The Ricochet Podcast - Inching Towards Normalcy

Episode Date: May 15, 2020

We’re about 9 weeks into the Great American Shut Down and maybe, just maybe we’re starting to see a light at the end of this tunnel? To help us parse this, call on an actual scientist, our good friend from Stanford Medicine, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya who helped write the Santa Clara Study and the just released MLB study. We discuss where we are now, where we might be going... Source

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T's and C's apply. See OnPost.com. Boston Telephone Directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University. We will have coronavirus in the fall. I am convinced of that. I'm the president and your fake news. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lilacs, and today we talk to Dr. Jay Bhattacharya about, well, guess what? Yes, COVID.

So let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! Welcome, everybody. This is the Ricochet Podcast, number 496, inching toward 500. And you know what we're going to do for 500? We have no idea. Usually we get together and have some big public thing, but public things now, as we all know, are just simply super spreader events that lead to, you know, bodies stacked like what, guys? That's right, like cordwood. Bodies are always stacked like cordwood when you describe these things. But that doesn't mean that we can't have sort of online virtual Zoomy type things. And Rob, I believe that there's an event coming up this weekend that people will

want to tune in for, which would be? I believe it's 5 p.m. Pacific, 8 p.m. Eastern, and wherever you are, you've got to extrapolate those two numbers. Can you be any more contemptuous of fly? Well, no, I mean, I was talking about our, our internet. Actually I could do America. America is easy. Uh, I was talking about our international listeners, James, we have many internationalists and I can never remember five or six hours. I can never remember UK or the continent. I can never remember that. Uh, so you're on your own. Um, uh, of course, if you're James, you're never remember that. So you're on your own. Of course, if you're James, you're an hour earlier, so you're at 7pm.

And if you're in Mountain Time, then you're at 6pm. And if you're in Arizona, what are you doing if you're in Arizona? We'll have Gabriel I think John Gabriel and Bethany will make a quick appearance and we'll figure it out as it goes. What it's going to be is a founder's happy hour.

If you're a member of Ricochet, please join us. We don't really have much of an agenda, except that it's Saturday night. We want to. I'm waiting to hear what the agenda is. I said I do this. And then I assumed that you had it all figured out. No, no, no. It's it's it's entirely casual.

We're not going to you know, you can you can we're just going to relax and untie our sweaters and just let it all hang out. So please join us. And if you're not a member and you think, oh, that might be fun. Well, there's a simple way to accomplish that. Just join. And we hope to see you on Saturday night, 5, 6, 7 or 8 p.m., depending on where you live. There you are, folks. The return of Rob's membership spot bumped to the top of the show. Yeah, right. I've got to shake these things up from time to time and make sure that people are still paying attention.

So here's the deal. We are at this moment in Minnesota experiencing panic, at least in some parts. Our governor was regarded as a wise sort who was keeping everybody home and keeping everybody safe. But then he had to go and open some stuff up. And we are gradually loosening. And the people that I've been reading on the local Reddit threads who are saying wise governor are now he's foolishly abandoned his principles.

He's given into the Republicans. It's going to be horrible from here on in. And everybody is going to get very, very sick. This seems to reflect what you find in the rest of the country, according to a story in Real Clear Politics. They did the polling. And what do you know? There's two Americas.

Who could have thought of that? Let me quote from the piece. Political divide among the public is stark. According to CBS News, YouGov poll released Thursday, 88% of Democrats believe the top priority, 88%, 88% believe the top priority is stay home, slow the virus spread. Only 12% of Democrats believe the top priority should be get back to work and get the economy going. Now, 62% of Republicans, on the other hand, favored getting the economy going as the top priority,

while 38% felt staying at home was the top priority. Put another way, says real clear politics, the net difference between Democrats and Republicans and what the top priority. Put another way, says real clear politics, the net difference between Democrats and Republicans and what the top priority of the country should be is 50 percentage points. Wow. Of course, my immediate thought is if only 88% of Democrats would stay home.

That really is striking, isn't it? I wouldn't have thought. I mean, I think the position of all three of us, although I'm trying to remember when Rob and I got testy with each other, I think it was way back when all of this was still a first shock to us. So that's what, three, four, five weeks ago. Remember, there was an opening segment where we actually had a little cross. But you know what? It was what psychologists would call displaced anger, because I don't think it was about – Yes, that's the point.

It wasn't really about what we were talking about. It was about some other ancillary issue of which I was correct. But Rob's first impulse was we need to lock down. My first impulse was anti-lockdown. But the perfect truth – and I do think that to the extent that we got across with each other, and let's be frank, we did a little bit, it was the shock of the thing. We were really upset, as was the whole country. However, as more and more facts have come out, I think we're sort of in the center position, which is, let's open up as best we can, protecting those that we now

know to be vulnerable. We know stuff we didn't used to know. We know that nursing homes are a particular problem, and we know that people under 25, and particularly school-age children, are at essentially zero risk. Well, let's act on that. Isn't that sort of, I thought everybody was there, no? Yeah, no, I think you're right. I think we're in real trouble here, too, because, I mean, as I've said since the very beginning, like, I think you're right. I think we're in real trouble here, too, because, as I said since the very beginning, this is definitely a dress rehearsal. I mean, we're living in a world in which these things are going to happen. And if you say to people at the beginning of something, listen, stay in. We're going to stay in for a couple of weeks. We don't want to overwhelm the mitigation strategy. We don't want to overwhelm the healthcare facilities and doctors

and everything. We're going to stay in. Then people go, okay, I get it. I totally get it. I'll do it. I'm in. I'm in. I'm a citizen. I'm a person in the society. I want everything to be great. I'm in. I will do this. This makes sense to me. But if you continually move the goalposts, so now it seems like, well, wait a minute. Well, there's no vaccine. Well, no. But you continually act as if. And this is what my mantra constantly is like. The American people have been behaved impeccably with incredible sensitivity.

They've been absolute heroes in this. They've done exactly what they've been asked to do. They've done it. They've done it unfailingly. They've done it cheerfully. They've they've we've given money. We give them charitable donations are up. People are doing people are the American people are being fantastic. Our leaders, all of them in the statehouse and in the White House have been all unforgivably petty and stupid and malicious and patronizing and utterly utter utter failure at the political

level of this country and utter heroism and efficiency at the normal everyday level of this country. And I've never seen something in such stark relief. The terror you see on the faces of politicians, not just I'm not just bashing Trump. I mean, the the Cuomo, the hero, they call him here. The terror you see on their face, their first thought is don't blame me. Right. Don't blame me. Stay in. You cover yourself in Purell because I don't want to get blamed. And that level, the absolute absence of any leadership, any sort of, I don't know, like any, this is the wrong

way to put it, but I'm going to put it that way. Any manliness on the part of our leaders, it's all, they're all just such terrified little weaklings. I'm sorry. And we're being totally normal. Go ahead. Sorry. Manliness is not wearing a mask.

