Hey guys, I just wanted to take a minute and talk about a few things before getting into
today's video.
First, I just wanted to say thank you for all of the support on my last video, I haven't
had the time to respond to everyone but I read every comment and I want you to know
that I appreciate all of you for taking the time to watch the video and to leave some
kind words, it really means a lot.
I also have to say a special thank you to all of my new Patreon supporters and all of
the people that sent me something on PayPal, it's been helping me stress a lot less these
days and I can't thank you enough for that.
Also, for those wondering, I'm definitely not sick or anything, I'm hoping it stays
that way but I've been doing my part, only going out for essentials, washing my hands
thoroughly, so I should be okay but I'll keep you all updated.
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Given the current situation I, like many, have been returning to Steven Soderbergh's
film "Contagion".
To see what might be on the horizon if the disease continues to spread.
It is obviously a fictional story about a fictional outbreak, but according to many
scientists it actually gets a lot of things right in how it portrays not only the science
behind the virus, but the public response to an outbreak of this scale, so how does
a virus spread?
And how is it eventually stopped?
In the case of the fictional MEV-1 virus, the virus is zoonotic, meaning that it transfers
from animals to humans.
"Somewhere in the world, the wrong pig met up with the wrong bat."
Day one.
When the infected pig is handled by a butcher who doesn't wash his hands, he transmits the
disease to Beth Emhoff, the index patient, or patient zero.
Throughout the first day of infection she's not showing any symptoms and infects others
unknowingly, and when her and two of the other infected all hop on different planes, the
disease makes its way to a few new countires.
Day Two.
We start to see early deaths, while infected clusters pop up in the areas visited by those
who've contracted the disease.
But it's just getting started.
"Kowloon is the most densely populated area in the world, and Hong Kong is a harbor.
It's going to spread" Within a week it's spread to several other
major cities in the United States, and clusters are showing up all over the globe, as the
number of confirmed cases sees a massive spike over the following weeks.
"Last night there were 5 deaths and 32 cases."
"We have 47 cases and 8 deaths."
"We're seeing large clusters in Frankfurt, Cairo..."
"Government officials are reporting the closing of Mondale Elementary schools..."
"You've come into contact with an infectious disease and that you're highly contagious....don't
talk to anyone, don't touch anyone.
That's the most important thing."
"On day one there were 2 people that had it, and then there were 4, and then it was 16,
and you think you've got it in front of you but next it's 256 and then it's 65,000.
And it's behind you and above you..."
"We've got approximately 89,000 cases at this point and that we are heading toward 267,000..."
"In 30 steps it's a billion sick."
"The WHO estimates the number of people infected worldwide to be over 8,000,000."
"Without a vaccine we can anticipate that approximately 1 in 12 people on the planet
will contract the disease."
"The death toll in the United States is now believed to have reached 2,500,000.
The President issued a statement from a non-disclosed..."
The death toll and total number of infected continues to climb and eventually reach its
peak as the number of susceptibles decreases.
Until scientists develop a vaccine somewhere around day 35.
The Food and Drug Administration is accelerating approval of the MEV-1 vaccine currently in
production at 5 secret locations in the U.S. and Europe, saying the first doses could be
availabe for human use within 90 days.
Finally reaching the end of the worst days, with a final death toll of 26,000,000 people.
So how did it spread to that many people, that fast?
Is that even possible in the real world?
As it turns out, theoretically yes.
"So at this point I think we have to believe thi is respiratory in nature, maybe fomites
too."
"What's that, fomites?"
"It refers to transmission from surfaces.
The average person touches their face 2,000 or 3,000 times a day.
In between we're touching door knobs, water fountains, elevator buttons, and each other.
Those things become fomites."
You can spread the disease even without presenting symptoms, and you could end up contracting
the disease through something as simple as touching a contaminated surface or breathing
in pathogens in the air when standing too close to an infected person.
There's a mathematical equation used to quantify how infectious a disease may be, which is
crucial in determining the potential scale of an epidemic.
