Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Quarantine

Episode Date: March 2, 2020

For reasons we assume you can guess, we're discussing the history of quarantine, and how its historical misuse should make you particularly alert in the days and weeks to come as the world continues to combat COVID-19. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's lost it out. We pushed on through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around.

Come that essence, come that essence, the escalant macaque for the mouth. Wow! Hello everybody and welcome to Saul Buns, Mayor of the Tour of Miscguided medicine. I'm your co-host Justin McAroy and I'm Sydney McAroy Justin a lot of people are talking about quarantine. Yeah, I don't know why though You don't know why I don't get it. No, I don't follow the news. Not a big news guy. I love sports literally No news I keep the boot to to sports. We did a podcast week that wasn't last week was it last week recently. I do a lot of on coronavirus you don't remember it. Was there a touchdown involved or a sort of 3.9? No, a lot of people are talking about quarantine because as I'm sure you're aware, the novel coronavirus

COVID, is it his COVID-19? Is it has now been dubbed? I don't know, guys. You don't know about that? I don't know. I just feel like something a little bit. I'm glad the distinction between coronavirus and this new thing is being drawn, just so it's not all coronavirus.

I'm certain the fine people at corona are stoked to try to reduce their brand crossfire there. I'm sure there's jazz about that, but COVID-19 just doesn't trip off the tongue. I'm sure there's jazz about that, but COVID-19 just doesn't like trip off the tongue. I don't know. Well, I mean, there are bigger problems than the name, really. I think if you, you know, I can't impact any of them. So I might as well whine about one that's a little bit a smaller scale, right? We, we didn't really talk about in our first episode about coronavirus. What was being done in our first episode about coronavirus, what was being done specifically in China

and then now here to try to contain the spread of the virus. And I wanted to touch on that some, but I thought like having sort of an understanding historically of how we've used quarantine might be helpful to kind of see where we're coming from now. And what the, what I think a lot of people are concerned about rightfully so, the potential pitfalls of some of the ways that this has been addressed. I know there have been some articles about this recently too.

This is a hot topic. And so let's talk about it. All right, let's do it. So we have, I'm certain, and there's documented evidence from like ancient writings from hypocrites and people that we've been trying to find ways to contain, or like to, if somebody sick, keep them away from other people for a long time, informally, without any real understanding of germ theory of disease or anything like that.

But the first real formal attempts, like the beginnings of quarantine as we know it, really start in the plague epidemics throughout the 14th century. That's really where the true story of quarantine begins. I'm not saying people didn't try before, but that's where this story starts. And when we say quarantine, what we're really talking about is the attempt to restrict the spread When we say quarantine, what we're really talking about is the attempt to restrict the spread of some sort of disease, some sort of infectious disease by means of restricting the movement of people or things. Right?

So, that way the disease doesn't go anywhere because the people or the stuff doesn't go anywhere. When we talk about the plague itself, and we've done a whole episode on it before, there were no at the time in the 14th century any effective treatment strategies. Once you got it, it was just kind of, well, honestly, prey. That was really what a lot of people did. There were things people attempted, but the best you could do is try to stay away from it.

Right. Because it adds like strap-a-chicken deer arm and hope for the best you could do is try to stay away from it. Right, because that's like strap a chicken to your arm and hope for the best. Exactly. So there were some places that did things that were like, what are actually called sanitary cordons, where you would set up like armed guards at an entrance, at the main entrance road to your city, or town, or village, or whatever. And essentially, they were just like militarily enforced, and it was if you try to come into our city and we don't, like if you're a stranger

and you're trying to come in, we'll kill you. So don't come in. Or we'll show you. Or help stab you from a quarantine. Well, a quarantine is more restricting as opposed to like just sectioning off an entire town to try to prevent disease from getting in, a quarantine is taking infected people

and preventing them from going places, like keeping them somewhere. Whereas this is like, we don't have the disease in our town, so we're not letting anybody in. Got it. And sanitary accordance are also, that term is also being used if you look at what is happening currently in certain parts of China, where you just cordon off an entire

