Science Friday - Biden’s COVID Transition Team, Election Drug Policy Reform. Nov 13, 2020, Part 1

Episode Date: November 13, 2020

The New Biden Administration Plans For COVID-19 It’s been less than a week since it became clear that Joe Biden would be the president elect. While President Trump and his allies continue to push unsubstantiated claims of election misdeeds—with no evidence—the Biden transition team is moving into action.  This week, as coronavirus cases spike alarmingly around the country, the president-elect unveiled his own coronavirus task force. The team of experts will help guide the incoming administration’s COVID-19 response, as well as potentially shape the fight against the pandemic once the Biden administration is sworn in in January.  The panel will be co-chaired by three prominent names: David Kessler, the former FDA commissioner; Marcella Nunez-Smith, an associate dean at Yale Medical School focusing on health equity research; and Vivek Murthy, former U.S. surgeon general. The remainder of the panel is made up of experts from across academia, industry, and government roles.   Lev Facher, Washington correspondent for STAT, joins Ira to talk about the makeup of the task force, and how a Biden administration coronavirus response might differ from existing policy.  The Election Shows Americans Are Rethinking The War On Drugs Last week, all eyes were on the presidential election. But across the country, another major referendum was put before many voters.  In every state where drug reform was on the ballot, it passed. Voters in Arizona, Montana, New Jersey, and South Dakota legalized recreational marijuana. And medical marijuana got approved in Mississippi and South Dakota. In Washington D.C., residents voted to decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms. And in Oregon, all drugs, including heroin and cocaine, will now be decriminalized. The state will also legalize the use of psilocybin, the psychedelic drug found in magic mushrooms. With so many states approving pro-drug measures, from the deep blue to the deep red, does this signal a major turning point for how Americans view the war on drugs? Joining Ira to talk about this are Amelia Templeton, health reporter at Oregon Public Broadcasting in Portland and Lee Strubinger, politics and public policy reporter for South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Rapid City.  Everywhere In America, COVID-19 Is Surging It’s been another bad week for COVID-19 in the United States. Every state in the country is seeing increased cases, most at rates indicating completely unchecked community spread. Hospitalizations are at their highest rate ever: more than 60,000 people were in the hospital with coronavirus infections on Tuesday. And following the now-expected pattern, deaths are also rising, with more than 1,000 being recorded every day and that number, too, steadily increasing. Experts are predicting that an additional 20,000-25,000 people could die in the next two weeks alone, and 160,000 new deaths by February 1, 2021. MIT Technology Review’s Amy Nordrum briefs Ira on the latest alarming pandemic numbers, what President-Elect Biden said he wants to do about the climate crisis, and, on a lighter note, some stories you might have missed—like how Alphabet is unrolling optical internet in Kenya, and the amazing discovery of advanced water filtration in the ancient Mayan city of Tikal.     Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Later in the hour, a look at changes in drug policy legislation across the country and what the presidential transition means for COVID-19 response. But first, November has been a month so far, right? A presidential election with days of waiting for results. A Biden administration working to transition, even as Republicans have refused to concede. And I'm sorry to say, worsening news about the pandemic. COVID-19 is increasing in every state of the Union, and this week, hospitalizations reached a record unseen any time previously in this pandemic. And as of yesterday, 67,000 people were in the hospital. Hospital systems overwhelmed are on the brink. We also have record deaths each day, to put that in perspective.

There are more American deaths now, topping that of Vietnam and Korea. wars combined. For more about COVID and other science news of the week, Amy Nordrim, an editor for MIT Technology Review, joins us. Happy Friday the 13th, Amy. Thank you. We're good to be here. Okay, let's get right into some of these questions.

We pretty much have to start with COVID-19. The numbers are grim, even New York, which was so hearted in the spring, is putting back some restrictions this week as percentages rise. Okay, get into how bad. is it getting? Well, the pandemic is worse than it's ever been here in the United States. Yesterday set a new record for both daily new cases and hospitalizations. And it's higher now than it was in either of the previous peaks that we saw earlier this year in April and July. Yesterday, we had more than 152,000 new cases of COVID reported in the United States. And at this point, we've had more than

100,000 new cases a day for more than a week. And unfortunately, we'll see how today goes, but that number has just continued to tick up and up. Now, this peak that we're in now is expected to last longer, and it's also complicated by the fact that it's now occurring during flu season and also potentially during the holidays when many people are accustomed to traveling and getting together with family and friends. So the actions of individuals really matter here in the next few weeks to see whether we can turn this around and to get those case counts. down. And people are wondering how to do that at the moment because basically nothing is successfully slowing it down, is it? Yeah, there's a new round of orders being issued this week, stay-at-home

advisories issued by Chicago's mayor and by Wisconsin's governor. So a lot of the things that we've been doing, it's important to keep continuing to do, wearing masks and staying home as much as possible and, you know, keeping your distance from others when you do go out. But unfortunately, these numbers we're facing this week are really grim. And there is some beacon of hope, right? President-elect Joe Biden has already named the task force for tackling the pandemic. We've gotten some good news on the vaccine front, too. Yes, that's right. Pfizer this week did release promising preliminary data for its vaccine.

