Latest jeffrey hello, everyone. Welcome to the latest installment. This has been going on, seemingly forever. Because behind we go behindthescenes to talk about some of our latest reporting and writing. I will remind you that next month we are hosting our atlantic festival, this time digitally. It will have certain advantages, namely you do not have to get dressed up to go to the festival. Please stay tuned for more information and we will be delivering that you regularly. Today we will talk with ed yong. If you are watching, i assume you already know who he is. He is the preeminent pandemic reporter. He is certainly one of the most important reporters working in america today. His stories about the pandemic have not only told us what is going on, but they have helped us to orient around what we should think about what is going on. He has been on this subject for a while. His recent piece is on the cover of this months atlantic, the print edition of the atlantic. You can read it online at atlantic. Com. I know you have a lot of questions and i will incorporate them into our conversation as best as possible. Type them into the box at the bottom of the screen. Keep them short, not sweet but directed. I will try to get to as many as possible and also let them guide my questions. Let me just bring him in. Are you with us . Ed yong i am. Jeffrey goldberg that he is with his air pods. What i want to do today, in the short time that we have is to talk about the past, present and future. Lets start in the past. I do not mean the distant past. I need a couple years ago, we were talking, probably about three years ago. We had a shared interest in pandemics and in government response to crisis. We decided that you were going to go off and do a story about a theoretical problem. His the country ready for the next pandemic . We had written about the Obama Administration response to Ebola Outbreak in the late administration of the obama late stage of the Obama Administration. I was curious to know what it would be like, what a Pandemic Response would be like under a different kind of president. He went all around the world to the congo, to the source, and you did a lot of reporting in washington and elsewhere. Your conclusions were complicated. He said in some ways, you are comforted by what you found out, but mainly, your anxiety level increased a bit. Talk about what you found out in 2018, and that will carry us to where we are now. Ed yong the biggest thing that, preparedness is this abstract, nebulous concept. It comes down to people. It is a bunch of experts with the right know how to deal with the pandemic, and it is also physical, tangible objects. Whether there are enough beds in a hospital, whether there is enough protective equipment or drugs, or manufacturing plants. I remember the time, tony fauci, who has become a household name it is like having a chain. One link and everybody everything breaks. The other amazing idea for the piece i went to the democratic republic of the congo that had experienced an Ebola Outbreak. People forget and become complacent. There is panic when an outbreak happens and neglect when it dissipates. We seem to be perpetually locked into this cycle of panic and neglect. That is why it is important for us to publish that piece in peace times, when there was no pandemic knocking down our door. This is the moment where we need to find the weak links and ensure that they are fixed. Jeffrey goldberg sorry to sound pessimistic for a moment, but honesty requires me to say that this is an indication a compelling piece that was highly lauded yet not heard. Ed yong that was frustrating. This pandemic happened, a lot of people asked me and there were many other reporters and Health Experts who warned about pandemics for years, if not decades. Do you feel any sort of vindication . No. There is only tragedy. There are calls for action that are unheard. They are deeply introspective. For our society. There were things that i feel i missed out and did not discuss in that piece. This new one on the cover of our current issue, to write some of those, to fill in some of those holes and provide an even more thorough template of what went wrong and what needs to be fixed for the future. Jeffrey goldberg i want to get to that statement you made about how there are things you think that you missed the first time around. Before that, give the listener, those who are watching now give some sketch of your findings in this current piece. Was it all the links of the chain that collapsed simultaneously . Ed yong a little bit of column a and a little bit from column b. It does have a pivotal role in what went wrong, but one of the cool points that i hope came across is that trump is part of the story, but not the whole part. Everything from the stretched nature of our hospitals to understaffed nursing homes, overstuffed prisons to ventilation systems in our building due to underfunding of Public Health. Many people have pointed at other countries like new zealand, vietnam, slovakia and other areas that have done better at controlling the pandemic. It is not that there was one universal playbook. Some places did not do enough testing. Some places did not use masks. The u. S. Has failed spectacularly because he failed across the board. We did so many things wrong. Despite