area that has cases. So it's not that everyone within that area is sick, but the entire city or province is cordoned off. That's a sanitary coordinate. It's not a quarantine because not everyone in it is sick. Okay. You know, you're you're you're you're kind of trapping the sick and the healthy together. And that's not the case with quarantine. I can't be quarantined even if you're not sick. You can be quarantined if you're not sick, but you would hopefully be quarantined with other people who you should a real

quarantine should keep sick people with sick people and healthy people with healthy people and not mix the two. Now, as you've probably already guessed, that's almost impossible to do. There are ways to make you do it better, but that's almost impossible to do. So at this point, back in the plague days, you would just say, okay, put some people with weapons at the entrances to the city or town and don't let anybody we don't know in. And as you can imagine, this might keep out sick people, but it also would probably keep out anybody you didn't like, any races or religious orders you didn't like. So it was often used as an excuse to just discriminate. And, you

know, there was a lot of like racism and big, big tree that played into this kind of thing, who was a quote unquote stranger and who isn't. And, and this was also bad because it encouraged sick people if they didn't know where to go to just kind of wander to try to find a place to be and to spread disease further. Those that were sick within a town were placing like, makeshift little camps and things, basically, to keep the sick people from the healthy people. But the real first quarantines were done. The term itself actually comes from Italy, fromth century specifically Venice. There was a lot of fear that plague could be brought in by ships into Venice. There's a big port. A lot of ships coming in. And so what they started doing is requiring that all ships would dock, would sit and dock somewhere

for 40 days before the passengers were allowed to disembark. So, basically you just keep them there for 40 days, either on the ship or as we'll get into in a certain containment facility separate from the city until the 40 days of pass. And then at that point, if you weren't sick, they thought you probably were fine. And then they'll let you come in. The term quarantine comes from the Italian for 40 days,

Quaranta, Gioremi. So that was eventually shortened to quarantine. What's interesting, at least? Yeah, and that's where quarantine comes from. The, uh, if you did have a boat come in that thought they might have somebody with plague on it, and you counted on the, the people on the ship, the captain, to be honest, you would fly a flag and they would look on the church tower of San Marco, they would look for the flags coming in. And there were different ones. Nowadays, the flag that means this ship could contain, you know, disease, lightning quarantine is like a yellow and black flag that called it the yellowjack sometimes. Back in the day, some were yellow, some were black.

There were various ones. Now it makes sense. I say that because nowadays I believe a plain yellow flag means no disease. So. And she's gonna do a Mr. Yuck. That's these airbrains. That means.

What's going on? What's going crossbones? Is that maybe where that came from? Probably not. I thought that was from pirates. Yeah. Yeah. So the captain would be taken from the ship and a lifeboat to shore. And they would talk to the health magistrate through like, like a confessional kind of situation, like through a window. So that nobody would

get sick. And they would have to go over like what is going on in the boat, what is, you know, you have to show proof like is everybody healthy? Is everybody fine? Where did all of this stuff on your boat come from? Is it from somewhere where there's a known outbreak of anything? If there was any concern, then they would proceed to a quarantine station where you would be isolated for a period of time. Again, usually 40 days. And this grew to be adopted by a lot of other places throughout Europe, as like the method for allowing ships and trying to prevent spread of disease. As far as like Y40, in case you're curious, it may be the Hippocrates wrote about 40 days as being an important period of time for

some acute illnesses. The number four has a lot of significance. There's some biblical tie-ins. I think the short answer is we're not really, we're not really short. They're guessing about all this. They're guessing. It was later shortened to 30, but quarantine still stuck as the name. So 30 feels healthy 30 feels good. Still wow what a boring few to I mean boring. Yes.

