Science Friday - Inaccurate COVID Case Numbers, Spending A Trillion Dollars To Solve Problems. April 15, 2022, Part 1

Episode Date: April 15, 2022

FDA Approves First Breathalyzer COVID Test The FDA approved a new COVID breathalyzer test, which gives results in just three minutes. It’s the first test that identifies chemical compounds of coronavirus in breath. The testing unit is about the size of a piece of carry-on luggage and is intended to be used in medical offices and mobile testing sites. Nsikan Akpan, health and science editor at WNYC Radio based in New York City, talks with Ira about this new COVID test and other science news of the week, including new research on ocean warming and storm frequency, the story behind moon dust that sold for $500,000, and President Biden’s decision to allow higher-ethanol gasoline sales this summer, which is usually banned from June to September.   Major Undercount In COVID Cases Makes Our Tracking Data Less Useful For many, it’s become routine to pull up a chart of COVID-19 case counts by state or county. Though imperfect, it’s been a pretty good way to assess risk levels: Follow the data. But recently, that data has become even more imperfect, and less useful at determining individual risk. Thanks to a variety of factors, case counts are now so inaccurate that a COVID surge could be missed entirely. “We are really flying blind,” said epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina, assistant professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health and the author of the newsletter, Your Local Epidemiologist. Currently, for every 100 COVID-19 cases in the United States, only seven are being officially recorded, according to projections from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. As a point of comparison, during the Delta wave 43 out of 100 cases were recorded, and during the Omicron wave the figure was 26 out of 100 cases. The reasons behind the current undercount are due in part to the unintended consequences of good public health policies, like increased vaccinations and the availability of at-home tests, both of which lead to fewer cases being included in official CDC data. Mild cases are more common now, thanks to vaccines and changing variants. “People may just not get tested because they just have the sniffles,” said Jetelina.  Others may forgo testing altogether. The virus can spread asymptomatically from there. “We just haven’t done the groundwork as a nation to systematically capture these cases,” said Jetelina. Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.   How Would You Spend A Trillion Dollars? Imagining what you might do if you won the lottery or received a huge inheritance from a long-lost relative is a classic daydream. But in a new book, journalist Rowan Hooper imagines spending a trillion dollars—not on fancy dinners, sparkly jewels or mega yachts, but on tackling ten global challenges. While a trillion dollars can’t solve every problem, he estimates it would go a long way towards tackling disease, combating global warming, protecting biodiversity, or even establishing a moon base. Hooper joins Ira to talk about his book, How to Save the World for Just a Trillion Dollars: The Ten Biggest Problems We Can Actually Fix, and to daydream about where and how an infusion of cash might do the most to accelerate solutions to some of the planet’s problems.     Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. 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, why are COVID case counts becoming less accurate? And what's the best way to think about your individual risk in the absence of good data? Plus, how to save the world with just a trillion dollars? We'll be digging into some possibilities with hefty price tags. But first, the FDA has approved a new COVID test this week, a breathalyzer that gives results in just three minutes. Joining me now to talk about that and other science news of the week is my guest, Sikanakpan, Health and Science Editor at WNYC Radio based in New York City.

Welcome back. Hi. How are you? Tell us about this test. Yeah, it's called InspectIR COVID-19 breathalizer. And the FDA says, you know, in testing, it's shown like 91% sensitivity and 99.3% specificity. So that would actually put it in the realm of PCR testing in terms of its accuracy and precision. It can only be administered by a trained health professional.

And it sounds like the company is still sort of building out its capacity to actually like make these instruments and get them into clinical spaces. But, you know, the advantage of it is it can do a test in about three minutes, which would be really fast. and obviously you don't have to have something jammed up your nose coming close to swapping parts of your brain. Yeah, and you could put it some other place where you need to have to have quick results and get it to work. Yeah, exactly. And we're seeing real issues with, you know, testing right now in terms of demand. And so, you know, maybe this could attract people back to testing sites. That's a good point. Let's move on to some more COVID news, news of some new subvariance. What's the latest?