And that was encouraging not just for Pfizer, but also for companies like Moderna that are making a similar kind of vaccine, what's called a gene vaccine. This type hasn't ever been approved before for use in humans. So the fact that this early data is looking good is really exciting. But, you know, it is still preliminary. It needs to be checked out by other experts. And it'll still be months before any vaccine is widely available to the public. And we're going to talk more about Biden's 18 task force later in the hour and get some great detail on that.

Speaking of President-elect Biden, after a long tense week last week, he is the President-elect, which has other implications for science policy in the country, right? Especially the climate crisis. Yeah, that's right. It's been less than a week since his election was projected, confirmed. And he's already released his administration with Vice President-elect Harris has already released a transition plan that spells out a number of movements that they plan to make on climate change, including a plan to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 nationwide.

It's a really ambitious goal. He's promised federal investment of $1.7 trillion over the next 10 years into clean energy and environmental justice efforts. And he said he'll recommit to the Paris Agreement, which the U.S. formally withdrew from last week. So this is a big change from the Trump administration. And there's a lot that environmentalists and scientists are looking forward to about this. You know, I mean, I'm really glad you're here because I'm struggling to find time to talk about other

science news about, well, anything but the coronavirus or the election week. And let's talk about some science marches on in the world stories, including an exciting new rollout of something called Internet Over the Air in Kenya. Can you tell us more about that? Yeah, Alphabet gave a really interesting update this week about its efforts to deliver a high-speed broadband internet service over the air. This is not a technology that they invented, but it is interesting to see a big tech company invest in this and really take it to the point of actually implementing it in the real world across a real commercial network. So they've partnered with a teleco provider in Kenya to roll out this technology, and it basically delivers broadband internet by beaming light through the air rather than through

the fiber optic cables that we're typically accustomed to. And this approach, if it works and can be deployed widely, that would reduce infrastructure costs of creating a new wireless network, bringing the internet to new places, and it would make it easier to reconfigure. networks on the fly and change them as demand changes on the ground. Okay. Now, of course, every technology has some downside to it. Are there any negatives about this? Yeah, I mean, since it's a beam of light, there's some serious limitations to what it can do. So it can't go around corners. It can't go through walls or buildings like a Wi-Fi signal can. You have to have what's called line of sight. So it has to have a clear shot from one place to another. The transmitter and the receiver have to be,

you know, unobstructed, basically have a clear point. path through the air. So that's a limitation because you can imagine a number of places where that might not work out. And things like rain or fog have been shown previously in other research to sometimes interfere with these kinds of networks. So there will be some limitations that Alphabet and its partners will need to work around if they want to deploy this technology. But it could work well in some situations where it's just, you know, you can imagine a community on a mountainside or across the river. It's just expensive and difficult to dig that up and lay fiber there. to small villages or homes.

So I think this could make a difference. And it won't replace fiber optics, but it could complement the technology and be a new option for a lot of people. Yeah, I want to talk about a different technology story. And this one was really interesting. A thousand-year-old water purification system that was very advanced.

Tell me about that one. Yes, this is so interesting. There's an ancient Mayan community called Takal. It was a city that lasted more than, in a thousand years. It's what is now located in what is now northern Guatemala. And a researcher at the University of Cincinnati, Kenneth Tankersley, found that this community had a really advanced water filtration system. And it's the oldest system of its kind to be found in the Western Hemisphere. So we knew this kind of filtration was happening in Europe and in Asia, but now we

know also that it was happening here. And the Mayans were very technologically advanced in that regard. So they, mines have a rainy season and a dry season to contend with, and they built these large reservoirs to store water for the dry season. And what, what these researchers found was that one of them was a lot cleaner than the others. And when they examined sediment from that reservoir, they found that the materials there are called zealite that are known to filter out microbes and heavy metals from water. And the zealite didn't naturally occur in that location. So they knew that it was deliberately brought there to serve as a water filtration mechanism. So they trucked it in from other, what, volcanic areas to throw it into the water and kill the microbes?