Imagine and this is why they eventually established these hospitals these plague hospitals. The first was in 1423 on the island of Santa Maria, D'Nazareth near Venice, and it was called a lasoretto. Basically, you would have a compound where the ship would pull in and you could let people who seemed okay, but you wanted to monitor for signs of disease, go to one place, sick people went to another place. They had separate areas for goods

where they could be decontaminated and they had like a whole procedure for decontaminating the merchandise, like stuff that you couldn't get wet had to just air out. Basically, they didn't, I mean, they didn't know how disease spread. So it was like just ventilated for 48 hours. Maybe that's good, let it breathe.

Other stuff would just be continuously run under water for a couple days. Like, is that something? Is that good? Did we do something? There were, there was like a hospital of sorts there so that people who were actually sick were given some sort of medical care. And usually these places were like on a separate island or over a mountain range, like somewhere geographically isolated from the city that set them up. I know that you were trying to protect. There, there were similar precautions that were eventually taken in the UK, but again, in response to plague,

early quarantine was largely the result of plague. But we didn't see that in the UK until like the 1600s. In the US, in the colonial US, you would start to see this in response to more smallpox and yellow fever. You started to see some quarantining procedures very similar to what we just described. The way that ships were brought into port

and like quarantined off and like places for them to stay for a while to be monitored before they were allowed to disembark and that kind of thing. And there were also places where like patients with smallpox were forcibly quarantined to their own homes. That was another way that quarantine was used. Better than a pirate ship. At least I got the Xbox in there.

Well we're in the 16 and 1700s. I mean, X-Box one I don't know when it came out, but I don't think the first X-Box, okay, I see where we're confused Not the Xbox one the the first Xbox. Okay, what's 16 units around that little was it give or take give or take as the former game journalist I'll trust you is actually the Xbox the church had it and it's where they kept all the reports of witchcraft you feel good about that? No, okay, I don't Okay

So Throughout the 1800s quarantine really became a tool that was mainly directed at cholera. That was the newest scourge, and it caused death and devastation that was terrifying to a lot of countries. And so there were a lot of those same procedures that had been used previously against plague and to a lesser extent against smallpox and yellow fever were put in place again to try to keep cholera out of areas. And so again, quarantines and lasaredos and cordons and some more oppressive policies were established to try to limit the spread of cholera.

And this is where we really start to see, and this is something that you'll see as a theme. Whenever people are afraid of something, a threat especially an infectious disease, which can seem, while it is very real, there is an element of, it seems uncontrollable, I think, because you can't see it. Sure. It's a very frightening thing for a group of people, a society, to experience.

Oppressive governments can take advantage of that. I know shocking to enact policies that will target people who are already maybe marginalized by society and would be easy to further oppress and marginalize. And so you see that people facing homelessness or poverty or sex workers were often targeted by these quarantining policies to basically say like, if I see you on the street, I'm going to say that you could be out there spreading disease or whatever

and you're going to be arrested. And you could really direct a lot more aggression and violence towards these marginalized people in society at these times because people were so afraid for themselves, they're not thinking about anybody's personal rights or freedoms. And so seizing on that authoritarian leaders became more oppressive in all their policies, not just relating to health. And this was a, at this specific point in history, I'm right now I'm not talking about the current situation. Although, although as you may see, there are echoes of this. At this point, when we're talking about like the 1800s, if you think about what has just occurred in the United States of America, now

newly formed, United States of America. Yeah, amazing freedom. So, Eagles the whole bit. This was not a time when the world in general, many parts of the world, I should say, not all, we're at a place where oppressive authoritarian regimes were very welcome. Like if you think about trying to enact these policies in Europe or like in France in particular, like the French Revolution had just occurred. Right. Personal liberty was in vogue. So, all these cholera quarantines and procedures actually led to a lot of political upheaval,

riots, you know, uprisings, a lot of problems from that, because people, no, you don't get to tell me what to do. We don't get to tell me what to do. We just got out of that. We just fought them. We're free. We want to do what we want. And it didn't work very well for Colorado.