Manliness is striding out there with your face exposed to the elements. I regret it. Let me tell you boys a story, a little. Yes. This is in my life. And so, of course, we have to apply a discount. You shouldn't make sweeping generalizations based on your own personal experience. On the other hand, as the great economist George Stigler once said, the plural of data, the plural of anecdote is data. Okay. High school graduation coming up

here and the high school out here in Northern California in San Mateo County and the high school officials thought, what can we do? The kids are already working from home. What can we do to give them some event that closes their high school experience and just something to celebrate? And they came up with a plan that was modeled on the graduation ceremonies this year of the Air Force Academy. No parents, no spectators, and the graduates themselves would be seated six feet apart on an open field outdoors. In California, of course graduates themselves would be seated six feet apart on an open field outdoors in California, of course, it would be in the sunshine, and they would be handed disinfected. Actually, they wouldn't even be handed the diplomas. The diplomas were going to be mailed to them afterward, as I recall. County coordinator of schools says, let me take

this under advisement. She then gets back to them and says she's been in touch with somebody nobody knew existed until now, but there's apparently a county health official. Fine. As long as you stick to the Air Force Academy precedent, go ahead. Parents begin making plans. Kids are excited. And then some days later, she gets back in touch and says, nope, can't do it after all. The county health official has changed his mind. Well, why not? If it was good enough for the Air Force Academy, if we know these kids aren't at risk, if it's going to be taking place outdoors, if there's going to be social distancing, all I can tell you is that according to the new rules that the county health official will issue sometime in the next 10 days, this is forbidden. If every American doesn't say, what? Who gives them the right to tell anybody how to conduct a graduation, let alone on some unknown super secret set of rules that haven't been promulgated yet. No rationale offered. Zero. None. And if that kind

of thing is taking place across the country, and I have to believe that it is taking place all kinds of places, then a lot of people, well, now here I am in the lockdown camp. I guess I'm demonstrating the divide with which James began. But again, it's a false choice, right? It's a false choice. They are forcing this crazy choice. It's a false choice. Nobody's really saying they all want to like, we want to, that people are reasonable. They're making a reasonable answer. What they really want is they want to know there's a standard by which there's a transparent way they're making these rules and these judgments. And that, and that, and that the, we err on the side of assuming people are sensible and smart and will take precautions and are community minded.

The history of the recent history of the past 12 weeks or whatever it's been, nine weeks of this has been that the American people are sensible, cautious and community minded. The American people have proved themselves. I mean, not that they needed to, but they did. The only people in this entire pageant who have behaved horribly are the people who are tasked with serving us in an elected office, because they're terrified that they're going to get blamed. They're terrified. It's so weird to me that they actually think that little of us, that they think that we are reckless, hedonistic children who just want to, we don't care about no science. They really think that little of us, that they think that we are reckless, hedonistic children who just want to, we don't care about no science. They really think that about us, not just in the statehouse. I mean, I'm flabbergasted at the amount of praise that Governor Cuomo keeps getting. I feel like he,

all the people praising Cuomo and attacking Trump should be stop attacking Trump and instead attack Cuomo. And all the people attacking Cuomo and not attacking – they all deserve this incredible shroud of shame because there's not one of them who's been able to stand up and say, look, you're going to have to do a lot of this stuff and take a lot of these precautions on your own based on your own judgment. That's because you're sovereign citizens of the greatest nation in the world. That doesn't mean that we're going to let people die in the streets. That doesn't mean we're like, we don't want Nana to die. We don't mean we want any of that stuff to happen, but you're going to eventually, it's going to take forever to get a vaccine, longer than we expect.

You're going to eventually be on your own recognizance, like citizens. And the American people would just shrug and go, we know right right well it it does seem to vary by place to place doesn't it i mean when when you have the entire media concentrated in one place that's going to be the lens through which they see the rest of the world and when you add to that their own biases that everybody who lives in florida is an idiot with a rusted pickup and a mullet who goes out and sodomizes gators in their spare time, then yeah, you're going to assume that everybody in Florida is going to die because the Republican governor just doesn't know what he's doing, like Cuomo. But if, I mean, and you just, I know, Rob, you hate to hear it and I hate to hear it and we all

hate to hear it and say it, but if the situation was reversed,? You would have I mean, you the idea of taking covid positive patients and putting them in nursing homes would be one of those things that would cause congressional investigations. If you had, as you had in Pennsylvania, a Republican administrator saying, yeah, we're going to put the the people who are recovering from this stuff maybe in the nursing home with the old and the sick. But I got to get my mama out of there because she's 95 and she wants to go to a hotel. If that person did that in advance of their order, that's sort of the moral equivalent of dumping your stocks after you've been to the private briefing about what's going to happen when it hits. Exactly right. But we should just clarify, that really happened. I know. That's not a hypothetical you're making up. I just want to make sure people know that. Right. That really happened. These are things that happened

and the death in the, the deaths in the nursing homes in New York and Massachusetts appear to be appalling and not designed, but just sort of casually waved away by the media at this point, because, well, you know, we get these, you can, we'll trust Cuomo because in our hearts we know that Cuomo believes in science. And those Republican guys don't believe in science. They believe in the almighty dollar. All they want to do is make money for the fact. The idea that they that somehow people who want to open the economy are doing so because they want Jeff Bezos to have one point one trillion instead of one trillion dollars is not it. Also, Jeff Bezos is going to get a1 trillion instead of $1 trillion is not it at all.

Also, Jeff Bezos is going to get $1 trillion because we're stuck at home. Right. If you want Jeff Bezos, you want to make him go broke, get everybody back to work. I mean, there is nobody rich in America right now who needs to go back to work. That just isn't the case. There are most of the people who need to go back to work, certainly in New York State area, which is where 30%, 40% of all the cases are, they need to go back to work because they want to pay their mortgage and their rent.

And it is inconceivably politically stupid for the Democratic Party to ally itself, as it has, with the 1% who can stay at home and order in like it's great it's nuts to me it's nuts politically to me but here's just a little bit of a of a i know we i gotta get jay in here i just want to tell you a little bit slice of life just happened it is new york city i'm sitting outside it's 80 degrees it's a beautiful wonderful may day in new york city it's i'm gorgeous you're upstair i'm out on the roof it's fantastic you're gonna hear some street noise i It's a beautiful, wonderful May day in New York City. It's gorgeous. You're upstairs. I'm out on the roof. It's fantastic.

You're going to hear some street noise, I think. I am part of this New York City, you know, text thing where they'll text you the updates that you need to know. So it's a beautiful day. It's going to be a beautiful weekend. And here's what the city of New York wants you to know. Notify New York City. That's the text thing. Nice weather is here, but remember, if you go out, keep at least six feet of distance between yourself and others and wear a face

covering. That's like, weather's nice, but don't enjoy it. Don't you dare enjoy it. Right. So in New York, you can get on the subway. You can pack in with a bunch of other people in a viral-infused can and rocket your way to Central Park and then join all the other urbanites who are something themselves. And probably magically six feet apart. Not five feet five, because if you do that, it's the Black Death, but six feet apart. Meanwhile, here in Minnesota, when I was driving last week to do an errand at one of the places that had never proved to be open, a big box store with a parking lot crammed, I passed a small little shopping area. Very nice, very upscale, and I'd like to say it's decimated,

because that would just be one out of ten. Store after store after store after store. Gone. The movie marquee. Silent. Dead. Empty. So the idea that I can pack in with all these other people and stand in a long line at Home Depot, and that's okay.

