How The COVID-19 Pandemic Will End | Answers With Joe

this video is supported by curiosity stream i don't want to sound over dramatic or anything but i was one of the very first victims of covet here in the states because my birthday just happened to be the very week that they shut everything down here in texas and uh i had to cancel my birthday party covey grew in my birthday party it was just a hang a bowling thing this new big lebowski theme bowling alley had just opened up and it looked really cool and we planned for it and yeah they had shut down literally two days before we were supposed to do it it was actually a relief because everybody was kind of looking at each other like you know are you gonna go are you gonna go is this a good idea should we be doing this and then i didn't have to make that decision which was nice because apparently i'm at that age where one of the things that makes me happiest is canceling plans so that was march and none of us really knew at the time how long this was going to last or how bad it was going to get and this was way before the mask thing and it was just basically stay home you know but then you know we got used to it we got used to curbside service at the restaurants plastic barriers and everything and zoom calls and talk show hosts hosting their shows from their living room and cardboard cutouts filling the stands and stadiums this is being called the new normal but i gotta be honest it still feels pretty surreal to me like i saw this ad the other day and and i couldn't help but think that like six months ago if i had seen this it would have been the most bizarre thing and now my wife's birthday is coming up in a couple of months and we were talking about how she might not be able to do anything either or even go out to a restaurant for that matter and we were talking about how like when we canceled my birthday she really didn't think that hers would get cancelled too you know six months later but here we are covid has done a number on our economy and our mental health and our patients conspiracy theories abound people have fallen into political and ideological camps around it and the numbers have never been higher at the time of recording this around the world somebody dies on average every 15 seconds from covid seven people have died since the start of this video how do we get out of this there's been a lot of talk about vaccines about reaching herd immunity but what does that look like when will it happen how do we reach postcovid [Music] anyway you look at it covid19 has been a disaster and unfortunately it doesn't look like it's going anywhere anytime soon unlike the flu it doesn't seem to be seasonal so neither hot nor cold are gonna put an end to it someone's hoarding their vacation days so i referred my last video to the r naught value basically the number of people that anybody carrying the disease is likely to infect if it's above r1 that means that everybody that's a carry of the disease is infecting more than one person other than themselves so the disease is still spreading if it's below r1 that means that it's on the decline seasonal flu for example has an r naught of 1.3 so ending the outbreak is all about getting that r naught below one and there are a couple of ways to get to that point one of them is the social engineering side you know your social distancing your mask wearing basically preventing exposure to the virus in the first place and the second one is immunity through antibodies either through a vaccine or by actually getting the disease and develop the antibodies yourself so the social engineering is what we've been focusing on so far and it's worked well in some places not so much in others so that leaves the antibody root and there are some people who are making the argument that it's best to just kind of let it make its way through the population as quick as possible and get it over with some might even say that we're prolonging the pandemic by you know doing the restrictions that we're doing there are a lot of problems with that strategy and i'll get to that in a minute but first let's talk about vaccines for a second vaccines usually go through five phases before reaching the general public the discovery phase where a hypothesis around the treatment is tested then pre-clinical testing on animals followed by three phases of human testing each getting successfully bigger normally it can take up to 10 years to get through all these levels of testing but since we're in such a rush in this particular moment some of those phases are actually being combined so instead of testing on tens of people before testing on hundreds of people they're kind of starting with hundreds of people and then going up to thousands of people now if the idea of rushing out a vaccine sounds less than ideal i mean yeah you got to be careful that it doesn't do more harm than good covid19 is a very complex disease that hits the immune system in a lot of different ways so you could have a lot of really unwanted outcomes you know side effects that are mild in one person might be severe in another this is why safety testing has to go through so many subjects so yeah we have to allow time for safety testing and even if we have the perfect vaccine right now you have to produce and distribute and administer billions of doses of that and that's if people will actually take it according to an ap poll back in may 51 of people said they would be uncomfortable taking a vaccine that came out in late 2020 or early 2021. now yes some of those are anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists and whatnot but most of them are probably just people that aren't very comfortable taking a vaccine that's been rushed so much at least not until it's had a chance to prove itself out in the population so yeah a vaccine is gonna be pretty slow going but what about the alternative to that what i mentioned before the natural herd immunity i'm using natural because it doesn't involve a vaccine according to the association for professionals in infection control and epidemiology herd immunity quote occurs when a high percentage of the community is immune to the disease making the spread from person to person unlikely so medical opinions vary but it's thought that between 50 and 80 percent of people need to be exposed to the disease before we reach a tipping point and if you're wondering kovid 19's are not value is kind of hard to determine right now it's only estimated to be between say 1.4 or 5.7 and