HOUSTON WADE. COVID19 pandemic – Jason discusses Economic and Social implications

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Serious conversation with HOUSTON WADE. Jason discusses Economic and Social implications of the COVID19 pandemic. States are re-opening the economy and coming out of quarantine bringing forecast of serious consequences, relates this professor of Mathematics and AstroPhysics from Edmonds College in Washington State.  5-28-2020

Summary & Transcript below

[00:00 → 07:00]
Introduction and Context of COVID-19 Pandemic
Jason Schwartz opens the discussion during the May 28, 2020, COVID-19 pandemic, introducing Houston Wade, a math and astrophysics professor from Bainbridge Island near Seattle, Washington. Houston explains his background teaching math from basic arithmetic through calculus, physics, and astronomy. The conversation pivots to the global nature of the pandemic, highlighting the overwhelming complexity of data—varying infection counts, testing rates, and conspiracy theories—and emphasizing the physical, emotional, and economic impacts of the virus. Houston points out the shift in economic paradigms since the U.S. left the gold standard in 1972, leading to uncertainty about the true value of money amid massive federal stimulus spending.

• [07:00 → 11:48]
  Early Outbreak and Exponential Growth in Washington State
  Houston recounts the initial U.S. COVID-19 case: the index patient in Washington State on January 15, 2020, who was isolated by January 21. Despite early contact tracing, the virus spread undetected into a nursing home infecting around 300 people, traced genetically back to that first case. This outbreak triggered an exponential growth pattern with infections doubling roughly every three days. Similar outbreaks appeared nationwide—New York from travelers from Italy, clusters from the Diamond Princess cruise evacuation, and community spread from these initial “patches.” Every U.S. community now has at least one index patient, necessitating mitigation strategies focused on reducing social contact to slow transmission. Hawaii and Washington imposed strict quarantines and business closures to slow spread, extending the infection doubling time to about 14 days, avoiding hospital overload but causing significant economic hardship. Houston warns that reopening prematurely could reverse these gains, causing rapid exponential growth, overwhelming hospitals, and ultimately hurting businesses anyway.
• [11:48 → 17:47]
  Phased Reopenings and Risks of Importing Cases
  Houston describes the upcoming phased reopening in Kitsap County, Washington, starting June 1, allowing limited restaurant seating and salons to open. However, because of proximity and ferry connections to Seattle (with millions in the metro area), people are likely to travel for services, importing infections back into the community. This “piece-by-piece” reopening across communities within states undermines containment efforts, as people freely move between open and closed areas. Similarly, Hawaii faces challenges with travelers arriving without pre-flight testing but with a post-arrival quarantine. Despite geographic isolation, internal travel risks remain. The political divide impacts reopening decisions: more progressive communities like Bainbridge Island voted against reopening, while others pushed to reopen, often downplaying risks and resisting safety measures. Rural communities in Washington are vulnerable due to outbreaks in agricultural and meatpacking sectors. The ongoing movement and reopening risk undoing earlier progress and potentially triggering new infection surges.
• [17:47 → 23:37]
  Impact of Shutdowns and Political Challenges
  Wade presents a sobering analysis of hospital capacity: without shutdowns, Washington State would have run out of hospital beds by early April, with tens of thousands infected and 20% requiring ICU care. Shutdowns reduced the infection doubling rate from 3 days to 14 days, saving many lives and preventing healthcare collapse. Other states that reopened prematurely, especially in the South and Midwest, are now facing hospital bed shortages and rising deaths. Wade critiques political leadership, especially at the federal level, for downplaying the virus, politicizing the crisis, and encouraging protests against safety measures. He underscores the virus’s impartiality: it infects anyone without immunity regardless of political beliefs or messaging.
• [23:37 → 31:54]
  Strategies for Containment and Economic Support
  Houston argues that the only effective way to combat a novel infectious virus is a comprehensive shutdown, ideally lasting about a year until a vaccine is widely available. Other countries have paired shutdowns with universal basic income (UBI) or wage subsidies to maintain livelihoods during isolation—examples include Canada, the UK, Denmark, and the Netherlands. In contrast, U.S. federal relief has been inefficient: trillions of dollars were funneled to banks and businesses, with only limited direct support to individuals, fueling protests by economically desperate groups. The reopening debates highlight a conflict between economic pressures and public health. Wade emphasizes the need to prioritize saving lives first, as economic damage is inevitable but less catastrophic than mass death. He also notes that reopening prematurely risks exponential case growth, overwhelming hospitals and ultimately harming the economy anyway.
• [31:54 → 39:36]
  Public Opinion, Herd Immunity Experiments, and Misinformation
  Polling data shows that 75-85% of Americans are reluctant to return to public places such as restaurants without a vaccine. Places like Georgia and Alabama reopened but remain at very low restaurant occupancy and rising infections. Sweden’s herd immunity approach resulted in high mortality (over 4,000 deaths) with low population exposure (~7%), demonstrating that herd immunity without a vaccine may cause massive loss of life. Houston highlights the loud minority that denies the virus or protests restrictions, often fueled by misinformation and organized by small groups or individuals, not grassroots movements. The majority of the population voluntarily reduces exposure, but their voices are quieter and less visible. This dynamic complicates public health messaging and compliance.
• [39:36 → 45:06]
  Conservative Estimates and Projected Impact on Healthcare System
  Houston’s modeling suggests that absent any mitigation, over 160 million Americans could be infected by mid-2020, resulting in 10-20 million deaths. Shutdowns have slowed the doubling rate and saved 5-10 million lives. The Imperial College model projects 40-70% infection rates in the U.S. within a year, equating to roughly 160 million infections and 30 million hospitalizations requiring ICU care for 20 days each. Given only about one million hospital beds nationwide, this demand vastly exceeds capacity, with projected hospital costs potentially reaching a quarter of the U.S. GDP (~$8 trillion). Wade stresses these figures are conservative and actual outcomes may be worse.
• [45:06 → 53:54]
  Economic Realities and Long-Term Outlook
  Houston explains that federal money printing is necessary and can be done without immediate inflationary consequences because consumer spending is restricted and large purchases are down. He advocates for sustained UBI payments ($2,000/month per adult) for about 30 months, matching the roughly $7 trillion already allocated by Congress and Federal Reserve. This economic support is essential to keep people indoors and prevent unchecked viral spread. Wade also discusses how new treatments (e.g., hydrogen machines to reduce lung inflammation) exist but are not widely implemented. Testing challenges—due to long incubation periods and asymptomatic spread—make contact tracing nearly impossible. Historical context is provided: pandemics have repeatedly required isolation and quarantine to prevent mass death, and modern society benefits from these lessons. The Hawaiian Islands’ history underscores the vulnerability of isolated populations to novel viruses.
• [53:54 → 58:51]
  Summary and Closing Thoughts
  Houston concludes that society is economically doomed regardless of reopening or shutdown decisions, but only shutdowns save lives. Reopening risks overwhelming hospitals and triggering repeated closures. The long incubation period means interventions are always reactive and lagging behind infections. States lack money printing power and depend on federal funds, which creates political pressure to reopen prematurely. Religious gatherings are a major transmission vector, with several documented superspreading events globally. Wade cites biblical and historical precedent for staying home during plagues as the wisest course. The interview ends with a somber reflection on the lack of wisdom and leadership, the human cost already incurred, and the hope that eventually, lessons will be learned—though likely at great suffering.