Yeah, so Omicron sub-variants are becoming a bit of an alphabet soup. You know, I think a quick recap, Omicron is itself a variant of concern of the original coronavirus like Alpha and Delta that came before it. But as Omicron is mutated over time, as all viruses do, it's been yielding these new sub-variants that spread faster and faster than what's considered the original Omicron. So, you know, the world started off getting pounded by B, 11-529 and BA1. And then, you know, BA2 showed up essentially kind of around the same time, but for whatever reason it kind of sat in the background. Around the start of the year, BA2 started

to get a foothold in places like Denmark and the United Kingdom and other places causing surges within already ongoing surges. You know, there's data from Denmark showing cases going up and then down and then up again. Right. And that's because BA2 spreads about 30 to 50 percent faster than Omicron. Now this week, the World Health Organization is warning of new spinoffs called BA4 and BA5 because those versions are accounting for a growing share of cases in South Africa and Botswana, even though overall cases remain low. The White House is telling folks to remain calm because so far BA4 and BA5 appear to be similar to BA2, but personally, I'm mostly annoyed that the virus is clearly fine-tuning itself. Yeah, I think we're all

annoyed about that. Absolutely. Let's hit some energy news. This week, President Biden announced that he'll allow E-15 gasoline to be sold temporarily this summer. Give us a little refresher what the E-15 means and the gasoline and why is it usually banned in the summer? Yeah, you know, so that number E-15, it refers to how much ethanol is blended into gasoline. So about 98% of U.S. gas stations typically offer E-10, so it's 10% ethanol and 90% gasoline. E-15 ups the blend to 15% ethanol. You know, it makes it more dilute so you can spread your gasoline a little bit further. Ethanol, it's made from corn, hence why President Biden made the announcement in Iowa, so it'll really push demand for corn and also for corn-based biofuels.

You know, and during the announcement, the White House pegged these biofuels as a way to reduce carbon emissions. But, you know, that particular claim about biofuels has really come into question in recent years. Yeah, and the whole idea is supposedly why you don't want E15 in the summer is that the added ethanol makes more smog, right? Yeah, exactly. There have also been studies looking at just how much carbon is made during the entire production of ethanol. So Tim Dechant at the head of this great article in Ars Technica in February that they resurfaced this week about a study that was trying to measure that, the carbon contribution of just making ethanol for biofuels. And essentially what it comes down to is, you know, due to the use of fertilizer to make the corn and also the land use, harvesting the corn, all of those things. If they themselves are not powered by renewable energy, then you can actually have the production of,

biofuels lead to in a net increase in the amount of carbon that gets released into the atmosphere. So net net, you're not really saving any. Your carbon footprint's getting bigger, actually, instead. Exactly. Exactly. You know, and if the energy that supports the production of biofuels could be sourced from renewable places, then, you know, biofuels could be this great thing that we could add into the, mix for our energy needs, but it's a struggle.

Right. Speaking of energy and warming climate, there's a new study that tracked how the warming climate is affecting the Atlantic hurricane season from 1982 to 2020 that appears to change our ideas about the number of hurricanes on our warming planet. Tell us about those findings. The story really stuck out to me, and it's by Bob Berwyn over at Inside Climate News, because many studies looking at the connection between hurricanes and climate change kind of focus on the intensity, right? The idea that, oh, these storms might have more rain or stronger winds over time or that, oh, the storms appear to be halting or stalling whenever they get close to the coast. Bob spotted a study published this week in weather and climate dynamics that looks at whether or not we're seeing more hurricanes every single hurricane season. So, you know, I think past couple of years, we've kind of run out of names,

you know, alphabetical names for these storms, and we've had to switch to letter systems in order to Greek letters instead of the names. Yeah, exactly. And so what this study is saying is like, oh, no, those types of seasons where we're running out of names, where we're just having so many storms over and over and over again, those appear to becoming more frequent over time. So it kind of gets at this question of the frequency of hurricanes due to climate change, which is like, has been very hard to answer. And that's interesting because the common wisdom for the last few years has been, oh yeah, we're not getting more hurricanes. They're just getting more intense. And this seems to say we are getting more hurricanes. Yeah, exactly. And, you know,

This is just one model. And of course, we'll have to see if other scientists can replicate this research, if they can build similar models that take in the variables that they were looking at and find something similar. But it does sort of point us in the direction of saying, hey, we're getting more storms, which can be really bad, especially for island nations where these storms are more likely to hit. Right. Let's head in the opposite direction from the oceans up into the ocean.

space. This next story is a bit of a wild ride. Let me go to the end of the ride. It ends with a pinch of moon dust collected by Neil Armstrong on the moon, selling for half a million dollars. Give me the backstory on that. Yeah, this is a great piece from Maya Wei Haas at National Geographic, and I would describe it as perfect for like a Netflix crime caper series. So, essentially, And essentially, Neil Armstrong, he, you know, he collected this dust from the moon. And he was putting into bags and he brought it back down to Earth. I guess at some point, NASA loaned one of those bags to a museum in Kansas. And it turned out that, I guess, the museum director had a bit of a side hustle where they would sell off certain artifacts from the museum.