Yeah, they would collect it from an area where they may have noticed that the water tastes a little bit better. It is a mineral compound found in volcanic ash, and so they would have needed to carry it, transport it to their water filtration system. And the structure of zeolite, it's crystals composed of silicon and aluminum, and that structure is very useful in that it allows the mineral to capture microbes and heavy metals and hold them in place. And so it was a pretty effective water filtration method. And in fact, it's still used today in some commercial bottling. And we can synthesize this material now instead of just taking it from volcanic ash. So a really, really neat use of technology very early on that we're still using today. You know, it's just another instance where we don't give the Mayans enough credit for how advanced they did some of these things.

Let's move on to another story about birds. They're migrating south right now, and we should maybe take a look at their plumage when we see them, right? Cool story. Yes. Yeah, so billions of birds are migrating south for the winter, and a lot of them undergo a mold before or after they fly. So when they mold, they lose their feathers. they replace them with new feathers, and a lot of them molt again when they're ready to return or shortly after they return.

And researchers at Michigan Technological University and Occidental College reported recently that their study showed the further birds plan to fly, the more feathers they replace in these mults. And that's an interesting relationship because some scientists had thought before that the mold was related to breeding. So, you know, they molt to have more colorful feathers. that might help them attract a mate. But this research shows that, you know, that might also be kind of a secondary effect. But the primary driver, the reason that these birds are molting and that it coincides with their

migration is because they're trying to renew their feathers and replace them with better feathers because, you know, molting actually helps them do that. And flying for such far distances takes some wear and tear on the feathers that they do have. And lastly, we have one electronic nose story that can help you, identify spoiled meat? Tell us, please. Yeah, there's a research team in Singapore. They built kind of a clever, they called electronic nose.

It's basically a sensor system. And it involves placing a barcode or a piece of paper that inside of a packaging of meat or fish sold at a deli. And by looking at that barcode, the barcode's made of sugar and dyes, and they change color in response to gases. given off by the meat as it decays. And so if you point your smartphone at that barcode, their system uses an app powered by AI

to recognize the colors on the barcode. And that would, in theory, allow a shopper to tell which cut of meat is the freshest and whether the meat that they're looking at is fresh or not. So there's been a lot of these kinds of electronic noses built before, but this is a particularly clever system. And, you know, who knows, one day it could make it out of the lab could help shoppers choose the best meats from the deli.

I'm picturing a meat tricorder, like from Star Trek, you know, you'll wave it over the meat and tells you something about it. Interesting story and great palate cleansing news from you today. Thanks so much, Ira. Thank you. Amy Nordrum editor for the MIT Technology Review. We're going to take a break, and when we come back, we're going to talk about some election-related news.

You may have missed last week. Drug Reform. is having a big moment at the polls. It may surprise you. Stay with us. We'll be right back after this short break. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato. And now it's time to check in on the state of science. This is KERNO. St. Louis Public Radio News. Iowa Public Radio News. Local science stories of national significance. All eyes last week were of course on the presidential election. but across the country, something else big was happening. In every state where drug reform was on the ballot, it passed.

Voters in Arizona, Montana, New Jersey, and South Dakota legalized recreational marijuana. Medical marijuana got the OK in Mississippi and again, South Dakota. In Washington, D.C., residents voted to decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms. And in Oregon, all drugs, including, heroin and cocaine will now be decriminalized. The state will also legalize the use of silozybin. That's the psychedelic drug found in magic mushrooms. So, does this signal a major turning point for how Americans view the war on drugs?

Joining me today to talk about this are my guests. Amelia Templeton, health reporter at Oregon Public Broadcasting in Portland, and Lee Strubinger, politics and public policy reporter for South Dakota Public Broadcasting. Broadcasting in Rapid City. Welcome both of you to Science Friday. Thank you. Yeah, good to be here. Nice to have you both. Lee, was it surprising to you that South Dakota passed both medical and recreational marijuana? Well, it depends on who you ask. I mean, those backing the measure saw something in the state electorate that those in the political arena did not. I remember speaking with a national marijuana group. the day was announced the constitutional cannabis reform question would appear on the 2020 ballot. It was Matthew Schweik with the Marijuana Policy Project, and he said that they don't get involved in a

campaign unless they're sure they can win. And that being said, South Dakota is a very cautious state when it comes to reforms like this. Oftentimes, it's the last in the country to do something. So, you know, up until this summer, we were one of three states, even without an industrial hemp program. Idaho and Mississippi being the other two. And we spent two legislative sessions and a whole summer in between that debating the issue of industrial hemp. You know, lawmakers say that kind of caution has served the state well in the past. So I think a lot of the political establishment here was surprised that this went through. Was it sort of the attitude of the public about sort of don't

