- [Woman] Should I wear a mask?
- [Man] Can I see my friends yet?
How close are we to a vaccine?
(upbeat music)
- Hi, my name is Erin Bromage.
I am a Professor of Biology where I focus
on immunology and the controlled infectious diseases.
- My name is Dr. Stephen Morse.
I'm Professor of Epidemiology at the
Mehlman School of Public Health.
- [Woman] Is it safe to fly right now?
- So determining whether you want to fly or not
is really a personal choice that needs to be made
based on a lot of different factors.
- Do you need to, how important is it to do it?
- If you have any of the comorbidities
that have been discussed then flying becomes
a much more risky endeavor.
- Where you going?
Are you going to be going from someplace
that doesn't have very much virus circulation
to another place that may not have
much virus circulating around?
- Some of the other things you need to consider with flying
is how common are new infections in the area
that you're leaving from?
So if you find yourself flying out of New York
or out of New Jersey or even Massachusetts,
out of Boston where we are seeing
a lot of community spread, then getting on a plane
with 100 or 200 other people presents a higher risk
than what it would be if you were flying out of Alaska
where they only had a handful of cases yesterday.
- Probably there are as many dangers going
to and from the airport and waiting in the airport.
- [Man] Can I go to the beach?
- If we maintain the precautions,
especially social distancing, and if we are with
other people, they should be people we know and trust.
- The beach being outside allows you
to physically separate from other groups,
to create that needed space, that buffer that we need
to get away from the respiratory emissions
that could potentially infect you.
- Not everyone is able or perhaps willing
to maintain the social distancing we talk about.
So some beaches have gotten very crowded.
If so, I think you should head for another beach,
try to find a more secluded spot.
- So you can go to the beach but physical distancing
is still important.
- [Man] Can COVID-19 live in the water?
- If you go to the beach and it's saltwater
the chances are that there's gonna be a lot of dilution
if there is any virus in there.
Even if it could survive the tides are going to
sweep it away, there's going to be a lot of water
to dilute the virus.
So there's probably very little risk in that situation.
- This virus we haven't really studied in detail
to know that yet.
But if we look at other coronaviruses
we know that infectious viral particles
can persist in both fresh and saltwater
for an extended period of time.
Contracting it from the water would be very hard
when we're dealing with an ocean or a large lake
because it's not just exposure to the virus
that gets you infected.
It's exposure to enough virus.
- [Man] Can I see my friends yet?
- Any time that you possibly can have an interaction
with your friends make sure that you're doing it outside.
Outside is much safer than inside.
'Cause when we get inside the chance for transfer
of the virus just through those tiny little droplets
in the air is dramatically increased.
- I think gradually we're expanding our circle
to seeing more friends in small groups
and limited settings.
- Just understand that the longer that you spend with them,
the closer that you are, the riskier
that particular interaction becomes.
- If you trust your friends and they trust you
or if you've all been indoors staying home
and not at risk of having been infected,
you can probably see each other.
- [Woman] When is it safe to see family again?
- So seeing family again follows the same rules
as everything else we've been talking about.
You've got to think about the risk factors
of your household and the people, your family
that you're visiting.
- There are so many grandparents, I'm in that category,
who want to hug their grandchildren
and see their grandchildren again.
So that's a really hard decision.
- If you're looking at visiting your mother
or your grandmother or grandfather
and they have a lot of comorbidities and age
then you need to take much more precautions
if you want to have that visit.
- I think that gradually as we learn more
things will open up a bit and a lot of the risk
may very well be in how you get there
and what happens in the interim.
- [Man] Is it risky to stay in a hotel now?
- So risk again comes down to personal factors.
- Hotel rooms are always a difficult choice.
- Any time that you interact with somebody
or a new place you have a chance of becoming infected.
- If you have to stay in a hotel because you're traveling
look for a hotel that really seems to be
enforcing good standards.
- Some people become infected and don't become sick.
Some people become infected and only get a little bit sick,
then others get really sick and up to and including death.
So you've gotta look at your risk factors
about whether staying at a hotel is actually
a risky endeavor.
The risk from a hotel really comes down to
how well that hotel is maintaining the cleanliness
of their rooms, of their lobbies, of their elevators.
- They should be wearing masks.
They should have good hand hygiene,
that is to say keeping their hands clean,
and probably you'll see bottles of hand sanitizer
for you to use.
That's usually an indication that they're
taking this seriously.
- [Woman] Should I wear a mask?
- You absolutely should be wearing a mask
when you cannot physically distance all the time.
- In China, they feel very strongly that masks are helpful.
And we do know that masks can prevent
the transmission from people who are infected.
- A mask stops most of your respiratory droplets coming out.
They get caught on the inside of the mask
and just lowers the overall viral burden
that's in the air.
- So yes, we should wear masks.
Many people have asked why didn't we do this earlier?
And we probably should have.
- [Man] When will it be safe to travel again?
- Safety with traveling comes down again to risk factors.
- I think it depends a lot on how you're going to travel.
You know travel by car for example
has always probably been pretty safe.
But everything in life carries the risk.
- I think we're going to find that travel in general though
is very country focused for quite a while now.
- So a lot of it is really taking precautions
to reduce your risk and decide what's appropriate for you
and what's appropriate for the people
you come in contact with.
- [Man] What if someone sneezes on you?
- If someone sneezes on you, ninja roll away
as quickly as you can.
- I think it depends on where and how they sneeze.
- So a sneeze can emit thousands upon thousands
of viral particles, infectious viral particles into the air.
So that's why we need the six feet space.
That's why we need masks.
Because a mask in six feet space
will stop any of those droplets coming towards you.
- If we're keeping that social distancing,
hopefully we would take a few steps back.
If we're close and they're sneezing on us,
you know I certainly wouldn't want to be anywhere near them.
This is why we want people to wear masks
to protect not only themselves but to protect
others when they're sneezing, for example.
- [Man] How close are we to a COVID-19 vaccine?
- Our fastest vaccine that we've produced to date
is about four and half years.
So if we go by old standards we're looking at
four to potentially 10 years for a vaccine.
The upside with this particular vaccine
is that I have never seen more companies focused
on a singular effort than this one.
So with that alone that gives me much more hope
that we will get out of the bench phase
and into the phase one, two, and three trials faster.
- There's a lot of hope obviously for a vaccine
and the answer is we don't really know.
The speed with which vaccines are being developed
and tested is unprecedented.
So I'm hopeful that we will have some vaccines soon.
- Even though you may not be concerned about your own health
understand that you actually do have a role in this
and that you may be part of the transmission chain
that leads to it getting into a nursing home
or getting into a school or getting it into
a place where people aren't so fortunate
with their health and that can lead
to devastating outcomes of that group of people.
- I hope we'll learn some good lessons from this.
One lesson is that if we'd acted quickly
on the global level as well as nationally
we could have probably prevented many of the infections
and deaths we see today.
(dramatic music)