"What we need to determine is this: for every person who gets sick, how many other people
are they likely to infect?
For seasonal flu that's usually about 1, smallpox on the other hand is over 3.
We call that number the R-0(R-naught)."
"Any ideas what that may be for this?"
"How fast it multiplies depends on a variety of factors; the incubation period, how long
a person is contagious -- sometimes people can be contagious without even having symptoms,
we need to know that too.
And we need to know how big the population of people susceptible to the virus might be.
Once we know the R-0, we'll be able to get a handle on the scale of the epidemic.
This isn't a hard number that stays the same throughout the process, in fact that number
can be lowered through preventative measures like quarantine or vaccination, and when everything
is working properly that can eventually bring the reproductive rate down to zero, which
is what happend for SARS.
And by Day Nine, they have their number.
"Using our model based on an R-0 of 2, here is where we expect to be in 48 hours."
Essentially this number tells us how likely the disease is to spread upon contact with
an infected individual, considering the many different factors that effect transmission
rate like age or pre-existing medical condition.
But understanding a virus's R-0 just helps us to understand the scale of the outbreak,
there still needs to be an ongoing investigation into how it all began and how to keep it contained.
"That's also why the World Health Organization is sending an epidemiologist to Hong Kong.
It's hard to know what it is without knowing where it came from so our first job with these
things is always to find ground zero, figure out how it jumped to the population to begin
with."
By tracing back step by step through the chain of infected, eventually you find your way
back to the beginning.
Which helps to answer important questions of how this disease was transmitted to humans
in the first place, what sort of people are more susceptible, as well as to follow a trail
to the other infected areas and to help implement the proper procedures to contain and mitigate
the effects of the outbreak.
"Emhoff is the index patient, we need to know everywhere she went before the casino."
"We're isolating the sick and quarantining those who we believe were exposed."
Arguably the most important step in the process that happens concurrently with finding its
transmission rate and origin, is studying the virus itself in a lab to eventually find
a cure.
This involves first being able to grow and observe it in a lab setting, and then testing
as many attempts needed until they develop a successful vaccine.
But even then, it's still a long and complicated process until it could ever reach the public.
"If we even had a viable vaccine right now we would still have to do human trials, and
that would take weeks.
And then we would have to get clearance and approval, figure out manufacturing and distribution,
that would take months.
Then train survivors to give inoculations, more months, more deaths."
Though the film speeds this process up quite a bit, in total, From the initial outbreak
to widespread vaccination, was only a span of about six months.
To contrast, Ebola was first discovered in 1976 but we didn't see an FDA approved vaccine
until just last year.
Generally speaking one of the biggest complaints within the scientific community about the
film is how fast and efficient the public reponse to the crisis is.
"Now in the movies, it's quite different.
There's a group of handsome epidemiologists ready to go.
They move in, they save the day, but that's just pure Hollywood.
We're not ready for the next epidemic.
The failure to prepare could allow the next epidemic to be dramatically more devastating
than Ebola."
So all of this can feel very scary, like we might see something even worse than what the
film presents.
But I think it's important to manage our expectations, and Contagion does not provide the best model
for predicting how things will play out for COVID-19.
There are countless articles from scientists analyzing the film to clear up any concerns,
and we can always just look at the hard data presented in the film to see how it differs
from our current reality.
Earlier we talked about the R-0, which is the average rate of transmission for an infection,
by the end of the film the MEV-1 virus has mutated and reached an R-0 of "no less than
four".
With a estimated mortality rate of 25%.
Currently COVID-19 has an R-0 of between 2 and 2.5, with the CDC and WHO estimating a
mortality rate of around 2%.
In other words, the coronavirus is half as infectious as the fictional MEV-1 virus, and
not even one-tenth as fatal.
For perspective, on January 22nd, there were a total of 580 confirmed coronavirus cases.
By March 15th there were around 170,000.
But for the MEV-1 virus, in that same time-frame it had spread to 10% of the world's population,
and killed a total of 26,000,000 people.
