Speaker 1: Pushkin. For every problem that we face, we know of solutions.
Speaker 1: The question is will enough people, young people find the ability,
Speaker 1: the commitment, the dedication to implement the kinds of solutions
Speaker 1: that we know are possible. There's no way to predict.
Speaker 1: It's a matter of will and choice. It's a matter
Speaker 1: of action and not speculation. That was Noam Chomsky. I'm
Speaker 1: Sam Fracoso and this is Talk Easy. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, thank you for being here this week. Today
Speaker 1: on the show, we're doing something a little bit different.
Speaker 1: As the coronavirus crisis carries onward, I wanted to have
Speaker 1: on two people that I thought could speak to our
Speaker 1: current situation. The first is Noam Chomsky, a philosopher, author, linguist, professor,
Speaker 1: and historian. He has also Noam Chomsky and needs no
Speaker 1: further introduction from me. My talk with him comes later
Speaker 1: in this episode, and in it he addresses the potential
Speaker 1: political and sociological ramifications this crisis may have on us.
Speaker 1: But to start, I called up doctor Ashish Ja He's
Speaker 1: the director over at the Harvard Global Health Institute. Some
Speaker 1: of you may remember doctor Jaw from an episode we
Speaker 1: aired just a month ago. Many more of you are
Speaker 1: probably familiar with doctor Jaw from your television sets, as
Speaker 1: he's been a recurring face on MSNBC, Fox, CNN, and
Speaker 1: PBS throughout this pandemic. This week, I asked him about
Speaker 1: the current climate within the medical industry and the stories
Speaker 1: he's hearing from the front lines inside the hospitals as
Speaker 1: resources run scarce. We also discuss a realistic roadmap to
Speaker 1: recovery to better understand when we may be able to
Speaker 1: return to something like normal life. Doctor Jaw has a
Speaker 1: kind of even keel temperament about him that I have
Speaker 1: found very, very comforting in these trying times. I hope
Speaker 1: you may feel the same. So why don't we try
Speaker 1: calling him up? Doctor joh thank you so much for
Speaker 1: coming back. How are you doing. I'm good, I'm well,
Speaker 1: I'm keeping safe, keeping healthy. How about you? Oh? Well,
Speaker 1: was that the wrong question to ask? Saying no, No,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you're immediately asking me questions. In your article
Speaker 1: for Forbes just a couple of days ago, yep, you
Speaker 1: compared our current predicament to a war zone. Yeah, you wrote,
Speaker 1: we're on a battlefield wearing blindfolds. For people who didn't
Speaker 1: read that article, tell me where you think we're at
Speaker 1: as everybody knows, we are in the biggest, most consequential
Speaker 1: pandemic of a century. And if we do things well,
Speaker 1: if we're smart, we manage the issues effectively, we'll probably
Speaker 1: still lose millions of people and across the world. But
Speaker 1: if we mishandle this, if we don't do the things
Speaker 1: that we know we need to do, it'll be ten
Speaker 1: times that it'll be completely devastating to our to our country,
Speaker 1: to the world. And a fundamental part of managing this
Speaker 1: disease is knowing who's infected and who isn't, and that's
Speaker 1: how we make a game plan. That's how we decide
Speaker 1: where we're going to put our energy and efforts. It's
Speaker 1: by focusing on people who are infected, letting people who
Speaker 1: are not get back to their lives. We can't do
Speaker 1: any of that without testing people. And it's the sort
Speaker 1: of public health one oh one that we have somehow
Speaker 1: not managed to get right so far. When you're talking
Speaker 1: to policymakers and folks in DC, what has that dialogue
Speaker 1: been like People I think understand on some basic level
Speaker 1: that we need to have testing, But I think there
Speaker 1: have been a couple of stories that have settled in
Speaker 1: that are really problematic. One is people think, well, surely
Speaker 1: we've solved this by now. It is so basic, so
Speaker 1: one oh one, how could we not have fixed this?
Speaker 1: And the President says every day that we fix it.
Speaker 1: We're testing more than any other country in the world,
Speaker 1: and turns out, you know, we haven't fixed it, right.
Speaker 1: And the other narrative that has settled in is testing
Speaker 1: was important early, but it doesn't matter anymore, And that
Speaker 1: I find even more frustrating, because you know, it mattered early,
Speaker 1: it mattered now, it will matter in three months. It
Speaker 1: is the single most important thing, the single most important
Speaker 1: tool we have, and it just stands to reason, right,
Speaker 1: if you want to if you want to figure out
Speaker 1: how to get humanity through this, you gotta know who's infected.
Speaker 1: You gotta know who do you focus on, and otherwise
Speaker 1: we're going to be shut down the way we are.
Speaker 1: So these two narratives keep coming up. I keep battling them.
Speaker 1: People get it, and then a week later people seem
Speaker 1: to have forgotten. Where has that second narrative come from?
Speaker 1: Some of it I think came from a good place
Speaker 1: in that at some point when we really just failed
Speaker 1: on testing and it became very clear that our country
Speaker 1: was going to get overwhelmed with infections, and that hospitals
Speaker 1: were going to get overwhelmed and many, many people were
Speaker 1: going to die. That a lot of people said, Okay,
Speaker 1: testing is important, but we got to focus on other
Speaker 1: things too, And we've got to focus on getting doctors
Speaker 1: and nurses their equipment, we got to focus on making
Speaker 1: sure hospitals are well stocked. All completely true. And we
Speaker 1: got to focus on social distancing, also true. And so
Speaker 1: in order to say this is more than just testing,
Speaker 1: which I agree with, it shifted from its things other
Speaker 1: than testing. And you can see that subtle shift when
Speaker 1: you move to a new thing or an add on
Speaker 1: a thing. It's easy enough to forget the first thing
Speaker 1: that was so critical. I think that's been part of it.
Speaker 1: And the other part of it is because it just
Speaker 1: hasn't moved as much as it needs to. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people have decided, well, maybe it's not
Speaker 1: so important, and maybe we can focus on something else instead.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about one facet of testing for a second.
Speaker 1: A major concern across the medical community is the country's
Speaker 1: need to test people who are asymptomatic, people who are
Speaker 1: not sick people who are healthy. Yep. And these doctors
Speaker 1: say that until we do this, the data we have
Speaker 1: is unreliable. Yep. Some doctors say, we're reporting dangerous outputs
Speaker 1: data that has very little foundation in reality. Can you
Speaker 1: walk me through this? Yeah, So, the way to think
Speaker 1: about it is, if you take a hundred people who
Speaker 1: are infected, and this is based on the best evidence
Speaker 1: we have as of today. If you take a hundred
Speaker 1: people who are infected, what we know is that probably
Speaker 1: about fifteen twenty of them will end up getting really
Speaker 1: pretty sick, sick enough to need hospital care. And some
Speaker 1: chunk of those people, maybe four or five out of
Speaker 1: that hundred end up needing ICU care, and you know,
Speaker 1: one or two out of that hundred end up actually die.
Speaker 1: But what about the other eighty who are not so
Speaker 1: sick as you need hospital care? Here, the data really
Speaker 1: is unclear, we think, I think, and again I hope
Speaker 1: you hear a little hesitation in my voice, because we
Speaker 1: don't know what we think is out of that eighty,
Speaker 1: maybe forty or fifty have symptoms. They have fever, they
Speaker 1: have a cough, they feel terrible, and they want to
Speaker 1: get tested. But they usually can't because we don't have
Speaker 1: enough testing capacity. And another twenty or thirty out of
Speaker 1: that hundred, the rest of the folks barely feel anything
Speaker 1: at all. They might feel completely well, or they might
Speaker 1: feel a little off, but nothing serious. And they are
Speaker 1: going around spreading the infection as much as anybody else is.
Speaker 1: And so we're not going to get our arms around
Speaker 1: this disease, and we're not going to bring any kind
Speaker 1: of control to the infection unless we can identify who
Speaker 1: those folks are and get them to not go out
Speaker 1: to restaurants and not go out to bars and stay
Speaker 1: at home. And it's fine when we're all shut down.