So essentially what happened is that this bag got sold. and then the person who bought it was like, oh, I want to see if this is authentic, right? So they sent it to NASA and NASA was like, yeah, this is our bag. How did you get it? NASA wouldn't give it back. The person sued. The person won. They got the bag back.

But then it turned out NASA had kept some of the dust from the bag. And it just raises all types of really interesting questions about property rights when it comes to stuff that comes from space. Yeah, who has a right to anything from the moon, right? Exactly. You know, we have international space law treaties that kind of regulate activities

in space, you know, sort of like how many satellites we can put up, you know, military activities. But it's a really interesting question, right? Like, who owns the moon? Is it the first person that gets to the moon? Does Neil Armstrong own the moon? Or if dust comes

back from the moon or if it comes back from Mars, do we all own it? You know, because space kind of, the universe is kind of for everybody. Exactly. Exactly. It's sort of one small spec for man, one giant conundrum for mankind. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, it also raises all types of conundrums. Like, what would you do with moon dust, right? Do you just, do you just like leave it on a plate in like a glass case? Do you eat it to try to absorb? the powers of the moon? No, that's a, that's a joke. Let me, let me get to a quick final, final question. Let's continue our journey into space. In the coming months, both SpaceX and NASA are launching two big rockets. Yeah, you know, this summer is going to be really great for rockets or people who

love rockets. And Jonathan O'Callaghan at Scientific American has a great deep dive into SpaceX's Starship rocket and NASA's space launch system. or SLS. Both are slated to launch, have official launches this summer, and both are kind of designed to be able to carry really heavy loads. You know, so for instance, if we want to put the James Webb Space Telescope into orbit now, it has to be kind of folded up. It has to be in a, you know, sort of sent up in a way that it can be the final assembly or the final unfolding can happen in space. These rockets would allow us to just send up really big things into space all at once. And so they would be really useful or they'd be very useful for, you know, potentially like deep space missions, say, you know, going to the moon, going to Mars.

We'll look forward to a summer of rocketry. Thank you, CECON. Yeah, thanks for having me. Sikon Akpan, Health and Science Editor at WNYC Radio based in New York. We have to take a quick break. And when we come back, how accurate are the current COVID-19 case counts? We'll talk about why trends and not the numbers themselves are better guideposts. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. At some point during this pandemic, you've probably pulled up one of those charts, you know, showing how many COVID cases were in your area. Maybe you even looked at something called the seven-day rolling average. Though imperfect, it's been a pretty good way to assess COVID risk levels. Follow the data. But now, Our case counts are inaccurate enough that they may actually be missing a surge.

And on top of that, the CDC changed its risk-level calculations in February. So why now two years into the pandemic is our data so spotty? And what should you do to calculate risk? Joining me now to help us better understand what's going on. And how you can still understand COVID risk, despite it all, is my guest, Katelyn Jettelina, Assistant Professor at the UT Health School. of Public Health based in Dallas, Texas, and author of the newsletter, your local epidemiologist. Welcome to Science Friday.

Hi, thanks for having me. Let's start off. Why are our COVID infection rates not as accurate as they could be or they once were? I mean, one of the reasons could be, as Dr. Fauci pointed out, is that we are all self-testing more than we used to and not reporting the results. Could that be right? That's right. You know, we saw during the Omicron, wave that the use of antigen tests more than tripled compared to the delta wave. And while this is fantastic news, it's a tool that's been chronically underutilized. We just haven't done the groundwork as a nation to systematically capture these cases. I do know that some local jurisdictions

have implemented systems for communities to report at-home antigen results, but uptake has been less than optimal. Okay, so what are some of the other reasons these rates are not being reported or they're not as accurate? We also just have less testing period. Last month, around March 22nd, providers were just no longer able to submit claims for tests for uninsured patients. So, in other words, we removed testing incentives. Unfortunately, this means that testing disparities will soon follow. Just like we saw in the beginning of the pandemic, the poorest neighborhoods will have even more depressed case numbers than high neighborhoods. The other reason is asymptomatic cases with vaccines, with infection-induced immunity, there's just going to be