Because as it turns out, they take some creative leeway to make their fictional pandemic more
severe.
Like the time before transmission.
We see Beth get infected and within the same day is already able to spread the disease
to multiple others.
In reality "It would take some period of time — at least days — for her to shed the
virus from her respiratory tract or saliva."
It takes a while for a virus to make enough copies of itself to spread through the body
and actually make a person contagious, for COVID-19 that's looking like five to six days.
There's also the rate of death, which seemingly effects people of all ages and backgrounds
equally, which is uncommon in most viruses, and it certainly kills in a much smaller window
of time than anything we're seeing with COVID-19.
Basically, the progression of events in the film isn't entirely implausible, it's just
not very realistic; while it does makes for a more thrilling film, ultimately it is just
a movie and not some crystal ball vision of our future.
Though, that's not to say there aren't worthwhile lessons that we can take from the film.
Don't go out if you're feeling unwell, wash your hands thoroughly and often, and for the
love of god "stop touching your face."
Don't be this guy.
"Could you cover your mouth please?"
"Fuck off lady."
Don't be these people.
Because ultimately you're just hurting other people who are just as scared as you, so try
to stay calm and look out for others, try to be a helper whenever possible because the
world needs it.
And don't forget about the people who are sacrificing their own safety to look out for
the rest of us.
Often going entire days without food or sleep, putting themselves at risk and facing incredibly
difficult decisions that no one should have to face.
And sometimes, even making the ultimate sacrifice.
So do what you can to make their lives easier, they deserve it.
We also need to remember that while we may be the dominant species on this planet, we're
not invincible, all it takes is one tiny microbe to potentially unravel everything.
And we need to look closer at how these things start so we can do everything in our power
to make sure this never happens again.
We need better environmental protection that doesn't disturb every natural habitat that
remains, because the more we fight the natural order the more it fights back.
We need better preparations for this sort of event, if every country has protocol in
place for nuclear fallout, you'd think we'd be better prepared for something that epidemiologists
have been warning us about for years.
We also need better food safety regulations, because these meat markets can are breeding
grounds for disease, and frankly China was under scrutiny well before this novel coronavirus
for its bad practices with food sanitation, with many rightfully predicting that the next
epidemic crisis would originate there, the filmmakers behind Contagion included.
They also rightfully predicted the way that the world would act in the face of a global
pandemic.
Where those with privileged information will look out for themselves before ever giving
a warning to any of the rest of us.
How governments will do anything they can to suppress the truth if it makes their country
look bad.
How there will be panic and profiteering, and a lot of fear and uncertainty before it's
all said and done.
But the thing that they get correct that matters most for all of us right now, is that they
got through it, and we will get through this too.
I'm in no way shape or form an expert, I have no idea if this will all be over in a few
weeks, a few months, hopefully not longer.
But what I do know is that we're still here.
The human race has survived much worse than this, with much less for medicine or technology,
so this won't be the end of us.
But at the same time, this is a serious situation.
If the world's scientists are telling you to stay home, then that's what you should
do.
When they tell you that you're endangering those around you by going out, they're not
being dramatic or incendiary, they mean it.
So listen to the science, stay informed, and please stay safe.
"I understand, thank you but I can't let you in.
We just, we're not going to take any chances."
If we all practice good pandemic protocol we can have a severe impact on the scale of
what we're looking at here, and the bar for doing your civic duty literally could not
be any lower, so you have no reason not to.
All you have to do is stay indoors unless otherwise necessary.
Keep social interactions limited, and self-quarantine if you're feeling unwell; and we just have
to wait out the worst of it.
And if it does get worse from here, well we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, and
we'll get through that too.
But we all can have an impact on our world, and I think that now that's more clear than
ever before.
So I think we all just have to try to make sure that our impact tips the scales in the
right direction, and if we feel we can't do much else the least we can do is be kind and
compassionate, everyone is being effected by this, some more than others and kindness
goes a long way in difficult times.
Anyways, that's my two cents.
thank you for watching.