But two or three people can't go into a small store at a time and buy a scarf or a cupcake or something like that is absolutely off the table. But again, I'm not doing this. If I was doing this for capitalism and big business, I'd say great to Target and Home Depot and all the other big corporations that are able to, I actually care about these small little things in my neighborhood because this is what makes the character of this place what it is. But no, I guess I just, I don't even want grandma to die. I want grandpa to die as well. I want the hand in hand to be married and, you know, put in a put in the ground in a double ceremony. Oh, he could vote. Oh, anyway. So Jeff Bezos, right. Trillion dollars. You know what that means? That means that Jeff Bezos could overpay for his car insurance a hundred times over every year. Because, you know, it's been reported that Americans overpay in their car insurance over $21 billion a year.

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Best part, though, it's completely free. You can save up to $670 using TheZebra.com. So whatever your economic situation is right now, The Zebra is committed to helping you save. How much can you save on your car and home insurance? Well, go today and start saving at TheZebra.com slash ricochet. That's TheZebra.com slash ricochet, spelled T-H-E-Z-E-B-R-A dot com slash ricochet. And our thanks to The Zebra for sponsoring this, The Ricochet Podcast. And now we welcome back Doc J. Think you're smart? Hey, our next guest holds an M.D. and a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University, professor of medicine at Stanford University, research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research, a senior fellow

at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the Stanford Freeman Smalley Institute. And he's a great chef and he plays the French horn like a virtuoso can beat any time. A world-class chess master, Scrabble player, Django champion. And you're what, 15 years old? So, you know, this is quite the accomplishment. AJ, welcome back. Now, there's a new Major League Baseball study that shows that 70% of the MLB employees who had positive coronavirus antibody tests showed no symptoms. One can say

that's good news. One can also say 70% of what, how much was the testing? Is there more noise than data here? Tease this out for us. So one correction, and it was my error, is it's actually 45% had no symptoms, but a larger fraction had mild symptoms. So just to correct the record on that. That's absolutely true, though. A very large fraction of the MLB employees who had positive antibodies to COVID had no symptoms at all, which is, I mean, in some sense, really, really surprising, although that only a small fraction of the MLB population had COVID antibodies at all, about 0.7%. That is, 99.3% had no COVID antibodies.

There are no deaths, by the way, in the MLB employee population. Oh, and that was the other thing. It's employees, not the athletes. That's really important to recognize. That means, in some sense like the good news is no deaths in that population. The bad news is the disease hasn't spread very far. We're not very far along in it. I mean, in a sense, we kind of have to learn to live with it if you think about where it could be. Now, there are other things about this. Like the fraction of the people that had antibodies

is lower than you find in places that are, surrounding areas where the MLB employees live, right? So in New York, for instance, the Yankees employees had much lower prevalence of these antibodies than the surrounding community did. Surrounding community has about 25% prevalence, whereas I think here it was like something on the order of three. And Jay, Peter here, a reasonable supposition is that the MLB employees,

you're not talking about players and you're not talking about the guys who, the part-timers who sell Cracker Jacks during games, the full-time employees only work in the Bronx. They work in the office complex at Yankee Stadium, but then they get in their cars and they go home to very nice suburbs in New Jersey. They don't live in the Bronx, right? I mean, that's certainly possible. That's certainly one explanation. I think it highlights that there's a socioeconomic status gradient in this disease. Poor populations are hit harder with this disease in the sense of have higher prevalence than richer populations. So that certainly could reflect that. Although, I mean, there were some of the Cracker Jack sellers. Jay, something you said stuck out. It

seems like half the population fears that it's everywhere, that if you go outside, you get it. And you're saying the bad news is that, no, it's not that prevalent out there, that if you go outside, you get it. And you're saying the bad news is that no, it's not that prevalent out there and we need to get to the point where it is. But tell me where I'm wrong there. No, that's exactly the paradox at the heart of this thing. The question is, what do you think the end goal is? Is the end goal to eliminate the disease? Well, in that case, 0.73 is excellent news. We just need to push down harder and it'll go away. Do you think the end goal is something else where we learn to live with the disease? I think from this study and from others, I think there are, from others that have looked at antibodies in the population, I think it's

not possible to eradicate this disease. The lockdowns, what they do is they delay the onset of the disease to after the lockdowns are lifted. They slow the rate of growth of the disease. I mean, remember the original justification for the lockdowns was to flatten the curve so that we don't overwhelm hospitals. Well, flatten the curve doesn't mean get rid of the disease. It means delay the disease until later. So I think that's the question about good or bad news. To me, I don't believe it's possible to eradicate this disease without a vaccine or some sort of substantial scientific breakthrough that I don't see forthcoming anytime soon.

Although I did hear some good news about a neutralizing antibody someone discovered today, so maybe it could be proven wrong in real time. But yeah, so I think if the goal is disease eradication, I think it's an unrealistic thing to think. I mean, there's no way a lockdown, in any case, would produce disease eradication. It would take some massive scientific breakthrough to make that happen. Right. I mean, of course, massive scientific breakthroughs are what we come to expect.

So get on it, scientists. Like, what's with the excuses? They're working hard. They're working hard. Anyway, so Jay, it's Rob Long here in New York. Thank you for joining us. So can you just take me back? So the reason the MLB study is – one of the reasons why it's significant is because of the scope of it, that you took people randomly working and who definitely work in places where a lot of

people come in and come out and across the country, right? Is that, is that, so we're- Yeah, it's a nationwide scope. I mean, it's a select population. I don't, I'm not making any argument that it's representative of America at large, obviously isn't. As I said, I think it's lower prevalence, but it is really interesting because in one go, we got to look at, you know, 26 cities across the, 26 teams across the country the country, a slightly fewer number of cities, but a huge number of places on a two-day period. That kind of data collection would have been very difficult to do without the organizational might of the MLB. A surprising takeaway from the MLB study is that this, for me anyway, is that it's a slow spread, not a fast spread. I live in New York, and if you ask people what they think, they think that for a long time, you know, I bet you everybody's got it.

And we've all got it. We all have it. That's what we've been saying. Like, oh, the infection rate is going to be much higher than anybody imagined. Do we now know that was wrong? I think in New York, it's I think about 25 percent. New York City, about 25 percent have it. So one in four.

So if everyone thinks they have it, three in four are wrong or have had it. Right. The rest of the country, it's I mean, the prevalence numbers are somewhere between two to four percent right so if everyone thinks they have had it it's they're 96 to 98 percent of them are wrong yeah i i and also people in new york are hypochondriacs so it's 110 percent think they had even the people who people who have it are talking about how they have it um this is just one of the benefits of science i thought i i thought for sure that I had had it. Now, I haven't been tested because I want to save the test for the studies. But now that I've seen the prevalence numbers in Santa Clara and where I live,

Santa Clara County, where I live, it's almost certain I have not had it. So describe it. Tell me more about that. And I could have could have got i mean it's possible it's i know it's it seems outrageous for me to say this but it's possible i got it wrong but it seemed to me that the takeaway from the santa clara study was oh you know a lot more people have got this than you think and the takeaway from the mlb study is actually no it's not really it's not really it's it's a similar similar thing so like the the thing about the Santa Clara study and MLB's share in common is, you know, we found roughly 3% in Santa Clara. L.A. County, we found 4%. That is not a big number if you're thinking about how many people in the population are

still susceptible to disease. I'm sorry, haven't had it yet. That's a huge number of people still left over. It's a big number relative to the case's a huge number of people still left over. It's a big number relative to the case counts, the number of people that you see on that Johns Hopkins map with the big red circles. That undercounts the number of people that have had it by about 50-fold. So it's big and small sort of at the same time.