more mild cases than ever. And because of this, there will just be more, one, asymptomatic spread. Two, people may just not get tested because they just have the sniffles. Or, three, they just find no concern of being infected so it won't test. Do we know how big of a gap there is then between the true infection rates and what's being reported in the figures? We have a rough sense, I will say. You know, in the UK, they've started hinting that official reported cases can't be trusted. One researcher looked at comparing the official case records in the UK to survey prevalence, and they found a dramatic decoupling starting in January 2022 because of removing freely available options for testing. In the United States, I will say that estimates are even more

rough because we just don't have such a strong public health surveillance system as the UK. But the latest numbers that I have seen are from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation over in Seattle. You know, in the past day or two, they estimate that for every 100 cases in the United States, only six or seven are being officially recorded in our surveillance system. The gap between reported cases and quote-unquote true cases has dramatically widened over time.

During the Delta wave, there was an estimated 43% of cases reported. During Omercron, about 26% of cases recorded. And like I said right now, we have about 7% of cases reported, which is abysmally low. We are really flying blind. So we could be in already a COVID wave and just not know it because we don't have the data. That's true. I mean, what we can look at is trends. So our trends will still be pretty accurate.

So, for example, in the Northeast, we know that trends are exponentially increasing for cases. The thing that this changes is that instead of, for example, I don't know, 1,000 new cases per day, it's about 14 times higher than that. And so really, it's the level of transmission in our community is much higher than our official statistics are reporting. Now, we typically do follow Europe, right? A few weeks later, and they've recently had a surge. That's exactly right. So the United States throughout the pandemic has almost mirrored exactly what happens in Europe. And the only exception and really interestingly is during the Alpha wave, which was at the same time period, you know, in April of last year, that the UK was hit really hard with Alpha variant and only a few

states like Michigan was hit hard in the United States. So we're not sure what's going to happen with the BA2. The United States may get hit hard in the coming weeks that we may not. It's just, we're kind of at the mercy of time right now. And when you say the mercy of time, would it also be the mercy of the weather and the season because it's getting warmer and people are outside more? That's right. So there's a few things that may be going to our advantage in the states is one is the weather. You're right. It is getting warmer. People are outside. And coronaviruses typically thrive in the winter. The other thing that is a little more nuanced and not really reported is that our first Omicron wave in the United States was actually driven by

sub-variant B-A-1.1, which is different than what was hit in the first Omicron wave in Europe, which was B-A.1. And so this slight difference, B-A-1.1, is a little more. transmissible than the original Amercron. And because of that, we may just not have as much more wood to burn in the United States as Europe did with BA2. Sounds like software technology, numerology has moved over to epidemiology. Yeah, it's a little difficult to follow. And like I said, the nuance is small, but it may make a big impact when we're talking about population. level statistics. Well, let's talk about this in perfect data. Where are we seeing COVID cases rising? If you say follow the trends, what are the trends? Well, I will say in the past two months,

we've been consistently nosediving in cases. But currently, the U.S. is actually showing a modest 10% increase at a national level. And relative to Delta and Omicron waves, we're at really low recorded case numbers, which will help soften the impact if BA2 is found a threat here in the states. On a regional level, the northeast is showing the most case acceleration. Rhode Island is the leader with about 100% increase in cases, followed by Maryland, D.C., New Jersey, New York. There's also interestingly some other random states that I'm paying attention to, including like Mississippi and Oregon. These obviously aren't. in the Northeast. And the reason I'm interested in it, because they may be the initial seeds

that will spark those regional hotspots. You know, one of the reasons we hear about why the case numbers are important is that some experts argue it's that because of hospitalization, right? Hospitalization numbers are more important as they are what put a strain on the health care system and not the milder cases. That's true. There's been a lot. of focus on hospitalizations and just using that metric to determine, you know, individual level behavior. In fact, that's why the CDC changed its whole transmission map a few months ago was so we can focus on just not straining the hospital systems. I do think that this has a major limitation, though, and because people are still trying to and rightfully so

avoid infections and or break transmission chains for the vulnerable. And if we don't have valid data, robust case data, and just rely on hospitalizations, it really won't truly reflect the risk and transmission in that community for people to inform their behavior. Good point, because there still are lots of people who are not immunized. And I'm thinking of the youngest people in our population. That's right, the youngest. I mean, I have two kids under five, and we still don't have vaccines for them. The other reason is we have long COVID. We know that vaccines reduce the chance of long COVID, but they're not also perfect. And long COVID isn't something that the average Joe wants either. And so paying attention to transmission levels is still very important right now. Yeah, and I think there are some people who are feeling self-conscious now about wearing a mask in public.

because so few people are. And I was on mass transit the other day where there is still a rule about wearing your mask. And I would say that at least half the people were not wearing a mask. Yeah, I mean, yeah, there is. There's this kind of herd mentality that influences behavior like wearing masks. I will say I hope that with time we can normalize the use of masks. This is done over in Asia all the time. You know, if someone has a cold or the flu, they wear a mask out of respect.

