The Daily Signal - A Doctor's Answers to All Your Questions About COVID-19

Episode Date: March 18, 2020

Today we’re interviewing Kevin Pham, a doctor and a contributor to The Daily Signal, about COVID-19. How real is this threat? How is it like and unlike seasonal flu and the swine flu? When do you need to call a doctor if you have symptoms? How soon can we expect a vaccine, and how likely is it that our hospitals run out of beds and ventilators? Is there any hope for better treatments? Dr. Pham answers all these questions and more.  We also cover these stories: President Trump says he won't stop referring to the Chinese origins of the coronavirus. The Trump administration announces financial assistance for Americans. More states shut down businesses. The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, Apple Podcasts, Pippa, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At Desjardin, we speak business. We speak equipment modernization. We're fluent in data digitization and expansion into foreign markets. And we can talk all day about streamlining manufacturing processes. Because at Desjardin business, we speak the same language you do. Business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us. And contact Desjardin today.

We'd love to talk, business. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, March 18th. I'm Rachel Dildjudis. And I'm Kate Trinco. Today, we're interviewing Kevin Pham, a doctor and a contributor to the Daily Signal, about COVID-19. How real is this threat? How is it like and unlike seasonal flu and the swine flu?

When do you need to call a doctor if you have symptoms? How soon can we expect a vaccine and how likely is it that our hospitals run out of beds and ventilators? Dr. Pham. answers all these questions and more. Don't forget, if you're enjoying this podcast, please do be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Now on to our top news. President Donald Trump spoke to the nation Tuesday, touting new telehealth initiatives and progress on testing. Here's what he had to say via C-SPAN.

Progress being made. And I appreciate it. you're all joining us. Last night, the FDA announced groundbreaking new policies to further increase testing, very substantially so. All states can now authorize tests developed and used

within their borders in addition to the FDA. So the states are very much involved. They have been involved from the beginning, but we're stepping it up as much as we can, and the testing procedures are going well. And within a short period of time,

the private labs will kick in. This has never been done before, and it's going to be something very, I think it's going to be incredible if it's done properly. And these are great companies. These are among the greatest companies in the world, actually. So the state's going to be dealing through themselves and with local government, local physicians, local everybody. They're also dealing with us. But we have a tremendous testing capacity. Today, we're also announcing a dramatic expansion of our Medicare telehealth services. Medicare patients can now visit any doctor by phone or video conference at no additional cost, including with commonly used services like FaceTime and Skype. A historic breakthrough. This has not been done before either.

The president also took a question about whether it was inappropriate for him to refer to the Chinese origins of COVID-19. China and others have criticized you for using the phrase, Chinese virus. How do you feel about that? Do you go to continue using that phrase? Well, China was putting out information, which was false, that our military gave this to them. That was false. And rather than having an argument, I said, I have to call it where it came from. It did come from China. So I think it's a very accurate term. But no, I didn't appreciate the fact that China was saying that our military gave it to them. Our military did not give it to anybody. Critics say using our phrase creates a stigma.

No, I don't think so. No, I think saying that our military gave it to them creates a stigma. President Donald Trump and his administration is also looking at cutting checks to Americans to help mitigate the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Here's what Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told media at the White House on Tuesday via ABC News. You say a stimulus package for American workers, do you mean direct payments to Americans? Are you talking about a payroll tax holiday? Although the president likes the idea of the payroll tax holiday, I will tell you what we've heard for many people,

and the president has said we can consider this. The payroll tax holiday would get people money over the next six to eight months. We're looking at sending checks to Americans immediately. And what we've heard from hardworking Americans, many companies have now shut down, whether it's bars or restaurants. Americans need cash now, and the president wants to get cash now. And I mean now in the next two weeks. I will be previewing that with the Republicans.

There's some numbers out there. They may be a little bit bigger than what's in the press. Go ahead, please. How long could the coronavirus crisis last? Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York said he thought the peak in New York could be in 45 days and predicted that the state could need as many as 55,000 to 110,000 hospital beds. That's according to the Hill. New York currently has the most cases out of the 50 states with just under 1,400 cases of COVID-19.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced Tuesday that all bars and restaurants in this state will be closed at 5 p.m. on Tuesday for the next 30 days. Restaurants must operate at 50% capacity. Seating must be staggered and that all employees be screened, according to Fox News 13. Additionally, Governor Kim Reynolds of Iowa announced sweeping closures across her state, including saying that from noon until March 31st, all bars and restaurants will be closed to the public. Next up, we'll talk to Dr. Kevin Fam about what you need to know about the coronavirus. Do you have an opinion that you'd like to share? Leave us a voicemail at 202-608-6205 or email us at letters atdailysignal.com. Yours could be featured on the Daily Signal podcast. Joining us today is Kevin Pham, a medical doctor, and a contributor to the Daily Signal.