the numerous advantages we had going for us, the biomedical expertise and incredible agencies like the cdc. So much expertise and logical might, yet we have dramatically underperformed. Trump deserves blame and takes responsibility for that, but how did it come to this . I think that is spectacularly missing the point. If that is the lesson that we draw from this, we will not take this opportunity to fix other vulnerabilities that were very much in play, that we are going to do any better for the pandemic in the future or if we are going to make any progress with the current one. You noted that trump is, himself, a comorbidity. You have a lot in our country. I promised you chronology, but i am violating that promise. Talk you little bit about something you mentioned, which is not the parts that you got right, which are many, but you suggested you missed several things. Is this worse now than what you thought in 2018 . I think so. I did not think that america would screw this up to the extent that it has. I think it has truly fumbled in a way that a country of its resources should not. I think it should be a humbling experience for the u. S. In terms of global health, they have long held the position of being a leader. It sports expertise to other nations. It is supposedly rich and developed, yet for all of these advantages, 4 of the World Population accounts for a quarter of covid19 cases. Even those figures are clearly underestimates because we are unable to adequately test enough people to really get a handle on how widespread this pandemic is. Health inequalities is a major one. There is no mention of them in 2018, but it is evident to those following it that it should disproportionately affect poor and disabled communities who have experienced poor health and Poor Health Care as a result of longstanding issues of racism, of discrimination. The fact that health care has been deliberately pushed away from black communities for decades, not centuries, going back to the end of the civil war im jim crow era. We should have known that covid19 was clearly going to disproportionately impact and kill black people. Not something that i really delved into in 2018, but something that is a central pillar of understanding americas failure now. It is a big issue. It has caused so much fear and anxiety. We have long known them to be radicalization engines. They provide people with attention grabbing, engagement hogging content that is often wrong and dangerous and highly in may created. Not only do we have 70 vulnerabilities, but they were all predictable and they have all been discussed by subparties beforehand. Nothing in that piece should be new. Nothing and it had never been discussed before. When you put them all together, you get a recipe for disaster. Let me push back let me push back on one thing he said. Blame this on one man to blame this on one man. The coronavirus emerged out of china in 2013. It was when barack obama was president. Do you really think, all else being equal, that we would be five months into the spread to the u. S. , that we would be where we are with barack obama as president . I do not there is a vast gulf of difference. Not will to infectious disease, but other things like honest communication. Respect for science and evidence. The problems that the Trump Administration has manifested over the last several months, holy predictable. The morning of advice from people who know better. The inconsistent tweeting. The rash claims. The constant lying and misinformation. These are things that everybody knew. Even before the big 2018 piece, exactly how trump would behave, come a pandemic, based on his behavior during the ebola crisis and during his election. An effective border control, tweeting irrationally, spouting conspiracy theories, failing to heed the advice of experts, which is exactly what happened. Trump has shown us who he is, right from the start. Do i think that things would have been different, had a more evidencebased, calm her, frankly a more intellectual leader had been in place . Yes, i think it would have been different, but there were still all these vulnerabilities that would have existed and manifested in a smaller way, but still in a real way. Under an Obama Administration, a pandemic would still disproportionately hit people from marginalized groups. Maybe the magnitude diabetes and obesity. Obama did not offend the curve on those issues. Absolutely. It is interesting that you bring up those conditions because those are conditions that predispose to covid19, that they are also the consequences on a long legacy of discrimination and racism that we talked about. That legacy would have always existed. In some ways, the greater magnitude of the crisis now has exposed some of these fault lines that might still be invisible, or at least were visible to those it negatively infected but invisible to those in a position of privilege and power. Do you really want we can go back to a public status quo, one in which we have competent leadership and the pandemic is not as bad as it could be, or one where we argue that even decent leaders have some work to do. We need to fix that longstanding foundational rock, so it is not just the next performance is acceptable, but laudable. I want to ask you a question specifically, as an insider