1. 1. 1. Key Insights

• Exponential growth of COVID-19 infections is characterized by rapid doubling times (~3 days before shutdowns).
• Mitigation efforts in Washington and Hawaii extended doubling times to ~14 days, preventing healthcare collapse but causing economic distress.
• Premature reopening risks a return to uncontrolled spread, overwhelming hospitals and deepening economic damage.
• Universal Basic Income (UBI) or wage subsidies are crucial to enable effective shutdowns and reduce protests.
• The virus is impartial and infectious to everyone without immunity; misinformation and political polarization undermine public health efforts.
• Herd immunity without a vaccine is dangerous and causes high mortality, as shown by Sweden’s experience.
• The U.S. healthcare system is dramatically underprepared for potential hospitalization demands exceeding bed capacity by tens of millions.
• Federal stimulus funds have been inefficiently allocated, with insufficient direct aid to individuals, fueling social unrest.
• Long incubation and asymptomatic transmission make testing and contact tracing ineffective as sole containment strategies.
• Religious gatherings are major sources of superspreading events globally.
• Historical and biblical precedents emphasize stay-home orders as effective plague responses.
• Ultimately, saving lives first is essential, as economic damage is unavoidable but less severe than mass mortality.

1. 1. 1. Timeline of Key COVID-19 Events (Washington State Example)

Date	Event Description
Jan 15, 2020	Index COVID-19 patient arrives in Washington State
Jan 21, 2020	Patient tests positive and is isolated
Late Feb 2020	Outbreak in Washington nursing home traced to index patient
Mar 16, 2020	Washington State orders shutdown to slow virus spread
Early Apr 2020	Without shutdown, hospital beds would have been exhausted due to overwhelming case numbers
May 28, 2020	Interview date; doubling rate slowed from 3 to 14 days nationally
June 1, 2020	Kitsap County phased reopening begins, raising concerns about importing cases from Seattle

Quantitative Data Summary

Metric	Value / Estimate	Notes
Initial doubling rate (pre-mitigation)	~3 days	Washington State early outbreak
Post-mitigation doubling rate	~14 days	Slowed spread, reduced hospital overload
U.S. population infected (projected)	40-70% (~160 million)	Within one year, per Imperial College model
Hospitalization rate among infected	~20%	ICU admission required
ICU hospital bed capacity in U.S.	~1 million beds	Vastly insufficient for projected demand
Estimated hospital days (total)	6.6 billion days	Assuming 30 million hospitalizations × 20 days
ICU hospital cost per day	~$4,000	Total cost could reach $8 trillion
UBI proposed payment	$2,000/month per adult	Would require ~$7 trillion over 30 months
COVID-19 deaths in Italy (March 1–24, 2020)	~400 confirmed, 300+ excess deaths	Many deaths unrecorded as COVID-19 related
U.S. COVID-19 deaths (as of May 2020)	Over 100,000	Underreported due to testing and cause attribution

Definitions and Concepts

Term	Definition
Index Patient	The first identified case in a location initiating local transmission
Doubling Rate	The time it takes for the number of infections to double in a population
Mitigation	Measures to slow virus spread, such as social distancing and business closures
Exponential Growth	Rapid increase where cases multiply by a consistent factor over equal time intervals
Universal Basic Income (UBI)	Regular, unconditional cash payment to individuals to maintain financial stability during shutdowns
Herd Immunity	When a significant portion of a population becomes immune, indirectly protecting others
Superspreading Event	Occasions where one infected individual transmits the virus to many others

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q: Why can’t we just open businesses and “flatten the curve”?
A: Flattening the curve slows infection but does not stop it. Opening too soon will reduce the doubling time, causing a surge in cases that overwhelms hospitals, forcing closures again and deepening economic harm.

Q: Is herd immunity a viable strategy?
A: No. Without a vaccine, herd immunity requires millions of infections and deaths, as seen in Sweden, making it a dangerous approach.

Q: How long will shutdowns need to last?
A: Likely around a year until a vaccine is widely available. Shorter shutdowns risk recurrent outbreaks and prolonged economic damage.

Q: Why is UBI important during the pandemic?
A: UBI allows people to stay home without economic desperation forcing them to work, reducing virus spread and protests against restrictions.

Q: Are current U.S. stimulus efforts sufficient?
A: No. Most funds have not reached individuals adequately; more direct and sustained support is needed.

Q: Can testing and contact tracing control the virus?
A: Testing is complicated by asymptomatic and long incubation periods, making contact tracing difficult and insufficient alone to contain spread.

1. 1. 1. Closing Summary

Houston Wade offers a mathematically grounded, sobering analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic, emphasizing the necessity of prolonged shutdowns paired with comprehensive economic support to save lives. The U.S. faces a dual crisis: a public health emergency and an economic collapse, with political and social factors complicating effective responses. The virus’s exponential growth, asymptomatic spread, and healthcare system constraints demand prioritizing life-saving measures over premature economic reopening. Without decisive action, the U.S. risks millions of deaths, overwhelmed hospitals, and deeper economic damage. Historical precedents and international examples reinforce that only sustained isolation and coordinated support can halt this pandemic until vaccines become available.

