During this week’s episode of “The Ben Shapiro Show: Sunday Special,” The Daily Wire editor-in-chief talked to three renowned experts — a distinguished professor of medicine, a healthcare policy researcher, and an economic advisor and president-elect of Queens College at Cambridge University — to offer an understanding of how the coronavirus epidemic affects the totality of American life.
Public Health, With Dr. Bob Wachter
In the first of Shapiro’s three interviews, Dr. Bob Wachter, chair of the department of medicine at the University of California-San Francisco, speaks to the science behind personal health steps, including hand washing and the possibility of wearing masks in public becoming “the norm” in the United States.
Dr. Wachter also breaks down the severity of infections and mortality rates as a percentage of the population, noting that about 80% of people who contract coronavirus “do just fine,” some of whom do not experience any symptoms, and others of whom only experience mild flu-like symptoms.
Dr. Wachter says that approximately 15-20% of the remaining people will need to go to the hospital, and about 25-33% “might” need to enter an intensive care unit. This does not mean that they will require a ventilator, says the doctor, who explains that people who do end up on a ventilator have about a 50/50 chance of surviving.
“The overall death rate nationally in the U.S. is around 1% of all people who get the illness,” says Dr. Wachter.
After Shapiro asks Dr. Wachter about the possibility of a second wave — a possibility that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House coronavirus expert, has warned about — Dr. Wachter contends that the best public health policy would involve “testing and contact tracing.”
“My analogy is that of a wildfire: You have tamped down the worst of the wildfire, and now you’re out there looking for embers. You see an ember, and it pops up and you stomp on it and make sure that it doesn’t spread,” says Dr. Wachter.
Public Health, With Dr. Scott Atlas
During the second conversation, Dr. Scott Atlas, a researcher at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, talks about the problem with all models, across every field, and then touches on the possibility of the United States entering into a “new normal,” especially among people who deal with at-risk populations.
Later in the discussion, Dr. Atlas touches on the subject of herd immunity, and also emphasizes the importance of not underestimating “the work being done on the drugs that are being used in the clinical trials,” and highlighted much of the work being done at the FDA.
“We will start seeing results this month, meaning within a couple of weeks, perhaps even within one week,” says Dr. Atlas. “I believe there’s reasonable optimism to be held that we will be able to treat the disease, and given that, over time, that changes what happens next.”
After Shapiro asks about the federal and state preparedness for the coronavirus threat, Dr. Atlas contends that the United States had a “good but imperfect response.”
“The first issue was knowing as soon as possible that there was something serious going on, and that was imperfect,” says Dr. Atlas. “Decisions were made based on flawed information and that information was really, frankly, lies coming from China.”
Economic Policy, With Mohammad El-Erian
During the third conversation, Shapiro asks Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic advisor to the financial services company Allianz, about the false dilemma that seems to crop up in online discussion, where Americans are seemingly asked to choose between public health and the economy, and later discusses the role of the stimulus package.
“I think you have to think about this sequentially. It’s not an ‘either or’, it’s just a sequence over time,” says El-Erian. “Priority number one is to get control of the virus, contain it’s spread, treat the ill better, and hopefully increase immunity.”
“Until we get the first two things done, it’s going to be very hard to restart this economy without going into a ‘W,’ [where] you start and then we have to come down again,” he says. “Having said that, we have to protect the economy, and this stage is about relief, about containing the damage, and there will come a next stage, which is going to be about trying to return the economy to some sense of normalcy.
Later in the conversation, Shapiro asks about how long the economy can survive amidst record unemployment rates, looming bankruptcies, high levels of borrowing.
“It’s going to be horrific. It’s going to be worse than anything we’ve ever seen. There’s no hiding this,” says El-Erian. “We have to be honest with the American people that we are facing a very difficult economic outlook.”
“Now, the good news is that relative to every other country in the world, we can manage this awful journey a lot better. Not smoothly, but a lot better. Why is that? Because we are part of a neighborhood that is being hit hard, so we have better capacity to avoid the things you said, shortages, avoid temporary problems becoming permanent ones,” says El-Erian.
Shapiro also asks how China should be treated after the coronavirus pandemic, prompting El-Erian to note that people have been waking up to the fact that China isn’t a “responsible player.”
“China does not play to the global rules, and we haven’t held China accountable for a very long time,” says El-Erian. “This is the moment to say enough is enough, we’ve tolerated intellectual property theft, we will not tolerate you being part of the export of a virus.”