outsider, someone who is very much here and american, but is very much so has an outsider perspective on American Society. I hate to talk in a journalistic cliche, but this is america, my land of contradictions question. This is a country that has the best science in the world, in many cases. It also has a very large population, all the way into the leadership of one of the two Major Political parties, that has a kind of oppositional antiscience standards. Could you analyze why this which developed richly developed country with Technology Companies and the best universities how do you explain to people outside this country why the reaction to masking, for instance, is so profound and political . How do you explain this to yourself . With some difficulty. With a bizarre sense of bafflement. Being a country of paradoxes is correct. We spend the largest amount on health care. The idea that we should be invested in Public Health and have such massive inequality is perplexing. The idea that we have some of the best scientists and the deepest well of scientific expertise in the world, yet should have should be in a position so easily pulled politicized it is galling. One position is this idea of america being highly individualistic. A lot has been said about how their rugged individualism has contributed to its problems during the pandemic. The masks being a good example, with some people saying it is an infringement on their freedom. We have this sense of america being highly individualistic, yet the country was willing to take action with social distancing. We were just restricting our movement during the spring. Masks are heavily political, but they have gone from zero acceptance to majority acceptance. In a matter of months. It is that 25 . It is concentrated in certain areas. We are both in washington. I do not see anybody without a mask. Your point is actually worth noting because you are saying it is not as if the country that half the country is in thrall to a weird version of individualism. You are saying pockets, but at what point do you have to shrink it down to the point where we can come out of this . The way i see it, the idea that we have gone from zero to majority acceptance in a few months is mind blowing. That has never happened. The idea that we have done that in this particular country is incredible. It almost makes the tragedy worse because i think imagine what could have happened if you had a leader in position, who said wear a mask, very consistently wear a mask. In his meetings, clear and consistent with the people. The American People has made tremendous strides against stereotypes with this longstanding stereotype, despite having such confusing messages from the conservative media and the government. It is almost like they were working for their self interest, against people who were meant to be leading and representing them. Imagine what would have happened if there had been leadership that gave them the right messages. We would be in a very different position. If you had a president who was arguing that demanding masked man is an infringement on freedom if you had a president who said you also have to wear pants. That is also an infringement on your rights to go around without pants. Some of it is so obvious. That is where the tragedy is. The counter arguments, that these arguments are so obvious. Given all of the things you have a pretty comprehensive list in your story of all of the specific reasons things have gone so wrong here. Given your analysis of American Society being more responsive than stereotype. I am asking you to do the impossible, which is to protect even the near future. Do you think that we are in any way coming out of this in a way i say this sardonically. Highly functional societies like italy to figure it out. I think it is increasingly tough to predict. I will pieces in march and april about what we should do. I am struck that the gulf between what we should do and what we can do is best. The distance is larger than i anticipated. The good news is that this is still not some ridiculous, uncontrollable pathogen that we have no solutions to. We do actually know what works. We know that masks make a difference. Indoor spaces and crowds increase risk of infection. Know that basic Health Measures can make a difference. We know very clearly that periods of social distancing actually work. The problem is, because that period was wasted, because the sacrifice americans made was largely squandered, things can get better. We have many months into this crisis. We are in a situation where people are asking themselves it is almost like someone these people want something new. We have so far struggled to control the virus. We therefore need a big, new thing that will save us. That is not the case. We have tried we did not do the right things well enough, so we need to go back and keep on doing them. One last thing. On top of that, the problem is that we are in this very difficult situation, where there are not good options. Opening schools, opening colleges, what happens when it gets colder . We are in this difficult situation because we did not do enough in the first place. Stay on this for a second because i have heard various people saying the answer to the problem is if anybody everybody in america stays home for four to six