Speaker 1: That is okay, it's still not great. You still want
Speaker 1: to identify them. But the moment you open up those
Speaker 1: asymptomatic people are going to be the neighbor in your office,
Speaker 1: the person in the cubicle next to you, the person
Speaker 1: sharing your lunch with you, and that's going to be
Speaker 1: a real problem. So we want to identify people who
Speaker 1: are sick. We still can't test them. We want to
Speaker 1: test them, but we want to test a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of other folks who are asymptomatic, because we've got to
Speaker 1: know who's infected and who's not. And if you're infected,
Speaker 1: you can't be going out to restaurants and parts not
Speaker 1: until you're better well, you know. On the subject of
Speaker 1: endangering yourself and potentially others, there were is this report
Speaker 1: given by a nurse in New Orleans. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you saw it, but she said the following to
Speaker 1: The New York Times. As healthcare workers, we're all the
Speaker 1: biggest carriers. We're infecting people. The people that are taking
Speaker 1: care of you are just as infected. When it comes
Speaker 1: to doctors and nurses themselves, she said, there's a strong
Speaker 1: culture of not testing. There's a fear that tests may
Speaker 1: run out, and a concern of steep hospital bills. When
Speaker 1: pressed by The New York Times on why these healthcare
Speaker 1: workers wouldn't just get tested or stay home, she said,
Speaker 1: I don't know. We needed people, and we needed people
Speaker 1: to be working, even if you're afraid that you might
Speaker 1: be sick. It's a culture where one doctor says to another,
Speaker 1: oh are you sick? But are you that sick? I mean,
Speaker 1: we all got it right, and we've heard these accounts
Speaker 1: from across the country. That was from one nurse in
Speaker 1: New Orleans, but I've been in contact with a doctor
Speaker 1: in Baltimore, a doctor in Chicago. All of these healthcare
Speaker 1: workers are on the front lines, and almost all of
Speaker 1: them have resigned themselves to the fact that they will
Speaker 1: get this disease. It's not a matter of if, but
Speaker 1: when for these people, and they're just hoping they won't
Speaker 1: need the ICU. I'm curious, have you been hearing similar reports,
Speaker 1: and if so, how could this possibly be sustainable? I have,
Speaker 1: and it is. Again, it's born out of a very
Speaker 1: important ethos in medicine, but it's hugely problematic right now.
Speaker 1: And the ethos is one of you know, the patient
Speaker 1: comes first, So you wake up in the morning and
Speaker 1: you're having a bad day, you put it aside and
Speaker 1: you go to work and you take care of people
Speaker 1: because the patient is there and they need you. And
Speaker 1: not only does a patient come first, but your brothers
Speaker 1: and sisters, your fellow doctors and fellow nurses, they come second,
Speaker 1: right after the patient. So if you are not there,
Speaker 1: they're gonna have to take care of more people, and
Speaker 1: you're going to increase the burden on them, and so
Speaker 1: you have to do your part. We see sentiments like
Speaker 1: this in the military We see this in other situations
Speaker 1: where people are facing what feels like a common enemy,
Speaker 1: which it is in this case coronavirus and challenging situations.
Speaker 1: Is that you don't want to be the person who
Speaker 1: calls in sick and says, I know that means that
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to take care of a lot more
Speaker 1: patients today, but I'm going to stay at home. I
Speaker 1: get where that culture comes from. I have participated in
Speaker 1: that culture, and in retrospect, I have thought about times
Speaker 1: when I clearly should not have gone into work, but
Speaker 1: I did and didn't even think twice about it. But
Speaker 1: in this context, that culture, born out of a really
Speaker 1: great place and good motivations, is harming all of us.
Speaker 1: Is harming doctors and nurses, but it's also harming patients
Speaker 1: because then we can end up being the conduit for
Speaker 1: more infections. So it's very hard and it's very hard
Speaker 1: to change culture in the middle of an outbreak, you know.
Speaker 1: But this is a place where great healthcare leadership becomes important,
Speaker 1: and I think senior clinical leaders need to make this
Speaker 1: point very plainly that you're not doing anybody a favor.
Speaker 1: You're not helping your patients, you're not helping your fellow providers,
Speaker 1: doctors and nurses when you do this, and for them,
Speaker 1: if not for yourself, but for them. You have to
Speaker 1: stay home. You have to take care of yourself, and
Speaker 1: you have to protect yourself because there will be nobody
Speaker 1: left to take care of sick patients if everybody gets
Speaker 1: if all the doctors and nurses get sick. But what
Speaker 1: does the alternative look like. I mean, they stay home,
Speaker 1: but there is a finite number of healthcare workers riot yes, no.
Speaker 1: And this is where you know, this is where early
Speaker 1: action would have been so helpful, is that if we
Speaker 1: could have prevented the number of people who got very,
Speaker 1: very sick, it would have would have been less of
Speaker 1: a strain. And of course this is why people need
Speaker 1: to continue to stay at home right now, until we
Speaker 1: are at a point where, you know, the health system
Speaker 1: is not so stractum. But we've been doing a lot
Speaker 1: to try to expand the pool, right We've We've had
Speaker 1: retired doctors and nurses coming back. We've had doctors and
Speaker 1: nurses from around the country flying into New York with
Speaker 1: the expectation assumption and I don't think they expect it,
Speaker 1: but I expected that when their hometowns get hit that
Speaker 1: a lot of doctors from New York will pick up
Speaker 1: and go there. That kind of camaraderie is wonderful and
Speaker 1: it's and it's great, and that will help, but it
Speaker 1: may not be enough. But nonetheless, what I've been saying
Speaker 1: to my friends and colleagues is, if you're feeling sick,
Speaker 1: you got to stay home. You got to take care
Speaker 1: of yourself, because at the end of the day, you
Speaker 1: sick in the hospital is worse than you not at
Speaker 1: the hospital. At all, of the healthcare workers that you've
Speaker 1: spoken to over the past few weeks, what has their
Speaker 1: general temperament been like. There is this incredible sense of
Speaker 1: focus and mission right now. I think some amount of
Speaker 1: frustration that our country has not supplied them with basic
Speaker 1: protective equipment, that our government has chosen not to prioritize
Speaker 1: their safety. But remarkable in that that no one I
Speaker 1: have spoken to suggests that that somehow then makes their
Speaker 1: obligations to their patients sort of null and void, That
Speaker 1: it advrogates, you know, kind of their personal obligation. And
Speaker 1: this is interesting because one of the things that I've
Speaker 1: been thinking about is, of course, doctors and nurses have
Speaker 1: an ethical responsibility to take care of patients. But society
Speaker 1: has an ethical responsibility to make sure that doctors and
Speaker 1: nurses are protected. And if society, through its government, says
Speaker 1: we're not doing that, We're just not going to do it.
Speaker 1: It's not a priority, then does the initial ethical obligation
Speaker 1: of doctors and nurses to patients still remain? And the
Speaker 1: answer I've heard from my colleagues is absolutely, yes, absolutely, yes,
Speaker 1: we're not backing off even if society doesn't have our back.
Speaker 1: I think it's heroic. It also in some ways breaks
Speaker 1: my heart because it means a lot of people are
Speaker 1: getting sick and a lot of people are dying, and
Speaker 1: that's just frustrating. But the sense of mission is very clear.
Speaker 1: What's the most horrifying story you've heard behind closed doors
Speaker 1: in terms of the kinds of things that doctors and
Speaker 1: nurses are having to go through. Yes, you know, and
Speaker 1: some of this has made it out into the media,
Speaker 1: but you know, having to having to wear garbage bags
Speaker 1: because there's no gowns that can protect you having you know,
Speaker 1: the stories that I've heard about the face masks you
Speaker 1: have to use day in, day out, And after a while,
Speaker 1: it starts smelling, but you can't toss it because there
Speaker 1: is not another one, and there's no easy way to
Speaker 1: clean it without ruining its protective capability, and so you
Speaker 1: continue to wear it. You know, these are small stories,
Speaker 1: but I think over time they accumulate and they great
Speaker 1: on people. But people continue. Again, I haven't heard anybody
Speaker 1: say that's it, I give up, I'm walking away. They
Speaker 1: feel like their obligation is to the patient in front
Speaker 1: of them, and so even with that stinky face mask
Speaker 1: or the garbage bag as a as a gown, they're
Speaker 1: going to do what they need to do. There's also
Speaker 1: this economic consideration that I don't want to leave out.
Speaker 1: You know, I have from a friend here that hospitals
Speaker 1: are notorious for mistreating and exploiting providers, pandemic or not.
