What A Day - Airborne In The USA With Dr. Abdul El-Sayed

Episode Date: November 18, 2020

The US is in an extremely dangerous period of the pandemic, with cases and hospitalizations at record highs, holidays fast approaching, and little in the way of a federal response. Our guest host for today —epidemiologist and former Detroit health commissioner Dr. Abdul El-Sayed — answers our questions about the current state of affairs, vaccine updates, Thanksgiving, and what gives him hope about a Biden administration. And in headlines: Hurricane Iota update in Central America, Apple faces privacy lawsuit in Europe, and Dolly helped get us the Moderna vaccine.Show Links:Listen to America Dissected crooked.com/americadissectedShop the Crooked Store store.crooked.com

It's Wednesday, November 18th. I am Gideon Resnick. And I'm Dr. Abdul El-Sayed with the impossible task of filling in for Akilah Hughes. And this is what a day where we are willing to pay Rudy Giuliani his rate of $20,000 a day to just simply try meditation. Yo, where's LeBron James in that Calm.com app? I feel like we need a Rudy Giuliani version. And it's just Donald Trump screaming into a microphone. That helps the man sleep. Doesn't help me sleep, but you know, to each their own. All right, Abdul, thank you so much for being on the show today.

I am incredibly grateful to be here. It is impossible to fill in for the indomitable Akil Hughes, but I'll do my best. Thank you. Yeah, you always do. It's always a pleasure. So for those of you who don't know, Abdul is a physician and epidemiologist, a progressive activist, and Detroit's former health commissioner, just to name a few things. He also has a pod with Crooked called America Dissected, which we've told you a million times to listen to. And if you aren't already, we're going to tell you again, listen to it. We've had him on the show before to talk about the pandemic. He is back again today to take some more questions from us. So let's just

roll right into it. So before we started recording, you were talking about this current phase of the pandemic in a really striking way that stuck with me. You were saying that this is basically going to be the phase that is talked about in history books. Can you get into that a little bit more? That's right. You know, we right now are living through this pandemic, and all of us remember the shock of the first several months. But when you compare both the positivity rate, the degree to which this virus has spread, and the rate of growth in viral

transmission in potential deaths, the part of the pandemic that historians are going to write about isn't what happened in March and April. It's what's happening right now. And this follows the history books when we look at the 1918 flu pandemic. You had a first wave in the spring, and then it went dormant in the summer, and then it spiked majorly in the winter months. And we're headed into those same winter months. So this is the pandemic. When we talk about the pandemic hereafter, we're going to be pointing to this moment. And so we've got to bring the same kind of care and the same kind of focus on protecting ourselves and our loved ones that we were bringing back in March and April. We know a lot more about this virus,

thankfully. And so, you know, some of the things we were doing, like, you know, wiping down every individual banana, those are things we don't need to do anymore. But when it comes to wearing a mask, when it comes to physical distancing, when it comes to hand hygiene, we know that these work. And these are the times where we need to be doing them. Right. The same practices apply, but the stakes are even higher. That's right. President-elect Biden has been talking about trying to persuade governors into instituting mask mandates, those who haven't already. I wonder, though, if they're not listening now, and there are a lot of people in our country who may not abide for various reasons,

as they haven't so far, what do you think he can actually do to change that? Yeah, believe it or not, Gideon, you know, the last four years taught us anything is that leadership matters. And even if poor failed leadership has created the space where this virus and this pandemic have been politicized, I think President-elect Biden has the opportunity to actually unify people just simply around a coherent message around masks. And so, you know, once you start addressing the norm that people should be wearing masks, that it's a perfectly normal thing to do in the middle of a deadly pandemic that's taken 247,000 lives, I do think it's going to start changing the conversation in a pretty profound way. The other thing here is that, you know, Donald Trump has had such an impact on his followers. And I wonder what the impact of his loss and the way that he has acted since his loss, if that is going

to maybe show him for what he is, you know, the emperor has no mask in this case. And I do hope that that kind of moral leadership will help to turn the tide on masking. But we also, frankly, just need federal policy. And that's something that as soon as he takes office, the president-elect and his team will be in the position to do. Right, right. No, that's a great point. And thinking about these things, too, as it relates to our lives, I'm sure you've been getting a lot of questions about the holidays and thinking through it yourself. So to start, what would you advise people to do when it comes to the question of Thanksgiving? Yeah, for anybody who knows me, they know that I love Thanksgiving. It's my favorite holiday.