And so I think we really need to try and move that direction. Unfortunately, masks were incredibly politicized here in the States. And so people also see them as signals and messages, not just for health, which I think is disappointing. Yeah, yeah. With the holidays coming up this weekend, as an epidemiologist, will you be watching, let's say, five, ten days after the holiday season to see if there's been a spike? I always think it's interesting to see the impact of the holidays. The challenge is that it's close to impossible to weed out the differences between the impact of behavior, like the holidays with the impact of the viral dynamics of just BATU catching ground. I would assume the interaction of both of those would really springboard us into more transmission and more exponential growth.

But again, it may not. We kind of just have to see where this virus takes us. One of the ways of seeing where the virus takes us and tracking COVID-19 rates is analyzing wastewater. Is that a good stopgap measure in lieu of good testing data? Yeah, so wastewater detection is very useful in predicting and indicating early waves. It's thankfully implemented in quite a few cities, but unfortunately not all of them. So it's not a reliable metric for all areas. The other problem is with wastewater is it's meant to be used in addition to and not a substitute for clinical testing data. And the reason for that is because there's really no consensus on a direct comparison between

wastewater concentration or RNA concentration and clinical case numbers. They're really only used, wastewater is really only used to indicate trends. And so wastewater can, again, contribute to our holistic views of a virus is spread across a community, but not necessarily a threshold in which you should wear a mask or not wear a mask. Speaking of wearing a mask or not wearing a mask and people trying to assess their risk, the incompleteness of the data makes it hard for individuals to do that, right? Let's listen to what Dr. Fauci said in a recent interview with ABCs this week. What's going to happen is that we're going to see that each individual is going to have to make their

calculation of the amount of risk that they want to take. in going to indoor dinners and going to functions. You're on your own, basically, is what he's saying. Yeah, unfortunately, this has been a theme in the United States throughout the pandemic, is this individual level response. And I was quite surprised when Fauci said that, honestly, because he's taken a very population-level approach to the pandemic until now. And it makes it almost impossible, nearly impossible,

for individuals to navigate because this landscape does continue to shift. There aren't reliable data for them to rely on. And it's really difficult for individuals to navigate this risk because this landscape does continue to shift. Our case numbers are crumbling and there's really no other metric people can use to determine their behaviors or to even navigate this impossible landscape. And so while I guess I kind of understand the individualistic approach, you know, infectious diseases violate the assumption of independence. And we are in this together and we really need

population level strategies to continue and that guidance to continue because we are still in a pandemic. Just a reminder, this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. I'm sure Dr. Fauci would say that even though you're on your own, there are still things you can do, like still wear your masks and doors, avoid getting in closed situations, good ventilation, right? I mean, there are still those many layered things that one can do. That's true. There's lots of layers that people can do. And you mentioned some great ones, using antigen tests to break transmission chains, wear masks, advocate for better ventilation, infiltration in workplaces and in schools. I think the challenge that people have, though, is when should you wear a mask and when can you take it off?

This pandemic is a marathon. It's not a sprint. And so we desperately need some sort of guidance on a population level on what individuals should and should not do. So then what should a person do? I mean, what's the best advice you can give us? Yeah. So like we said in this, you know, raw case counts aren't necessarily accurate. So I would suggest, and I would urge people not to use static numbers or case thresholds like 50 cases per 100,000 to determine behavior. Instead, I would use trends, wastewater trends if you have them in your area, test positivity rate trends, or even case trends. And if these trends are increasing in your county, and if they're increasing fast, it's time to dial up your COVID-19 layers.

So you wear a mask or you leverage, be sure to leverage antigen testing to break transmission chains before seeing the vulnerable. Dr. Jettelina, is this something that we're just going to have to live with and continually adjust our expectations because this virus is not going anywhere real soon? That's right. You know, this virus is not going anywhere real soon. Unfortunately, I do think that this landscape will be. continue to change because we know the virus will continue to change. Hopefully it will get easier

and easier with time because we will have, you know, more people boosted, we'll have a lot more antiviral treatment. But we never know what the virus is going to throw to us next. And so we need to be proactive and really pay attention to how things are changing on the ground. Thank you very much for taking time to talk with us today. Yeah, thanks for having me again. Dr. Cately and Gentilina, assistant professor at the UT Health School of Public Health, based in Dallas, and author of the newsletter, Your Local Epidemiologist. After the break, how would you spend a trillion dollars? A new book tries to run up the tab for science.

Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. If you're a regular listener to the program, you have heard me ask researchers the question I call the blank check question. Imagine I gave you unlimited resources, a blank check to spend on your research. How would you use it? More people, better technology, some costly ingredient or supply? Okay, so let's narrow it down just a bit. What if the price tag wasn't unlimited? Just really high. And what if the result needed to be making the world a better place?

That's the question asked by Rowan Hooper. He's a journalist with new scientist and host of their podcast. An author of How to Save the World for Just a Trillion Dollars, the 10 biggest problems we can actually fix recently out in paperback from the experiment. You can read an excerpt from the book on our website, ScienceFriday.com slash trillion dollars. Rowan, welcome to Science Friday. Hi, Ira. Great to be here. Nice to have you. Let's begin with some context here.

Numbers, this big, start to lose their meaning, right? Yeah. How much is a trillion dollars? So it's a thousand billion dollars. So if you think about it as the richest people in the world, you know, it's either Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk and they've got about, what, 220 billion. So it's a fair deal more than them. And it's about the same as some of the biggest companies like Apple and Amazon. But in terms of the amount of money that's out there, if you look at just private equity firms, the amount of money they have before they invest it, they call it dry powder. In 2020, at the start,

of 2020, they had $1.45 trillion of dry powder, cash just sitting around. It's 1% of world GDP is another way of looking at it. Okay. So we have a little bit of reference here. Now, I think if you ask people what they would do with a trillion dollars, a lot of them would say, first off, cure all human disease. And that's one of your options. Yeah. Is that really possible even with a trillion bucks? Well, I mean, if you ask Mark Zuckerberg, he says, it is because his stated aim. So him and Priscilla Chan, his wife, started the Chan Zuckerberg initiative, and their stated aim is to cure all disease and to extend human life to age 100, on average, by the end of the century. They say they're going to put in all their fortune of

around $60 billion by the time they die into this project. So they think it's doable. I don't think it's doable on a trillion dollars because there's just so much that needs to be done. And most of all is basic healthcare globally would cost a lot of money. But you could do a huge amount of good tackling various diseases. Of course, you could with a trillion dollars. Yeah, you certainly could. You focus on all sorts of options in your book. And one is to settle off the planet, to set up a colony on the moon. That could cost us under a trillion bucks? Kind of cheap. Yeah. It's actually surprisingly cheap. I mean, I say cheap, you know, but To get to Mars, it would take all the trillion, I think.

But to settle on the moon, you could do it in under a trillion dollars, yeah. And the good thing is there's a lot of projects already going to the moon that you could piggyback on. You could augment and speed it up. There's a lot of research going on already. But yeah, to go to the moon, go to the South Pole, build a base there, start mining water, put up some solar panels. You could do that relatively cheaply, you know, with, say, a few hundreds of billions of dollars. And you don't want to just stop at the moon. No.

Because you have another option, and that is to cure cosmic loneliness. Are we really cosmically lonely? By that, I mean, you know, finding life outside of our planet. Yeah, I think we are lonely. Ever since we've kind of evolved, we've been looking up to the stars and wondering if anything else is out there. So the question of, are we alone in the universe? Or even in the solar system, you know, is it. massive question. And literally, if you could throw some money at it, throw more money on it than

we do now, you might be able to answer that question. Now, I have to caveat that by saying that you might only find that we're not alone because there's a bacteria living on Enceladus or on Europa, you know, out in the solar system. But still, I think an alien bacterial life form found in this solar system would be a truly sensational discovery. And there's something that you could do. I mean, NASA have got projects going out to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and they only cost in the order of tens of billions of dollars each. So I think you could speed that up, or you could augment that, and really start looking for life forms out in the solar system. Wow. You're not talking about intelligent life, even if you just found some bacteria or something like that.