tell me how to, you know, vote or don't tell me what I can smoke or I can't smoke? You know, the petition process in South Dakota is something that is very fascinating here. We were one of the first states in the country to allow its citizens to petition the government with ballot questions. And every so often, these kind of ballot questions will come up and the voters will speak and it will generally sometimes turn out the way that lawmakers don't anticipate. Yeah. Amelia, you're in Oregon. Now, that state has a real tradition of being quite liberal, doesn't it? Yes, Oregon was very early to allow cannabis for medical use. We were one of the earlier states to pass a legal recreational marijuana program. And even outside of those issues,

one of the only states in the nation to allow physician aid and dying, you know, death with dignity. So certainly a state that has a bit of a libertarian streak when it comes to health and and drug use as well. So I think that may have been one reason why national organizations thought Oregon was a good test case to look at for all drug decriminalization. So not quite surprising then for the outcome. No, I don't want to suggest it was a foregone conclusion. There was a vigorous debate in Oregon. We had the Drug Policy Alliance, which is a national organization based in New York that's been a major proponent of medical marijuana that came spent more than $5 million qualifying this measure for the ballot in Oregon and then, you know, pouring money into the Yes

campaign. Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's foundation also made a large contribution. And then on the opposition side, you know, really small local opposition, not really any national engagement against the measure in Oregon. And about a hundred hundred thousand dollars compared to the five million on the yes side. So you could either look at it as a state where this is something there's a lot of broad interest in, broad public support for, or, you know, alternatively you can look at it as a sort of well-oiled political campaign that produced the outcome that the proponents were looking for. Amelia, let's talk about what it is like. Walk me through this decriminalization measure. What does it entail? What actually happens? Well, currently in Oregon,

in simple possession of a small amount of a substance like cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, a person, if it was their first offense, could wind up with a misdemeanor charge. Probation, potentially, or in rare cases, maybe a jail sentence. Under the new system established by Measure 110, possession of small amounts of those kinds of drugs goes from being a criminal matter to being a civil matter. So people would be facing a civil violation similar to a traffic ticket. They could either pay a $100 fine to resolve that or opt to get a health screening,

screening for substance abuse disorder. No possibility of jail time, really no sort of coercion involved in this. That would be true whether or not a person was stopped the first time with one of these substances or the second time or a third time. And I do want to just draw a distinction. A lot of people, you know, in many states, there are diversion programs. There are things like drug courts, treatment courts, where a person is given the option to participate in a treatment program. And when they have successfully completed that treatment program, they can either have their record cleared or avoid a jail sentence. You know, this is very different from that. This is essentially 100% happening, you know,

within the civil justice system, not the criminal one, and a person doesn't have to pursue treatment, they merely have to pay $100 or go through a screening process and whether or not they ultimately pursue treatment is up to them. Is there some sort of limit to what you can carry or use? And after that, you sort of go outside the bounds of niceness and you get to be looked at as maybe a dealer or a seller or something illegal? Yeah, absolutely. So this is really intended to cover personal possession and user amounts of drugs. It varies by the drug. So I believe it's 40 pills of oxycodone, a couple grams of things like heroin or cocaine. And beyond that, a person is looking at a misdemeanor charge if they have a larger quantity of drugs or even in some cases potentially

a felony charge if there's other evidence of a commercial drug offense. So a person who is arrested with stolen property and a large quantity of drugs or with a weapon, those types of things, they could still see felony charges in Oregon and manufacturing distribution. Those remain crimes. Can you give me a timeline on this? This doesn't just happen tomorrow, does it? Implementation is set to begin in February of next year. However, the state, legislature, I think, is likely to want to look at what the citizens have approved and make their own adjustments or changes. There's a number of questions around the funding for this measure. It uses marijuana tax revenue to fund the health assessments and potentially greater access to

treatment. That marijuana revenue has already been dedicated to other county and city programs. So they're going to need to do some shifting of money in order to backfill some of the cuts in the programs that were expecting marijuana tax revenue. And then we've already seen a lobbying effort to look for changes to this measure. So one example, there isn't any special language in the measure about juveniles who are found possessing small amounts of drugs. Some people would like to see a separate system for juveniles. So I think there'll be a conversation at the legislature. And one of the big questions I think will be, are they going to stick to the timeline, the pretty aggressive timeline that the citizens have approved, or will the legislature try to push that back?

Lee, same question to you in South Dakota. What could the timeline look like for setting up medical and recreational marijuana? Sure. So it won't be legal to use recreational marijuana for adults 21 and older or for medical marijuana until July 1st of 2021. That's when ballot measure questions go into effect unless they're otherwise stated in the ballot question. And that gives the state legislature at least one session to sort of smooth out any conflict within state law. And the state also has a deadline of April of 2022 to draft rules and regulations for marijuana sales. I'm getting the impression from listening to you talk about this, that it seems like the legislators were not as enthusiastic as the public was about this. Yeah, there was various groups that were against this measure.