There are isolated incidents where we see that maybe quarantine was somewhat effective, especially like a really small island, and this happened a couple times. If you are part of a small group of people who live on a tiny island, and you basically just like scare away anybody who tries to come on the island

with like weapons. Yeah. Then I guess quarantine could work, but with cholera, it just didn't work very well for the most part. And this of course led to panic. There was no coordination on a global level. There was no like scientific coordination to try to figure out. Like some people thought it was communicable.

Other people thought it wasn't. And nobody was really working together very well to share information or anything because of all these quarantines, where it was just like, well, shut the doors, isolate ourselves. It's very isolating. I was about to say, I think it fosters that sort of like

me above everyone else sort of like me above everyone else sort of. Yes. And makes you view others as particularly hostile. And it will prey upon whatever prejudices already exists within societies and individuals. So what you see in times like this is that color gets blamed on blamed on whatever race is being oppressed or marginalized within that specific society. And they get targeted with increased policies and oppression and deportation or whatever, just because we already have those underlying prejudices and now this enables our fear

to run rampant. And this was kind of the way things went with cholera until eventually we figured out the germ theory of disease and that people could, we knew how things were communicated, you know, how a bacteria was given from one person to the next. We understood the spread of cholera. And once all of that fell into place, we could actually come up with effective strategies to limit it spread outside of just like bar the door. And then we had, it all figured out, right?

Forever. For the rest of human history, we figured out all disease and how to stop it. And everyone was healthy forever. The end of solvans. Wow, what a great run, what a great series. 300 and some episodes. Amazing. Except, of course, we didn't.

Oops. None of that was true. Oh, what is it? Well, everything was true except for the end where I said it was all better. What actually happened? Well, I'm going to tell you what happened next, but before we do that, let's go to the billion department. Let's go. The medicines, the medicines that ask you let my God before the mouth.

So how did we narrowly avoid fixing everything? Well, it wasn't really our fault. It was that our concept of what could cause disease shifted. So we had gotten used to the idea of cholera and how it was spread and we had understood through water and we understood, you know, kind of what we could, sort of what we could do to protect ourselves more or less. We still didn't understand everything yet, right?

But we were getting better. In the midst of a world war, a new infection emerges that people were not prepared for. And then as we are in 1918, and influenza overwhelmed us as a species. Yeah. Yes. People did not know how to handle.

And it came at exactly the time when you would have trouble, you know, organizing a coordinated response, right? So we're in the midst of World War I. More soldiers are dying from influenza. What would eventually be called the Spanish flu? Do you know why they probably got the blame for that? I think we may have said this in our episode. It sounds familiar about remind me. It was all over the place, right? Everybody was getting the flu. It wasn't just in Spain, but a lot of other countries weren't wanting to report it because of war. Right.

And they didn't want anybody to know. You want to cool and tough in front of all the other countries. And Spain reported it. They snitched, basically. They were honest. So they got a flu in the afternoon. But when you have the movement of troops across borders, there's no way you can control where people are traveling, or the governments are in disarray, there's no worldwide cooperation. Everybody's already panicking.

Everybody got sick. And in the US, specifically, the response to the influenza epidemic of 1918-1919 was, I mean, it varied. It was not a coordinated federal one-size-fits-all kind of solution. In some cities, it was quite severe. School shut down, church-stop services, theaters closed. There were no public meetings. There were no, I think I saw it like it at Yale. There were no more meetings, no more group meetings or anything like that.

At some places, they wouldn't even do confession at church anymore because you're talking closely through those little gated, I should know the name of that thing. In the thing. In the thing. In the thing. Through the fancy gate that you talked about. The fancy gate. The fancy gate.

The fancy gate. There weren't funeral services in some places. Basically, any kind of gathering was eliminated. And other places were a little more flexible. They were really worried about what that would do to business. Oh, right. You know, shut down like that keeps customers away. Exactly.