Yeah, I think that would be awesome enough, yeah. Let's focus on clean energy for a moment. I recently did work to winterize my home, I added some solar panels, and it was not cheap. How far can a trillion dollars take you there? Well, globally, it won't get us to carbon zero. It won't get us to a carbon neutral state at all. That is going to cost around $100 trillion in investment by 2050 to get us globally to zero carbon emissions. But what it could do is, you know, the ball is already rolling towards carbon neutral energy,

towards renewable energy. And what we need to do is push it faster, get it rolling faster. So I think putting lots more money into what we're already doing in terms of wind power and solar especially, but also nuclear, would help just speed up that process of the transition to a carbon neutral economy, to a carbon neutral state. I want to explore that a bit more because you have all kinds of ways to spend the money. But in your conclusion, in the end, you narrow down the projects to the most important areas that you think should be

recipients of the money. And the first one is half a trillion to spend on transitioning the world to renewable energy. How could we do that? Well, what I would do is give a lot of money, a few hundred billion, to countries like India and China especially, and basically stop them developing more fossil fuels by giving the money that says, use this to develop renewable energy and don't use coal, keep the coal in the ground, because at the moment there's still too much coal-fired power stations being used, being built even in those countries. And so we really need to shut that down. And so I think I would, as you said, use half a trillion dollars on projects like that

to speed the transition to renewable energy around the world. And then you say half a trillion to massive biodiversity renewal and carbon drawdown. Yeah. Talk about that. Yeah. I really like this idea because you effectively get twice the bang for your buck. Because if you invest in areas of rich biodiversity or areas that are vital for biodiversity, there also tend to be areas that are vital for carbon storage areas. So you protect those. You end up drawing down more carbon or protecting carbon sources and preserving areas vital for biodiversity.

So interestingly, this is a very important. what Jeff Bezos's Earth Fund is doing on a smaller scale than a trillion dollars, but still they're doing it on a very effective scale by purchasing land that is both vital for carbon stores and for biodiversity. So you get double your money. And that's what I'd like to see on a much bigger scale. Yeah. So my question is, how do you get people to commit this kind of money? Are you targeting governments? You've mentioned a couple of philanthropists and billionaires. Are you targeting them? We're at a low. hanging fruit, I guess I'm asking for on this. Well, I think the lowest hanging fruit is unpaid tax

in the United States, which the Treasury estimates at $7 trillion by the end of the decade. So by 2030, there's $7 trillion in unpaid tax in the U.S. So how about cracking down on that unpaid tax a bit, freeing up a few few trillion dollars? Probably the second lowest would be quantitative easing, you know, just get some, I say it, I say I just get some governments to print some more money. But they do that a lot. They've been doing it a lot recently with the pandemic. That would be another way. Or some sort of universal treaty like we had with the ozone layer. If you could get a treaty, get countries signed up into an earth fund. You could perhaps start with trying to save the Amazon or the Arctic and you could raise the money like that. But the book isn't so much about

raising the money. It's about how to spend it. I think I'm better at spending it. So we're not thinking a big go-fund me campaign here. Although, who knows, maybe people would want to chip in for something. Yeah, you know, I think it's... Yeah, it might be worth doing. A few people have suggested that. Yeah. Yeah. All right, let's talk about where to spend the money because you have some other ideas. Do you have one of your favorite ideas besides what you think where we should spend it, one that you would like to spend it on, just maybe for fun? You know, one of the fun ones I'd like to do is I call it the Terran Alliance, which is effectively a space agency for the world. I would give a few tens of billions of dollars to some of the smaller space agencies, especially the African Space Agency and some of the ones in smaller countries other than the US and China and make a Terran alliance that would elevate other countries up into space so that it's not just dominated by the US and China.

and I think that would be actually now I'd say it sounds a bit like Star Trek doesn't it like the federation but it makes it more equitable and when we do get to the moon and start building on it if you have an alliance a true alliance of peoples then I think it would be better for humanity it would work better and it would be just a beacon of hope it's like we've had with the international space station you know been working there different nations working together for years up there, but do that again on the moon on a bigger scale. When you decided on the 10 problems, did you have to sit down and think about, gee, what problems can we actually fix?

Yeah, I did. I mean, one of the criteria I used to select them was that they were actually fixable problems, right? There was lots of other cool things I'd like to do, like create an interstellar starship, but that's not something we can do anytime soon. So they have to be problems that we can fix, and they have to be ones that we can do right now, effectively, but that money is the thing that's been holding us back. So there are things that we could not do, even if I gave you my blank check question. There's just some things out of reach.