He's also a former graduate fellow in health policy at the Heritage Foundation. Kevin, thanks for coming on. Pleased to be here. Okay, so before we get into the coronavirus discussion, tell us, why did you decide to become a doctor? It was kind of funny. In undergrad, I was actually deciding between becoming a biology major and becoming a humanities major. there's quite a gulf there yeah they seem pretty juxtaposed to each other but then um and the truth is medicine is medicine is based in science like we treat people based on science but in the end we're actually

treating people you know there's a there's a very human aspect to uh to clinical practice you can't really can't really relate to a person unless you understand the person and i felt like um i just felt like medicine was the best intersection between humanities and science that was available and um I think it's been a, it's a really noble profession for that. Okay. So how serious is the coronavirus threat? It is certainly serious. It's probably one of the more serious things that I've been alive for.

I was still an undergrad when the H1N1 pandemic hit. And I was in California for that, too, where it first hit in America. H1N1 was very serious. but the thing is it was less lethal based on the current available data that we have for COVID-19. H1N1 was less lethal than COVID-19 and less transmissible. What we've seen with COVID-19 is that it's a reproduction rate, which is how fast that it can infect another person, seems to be between two and four based on available data.

Most of this comes from China, so it's pretty good. good data. There's a lot of data coming out of China right now. It's two to four for COVID-19, but H1N1, which was a serious threat, that one was between one and two. So as you can see, just from the transmissibility, it was anywhere between two to four times as much as H1N1. So it is certainly a serious threat, and we should certainly be taking it quite seriously. So you mentioned in a recent op-ed you did for the Daily Signal that COVID-19 is not just another flu. Can you explain why the coronavirus is different from the flu? Because, of course, you know, tens of thousands, if not more, people do die from the flu every year.

It is contagious. But we don't take the sort of measures we're taking now. Right. So first off, it is, COVID-19 is literally different from the flu. The other pandemic that I mentioned, H1N1, that is another influenza, whereas COVID-19 is a different coronavirus altogether. Um, excuse me. As far as, as far as how it's not, it has not yet reached the, um, the deadliness of the influenza virus, the regular influenza virus. That's, uh, that comes from a couple of things. The first off is that it's new. It's new to us as a novel strain. So it hasn't had a chance to sweep

through the entire global population yet the way influenza has. So when this is all done and over with, it may, hopefully it does not, but it may reach the, um, the kind of deadliness that the flu does. But the other thing is that influenza is already throughout the world. So it would be impossible for us to stop the flu now because the flu, it mutates, it resorts itself. That's what H1N1 is. There's also H1N7 and all sorts of different combinations of the two ages and ends. And so for that reason, we can't stop it. But we haven't necessarily seen that yet with COVID-19.

So there is a chance that we can actually stop it. and if we have the opportunity, we should definitely take the opportunity to stamp it out. Other than that, like, we have, basically with the flu, we're behind already. We cannot catch up to the flu. But if we can catch up to this, we can save a lot of lives. And it's worth chasing that goal because we're seeing that,

you know, the coronavirus is leaving, it seems like it's leaving permanent damage to organs after, After the illness, people out of Hong Kong are reporting difficulty breathing that's persistent even after they recover and heal and get discharged from the hospital. Furthermore, the influenza usually stays in the respiratory system. Whereas with COVID-19, what I'm starting to see a lot of is that it also attacks the heart, in some cases attacking the liver. So it's getting to a lot more places. In fact, a lot of the people who are dying in Seattle, they're not dying of the respiratory illness. they're dying because of their heart has developed a bad rhythm.