Interestingly enough, the state voters approved this recreational marijuana ballot question, and Republicans in the state legislature actually picked up more seats. A lot of Republican lawmakers came out against this when it looked like it was going to be on the ballot and spoke out against it here and there. Like Amelia said earlier, there was an organized campaign against this by various groups that came together, like the Chambers of Commerce in two of our major metro cities, if you will, Sioux Falls and Rapid City, and then the State Chamber of Commerce, they all said that they opposed it. Our governor, Christy Noem opposed it, various law enforcement agencies, but the pro question was very well-funded

there towards the end. When you say very well-funded, does that mean there were advocacy groups supporting it and good support from the public? There was one national, group in particular new approach out of Washington, D.C. towards the final stretch of the campaign, they pumped in nearly a million dollars after a independent poll sort of came out that the race was going to be very close. There was a poll that came out about a week before the election that said Amendment A, which was this ballot question, had 51 percent of support from the South Dakota voters. And so they kind of backed up that campaign towards the final stretch there. But, you know, You know, 54% of South Dakota voters ended up approving this measure.

That means a lot of the states Republicans voted in favor of it. Brendan Johnson is the president of South Dakotans for better marijuana laws, and he summed up the support like this. We're a conservative state. We have a libertarian streak, and I think that you actually see Democrats and Republicans coming together, maybe sometimes for different reasons, but both sides are agreeing that the prohibition on marijuana simply has not worked. Johnson is a former U.S. attorney for the state of South Dakota. He was there

during the Obama administration. He says for Democrats and liberals, it's a social justice and criminal justice reform issue. And for Republicans and conservatives, he says they feel like the state is spending way too much money on jails and law enforcement on something that Johnson says should be a personal decision. Amelia, same thing for you. Who was in support of across the board decriminalization in Oregon and who was against it? It had the support of a number of medical professional organizations, the Oregon Nurses Association, which is the big nurses union. A couple of different physicians groups came out and endorsed it.

And they essentially said, we believe that the science says addiction is a medical condition, a medical disorder, and that the focus should be on treatment, not on punishment. We also saw a wide range of groups that do sort of racial justice work. A lot of people who do harm reduction work, who provide services like needle exchanges or health care to homeless populations, to people with drug use addiction disorders, endorse the measure. And then there were interesting endorsements from a couple of progressive district attorneys, actually.

So the district attorney that represents Multnomah County, where Portland is located, endorsed it, as well as a district attorney from central Oregon. Most of the district attorneys in the state, though, I should say, were squarely against it. And on the opposition side, there were also some interesting groups that do work with people in recovery and that provide treatment. So the largest sort of coalition of treatment providers in Oregon actually opposed the measure. And they said, look, our state ranks extremely poorly for the number of treatment beds that we have compared to the number of people with addictions who need treatment, and that to do this kind of big experiment in a state that doesn't have a really well-built, robust treatment system is just

too risky. And, you know, the comparison they made was essentially when we deinstitutionalized people with mental illness, closed a bunch of really grim state hospitals, but, you know, didn't provide the community support that we said we were going to provide for people. I think they're afraid of something that looks like that all over again. I'm Ira Plato, and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. So how will this impact people who are currently in jail in Oregon for drug possession who might now have not been arrested in the first place? Amelia?

That's a great question. I think the short answer is we don't know yet. That is one issue that the supporters of the measure said, if the state legislature gets involved in what this looks like in implementation, that's something that they would like to see addressed. But it's not the focus of the measure. It's not really explicitly called out. So I think that's something I'll be keeping my eye on in the future. Lee, South Dakota. Yeah, similarly, we don't know yet. The constitutional amendment didn't really address what would happen with people who are currently in jail or prison. You know, the state

legislature could do expungement or pardons. But without action, it seems like it will kind of remain the same for those people. You know, South Dakota, as you've highlighted for us, is quite a red state. Do you think that the state legalizing weed is a turning point for marijuana in the rest of the country, Lee? I mean, certainly the national organizations that back this campaign see it as a turning point, you know, of the four states that did legalize recreational marijuana on election night. South Dakota certainly has a case for being the most conservative. I don't think this vote will go unnoticed on a national scale. But the case that groups like the marijuana policy project will make in the future will be something like, hey, look, marijuana reform is a bipartisan