Speaker 1: She said, Hospital administrators who know nothing about clinical care
Speaker 1: could care less about patients or providers. They only care
Speaker 1: about the bottom line. And this is coming from a
Speaker 1: few folks who work on the front lines that the
Speaker 1: more renowned the hospital, the worst it is. They think
Speaker 1: low pay and being overworked and appreciate it is acceptable
Speaker 1: for the privilege of working for one of these big hospitals,
Speaker 1: and that behavior that sort of mentality is still embedded
Speaker 1: in the system even in this crisis. Have you heard
Speaker 1: about this? Yeah, I think my experience and I've certainly
Speaker 1: heard of this idea, right, And there is definitely examples
Speaker 1: of hospital executives who care fundamentally about the bottom line
Speaker 1: and only about the bottom line. And actually, one are
Speaker 1: the I've written and talked a lot about is what
Speaker 1: are the obligations of hospitals that are nonprofit? Because nonprofit
Speaker 1: is another way of saying, you don't have to pay taxes,
Speaker 1: We're giving you a break, and we as a society,
Speaker 1: but you owe something for that nonprofit And a lot
Speaker 1: of hospitals have forgotten that they have a mission that
Speaker 1: society has given them a big financial break for. And
Speaker 1: this is a huge general challenge, you know, in this outbreak,
Speaker 1: I've seen a mix, so there are hospitals that have
Speaker 1: continued that same path. I spoke to a very senior
Speaker 1: hospital executive about ten days ago and we were talking
Speaker 1: about hospital capacity and he said, I don't plan to
Speaker 1: cancel any elective surgeries. They are my most lucrative procedures.
Speaker 1: And I said to what are you going to do
Speaker 1: with COVID patients? And he said, I'll find a way
Speaker 1: to make sure they go elsewhere. Okay, I guess you
Speaker 1: can try. And this was your friend, a colleague. Let's
Speaker 1: just say that someone I've known for twenty years, right
Speaker 1: by the way of our two conversations. This is the
Speaker 1: first time you've backpeled and been like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: he's he's not my friend. I swear, I've just I
Speaker 1: just he happened to have been in my life for
Speaker 1: two decades. I'm sorry. Yeah, no, Look, it's hard to
Speaker 1: know how to be friends with someone like that. You can,
Speaker 1: you can appreciate them. He's a smart guy. He is
Speaker 1: very effective at his job, but there is a disconnect
Speaker 1: on values that really does make it hard for me
Speaker 1: to feel like we're friends. You know, i'd have a
Speaker 1: cup of coffee with them, but I don't know that anyway,
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter. But he represents a you know, a slice,
Speaker 1: a chunk of hospitals, a chunk of organizations that I
Speaker 1: think are doing that. But I also have colleagues and
Speaker 1: now people i'd call friends who you know, seen your
Speaker 1: hospital leaders who said for the next three months, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to take a salary or I'm going to
Speaker 1: cut my salary in half, and I'm just gonna take
Speaker 1: those dollars and donate it to frontline providers so they
Speaker 1: get a little extra and they are there at eleven
Speaker 1: o'clock at night on a Sunday, not on the front lines,
Speaker 1: bothering the doctors and nurses, but one step behind, you know,
Speaker 1: working the phones, trying to make sure that the equipment
Speaker 1: is showing up, trying to make sure that So it's
Speaker 1: a pretty heterogeneous set of responses, but I think it'd
Speaker 1: be unfair to not call out those people who have
Speaker 1: done the heroic work of they're not they're not taking
Speaker 1: care of the patients, but they're taking care of the
Speaker 1: people who are taking care of the patients. And I've
Speaker 1: seen that too, and it's been heartening. And it's been
Speaker 1: at some very very big, academic, famous academic medical centers
Speaker 1: that we've seen some excellent behavior as well. So so
Speaker 1: it's a bit of both before we get into what
Speaker 1: the next two or three months may look like. Yep,
Speaker 1: I'm curious, what does a piece of this evolving story
Speaker 1: that you think is not getting enough coverage in the
Speaker 1: mainstream media. What are we missing, what are we not
Speaker 1: talking about enough? There are a couple of things that
Speaker 1: I've been thinking a lot about that I feel like
Speaker 1: maybe I'm not hearing so much about. It. Is remarkable
Speaker 1: to me how well the American people, not everybody, but
Speaker 1: most Americans, how well they have adapted to or let's say,
Speaker 1: how well they've been compliant. I hate that word, but
Speaker 1: with this idea of social distancing, I mean it's really working.
Speaker 1: People really are staying home, People really are staying away
Speaker 1: from each other. And that's such an odd thing to
Speaker 1: ask people to do, right, Like all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: your governor said, hey, don't go out, don't spend time
Speaker 1: with friends and family, don't And people more or less
Speaker 1: have done it. And I think it's amazing. I have
Speaker 1: to tell you I've been I just assume there'll be
Speaker 1: a lot more pushback, a lot of people saying I'm
Speaker 1: going to go on with my life, and there's been
Speaker 1: a little, but very little. So I think that's been remarkable,
Speaker 1: and I think it has not gotten enough attention, and
Speaker 1: it has been hugely helpful. The other part of it, though, Sam,
Speaker 1: and the part that I worry about, is what is
Speaker 1: happening at home for folks. We've seen little bits of
Speaker 1: data about increases in domestic violence. We've seen little bits
Speaker 1: of data about increases in loneliness and mental illness. But
Speaker 1: while people while I just spent all this time celebrating
Speaker 1: that people have been compliant with this and have done it,
Speaker 1: I think we have paid very little attention to what
Speaker 1: the impact on people's lives has been. And we're not
Speaker 1: done right. We're right now still in the first half
Speaker 1: of April, and this is not ending in April, and
Speaker 1: I don't think it's largely ending in May. And I
Speaker 1: worry a lot about what people's lives will be, like,
Speaker 1: how much suffering there is that we're just We're going
Speaker 1: to uncover over time and realize how expensive social distancing
Speaker 1: really was. Yeah, I mean, how tenable do you think
Speaker 1: it is for people to socially distance and self isolate
Speaker 1: for the rest of April and through most of May.
Speaker 1: Do you see that happening? This is going to get
Speaker 1: harder and harder, right, And I think we've got to
Speaker 1: get through April and we've got to try to get
Speaker 1: through as much of May as possible. And part of
Speaker 1: this is, you know, I'm talking to my public health friends,
Speaker 1: the kind of experts that I spend time talking to
Speaker 1: and they're saying things like, oh, she's you're being too optimistic.
Speaker 1: We need to have everything shut down through July and
Speaker 1: then maybe we can open up for a month and
Speaker 1: maybe six weeks and we'll have to shut down again.
Speaker 1: And they're showing me data and models. I look at
Speaker 1: and them data and models are pretty good. And I
Speaker 1: get why people say that, and I get why they
Speaker 1: think that's what we need to do, and they're not
Speaker 1: technically wrong. But my take is that is untenable. I
Speaker 1: can't imagine saying two Americans basically through July. I just
Speaker 1: don't think it'll work. I don't think people will do it.
Speaker 1: I don't think people can. And so on one hand,
Speaker 1: I'm fighting that battle of trying to convince my public
Speaker 1: health friends that we got to open up much sooner.
Speaker 1: And then, of course, on the other hand, I'm hearing
Speaker 1: from everybody else that I just can't keep going. So,
Speaker 1: you know, this really gets us to where we need
Speaker 1: to go in the future. I think we've got to
Speaker 1: hold on as long as we can, and I hope
Speaker 1: and pray that we can hold on through a good
Speaker 1: chunk of May, and then we've got to open up slowly,
Speaker 1: and we've got to open up deliberately, and we've got
Speaker 1: to open up in a data driven way. And this
Speaker 1: is why I keep emphasizing testing, because testing gives us data.
Speaker 1: And at that point, we've got to let people get
Speaker 1: as much of their lives back as we can tolerate.
Speaker 1: And we have to understand that the moment we let up,
Speaker 1: the virus will start circulating more robustly, more vigorously, and
Speaker 1: the longer we are open, the more the virus will
Speaker 1: spread in our communities. So there's no question that it
Speaker 1: will increase. And that is why a lot of people
Speaker 1: think we'll just have to shut down again. I think
Speaker 1: that a very vigorous testing, tracing, isolation strategy can allow
Speaker 1: us to stay open. We won't go back to life
Speaker 1: as usual. But I think so many of the things
Speaker 1: that we're all missing and craving in our lives, just
Speaker 1: basics social interactions outside of there maybe two three people
Speaker 1: we live with. We I think we'll start being able
Speaker 1: to get that back. But we're really caught between a
Speaker 1: rock and a hard place. There is no easy path
Speaker 1: out of this. So that's why I've been pushing forward.