Essentially, they're having heart attacks is what they're dying from. And so it's different not just literally being different, but it's also different in how it affects people and the kind of ramification it has for a person's health going forward. So you mentioned that we still have a chance that we could stop the coronavirus. What does that mean? Do you mean, is there a chance that we could be in a position where literally no one in the world has it anymore and therefore it's not contagious?

or what does that look like stopping it? I think that would be optimistic. I think it's technically possible because the new cases coming out of China right now are, I think they're down to the double digits, which is huge. It's a huge reduction. And so if we just stop having new cases in general,

then it might be the case that the virus just, you know, it stops infection. Again, that's extremely optimistic. But we could get it to the point where it's essentially, like incidences might be not observable to surveillance organizations. You know, kind of the way polio is in the United States, although that's making a comeback. Smallpox has been eradicated. A little different situation, but, you know, it might be possible. I think it's unrealistic to stop it out like that. But I think it is realistic to get to such a low background level

that it becomes essentially a non-factor in daily life. So you just mentioned that China's number of cases have gone way down, Italy, Korea, and then, of course, China, they've been grappling with the coronavirus longer than we have. Are there lessons to be learned? Are there things to be avoided from what they've done and haven't done in those nations? Yeah, unfortunately, I think we mostly have cautionary tales coming from them because we've already missed the window. South Korea has had a pretty good response. They had very aggressive testing early on. They had very aggressive contact tracing, which is finding people who have been infected and then finding everyone that they've been in contact with and then quarantining them. I think we've missed the window for

that. That would have been February, but as we've seen from the issues we had with testing, we've essentially lost February as far as being able to do anything about containing the spread. Out of China, again, it's a cautionary tale. We should be upfront, honest and transparent about what's happening with this. You know, I've seen a report that it was known to Chinese authorities back in November, and they didn't really, they didn't acknowledge it until December, and the world didn't really start taking it seriously until January. And so that's three months of lost time that could have been spent stopping this virus

before it becomes a full-blown global pandemic. Italy is another, Italy is an extremely unfortunate tale just because they have exceeded, they have exceeded their health care capacity. And what we've seen with most countries is that the case fatality rate has decreased. Case fatality being the number of people who are infected who die from the disease. Most of the world, as they're testing more people,

they're seeing more people who are infected and comparatively fewer people dying from the disease. That's because they're still able, for the most part, to get into, treatment if they need to. But Italy is beyond that. And so what you see with that is not only are people dying because they're not getting treated, but we're also seeing people who get infected because they're at the hospital and there's not enough resources to properly isolate them. And so they're potentially spreading the infection further inside of the hospital. And we see that a lot with

healthcare systems that will get overwhelmed. Once you reach a certain critical mass, then it becomes really difficult to put a lid back on it. And then you start getting this growing escalating case fatality rate. What do Americans need to do to halt the spread of this disease? So this is something that everyone needs to take part in. This is a worldwide national and local issue. Every community needs to be responsible for preventing the spread of disease. And to that end, I think the administration has been pretty good about putting out the guidelines.

the CDC just put out guidelines recently. I had it up a second ago, but I don't know where I put it. But essentially, it's, you know, limit the amount of time that you spend with other people. And that includes limit time going out. Anybody who has symptoms or illness of any kind should stay quarantine and isolated for the 14 days. And anyone who is very sick should call the provider see what needs to be done. And if they're severe enough, then they should be. admitted to the hospital. And that's a good point to make, actually, is that before, before going to

like the emergency room, for instance, it's best to call a doctor first and then possibly, possibly avoid having to go through the emergency department because the emergency department is still taking regular emergencies. And so if someone with COVID-19 walks into the ER, then they stand a chance to spread the disease to a bunch of people who are in there for other reasons. and we really want to avoid that aspect of it. This is a little bit more difficult to sort of gauge, but if you're out there and then you know that you've been exposed to someone who eventually tested positive,

then it would also be worth it for those people to call their doctors and see if they can get tested as well. Because as we're seeing, there's a lot of people who are asymptomatic but have the disease, or at least have the virus. They may not develop the disease that goes with a virus. but for a period of time they are asymptomatic but infectious. And so they're walking around, they feel fine, but they're able to transmit the disease to somebody else. And so that's sort of the justification behind asking everyone to create a social distance between them and the next person.

