Gets a security detail, talk to bill gates about fighting the coronavirus, and america has moved on from toilet paper and are now hoarding guns. Lets get into it. The daily distancing show. From trevors couch in new york city to your couch somewhere in the world, this is the daily distancing show with Trevor Noah Trevor lets kick it off with good news. Like everyone now, scientists around the world are no longer thinking about anything other than the coronavirus. In fact, many scientists have dropped almost all other research and are only focusing on cures and treatments for covid 19, which i think is great, because i think scientists are too busy working on random shit, anyway. Theres always the one random scientist where you read the headline, new study shows ducks can only live two seconds in states. We dont even need to know that whos doing that experiment . How did you get money into this . Now scientists are deciding they will put cooperation ahead of competition and Share Research immediately rather than waiting for months published results and get credit for themselves, which makes sense to me, this is not the time to worry about credit. Trying to get credit for stopping coronavirus is a waste of your time anyway. We all know President Trump will take the credit no matter what happens, so relax. Ready, trump, you did it . You damn straight. How did you do it . I put the thing in the thing and, boom, it disappeared. Some of this research is coming from an unlikely source. Yeah, one of the companies who announced a possible breakthrough in Vaccine Development is the cigarette giant British American tobacco. Yeah, those guys. They claim that proteins extracted from tobacco plants could lead to a cure tore coronavirus. And you know what . Im not surprised. They spent years destroying peoples lungs, of course they know what its all about. Coronavirus is basically their competition. This is one of those to catch a killer youve got to be the killer. The hannibal lector of coronavirus. So scientists are teaming up, Tobacco Companies are trying to do something good for a change, but in notsogood news, there are now nearly 1 million coronavirus cases around the globe. The number keeps going up and here in the u. S. Yesterdays death toll was over 1,000, the highest yet. Those arent the only bad numbers, a record 6. 6 million americans filed for unemployment last week. Yeah, 6. 6 Million People filed for unemployment. I know it can be hard to wrap your mind around numbers like that. But look at the graph showing the spike in job losses. See that . Look at that spike. Looks like unemployment overdosed on viagra and got a fourhour boner, we have to call a doctor. But you call a doctor after the four hours. Before that, youve got to use what youve got. Thats not the only record being set now. Over the past month, 3. 7 Million People have tried to buy guns. The highest number the f. B. I. Has ever recorded. So during this pandemic, the two things people in america want the most are guns and toilet paper which makes sense because when i see someone carrying a gun i shit myself. I dont know why stocking up on firearms will help you in a pandemic. To protect yourself from outsiders, think outof the box. You need a recording of someone coughing on a loop. Play that in your house all the night. Someone comes in the window, no, im not messing with this house. There is one person out there who needs more protection right now, dr. Anthony fauci, the man whose calm leadership during this crisis has won him the respect of all intelligent people and President Trump and, according to reports, dr. Fauci has now been assigned a security detail because of threats being made against him, which is insane. Why would you threaten dr. Fauci . and authorities arent sure where the threats are coming from, but police have released a sketch of a potential suspect, and i dont know who it is because of the glasses, but that facing looks familiar. Now, unfortunately, getting threats is fairly standard for anyone in the public eye, but whats not standard is that dr. Fauci is also receiving lots of unwelcomed communications from fervent admirers. Yes. Thats a nice way to say that your groupies are crazy. Who would have thought one day we would live in a world where the whole planet would be grounded and the epidemologist would be the hottest man on earth. I gotta get me some of that fauci, you know he got that vaccine, girl. Whos sexier than fauci . Nobody. If People Magazine doesnt hit him on the cover, theyre wasting their lives. More and more governors are announcing belated stayathome orders for their states. Yesterday after weeks of resisting, the governor of florida, ron ron desantis, finay announce add lockdown for his state on april fools day. Florida is officially locked down, which means mickey mouse and all his friends will have to work from home, which i think is perfect for donald duck. Due to his never worn pants, he was born for the teleconferencing life. Do you wear pants . I dont. I would stand up right now, but youre not ready. Im also not ready. I didnt think about that before i started telling that joke. But im not wearing pants, and im not ready. Georgia is another place that institute a stayathome ban. Brine brine declared a stayathome order and explained the reason he didnt do it sooner is he just found out that asymptomatic people can spread the virus. Thats what he said, he said he found out people who dont show symptoms can spread the coronavirus. He just found that out. Yeah. Thats something known widely for months. Yeah. How can a governor be so far behind the curve . A governor. I just picture him watching season three of westworld, guys, im starting to think some of these people might be robots. I dont know. Something about them. But lets move on. Because earlier today, i talked to someone who, unlike the governor of georgia, actually does know a lot about the coronavirus, mr. Bill gates. So check it out. Bill gates, welcome to the daily distancing show. Its great to be on. Trevor lets jump straight into the first question that everybody would want me to ask. You delivered a ted talk where you predicted