Transcript

00:00

[Music] hello everyone I’m Jason Schwartz your host of the neutral zone Maui neutral zone calm today is the 28th of May in 2020 and if I was outside you see me wearing a mask because we are right in the middle of the cove at 19 pandemic and I don’t even have to tell you what that means you guys are all pros now pandemic means an epidemic pan like the whole globe everywhere and I have a special guest today you’re looking at him that’s Houston Wade you said he’ll tell you a little more

00:53

about himself I had someone here that it was from Maui who said you should speak to this guy his stuff is so important and I said absolutely so we jumped on it for you I mean confine these shows at Maui neutral zone calm you can find them up at ka K you radio you can find them up on YouTube we put them all up on the web so that they’re available for everyone everywhere Houston welcome to our show Houston Wade from thank you so much where are you from from Bainbridge Island yes red cross the water from

01:30

Seattle Seattle Washington for those of you around the world the west coast of the United States one of the I want to say one of the first breakout areas was just across the water from you wasn’t just as Snohomish County so about about 30 miles from us across the water so yep we have water around us – it creates a very different environment than on the mainland so what do you do I mean I understand you as a professor what do you I’m a math and astrophysics professor hello yes yeah so I teach all

02:14

levels of math from from basic arithmetic all the way through calculus and I teach physics and astronomy as well Wow oh well we could go to all kinds of subjects conversation but the thing that really kind of triggered this thing is this this covert 19 you know when you do the math when I do simple math I look at what’s going on and I see no I know what exponential means and the potential for something multiplying and then that number multiplying it’s like multilevel same kind of an idea right so with all

02:56

this going on in the world this has been quite an experience I mean to me I think of the world as one or like on an island we can sort of say okay that’s our world yeah we’re dealing with a world that somehow right now we’re getting identification of the United Kingdom has this many this is what’s going on in France this is what’s going on in Spain this is the United States and look at all these little states we’ll break it down and separate it out and here we have nine cases there we have 27 200,000

03:35

but there’s this much testing here and that much testing where I’m swimming from it all personality and the information out that we have available to us is like stories about conspiracy theory and it came from a lab and Wuhan in China or it came from the United States and everyone’s fighting to me the issue is people are ill and we want to figure out what to do because the illness is both physical and they only got this other component called economic you know I mean emotional the economic thing right now

04:19

I grew up thinking that the the national debt and that money used to be backed by something I’m not sure what year we were born but it was 1972 that president Richard Nixon went off the gold standard so our dollar that was backed by dollars in gold and whatever other things was actually hard currency but you can actually track the number of dollars with the amount of something hard so everyone in the world was on a real standard where we knew what value was but after that it’s gotten real vague

05:00

and I thought our our economy and we talked about our US economy and they talked about a trillion dollar debt two trillion dollars and that was some staggering number that was gonna have our kids paying back and balancing this budget for the rest of their lives and suddenly something’s changed no one’s looking at what a dollar really is worth anymore and in recent I guess I’m talking too much here but I’m sort of setting it up you know in recent times you know you see a stimulus package of

05:40

two trillion dollars and on the heels of it trillion here few trillion there and then the other thing with math is people getting sick one gets sick and then it’s nine and then it’s 81 but then they fix that and they think it’s kind of managed over here but what about over here that’s not mad yeah so what I heard you were a mathematician I thought let me take all this confusion that I’m sure everybody’s got like me what’s going on in this world man how are we gonna figure out what to do

06:20

when this all stops well we don’t have control of what stops so I want to hear your hit on this I mean please excuse me if I’m up front just going at it but yeah to me I just like it’s making no sense I am not having an easy time understanding what this is gonna all boil down to and you’ve looked at it in different ways and I’d like to hear your math and okay make it simple math for simple guys like me perfect all right yeah so uh when the initial outbreak happened in the United

07:00

States we began with you know it’s a 1 index case in Washington State’s case that was one patient who arrived on January 15th were tested positive on thick January 21st and then was isolated they did a little bit of contact tracing but they really couldn’t figure out where he had gone who he had talked to and they thought they had it pretty much under control Washington then by the end of February we had a nursing home where dozens and dozens I think was 75 patients had tested positive in this

07:32

nursing home including staff and and that ballooned eventually I think to like 300 people just associated at nursing home and we were in full-blown outbreak in Washington and when they did the genetic testing of the people in that nursing home it traced back to that initial index patient in Washington so they taste the trace the genetic code of the virus and discovered it came from that first patient there trying to figure out how the virus got from that patient into the community and they believe it may have been a woman who

08:03

lived near him and may have gone to the same grocery store who they don’t know but she was the elderly woman she was in her 80s she ended up getting pneumonia an acute respiratory distress syndrome and was a local hospital and when she got better they moved her into this nursing home where she was probably still shedding virus at the time it may have spread it to everybody in the nursing home after that from there Washington quickly began seeing a doubling rate of infections about once every three days that means if you had

08:34

one patient three days later you’d have two patients three days after that you’d have four patients three days after that you’d have eight patients and so on and it becomes this exponential curve that’s very steep and little pockets around the country began appearing from that so somebody who caught it from the nursing home in Washington ended up I believe in North Carolina started spreading it there people came from Italy to New York began spreading the virus there there there was spread from the Diamond

09:01

Princess cruise ship that was in Japan Americans got evacuated from there brought to a military base in the San Francisco Bay Area and one of the HHS employees wasn’t properly wrapped up when they met with the patients and they spread it from the hotel room on and so they had a route break in like Sausalito and places down there so what began our outbreak are these little patches these little kind of if you imagine doing a test petri dish and there’s a few little bacteria and these little splotches

09:32

start to grow the same math applies in different communities around America so right now we have basically every community in the United States has an index patient of some kind so what began back in January with one patient and spread throughout the country we now have that same index patient at every community we can imagine so what we’ve done is we started mitigation efforts because so many people are infected we couldn’t isolate anymore we were millions infected right now in the United States and and not being able

10:09

to isolate these patients means we have to mitigate and reduce social interactions that’s where you know Hawaii closing down their borders essentially and putting 14 day quarantines requiring people to shut down their businesses where social contacts can be made such as bars and restaurants and schools and reducing our interactions with each other because interactions is how all this transmits and this is done actually pretty fantastic job and that our doubling rate nationally went from three days down to

10:43

I think we’re like about 14 days or so nationally in our doubling rate which isn’t great because it still means people are getting affected but it’s slow enough that our hospitals aren’t overwhelmed the problem is is that we don’t have the largest economic generators in our country which are the socials Lisa these uh services like restaurants going and people’s pocketbooks are being hurt and so there’s a large push to open up to be like okay it’s over if we flatten