issue. And they hope that this vote really provides evidence and to take that to Congress for further action. And Amelia, Oregon is now the first state in the nation to decriminalize drugs across the board. Do you feel like all eyes are on Oregon to see how this goes? Yes, absolutely. I think, you know, people here understand that we are a test case and the people who've fought really hard for this measure and see it as a potential, you know, life-saving new approach are going to really push for as many treatment dollars as they can get and everything they can do to make it a success. I think that, you know, opponents are going to be looking to see if some of the unintended consequences they've predicted, you know, things like an increase in

property crimes or like falling numbers of people getting into treatment happen. So, you know, it's certainly what one source called a grand experiment, and we will have to wait and see how it plays out. Well, that's about all the time we have for today. This was really interesting. I would like to thank both of you, Amelia Templeton Health Reporter at Oregon Public Broadcasting in Portland, Lee Stubinger, Politics and Public Policy Reporter for South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Rapid City. Thank you both for taking time to be with us today. You're welcome. Thanks for having me. We're going to take a break, and when we come back, the presidential transition in terms of COVID response, we'll be right back after their short break. Hey there, folks. It goes without saying this.

has been a challenging year, no? And if there's one thing we know for sure, it's that the need for fact-based journalism and the need for science are stronger than ever. At a time when science is continually called into question, Science Friday remains committed to filtering out the noise and discussing the evidence supporting the science that you need to make informed decisions. You know that demand for science Friday this year was high. higher than ever, but you may not know that your donations are what's keeping us running. And right now, Science Friday has a dollar-for-dollar donation match, which means that any donations will be doubled. So, if you have a few dollars to spare and agree that this world could use

more science, please support Science Friday with a donation. Any amount makes a difference. Go to ScienceFriday.com slash give. that's ScienceFriday.com slash give. Thank you and stay safe. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. It's been less than a week since it became clear that Joe Biden is the president-elect. And while President Trump and his allies continue to push with no evidence, unsubstantiated claims of election misdeeds, the Biden transition team is moving into action. For example, this week with coronavirus numbers continuing to spike alarmingly around the country, the President-elect unveiled his own coronavirus task force, a team of experts to help guide the incoming administration's COVID response.

Joining me now to talk about the task force, and what, if anything, it can do to stem the overwhelming COVID numbers is Dr. Celine Gounder. She is assistant professor at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and a newly named member of the Biden Coronavirus Task Force. Welcome to Science Friday, Dr. Gounder. It's great to be here, Ira. You know, the months ahead look really bad. Numbers like 400,000 deaths are being talked about by January. What do you see the task force's role in the coming months? The task force is really going to be focused on issues like testing and contact tracing. How do we scale up new therapeutics like the monoclonal antibodies? and how do we get a vaccine distributed to the public once it has been approved for use by the FDA? We're also very focused on health disparities.

We know that the coronavirus has had a disproportionate impact on communities of color, for instance. And so we're going to be very focused on making sure that those disparities are addressed. There is a much deeper bench of doctors, scientists, public health experts that comprise the transition team who've been working on policy and plans for months now. And so some of our role as the advisory board is to lay a second set of eyes on these plans, to be sort of the big thinkers, big idea generators, and to raise questions about the implementation of these plans. But there are many people who have been working on how do we implement the nuts and bolts of this in the coming months. So the plan is to be ready on day one to jump right in on this. Do you have any indication that anybody

until day one from the White House transition team might soften up and give you any help on this? Well, I certainly hope so. I am optimistic that there will be an understanding that this is the right thing to do in service of the nation and to protect both the nation's health and economy. Do you think that we will need more than one vaccine, one type of vaccine, because the one that we talked about this week needs to be kept at 100 degrees below zero? I mean, how can you transport that and give it out to the rest of America if it really needs that kind of condition to survive? Well, it certainly will make distribution much more complicated. The average general practitioner, family doctor does not have that kind of deep freeze capacity. You're really looking at, commercial pharmacy and hospital kinds of facilities that would be able to do that. But I do think it's important to remember that the Pfizer vaccine is not the only promising vaccine in the pipeline. It might be the one that's coming out first with a FDA emergency use

authorization. But there are a number of others in the pipeline, some that do not require deep freezing, some that are only a single dose as opposed to two doses. So I think what you're going to see is the distribution of a number of different vaccines. And these will be targeted to different populations, to different geographies, based on what makes sense in terms of the characteristics of the vaccine and also the supply chain. So you're hopeful about all of this progressing. I am cautiously optimistic. And I think what I'm most optimistic about is that science and not politics is really going to lead the way here.