Speaker 1: Please stay at home, but as soon as we can.
Speaker 1: Let's start relaxing at least some of these restrictions so
Speaker 1: people can start getting back to work and maybe kids
Speaker 1: can start going back to school. Right. I think everyone
Speaker 1: is eager to get back to work, to go back
Speaker 1: to school. Well, maybe not go back to school, but
Speaker 1: they want to feel something that is vaguely normal. Yea.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about a reasonable road map for this country.
Speaker 1: A lot of the timetables predicting when we can reopen
Speaker 1: America are based on how South Korea deal with the situation,
Speaker 1: how they managed to keep offices and restaurants open during
Speaker 1: the crisis. Ye walk me through how they manage this.
Speaker 1: South Korea and Singapore and a couple other places did
Speaker 1: a few different things that I think are worth understanding,
Speaker 1: and then maybe I can shift to how that might
Speaker 1: play out here. But fundamentally, what those places did was
Speaker 1: they had a very robust tracing tracking program. So that
Speaker 1: meant what I mean by that is if you got infected,
Speaker 1: if you were found to be infected, you got quarantined,
Speaker 1: but they would track down everybody you had spent time
Speaker 1: with and quarantine all those people as well. A lot
Speaker 1: of the bigger venues got closed they did a reasonable
Speaker 1: job of keeping restaurants and other social gathering places open,
Speaker 1: but with a lot more social distancing built into them,
Speaker 1: and that I have been arguing is our path forward.
Speaker 1: So when I look ahead, let's say we can get
Speaker 1: through most of May, and we have really good testing
Speaker 1: data so we know where it's safe to open. When
Speaker 1: we open, offices can start letting people come back to work.
Speaker 1: But if it's a super crowded office, maybe it's only
Speaker 1: half the people come back on Mondays and Wednesdays and
Speaker 1: the other half people come back on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Speaker 1: or some sort of a halfway opening. I can imagine
Speaker 1: restaurants and bars opening, but I can also imagine a
Speaker 1: rule that says they can only meet they can only
Speaker 1: fill up to fifty percent of fire code capacity, which
Speaker 1: will necessarily mean that you know, there'll there'll be a
Speaker 1: lot more space, there'll be fewer crowds. There will not
Speaker 1: be a packed bar on a Saturday night that you
Speaker 1: will go to. I don't see any possibilities of a
Speaker 1: baseball game where thirty thousand fans are packed into a stadium,
Speaker 1: because you do one of those and a few of
Speaker 1: those folks there are infected, and a couple of them
Speaker 1: are super spreaders, and you will fuel an outbreak that
Speaker 1: will shut the whole city down for four weeks, and
Speaker 1: cities will decide that a single baseball game isn't worth
Speaker 1: shutting the whole place down for four weeks. So those
Speaker 1: are the kinds of changes that I think are going
Speaker 1: to be necessary. And coupled with and here's where it
Speaker 1: starts getting tricky. So coupled with this very vigorous tracing
Speaker 1: program that you know, there's this at South Korea and
Speaker 1: Singapore did where you're gonna we're gonna have to decide
Speaker 1: how much civil liberties we're willing to give up. So
Speaker 1: we may have an app on our phone and this
Speaker 1: may very well come to be that is put in
Speaker 1: there by your carrier, and when you test positive, it
Speaker 1: will send an alert to everybody you've been within six
Speaker 1: feet up in the last five days. And it won't say, hey,
Speaker 1: Ashisha is positive, but it will say someone you were
Speaker 1: in close contact with was positive in the last you know,
Speaker 1: someone need to contact within the last five days, and
Speaker 1: then all those people need to go get tested and
Speaker 1: anybody who's positive, they needs to get quarantined. And that
Speaker 1: cycle begins again for them, and this is the kind
Speaker 1: of vigorous program we're gonna need to have if we're
Speaker 1: going to have a shot at staying open. Now people
Speaker 1: are going to be like, I'm not super comfortable with that,
Speaker 1: and I understand, And my response is, how comfortable are
Speaker 1: you shutting down for several months again? Because those are
Speaker 1: going to be our choices and the choice of life
Speaker 1: goes back to normal, I can do what I want.
Speaker 1: That's going to be not with us until this pandemic
Speaker 1: comes to an end, and under the best of circumstances,
Speaker 1: the pandemic comes to an end in twelve to eighteen
Speaker 1: months from now, you know. I listen to the President
Speaker 1: and he says, we want to open up. It will
Speaker 1: be great, life will be back to normal, and we
Speaker 1: want to open up May first, And I play out
Speaker 1: that scenario in my head and I say, Okay, let's
Speaker 1: do what the President is suggest what happens. What happens
Speaker 1: is that we open up May. The first couple of
Speaker 1: weeks will be great and everybody will feel like, oh,
Speaker 1: thank God, We're over this thing. And by late May
Speaker 1: then rates of infections will start getting very, very high
Speaker 1: across all of America, and by early June, the hospitals
Speaker 1: will be filled up again and people will be dying
Speaker 1: at alarmingly high numbers, and we will shut down. And
Speaker 1: when we shut down, we'll have to be shut down
Speaker 1: for three months, and so we'll be shut down through
Speaker 1: the summer into early fall. And there are public health
Speaker 1: people who think this is going to be our cycle.
Speaker 1: We're going to open shut, open shut, and we're going
Speaker 1: to potentially spend fifty to seventy percent of our time
Speaker 1: shut I lay that out for folks, and I say
Speaker 1: that's the most likely scenario, and the question is what
Speaker 1: are you willing to do for an alternative scenario? How
Speaker 1: much are you willing to sacrifice? And I find that
Speaker 1: most people find the scenario I've laid out of open shut,
Speaker 1: open shut to be intolerable. The idea that we'd open
Speaker 1: for six weeks and then shut for three months just
Speaker 1: feels intolerable. And I think it is intolerable. I think
Speaker 1: the economic effects, I think the social impacts of that
Speaker 1: will just be awful. And so then the alternative is, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm willing to make some sacrifices. If I'm infected, I'm
Speaker 1: willing to go be quarantined for two weeks because I
Speaker 1: don't have another like, there's no third alternative that says
Speaker 1: you just get to have your life back and everything
Speaker 1: will be fine, not that I know of, and so
Speaker 1: trying to help people understand that our choices are limited.
Speaker 1: But if we if we all collectively agree on that
Speaker 1: kind of middle path of testing, isolation, quarantine, tracing, we
Speaker 1: can get enough of our lives back that you know, Sam,
Speaker 1: you and I've never met each other, but we could.
Speaker 1: We could get together for a drink and talk, and
Speaker 1: that would be lovely. But we can only do that
Speaker 1: if we're willing to go through that, through that middle path.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to get a drink with you in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. It's going to be so Longessum, twenty twenties,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do it this year. Oh my god, that
Speaker 1: would be great. You keep going back to this idea
Speaker 1: of sacrifice. But do you think our country is willing
Speaker 1: to forfeit civil liberties in the name of public safety?
Speaker 1: And let's think about what that would look like. You know,
Speaker 1: that would include rigorous monitoring of our cell phones, checkpoints
Speaker 1: where our temperatures would constantly be taken rules and regulations
Speaker 1: for not just everyone with the virus, but anyone you
Speaker 1: may have exposed to it. And I mention all this
Speaker 1: because there are large swaths of this country that really
Speaker 1: believe in their hearts that one of the key principles
Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party is that everyone just wants to
Speaker 1: take their guns. If that sounds silly, it's because it
Speaker 1: definitely is. But I have to mention it because there
Speaker 1: are a lot of people across this country that will
Speaker 1: tell you they want less government in their life, not
Speaker 1: more of it, even when it comes to public safety.
Speaker 1: Can I let let me tell you how I think
Speaker 1: this plays out. Okay, this is where federalism. You know,
Speaker 1: the fact that we states are have a certain amount
Speaker 1: of sovereignty has been a real challenge in our country
Speaker 1: many times in our history. But it's also been a
Speaker 1: real boon. And in this pandemic, it's been both. When
Speaker 1: our federal government refused to act on social distancing a
Speaker 1: bunch of states, state governor of Ohio shut down Ohio
Speaker 1: much earlier than the federal government suggested they should, so
Speaker 1: did parts of California, so did other places Washington State.
