Physician. And i have a small private practice outside of washington d. C. I focus on helping people recover their brain health after concussions and a lot of times thats in coordination with Infectious Diseases. So sometimes, you know, theres a lot of things that cause people to lose their function of brain Health Including just aging. But it really plays on i was trained at the walter Reid Institute of research with a focus on Infectious Diseases and while i was there i created a system called the essence system and its an Early Warning system that is a data mining system looking at dods data to look for trends that might be out of the ordinary such as unexplained fever or respiratory complaints or Emergency Rooms as a red flag to give us an Early Warning to pick up the phone and find out why the emergency room is seein reward for that was to be able to go overseas to bangkok, thailand, where i established the presence of at the time in the late 90s something called the department of defense global emerging infections system, and it was to use these overseas platforms that we have in the army and the navy, these great, incredible resources, these research labs. So i was assigned to the one in bangkok. My job literally for years was to run around asia looking for partners to find, to develop systems like i developed at the Walter Reed Institute of research and to look for new and interesting diseases. And so basically i was a disease hunter in Southeast Asia. Just happened to be when sars and bird flu happened in the early 2000s. So what was the most important lesson you learned while hunting those diseases, including sars and bird flu . What was the most important lesson you learned about viral outbreaks . Well, the most important thing and the reason why i was tasked with using dod money to work with partners in Southeast Asia im not talking about like other militaries, imworked with militaries, ive worked with governments, i worked with nongovernmental organizations or ngos, is openness. To be able to the only way that we can be on top of diseases is if we know they exist and know theyre coming. And so that ability to to raise the flag and say, hey, you know, weve got something going on here this this new type of outbreak of respiratory illness thats killing people, that was really important. You know, some Unsung Heroes from back in the day. Carlos urbani was a w. H. O. Physician in hanoi. He was one that really raised the big flag saying, hey, theres something crazy going on, youve got to look into this. That kind of openness, that transparency is what we really lack this time around. When you say that type of openness, that type of transparency, are you talking about from foreign governments . Are you talking about the United States government . Who are you talking about when you say that . Well, it really is, you know let me just say that viruses have existed long before mankind. They will exist long after were gone. So we have to learn how to coexist with viruses. And the only way you can do that is with openness and transparency. And so, you know, part of the reason why we knew much more about sars is because it really kind of came out of hong kong. Hong kong had just turned over from the british. Was very westernoriented type of society back then. And so the transparency was there. This current coronavirus came out of wuhan in the heart of china, the republic of china. And peoples republic of china. And it the transparency wasnt there. We still dont really know when this current coronavirus kind of started. You know, theres been this talk about, well, maybe it wasnt december, maybe it was november. Maybe it was october, maybe it was even around for months before that because we dont have that transparency with the chinese government. So what was the result of bird flu and sars . How many people died of bird flu . How many people died of sars during those outbreaks that you were working there . And how does it compare to whats going on with covid19 right now . Well, with bird flu, you know, it really kind of started off in 2004 and then 2005, 2006. So over a period of a couple years. It killed about as many people, not quite as many people as covid, but over a longer period of time. So influenzas always a concern. When it makes a big leap, you know of course, each year it makes incremental differences, and thats why we have to have an annual flu vaccine because were trying to catch up to it. And trying to match up with what might be the influenza. So but occasionally it takes a big leap. With sars, we were able to get it under better control. It wasnt as transmissible as as influenza, so it was very much limited in outbreaks. We did good contact tracing, we were able to keep it under control, and hundreds of people died, not tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. Lets let our viewers take part in this conversation. Were going to open up regional lines for this talk about covid19 and previous outbreaks. That means that if you are in the eastern or central time zones, your telephone numbers going to be 2027488000. If you are in the mountain and pacific time zones, your telephone number is going to be 2027488001. Were going to open up a special line for other medical professionals. If you have a question youd like to ask and youre a medical professional, your line is going to be 2027488002. Keep in mind you can always text us at 2027488003. And were always reading on social media on twitter at cspanbwj and facebook at facebook. Com cspan. Dr. Lewis, tell us about the essence program. What was the essence program, and what was its role in monitoring outbreaks around the world . Well, when i created the essence program, it was really looking at the concept that people dont go to the emergency room or to the hospital or to a clinic with a diagnosis, they go with symptoms. So you you go to the emergency room because you have a fever and a sore throat, for example. And so my idea was to capture that data and look at it historically, and does it is it out of the norm for that week of the year, that day of the week for