And so places that were a little more concerned with that didn't do all that. Doctors didn't know what to tell people. They said, like isolate yourself as much as you can. Hope for the best, you know? And then government policies throughout the world ranged from completely oppressive to non-existent. And this was the first time we really saw the media

play a big role. Oh yeah. And I don't wanna say adding to the panic, but in spreading the awareness that there's something to panic about, I should do that. It's not the media's fault for telling the truth. The flu is bad people are dying. That is just the truth.

It's just they make sure everybody knows it. And this of course would be the first of the influenza, you know, seasonal flu, like well, I mean, the seasonal flu is probably already happening, but this would be our awareness of it, that the flu is something we're going to have to continue to deal with. And the first of the influenza pandemics of the 20th century, by the 30s, we understood the cause of agent, and then eventually we had a vaccine. And I think that that has changed kind of the way we look at the flu, because something we talked about in the first coronavirus episode is that people

are scared of this in a way that I don't see them be afraid of the flu. And you can get down into, well, the mortality is probably higher. And so maybe there's good reason to and all that. But also, you'd think if you were scared of this, you'd be motivated to at least go get the flu shot. Sure. And not everybody is. And I think that maybe we've become comfortable with the idea of the flu.

Hmm. So it would be weird to it because we hear about it so much and talk about it so much that we've lost our fear of it. Yes. Which is not good. No. Not the, not that, I mean, fear without action is not like a healthy response, but if it's fear that drives you to

Preventative action. Yeah shot and stuff. Yes, then it's good What really changed things in more recent years because I mean we've certainly had other flu pandemics Sure most recently H1N1 swine flu. Yes but SARS is what really that I think I think that SARS really kind of changed the game for a lot of people so 2003 we already mentioned SARS occurred in in China and it spread very quickly it

It was transmitted very quickly it had a high mortality rate We didn't have a vaccine. We didn't have any way to treat it. It was transmitted very quickly. It had a high mortality rate. We didn't have a vaccine. We didn't have any way to treat it. It was scary. But it did not seem the strategies that were hit among different countries that got hit really hard by SARS really varied. And it's interesting because you see a lot of these quarantining, like coordinating off buildings, checkpoints on roads. I mean, in China, they

were even like, they installed web cameras in private homes to monitor people for signs of infection. Yes. And Canada, it was more of a voluntary quarantine. Do you remember that, like, this is within our adult lives? Do you remember this? Yeah. How do you not remember it? I don't know how I kind of didn't. I thought you would say no, I don't, I can't believe my Mrs. 2. It's kind of what I thought you would say.

You could, especially specifically in China, the measures that were taken were really, really aggressive. There were severe punishments. I don't know how many of them were enacted, but that could be if you broke quarantine. And again, as we've talked about, anytime this happens, it is,

if a system, if it is useful to a system to oppress certain populations, certain aspects of the population, this is an opportunity to do so. And without- Because you suddenly have, it's a perfect storm, right? Of like, we, have people we want to oppress, everyone's afraid. Yes. And you have this like opportunity to sort of capitalize on that fear and panic by telling people, making

these restrictions. Right. And I think you could draw a lot of correlation between this and what happened in the United States following the September 11th terrorist attacks. Absolutely. To a lot of civil liberties. And so we already know like if we look to SARS and what the way that China responded to SARS back in 2003 and the thing is like it's been credited, their quick response has been credited with restricting the spread of SARS to some extent, although it didn't

completely, of course, it was. The country was bad. That one's like a 10% mortality rate, right? It's higher, yeah. And so it was worse, but it- And then murder is like 30. Murder was much higher, but it did not seem to spread as well. Yeah.