Speaker 1: But it's been a real challenge, and that when we're
Speaker 1: trying to get ventilators, all of a sudden, we have
Speaker 1: fifty states all competing for ventilators, and competition is not
Speaker 1: helpful in this. So there are times when federalism is helpful,
Speaker 1: other times when it's really harmful. I think on this
Speaker 1: issue it's going to be helpful, even though I wish
Speaker 1: we could have a single national program. One could imagine
Speaker 1: that Massachusetts has already committed to a pretty aggressive testing
Speaker 1: tracing program. The governor, our governor who's a Republican, just
Speaker 1: last week said we're going to do this, and what
Speaker 1: will happen is states will open, and Massachusetts will be
Speaker 1: able to stay open because of this, and states that
Speaker 1: say we're not doing that, we're just not going to
Speaker 1: do it, they're going to see their numbers rise and
Speaker 1: they're going to start seeing people get sick and people dying,
Speaker 1: and at some point people in those states are going
Speaker 1: to say, you know, nobody's going to a restaurant or
Speaker 1: nobody's going out to the bars because the hospitals are
Speaker 1: full there and people are dying and it's awful, and
Speaker 1: people in those states are going to clamor for an alternative.
Speaker 1: That is not how I want to make policy that's
Speaker 1: not what I want. But I fear that that's what's
Speaker 1: going to drive some states to say, Okay, give us
Speaker 1: another option. And they're going to see states like Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: in Ohio and I think California and other places relatively open,
Speaker 1: not perfect, but relatively open, and they'll say we want that,
Speaker 1: and they'll understand that the cost of that is somebody,
Speaker 1: maybe it's not their government, probably not the federal government,
Speaker 1: but somebody will be able to track down everybody that
Speaker 1: they have spent time with, and they'll have to give
Speaker 1: up that information. I don't know how else you do
Speaker 1: it except making the costs and the benefits of this,
Speaker 1: which you know is a real violation of civilities. I
Speaker 1: don't love the idea that, like if I got sick,
Speaker 1: somebody would figure out everybody I have been in contact
Speaker 1: with in the last five days. I don't love that,
Speaker 1: but I'm willing to give that up if it means
Speaker 1: that I get to you know, I get to go
Speaker 1: to the office, I get to see my friends. I
Speaker 1: get to go off for a drink with a friend
Speaker 1: every once in a while. I think when people see
Speaker 1: that that's the trade off, they will make it, But
Speaker 1: I worry that until people have seen the benefits of
Speaker 1: this effort and this approach, they won't. You know, so
Speaker 1: much of the discourse around COVID nineteen is about readiness,
Speaker 1: how we can best prepare ourselves for when this virus returns. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the return either this fall or early next year, seems
Speaker 1: like almost a given at this point. Yeah, and yet
Speaker 1: do you see any way in which this virus could
Speaker 1: be eradicated, to have this specific virus eradicated? Yes, this
Speaker 1: virus is now in our community, in every community around
Speaker 1: the world, and only two things will bring this pandemic
Speaker 1: to an end. Only one of two things. The first
Speaker 1: is we get a highly effective vaccine and we are
Speaker 1: twelve to eighteen months away from that. Or second, that
Speaker 1: we have so many people around the world infected that
Speaker 1: we essentially achieve what people call and I hate this term,
Speaker 1: but I use it because I don't have a better one,
Speaker 1: what people call herd immunity, the idea that so many
Speaker 1: people have been infected and have become immune that the
Speaker 1: virus no longer finds susceptible hosts. Sixty seventy percent of
Speaker 1: the world's population will have to be infected for that
Speaker 1: to occur, maybe as low as forty percent, but still
Speaker 1: a very large number. And there is no third thing
Speaker 1: that I know of, because even if we did everything
Speaker 1: else right, with massive social distancing, we can get the
Speaker 1: infection rates very very very low, but we can't get
Speaker 1: it to zero. Somebody will have it, somebody will spread it,
Speaker 1: and as long as one person is infected in America,
Speaker 1: the virus will continue spreading until again we hit that
Speaker 1: number of large numbers of people having been previously infected.
Speaker 1: So you know, this pandemic comes to an end when
Speaker 1: we have a vaccine. That's really the story. And until then,
Speaker 1: the virus can be a small part of our lives.
Speaker 1: It can be a major part of our lives. It
Speaker 1: won't go away. I shouldn't call it a small part
Speaker 1: of our lives. It'll be an important part of our
Speaker 1: lives no matter what. But it can either completely paralyze
Speaker 1: us or it can let us have some semblance of
Speaker 1: our lives back, but that will be difficult to pull off,
Speaker 1: and we'll have to give up some things in order
Speaker 1: to get that last thing before we go. We've talked
Speaker 1: about everything and everyone but you, so before you go
Speaker 1: on to any number of cable network shows that I've
Speaker 1: seen you on. By the way, I think you've become
Speaker 1: like the Jude Law of mds. Everywhere I look I
Speaker 1: see your face on the television. I was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: he got that role, got that role. I think all
Speaker 1: these people need to be paying you a lot of
Speaker 1: money since they still have it and are profiting greatly
Speaker 1: from this crisis, which is something I don't even want
Speaker 1: to get into. But really, how are you and your
Speaker 1: family faring right now? How are you keeping it together? Well?
Speaker 1: Thank you for asking. You know, I have not, in
Speaker 1: this outbreak, been on the front lines with my fellow
Speaker 1: physicians and nurses and others, and I feel like, but
Speaker 1: I'm still part of this mission. I have a job,
Speaker 1: and my job is to try to take the incredible
Speaker 1: amount of science that's being generated, take all the uncertainty
Speaker 1: and all the data, and try to communicate it to
Speaker 1: people in a way that's honest and fair and not sugarcoated,
Speaker 1: but also comprehensible. And to the extent that I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm doing that, I'm going to keep going. And
Speaker 1: the personal toll or whatever is pretty trivial, And I
Speaker 1: think about people who are out of job's people who are,
Speaker 1: you know, in really bad situations at home and can't
Speaker 1: get away. I you know, we've got the standard challenges.
Speaker 1: The kids are going crazy. Everybody's patience is being tested.
Speaker 1: You know, life is life is hard, but for me,
Speaker 1: like life is hard compared to what it normally is,
Speaker 1: but I think it's really easy compared to what most
Speaker 1: Americans are going through. So I feel mostly blessed, and
Speaker 1: I feel like I have a job in front of
Speaker 1: me and I gotta get to it, and I gotta
Speaker 1: do it and through the public stuff, but also a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff I do on the background. I'm calling
Speaker 1: people and I'm trying to get folks to move on
Speaker 1: issues that I think are important, talking to policymakers, just
Speaker 1: trying to feel like a five year or from now,
Speaker 1: I can look back and feel like I did something
Speaker 1: useful in the middle of the biggest pandemic that humanity faced.
Speaker 1: That's the goal, And to do it for myself, for
Speaker 1: my wife, for my kids, for you, for all of us,
Speaker 1: because we really are in this together, right Like, if
Speaker 1: you keep doing what you're doing, and I keep doing
Speaker 1: what I'm doing, and we're all working pulling in the
Speaker 1: same direction. Sam we are going to get through this,
Speaker 1: so that's been my motivation. Well, I appreciate your cautious
Speaker 1: optimism here, and truly thank you for all the hard work.
Speaker 1: I know these past six weeks I've been a lot
Speaker 1: for you and your family and many of your colleagues
Speaker 1: on the front lines. So truly, thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. I appreciate that I'm not terribly
Speaker 1: optimistic we're going to get that drink this year, but
Speaker 1: I certainly hope we do. I do too, Doctor John,
Speaker 1: all right, thank you very much. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for having me back on. That was doctor ashish Ja.
Speaker 1: He's the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: To learn more about doctor Jah, you can visit our
Speaker 1: site at www dot talk easypod dot com. Before we
Speaker 1: get into NOOM, I want to take this time to
Speaker 1: thank a few people who recently made donations to the program,
Speaker 1: Charelle jelln Ulrich Hammer, Lynda Butler and Sunrise Airs. And Yes,
Speaker 1: in case you're wondering, none of those people are made up.