Sure, yeah, absolutely. They're technologically out of reach. You know, you couldn't build a solar shield around the planet to deflect sunlight away because it just is technologically not possible. You couldn't build a particle collider that's within the orbit of Mars that would allow us to really, like, throw particles, collide particles together with such velocity that you'd be able to really probe the structure of reality, much more than we can do with the large Hadron Collider. So there are things that people think about that are still very, very far off. Well, speaking of that being very far off, you have an option you call Discover. new reality, and that is, let me read from the book, to break or fill the gaps in the standard model of particle physics, to understand the missing 95% of reality. So it's just a matter of having

enough money to do that. Well, it is, although that's funny that chapter, because big physics problems don't actually cost that much. I struggled to spend it on experiments that are doable now would only cost in the order of billions or tens of billions of dollars, which doesn't really add up to, I couldn't spend the whole trillion in that chapter. This is Science Friday from WNIC Studios. Talking with Rowan Hooper, author of How to Save the World for just a trillion dollars, the ten biggest problems we can actually fix. Is it a question of money or is it a question of new ideas?

And can money spur these new ideas? ideas about what the universe is made of. Yeah, I mean, it's a really good point. People are wondering now if science is slowing down, right, that the ideas haven't been coming. I do think, though, I have to be an optimist about it, that if you throw money at it, if you make some really big new experiments, that you'll start to see little cracks in the standard model, you'll find places where something looks funny, and then you can go and theorize about what's happening, and then you'll get new ideas, and the thing will start rolling on. So, I do think that money has been holding us back. It's certainly been slowing us down. If you look at the James Webb Space Telescope, it's only just launched. It's what, 10 years late. It's going to be incredible when that's up. But if we had our blank check, you know, we could have got a whole load of projects up and running. We could go to the far side of the moon, right, and put a space observatory, a science observatory on the far side of the moon. I think that would be something really worth doing because then you get this pristine view into the galaxy.

into the universe that we simply can't do on Earth. We could do loads of observations of dark energy, dark matter, and I think that might start to move us to a new understanding. An idea you have is called Second Genesis to develop a machine with human-level intelligence. A machine we would agree is as conscious as you and me. Yeah. Is that the singularity we're talking about here?

Yeah, that is actually what. the singularity is, isn't it? It's a machine with human level intelligence. The reason I've written that chapter is that there's billions of dollars being invested around the world in the race for artificial general intelligence. And again, it's being dominated by China and the US in particular. And I think that the consequences of a single power or corporation getting there are so so incredible that ideally I would love to spread out the benefits of that wider across the world or just so that we don't end up with one corporation or one entity, one state, really dominating the rest of us with if they do get to this breakthrough kind of AI or a breakthrough kind of

quantum computer as well. What was your original goal with this book and how did it actually wind up? You know, the original goal. was a daydream. It was like, oh, what would I do if I had all this money? And then I just started thinking, you know, there is a lot of money out there. Let's see what you could do with it. And the goal is not to show how we can get the money, but I'm only a journalist. I don't know how to get the money, right?

But it's to offer solutions. It's to show that there's so much pessimism and doom out there, right? especially around the climate change and the biodiversity crises. I want to show that we can solve a lot of this. And what's holding us back, actually, is just investing wisely. So I just wanted to show that there are solutions out there and we can do this. And yes, the problems are massive, but we can tackle them bit by bit, and we can get there and we can solve this problem.

Rowan, we can all use a little bit of optimism these days. Yeah. Thank you for taking time to be. be with us today and good luck with your book. Thank you, Ira, and let's hope it brings me in a few more hundreds of millions of dollars. Absolutely. Rowan Hooper, journalist with new scientists and host of their podcast and author of How to Save the World for just a trillion dollars. The 10 biggest problems we can actually fix recently out in paperback from the experiment.

And you can read an excerpt from the book on our website, ScienceFriday.com slash trillion dollars. And that's about all the time we have for this hour. Here's Kathleen Davis with some of the folks who helped make this show possible. Thanks, Ira. Melissa Mayors is our office manager. Beth Rami is our controller. And I'm Kathleen Davis, radio producer. Thanks for listening.

Thanks, Kathleen. BJ Leatherman composed our theme music. And of course, if you missed any part of the program or you would like to hear it again, subscribe to our podcasts or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. Oh, and on the SciFri Vox Pop app this week, we're looking ahead to Earth Day. What are you or your community doing to take action? Something big or something small. Tell us on the Science Friday Voxpop app wherever you get your apps.

And if you're celebrating, happy Passover and Easter to you. Have a great weekend. I'm Ira Flato.