So on that note, in terms of social distancing, how severe does it need to be? I mean, can you have a friend over? Can you, you know, see family? Is it something that, you know, I mean, people still have to run into the grocery store. Should it be that unless it's really urgent, you avoid doing it, even if it means you're cutting back on things you would normally do? Or how should people handle this on a practical level? So as far as how much distance we have to create socially, it's as much as you can manage. If you need to go to the grocery store, you obviously need to go to the grocery store.

but for instance, I usually buy my groceries for a couple of days at a time, but I bought enough for about, well, by now it's about a week and a half, but when I bought it, it was about two weeks worth of food. That way I'm going to the grocery store half as much as I did before, maybe less than half, or, yeah, even less than that. I think, so social distance is different than isolation. Isolation is no contact with, no physical contact with anybody. I think it's okay

If you have friends who have been Who have also been keeping a good social distance Between themselves and others It's okay to have them over And then see each other once in a while I would limit that But you know It's we can't have people going crazy

You know there needs to be some kind of human contact Because we are still human creatures Among healthy people It's not that bad of an idea To see each other once in a long while Maybe not too long but you know limit it, but you're not absolutely barred from seeing people. Certainly do not, like, no house parties right now, that would be a bad idea.

But having one or two friends over and keep it in a small circle, that way you're, in your group, you are isolated. Friends and family, family is okay per what I just said before, but so long as they're not over like the age of 60, honestly, I would go to age of 55 or so. if you're above like 55, I would just, I would just try to limit any physical contact, but make sure you stay in contact with them electronically. We have all these ways of keeping in contact with one another. And so we should do that to stay grounded during this time.

But other than that, we should definitely try to minimize human-to-human contact. So you mentioned that you should call your medical provider if you think you might have COVID-19 rather than go straight to the ER. We're seeing a lot of, you know, charts going around now. How do you tell if it's allergies, the cold, flu, or COVID-19? What's your advice to people on when they need to be concerned and when they probably don't need to call their doctor? So differentiating between, like, the seasonal allergies and COVID-19,

that's going to be important if it's seasonal allergies and you don't need to be, be worried. You'd start needing to be concerned about your health if you start developing a fever. That's probably the most common and the most distinguishing factor from COVID-19 and seasonal allergies. It's unfortunately it's going to feel it's going to at first feel a lot like just the seasonal flu. But I mean, if you do get the flu, then you should also be isolated anyway because that's also very contagious. And as we mentioned before, it's also deadly to people. So if you develop any kind of respiratory symptoms and you have fever, then definitely make sure that you stay inside. The point where you start seeing a doctor is when you have trouble breathing,

you shouldn't be gasping for air. Maybe call them a little bit earlier than that. But when you start having trouble breathing, chest pain, and you just can't move around very much, then that's the sign that you need help from somebody else. And you should call your doctor for that. but short of having difficulty breathing, that is, you know, like your, your lungs should be, they should feel heavy and they should feel, they should be like developing a lot of, it should feel like there's fluid inside.

Essentially what I'm saying is that when you get pneumonia, then you should be admitted to the hospital. But if it's just a common, if it feels like a common flu, then we've dealt with flus at home before and you should deal with this at home because, most people, I don't know what the proportion is, but a lot, most people develop only mild to moderate symptoms. When it becomes moderate to severe, that's when you go to the hospital. So what do we know about a possible vaccine for COVID-19? How long will it be before we have one? And do we even have assurance that we will be able to develop one?

So there is one that's currently in development. It just went into phase one testing on Monday, I believe, yeah, Monday this week. And which is record time. The virus was first introduced to American Shores mid-January, and then to have an approval for testing by mid-March is blazing fast. It is in phase one testing. It's a process that takes three phases. They might try to expedite it, and then they might modify or omit one of the phases. But essentially what the phases do, phase one is to test to make sure that the vaccine is

not harmful to healthy people. Phase two is to make sure that it's not harmful to the people who would probably need it. So it would be testing on healthy people who are above the age of 60. Those are the people who are most likely to develop severe symptoms. So they want to make sure that the vaccine, since it's going to be most beneficial to them, they want to make sure that the vaccine does not harm them. And then phase three is seeing that if it actually works as advertised. We expect the vaccine to be available in about a year's time, so it's still a little ways out.

But like I said, they may try to accelerate and cut some corners. And I do say cut corners. H1N1 vaccine came out pretty quickly as well, but people did not trust it necessarily. I think it was fine. It was ultimately fine. H1N1 is vaccinated in the seasonal flu vaccines, I believe, nowadays. It's, they might try to shortcut some things, but in the end, I think it's going to be safe because the last phase of testing, they're going to make sure that they're going to see if it, so long as it doesn't hurt people, you know, that that's one of the things that they're most looking out for. But like I said, they're trying to go fast and it might be out within a year.