weeks, shut everything down again and four to six weeks should solve much of the problem. Do you agree with that . It is short thinking. I do not think people will do it. I do not think leaders are capable of forcing people to do it. It is doing a lot of heavy lifting day. A lot of people simply will not be able to do that for their livelihoods. That community is disproportionately poor, black and brown. We will have the same problems as before. The shutdowns were never intended to fix the problem on their own. They were intended to allow us to suppress the virus by buying us time. Without that peace restricting ourselves it only buys time that you then have to use. If we go back into it with that mindset, we will once again squander that time. There is no single fit. Whether we have the political will to do that, i do not know. Maybe it comes down to individual citizens making the right choices, looking after each other and deciding who they want to vote for in november, and we will see. We have a lot of questions about vaccines and some of them about schools. As a thought experiment, do you think that we could be in a situation in january imagine that joe biden wins over donald trump. Can you imagine a situation in which the situation is so bad in the country. The Biden Administration has 10 another, almost total shutdown or trying to impose a total shutdown . Even if it is to buy time for experts to come up with a solution to the problem . This is barring the development of a useful vaccine. I do not know if we will ever need to go back to such an extreme measure again. Clearly, the cost is enormous. This is a patchwork pandemic. I do not think we will get to the point where all of america will be forced to do the same thing again. I do not think it is financially or or financially or emotionally viable. Without the long delays that we are currently seeing, i think that if a president can truly marshaled the scientific expertise at the countrys disposal, which is best i think we have a shot. So many roadmaps have been developed on how to control the pandemic. There is no shortage of expertise. I would hope a new administration would listen to the sociologist talking about paid sick leave. That could make a difference without needing to rely too much on nickel blitz. It has already been speaking loudly. Susanna asks a question. Can we trust trumps vaccine, a. K. A. Operation warp speed . Do i think that we will have a vaccine, eventually . Yes. Some of the early signs are promising. Everything everyone in the biomedical community are doing what they can. I am not reassured by some of the frederick around vaccine development. It needs to be safe and effective, which requires time. The prospect that it will be rushed for a october surprise, i do not think we should dismiss that. Creating a vaccine is just one part of the problem. The other involves convincing people that the process was done with all the checks and balances to ensure safety and efficacy, getting it to the most vulnerable populations, instead of the purchased or most popular ones. Getting it deployed across the country, a massive logistical exercise. There is nothing that really convinces me that the country, as is, is up to that adjustable challenge. There are many steps. Even then, we do not know if such a vaccine will provide full, protective immunity against the virus or if it will only be partial, like the flu shot. I think a vaccine will help, but i do not think in the moment game changer that people are envisioning. It is not like some day someone will say we have approved a vaccine, and the next day everybody will get a shot, and the next day we will get back to normal. It the desire for a magic bullet, it is universal, but it will lead us nowhere. Let me ask you this question. Why is the cdc so disenfranchised during this pandemic . Why has it fallen to Anthony Fauci . Even during the ebola crisis, people felt like the cec was the gold standard. These are all cdc was the gold standard. People in the most frustrated out of all of us. Many of them are career Civil Servants who have worked hard to protect the country from exactly this sort of thing. To have that agency being marginalized right now is one of the most shocking in this pandemic. You are right. The cdc is widely regarded as one of the greatest Public Health agencies in the world. There is a reason why the chinese cdc is called the chinese cdc or the nigerian cdc. The cdc is the model of responses with almost every crisis in recent history. The ebola crisis. They were out there reassuring the public all the time. They have the expertise and they should be the voices of young hearing from. There was a three month period, whether cdc did not hold a single press conference, while trump without their daily, telling people about hydroxychloroquine and the hypothetical curative effect and all kinds of nonsense. It is shocking. Do i know that is the case . Some people have written stories about this and gotten some pieces of it, but the fact that the cdc failed to rollout a good diagnostics test early i think part of it is trumps failure to respect expertise. This is a man who does not know very much and does not know what he does not know. He lacks humility to know more. Tell me what the right thing to do is and advise the country. That