11:14

the curve let’s open up and let the economic portion recover the problem is is that we’re still only at about 1% of the country having been infected by this disease and already over a hundred thousand dead that means we still have 99 percent of the country so three hundred and twenty seven million people that have yet to be infected and could potentially face you know lifelong repercussions from the illness die sucker up much of a resources and hospital costs so if we open up to supposedly save these small businesses

11:48

we’re going to see that doubling rate drop from 14 days down to something that’s unimaginable unmanageable say below every seven days and our hospitals are gonna get overwhelmed in a hurry and if those hospitals are overwhelmed people aren’t going to be going to those businesses and those businesses are gonna hurt regardless so that’s kind of where we are is where we’re in this lake let’s pretend it’s over and open everything up in an emergency I if we do that well and we’re doing that yeah

12:22

you’re you’re opening up to some phase right there right yeah so the the county that I’m in Kitsap County we’re entering phase two on June 1st which means we’re allowed to have limited seating and restaurants barbers and salons can open up the problem is we’re a bedroom community of Seattle and we’re just a ferryboat right away and the ferry boat is the largest tourist attraction in Washington so people just take the ferry just to get on the water and enjoy themselves and they come to you without

12:52

being quarantine yes so what we think is going to happen is is you know the two to three million people live in the Seattle area or be like well it’s been three months since I’ve had her cut her Bainbridge is open I’ll head to Island and get a haircut there and we’re gonna become a covert port where hundreds of thousands of people are going to take little day trips from Seattle which does not qualify to reopen their hop on the ferry come to our community they’re going to have drinks tanara ours they’re going to

13:20

get their hair cut and we’re going to be importing cases and it’s going to spread like wildfire and this piece-by-piece reopening doesn’t work inside of a state because everyone within that state can travel and go anywhere they want so if they want to do shopping or or get a haircut they can travel easily within 30 minutes or an hour to a community that’s reopened and bring with them essentially the plague well we here in Hawaii on June 1st are opening up sounds exactly like you same timing and even though

13:58

we’re a remote community we are protected by it then seems that travelers coming from the world have a 14-day quarantine but they’re not being tested before they jump on the plane yeah really understanding why that what are they testing them after they arrived are they testing anyone before they come across on the ferry nope there’s hop on the ferry and they’re here so the same situation yep so our situation might be quote a little better in that if people come over from the neighboring islands

14:33

we’ve been kind of more contained but same kind of thing at a slower rate potentially than yours yes what is it must be a pretty loud outcry there so the seven meanest seven main municipalities in our County voted last night whether to reopen or not and Bainbridge Island was the only community that voted no the other the other parts of the county are less progressive more Republican and more apt to believe that the viruses and the threats less likely to wear masks less likely to follow protocol and they just want to be able

15:10

to go to the bar and enjoy themselves but there are two other main communities there served by ferries from the Seattle side there’s a little town called Kingston and then a bigger city a navy Navy town known as Bremerton which has a giant shipyard I think both of these communities are going to get hit by people day tripping over to their to their sites to visit the restaurants and so we might see like a huge economic boom initially because we will be able taken all this business from those

15:37

communities but it is going to be infections and our county had managed to you know we’ve got this this barrier of water so if our fire workers aren’t commuting to Seattle anymore because they’re staying home to work we aren’t going to Seattle getting the virus been bringing it back home and so we’ve been averaging one or two infections a week and most of those infections that actually come for people who went on vacation to Eastern Washington to go fishing to go camping to go on hikes and to visit those that

16:05

small community and we should wash is having a really bad problem in the rural communities at packing plants and and and orchards it’s being spread amongst the workers and so those viruses are spreading in Yakima to spreading Spokane they’re spreading in Grant County people go out there for outdoor recreation for a few days come back and they’re bringing the virus back to our County initially the governor had shut down fishing for that exact reason that people will be spreading the disease

16:31

hitting these rural rural communities and that’s basically what’s what we’re seeing happen so now this explosion to suddenly have an economic shot in the arm and with all these reinfection x’ that means if things shut down again all the good that we were accomplishing and trying to slow this down and make it a more manageable thing is completely out the window am i right oh yes so with the initial infections in Washington we shut down I think it was March 16th and I had done a series of posts on the internet

17:16

showing the math of if we don’t shut down this is what we can expect as the rate of growth and by the first week of April Washington state would have run out of hospital beds we just would have been out where there have been you know 16 to 40 thousand infected 20% of those would require ICU admission and we just would have been swamped the shutdown the 16th and the growth rate plummeted it dropped from three days down to about 14 days almost within a week and that’s really what saved our hospital system in

17:47

Washington and we can look at regions that have reopened or partially reopened or never even really shut down that much generally in the south of the Midwest we could see that they’re running out of hospital beds Alabama is out of hospital beds they you know they are a small rural state in Montgomery Mobile Birmingham they have no more ICU beds for patients and there’s not very many hospitals in the rural communities outside of there and they’re trying to figure out where to put them all but the

18:14

governor refuses admit that his policies has resulted in a huge crisis in a state so they’re just pretending like everything’s fine keep going to Applebee’s keep going to your salon and it’s it’s something that that the virus doesn’t care about marketing it doesn’t care about positive spin it doesn’t care about what type of campaign you put out if you are a human being without antibodies you’re going to get infected and you’re going to spread it so you know we can we can do as much of this

18:52

campaigning and marketing as we can but the virus doesn’t care it’s not listening so you can’t you can’t talk your way out of being infected by a disease no one has any immunity – what about the people that say oh this doesn’t affect me but they’re not covering and not respecting other people and what other people feel whether or not they believe it that lack of public respect for each other is is amplifying I don’t want to say because of the president but surely we’re not

19:28

getting a leader who is respecting everybody’s personal integrity and just by the way he approaches it here we now see you know in the last day he’s now attacking social media which he’s been exploiting it has his way to say this fake news out there and put out his truth and there’s suddenly check you hear this yeah we’re checking him and now he he wants to stop them so where do we are they really very difficult to figure in our world what we’re what we’re gonna do and how we’re going to address this

20:09

what do you think we should do what do you think we can do there’s basically one option and only one option to successfully combat and Infectious novel virus and that is shut everything down that’s it if we were somehow to magically keep every American say in a separate room from every other American for 14 days the virus would vanish you’d be gone but we still have needs we still need to eat we still need to get waste management and certain certain things like that so what we’ve chosen to do