yeah that's a huge range but it's kind of hard to tell because so many people can transmit it asymptomatically so one of the assumed benefits of the let it run its course argument is that it's faster you know just let it go through the population and get it over with right right but we're talking about 150 million people just in the united states alone that would need to get it actually it'd be a little bit more than that but i'm rounding for easy math here in the us right now as i'm recording this we're seeing around 60 000 cases of covid19 every day it's actually down a little bit from july when it peaked at around 78 000 but even at that rate the highest rate that we have seen so far it would take five years to reach herd immunity levels now some might hear that five years number and think yeah but that's why we've got restrictions in place it would be a lot faster if we dropped all the restrictions but remember the whole flat in the curve thing there's still only so many hospital beds in the country only so many doctors only so many nurses only so many ventilators if we just let kovid do its thing it would completely overrun the hospitals really quickly and the death rates would skyrocket but not just death rates from covid19 but from all the other things that send people to the hospital case fatality rates have been declining they've settled around 3.5 percent but what that means is that out of 60 000 people every day that get the virus 2100 will die the assumption is barring the hospitals becoming overrun that the death rate is going to continue to go down because we are learning how to treat the disease better but experts predict that it could take up to a million people dying by the time we reach herd immunity without a vaccine now there is one case study where a country decided to roll the dice and just uh see how the whole let it play out strategy would work and that's sweden and the results have been um well let's just say that people on both sides of the argument claim that sweden proves their point they limited gatherings of 50 people or less but besides that they kept bars and restaurants open with the idea being that it would go through the population quickly and that the numbers would go down before the summer came that didn't happen numbers actually peaked during the summer now they've gone down significantly since then but they are still higher than their nordic neighbors who did institute social distancing when it comes to deaths per 100 000 people now some might point out that their numbers are quite a bit lower than spain and italy who did have strict restrictions in place but those are warmer clients with totally different social lifestyles and last point on sweden was that it didn't really help their economy very much the central bank predicted that their economy was going to contract by 4.5 percent which is about on par with their neighbors that did have lockdowns so people are going to be debating about sweden for quite some time now there is one last flaw in the whole natural herd immunity argument and that is that getting coveted may not guarantee that you're immune to it people been treating covid19 like it's the chickenpox or something like when like once you get it you can't get it again this has just become common wisdom around this disease people have actually been having covid19 parties so that their kids can all get sick like my generation did with chickenpox when we were kids the idea being you let them all get it and get it over with and then they can't get it anymore and you don't have to worry about it again but there's no proof that that's the case chickenpox is a very very different kind of virus it's actually a type of herpes virus and the reason why you never get it again is because it never really goes away it kind of hides out in your nerve tissue and your body continually makes antibodies for it so it just kind of stays there and in fact it can pop up later on in life as shingles which i did actually get a couple years ago would not recommend now other viruses like flu viruses will also create sort of a temporary immunity your body builds up antibodies to that so it can kind of come and go but the immunity doesn't last forever because once the disease is gone your body stops making antibodies to it and eventually those antibodies will get flushed out of your body which is why you have to keep getting flu shots every flu season and there are a handful of different flu viruses that go around that kind of take turns each flu season but we do have vaccines stockpiled for that so that when there's an outbreak that occurs we can sort of keep it under control becovid 19 isn't a herpes virus and it's not an influenza virus it's a coronavirus and there are many of them out there and that's why this one was called the novel coronavirus because it was kind of the new kid on the block we get coronaviruses all the time in fact there's four different coronaviruses that sort of make their way around and these are the ones that cause the common cold and you know what makes the common cold so common because you can keep getting it over and over and over again there is no immunity to the common cold and this might be true of covet 19 as well but it's hard to say right now because it's such a new kid recently the new england journal of medicine published a letter from a team that's been studying the decay of sar cov2 antibodies and found that they have a half-life of 36 days if that's accurate it means it's possible to come down with covid19 multiple times a year if the antibodies flush out of our bodies every few months then natural herd immunity is going to be next to impossible and just imagine the hit that our economy and our hospitals would take in wave after wave after wave of outbreaks we will almost certainly need a vaccine if we're going to get to a low enough or not and a massive campaign of distribution and administering the vaccine and getting people to take it even if they've already gotten the virus but before you go chugging down a whole bottle of pain pills there is some good news there are a ton of vaccines in development right now remember the five phases i talked about earlier at the time that i'm recording this more than 140 vaccines are in a pre-clinical phase of development 19 are being tested for safety in limited trials 12 are in expanded safety trials five are being tested for efficacy and one vaccine has been approved for limited human use that last one is a big deal so let's