Speaker 1: They all just have incredible names. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: make a contribution, be sure to visit our site at
Speaker 1: www dot talk easypod dot com slash donate. I know
Speaker 1: these are difficult times for everyone right now, especially financially,
Speaker 1: so we really appreciate any support you can offer us.
Speaker 1: That said, if you can't make a financial contribution, I
Speaker 1: still believe the most helpful thing you can do for
Speaker 1: us is to share this show online on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram,
Speaker 1: with the friend, a family member, anyone. God knows, we
Speaker 1: all have way too much time on our hands than
Speaker 1: ever before. Maybe they'd like our episodes with Gloria Steinham
Speaker 1: Better Arooric Lord, Dern Werner, Herzog Errol Morris, Juliet Lewis,
Speaker 1: Edward Norton, Malcolm Gladwell, Naomi Klein, Alan Aldo, Rob Reiner.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stop. I'm sorry. It's a lot of people.
Speaker 1: You get the point. It's one hundred and sixty plus episodes,
Speaker 1: and I cannot tell you how appreciative everyone on the
Speaker 1: Talk Easy team is when we see someone sharing this
Speaker 1: podcast online. We're an independently operated show, and it truly
Speaker 1: means the world to us when we see people care
Speaker 1: about the hard work that we put into this thing
Speaker 1: week after week. But that's said, let's get into the
Speaker 1: next conversation. Noman and I first spoke back in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: two weeks after President Trump was elected. In that interview,
Speaker 1: which you can find in our show notes, he offered
Speaker 1: some grim prognostications that have unfortunately come to pass since then.
Speaker 1: I'll admit this conversation is a little shorter than our
Speaker 1: normal episodes. I'd like to say that was planned, but
Speaker 1: we had some technical difficulties. It turns out sending a
Speaker 1: microphone to someone in another state is not so easy
Speaker 1: right now. Nevertheless, it was an honor to sit with
Speaker 1: Nome once again. We'll be having him back on this summer.
Speaker 1: For those who want to hear more from him, I
Speaker 1: know I do so. Without further ado, here is Nom Chomsky,
Speaker 1: Noam Chomsky, Thank you so much for being here with me.
Speaker 1: How are you doing doing fine? Are you fatigued by
Speaker 1: the technical challenges? Oh? Yeah, I have to go back
Speaker 1: to MIT and get a PhD in computer science. I
Speaker 1: wanted to start. You know, in the aftermath of nine
Speaker 1: to eleven, you were called on by innumerable publications and
Speaker 1: TV networks to speak on the attack, to provide an
Speaker 1: academic and historic context to what was happening. We're now
Speaker 1: in this similar, if more grave moment with the coronavirus.
Speaker 1: Have you tried to make sense of where we're at
Speaker 1: in this country? The United States is way behind other
Speaker 1: countries in dealing with it. The countries in the perimeter
Speaker 1: of China have done quite will Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore,
Speaker 1: Hong Kong, and New Zealand apparently has almost completely conquered
Speaker 1: the virus seems to be stopped essentially. In Europe, they
Speaker 1: sort of dinnered for a long time, but some of
Speaker 1: the better organized societies have it under control. Germany has
Speaker 1: I think the lowest death rick in the world. Norway
Speaker 1: is also doing pretty well. The others are coming to
Speaker 1: terms with it. The Britain kind of bungled it at first.
Speaker 1: It seems to be going The United States is a
Speaker 1: total disaster. It's the epicenter of the crisis. It's the
Speaker 1: only country, the only major country where it can't even
Speaker 1: provide data to the World Health Organization because it's so
Speaker 1: out of control of the administration. The way they handled
Speaker 1: it is almost indescribable. They knew by January from Chinese
Speaker 1: information just what was happening, but they couldn't get to
Speaker 1: the White House. US intelligence was trying to reach the
Speaker 1: White Houses. We just learned today one of the top advisors,
Speaker 1: Peter Navarro and Lake January, was reporting the Chinese information
Speaker 1: to the White House. Nobody could get through. Trump was
Speaker 1: either playing golf or watching his ratings on Fox TV
Speaker 1: or something. So it was one day it's just flew,
Speaker 1: another day it's serious, another day go back to work,
Speaker 1: and day forget it. It's terrible, and I was the
Speaker 1: first person ever noticed it. In any event, the situation
Speaker 1: is disastrous. We can ask several questions. One question why
Speaker 1: is the US so behind? A deeper question is why
Speaker 1: did this happened altogether? I mean, as to why the
Speaker 1: US is so behind? We can look at the wrecking
Speaker 1: ball in the White House. In the fact, it's almost incredible.
Speaker 1: Ever since Trump got into office, he's been cutting back
Speaker 1: every year, cutting back the health related elements of the government,
Speaker 1: Center for Derees Control and so on, just cutting them.
Speaker 1: This year, he produced a budget on February tenth, when
Speaker 1: the epidemic was raging all over the country. The budget
Speaker 1: called for read to further reductions in Center for Disease
Speaker 1: Control and every other health related element of the government.
Speaker 1: In fact, reductions just about everything that relates to human
Speaker 1: welfare and an increase in funding, an increase in subsidies
Speaker 1: for the fossil fuel industries. It's almost madness. You can't
Speaker 1: describe it. Well, that's the United States. It's a fuel
Speaker 1: pardon the expression. Trump is busy turning it into what
Speaker 1: he called a shiitthole country. But that's the United States.
Speaker 1: What about the deeper question of why this happened? Altogether?
Speaker 1: Here we get the real issues which have to be
Speaker 1: dealt with if we don't want another pandemic to recur,
Speaker 1: which is very likely predictions or they will keep recurring,
Speaker 1: each will be worse than the At last, the last
Speaker 1: major one, there were others, was the source flute source
Speaker 1: coronavirus to two thousand and three. At that point scientists
Speaker 1: new with high confidence that this is going to recur.
Speaker 1: And take a look what happened. The virus was identified,
Speaker 1: the sequence to people started working, drug started working on vaccines.
Speaker 1: The vaccines were developed, but they were never pushed through
Speaker 1: the testing phase. Then, in a sane society, the entities
Speaker 1: that are concerned with health would have started working to
Speaker 1: prepare for the next pandemic, so they'd be ready for it.
Speaker 1: And I could abort it before it starts. Well, who
Speaker 1: are they? First of all, they're drug companies. Drug companies
Speaker 1: follow capitalist logic. They look at market signals, and the
Speaker 1: market signals say there's no profit in trying to fend
Speaker 1: off a major catastrophe. The profit lies in doing things
Speaker 1: it'll sell today. Okay, so that's what they did. Well,
Speaker 1: so far, that's just capitalist logic and suicidal but ordinary.
Speaker 1: Then comes another hammer blow, the neoliberal version of savage capitalism,
Speaker 1: which begins with Reagan. Really, you may recall that one
Speaker 1: of Reagan's first pronouncements was government is the problem, not
Speaker 1: the solution. So and again, in a sane world, when
Speaker 1: the drug companies fail because they observed capitalist logic, the
Speaker 1: government would move in just the way the government basically
Speaker 1: produced the Salk vaccine, which was offered free and which
Speaker 1: ended the plague of polio. But that was then when
Speaker 1: we were still under the basically new deal system of
Speaker 1: regimented capitalism. Now we're in the regime since Reagan of
Speaker 1: unrestricted capitalism let it go wild, so the government couldn't
Speaker 1: intervene to deal with the market collapse. And it's very
Speaker 1: interesting to see how it happened in detail. So President
Speaker 1: Obama his administration recognized that there is a problem. And
Speaker 1: it turns out if you take a look at the
Speaker 1: hospitals today that the real bottleneck, the thing that's causing
Speaker 1: the major crises, is the lack of ventilators. Well, that
Speaker 1: was forecast. So Obama did contract with a small company
Speaker 1: that was producing high quality, low cost ventilators. Well, it
Speaker 1: was brought up by a larger company, Covidian, and they
Speaker 1: shelved the project, presumably because it was competing with their
Speaker 1: expensive ventilators. They didn't want to cut that back. A
Speaker 1: little later they turned to the government and they said
Speaker 1: they wanted to cancel the contract because the project low cost,
Speaker 1: high quality ventilators wasn't profitable enough. Okay, that's capitalist logic again.