20:40

temporarily is essentially shut down most everything and keep try to keep these essential services humming along so people don’t starve to death and we kind of weekly did a little shot in the arm with the stimulus of $1,200 for everyone by extending federal unemployment aid to States for like four months worth of unemployment to help keep people in restaurants other essential businesses getting a paycheck so they don’t again starve to death but what other countries are successful at managing this crisis are doing is

21:18

they’re not just shutting everything down but they’re giving everybody a ubi Canada is guaranteeing 2,000 a month every citizen Great Britain is paying 80 percent of everyone’s wages keep them employed so they’re technically if you worked for an airline in Britain you’re still being paid by the airline but the government is covering 80 percent of the cost same thing in Denmark and the Netherlands and we want more well I mean there’s actually printing it is it’s monies fake money isn’t real so you know

21:52

when it comes to a crisis slice like this you have to treat the health of your citizens first and worry about the economic damage later because the economic damage is going to come regardless after the 1918 flu we had an economic depression in 1920 1921 as a result of it so you know no matter what you do people are going to stop going out they’re going to die in pre sheral percentages so we need to consider that and try to keep as many people alive as we can while we wait for a vaccine to be tested approved and

22:28

administered now we’re looking at probably still a year away from having a viable vaccine for everyone which means we need a year of shutdown essentially and we just need to accept that we need the powers to be to tell everyone this is how it’s going to be you have a year of this game we don’t see that now in fact yeah we see exactly the opposite we’re gonna have a national election in all these elections and our sitting president is not only not in favor of that he’s leading the charge to what

23:02

really gets me is he’s leading the charge imagine you were in government in Michigan or I think it was Michigan now where suddenly people with guns are coming and attacking and that the president United States says I support that if they have a gun anywhere near his area right they shut all down yes he’s gotten crazy and the people that say well he’s he’s right he’s right we can’t do what are we gonna do like the thing that you just posed I don’t know how we can even hope to

23:37

enforce them well okay so the stimulus generated by the federal reserve and Congress so far totals around seven billion seven trillion dollars that’s enough money if we had just printed that seven trillion dollars and paid every adult not already on Social Security or disability two thousand dollars a month we could do it for the next thirty months but instead what we did is we printed that money lent it to banks who immediately just lost it in the stock market to vanish into nothing we spent

24:08

trillions of dollars of allocated money from Congress and only a few hundred billion went to American citizens with the twelve hundred dollar one-time stimulus and the rest just got frittered away into these PPE loans that will never get paid back and will never actually do the job that they need to do and literally we just need to pay people to stay home and that’s it if people received money every month for not doing anything and just watch the other couch and watching Netflix they wouldn’t be out there protesting they’d

24:39

be like oh I’m getting something for this I’m being paid for my time to not be productive and you know the the the bulk of these protesters they’re not I should put this it’s not that they want to go back to work is that they want people to keep working for them they’re willing to sacrifice their aesthetician and their waiter but you know because they want services they want to take somebody who works in a restaurant they don’t value their life they don’t think that they’re a human being worth living

25:12

they’re just they’re as human capital stock to serve them well some of the people out there are the people that are the workers I don’t know what confusing them I see more business owners than I do workers that are complaining yes the workers are like I don’t want to go back to the restaurant I’m going to die if I go back to the restaurant but the restaurant owners like I need people to get back in here so I can make my money and you know we need to pause rents we need to pause mortgages pay everyone to

25:42

stay home and just ride this one out so it’s now pose let’s run the clock ahead a little bit okay Georgia has been open for a month whatever the period and I’m hearing that you know they they keep trying to show you it all well it hasn’t really gone up yet I don’t know how they want to keep isolating this area somehow I don’t think but it’s starting to go up again so let’s say now somewhere along the line I’m not sure who got a president who somehow is fighting it yes

26:17

I I don’t really know what to say here we don’t have anyone in our favor that’s looking to shut this down oh the legislate simply to give money to everyone in America you saw by the first the first package in seven trillion dollars like you said a small fraction of that actually going to the people yeah so here we have another chance at this likely not uh the Republicans seem pretty intent to just let grandma die and that seems to be their their their entire mo is like well we tried we spent

27:01

a lot of money oh well the problem is is that while the the the blue states in York California why Washington those places got hit the hardest first because those are large cities with international airports and it hit those places first because they’re of their trade with China and Italy uh it spread from there into these rural communities the blue states locked down they flatten their curve very early the red states were slow to react and when they did react the kind of half-heartedly did it

27:34

and then they turned it off too soon those red states have high morbidities hike or more comorbidities we’re talking more than a third of the population being overweight or diabetic heart disease renal problems hypertension you know the third of America is obese and obesity has you know a ten to fifteen percent mortality when they get infected with with with this disease so if every person with diabetes in America gets infected we’re looking at just four million deaths from that alone and these

28:08

numbers are not clicking in the heads of these elected politicians especially in the red states because they have this weird I would say it’s a American exceptionalism idea that like it’s something that happens to someone else not to them and they just can’t they just can’t imagine that they are a fleshie ball of goo that’s susceptible to infection let’s just like everyone else and so they just believe that they’re not going to be infected they still want to go to Applebee’s and enjoy

28:38

their meal so they’re going to be hit really hard and these rural areas also have really poor health care systems rural hospitals been shutting down in the hundreds across the country for the last decade and you they don’t have the beds they don’t have the doctors they don’t have the nurses they don’t have the equipment and so I fear that Trump and Republican governors are going to kill off their base their base is older their base is more conservative and those are the people that are generally also have high

29:08

comorbidities age and health-wise that you know they’re going to lose an appreciable percentage of their electorate and it’s going to demographically change the election come November November especially if we have a second peak coming August September October that can wipe out you know hundreds of thousands of people maybe even millions of people if if we don’t cap this we don’t find the curve once again where does wisdom get get to policy I mean here with an executive order from us trying to close down

29:45

social media do we have no control over what’s gonna happen here it seems like our system of government isn’t letting us the people with well I mean what you said seems to be very basic wisdom to me and I may not be comfortable to a lot of people to be sitting around and take away some of the pain yeah it’s it’s it’s pretty phenomenal if if if you look at the the polling being done about you know are you staying home are you using a mask are you doing these things about 75 to 85 percent of the population were