example on monday ths, people tend to go to clinics and Emergency Rooms more on mondays because they dont go on the weekends, or the clinics arent open on the weekends. We look historically at that. When we first stood it up on the 1st of december 1999, you know, it was basically tapping into dods data, looking at that type of data on a daily basis. Actually on an hourly basis, and comparing it historically. Within a couple weeks, all the sudden we saw a big spike in unexplained fever. And so we picked up the phone, called the local emergency room, and sure enough they were seeing a an increase of influenza at that time. The reason why thats important is we picked that up in about a day or two, whereas at the time, the cdcs influenza system was taking six to eight weeks to recognize an outbreak of influenza, and we were able to detect it in about two days. So what similarity do you see between the sars outbreak and the covid19 outbreak . Are there any similarities . Are there any differences . How can we compare the two . Well, theyre obviously both coronaviruses, and they cause simil similar sympotology. If you dont catch these diseases early on and kind of put them back in the bag if you will, and they escape out of the bag like the coronavirus, the covid19 has, then youre really kind of jumping through hoops trying to play catchup. And thats really, really difficult. Unfortunately, covid19 appears to be sort of the worst combination of sars and influenza, where its easily transmitted like influenza but has the morbidity and mortality of the sars virus. And so thats a horrible combination as weve seen where weve, you know, have hundreds of thousands of deaths around the world. Now dr. Lewis, a lot of us follow the john hopkins covid19 page where they keep a count of the numbers of confirmed cases and deaths. Im looking at it this morning. It says that the United States has more than two million confirmed cases, and more than 119 deaths due to the covid19. They also have lists of other countries and their deaths and infection rates. How accurate are we are the numbers from these other countries . Are other countries being forthright and open about how the covid19 coronavirus is spreading through their countries . You would have to look at it on a countrybycountry basis. I really couldnt speak to that because i dont know. If you look at what the the w. H. O. Hopefully is on top of this and looking at it country by country, the cdc certainly is our net National PublicHealth System. Im sure theyre very much involved with it. The cdc has has people, trained people in a lot of different countries, helping these countries out. So it really varies. And part of it is very political, of course. Ive certainly seen this in my time, you know, Southeast Asia and so on. Theres some diseases that we never heard about because the Economic Impact of if that had gotten out throughout the world would have devastated that local economy. So countries always have a reason to either underplay or overplay how many cases that are going. It gets to be a political question, unfortunately, when it really should be a medical question. Lets talk specifically about china. Im going to read a little from a story from the bbc about what they are saying is the second outbreak in china. An area in the Chinese Capital beijing has been put under Strict Lockdown measures after the citys first coronavirus cases in more than 50 days. Outbreak has been linked to the citys largest wholesale market. A total of 45 people out of 517 tested at the market, tested positive for covid19, a district official said. None was displaying symptoms. It lockdowns have been imposed on 11 nearby neighborhoods while 10,000 market staff will be tested. The authorities want to test everyone who has had recent contact with the market, as well as those living in the districts surrounding it. These are the first new confirmed cases in beijing for more than 50 days. So how forthright has china specifically been on with outbreak information . You know, i wish i could answer that a lot more specifically. I think that, you know, i i cant really give you a good answer on that, unfortunately. I dont have the access that, you know, our top leaders in the government have, the bbc has, and so on. And so, you know, i think that china putting out that information is a good thing. Now how accurate it is, i really cant speak to that because nobody knows unless youre there on the ground. So lets talk about in the past with sars and bird flu. How how were they with releasing information with these previous outbreaks . Well, they actually were much better. And part of the reason like i mentioned before is that sars came out of hong kong for most part. And so hong kong being the special territory that it has been was much more open and transparent, especially back, you know, only a few years after the handover from the british authorities. And so far big differs other thing that you have to take into account today is as opposed to back in 2003 is social media. I mean, we didnt have facebook and twitter and instagram and all these ways of instantly communicating around the world for better or for worse. Now, politically china keeps a hold of a lot of things, you know, as far as being able to access these types of platforms. But back then, nobody had access. They didnt even exist. And so we didnt have this 24hour news cycle, we didnt have Johns Hopkins sitting there saying, all right, theres another one, theres another one, theres another one. You know, in many ways, part of whats fed the hysteria about covid19 has been just this 24 7 access to too much information really in my opinion. Lets let our viewers join in this conversation. Well start with sig calling from plainview, new york. Good morning, did i pronounce your name anywhere close to correct . Caller cy. Lets go to cy. Caller thank you. Its come to my attention from news media reports that wuhan was the epicenter, and the Chinese Communist government allowed flights out of wuhan knowing that there were infected people on board, and this ceded the planet with the