pretty much what is happening now. Now, thanks to the world we live in, that has spouted a bunch of conspiracy theories everything from bill gates invented this virus to prove himself right or he knew it was going to happen and thats why he said it, was that ted talk about this virus or was that a hypothetical that has now come true . Well, i didnt know specifically it would be coronavirus and that it wouldt hit in late 2019, but the goal of the talk was to encourage governments to make the investments so we could respond very quickly and keep the case numbers very, very low. So, sadly, this is not a case where, you know, i feel like, hey, i told you so, because we didnt use that time when it was clear the biggest threat to kill millions of people to have the diagnostics standing by, to be ready to ramp up a vaccine factory. A few things were tone. Some countries, some will help are the vaccines now, will help with the diagnostics, but most of what was called for, particularly in a new england journal of medicine article i did that went into way more specifics than i could in a short ted talk, those things didnt get done, and, so, thats why its taking us a long time to get our act together faced with this threat. Trevor heres a question i have as an individual. How is it that you as a nongovernment knew this information and knew that it need to be acted on, and governments and organizations that are specifically tasked with protecting people from this very thing either didnt have the information or ignored it, what do you think happened there . Because i know you interact with governments, you talk to organizations like the c. D. C. , like the w. H. O. What went wrong . Well, there are lots of individuals who were as worried as i was. You know, people like dr. Fauci, who had been through various epidemics. So, when we had ebola, zika, sars, mers, we were lucky that they didnt transmit very easily, they werent these respiratory viruses where somebody whos not very symptomatic and is still Walking Around can spread the disease, in some cases to literally dozens of people. So the respiratory transmission, particularly because world travel is so intense, thats where i show the simulation in that speech and say this keeps me up at night more than even war, which is no small thing, and, yet, in terms of being systematic about, okay, lets run a simulation and see how would we reach out to the private sector for tests or ventilators and what kind of quarantine would we do. And as we enter into this, we havent practiced at all. So you can see its every state is being forced to figure things out on their own, and its very ad hoc. Its not like when a war comes and weve done, you know, 20 simulations of various types of threats, and weve made sure that the training, communications, logistics, all those pieces fall into place very rapidly. Trevor you are in an interesting position where, in many ways, you are an expert on this topic because of the work you now do in philanthropy. Your goal has been to eradicate malaria across the globe, focusing in africa. You work with infectious disease, you work with experts in and around infectious disease. When you look at the coronavirus as it stands now, its happened, leaders acted late, but what do you think needs to be done Going Forward . You wrote an interesting oped about this, but what do you think we need to do from the ground up, from the people to the leaders to the private sector . Well, the main tools we have right now are the behavioral change, the social distancing, which often means staying at home most of the time, and the Testing Capacity to identify who in particular needs to get isolated and then testing their contacts to make sure that we can catch it so early that a lot of people who get sick dont infect anyone else. Now, so our foundation is engaged in projecting whats going to go on, the modeling, our partner i. T. M. E. S telling each state what they should think about in terms of ventilators and capacity. Further on out, the work that were doing to find a therapeutic, a drug to reduce the disease, to cut the deaths down, you know, were hopeful that, even in six months, some of those will have been approved. But the ultimate solution, the only thing that really lets us go back completely to normal and feel good about sitting in a stadium with lots of other people is to create a vaccine and not just take care of our country but take that vaccine out to the global population so that we have vast immunity and this thing, no matter what, isnt going to spread in large numbers. Trevor you have a unique advantage point in that you have been communicating with various governments around the world in and around the covid 19 response, what they plan to do and what they havent done thus far. Which countries do you think we should be looking to for models that work and can we apply those models to a larger country like the United States . So many people say italy and korea, yes, have their numbers, but they cant necessarily be applied to america. Is that true or not or is there a model that seems to work and should be followed for everybody . Well, countries have differences. You know, south korea did get a mediumsized infection, but then they used testing, enforced quarantine, Contact Tracing and really bent the curve, even though it looked pretty scary there for a while. The epidemic in the United States is more widespread than it ever got in south korea. So were like the part of china, hubei province, where a lot of the cases were in one city, wuhan. And the u. S. And china are different. You know, the lockdowns that we do wont be as strictly enforced, but they are very, very important. The way we do Contact Tracing wont be as invasive and, so, it wont be quite as perfect, but it is very good news that china, although they are maintaining a lot of measures, they are not seeing a rebound, theyre not seeing cases coming back, etch though they are sending people back to the factories, sending people back to schools. And, you know, so, thank goodness, if were see ago big rebound there, the idea you could keep it under control once you have a large number of