It's football and food and family. Those are like three things that I love more than almost anything else. Yeah. family. Those are like three things that I love more than almost anything else. And I'll be honest with you, sometimes in public health, we're not very good at being honest about our emotions, right? There tends to be a, say it with a smile and a twinkle in your teeth and everyone should just abide by it. No, like it sucks that we're not going to have the kind of Thanksgiving that all of us have been looking forward to, particularly after 2020, where we all really could use a little bit more of one another. But here's the thing. We are in nearly unchecked growth right now. And I think about the people that I'd be with during Thanksgiving,

people like my dad, who's getting a little bit older, my grandparents, who have been older for a while. And I think about what it would mean if they were to come together and then get sick. I don't want to be in a situation where we are lamenting Thanksgiving, right? It gives Black Friday a whole different meaning. And so I hope that folks will do this because they recognize that it's more important that we are all here to see next Thanksgiving than it is to try and to force this one. And so I'm not going to do the Friendsgiving that we usually do. And we're going to be socially distanced

and very, very minimal engagement with just our nuclear family. And Zoom is, I spend all my days on Zoom, but it is a powerful tool. And if it connects us to be together so that next year, hopefully we can be together in person, I think it's worth doing. Yeah. And I think I might know your answer to this, given what we were just talking about.

But if you had a situation where there is a quarantine pod that's been a quarantine pod, they're not going to see folks that are older. They're not going to see folks that are older, they're not going to, you know, cross beyond that pod. And everybody, you know, got tested to feel like they're trying to mitigate risk on their way into a gathering. Are the tests themselves reliable enough at this point to give people a good understanding of whether there is presence of the virus or they've been exposed to the virus? Yeah. From what we know, epidemiologists, we calculate this number called the negative predictive value. And that number is 80%. What that tells us is the number of people who test negative were actually negative. And so what you

see is about a 20% slippage there, right? And it really also depends on when you test. If you test a couple of days in advance and it took the test a while to result, then it's possible that you could have been infected in the interim. So look, I'm not going to tell folks how to live their lives. It's not my job. But I will tell folks that the tests are not a perfect tool, but they are better than nothing. But the best way is potentially to limit the size of the number of people who come together, to wear masks, to potentially do it outside if you're in a community where the weather is good. And if you can, use the telecommunications tools that we've got. But this situation sucks.

I really wish that I could tell you that we should all go and enjoy Thanksgiving because it's been a hard year. And that's what I wish I could do. It's just not where we are right now. And so if you're taking measures to protect yourself, that's a good thing. But we all know that this is a matter of scale.

And the best measures to reduce the likelihood of spread is to wear a mask, is to physically distance, and to avoid these kinds of gatherings in the first place. Yeah, I think that's especially useful now that we are coming up on potentially difficult conversations about the holidays. We've talked a lot about things that are terrible and bad, but let's end on this. What makes you the most optimistic about the incoming Biden administration? And then secondarily, maybe on a less optimistic note, how important is it right now that they're able to get access to that HHS information that they need, the other information that they're going to need to make

this transition fluid? I know many of the people that President-elect Biden has appointed either to key transition leadership or to the administration itself. And from top to bottom, these folks that I know are extremely competent, focused on public service for services sake, and care a lot about getting it right. They, you know, double check and cross their T's and dot their I's. And so, you know, you're talking about people who will do an amazing job in whatever role they're put in, and we're lucky enough as a country to have them in positions of leadership on a pandemic. You know, I am worried, though, about the fact that the Trump administration continues to block President-elect and his team from getting critical information. We forget the fact that the