coronavirus. Another question i have is were the original samples destroyed and why . And was the genetic sequence tampered with to your knowledge . Thank you. Well, to my knowledge, you know, what you said about a member of planes have to remember that this led right into the winter holidays, and so a lot of travel, it was right before Chinese New Year which is the biggest holidays in the chinese culture. And so people tend to travel back to family or around the world. Youre absolutely right, there was a lot of air travel around the world literally, all at the wrong time, unfortunately for us. As far as the genetic sequence, i keep hearing varying things. I have no inside knowledge on this. What i would what my belief and this is just my personal opinion from what ive read and what i understand about the systems and how ft. Detrick and frederick, maryland, works, and the u. S. Army medical the Infectious Disease program, and knowing these systems, i dont believe that this was a genetically modified virus. I do believe again, my personal opinion that it was a virus that came from nature that was being studied at the wuhan laboratory. And somehow probably a laboratory error, and it got out of the out of what we call the hot zone which is really, really difficult to believe that it would. But we also have to realize that not everybody has the level of training that Infectious Disease researchers have, say, at ft. Detrick in maryland. Lets go to richard whos calling from san diego, california. Richard, good morning. Caller good morning, can you hear me . We can hear you. Go ahead. Caller okay, you asked a lot of questions, id like for that guy to answer mr. Lewis, dr. Lewis. He seems like a pretty smart guy there, and i just got one question for him you asked him at the start of how many sars, how many the bird flu killed. We dont, you know he says i dont really know numbers. How many did age kill, sir . And let me ask you a question, did we shut the whole world down for aids . I was 18, in my prime, when they shut it down. They didnt shut down the world. You know what they told me . Wear a condom, sir. Go ahead. Whats the difference between aids and the coronavirus is that weve been talking about . Well, you know, so the aids virus, you know, hiv, it really destroys the bodys immune system. And that leads to opportunistic infections. And of course the way its transmitted is quite different than sars and coronavirus. Coronavirus coronaviruses, of course, are transmitted principally through respiratory, whereas hivs transmitted by close contact such as blood to blood, through semen, through intercourse, that type of thing. So a huge difference in that. What coronavirus does is it causes the immune system to react to it, and particularly in the lungs where we have a large amount of immune response capability. And so we get that response to the coronavirus whereas the hiv, you know, virus, the aids virus, it causes destruction to the immune system. So kind of the almost i dont want to say opposite effect, but very different effects on the immune system. Ones ones destroying it, and coronavirus is causing it to overreact. This seems to be a good point where i can ask this question so you can explain this to our audience. Explain to us the usage of the term coronavirus versus covid19, as were talking about aids and hivment explain how were supposed to be using this coronavirus, covid19 is a coronavirus . Explain to us the exact terminology there. Well, the virus is the sars cov2, and really the disease that the clinical symptoms that, you know, that virus causes is considered the covid19. Perfect. Lets go to joe whos calling from gainesville, virginia, and joes a medical professional. Joe, good morning. Caller good morning. Go ahead, jo. Caller yes, there is jo. And i wanted to share a thought with your listeners there. I used to work as a nurse in haiti for two years, and before that i worked in medical surgical on a cardiac unit also in virginia. When i was in haiti, i learned a lot about you might say subtropical and tropical diseases, and it has been occurring to me that regarding the coronavirus that it might be really a good idea if during the Elementary School ages in this country that our children got some good, basic hygiene class, and that i believe it would help a lot in future times to avert some of the problems because i know when my children were in one of the nearby schools that sometimes the teacher would say, you know, just you all go to the bathroom, and then go on to lunchment and no one would check to see if the children were washing their hands after going to the bathroom. And many examples of basic hygiene like doing the clean chore before the dirty chore. That sort of thing and then washing your hands, rather than a dirty chore and then the clean chore. So i think it would just be good particularly in the early school year, starting even in the kindergarten class, the preschool classes, and going through fifth grade to get that ingrained in the children, its just a habit. It wouldnt have to be thought out, and so many adults that dont seem to know this after practicing the wrong way for years. Go ahead and respond, dr. Lewis. Well, let me give you an example. When i first came in into the military, into the army many, many, you know, several, many decades ago, basically, you know, if youre out on field exercises, you just ached. You know, whether there ate. Whether there was dirt in it or not. It took a generation or two in military army terms to where the point is that, you know, we always wash our hands before we eat. It was really emphasized. But it does take time. So youre absolutely right. If we get a little bit more coherent about teaching our children good hygiene, it may not catch on right away, but it will pay dividends down the line. I think if theres one good thing that will come out of the Current Situation is that we are paying a lot closer attention to hygiene now. Now will that continue on . But also i always worry about what are the unintended consequences. If were using a lot of antibacterial soap and a lot