Speaker 1: It was well known that a crisis was on the
Speaker 1: way all through Trump's term. It was well known, and
Speaker 1: he kept every year cutting back defunding the health related
Speaker 1: institutions and cutting back the surveillance of them into but
Speaker 1: it was still well known. As late as October, there
Speaker 1: was a high level simulation of a pandemic crisis showing
Speaker 1: how how severe it was. In December. On December thirty, first,
Speaker 1: China reported to the World Health Organization that they were
Speaker 1: finding pneumonia like symptoms of unknown ideology. A week later,
Speaker 1: Chinese scientists figured out what it was. They informed the
Speaker 1: World Health Organization that it was another coronavirus. They identified
Speaker 1: the genome sequence that provided the information of the world.
Speaker 1: At that point, it was public knowledge. US intelligence knew
Speaker 1: all about it for months. They tried to reach the
Speaker 1: White House to try to break through, to explain that
Speaker 1: this is of your crisis. Other countries, as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: did respond these Asian countries or have it under control?
Speaker 1: The New Zealand's apparently killed it. If we want to
Speaker 1: prevent a recurrence of this, we've got to go back
Speaker 1: to the route, not the idiosyncrasies in the United States,
Speaker 1: but the root of it, which is in market failures
Speaker 1: that are bound to recur and the neoliberal hammer blow
Speaker 1: that says the government can't intervene. I should. It's clear
Speaker 1: that that mantra of that government is the problem that
Speaker 1: only holds when the fate of the population is at stake.
Speaker 1: If corporate corporations are in trouble, then government is the solution.
Speaker 1: That's the world we're living in, and if we don't
Speaker 1: do something about it, it's going to recur worse. And
Speaker 1: remember that right in the background is a growing crisis
Speaker 1: that puts all of this into the shadow. We will
Speaker 1: recover from the coronavirus at great cost in the United States,
Speaker 1: at much greater cost than is necessary because of the
Speaker 1: I don't know what to call it, the farce in
Speaker 1: the White House, but we will recover. There's something else
Speaker 1: from which we won't recover. While we're all talking about this,
Speaker 1: the Arctic ice sheets are melting, leading to a feedback effect.
Speaker 1: As the ice sheats melt, first of all, they raise
Speaker 1: the sea level, but beyond that, they reduce the reflective
Speaker 1: capacity of ice and are replaced by dark water, which
Speaker 1: means that instead of reflecting the Sun's rays, we now
Speaker 1: absorb them. So the feedback loop goes into operation and
Speaker 1: it accelerates global warming, which is an existential crisis and
Speaker 1: one that Trump is dedicated to accelerate. We know the details,
Speaker 1: and this is indescribable. There has never been a crime
Speaker 1: like this in human history. Literally, the US is leading
Speaker 1: the way to trying to destroy the prospects for organized
Speaker 1: life on Earth. And it's not that they don't know it.
Speaker 1: High the corporate world knows it, the administration knows it.
Speaker 1: They all understand it perfectly well. Just to illustrate that,
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago, a memo was leaked from
Speaker 1: the JP Morgan Chase, the country's biggest bank. The memo
Speaker 1: warned that their words were, the survival of humanity is
Speaker 1: at risk if we continue in our present course, including
Speaker 1: the bank's loans to fossil fuel industries. So it's all understood,
Speaker 1: nothing less than the survival of humanity. But capitalist logic
Speaker 1: says race ahead, right, and the insanity says, let's accelerate it.
Speaker 1: And amazingly in my view, and I just can't understand it.
Speaker 1: His loyal adoring base, Republican Party voting base, they love it.
Speaker 1: The more he destroys things, the more he destroys the country,
Speaker 1: the more he harms them, the greater the applause. Maybe
Speaker 1: somebody can explain that, you know, this capitalist system you're describing.
Speaker 1: I think the virus has exposed these glaring issues we
Speaker 1: have with economic inequality in this country. And this is
Speaker 1: not a new issue, right, you know. In writing the Constitution,
Speaker 1: James Madison's chief concern was to protect the minority of
Speaker 1: the opulent against the majority. He knew that if the
Speaker 1: poor could vote freely, that they would get together and
Speaker 1: take the property of the rich. The Constitution, in many
Speaker 1: ways was set up to prevent democracy. But the issue
Speaker 1: totally predates this country. If we go back to Aristotle,
Speaker 1: and I know you've talked about this, he believed in
Speaker 1: a welfare state that Athens could then reduce inequality. So
Speaker 1: I'm curious, where do you see a mayor America heading
Speaker 1: on this issue once we're on the other side of
Speaker 1: the crisis. Oh, that's up to us. It's up to
Speaker 1: people like you. There. There is planning going on right
Speaker 1: now about the post crisis world. The corporate sectors working
Speaker 1: hard to try to ensure that the post crisis world
Speaker 1: will still be in their hands, that they will be
Speaker 1: the masters, and if they're not countered and overwhelmed by
Speaker 1: popular forces, they'll win and we'll move on to suicidal
Speaker 1: policies and face the consequences. And maybe some people survive
Speaker 1: living in high mountains and isolated valleys. But we're leading
Speaker 1: to a crisis of a kind that is almost unimaginable.
Speaker 1: I mean, bear in mind that we're now approaching the
Speaker 1: global temperatures of over one hundred thousand years ago, when
Speaker 1: the sea level was about twenty five feet higher than
Speaker 1: it is today. We're moving toward that crisis rapidly. There
Speaker 1: have been other severe crises in we're not talking about
Speaker 1: human history, geological history. We're getting near that. Sixty five
Speaker 1: million years ago, an asteroid hit the Earth. It caused
Speaker 1: a huge environmental crisis. It wiped out I think about
Speaker 1: seventy five percent of species, ended the age of the dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: Gradually life recovered finally led to us. That's what we
Speaker 1: are now doing to the Earth. We're killing species at
Speaker 1: a massive rate. Already we're soon going to doom human
Speaker 1: society and millions of other species. And we know what's wrong.
Speaker 1: It's not hard to find out. The things I've identified
Speaker 1: are right on the surface. They're not quantum physics. They
Speaker 1: just have to think for a minute. They're right in
Speaker 1: front of your eyes. The refusal of the drug companies
Speaker 1: to prepare following good capitalist logic, doing exactly what they're
Speaker 1: supposed to do. The inability of the government intervene, as
Speaker 1: it did, for example, with polio. That's a gift of
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan. Milton Friedman, the other apostles of New liberalism
Speaker 1: and those who followed them, including Clinton and others. Obama's
Speaker 1: will Okay, that's where we are. It can all be changed.
Speaker 1: You know, you have been batting around some of these
Speaker 1: ideas before the coronavirus took hold. On a personal level,
Speaker 1: I'm curious now, do you feel less hope now than ever? Not? Really.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm old enough to remember the rise of fascism
Speaker 1: in Europe. I'm old enough to remember listening to Hitler's
Speaker 1: addresses over the radio to Nuremberg rallies and the massive
Speaker 1: applause and adoration. I have to say it, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of reminded of that when I listened to some of
Speaker 1: Trump's rallies, So it's quite a different situation. At that time,
Speaker 1: it looked as though fascism, the spread of fascism was
Speaker 1: just inexorable, couldn't be stopped, was going to be spread
Speaker 1: over all of Europe, maybe all of your Rasia, and
Speaker 1: who knows how far beyond. I mean, that was a
Speaker 1: hideous threat. Now that's childhood memories, but it turns out
Speaker 1: it wasn't unrealistic. The US government was making pretty similar assessments.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty nine, high level commissions were established from
Speaker 1: the State Department and the Council on Foreign Relations, the
Speaker 1: main non governmental foreign relations institution closely integrated to the government.
Speaker 1: They started studies on what the post war world would
Speaker 1: look like, and their assumption was there would be two superpowers.