And that's true, I think, for the MLB study, although it's obviously on the smaller range than on the bigger range compared to the Santa Clara or the LA studies. Okay, so I just wanted to, we're going to talk about science too, and I'm going to, when we talk about the science, I'm going to pretend I know all about it too. So just to forewarn you that I'm going to pretend I understand any of these concepts. Before we do, I was talking about four other people the other day. Now, these are smart people and they read the news and they keep up and they do all sorts of things. And I've had this experience with a bunch of people lately, smart people, well-informed people. We all have a different set of facts that we seem to be relying on. Some will say, oh, no, no, I hear that in New York.

Well, I hear, no, I just read. And it seems to me that whatever's happening in the translation of this testing data, this research through the media lens to the American people reading the newspaper or watching TV, whatever's happening, whatever's happening, this, this, this, a distortion field. And so I'm asking you, what do you think if I'm just a person and I'm, you know, people listening to podcasts, they're smart, they're connected, they pay attention to the world around them. What would you like to tell them about how to read and digest studies like yours or, or, or the latest report from the CDC? What kind of stance should we have? Because I feel

like we're all getting a different message, even though we're listening to the same people. Yeah, I mean, that's a really good question. And I've been pondering this also. I mean, I have sort of two observations about this. So one is that you have to leave yourself open to being surprised, right? So if you sit and read the news with very strong priors, oh yeah, the only thing that matters is the Johns Hopkins case count, or, you know, I'm just going to track the fraction positive PCR test today, or whatever it is that you focus on, you're not leaving yourself open to being surprised by new and different evidence. So I think there's some aspect, I mean, obviously, you want to be careful about every single new thing, but you should leave yourself open to

changing your views pretty fundamentally, because this is a new disease and we're still learning a lot about this kind of every day. And so the gotcha game is probably not productive. It's not useful, right? I mean, I expect to learn a lot about this disease over time, and I expect that some of the stuff that I believe now is going to turn out to be not right. That's the way that new diseases work, science works. I mean, you should expect that. So early on, I, early on, I read a thing, I read a bunch of things and I thought, okay, I got it. I just have to keep an eye on the

R naught number, right? The rate of infection number. That's what I want. I want it to be below one. And when it's below one, we can all come out and we can all, you know, I can go back and get a drink in my local bar. Uh, how I? So R-naught is the how many people are infected by the first person who gets the virus. How many people does that first person infect? So that's a technical number that relates to the rate of hurt, like how high the fraction has to be before you get herd immunity. But there's something close to what you're talking about, which is like, how many people does each person currently with the virus do they infect?

The problem with the reasoning about it just has to be less than one is, if it's lockdowns that produce it less than one, then when you lift the lockdowns, it's gonna go up, right? It might go above one. Is the goal to keep the virus spread so that each person infected infects only one other person? I mean, you know, genius. That is the first time I have ever, ever grasped that concept, the question of how many people. And so there are two ways. If I have the disease

and I'm standing in a parking lot, there are two ways I can avoid infecting other people. One, the parking lot is empty. We're on lockdown and there's nobody around for me to infect. The other way is the parking lot is full of people, but they've all already had it. Yeah. And those are just absolutely fundamentally different policy. They imply absolutely fundamentally different policies, right? Yes, yes. I mean, so I think one is a lockdown essentially forever. It'll slow the

spread forever. That is a policy, and it will reduce COVID deaths. Absolutely. The other is, well, we have to get on with our lives, and we're going to have to deal with COVID just the same way we deal with, I mean, not exactly the same because it's a very deadly disease, but we have other deadly diseases we deal with as well. And we'll have to learn to live with it. I mean, the in-between is there's a massive technological breakthrough that solves the thing and we're all safe. I mean, so I think those are kind of the three endpoints that people think about. Can I ask a question? I know James wants to jump in. I got one more question. So in your brain, because in my brain, I'm trying to construct a graph of two intersecting lines. One is some metric that measures safety.

And maybe it's R-naught, maybe it's R-naught adjusted, maybe it's, I don't know what it is, it's some number, and some number that represents economic disaster. And I'm willing to do a lot while the economic disaster line is not terrible, not the worst thing ever, not unrecoverable from, and I'm willing to do a lot of economic damage, frankly, if that R number or whatever that number is, is too high. What are those two numbers or is that the big question that nobody knows? Do you know, am I making any sense? I mean, that's the right way to think about it. Unfortunately, I think what we've done from a policy point of view is we think only about the COVID harm. Right.

All of the policymaking is focused on that. And very little is focused on the harms that are directly attributable to the lockdowns and other policies to slow COVID. And as I've said lots of times, and I think this is really important to remember, we're not just talking about dollars, people unemployed, although those are harmful. We're talking about lives, people who delay chemotherapy, people who don't get their kids vaccinated with measles, you know, MMR vaccines. You know, sort of, I just heard that global vaccination efforts are being curtailed because of COVID.

I mean, I think the lockdown efforts are going to cause a lot of harm to lives. And I think it doesn't make sense to me to not include those in the policy calculus. You need to have both. And it's exactly the way you put it. There's two, and they trade off against each other. I mean, I have a very strong prior, I admit, about where that lies. I mean, I think my prior is that we're likely going to end up killing more people than we than we save with these with these like dramatic lockdowns. But I might be wrong. But so let's have a let's let's let's have modeling around that. I mean, the modeling around COVID is uncertain. People say the modeling around those lives lost is uncertain. But how is that different than the modeling around COVID?

The idea isn't to have certain models that we only count the costs if we're certain about them. We count for the uncertainty and we count for all of the costs and benefits together. That's the right way to do policymaking around this. Jay, I read something the other day that was absolutely terrifying. And we'll get to that right after this word from our sponsor. You know, in a time when self-care is more important than ever, every day now is an opportunity to skip damaging styling tools and chemicals that you dump on your head and focus on better hair growth from within. Nutrafol is formulated with potent botanicals to help you grow hair as strong as you are,

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Promo code Ricochet for hair as strong as you are. Thanks to Nutrafol for joining the Ricochet podcast. Jay, you talked before about keeping open to new information. I am. I try to look at everything. I don't try to confirm my priors. I wince when I see some stuff. I'm happy when I see some others. I seem to be operating on a completely different data set than everybody wants to stay home forever. But then you read something that just upends your world. The news media loves the worst possible thing they can tell you these days. I rarely see anything that's remotely hopeful. But this story said a new study shows that droplets emitted from COVID positive patients can remain suspended in the air for eight minutes.

This is a legitimate. This may have been the Washington Post for all I know, which it's just it's one of those things that says, okay, I got to wear a mask everywhere in the house now constantly, even though the mask probably isn't going to do any good. When you read something like that, you have to, you know, you think, well, do I have to readjust everything that I'm thinking in the way that I'm living now? And then you read something else a little bit later that upends that particular idea. And so while we should be open to new information, it's hard to know what the baseline is here. We're all just flailing around, buffeted by one story from one side to the other. If we are to remain open for what kind of information should we be keen to prioritize, I guess is what I'm saying.