30:25

asked if are you willing to go back to restaurants if you’re open they said no so you know a overwhelming majority seventy five percent or more of the country will not go back to restaurants until there’s a vaccine in if you look at Georgia Alabama Florida Georgia Texas then what they’re seeing is the restaurants really at 15% capacity they opened back up if people are coming back to their restaurants so the infections are happening amongst this small population that’s that that believes

30:58

that this virus isn’t isn’t going to affect them and those are the ones are being hit really hard the same thing is happening in Sweden so Sweden is famously doing the let’s reach herd immunity experiment and they have the highest mortality rates in Europe they have run away infection and they felt okay we’re only a couple weeks away from having herd immunity and then they got their antibody tests back and they discovered that you know only 7% of Sauk home in less than 3% the rest of the country has

31:28

been infected and they’re out four thousand deaths and they’re like oh my god herd immunity that’s another sixty to a hundred thousand deaths in our small country and so they’re freaking out but the Swedish people eighty-five percent of them have removed themselves from society they’ve stepped back and they’re not going to restaurants or not going out so the people who have been affected are only that small fifteen percent that doesn’t believe that that they can be infected

31:54

everyone else doesn’t gone out to to you know do their part in getting affected in increasing herd immunity so you know the the bravado from this minority is what’s the loudest and it’s that’s what everyone’s hearing but there there’s such a small minority compared to everyone else and the difference is that small minority they’re willing to show up to the you know Michigan State House with their guns and drive their $60,000 trucks and demand to get a haircut you know they’re loud they’re banding

32:24

together and they’re being heard but that eighty-five percent of the population is like well why would I go to a protest where I could get sick so you’re not going to hear their voices you’re not going to hear them chanting at the Statehouse to stay closed because wisely they’re staying home and avoiding you know transmission of the virus so there there’s incredible disconnect between you know what we’re hearing and what people actually believe and the loud micro voices that are you know hate

32:53

to be that conspiracy theorists but all of these these reopening websites in the Facebook groups they’re all being run by like one group out of Jacksonville Florida and you know the this one man we created all 50 they reopened Washington reopen California reopened Montana web sites and he’s stoked and scheduled all these protests from Florida and and you know it’s not an organic it’s not a grassroots movement it’s it’s something planned by an individual trying to stoke you know its instigate

33:31

confrontation and it’s not you know we need leadership that can be like it’s time to shut up now stay home until we have a vaccine so between now and the election never mind I don’t want to give many ideas but now they could declare martial law and decide to postpone the election you know I mean I don’t mean to be radical about it but well we’re realistic here when it’s out of control control yeah it’s you know the the things I can predict I can predict you know rates of doubling I can predict how

34:19

many people are going to be infected how many hospital beds were going to need things like that the human reaction component is something that is so intangible that the variable can’t be defined and how people react to this pandemic is is phenomenal and unique you know I have friends that are liberal Democrats socialists that just can’t accept that the virus is real and there they are all sudden swiveling to these hard right you know white supremacists YouTube blogs where they’re being told

34:55

that the virus isn’t real or comes from 5g towers and all sorts of weird you know Kremlin propaganda they get seeded into into our country and their intent entire political ideals are flipping the way that I saw it thought happened after 9/11 was a lot of people you know a comedian Dennis Miller was one of the most outspoken liberals in America 9/11 happened and it broke something in his brain he became a conservative firebrand and you know the how we react this as a a coping mechanism and be a

35:30

instantaneous reaction or response to threat is something that happens on individual level and I just I I honestly can’t predict how how we’re going to do that but I do see the powers that be using this crisis to exploit whatever they can so I expect to see Trump you know try to keep States from doing mail-in ballots because if you don’t have mail-in ballots you have an excuse to cancel or postpone or or do other things they’re unconstitutional regarding the election and I do see him

36:06

wanting perhaps people to get sick so he has an excuse to be like oh it’s too unsafe to have a national election we must postpone it the weird thing is is that if we postpone an election January 20th Trump stops being president regardless and Nancy Pelosi becomes president so there’s there’s nothing about Congress having their terms removed if there’s no election but that is written in the Constitution that Trump is no longer president and as of January 20th in Penson longer vice

36:38

president’s so Nancy Pelosi would become president the United States so it might backfire on him if he decides to postpone the election still there’s still secession there meanwhile back we get out of politics and we get back to the human part the humanity we’re talking about I don’t want to give numbers you can tell me but it sounds like millions of people will die oh yeah hundreds of thousands worry that we’re already on pace to lose about a million people by this time next year

37:11

that’s as if infections do not grow if we do not see the number of effects with each day hit the exponential curve we will lose over a million people by this time next year if we see growth we see second wave two to three million and those are confirmed cases the the interesting thing about the what we’re seeing with mortalities is in northern Italy you know and well garan MO I believe they had from March 1st or March 24th they had around 400 deaths and during that time the previous year they only had around 90

37:52

deaths so subtract those 90 natural deaths you’re at 300 plus deaths occurring in those three and a half weeks but only 136 of those deaths were actually recorded as a Ovid related they still had 200 plus deaths that that were the result of you know natural death at home uh other covertly deaths such as stroke and heart attack that happen from extreme response to this disease usually in young people young people are seeing lots of strokes and heart attacks so it would be interesting to see you know

38:28

come January when the Social Security Department announces how many social security cards have been cancelled due to mortalities how many people actually had died in New York they were having four hundred deaths a day from heart attack at home when you only had 20 deaths a day prior so you know not all those deaths got record as Covid deaths I have friends who were in their 30s that just drop dead back in April March and and they drop dead from strokes and heart attacks and they never got tested

38:57

they you know we we never saw why a 36 year old man would drop dead of a heart attack and and yet it happened they’re not being recorded as Covid deaths so so let me ask a question because I’m hearing all those people out there that are saying oh this is fake news where does he get a statistics yeah your statistics are personal and are conservative that’s what you keep I keep hearing you talking to kind of diminish the numbers because I see you know when I realized exponential I see much bigger

39:36

numbers nowhere you know if if we if we acted like we were acting in February nationally no prior to believing if there was there was there was expections everywhere we would we would have had a doubling rate there was every three days which Mitte meant between February 1st and today there would have been about a hundred and sixty million Americans infected by this disease that’s that’s what what shutting down did for us was to basically reduce that doubling rate from three days to 14 days