Maybe because it was like 30. Yeah. Well also, it was harder to get from person to person. I don't think they ever proved- It's so pretty. Yeah, I don't think they ever proved that it was definitively being spread from person to person as much as from animal to person, or if it was, it was, it was much harder. So now with coronavirus and response to that, we've seen a lot of similar actions and

you can read all of these firsthand accounts. A lot of them are anonymous, but a lot of first-hand accounts from people who are currently in China, specifically in the parts of China that have been most effective in the Wuhan region and in Hubei, where the entire first-the-city and then provinces were put under sanitary cordon. I think eventually there's like over, they were saying 50 million, but people were restricted under these, but I think it's way more than that at this point. They actually, they took, they took actions like the, the communist leaders in Wuhan and Hubei were fired and replaced with bosses who were strict, the way that it read in the article, I was reading, said that they were parachuted in. I don't know

if that's literal, perhaps. That would be pretty rad. But they were more military background leaders to basically they have started going door to door to as they put it in their terms, quote unquote, round up people who are suspected of having coronavirus. and to place them in either, they have makeshift hospitals that have been formed throughout the various regions as well as what they're calling like quarantine hotels. Right. So like places to go get medical care if you're sick

and then places to just put you if we're not sure if you're sick. And some of this is voluntary and then if it's not voluntary, then it's in's in voluntary right and the problem to this is obvious as has been reported not I am not this is not groundbreaking coming from me. You can read numerous news reports on this Because right now we're not testing everybody and we're not sure who to test people are getting quarantined Whether or not they actually have it with other

people who may or may not have it. And so there were there are numerous people who have said like I was held and tested with like 10 other people. Three of them had it. They were put somewhere else and then the rest of us were sent elsewhere. But like for a while we were all in one place together for several days. We all occupied the same space. Right. So, when we mix people who do and don't have, we're going to spread it. So, we're going to facilitate spread of the disease this way. The other thing is we're going to facilitate spread of other things.

Like what if nobody has COVID, but somebody has the flu. Right. It is flu season. Right. So. We're creating, by packing people in like that, we're like creating opportunities for any disease. So there's going to be some concern with that. And and a lot of this, like there's no way to there are neighborhood committees within different areas. I mean, this is something that's been around since

Mal in China, where they will like they'll come to your door like within your they're like a liaison between the government and directly your community, your neighborhood, right? And they will, I mean, they'll come to your door, like within your, they're like a liaison between the government and directly your community, your neighborhood. Right. And they will, I mean, they'll come to your door and enforce your testing and enforce your quarantine and enforce family members to, you know, stay apart and all that kind of thing, if necessary. And because this is also scary, you also see in situations like this people run. Sure. They don't. Yeah. They try to escape before they can get quarantined.

Because it's scary. And that's bad too. Yes. Yes. For obvious reasons. And you know, what you're starting to see is that we can, if we are not careful with how we apply quarantine and other public health procedures, we can oppress marginalized people or we can cause harm or we can violate, you know, personal

freedoms to an extent that we are doing more harm than good. And there are lots of examples of this throughout history. I won't go into detail, but there have been cases in 1892. We did this with Typhus in New York with a Jewish immigrant population in 1900. We did this with Chinese immigrants Suspective having the plague in San Francisco as recently as 1986. There were camps set up in Cuba for patients tested positive for HIV and Then in more recent years like we've seen

Casey Hiccox the Nurse who was helping with Ebola in Sierra Leone, returned in 2014 and was put into a tent in a, where was it? In a library or something for several days? Because Chris Christie wanted a corn tiner and even even CDC was like no. And anyway, we've seen this happen. The US has not had a federally mandated corne tine since smallpox in the 60s. So when they first got the US citizens from the diamond princess recently from that cruise ship and they and had them placed in a facility for 14 days after they got home.

That action is huge in terms of like historical significance. That's essentially a lasoretto is what is what they've done. Well, at a certain point, you're it's attainment. I know I get you're detaining people. Yes, against their will. Yes, you know, yes. And and the question is if like, are we going to are taking these draconian actions? Is it going to be effective? Are we going to slow the progression of the infection to the extent that we can stop it and what are we willing to?