So we've talked about like flattening the curve. If we can flatten the curve to about a year's time, then we should be able to get out of this. So speaking of flattening the curve, the premise is basically that we don't want to be in a position where there are more patients than hospitals can handle in the United States. And we're hearing about that happening in Italy. So what kind of capacity do U.S. hospitals have? How many ventilators do we have? And do we have any options, whether it's, you know, turning other buildings into hospitals or ordering more ventilators to increase capacity or what can. or can't be done now?

So we're seeing the, in remarks made today, the administration is trying to get more, get more ventilators made. I don't know how many ventilators there are in the country. There's a decent amount in stockpiles around the country. But I'm not too worried about, if we all do, if we all do our part to prevent the spread of the disease, I'm not. too concern about capacity just yet because the example that I've been looking at is New York State currently has, let me see, they have, I think, around 1,300 confirmed cases today.

And based on early data coming, actually there's not really early data anymore, it's just based on data coming out of China, about 20% of people who are hospitalized require an ICU bed, which is the when you need a ventilator then you're in the ICU um so 20% of people need ICU beds if 20% of all hospitalized patients sorry if 100% of all the patients all the confirmed cases in new york state required a hospitalization 20% of that is still less than the capacity that they have right now which is 600 beds it'd be about 200 or 200 to 300 beds if everyone needed to be hospitalized in new york state so we still have excess capacity right now. And we probably will for the next few days. Looking beyond that, it requires

all of us to do our parts. So again, if we can flatten this curve out to beyond the time it takes to develop a vaccine, then I think we'll be good. I don't think that we'll reach that critical mass that Italy has. So a new study is out from the Imperial College London, and it's full of pretty scary predictions, including the possibility that 2.2 million Americans could die. Have you had a chance to look at this study? And if so, what do you think of it? I've been looking at that study. It is definitely scary. I believe the 2.2 million figure is if we do nothing, which is obviously not the case. But it does. So first off, I want to say that their modeling is very good. They take a lot of things into consideration. And so if we do absolutely nothing, then 2.2 million are, that's probably

accurate. And so that should really underscore the seriousness of this pandemic that millions of people could die. I do think it's a little bit on the pessimistic side. I tend to be a little optimistic about this. I think that we'll get through this okay if everyone does their part. It requires everyone doing their part. But I just want to point out that they, based on their modeling, they're using a 30% critical care rate that is 30% of hospitalized patients requiring an ICU bed. From the numbers that I've seen from what I've read, it's more like 20%, so that I think their capacity figures are going to be a little bit inflated. But other than that, it's very good modeling and it takes in account different localities with different population densities.

So I think it's pretty accurate. It does not account for, since it uses probability, it doesn't really account for active behaviors. It just takes the amount of, the amount of contact you normally get in a certain setting. If you take a policy to prevent that, it takes out that possibility. but, you know, humans are notoriously difficult to project and we're notoriously unreliable creatures one way or the other. So I think that if we make an active effort to not spread the disease,

I know I keep hammering this, but if we all do our parts and not spread the disease, I don't think it will be as bad as they predict. If we continue to be cavalier about it, for instance, we saw the picture of, you know, a Florida beach that was just covered with people. over the weekend there were downtown areas that were just completely crowded out with people. If we continue acting like that, I think that we will, I don't think we'll hit the 2.2 million

figure, but I think we will achieve something kind of close. And that's not something that we should try to achieve. So on that doing our part, I think many of us have been somewhat stunned by the speed of which, you know, state and local governments have ordered businesses to close or, you know, said restaurants can be delivery only, have said that, you know, people need to work from home, the San Francisco Bay Area. Everyone's now sheltering in place. And New York City is considering that as well. And do you think these kind of measures are truly necessary right now? It's difficult to say what is truly necessary. What I will say is that they will certainly help. They seem they seem kind of draconian. Like, for instance, if there's a,

If there's a bar in the middle of, there's like a saloon in the middle of Ohio, I don't think that they really need to be closed. But, you know, the major metropolitan area, San Francisco, for instance, L.A. in New York City, Seattle, I think that it would, if it doesn't, not just that it only helps, but I think it's kind of necessary at this point to prevent further spread. It would have been nice if we can all just voluntarily not go out. but it doesn't seem like that that was the case. So these really heavy crackdowns on activity,

they will certainly help. I don't really like talking about the necessity of them because whether you think that they're necessary or not, they are not necessarily, they're not the wrong choice. They will do what they are supposed to do, which is prevent the spread of disease. whether we should be doing them or not, I think that's a question of political philosophy that we can answer later on once we've gone out of this. So are you in touch with other doctors now? What's the general attitude among the medical community about COVID-19?