40:08

and saved essentially five to ten million lives so you know if every single American gets infected by this virus we’re looking at 10 to 20 million dead and I agree staggering it’s absolutely mind-blowing now what what did New Zealand do I understand New Zealand you said yep nobody in nobody out what’s going on there I have a friend in their family are actually stuck in New Zealand they can’t get out and two friends that got out on basically the last flight they had gone to New Zealand

40:44

to do a year abroad and travel on a campervan and then they got there and within days everything shut down so they were stuck for about a month in this one community living in their van and managed to get out and basically the last flight but New Zealand did it right they shut down they said okay we’re gonna give everybody at UVI universal basic income and we’re just going to sit tight for the next year until the vaccines available and if you’re on an island that’s the luxury you have you can do that and so they

41:14

have no more infections the last patient left the hospital I think this week and is recovered and they have no no way for transmission to come back into the country because they’re not letting anyone in so that’s kind of the route you have to take so interviewer Hawaii and you yeah I mean I’m we’re now talking the barge the young brothers is saying oh we are running into a money problem now we need 25 million to keep going and we’re gonna run into this same issue yeah yeah there’s there’s gonna be

41:48

an economic component no matter what what choice you take whether it’s going to be reopening or whether it’s to be shutting down the thing is only one of those saves lives you know you open Hawaii back up all of a sudden you’d be dealing with with hospital costs that are far beyond anything that’s sustainable tell the governor and the lieutenant governor this message us aye I think so it has to be you know the people you know if Hawaii starts taking in millions of visitors and local transmission begins

42:22

the Hat spread throughout the community you know a people will stop coming as tourists and be your local population is going to overwhelm the meager hospital beds you already have and you know if if half the people get infected don’t require hospitalization so fifty percent are asymptomatic they’re carriers of the virus but they aren’t displaying symptoms the other half display symptoms and of that half around forty to fifty percent of them have severe enough symptoms that require hospitalization

42:57

now the hospitalization runs for about 10 to 40 days before recovery or death and it costs about $4,000 a day for every day one of those patients is in these ICUs so we’re looking at hospital bills from thirty to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars per patient for every patient has to go to a hospital that’s 20 percent of the affected people are looking at hospital bills that rival four years of college so you know that’s unsustainable the Kaiser Permanente the other insurance companies that operate

43:35

in Hawaii they’re not they’re going to declare bankruptcy before they pay all those bills they’re gonna be able to afford that nationally if we look if we have you know the Imperial College in London was saying that within a year about forty to seventy percent of the u.s. population is going to be infected even with mitigation efforts so forty to seventy percent let’s just say it’s about a hundred and sixty million Americans are infected within the next year okay that is around thirty million

44:02

hospitalizations that require ICU 30 million hospitalizations that all have let’s say 20 days of being in the hospital so you’re looking at 66 hundred million days of hospitalization total well we don’t have enough equipment we don’t have enough hospitals no we only have a million beds the United States so working at 29 million more people than beds we have being infected well and and you know some people say oh you’re just blowing it up yeah you your math is I don’t mean to be funny you’re

44:39

conservative all right oh yeah I you know that I was interviewed by local podcast and and when I came up with my data and everyone was like oh you’re scare monger why would you say these things and then we revisit a month later my data was all conservative he got what was actually worse than what I had predicted so you know take the numbers I have and just expect them to be worse than what I’m saying and the numbers I’m saying are pretty apocalyptic you know 600 million Hospital days for Americans

45:06

at $4,000 a day we’re looking at you know a full quarter of our entire GDP just going to ICU health care yeah let’s redic eight trillion dollars just going to hospital care for patients never mind that everything else is gonna have to reclose down again exactly yeah and all the money what do you say uh 30 months of $2,000 a head yep for every adult path on Social Security or disability yeah what would that be about seven trillion seven yeah which is what we already spent like that when all this is said and done then it

45:50

has to somehow we have to live to rebuild everything oh yeah yeah are we going to learn now isn’t that a good question for our world are we gonna learn to cooperate and help each other or are we go to some old model here what’s going on now the old not yeah you know IIIi I think I hate to be a pessimist but I think it’s gonna be more brutal until until people have learned their lesson there’s a large segment of population that has to touch to touch the stove to learn their lesson you know

46:29

I still see stories of these protesters are like oh coab is not real and then they died from the infection or they get themselves and going into an induced coma for two weeks and they come out of it and like I was so wrong you know have to avoid this and they have to learn their lesson the hard way before they can come to this realization it’s it’s one of situations where you know a smart man learns from their mistakes a wise man learns from the mistakes of others well we’ve got a few smart people

47:00

not very many wise people in a whole bunch of stupid people they have to touch the stove and and the that’s just gonna be the reality of it so can we I’m here we are yeah we’re a few days before things open yep if I go to the mayor and I just run the scenario what are my chances of having him say Jason I see what you’re saying let’s shut it all down I’m yeah not gonna happen yeah so what is it we are just a too powerful and what about food 90% of the food coming to these islands is coming from off

47:47

island 90% you’d think that everyone would be scrambling on every inch of land to be growing food to be it’s pretty phenomenal you know I went to school in Hilo and every yard had banana trees had pineapples and whatnot and no one ate the trees in their own yard they all went to Safeway they bought bananas that came from Chile or Costa Rica or something they ate those so you know hopefully you’ve got enough sustainable just plants in your yard that you can ignore the grocery store for a while and

48:26

live off of that well yeah Hawaii why face the real predicament because they’re such an import economy so you know they there has there’s going to be some level of transaction involved the different that what’s going to depend on that is are you going to see relief from the federal government and that’s the federal government has the ability to print money and we need to utilize that leverage now you know there’s no reason we should be racking up debt in this time because you know

48:57

we don’t have to worry about inflation namely because we print all this money we pay people ubi but they’re not buying homes with it they’re not you know buying cars with it it’s just enough money to survive and maybe maybe save a little bit but it doesn’t it’s not enough to to instigate a rush on on these large purchases that would cause inflation to happen people aren’t traveling so gasoline prices are going to go up so it’s kind of a unique situation where you can literally print

49:30

money and not see the the rapid inflation as a result of it and it’s just kind of like a unique situation so we might as well use that situation to flood the economy with cash so that people can survive and we can we can guarantee their there their way of life for the next year before we can get the virus out – the vaccine out to them and recover and some people don’t want to do with vaccines so don’t make it or break it based on other things I mean there’s lots I’ve seen some treatments that

