at least at this point in time that we're talking, there are more cases of the flu and more deaths from the flu than from coronavirus. Is that this year? Or is that in general? I mean, that would be this flu season. So it would be, you know, the end of 2019 to now. Really? So there have been more flu deaths from non-COVID-19 related flus than from this one?

Yes. I did not know that. And just like thinking about like, what if I woke up every day and they told me like how many people went to the hospital with the flu? or like how many people died because of the flu. And then so then I just kind of started poking around, like just to see. And it was like this week for the flu, you know, they're still counting the death toll. But it's like 347 people died, which is like 49 deaths per day. The week before that, 487 people died of the flu.

And this says no COVID involved at all. This is just the flu. And there's so many things that are wrong with this metaphor. Overall, coronavirus has a higher death rate than the flu. So we just aren't there yet, essentially. Like, if the death rate plays out, it will be higher. But it's not really about, like, the direct comparison. It's just like, what would my emotional reaction to, like, the flu be if every morning I woke up and they told me how many people died of the flu. Yeah, and it's like an 28 point font right there on the front page. Yeah, and it's like this interesting thing where I'm like dancing this fine line where it's like, coronavirus is scary. We should all pay attention to it. It is worse than the flu. But at the same time, like I just think about like what it's doing to me emotionally and to the rest of the country and to like the world to have this like ticker, going off, you know, that is in a 24-hour news cycle literally updated how many times a day,

like every hour. Yeah. I mean, it's like when I talked to last time, you were like, oh, my God, can I handle more numbers? There's too many numbers coming at me right now. There are so many numbers. And it is like you start getting lost in it where you're like, should I care about the hospitalization rate or should I care about the death rate or should I care about how many people are getting sick?

And I guess I care about all of them. And then all of a sudden, I'm like, wait, do I know what the late? latest numbers are and like how many people have them. And then I'm like, is there really a difference between 400 and 5? Like for me. And there is. It's bigger. It's a hundred bigger. You know, I don't know. I don't know. I probably need to know that because you're just like, okay, I and or people I know are going to get coronavirus. Good chance someone I know will probably die from it. Um, yeah. And so I'm not trying to be like trite. This is a super serious thing. I guess I just wonder though, like, would I take cancer more seriously if like every day there was a thing on the front page

in the New York Times that said like 1,600 people died yesterday from all cancer? Like that is a real thing that's happening. Yeah. If we took the amount of intensity and anxiety that's that these numbers are generating and actually transposed it onto cancer, how would we? Well, Well, it's like suddenly would we be actually care about cancer and like be super conscious of it and trying in 18 months to find a cure? You know, it's like, like I was looking at the CDC websites and like different like health websites just to stay in like medicine land for a little. Though my brain has gone many places with this. You know, basically it's like 890 cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed each day in 2020. And so like what if every morning I woke up and it was like,

890 women were diagnosed with breast cancer or like 9,500 people they think will be diagnosed with skin cancer each day. You know, and then it's like, oh, well, I suddenly start wearing sunscreen? What would it be like to live in a world where every day they told me how many polar bears died? Roughly two a day, 666 a year. Or like how many flowers bloomed because that's like happier than all the bad stuff. Yeah, I was like, go there, go there. It doesn't have to be bad things. Trees blooming on the first day of spring,

roughly 1.5 billion trees flowering first day of spring. Like what if every day I had a ticker tape of like how many jars of peanut butter had been sold? You know, like... How many jars of peanut? Do you know that number? Knowing you, you probably know that number. I do know that number.

It's 200... This is the estimate. 246,575 per day. of a single brand. Or like, what if there was like the number of babies born? Which is something like 360,000 per day at this point. Wow, okay. That's like 1.2 babies per jar of peanut butter.

I know. Keep going. 18 million Uber rides a day. Wow. That's worldwide. That's insane. There's like 172 million 800,000 gallons of wine drunk a day. Wow.

Six million tons of garbage made each day. Oh my God, if that were the number we saw in the papers every day, we definitely want to bring that number down. How many rocks were skipped on a lake? Ballpark in it? 102,614. How many bonfires were made? Maybe 32,017. The number of baby seals that died.

I don't know. I just saw baby seal for like the first time a year ago. I think I like them. Who doesn't like a baby seal? They're like little puppies. I feel like a great affinity for them. And so I was like, I wonder how many baby seals died. If you just look at Harbor Seal numbers, a few hundred thousand each year are lost to predators.

