Hi! Welcome back to the show.
With COVID once again skyrocketing—along with my blood pressure when I read about
COVID skyrocketing—I decided to torture myself by asking infectious disease expert Charity Dean
how the U.S. bungled our response so badly. - You yell “shark,” we’ve got a panic
on our hands on the fourth of July. You know how like in “Jaws,” Chief Brody goes
around trying to convince everyone there’s a shark out there? But they all ignore him, and then…
- That literally sums up the job of a local health officer.
Dr. Charity Dean was a local health officer, and one of the rare Chief Brodys who tried to warn
people about COVID. In January 2019, she was the: - Acting State Health Officer with the
California Department of Public Health.
She had a premonition that this new pathogen in China had already spread to California,
so she did some math-y doodling based on that and said, “Uh oh, this is really bad,
I better tell people!” And they said, - “You yell, ‘shark…’”
Yup! She got Chief Brody-ed. - I was asked to not say the
word “pandemic” because it might scare people. Doctor Dean’s premonition, and what happened next,
is detailed in Michael Lewis’s latest book, which will do this to you.
Seeing as how she’d called it all from the beginning, I wanted to sit down with Charity – AKA
me, but much, much more intelligent – to get some expert input from smart me in glasses.
Is there a world in which this could have been contained properly?
-I believe containment was possible. I do think that because at the very beginning of COVID,
the country was not being led by the kind of messaging that it needed...
-One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear. -Things went sideways.
Oh, they did! We have had an absolute s***show. -Yes, I believe so.
What is happening now? Are we re-s****ing the s***show?
-I’ll tell you the truth: with the Delta variant, it’s really bad right now. It’s probably going
to get worse. Many children are going to be impacted. And states that aren’t using mask
mandates or have low vaccination rates, we’re going to continue to send our kids into the ICU.
But surely by, say, New Year’s we’ll be past this misery, right?
-Because we don't have the entire world vaccinated, there is a selective pressure
to create variants that are more dangerous or that escape the vaccine.
That’s a long way of saying we’re gonna be in this for the next one to three years.
Oh! Oh, excuse me for one sec... Jason, she says it’s going to last one to three more years!
-Why would you tell me this!? It’s not my fault!
-It is your fault! I didn’t do–
Hampering our response: while we may lead the world on some benchmarks, such as number of idiots
treating COVID with horse deworming goo, we’re way behind in testing and tracking new variants.
-So right now, the United States is reliant on other countries to tell us that. We’re still,
in large part, flying blind. What about the CDC though? Isn’t
that like our like rapid response, high-tech, centralized place for fighting pandemics?
-That’s not their role. The CDC has a lot of value. Their academic analyses of data is
invaluable. However, it’s largely retrospective. -It was a shark.
Thanks, that’s helpful to know! But not three months later!
How is the CDC not the frontline? It’s literally called the Center for Controlling Disease.
-Most people don’t understand what the U.S. public health system actually is. The U.S.
public health system is a collection of largely disconnected local public health departments.
Yes! Over 3,000 of them, staffed by people like Charity and equipped with the best of
technology... from 50 years ago. -So, fax machines, phone calls–
So you’re telling me, right, that- that our public health system is just
a patchwork of people trying to send faxes? -It’s even worse than that in many states
where they still rely on receiving reports by snail mail, putting something in an envelope
with a stamp on it to send reports back and forth with critical information.
So you can see how that might cause problems. And what would those letters tell us now,
other than get vaccinated, don’t take horse goo, and maybe get a booster shot?
There’s so much conversation around booster shots right now. But isn't it immoral for us
to give ourselves boosters when really what we should be doing is sharing that with the global
community to ensure that more variants aren’t created in places with low vaccination rates?
-Your point is spot on. Really? She said my point was spot on!
-Mmkay. She’s being nice. She thinks I’m smart!
-She’s just humoring you. Sorry.
-I mean, look, until the whole world is vaccinated, the economic security,
health security of the United States is not secure. But one of the silver linings of COVID is
it’s really laid bare the failures of our system, so now we actually have an opportunity to fix it.
But what if we can’t? -We were able to eradicate smallpox. We
were able to vaccinate all our children against polio. The United States has a history of doing
bold and brave things in public health. Yes! We created stuffed crust pizza! We put
a woman over 50 on TV! Anything is possible! -I don’t care if it’s one tiny sparkle in a
mound of horse poop. Yes!
-I will never give up hope that the United States can reinvent itself.
She’s right! We’re America! We can beat this thing! All we have to do is
work together. Right, Governor DeSantis? -No to lockdowns! No to school closures!
No to restrictions, and no mandates! Welp! See you in one to three years!