You know, the little anecdote, horror stuff that comes out, or just solve a problem. So take that droplet spread story, right? If it's not accompanied by some estimate of what is the marginal effect on my risk of dying from COVID, I mean, I'll look at it and say, that's interesting. Should it change my behavior? Maybe in a crowded room where people are singing. Maybe not in other places. I don't know. I mean, I think it has to be put in some perspective. Or maybe it's incumbent on the reader to put it on perspective, because I think a lot of the media, they're not going to do this job often. So I think just like the question to ask yourself is, well, what does it mean about my individual risk to this? And how should I react to this, given this change in my

belief about my individual risk from this? I want to go back to something you said at the start of the show when you were talking about the people who had mild symptoms. We're not sure what mild symptoms are. And it goes to the suspicion that a lot of people have that this has been afoot in the land a lot longer than they say. December, January, I think there's some new studies that say in Washington that it was there earlier than they thought. Everyone's keen to sort of say, you know, I was really sick back in November and December. I know a lot of people who were. They're flattened by it.

Maybe it moved through already. Maybe this is the second wave. So first, what are the mild symptoms? The mild is like, it looks like a cold. Cough, maybe sore throat, sneezing, you know, those kind of cold-like symptoms. It might be a mild fever. So I think that's actually pretty common, that sort of constellation of symptoms. The Santa Clara study and the LA County study and the Miami-Dade County and New York study, they all suggest the same thing. There's just a

vast constellation of symptoms ranging from basically no symptoms, the mild cold flu-like symptoms, all the way up to this horrible viral pneumonia that we see. But the viral pneumonia is just the tip of the iceberg. The vast number of people who have it don't have that viral pneumonia that kills you. So then how about the theory that it's been here longer and that this perhaps is the second wave? Some of that study was fascinating. Apparently apparently some, uh, someone in Washington state, I think was, they, they, they had taken blood from her in, um, in December, I believe. And they found that that her blood from December was COVID positive, which is fascinating. It means

it was, it was definitely in the country earlier, but at the same time, if let's say she was the first patient, um, in Washington state in December, I don't know when, December, mid-December, late December, whatever it is. Well, she spread it to only a few people. It's not going to be, it won't have had the time for the exponential growth for everyone to have gotten it by then. Certainly, though, we had no lockdown in December, January, February, even into the middle of March almost, right? It should have spread. I mean, from that, we kind of said we can get some sense that it spread a lot, but it didn't spread maybe as much as the, I mean, it's interesting.

Like I said, when you push back the start date, the models predict that there should be a higher fraction of people infected now with it. And it was unimpeded spread, right, from then to from January, from, let's say, middle of December or whenever that study says they found the first case to the middle of March. Well, I mean, I think we can get a pretty good estimate then of how fast the disease spreads that are not from it. Right. Well, the popular view seems to be that you have one person with a bad cough and roomy eyes staggering through the mall, and then the next thing you know, you've got dead bodies by the thousands in the armory. When in truth, it seems, at least in the Pacific Northwest,

what happened was that you had several workers who were infected who worked in several different nursing homes and brought the disease to those places that way. So that's one way it happened there. You had a super spreader event in Boston. You have New York with a subway. Every place is different. But if we look at this now from what we know, does it seem likely that perhaps all of these stories about diminished cell phone traffic at the Wuhan lab in October for two weeks, that that's probably when it got out.

It moved then over across the Silk Road to Europe and New York got hit by the Europe variant. The West Coast got hit by some other variant that was coming from from China. I mean, are we seeing with a certain amount of confidence how this probably happened? And again, the question is, are we now in the second wave or still dealing with the first? James, I don't know. I mean, I don't have any access to any special information about the Wuhan lab or anything. I mean, we almost certainly know that started in China and I've seen different origin stories about it. And I don't I don't have the information to be able to tell the difference between the origin stories. The date, October versus December.

I mean, I think if this story I just read about the woman's blood is right, you know, from mid-December, testing positive for COVID. Well, I mean, that pushes the date back in the United States to then. We're going to need more work to, at least as far as I'm concerned, to convince me that it was started a huge bit earlier than that. October, maybe it's possible. If it did start in October, it's not that infectious in some sense. It took a good long time to get up to speed, even in Wuhan then. Hey, Jay, Peter here. Could I take you back to the costs of the lockdown?

And just, I'm about to say lightning round, quick answers. Of course, you can't do that with science. And I know I can't do it with my friend Jay, but to the extent that we can. The costs of the lockdown here in the U.S., do we know with some certainty that a lot of people are missing tests and treatment because they're afraid of going to the hospital so that there will be quite straightforward medical costs of the lockdown? Is that fair? Completely fair. We've had a big bailout of hospitals because the hospitals have very few patients.

Those, the people that are staying away from the hospitals aren't, I mean, their health costs to be paid for that. Hospitals are there for a reason. Right. Okay. So I got a robo call from my medical provider the other day urging me to come in for a colonoscopy. Well, I'm not eager for that in the first place, but right about now, I think I'll give it a pass. Okay, then what about, so there are direct medical costs because people are not getting tests, they're not getting their

colonoscopies, they're not getting their PS tests, they're not getting their pap smears, and what about actual treatments? People who have heart trouble or people are missing treatments? There's evidence of this? We know that. People are missing chemotherapy. People are missing checks for their diabetes. All of these things, I think, have slipped by the wayside. Not entirely, but in large measure.

And because of the, you know, I mean, at first it was very reasonable. We're holding our hospitals open for the flood of cases that are going to come from COVID. I mean, the flood, the flood, except, okay, fine. Then a somewhat wider scope. We used to hear about when the press could blame it all on capitalism, on the workings of the free markets, they called it all deaths of despair. And that was, as I understand it, the argument ran through Appalachia, through former manufacturing centers of the country. The argument was that all the capitalists move manufacturing to Mexico and China, and these people are suddenly unemployed and they become opioid addicts and

alcoholics. And we actually see a shortening for the first time in, I don't know, decades, possibly ever. We actually see the lifespan of, I think it was white Americans, white American males, I think it was, the lifespan shrinking. That was because of unemployment. We now, and that was, again, they called it deaths of despair when they could use it to attack the system. Now, the unemployment rate is much higher than it ever was during the 90s and the early 2000s, what about these so-called deaths of despair? Is that something that's likely to develop? Seems like it. I mean, 30% unemployment, I guess it partly depends on how long this depression lasts.

I mean, I'm not a macroeconomist, but many of my macro friends tell me that this is going to be the biggest depression we've seen maybe since the Great Depression. So entirely reasonable to suppose that there will be heavy costs as a result of the lockdown in the sort of looser, not people missing treatments, but just the loose kind of degrading of lifestyle, the things associated with depression, lower levels of income, and so forth. Is that right? Yeah. I mean, I fully anticipate those deaths of despair to return. Got it. And then last question on this cost of lockdown. What about the rest of the world? What do we know about? I don't even know how to frame the question, Dave, but we've talked about

this, that you have family back in India. What about the costs to poorer countries of the Western world shutting down? It's going to be enormous, and it's going to be heartbreaking. I mean, I told you earlier that global vaccination efforts have been curtailed. That means those diseases, those vaccines to prevent against will return. Antimalaria, mosquito efforts, eradication efforts or reduction efforts have been curtailed. Malaria will come back. Tuberculosis treatment efforts have been stopped, more or less. Tuberculosis will start to rise.