Let's say 240,000. Divide that by 365. You get 667 lost each day, which frankly seems like a huge number. How many girls got their periods? Roughly two million. How many houses were built? 1.6 million a year. That's a real number.

Or a number of iPhones bought? How much Bitcoin was made? How many people danced? that day? I mean, that's a really good one, actually, right now. That one I want to hold in my consciousness. The reason I really like this idea, a lot of the stuff you're playing with is

because for me, there's a kind of myopia that sets in with these numbers. I mean, and for good reason. Like, this is absolutely serious and it's happening, and we all need to pay attention to it. Really focus on it. But it does remind me that when you do the peanut butter and you do the purple flowers,

It just reminds me that like even in this intensely anxious moment where we have this tendency to fixate on these horrible, ever fluctuating numbers, we can, though, through an act of will, remember that there are other stuff happening. There's other stuff happening in the world that we should, that's still worth paying attention to. It's like perspective. Like the onslaught for me has been really intense. So I've started only reading the news once a day. like I'm almost forcing the old system like of a newspaper lance on my doorstep in the morning because it's just like it's such an onslaught.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know, it's like I can't almost focus on anything else. And then today I like turned off my phone from like 1130 to right before we talked and I went to the park. and then I came back and I like read and made dinner and it was just like oh there's still a world out there. Yeah.

Like this thing is coming. It's going to blow through here. I don't know what it's going to do to me and everyone I love and people I don't know but still love from afar. But there's still like a park and a flower and that person and their dog. totally yeah just like life you know the number that I

it's just occurring to me as the number 100 I think that number 100 days like the first 100 days comes from from from BLEE from FDR who in the wake of the 1929 crash

like in 100 days basically reformatted America you know I mean you had all of these social safety uh program coming in and passed one after another after another because things were so, so dire at that moment that everybody just sort of stood and in lockstep basically said, this is the country we want and let's just do it. I wonder what happens in the hundred days after this.

I see so many people were like when you were talking, we're like shaking their head. No, we're not going to change. Or, you know, we are, but it's going to change in a direction that's just opposite of FDR ideologically. Like, you know, that everything will shift just, you know, away from social support and toward something else, more capitalism. It feels like a tipping point for that. Yeah, like speeding up the future in a way.

Just because this is, yeah. Oh, my God. I just want to jump in and say, I have a little bit of hope. I'm starting to get really, really depressed, and I just need to say, I feel like, I know, I feel like,

this there's a real I think there's going to be a lot of shitty outcomes but it also feels like a real moment where everyone could like take a deep breath and like reassess and like take forward even as individuals like what do we want to take forward like from this time like we're going to see a lot of places in our lives where like things are lost and we might actually be like or things are changed and you might actually be like oh that maybe that change is okay I'm on team hope I'll raise my hand for I've got to Yeah, I'll third that.

Wait, can I ask a technical question with everyone here? Or I'm going to send an email. I can do either. Let's find, I do need to off. I need to bolt, so let's find a way to offline it and get an email out.

But I can join you in the conversation or whatever to set the parameters you think make sense. But, yeah, let's feed it back some other way. Okay, kids. Thanks all. Thanks, everybody. Chad, are we staying on? Oh, I guess not.

Oh, yeah, there you are. Still here. Before we close, I just want to thank, you know, in Molly's riff, a lot of those numbers, especially some of the more guessy ones. We had help from a professional guesstimator of sorts, hat tip to physicist Larry Weinstein. And, yeah, I guess that's it. I'm Chad I boom-rod. Thank you guys for listening.

I hope you're healthy and hope you're coping. please stay safe stay inside we'll have another dispatch for you in a couple days this is eddie calling from hobart Australia radio lab is created by jad app and rab with robert quowicz and produced by

soren wheeler dealing keef is our director of sound design suzie lexenberg is our executive producer our staff include simon adler becker brezler rachel kuzik david giebel bessel hapti tracy hans matt keelty annie mccuin latif nasser sarah cari

Ariane Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster, with help from Shima O'Leary, W. Harry Fortuna, Sarah Sandback, Melissa O'Donnell, Tad Davis, and Russell Gragg. Our fact checker is Michelle Harris.