is what happened. Talk about where we are right now in testing. This is part of a larger question, and it goes to your status as someone who is observing the country. A couple questions. They used to be this thing known as a cando americans. When you are talking about the distribution of vaccine, i remember covering different epidemic related stories in subsaharan africa, talking about not only getting medicine to people, but that in clean water to people. You would be in the most remote parts of Southern Africa or west africa, and everybody would have access to cocacola products. Somehow the Cocacola Company had found a way to penetrate every corner of the globe. Why do you think we feel this is how i feel why did we feel that something has gone missing . There is this passivity in the the air. There are not even protest. There are protests about george floyd, but why is there no protest over this . There is a story today about that. I do not understand why americans have not gone in front of their statehouse and the white house and said, this is ridiculous. I think about how bad the response has been, in proportion to peoples expectations. There is a certain amount of effort meant that this country could still be struggling with Something Like testing. It is almost like the bafflement leads to paralysis. So Many Americans are just not used to thinking of themselves, of their country as being quite this inept. I think it is a painful realization. From the accent, i am not from these parts. Jersey, please. My friends jersey, please. The extreme gap between expectation and reality has almost led to these this emotional shutdown. The people who are most deeply invested in it and have the clearest picture of what is going wrong are also the most burned out. I vote that the pandemic experts are doing really badly. The people who have been warning since march that this will be really bad, they have been working since midmarch and they are emotionally devastated. They are fried. They are exhausted. They are getting hate mail, threats they just do not have the energy. The people who best see what is happening had the least amount of energy, and the ones who are the most vocal are the ones who have also been the most cavalier. I do not know how to resolve that. You mentioned the george floyd protest. I argue in the piece that those protests are not about the pandemic, but i think they are inextricable from it. A lot of what we are seeing, the fact that people from other racial backgrounds have participated in this civic action is not just about the racial injustices that they are protesting, but the fact that they have spent much of the year of realizing that Many American institutions are broken and there are systematic, festering there is this exceptional veneer to it. That contributed to the turnout, the changing attitudes that we see in black lives matter. I think america is ripe for systemic change. When you asked me what i see for the the systemic failures that have cost us so dearly, this year. To actually do the radical work needed to reimagine a country that is more resilient and equitable. Jeffrey i want to do a few more questions from our audience on subjects that we have touched on already, but i think they are of profound importance. Cindy, a history professor from texas says what kind of impact do you believe that we opening schools will have on the rate of infections . But i it is a big mistake hear from parents who cannot bear the idea of homeschooling while working from home. Mr. Yong i caveat this by saying that my reporting efforts have been on other things. The internet is too full of on thingsighing in they have not done work on. Fortunately, we have colleagues who have done the work. Based on what i have seen, i feel there is a huge risk. You open up these crowded indoor spaces and you are jeopardizing the lives not only of kids but the families those kids will go home to, and crucially, teachers. The flipside of that is that you have problems with kids being homeschooled for so long, not just in terms of the Emotional Wellbeing of parents, but especially people from poor and minority communities, who have disproportionate struggles of their own, but i forgot the first clause of the sentence. I dont how to wrap it up in a good way. There are problems. What i am trying to say is this is what i meant when i said action inactio n early in this pandemic has left us in a position where there is really no good option. It is not the case where either opening schools or keeping them closed where one of them is good and the other is bad. They are both terrible and we are having to weigh in on which is least terrible in different parts of the country. I think the right answer will vary depending where in the country you are. It is obviously a problem that this is still a new virus and we are still learning about how it affects children and how it spreads among children, and from children to adults. There is so much we do not know. It is a horrible position to be in and it did not have to be this way. Jeffrey that is where the paralysis comes in. Let me go to the last question. There are many questions. Im sorry i could not get to everything. This is an interesting one that combines the coming election and pandemic. Joshua asks, if biden wins, what should