I can't remember the last time I ever heard a president-elect and a vice president-elect mentioned the word science in their speeches. You know, it's funny. I had some friends reach out and, you know, they were congratulating me on the role. And they said that they had tears in their eyes, not just that, you know, it was me, but rather that scientists and doctors and public health experts were going to be leading the charge. These are friends of mine who are also, you know, healthcare providers who've been working in the trenches, who have felt completely disempowered and neglected for months.

and have really been terrified by what they're seeing ahead in terms of new infections. And I can't tell you how relieved they were to hear that people were really going to be pushing for a scientific approach to this. What a concept, science. Thank you, Dr. Gounder. My pleasure. Dr. Celine Gounder is an assistant professor at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and a newly named member of the Biden Coronavirus Task Force.

Thank you again for taking time to be with us today. Good to be here. Joining me now to talk more about the task force and the government's COVID policy during the presidential transition is Lev Fasher, Washington correspondent for Statt. Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks so much for having me. Let's talk about some of the members of the task force named by the Biden team this week. Who are they? Is there any common theme here? I think the common theme, I've heard the term a lot this week, the A team.

I think people are really, really pleased at the caliber of scientists and public health officials from academia, from past administrations, from local governments, from the federal government. There are some expected choices and some surprises. So, for instance, a few of Biden's longtime COVID advisors, folks who've been counseling him about pandemic issues throughout the campaign are the co-chairs. So Vivek Murthy, he's the former Surgeon General from the Obama. administration. He's one of them. Marcella Nunes Smith is a physician and researcher at Yale. She is one of the co-chairs as well. And I think that's really telling her focus is health equity,

health disparities, which of course, sadly have been very prevalent in COVID-19 data. And David Kessler, who's a former FDA commissioner. So, you know, I think people are just in general impressed at the caliber of advice that Biden's going to be getting. Of course, the question is, how soon can these people start to affect change? And there are about 10 weeks until Biden takes office. So they might be waiting a while to put some of these plans into place. You know, I think what a lot of people may be noticing is a large absence of one name in particular. And I'm sure you know who I'm talking about. And that's Anthony Fauci. Why is he not on that team? The short answer is that, there's one government at a time. Anthony Fauci works for the federal government. He technically

works for Donald Trump. So there's a decorum that has to be observed. Fauci, you know, can only serve one president at a time. Assuming Trump doesn't actually attempt to fire Tony Fauci between now and inauguration day, I think it's fair to expect that he'll maintain his very prominent role in this pandemic response. But it's not a surprise to me that he's not on the Biden task force, just because practically he can't be yet. Is this panel going to be hobbled at all by the unwillingness of the Trump transition team to work with the incoming president? I think in some ways yes and in some ways no.

Of course, these people aren't in government yet. They're advising a president-elect who is preparing to take office. So as of today, the most potent tool they have at their disposal is, I think, messaging. and just stressing to people the importance of mask use and social distancing. I think that aspect of the transition won't be hobbled at all. I expect Vivek Murthy. I expect Dr. Nunes Smith. I expect David Kessler, all these folks to have the opportunity to speak publicly.

Atul Gawande is another name, Zika Manuel, Julie Marita, the former Chicago Public Health Commissioner. These are all people very experienced in public speaking, in, in messaging on these health issues. On the other hand, are there issues more at the practical level in terms of how the Department of Health and Human Services is run, CDC, FDA that are hobbled by the Trump administration's unwillingness to hand over the keys? Yeah, probably, but it's still early. And I would just remind people that a lot of the people at those agencies, in fact, the majority of people are not political appointees, their career civil servants who are they going to take

instructions from the Biden Task Force before inauguration day? No, I don't think so at all. But there are some cues to be picked up on, for instance, Biden is not going to withdraw from the World Health Organization. He's made that very clear. So I think government scientists who have partnerships now with WHO researchers, they know that they don't have to be in the process of winding down their work, even if no one says that explicitly. It's just been made very clear. So there are things they can do, things they can't, but I think they have a lot of opportunity to effect change prior to January 20th. You know, and that's a very important point because we have, what, three months to go until a change of administration. And with COVID just out of control,

the public is going to look for some reliable science-based information to work through during these months. Absolutely. And I've spoken to Dr. Murthy a few times during the campaign. And transparency and straightforward communication have been really big themes for him. So, you know, telling Americans when they can expect a vaccine to be available, what therapeutics are available if someone does get sick, what the data is in terms of who's most likely to become severely ill or need oxygen or a trip to the hospital. And I think that's really key because there's been so much top-down messaging in the Trump era. President Trump will tweet about how a vaccine is coming soon. He'll say so in an address. And he wants it to be a reassuring message. Of course, in many ways it is to hear that a vaccine is