dig into that a chinese vaccine company called canned sino-biologics announced their candidate vaccine showed a positive immune response in hundreds of subjects in early july the next step for canned sino is to launch a 40 000 subject phase 3 study and they're collecting support from russia brazil chile and saudi arabia among other companies to get that done and the chinese government's approved it for use by the military here in the united states billions of dollars been allocated to major pharmaceutical companies like moderna and pfizer on july 27th moderna launched a 30 000 patient phase 3 trial of a drug that uses a viral rna to stimulate the immune system with cues from the rna immune cells can generate antibodies that destroy the virus assuming phase 3 goes well modernity plans to have half a million doses of the vaccine in production by the end of the year it's worth noting that their stock price has quadrupled since the beginning of the pandemic however that makes you feel now other companies like johnson and johnson and astrazeneca say they will not turn a profit initially johnson johnson's unlikely to produce a vaccine before next year a vaccine from astrazeneca has already entered phase three trials in england and brazil modernity plans to charge 50 to 60 dollars per dose for their vaccine and astrozenicus is going to be quite a bit lower in fact they've already signed a deal with several eu governments to provide vaccines for their citizens so once again european socialism is going to force millions of people to pay less for life-saving medicine now there is also good news on the treatment front i mentioned earlier the death rates are actually going down because we're learning how to treat the disease a little bit better well here's some of the stuff that we're doing a steroid called dexamethasone has been effective at dampening the immune system to prevent the cytokine storm that's one of the deadliest symptoms of the virus more than 2 000 patients on ventilation machines or receiving oxygen were given the steroid and it reduced the number of deaths by a third the antiviral drug rem disavir got some press earlier this year when it was shown to reduce recovery times for covid 19 patients by up to four days and then further testing kind of muddied the water some tests showing benefits and some not the who is currently testing rendezvous to come to a better conclusion another drug known as ectemeraroctemra or tocillogenmob recently flunked its phase 3 testing it didn't do better than placebo at improving patient mortality rates after 4 weeks though it did decrease hospitalization time for some patients and then there's hydroxychloroquine you may have heard of that one a study from back in june got similar results to the actimmer results it didn't really do much better than placebo but there's a lot of more testing going on around this because of all the increased scrutiny so i guess we'll see the fda announced on june 15th that hydroxychloroquine and a related drug chloroquine phosphate are quote unlikely to kill or inhibit the virus in fact it could lead to some serious side effects like serious heart rhythm problems blood and lymph system disorders kidney injuries and liver problems and failure so yes there are many people still advocating for this drug if you want to take it it's a free country go ahead and give it a try but be aware that there are some risks but the good news is there is going to be a vaccine probably several of them there's just too much money to be made off of it for there not to be whoever it is that first delivers a safe and effective vaccine is going to reap some major rewards and by major rewards i mean billions and billions of dollars in profit and it's that race to get the billions of dollars in profit that's sped up this this whole process and will probably save millions of lives so fair play to capitalism but actually getting that vaccine distributed and administered to billions of people is going to take all levels of society from insurance to health care to government to get us to a hurt immunity state just like not everybody still has access to testing we're going to hit those same bottlenecks with the vaccine i'm just saying it's gonna be a whole other thing and it's gonna take a while not to even mention the societal and political winds that are gonna shape how people perceive the vaccine so yes the pandemic will eventually end but the virus itself it's probably not going anywhere i think we need to get used to the idea that covid19 is an endemic disease at this point and it's not going to completely go away it's just going to be out there a part of life just kind of in the background with little outbreaks every once in a while you know malaria is a prime example of an endemic disease it's just kind of always there in some parts of the world the united states chickenpox is endemic seasonal flu is endemic nobody likes these diseases but they are familiar doctors know how to treat them they don't shut down our society i'm not saying this to minimize the suffering around them endemic diseases are scourge but they're manageable scourge and a cheap widely available and effective vaccine combined with aggressive testing is going to make covid19 just another one of those things we have to deal with so even when we have a vaccine regular testing is going to have to be part of the protocol we have to test so that we can tell where these outbreaks are starting to pop up here and there so we can keep a cap on it and control it you know some of the best success stories in cobit 19 are countries that had aggressive testing policies and according to a harvard analysis we're going to require 4.3 million tests a day in the u.s to contain kobit 19. right now it's closer to a million so if i may play joster thomas for just a second here's how i see this playing out we'll see the case numbers kind of ebb and flow over the fall and winter we'll probably see some spikes when the schools start to open up again which is going to cause many of them to go back to distance learning we will continue to hobble along until around the end of the year and about that time some vaccines will become available on a limited basis they'll only be going out to certain people and by certain people i mean professional sports teams i'd say in the first half of 2021 it's going to become more available for people in the higher risk categories there's going to be endless debates over the safety and efficacy of it many people will