cases like the u. S. Does in many countries in europe, then, you know, it would seem almost impossible. So it can be done. You know, china ended up with. 01 of their population infected. You know, our goal is to stay so its only a few percent, so at least the medical penalty isnt gigantic, even though the economic penalty will be very large. Trevor when you look at that balance between the economic penalty and the human penalty, there are some who have argued that the economic penalty will, over time, equal the human penalty. Now, you were one of the few people in the world where you actually have enough money to tell us about whether or not an economy shifting in this way or another way is going to cause mass deaths, but how do you think we should be looking at this . Because, yes, there is an economy and, yes, there is human life, but where do you think the truth lies . Well, there isnt a choice where you get to say to people dont Pay Attention to this epidemic. You know, most people, they have older relatives, you know, theyre worried about getting sick. The idea of a normal economy is not there as a choice. You know, about 80 of people are going to change their activities. If you get the other 20 to go along with that nationwide, then the disease numbers will flatten, hopefully in the next month, and start to go down, hopefully in the month after that. Then, when theyve gone down a lot, then, in a tasteful way, using prioritized testing, you can start to reopen a lot of things, like schools and work. Probably not Sports Events because the chance of mass spread there is quite large. Trevor mmhmm. So to get back economically, taking the pain extremely now and telling, you know, those who wouldnt curb their activities, no, you must go along with the rest of society and not associate in a way that we have exponential increase in these cases, you know, that is the right thing, even though its extremely painful, its unheard of. You know, there are particular businesses that its catastrophic for. Thats the only way you get so you can feel like you can say to the entire population ideally in the early summer if things go well, yes, now please do resume, and we are through testing, making sure that it wont spread in some very, very big way. So people will need the confidence that the system is working and smart people are making decisions and overoptimistic statements actually work against that. Trevor what do you think most people are missing right now . Because everyone has an opinion. You know, everyone from my mom to my friends to people online, everyone has an opinion on coronavirus because we have very few centralized sources that people trust. But what do you think people are missing about this virus and this moment and what we need to be doing as people . Because we know the basics wash your hands, stay at home, stay away from other people, try to, you know, maintain a world where people are moving as little as possible, but what do you think were missing that people might make a mistake and exacerbate what we are going through now . Well, the thing that needs to get fixed in the next few weeks is to prioritize our Testing Capacity, which is going up, but making sure the right people are being tested. That will guide us in a very deep way. And who are the right people . If youre symptomatic or somebody you have been in close contact with tested positive, you know, those are the broad categories. Of course, in the front of the line, you have Health Workers or essential workers who have to go, you know, keep the food supply, the medical system, water, electricity, internet, keep those things running for the people who are mostly at home, but that doesnt use up that higher percentage of the Testing Capacity. We have a lot of people without symptoms who are just kind of worried, and there we need to show them that until our capacity goes up a lot, they are going to have to wait. The worst thing we have is if it takes you longer than 24 hours to get the test result, then you dont know you havent been told during the very key period where youre most infectious to take extreme measures, and, so, weve got to get not just the numbers out, that confuses people, its the speed of the results. South korea was giving those results in less than 24 hours. Trevor so if we have tests that are ramping up around the world, were going to see the numbers going up. Now, some have said that number and the mortality or fatality rate can be deceptive because there are so many who arent getting tested and are we covering and, so, we dont really know how dangerous or how fatal this disease actually is. What is needed in the realm of testing . What im trying to say is i understand you want to get as many tests as possible, but once weve tested as many people as weve tested, what are we trying to get to as an end goal . Well, for rich countries that do the right policies, you should be able to plateau and get the cases down with less than a few percent of the population infected. China, south korea, you know, they are countries that absolutely have achieved that, and that means that your total deaths is actually not gigantic. Now, in developing countries, the about to do lots of testing, to have the patients who have severe respiratory distress get treatment and do this social isolation. For developing countries, its far harder, and, so, you know, there, will these measures actually stop it from getting to a large part of the population, places like india, nigeria . You know, i was talking to president ronald posa today who is not only president of south africa, hes the head of the african union, and hes a very strong voice in encouraging the countries there to act quickly when the number of cases is still fairly low, which is true throughout sub Saharan Africa right now. Trevor when you look at where we are right now, the one thing we cant deny is everybody has dealt with the coronavirus on a different time line. Not just across the globe. I mean even with the United States, you have states like georgia and florida that implemented stayathome orders, you have many other states that havent done it at all. Is this going t