A lot of doctors are very concerned that people are not concerned enough. It's a lot of frustration when we see these pictures of people going out into large crowds. But a lot of that's been cut down. So there's a little bit of a sigh of relief there. A lot of doctors I've seen are asking for a federal nationwide lockdown. I think that would be too much because that would violate the whole federal system that we have. But, you know, it's a lot of frustration with people's behaviors. Doctors who are actually treating, doctors who are actually treating COVID patients, they are

they're sort of exasperated at the at the disease itself because it's it starts off as a respiratory disease and it seems to progress to a cardiac disease and so it's it's kind of a it's it's kind of a running gun battle with the with a virus trying to keep it in a trying to keep it from killing your patient because the thing is we know how to deal with it

this is something that the medical community knows how to do respiratory disease comes in. If it's very severe, they go to the ICU. If they stop breathing or having respiratory distress, they get put on a ventilator. If organs fail, you start doing supportive therapy. We know how to do that. It's just that this virus seems to deliver each organ system one by one, and you have to deal with it one by one until finally the patient gets to go home.

And even then, it seems like patients who are going home, they still have some long-term sequelae from the disease itself. One of the things that's been really helpful, I think, about this, it's not helpful about the pandemic, but helpful during this pandemic is social media. I see a lot of doctors are collaborating. There's a Facebook group of which I'm a part of, and it's got almost 100,000 doctors all throughout the country, not just doctors, but also nurses and PAs and other people in the medical community. This one has 100,000.

There's one in Europe. There's one in Italy. And there's also a lot of people who are in multiple groups. So there's a lot of information getting shared really quickly. And also there's also publications that go up that they're not getting peer reviewed first. But at this time, we don't really need peer review. What we really need is just firsthand experience. And that's what we're getting a lot of.

So on the medical community, like there's a lot of talking going back and forth. And this has been really good. Like just for instance, one thing that I saw is that, kind of, hydroxychloroquine, which is a drug that is used for rheumatoid arthritis and some other. It's also an anti-malarial drug. There's some people who are seeing success using that against COVID-19. It's been used clinically in China and South Korea. And based on some evidence, it seems to shorten the length of the disease.

I've seen other people who have tried to use it and it doesn't seem to work. So, you know, we don't know for sure. But if there's a chance that something might work, it seems to be people are, it's giving the people the chance to try it. And that's a very promising thing about the response to this pandemic. That's great news. So President Trump mentioned earlier this week that he thought we could be dealing with COVID-19 into the summer, into July or August. Do you have, I mean, I know predicting the future is a fool's errand, but any sense of how long Americans could really be facing daily life being affected by this?

Yeah, so the CDC is asking for, you know, 15 days to, to figure what were they used, but basically 15 days to cut down the disease burden of COVID-19. But we can cut down the disease burden, but it's going to be with us for quite some time. We have, we have thousands of people who are confirmed cases. We have at least two to, I forget what the range is, but there's a, multiples of the confirmed cases right now are infected and are not yet showing symptoms, and they will. And during this time, before they develop symptoms, they will spread it to, on average, two to four other people. So we're in the growth phase of the disease. The worst is still yet to come, but I think we're prepared for it.

I think he's right saying that this will go until the summer. but there's also there's also some evidence that warmth and humidity decreases the spread of this virus which is a little bit similar to seasonal influenza which that's that's great news for us because as as the summer season heats up a little bit we'll get if we get less spread we'll get a little bit of reprieve and then hopefully they'll give us some time to to really ramp up the necessary infrastructure in time for fall which is when the disease won't go away over the summer and it's likely to ramp up again during the fall.

But hopefully by that time, we'll have the infrastructure in place to deal with another surge. And hopefully a couple months after the fall, a vaccine will come out and then we'll be able to vaccinate people who aren't infected already. So this will go on. Like this is, we're not in this for the short haul. This is a war effort and we all need to participate.

And it's not going to go away anytime soon. But I think there is reason to be optimistic so long as we're all doing our parts. Again, so long as we're doing our part. Okay. Well, again, Dr. Kevin Fan, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast.

We appreciate your patience as we record remotely during these weeks. Please be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or Spotify. And please leave us a review or rating on Apple Podcasts to give you. us your feedback. We'll see you again tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Kate Shrinco and Rachel Del Judas. Sound design by Lauren Evans, Thelia Rampersad, Mark Geinie, and John Pop. For more information, visitdailySignal.com.