How Can AWL's Help Defeat Coronavirus? A FAQ Session with Dr. Anthony Fauci
As Mr. Cat and Mr. Commenter teased last night, today's Pardon My Take interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci is by far one of the most important discussions that they have done. They asked Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, very relatable, important questions in regards to Coronavirus. I highly recommend listening to the full, 40-minute interview to learn more about how to deal with this pandemic, but if you are unable to, a transcription of some of the more important questions that Mr. Cat and Mr. Commenter asked are below, along with the sufficient answers from Dr. Fauci. The topics covered in this blog include...
- Myths vs. facts about Coronavirus
- What steps to take if you or a roommate develops Coronavirus symptoms (spoiler: stay home and take Tylenol)
- Pandemic timeframe
Mr. Cat: Can you dispel a couple of things that I've read? One being: this virus will go away in the summer because the virus doesn't like hot weather?
Dr. Fauci: All of the answers to questions need to be founded and anchored on the fact that this is a unique situation for us, although you can make an extrapolation that it will act like similar viruses. You can't say for sure. Will it naturally start to diminish a bit as the weather gets warmer? If you look at the experience with influenza and other Coronaviruses that are typical common cold viruses, the fact is, when the summer comes for a variety of reasons, including people are cooped up in a house close to each other, they're usually outside on the beach, walking around, or doing whatever they're doing that you have less of a transmission during the warmer summer months. The basis for that is sound. However, we cannot be sure that that is going to happen when we experience the full brunt of this virus. It might happen, but we don't know for sure. So the answer is, I hope it does, but we don't know for sure.
Mr. Cat: Are you immune after you have it? So if you have it, you then are okay and you can go about your life and this idea of herd immunity that some countries were maybe trying to attain.
Dr. Fauci: If you look at any other viral disease that we have had experience with, once you get infected with a virus and you recover from that virus, you are immune for a prolonged period of time, sometimes for life with infection with that exact same virus. If it changes dramatically, the protection diminishes. But for the most part, once you're infected with a particular virus, the next time you get exposed, if you've recovered from that virus, you're protected. Now, that's what you say. Well, then that leads to, after a while, either through natural infection or if we get a vaccine and you actually make a lot of the population immune, you can have herd immunity, which means the virus doesn't have a lot of places to go because most of the people in the population are protected. So you can't get a real revved up outbreak. Now, that can get misinterpreted. And I know you read about that because you just referenced it. Some people say, oh, what the hell? Why don't we just let everybody get infected and develop herd immunity? That's a dangerous proposition, because if you do that, a lot of people, mostly the vulnerable, are going to get sick and they're going to die. And that's what we've seen in the elder population with a mortality rate that was significantly high in the individuals who were in that vulnerable group. So although herd immunity is a good thing, you'd like to develop herd immunity with a vaccine, not by getting a lot of people sick.
Mr. Commenter: In the case of a lot of our listeners, they're younger. Let's just say there's a 24 year old male who might live with a couple of roommates right out of college. He starts to come down with some symptoms of the virus. He's coughing. He's running a fever. You know, let's say not too high, 100-101. What do you recommend somebody like that does? Do you recommend that they go in and they get themselves tested? Or for now, do you recommend that they kind of stay in place and see if it gets any worse and reduce their contact with the outside world?
Dr. Fauci: OK, great question, because it's so practical. Now, a couple of days ago, we issued some social distancing type of recommendation, some guidelines that we announced at the at the press conference and specifically direct addresses the question you've asked. So, if you are sick and you feel there's a possibility that you might have a Coronavirus infection because you do have the symptoms that you just described, stay home. Call up your health care provider, be that a physician, a health care worker or a clinic. Inform them of what's going on. Don't go out. You don't want to go to an emergency room or go to a clinic. And have them, and there will be much more accessibility of this as the days and weeks go by, what is the best way for you to get tested? Now, since you're now kind of isolating yourself in your own home, what about your roommates? What should they do? That's the same thing as if one family member. So if you consider a roommate, a family member, which in many respects the roommate is a family member, the recommendations say that the others in the house should take extra precautions. The kinds of things, washing hands carefully, don't go in big crowds. You don't have to sequester everybody. If it turns out that you are positive and you do have Coronavirus, then the people who were in close contact with you as a roommate would be, those individuals should then sequester themselves and get tested. But until you know you are positive, they need to take extra precautions. That's the same thing as we recommend for families. So as far as I'm concerned, from a practical standpoint, you have two or three roommates. They're like your brothers and sisters.
Mr. Cat: So, what should people take if they feel like they have it, or feel like they are, you know, experiencing some of the symptoms?
Dr. Fauci: The safest thing to get your fever down is Tylenol. Take it as directed. If you want to take Tylenol, you really want to take it no more than every six hours.
Mr. Cat: When it comes to timeframe, I know you've been asked this a million times, but can you at least give us just a general idea of what you're looking at, like when we can start feeling like things are going in the right direction? Because right now it does kind of feel doom and gloom for a lot of people.
Dr. Fauci: So, again, not to be elusive and to evade your question, if nothing is certain for sure. But if you look at the general course of the outbreak in China, they first realized they had something at the end of December. Right now, the curve is way down in China. The number of new cases in China are a couple of handfuls when it was hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. A few weeks ago, there were more cases coming out of Europe now than coming out of China. But if you look at the time frame of China, you say the mid to end of December, the beginning of March, it was going way down. So that's two months and maybe two months in a week or two. And it was essentially way, way down. So if you want to talk about from the beginning to the end, you know, it can be anywhere from, you know, six, eight weeks up to just maybe a few more months. Unlikely it's going to be that long. But if you look at the at the timeframe that China and Korea told us, well, you know, you're talking about several weeks and in this case for China, it was somewhere between eight and 10 weeks. That doesn't mean that we're going to have to be doing this for that long period of time. It could be. And that's the reason why when the recommendations came out, we said 15 days with the option of relooking at it all the time and saying, OK, do we need to do another 15 days? Do we need to do another 15 days? Hopefully. Hopefully. And I don't think it's unrealistic to be somewhat optimistic. If we really carefully and successfully implement these mitigation strategies, what we've been talking about over the last several minutes, which does involve the younger generation. If we're successful, we may be able to cut that time down. It's possible. You don't want to be gloom and doom, but it's in our hands to see if we can get that down.
Big thanks to Dr. Fauci once again for taking the time during a *very* hectic period to inform Mr. Cat, Mr. Commenter, and all AWL's on everything regarding Coronavirus. Again, I can't recommend listening to the full interview enough, as it covers all the bases and is filled with FAQ's relating to this situation. One of the biggest takeaways is this, though: each and every person plays a role in helping defeat this virus. If everyone remains responsible over the next few weeks, it will hopefully be sooner rather than later that everyone is safe, healthy, and watching sports again. That is, of course, the ultimate goal.