Speaker 1: The United States would control the Western Hemisphere, would take
Speaker 1: over the former British Empire would control the Far East,
Speaker 1: and Nazi Germany would control the rest all of your
Speaker 1: almost all of Eurasia, England, all of Europe. That was
Speaker 1: a horrifying prospect and it wasn't in the analysis of
Speaker 1: government analysts. It wasn't really changed until the Russians began
Speaker 1: to defeat Nazi Germany, and Russia was almost totally responsible
Speaker 1: for the defeat of Nazi Germany. After Stalin Grud and
Speaker 1: the huge tank battle at Kursk where the Russians defeated
Speaker 1: the cream of the Nazi army and then started moving
Speaker 1: into Germany, became pretty clear that Nazi Germany wasn't going
Speaker 1: to survive the war, and the US planning shifted to
Speaker 1: a broader attempt to incorporate large parts of Eurasia and
Speaker 1: of Asia in the US dominated system. So there was
Speaker 1: a time when it really looked as if the ultimate
Speaker 1: evil was going to triumph. The depression was pretty serious,
Speaker 1: very serious in fact. But today we have a different
Speaker 1: kind of crisis. It's a natural crisis. The world is
Speaker 1: telling us you can't go on like this. If you
Speaker 1: go on like this, you're doomed. Coronavirus will be horrible,
Speaker 1: but it will recede. Spanish flu is worse covered others
Speaker 1: farther back, but you're not going to recover from the
Speaker 1: melting of the Arctic ice sheets and the other extremely
Speaker 1: dangerous developments that are taking place as global warming goes
Speaker 1: out of control. You know, I think this is a
Speaker 1: period where many people on America and across the world
Speaker 1: are taking stock of their lives and asking where they
Speaker 1: find value and purpose. You once said, I believe we
Speaker 1: go from dust to dust, and there's no meaning in
Speaker 1: our lives. There's meaning that we provide to life. There's
Speaker 1: no meaning outside of our own enrichment of our own life,
Speaker 1: which weekend. So I'm curious with that. Have you searched
Speaker 1: for meaning? Sure? Every minute of the day, my children,
Speaker 1: my wife, I play with my dogs, who fortunately are
Speaker 1: keeping quiet instead of barking. Do my work, have friends,
Speaker 1: all of that puts meaning in life. Your father, you
Speaker 1: know who you really learned a lot from. I mean,
Speaker 1: you guys would have these Friday Hebrews every Friday night
Speaker 1: as a kid. He was a principal and professor, and
Speaker 1: he wanted to educate people so that they would be
Speaker 1: and I quote well, integrated, free, independent in their thinking,
Speaker 1: concern about improving and enhancing the world, and eager to
Speaker 1: participate in making life more meaningful and worthwhile for all.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like you've continued his legacy? We had
Speaker 1: different focus of interest, but he was dedicated educator, committed
Speaker 1: pretty much. Do we an educator? And that's something I've
Speaker 1: tried to follow in my own life. To what extent succeeds,
Speaker 1: that's for other people to decide. Do you not think
Speaker 1: of those questions for yourself? Do I think of them
Speaker 1: of a legacy? You mean, yeah, that's not worth thinking about.
Speaker 1: I think of doing the best I can under currents circumstances,
Speaker 1: and what the legacy will be. As I said, that's
Speaker 1: up to others to determine. We started this conversation me
Speaker 1: asking you for context of our current life. Do you
Speaker 1: see the possibility of a radical shift where we address
Speaker 1: issues like inequality and education, the dysfunctional healthcare system, people
Speaker 1: unable to survive on minimal wage as a result of
Speaker 1: this crisis. Look for every problem that we face, from
Speaker 1: the huge existential ones like global warming, nuclear war to
Speaker 1: the kind that you're discussing, which are very serious. For
Speaker 1: all of them, we know of solutions. The question is
Speaker 1: will we find will enough people, young people, people like you,
Speaker 1: find the ability, the commitment, the dedication to implement the
Speaker 1: kinds of solutions that we know are possible, including for
Speaker 1: everything you just mentioned. You can't predict. There's no way
Speaker 1: to predict. It's a matter of will and choice, and
Speaker 1: for those topics there's no predictions. It's a matter of
Speaker 1: action and not speculation. Walter Littmann wrote, the public must
Speaker 1: be put in its place so that it may exercise
Speaker 1: its own powers, but no less, and perhaps even more so,
Speaker 1: that each of us may live free of the trampling
Speaker 1: and the roar of a bewildered herd. And that thinking
Speaker 1: ties into what I said earlier about James Madison, and
Speaker 1: even what Lewis Powell would say in his memorandum from
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one. It's people as spectators of actions, not participants.
Speaker 1: But let me ask you, after ninety one years of
Speaker 1: life and after studying people through the annals of civilization,
Speaker 1: do you think we could become participants in this country.
Speaker 1: I think it's not only possible, but there are very
Speaker 1: encouraging signs of it all around us. So let's take
Speaker 1: one example and take the case of the Green New Deal.
Speaker 1: Some form of Green New Deal is essential for survival.
Speaker 1: You go back a couple of years, it was either
Speaker 1: not talked about at all or was just an object
Speaker 1: of ridicule. Now it's right on the legislative agenda. There
Speaker 1: may be something will be done about it. The law
Speaker 1: will depend on the next election in November. But it's
Speaker 1: right in the center of attention. How did that happen?
Speaker 1: It wasn't a miracle group of young people Sunrise movement.
Speaker 1: It took the lead from a large popular movement and
Speaker 1: began to take serious steps towards it, leading to sitting
Speaker 1: in in congressional offices where they were supported by Alexandria
Speaker 1: Cossio Cortes other young legislators who would come in and
Speaker 1: the wave of the activism that Bernie Sanders stimulated and inspired. Okay,
Speaker 1: they awakened some attention by now the Cossio Cortes and
Speaker 1: EDMA Marketing from Massachusetts Senator joined in proposing legislation. So
Speaker 1: now debated can be improved, fixed, modified, and it can
Speaker 1: become the law of the land and offer us a
Speaker 1: path to the survival of humanity. To go back to
Speaker 1: the JP Morgan Chase memo, that's a significance important and
Speaker 1: it tells us that popular action can do things. In fact,
Speaker 1: that memo from JP Morgan Chase pointed out that the
Speaker 1: bank should put an end to its funding of fossil fuels.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons they gave is that their
Speaker 1: reputation is at stake. Why is their reputation at stake
Speaker 1: because of activists who are pounding on the doors and saying,
Speaker 1: you can't get away with this. Okay, we can affect
Speaker 1: the behavior of the existing institutions. We can modify and
Speaker 1: change them that and it's there are significant efforts to
Speaker 1: do that. Okay. That tells you the answer to your
Speaker 1: question is definitely yes, if people take up the cudgels
Speaker 1: and do the work. Your friend Howard then once said
Speaker 1: that what matters is the countless small deeds of unknown
Speaker 1: people that lay the basis for the significant events that
Speaker 1: enter history. One of my favorite statements I always quoted
Speaker 1: he was a wonderful person. What do you make of
Speaker 1: that statement in this moment? It's absolutely correct. Can you
Speaker 1: tell me the names of the members of the Sunrise
Speaker 1: Movement who sat it in Pelosi's office? Can you tell
Speaker 1: me the names of the young people who participated globally
Speaker 1: in the October global strike. These are the people who
Speaker 1: change the world. Those are the heroes of history. We
Speaker 1: don't know their names. So yes, Zinn's comment was accurate, significant,
Speaker 1: and it's a kind of a guideline like that to
Speaker 1: shine in front of us as we follow the meaning
Speaker 1: and significance of that comment. Well, I'd like to say,
Speaker 1: I'm certainly glad to know your name, and I thank
Speaker 1: you for all the work that you have done over
Speaker 1: the years and always for being so generous with your time.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, and good look. Thank you, Noam Chomsky,
Speaker 1: And that's our show. Special thanks this week to the
Speaker 1: team at the Harvard Global Health Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to learn more about Noam Chomsky and
Speaker 1: doctor ashish Ja, be sure to visit our site at
Speaker 1: www dot talk easypod dot com. You can also listen
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Speaker 1: If you'd like to be added to our email list,
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Speaker 1: And as always, this show is made possible each week
Speaker 1: by our incredible team. Our executive producer is Jennick so Bravo.
Speaker 1: Our associate producer is Nikki Spina. Illustrations by Christiana Chanoy,
Speaker 1: graphics by Ian Jones, music by Dylan Peck and Jin Saying.
Speaker 1: Our editors are Andre Lynn and kat Owen. Our engineer
Speaker 1: is Tim Moore, and finally, the show is produced by
Speaker 1: Caroline Reebok. I'm Sam Fragoso. Thank you for listening to
Speaker 1: Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next Sunday with
Speaker 1: w Kamal Bell. Until then, have a safe week everyone.
Speaker 1: Seto photo stood from both from photo se