Sacrifice in that pursuit and that's the thing is we're not doing this in a vacuum smart people in public health and ethics have sat down in the past and in a giant conference, come up with a set of ethical principles if we're going to apply quarantine or any public health measures. You balance personal freedom

and providing for the safety of the common good. And as long as you are constantly aware of all those ethical principles, there is a way to do this. You just have to be aware of them because you have to make sure that you're limiting personal freedom as little as you possibly have to.

Only what is absolutely necessary that you do not discriminate, that it is not used to oppress you know, certain segments of the population that you follow scientific evidence when you do it of what is actually gonna work, not just what we emotionally feel like might be helpful. That it is that you get compensation for losses incurred. So if you're forced into quarantine and you miss work that we compensate you that we provide you with food and safety and communication with your family on all that. And total transparency, total governmental honesty and open transparency

is fundamental to applying this in an ethical fashion. Okay. So you're saying that this is happening for America at basically the worst point it could have in nearly all of American history. I think that it is very concerning. And this is just I'm trying to be completely objective with the information I'm conveying. I think it is very concerning that Mike Pence has been put in charge of this effort because

the HIV outbreak that occurred in Indiana when he was governor was in large part of result of him not following scientific evidence and instead reacting to like political pressures and emotional reactions to many things, but specifically the needle exchange program that can help to prevent or lesson the rate at which HIV occurs and he did not listen to evidence. So he has a history

of not following one of these principles I just named. And I think that's very concerning. I'm also very concerned that all the messaging from our government is supposed to come from the CDC through Mike Pence or any other medical, scientific organization is supposed to come through, from the CDC through Mike Pence or any other medical, scientific organization is going to go through politics first. Right. Why? Why?

I mean, that's very concerning to me. Isn't that exactly the criticism we've been leveling at China that we don't know if the information we're getting is true because all of it comes through the state-sponsored media and We we are concerned that perhaps it's not honest. Why would we do? Why would we have state-sponsored Media? I know it's not that but I mean it feels that way right? It's what's the difference at a certain point. I mean it's's not, it's not going to be able to talk to anybody else. It, it doesn't.

This isn't the way that, this isn't the way that science works. This isn't the way that, this is not the way that public health ethics dictate this should go. We all need to know the truth. Whatever it is, whether it's scary or not, we need to be constantly being told the truth so that we can be then educated on how best to handle that, prepare for it, and move forward in a safe, rational way, as opposed to just what we've done in medieval times, which is freak out and put troops along every border and open fire on anybody who looks different than us, who tries to come in because none of that will work and will cause a lot of harm.

If this makes you worried about who you should go to for info, I still think- I don't know why it would. The CDC and the World Health Organization are still working to actually try to give situation updates and reports on what is happening regularly and they've been doing this prior to the WHO would not fall under this pen stuff, right? No, it would not No, it's separate and you can I mean this is easily accessible online. I look every single day Maybe multiple times a day would you say you look multiple times? I said I do look multiple times a day Yes, I at the World Health Organization, the CDC websites,

you can find peer-reviewed journal articles from doctors and scientists. If you're not sure, ask your doctor. They, we have access to all this stuff where we can look up and help explain, even if it's not something that's going to directly impact you, I'm always happy to answer questions about it, which probably a lot of us in medicine are getting these days.

Or just somebody, if you have a friend who's skilled at who reads studies and things like that, who knows statistics, who's in any branch of the sciences where they have to read these things a lot, can probably help interpret that data. Where the government is a good place to turn to to it. No. I would not the government.

I'm not too, okay, got it. I'm gonna, a lot of people say don't look at the media at times like this because they'll just scare you. But I would actually make a case that the media is our friend and they're trying not always, but if they're doing their job well, a good journalist is trying to get to the truth and hold the government accountable for what that truth is. The only concern with that is that they're also trying to get you to watch their channel or buy their paper or their website. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no ongoing issue like this. Personally, but that's my own bias. Well, because they're also going to report the things

that will get your attention. And the things that will get your attention aren't necessarily like the hardcore facts that you need. It's not that they're not there. It's not that they're lying. They're just also going to tell you some maybe really wild stuff that'll scare the crap out of you. Right.