50:04

they’re using in China like they use this hydroxy hydrogen machine that because hydrogen can help it reduce inflammation in the lungs the percentage of people that go on these ventilators that die and very very high oh yeah so there’s all kinds of solutions that no one is implementing here there’s a guy on Maui making these machines and I told you up in West Virginia there’s a guy getting that from China and making this machine to create hydrogen and oxygen for people and they’re like

50:42

non-existent to be able to wrap up and do that we hear them making ventilators how about tests I mean I know this whole thing is crazy whatever we just said how do we know only God unless we test yeah the the the testing problem is a huge issue because again you have you have half the population that will be asymptomatic so they won’t know they have it while they’re shedding the virus and the other part of the population is the the incubation period can be anywhere from four to twenty seven days before they before they have

51:13

symptoms so they’re shouting the virus the entire time if you have somebody’s at three weeks before they show symptoms and they go on for a test and you know the investigators have to do contact tracing no one can remember who they talk to over that three-week period who they met with where they were you know Oh was I on Home Depot that day or the day before I don’t remember you know so the uniqueness of this virus is almost just evil in that way and then it makes contact tracing damn near impossible and

51:44

a lot of people who also saying we’re losing our rights oh yeah never get them back so yeah I mean that silly stuff is 1918 we saw pink global pandemic in cities shut down they stopped travel they refused to let people onto public transportation if they weren’t wearing masks and guess what we got our rights back when it was over so you know there have been plagues throughout humanity were required isolation quarantine and social distances for since animal husbandry began and that’s the mo for

52:17

all of society for all time the only reason we exist you and I exist is because our ancestors did that hundreds of years ago in their communities back in Europe whenever there was a plague so you know we exist today because of that you know the Hawaiian people the white people were isolated for thousands of years in the Middle Pacific and when white people showed up they brought the cold virus with them and the cold virus wiped out 90% of their population so you know that’s a piece of history there

52:47

exactly you know the the Hawaiian Islands could support over a million people with the land that was there and because they don’t have the animal husbandry and because they’d have the virus transfers from for more populated continents they’d survive just fine but when it’s a novel virus a novel virus is a different animal you know if you don’t if your body has no history of being exposed such a virus it can whop wipe out appreciable percentages of the population like that and and we have to

53:19

imagine ourselves as a Western Hemisphere native people pre-contact and think of ourselves as we are just as susceptible to this new virus as they were to the viruses from Europe when contact was made it wiped out 90% of populations they had they had identity they had a bit of a bit more against them in that they were dealing with fork for novel coronaviruses and like eight flu viruses that they got hit with the same time whereas we only have one virus to worry about but this susceptibility is is is unique

53:54

to a novel virus and it’s just something that really must be taking consideration that we still have 99% of population yet to be infected Wow you know we could talk about this forever believe it or not we we’ve been speaking a full hour and I don’t know if we’re any closer to if you would sum it up and you wonder what would you say give it a summation I’m not sure where we’re going with it except to maybe I’ll get this tape to the lieutenant governor and the governor

54:26

mayor but I would say someone was giving them coaching before they’re making their moves no well I would I would say that mathematically you’re economically doomed no matter what you do if you if you shut everything down you’re doomed if you open to everything up you’re doomed but only one of those methods saves lives and that’s shutting things down so go with the one that saves lives because you’re going to be economically obliterated either way so here comes in a couple of days they’re gonna open it

54:57

up and I’m not sure when they’re going to evaluate time to close it down again but how do we stop this I’m done yeah we don’t do we you don’t and because the incubation period is so long every time you go to shut it down you’re still gonna have a huge spike three weeks later so so it’s gonna be always too late when you go to shut it down I’m the only one that can really keep our economy going here is federal dollars exactly the states can’t print money so the states are going to run out of money

55:30

and you know the the president is already threatening states if they don’t open up religious institutions and Kadeem them essential they’re going to lose federal money so all these states have to let churches open up and churches religious centers everywhere across the globe its religious congregations that are the biggest spreaders of the disease because they get close together they scream and yell and chant and sing and they export so much of the virus that hundreds and thousands in one venue can

56:00

get infected in Washington that a choir practice of sixty people forty five of them got affected in several died you know the church in in Seoul where fifteen hundred people got infected in Iran where the numbers we don’t know what the true numbers are in Iran but we’re probably seeing hundreds of thousands have died there most likely and millions and millions and millions have been affected and it’s because there is a religious practice with with the Shiite Muslims where they go to a

56:24

certain certain site and they kiss a rock it’s on a wall and millions of people cycled through and kissed the same rock and they went back to the communities and just spread the virus like crazy so you know I like to tell people that in the Bible God tells you exactly what to do when there’s a plague and that’s stay home we have an entire holiday called Passover all about that you know just stay home until it’s over that’s what God told you to do he didn’t say go to church he did say go to

56:54

synagogue he said stay home until it’s over so just stay home that’s it that’s the simplest method do what do what God said well Houston you’ve been a really good guest scaring the hell out of me but I was when I say scaring the hell out of me the thing that scares me is there’s not a lot of wisdom going on you know and that’s what scares me cuz I’m one of those older Americans yep and you know I can think I’m stronger than dirt but we can see it’s just happening to all kinds of people and

57:29

like you say and they’re not counting so many people as Covid deaths even though we hear people saying they’re counting all of them as coded deaths were counted by Apollo twenty to forty percent if not more yeah someone now I’ll know to show it shut off my phone right yeah you’ve been a really oh it’s they want you they want me you know that’s the thing you know because I’ve been helping people a lot of people don’t stop asking for help they don’t know when Jason has given

58:15

enough yeah pretty crazy out there well you’ve been a terrific guest I’d love to talk about astrophysics but now isn’t the time for that I also want to thank Caroline for putting us in touch yeah she’s a wonderful lady yeah and you’ve been a terrific guest and a wonderful guy I’m sorry we have to tell her to say I’m sorry we meet under these circumstances but it’s been a pleasure well we could we can visit again in a few months after everything’s opened up and we can go I told you so the only

58:51

solace to get situation is well I told you that’s some solace yeah all right well thank you so much for having me on sure it’s been a pleasure and I hope you have a nice evening all right thank you so much  Aloha Aloha [Music]