number of appointed officials in the federal government is 4,000 or so. That makes up 0.2% of the federal government. And the amount that happens that the federal government does every day is gargantuan. And the fact that you already have a pretty short time in transition, something like 73 days, and we're losing those critical days for members of President-elect Biden's team to get access to where we are and where we're headed, that really does not bode well for our country, doesn't bode well for the ability of the team to get cracking. But if there was a team who could do it, I'm confident that that the president elect will be will be appointing that kind of team that can get in and day one and start

leading with with competence and compassion. That is definitely reassuring to say the very least. Well, thank you so much again. Always a pleasure. We're going to keep tracking this, but for Squad, and for today's temp check, we are talking about a groundbreaking new technology. That is right. Twitter released Fleets yesterday, a feature that allows users to post content that will disappear after 24 hours, much like Snapchat or Instagram stories. The goal of Fleets, Twitter said, was to let people express themselves in a way that feels safer and lower pressure than tweeting.

Okay. So Abdul, we obviously love it when our favorite websites do big updates. Are you interested in fleets? And if you fleet, what are you going to be fleeting? You know, I just wish that we could go back four years and Twitter could introduce the fleet mode and then put Donald Trump in fleet mode that lasted about one hour. That would have changed the course of history. I think a little, little, a little too little too late. Jack, I appreciate the effort, though. I'll be fleeting. But, you know, I figure like I feel like I figure like if I'm if I'm fleeting, I don't really know the difference between fleeting and tweeting, because at the end of the day, nobody pays attention to what you tweeted like, you know, three days ago. But there's that.

Right. Right. It's just the idea that like it won't live in infamy, you know, in the future. And somebody will screenshot to next to each other and say like, oh, you changed your mind on something. I guess that's the fear here. I don't know or or you're gonna have trolls who just make it a goal to screenshot every fleet from here on out right right there's gonna be like the like the room raider account that exists right now it's gonna be like the same sort of dedicated staff that that screenshots fleets before they're gone um yeah that's that's an unfortunate sentence to have to say and and a one, I think. Yeah, no, it's fleetfollowers.org.

I'm already seeing it. Gideon, are you going to be fleeting or tweeting? I will not be fleeting. I'm trying my hardest to not even tweet as much anymore. I find the task generally appalling. But I think that this is the coward's way out. And I think that if you are going to bear the responsibility of some modicum of following on Twitter, whether it's to make jokes or share public information, put your best stuff out there, you know, put your

best foot forward. Like, let's not mess around with this, like, oh, maybe I want it to disappear, whatever. Maybe just think for a second before you send the actual living tweet. And then you don't even have to fleet, you know? So the answer here is just don't tweet garbage. I mean, honestly, right? Let's get the quality stuff. You know what I mean?

Like, let's just have people stop. Maybe you send a fleet to yourself initially and then check like, is this really stupid? And then you can upgrade if you need these baby steps up to a tweet. Either way, I'm just saying it's the coward's way out. I'm sorry. I mean, I think you just laid out the strategy here, right? A fleet is like a temp check for your Twitter. It is. That's very true. And that is the best way out of this conversation because just like that, we have checked our temps. They are fleeting in terms of temperatures. They're going up and down.

Stay safe, and we'll be back after some ads. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. as a Category 4 hurricane earlier this week. It arrived just two weeks after Hurricane Ada hit the country as a Category 4, and at a time when many were still recovering from floods and landslides. Iota sent 48,000 residents of Nicaragua into government shelters and became the strongest recorded hurricane to make landfall in the country's history. The tropical storm is now traveling up through Central America and is expected to dissipate near El Salvador. Iota is the 30th named hurricane this season, which has been the busiest Atlantic hurricane season on record.