And you don't need that. You just need to be informed. I will say that for whatever it's worth to people, because of what we do in Sidney's own personal interests, I would say, we talk a lot about this in this household and follow it really closely, I would say. And for women, it's worth, in terms of coronavirus, and correct me for wrongly, we're not panicked And for one minute it's worth, in terms of coronavirus,

and currently for probably, we're not panicked about the virus itself. Like we're still not panicking, and we read and look at this stuff as much as anybody. Like we're not panicking here. We're concerned about the government aspect of this, which is why we wanted to do this episode. Yes.

Because that sort of overreach has a potential. And the more you know that it's probably not important for you to be panicked about COVID-19, the more you'll be able to respond to and sort of like make sense of what's coming from the government. Yes, yes. Because I do think there are reasonable things

as it has been said now by many people in the scientific community. COVID-19 is probably already here in the US as to what numbers I don't think we know yet, but the more we learn about it and the more that we see that some people get a very mild perhaps even asymptomatic presentation, meaning that they had it and they didn't know. Who knows if where it is or how long it may have been here. And I don't say that to scare you. I say that to, to, to, let's move on to the next phase. I think the idea that we were going to just contain it, well, it looks like that hasn't worked.

So how do we best respond? Well, you've heard a lot of recommendations from the CDC. There's no sense in buying a mask. Save the masks for people who are sick and for healthcare professionals who are taking care of people who are sick. Don't buy the masks. Wash your hands. Don't touch your face. If you're sick, stay home. And vampire coffer, mate, come on. And vampire coffins, these. And if you're concerned, please go see your doctor.

Please go get checked out if you're worried, if you're sick and you're not sure and you're scared. Go talk to your doctor. Those are the reasonable actions that you can take right now. Anything else, I mean, panic will not help us, it will not help others, it will not make us better prepared. Yeah, I would say you're a big duty right now. And I understand that there are absolutely people listening to those who are immunocompromised or are very close to someone who is or, you know, elderly folks and like, absolutely, I understand your concern.

This is not to say that like, you should not be worried about this thing. But when the, it's not the like, you need to counterbalance it against the extraordinary measures that are being taken. Is that fair? Yes. Yes. And I think I can't see the citizens of this country standing for the types of measures that are being taken in China. It's hard for me to envision our citizenry with our kind of like philosophical leanings being. I didn't think.

Okay with it. I didn't think. Okay with it. I didn't think the mass singer was gonna be a hit. Here we are. But I don't know. I don't know, but the important thing is, there is no need to panic. This is, you know, we have dealt with things like this before you deal with the flu every year.

If you have not gotten your flu shot, please go get your flu shot because it's important to control the things you can control in situations like this to reassure yourself that we do have control over some things in the world. And one of them is your flu shot, and you can get that. And in the meantime, look for true sources of information. Don't just blindly follow and don't use this as an excuse to, I don't know, take actions

that further marginalize people or stigmatize people. I don't think the people that are doing that are listening to this show. Don't fall victim to them. Right, I got you know, don't know how to use that. There's been a lot of stories about how this has led to racism against, especially like people from various parts of Asia. It's just that doesn't help. You're not helping. Thank you, by the way.

Eugenia Tugnadi wrote lessons from the history of corn team from plagued influence at a paper article that I used extensively throughout the research for this. So I just wanted to thank her. Yeah, and we'll be I would say staying staying current on not every episode of talk about this is going to be about no this, but I mean obviously as as it becomes necessary, we have done chains of episodes for d demo reasons than a possible pandemic. Yes. That is going to do it for us. Thank you to the taxpayers for these their song medicines as the intro and outro of our program. We certainly appreciate it and thank you to

you for listening. We we're so happy that you're here. Thank you. But that is going to do it for us. So until the next time, my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. I'm Sydney McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy.

And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. I'm Sydney McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. I'm Sydney McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy.

I'm Sydney McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. Alright!