refuse to take it for various reasons we'll still need to maintain basic social distancing and mask protocols probably throughout most of next year but probably toward the end of next year assuming there's a herculean testing and vaccination program in place will finally start to turn the tide we might see the pandemic officially declared over sometime in 2022 but the virus isn't really going anywhere it's going to stick around for a long time it's just going to be another seasonal respiratory condition that we have to be vigilant about hand washing and mask wearing is going to continue on a voluntary basis probably for years even if it's not a pandemic it's still a pretty virulent disease and there's going to be a low grade level of concern around it and the virus will mutate it's already mutated several times but the good news is that it will probably mutate toward becoming less deadly because the more successful viruses are the ones that keep their hosts alive long enough to spread it in fact one strain of seasonal flu that we now deal with is sort of a remnant of the 2009 h1n1 swine flu we'll also learn how to treat it better we'll figure out why some people respond so much worse to it than other people will and find ways to guard against that so yeah the pandemic will end but it's probably going to be years before things return to anything that we once considered normal in fact the idea of normal is going to change over the coming years to answer the question that i posed at the beginning of this video when will we reach postcovid well we probably never will reach post covid covid is now a part of our lives and it probably will be for the rest of our lives but this what we're going through right now it will end we're probably still closer to the beginning of it than we are to the end of it but it will end now obviously we all want things to go back to as normal as possible as soon as possible and i can totally understand how somebody might have the mindset of well i just want to get it i just want to roll the dice get it get it over with and get on with my life if you're if you're young and healthy yeah that makes totally rational sense and it's your body you have the right to make that choice but other people have the right to make the opposite choice maybe they're not as young maybe they're not as healthy maybe they can't afford treatment they can't afford to take some days off of work and by putting them at risk you're taking away that choice god i sound like the guy at the end of the gi joe cartoons and knowing is half the battle now as for how this event is going to change society and the economy it's a whole other can of worms i'd like to think that we would learn some things and come out stronger maybe a little bit better on the other side of this that has certainly happened with plagues in the past of course it's led to societal collapse in the past too so all i can say is fight for kindness take care of those around you and your community and check in with friends make sure they're doing okay and fight against misinformation and conspiracy theory garbage online with kindness if possible and don't be afraid to ask for help the biggest asset we have in this fight is each other and if you want to be kept up to date with the latest news in the coronavirus there's a series on curiosity stream that i can highly recommend they've covered the race for the vaccine gone in depth on research into sar cov2 cover the psychology of pandemics and much more it's a great way to get past all the noise we're inundated with in the news and around the pandemic and this gets right down to the actual research from the researchers themselves of course that's just a tiny part of what you can find at curiosity stream with thousands of titles covering everything from history to art astronomy futurism you know all the stuff i talk about way better when you sign up for curiosity stream you also get access to nebula a streaming service i'm a part of along with many more of your favorite educational youtubers and there you can see these videos ad free meaning the version on nebula wouldn't have what i'm saying right now you can often find extended cuts of videos on nebula along with nebula original series that you can't find anywhere else possibly just get to do things that youtube won't let us get away with and we don't have to think about the algorithm we can just make content that we're passionate about it's a great way to support this channel and educational content in general and you get it for free when you sign up at curiositystream.com joe scott and by the way curiosity streams actually drop their price by 26 it's less than 15 bucks for the entire year that's two streaming platforms it's easily the best streaming deal you'll find as i said this pandemic isn't going anywhere for a while so you might as well find some interesting stuff to watch so curiositystream.comscott definitely go check it out all right thanks to curiositystream for supporting this video and a huge shout out to the answer files on patreon that are supporting this channel growing a community helping me out actually helping me do research on some of these it's pretty cool if you want to be a part of that you can go to patreon.com answerswithjoe and i totally forgot to murder people's names so let me do that there's brian beswick john dolan bob lewis thomas fuller leah leafler nathaniel langston thomas watts tim rutler mike jackson patrick yingst robert bergman thomas burns thales of militis guy smith michael thomas and michael harshall thank you guys so much please like and share this video if you liked it and if this is your first time here maybe check this one out google thinks you'll like that one any of the others on the side they might have a face on them dude check them out watch my face do things and make sounds and if you like those sounds that my face makes uh maybe hit subscribe because i come back with videos every monday i feel like i'm a failure as a youtuber if i don't say smash that button alright thanks again for watching you guys go out now have an eye opening rest of the week and i'll see you next monday love you guys take care

Channel: Joe Scott

Views: 646,065

Keywords: answers with joe, joe scott, coronavirus, covid-19, novel coronavirus, pandemic, vaccines, covid vaccine, how close are we to a covid vaccine, r-naught, vaccine trials, moderna

Id: XmjsLyTW5EY

Length: 21min 37sec (1297 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 17 2020