Starvation of kids, millions of kids around the world. The poor in every poor country will suffer enormous hurt from the depression caused by the lockdowns. Okay, so there are a series of costs, and they are large costs. And anyone with a heart would recognize that they need to be weighed. Do you see any evidence that public health officials and that the politicians who are the various governors, President Trump himself, do you see any evidence that they're making a serious effort to weigh these costs, to calculate them in some rigorous way? I don't, Peter. I don't. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't see that yet. Okay. Last couple of questions.

Do we know enough now, and I mean really feel fairly confident enough, to begin lifting the lockdown in a reasonable way? So do we know that kids are not really at danger? Could we, of course, it's going to be summer here, but could we reopen schools? Could we let them reopen parks, let them play tennis and soccer? Do we know that? Do we know that nursing homes are so much of a special locus that we can open up bits of the rest of the economy as long as we pay special attention to testing in nursing homes and disinfecting, making sure that people who enter nursing homes to visit older people. You see the point I'm making. Do we know enough to start ending the lockdown intelligently?

I do. I think we've learned a lot about who is really at risk from this disease in the last few months. And we should make use of that knowledge. I completely agree with your policy about nursing homes. That should be the focus of our testing because that's who is at high risk. That should be the focus of our testing, because that's who's at high risk. That should be the focus of our efforts of protection. A very large fraction of the deaths, a distressingly large fraction of the deaths that have happened in the last few months have been nursing home residents across the country. As far as schools, I think that on balance, the evidence suggests that kids are at much, much lower risk from this, from dying.

They're also at lower risk of spreading it to parents. There's some data from Iceland that suggests that, some strong data. There's some rare conditions people think that kids might be subject to, but that's a very small number of cases relative to the fact that, you know, very few kids die from this disease. So, I mean, I think cautiously opening up schools in some way, I mean, you know, their cost of kids skipping school, I mean, which lasts generations, right? If you have a full year of school gone for, you know, sort of substandard schooling for the whole country, a whole year of schooling, that's an enormous loss of human capital that'll last a long time. Hey, Jay, it's Rob again. So tomorrow morning,

the American politicians, governors and president alike com come to the senses and they say this is a day we're not to do this anymore uh... and just say every any everything's open what should what precautions should i take is a sovereign citizen who is on his own kinda i got up a i got a i got to carry me what what what's what are the one of the practical smart uh... uh smart precautions and processes I should put into my daily life knowing what we know right now? If, you know, we wake up tomorrow and all of this confinement and shelter in place, all these orders are rescinded.

What do I got to do? So can I address something slightly different? Sure. I mean, it's related, but slightly different. I think people are going to answer that question very differently. I mean, because when you lift the lockdown orders, it's not like people won't be reacting to the possibility of a virus infecting you. They're still going to be reacting to that. But they're going to be reacting in very different ways related to sort of how, you know, their view of the risk posed to them by the virus. Some people will be wearing masks and staying far away from you, giving you nasty looks if you get anywhere near them.

And, you know, others will be, others will stay, still stay at home even if the lockdown order is lifted, you know, whereas others will be freely going everywhere as if will be freely going everywhere as if there's no risk to themselves. The main thing I would, I mean, I don't know how to put this. I mean, I'm going to sound like a moral scold, but let's be nice to each other. Because we're going to start to judge each other on the basis of which camp we fall in. Right. But I mean, OK, so I'm... Jay, I'm so happy to hear you say that to Rob.

Yeah, right. Well, I forget. I reject it. OK, so I'm a gentleman of a certain age, right? I'm not in my 30s. I'm not in my 40s. I'm in my early 50s. Tomorrow morning, I get the news. Everything's open. Can I go to a restaurant?

Can I go to a bar? I mean, doctor, I would be careful about going to a crowded restaurant, but I would go to a takeout restaurant personally. If you're asking me personally. Yeah, no, that's kind of what I'm saying so speaking as your oldest friend rob go ahead yeah right right so that's so so being prudent doesn't mean uh hey it's all back to normal yeah i think that's going to take a long time okay i mean like i said we're going to need to learn to live with it and uh part of that will be figuring out what what that normal really means um i i think, once we start to open up, people will be cautious. I mean, I think there'll be people who go to the next concert they can go to. But I think that will be very difficult for a lot of people.

I mean, for me personally, I'm going to go to restaurants and do takeout orders initially. I'll go to – I would love dearly to be able to teach classes in person, though I don't think Stanford will let me do that without wearing a heavy mask so no one can hear my voice. Again, I'd be willing to take the risk of that to be exposed to Stanford students. From that, I mean, from a personal point of view, to be able to teach my students is more important to me than the risk of dying from getting COVID and dying. But I think that's the thing. I think every single person is going to have to ask that question

themselves. Jay, Peter here. Listen, there's one I just have to ask. I grew up in upstate New York, and this is the eternal question for us. And you're in a position, for somebody who grew up watching baseball in New York, although I live in California now, as you well know, I just have to ask. You're in a position to answer it decisively from the MLB study. Is it true that the Yankees are just sicker than the Mets? I have no comment. Drat. James, over to you. Well, two things. That's I have no comment. James, over to you.

Well, two things. And Peter always says last question. I got to one is economics and has to do with your profession of teaching. My daughter right now, she should be in Boston University, but she's home and she's learning in the basement. And there's absolutely no way that her doing what she's doing on the screen is worth what I'm paying for it. And an awful lot of people are going to look at this and say, hold on a second. These ridiculous sums of money simply cannot be justified by somebody talking to you on a computer. Does this seem to you like unless they get back next fall, that the whole higher education model kind of gets looked at askance

because parents are going to say, I'm paying $30,000 essentially for her to watch a YouTube video? Yeah, I think that's going to be a serious problem. I think a lot of kids and a lot of parents are going to say, well, why don't we just wait a year? And I think a lot of places that don't have the kind of endowment that Stanford has, they're going to be in danger. Yeah, so I think the answer is yeah. I think that's going to be a big problem for a lot of colleges around the country. Okay. And last question, of course.

A couple of weeks ago, the Atlantic Magazine was saying that Georgia is about to experiment in human sacrifice and doing other stories saying they're death merchants. They're all going to be gone. And now it doesn't seem as if Florida and Georgia are having the death tolls that a lot of people in the media were kind of sort of hoping for in a way. Now, why is, I mean, I know it's a big, complex story. Why have those examples worked out better? And is there anything the rest of us can take? Or are they sort of location specific? You can't apply the Florida model to the Pacific Northwest. You can't apply California to Detroit, et cetera. I've drawn two lessons from this. So one is the models that we have, they were wrong. I mean, they just, they made predictions that just have not borne out.