coming soon. But we've also seen confidence in the safety of whichever COVID vaccine is first approved really plummet and the number of Americans who want that vaccine once it's available really take a nose dive, I think because of some of that, you know, overaggressive messaging from people like Donald Trump who are not science communicators. So this is something they've really stressed. And yeah, it's going to be a scary 10 weeks or so. The numbers are really awful. And there's a lot of fear, frankly, that Biden is just going to inherit an impossible situation. I want to play a clip from Michael Osterholm from the University of Minnesota. He was on this program last week before being named to the task force talking about what he saw as a key priority. You know, what we need right now,

more than anything in the world, I think, is not just more science. We need an FDR-like moment. We need someone that can tell a story about where we're at, where we're going, why we're going there, how we're going to get there, how we'll make things different and believe in it. And I think that by itself could be a dramatic improvement on what's happening right now. That is my hope. We need a story and we need it very, very quickly. Is there anyone who can't tell that kind of story? I think it's really an open question whether anyone on this task force and maybe whether anyone at all can convince the entire country to buy into COVID mitigation, which means, of course, masks and distancing and not gathering indoors in large groups and maybe restricting your own travel.

Because, of course, Joe Biden is going to be able to convince his own voters, to a degree, at least, to do those things. I think the question, though, is can Joe Biden convince people who didn't vote for him to buy into a FDR-type moment approach? And as qualified as all the people on this task force are, I don't know that any of them are able to do that. I don't know if anyone at all can just because, you know, we've seen incredibly qualified researchers and public health officials and government officials just kind of have their message rejected when it comes to COVID. You know, of course, Joe Biden is a Democratic president. He's going to enact policies aligned with the Democratic Party. But, you know, the virus doesn't care about politics. And he's going to need both halves of the country to buy in. And I'm going to be really curious to see how this task force approaches that problem because

as qualified as these folks are, I don't know that any of them are authoritative enough in communities that have been resistant to COVID mitigation strategies to get those folks to reconsider how they approach the next few months. I'm Ira Flato, and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. In case you're just joining us, I'm talking with Lev Fasher, Washington correspondent for Stacked about the presidential transition and what it means for COVID response. The incoming Biden team also announced two health advisors who will be involved in the COVID response, but they're not on the task force. Can you tell us something about them?

Right. I think that's fascinating, actually, because there are now basically three groups. There's Biden's COVID task force. There's a separate group with a tiny bit of overlap, but really not much that is advising his transition for the Department of Health and Human Services, which is the parent agency of the CDC and the FDA. And then there are two outside advisors who you're referring to, Beth Cameron. She worked for a White House Biodefense Council that actually has been really controversial throughout the pandemic because the Trump administration wound it down essentially, and people have criticized them for saying there was this global health Council that, you know, it existed to warn us and help keep us prepared for pandemics exactly

like the one we're currently experiencing. So that's a notable pick. There's also Rebecca Katz, who's a Georgetown professor, well known in health security issues in D.C. circles. I'm curious to see what their involvement turns into because, you know, there are three groups, like I mentioned. So I'm not sure what the distinction is going to be between their role in the task force itself. Now, Washington loves setting up task forces. I'm wondering how much impact do they really have or are they just sounding boards for whatever policy and administration wants to implement. I've seen lots and lots of task forces do stuff and then they put it on on the shelf somewhere. I think even if they just serve as sounding boards, they could have a huge impact. Of course, an instant question is how many of these people are actually going to serve in the Biden administration, whether any of them are going to play for. formal government roles in the response. So I think in a way there's an expectation that this is kind of prep a way to hit the ground running for people who will play roles in the administration's

response. I think Vivek Murthy is certainly someone people expect to actually end up working for Biden after inauguration day. So yeah, there's a lot of hatching plans. There's a lot of making personnel decisions about who's going to run the various agencies, decisions about how a message to the public just about basic safety practices through the pandemic. I think this could be a really influential group, even if the impacts aren't overt, not kind of direct policy issuances or government action. I think they're going to be making a really, really a lot of key decisions about how the Biden administration takes over the pandemic response on day one. And we have to say goodbye. We have run out of time. Thank you, Lev, for taking time to be with us today.

Great to talk to you, Ira. Thank you. Lev Fasher, Washington correspondent for stat. Charles Berkwis is our director. Our producers are Alexa Lim, Christy Taylor, Katie Feather, and Kathleen Davis. B.J. Leidman composed our theme music. And of course, if you missed any part of the show or you'd like to hear it again, subscribe to our podcasts. Or you can ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. Oh, well, this week on our Science Friday Voxpop app, planning a segment about fake meat. That's what I said, fake meat. What questions do you have about fake meat products? Ask them, please, on the Science Friday Voxpomp app or wherever you get your apps. Have a great weekend. I'm my reflato.