Just a disaster. Apple is facing a new lawsuit in Europe that accuses the company of illegally letting advertisers track its users. The complaint was filed by a European privacy advocacy group called NOIB, an acronym for none of your business, very cheeky, very Euro, which won a landmark legal battle against Facebook in 2015, among other victories. This latest suit concerns Apple's identifier for advertisers, which is a code built into every phone that lets advertisers track users while they're in apps. That code is in iPhones in the US as well, just letting you guys know. As it stands, laws in the EU protect users against external tracking unless they explicitly consent to it. Apple argued that iOS 14 actually does allow users to control whether

apps can track them. But folks, if iPhone people wanted to get deep into their settings, they would simply be Android people. No, I've said that to stay within the limits of the law, Apple phones should be tracker free by default. Personally, I'd always upgrade to tracker because I like to have company wherever I go. Anyway, it's now up to regulators in Germany and Spain to decide whether or not Apple gets fined. Everyone loves Dolly Parton's music, but only the real Dollyheads know about her biopharmaceutical research. Close readers have revealed that Dolly helped fund the development of the Moderna vaccine, which has proven to be nearly 95% effective.

Back in April, Dolly gave $1 million to fund COVID research through Vanderbilt University, some of which went toward this vaccine. Dolly's donations also helped support a convalescent plasma study that went on to raise $34 million

from the NIH, plus promising research into monoclonal antibodies. These are more reasons why we'll always side with her over Jolene. Asked about her philanthropy yesterday on NBC's Today Show, Dolly said this. I'm just happy that anything I do can help somebody else. And when I donated the money

to the COVID fund, I just wanted it to do good. And evidently, it is. And let's just hope we find a cure real soon. And just like that, Dolly has decided that not only is she going to be our moral self through this pandemic, that she is also going to be our vaccination self. And for humanity's sake, President-elect Biden, I really think that Dr. Dolly Parton ought to be a part of the COVID-19 task force. Yeah, co-sign, honestly. And yeah, forget about Jolene for good. You can't run from your problems, but maybe you can escape them on something called a sea scooter. That question was investigated on Monday by financial advisor Matthew Piercy, who is being charged with running

a Ponzi scheme that netted $35 million. So Piercy was pursued by the FBI in a car chase to the banks of Northern California's Lake Shasta, where he pulled what's called a bubbly Madoff and used a submersible watercraft to disappear into the freezing cold lake. Piercy's sea scooter looks kind of like a steering wheel with a propeller on it, and with it, he was able to evade capture underwater for nearly 30 minutes before his arrest. He did not manage to slip away through a portal to Atlantis, which I have to assume was his plan all along. If you want to know what kind of scam this kind of guy is into, it was convincing his fellow parishioners at a local megachurch to give him at least $50,000 each for his upvesting fund, which he claimed involved cryptocurrency mining, but actually involved buying himself two houses and a houseboat.

To be clear, that's like a big sea scooter with a kitchen in it. If convicted, Piercy and his business partner face hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and up to 20-year sentences. To avoid an escape attempt, we recommend that his prison cell does not have a lake. In getting, I just think I just saw a fleet about how Donald Trump had asked to have one of these to get away from the White House on January 20th,

but who knew? Good thing it is disappearing in 24 hours, and those are the headlines. All right. One last thing before we go. New What A Day merch has hit the Crooked store. That includes a hand-poured limited edition jasmine candle that is perfect for winding down after a stressful day of news.

You'll also find hoodies and more WOD gear, folks. And if science is more your game, there's also some new America Dissected merch, hats and sweaters and tees. It's all at crooked.com slash store. Get yours now before they're sold out. That is all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, believe in science and candles,

and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just peer-reviewed articles by professor of biomedical research, Dolly Parton, MD, PhD, What Today is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Abdul El-Sayed. I'm Gideon Resnick. And don't fall for a bubbly Madoff. Don't fall for it. He's going to scoot

right by you under the water and you're going to be at Shasta shaking your head. I'm telling you, Donald Trump is next. It's true. On a sea scooter. Watch out. What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tan is our assistant producer.

Our head writer is John Milstein and our executive producers are Katie Long, Akilah Hughes, and me. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.