Now we don't know yet because you need to wait for a longer-term outcome than just the few weeks that it's been since some of the states have started to lift up. And I fully count on my fellow economists just to get busy trying to analyze that. As to your second question, I think that there are huge differences across places. I mean, New York City has had an enormously different experience with the epidemic than Santa Clara County, for instance. And trying to say one place generalizes to everywhere, it seems just not right. What we need really is to understand what types of places we should expect to have different types of things

happening. And I think our models aren't there yet. Jay, thanks for being with us today. You're our Fauci and we really appreciate the time. Oh, it's my pleasure to be here. By the way,

I lose to my, my son in chess all the time. So that's not, unfortunately, not a thing. No, no. If you, if at the end of so that's not, unfortunately, not a thing. If at the end of 40 minutes of conversation you can remember what was said at the very top introducing you, I'm even more impressed than I was

before this began. Thanks a lot. We'll see you again. Jay, thank you. Bye, Rob. Bye, Peter. Rob, you were about to say something. I guess what I mean is about what? Maybe I'm not watching the wrong TV or I'm reading the wrong articles, but I feel, that clarifies for me, at least for the next week before I spin out again, what's really happening. And I'm just, I guess my, on the one hand, I'm super proud. We do the podcast. If you listen to this podcast, you are now one of the best informed Americans around. And you are also not screaming hysterically about this or that. But I just But my new jag for the past 24 hours has

been just to understand the total and complete bankrupt failure of the media and the political class compared to the total and complete thoughtful, smart judgment, I mean, heroism of the American people compared to the American people. By the way, I would add to that. Everyone on TV, everyone. I mean, Fox News, I mean, all of them. And everybody in the political class disappeared tomorrow. The country would be in much better shape. And I'm sure that other people thought that, but I really feel it today. I would add to the political class and to journalists, which you mentioned, I'm afraid I would add what we've seen so far of the public health officials. Jay himself just made this absolutely astounding point that he sees no evidence that they are

weighing against what they're doing to flatten the COVID curve, that they're making any effort to weigh against that. People not showing up for their chemotherapy, people that were inflicting on poor countries. And there's just that to me is just shocking. But I would say to that, I mean, I agree with you basically, but I'd say that that's kind of not their job. Right. I mean, it's OK for me. Like my lawyer, my lawyer's job is to tell me, don't do this. You're going to be exposed or this or that, right? My doctor's job is to tell me, listen, I know you love your cigars, but you should not smoke them. I get that.

And I'm smart, and I think, oh, I can smoke a few. Their job is to tell me to be really super safe. And but that is they should not be given sovereign rights over me as a citizen. And and the politicians seem to be shrugging and saying, well, it's all about indemnification. Right. Well, that's what the lawyer says. Lawyer tells you this and like, OK, just remember to write, sign this piece of paper. If you sign this piece of paper, then your employer is indemnified. So should we call out the few people who the few figures? By the way, that strikes me as a totally fair point. It's up to the elected officials to have the courage to say thank you very much, public health officials. I take that into account. And I take responsibility. All right. So I I just have been terribly impressed by the current governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who has just refused to shut down his state. Now, maybe you could say in retrospect, he was slow in closing some beaches at the very beginning of the.

But in general, he's been paying a lot of attention. He's been doing, excuse me, a lot of attention to what the public health officials have been telling him. He's been doing a wonderful job in communicating to the public. Here's what we're doing next and here's why we're doing it. He has been deferring to people on the ground. The situation in Jacksonville is going to be way different from the situation in Miami-Dade, which is going to be way different from the situation in Pensacola. And he's so there are a few. I'm also impressed by Governor Abbott of Texas. No buddy who's listened to me for a while will be surprised by that. But Ron DeSantis, I think, is a star here. There are a few examples of courage and prudence and correct balance and

taking responsibility. Yeah, I mean, look, those governors know that if they get it wrong, right, they're going to get blamed. I mean, whether that's fair or not fair. Unless they're in New York. That's right. Yes, yes, that's right. If they're wafted aloft by the gusts of the media exhalations, then they're going to be fine. But, you know, Cuomo may end up being president at the end of this after having said, I mean, literally the very same party in media that accused Mitt

Romney of pushing grandma off the cliff in a singular example, one grandma would be more than happy to vote for somebody who sent 17, 2000 of them off to their quietus. I know you're right, Rob. I mean, you can't, you listen to the fire inspector, but you don't let them design your building because then, you know, no building is over four stories and they're all made completely out of concrete. And the, you know, the stairwells are nine yards wide, but when Peter said take responsibility, that's true. But if you look at Michigan, you have a governor who seems to think that by the maximalist position is the one that will be the safest for her politically, because then she can't be accused of anything. So, I mean, in Minnesota, I really been all over the road, but the malls are opening on Monday and I'm going to the mall. Oh, good for you. I'm going to Macy's.

Somebody would say, well, why can't you buy pants online? Well, I could. I actually like to try them on beforehand. But more to the point, I would like the person standing behind the counter at Macy's, who's probably going to be wearing a mask, to have a job. That's part of getting out and seeing things and feeling things and hearing the storm music and all, seeing the styles and all the arrays of ties and the rest of it. I'm telling you, on a good day, Macy's has social distancing of people 18 yards apart. It's nothing

like Target. Somebody sneezes over in ties, it's going to take a long time. If that virus from somebody sneezing in ties, if that virus is alive by the time it gets over to socks, it deserves to infect me and I deserve to be infected. So I'm going back because I've listened to everything that they've said and I just can't say it anymore. But when I go on Reddit and I hear people say, well, I'm not going out, I only go out for groceries every three weeks. I just have the vision of somebody who at this point is like in the end stages of a Zeger and Evans lyric. They're just a white homunculus being fed by tubes, as they said, in a dark room, staring at a flickering screen. Have you guys, by the way, noticed the more time you spend lately? Let me adjust that for a minute. Okay, go ahead. Locked down. I have

found that since I'm spending more time in my office looking at screens, I'm starting to get like these eye twitches that turn into complete total face twitches until I end up look like Professor Erwin Corey at the end of the day. I'm nothing like that. Well, my glasses probably aren't as good as they should be. If I was smart, I'd go to the optometrist. Oh, that's right. You can't. But when you do, maybe you could go and you could get fitted for some contact lenses.

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All right, not bad. Not bad. You can fix that in post if you wanted to. Oh, no. Post of the Week is Need Help With Research. It's by Thistle. And the reason that, of course, I'm doing this is that the very first line is, this is my first post, at which point we all say, welcome, gaba, gaba, hey, one of us.

And Thistle's point was his 24-year-old daughter has been living with him since mid-March because she left college or left her midtown Manhattan apartment. She's been working from home. She's in Virginia. And she and her boyfriend are steeped in the narrative that we're all going to die since the Hick states are slowly coming out of lockdown. So what Thistle asked for was reasonable news sources, you know, things like Dr. J, that he could point Thistle to,

Thistle, the daughter, and, you know, sort of separate her from her clammy, dreaded panic, which so many people have. They're consumed by it. It's a straitjacket they cannot get out of. And so I like the post for that reason, everybody chipping in and giving a little kind advice on what to do and how to move her towards the light, shall we say. Yeah, I mean, but I think that's what I love about that question is, isn't it?

I mean, it's my question, too. It's like, I mean, part of it is just this modern, modern know when this will end, which is not the same thing as saying I want it to end. It's saying I want to know when it will, I want to know. I want to, I just want to know. And if we feel entitled to know, I should be able to Google when will this end and come up with an answer. It should be on the first page of results, right? I don't want to go to page two. I want to go to page one. And, of course, and, you know, patiently,

people like Dr. J say patiently, well, there is no answer for that. You just, you have to, you know, you just have to wait. And there are people making inquiries and investigations into that answer. But just because it's, you know, not on your timetable,

there's no reason to get angry. But I do understand the idea of like, just give me one or two places I can go for some reasonable, thoughtful, calm, but still sober voices. Like Dr. J, I thought was

great, but also at the end, he said, this is serious, he's going to be with us for a while. And I thought, oh man, I just want to know when it'll be over. Right. By the way, may I register a note, not just of admiration for James, which I do all the time, but this time it's awe. He drove this whole show, this whole interview with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya just to set up the Lilacs post of the week. That's so true.