be the top few items on his administration to do list to deal with the future Novel Coronavirus . Mr. Yong i have been thinking about this. There are many things that we could do. I think the most important one is to immediately convene an actual Coronavirus Task force. Take the best minds in the country, a mix of neurologists, epidemiologists, economists, sociologists, get them together. Get them to give you advice. Take all the roadmaps that have already been compiled and create a working, national plan. It should not take long because those people are already out there and fired up, exhausted, but ready to help. They want to help. Everything flows from that. Respect expertise and marshal the expertise out there i hesitate to say win because it has been so disastrous so far. But we can pull ourselves up from this downward spiral. I think that single action informs so much else, dealing with inequality, eating a testing plan in place, shoring up the country going forward. Jeffrey the thing that people want to ask you over and over again i have been trying to avoid it. The uncertainty is what is emotionally, mentally taxing. As much as anything else. When we left work in the middle of march, get a few things and bring it home, we will be back in a couple weeks. It is august and we are heading into september. Could you imagine us a year from now, still fighting a rearguard action . Mr. Yong i do not know. I did not anticipate we would be in this position now. As has been clear from our discussion, i think a lot rides on november. I do not think that a Biden Administration will be a magic click your fingers and everything is happy. But i think we have seen what happens when you have incompetent, egotistical, narcissistic xenophobes in charge of the government. We have run that experiment, and it has not gone well for us. Maybe things will be better. How will it play out . I do not know. I hope it will be better. I hope for all of our sakes. I miss my friends. I miss my family. I miss so much of the world that we had. I reiterate that we cannot go back to normal. That normal led to this. We have to work at building something better. I do not know. I think in many ways, the pandemic has repeatedly defied my expectation so far so i am hesitant to make a prediction now, but i think the potential is there. We can still do this. It is a matter of political bill political will, individual resilience, all the things that we talked about. One of the only i do not want to call it a bright side, but one thing i am glad about is that when the pandemic came, we had you on our staff. People inside the atlantic know this, but my greatest achievement was luring you out book leave to of come back. Just spend a couple weeks writing on the pandemic. I am glad you did. Mr. Yong a month, i think you said. Jeffrey i said to come back for a month times eight. I am glad you did. There are millions of readers who are glad you came back. You have been vastly important in helping people understand what is going on around them. Also to help them with humility, understand what we do not understand. That has been as important as anything else. I appreciate your work, and i hear everyday from our readers who appreciate what you are doing for them. On behalf of all of those readers, thank you. I do not know why you are not typing your next story already. Mr. Yong oh, i am. I have another laptop right here. Jeffrey take the next eight minutes off. I have just been chatting into my computer. Mr. Yong i am doing my part, jeffrey. [laughter] jeffrey we can have our Performance Review later. Let me thank anybody from atlantic live for putting this on. Next week, we will do a special edition of the big story with a deepewkirk and expiration into katrina, 15 years later. You can download that anyplace you download podcasts. It is amazing. Dan will talk about some of the things he learned. So look forward to that invitation. Again, the atlantic festival, late september. You will hear more from us about that, an amazing lineup. With that, thank you for joining us. We will see you next week. Thank you. The federal response to the coronavirus outbreak at cspan. Org coronavirus. Watch congress, white house briefings and updates from governors. Track the spread of the virus throughout the u. S. And the world with interactive maps. Watch ondemand anytime, unfiltered at cspan. Org coronavirus. Later today, President Trump holds a News Conference at the Trump National golf club in bedminster, new jersey. We will have that live at 5 30 p. M. Eastern on cspan. On monday, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton discusses americas role in the world in a prerecorded conversation hosted by the atlantic council. Coverage begins at noon eastern on cspan come online at cspan. Org, or you can listen for free on the cspan radio app. President trump announced the United Arab Emirates and israel agreed to open diplomatic ties in a deal halting the planned is plant an accession of is really annexation of palestinian land. This is very important, a big event, and i want to congratulate all of the people behind me because they have done an incredible job. This is something that has not been done in more than 25 years. I hostedw moments ago, a special call with friends, Benjamin Netanyahu of israel, and the n