Yes. I thought it was a genuine compliment coming down the bike. No, more fool me. Uh, you know, Rob, you're right. We want to know, and we don't, and it's frustrating, but I'll tell you, I think I know when part of it, when, when this began and we're all stuck at home and watching television, we would see things from the before times that horrified us. Look at all those people in a bar. Look at all those people shaking hands. Look at this world where everybody's walking on a sidewalk without, and it was horrifying. At some point though, it changes and you're no longer horrified

by those old image. You hunger for them. And there is, there's this, this desire to live, to get out there, you know and the herd immunity will be not when or not when everybody's got it in some way or the other but it'll be when everybody has that feeling that they that they simply can't deny if this had begun in the fall we would be all locked down through winter and it'd be a different situation and the economic damage would have been you know catastrophic that happens That happens in Minneapolis every winter anyway. No, Wheeler. We get out by gum, by gosh, by golly.

We have a whole skyway system on the second floor that is designed to let people go around. And, you know, yes. I was hoping you weren't wrapping it up because I do want to say one more thing before you wrap it up. Okay. But I don't want to interrupt your non-wrapping it up if you were not wrapping it up. Let me interrupt your interruption of his wrapping it up because I do want to say one more thing before you wrap it up, but, but I don't want to, I don't want to interrupt your non-wrapping it up if you were not wrapping it up. Let me interrupt your interruption of his, of his wrapping it up. And I'm now, I'm now wrapping up

the non-wrapping up that I was doing. Oh, great. Oh, excellent. Okay. To James's point, I just want to say this. So ordinarily when we record these podcasts, I become incensed when somebody in my own neighborhood, when there's this distant noise and Scott has to say, what's going on of a leaf blower or a lawnmower? And today I heard a little of that and my heart leapt. And when James said, oh, there's an airplane flying overhead, my heart leapt. And when Rob, there was street noise from Manhattan because Rob is outside all the background noise that is that's just just, it means life. I am literally under the flight path of the airport, right?

And when I hear a plane now, I feel like somebody on Gilligan's Island looking up and waving. Should I arrange the frickin' coconuts to spell out a word? It's movie star Dash Riprox. Well, we all have our own stories, right? Look, we all have our, this is Ricochet, we all have our own opinions and we all have our own positions and we all have our own, you know, political analyses of these things. But we also all have our own story. And so we are at Ricochet, we're doing the COVID-19 online symposium. If you remember, we really want you to do this.

If you're so inclined, if you have a story, we want you to share your story. We've launched this online symposium to chronicle the effects of the coronavirus and associated lockdowns on normal Americans. So we need your help to make it work. We already know what the pundits think. We already know what even the experts think and the policy wants. But the history of this is not going to be written that way. The history of this is going to be written by the stories that people tell. Um, and we're right now we're leaving that out. So, uh, whoever you are, whatever you do, a teacher, nurse, small business owner, parent, whatever, we want to give you a voice and we want you to go, uh, and submit your story. Um, any member could submit their story. 500 to 1,000 words is the ideal

just because we want people to read them all. And put them on the member feed, and we're going to choose to select a few to go to our website every day. And just tag your post, COVID Symposium, so it doesn't get lost. And then eventually we're going to do something with them. I don't know what we're going to do with them,

but it feels to me like this could be a really, really, really important special project. And it's perfect for Ricochet members because you're already on top of it all. And you've already got great stories. And you're already sharing stories on the member feed. So I'm very pleased to have had a new member post for the James Lilac's Post of the Week. And I hope that we get other new members or Shire members just to tell us the story. It just, uh, you got, you know, a thousand words, not that much, um, 500, a thousand words. Um, what's this been like, what have you learned?

What have you not learned? What's been a surprise? Um, what have been the moments of grace? What have been the moments of just, you don't want to tear your hair out? All those stories are important and will paint the picture, not just for us now, but for the future. Is that like your elevator pitch? No, no, it should be, right? But it was a long elevator ride. That's what I'm saying. We would require a hand-cranked elevator going to the top of the Chrysler building. You are an old fashioned guy.

And I like that about you. Hey, we got one last thing to say before we wrap up. But before we do, I got to tell you, this podcast was brought to you by who? Well, the zebra neutral fall and avail,

please support them for supporting us. And you get lots of great stuff. You get lower rates, get more hair, you get better contacts. You'll be a better person when you come out of lockdown. And please, please take a minute to leave a five

star review on that Apple podcast site. The reviews allow new listeners to discover us. And then we'll pop up on that page that people go to when they want to discover new podcasts and they'll find the Ricochet Network and glory will happen to them and they'll be grateful forever. So last thing we have to say, I absolutely have nothing more to say except that the weekend now feels a little bit more like a weekend the more we get back to normal. I went to work every day this week. I got in my car. I put on a shirt and tie.

I did. I got in my car and I drove to work and I went to my desk because I was tired of not being able to do so. I can do so since I'm essential. And I just needed that to put on the old uniform and sort of live out the, you know, what the old ways were like. And in some sense, I felt like Chuck Heston driving around LA and the Omega Man, because I'm looking at calendars that haven't changed since March on people's desks. All the monitors are gone. And it's a bit sad, but the signs of life are starting to come back. And it was good. It was great.

It felt good to be useful again, and that's how it felt. And I imagine that you guys, too, are anxious for me to shut up so you can get back to your lives on your Fridays. So any parting words for the audience, or should we just say wave and goodbye? You just did a 10-second weeping sound that was, I got it. Nobody else got it, but i got it that was burt laur as the cowardly lion and it was perfect that wasn't burt laur that wasn't burt laur if i'd been burt laur if i'd been burt laur if i'd been burt laur i would have said things twice i would have said things twice oh man once again connecting with the young people, I see.

Come on, that movie was a shot. The movie only dates to 1939. Yeah, right. Honest to God, if you're saying that the younger generation doesn't know anything about The Wizard of Oz, that's one of those things that vaults from generation over generation to generation. Of course they did. If I went down into the cowardly line right now, what do you think my daughter would say? I think your daughter would say, why are you doing that weird thing you always do, Dad, that I don't relate to?

Are you having a stroke? I know that's what she said. All right, everybody, that's it. Thank you for listening. Enough of this. I hope you learned as much as we did, and we'll see you in the comments, of course, at Ricochet 4.0 next week. Next week, fellas. And boys, take care of yourselves in the meantime. We don't want to give the liberals the satisfaction.

All right. Gonna tell Aunt Mary about Uncle John He claimed he has a misery But he's having a lot of fun Oh, baby Yes, baby Woo, baby Having me some fun tonight.

Yeah. Well, long tall Sally, she be of a special guy. Everything that Uncle John need. Oh, baby. Yes, baby. Woo, baby. Having some fun tonight. Yeah.

Well, I saw Uncle joined with bald head Sally He saw Mary coming and he ducked back in the alley Oh, baby Yes, baby Ooh, baby Having some fun tonight Yeah Ricochet. Join the conversation.

How's that? Jay, Peter here. I just want to warn you that James and Rob and I have all agreed that the lockdown must remain permanent, and we're about to exclude you. That's what I thought you thought, Peter.