The secret weapon against pandemics | Georges C. Benjamin

David Biello: It's now my great honor and privilege

to introduce Dr. Georges Benjamin,

who's the executive director of the American Public Health Association,

who has a long and distinguished career,

both as a medical professional and as a public health professional.

Please give a warm welcome to Dr. Georges Benjamin.

Georges Benjamin: Hey, David, how are you?

DB: I am good, how are you, Dr. Benjamin?

GB: I'm here. (Laughs)

DB: Hanging in there. Good.

GB: Hanging in.

DB: We know that the theme of the moment is reopening, I would say.

We just heard one possibility for that,

but obviously,

a lot of countries have already reopened in one form or another,

and I believe, as of today,

all 50 states here in the US have reopened in one form or another.

How do we do that smartly, how do we do that safely?

GB: Yeah, we really do need to reopen safely and carefully,

and it means that we have not got to forget these public health measures

that really brought down the curve to begin with.

And that means thing such as

covering up your nose and mouth when you cough or sneeze,

wearing a mask, washing your hands,

physically distancing yourself to the extent possible from others.

Thinking about everything we do,

you know, before we go to work in the morning,

while we're at work.

And being as careful as many of us have been

in the last two months,

as we go into the next three months,

because this thing is not over.

DB: Right.

There is the chance of more waves, as Uri [Alon] mentioned.

It seems like it's kind of incumbent on all of us then

to take public health as kind of a second job.

Is that right?

GB: You know, I've been arguing a lot

that now that everybody really knows what public health is,

that everybody should always recognize that their second job is public health,

whether you're picking up the garbage or working in a grocery store,

or you are a bus driver,

or you're, you know, like me, doing public health,

a physician or a nurse,

everybody needs to put the public health mantle

into what they do each and every day.

DB: What do you think --

So we're all public health professionals now,

what do you think the new normal we might expect,

as countries reopen?

What is that going to look like,

or what do you hope that looks like, as a public health professional?

GB: If I could wave a magic wand,

I would clearly recognize

that people are going to be doing a lot more of the public health things,

in terms of handwashing

and thinking about what they do around safety when they go out in public.

You know, it was not too long ago

when you got in your car and you didn't put your seat belt on.

Today we do it,

and we don't think anything about it.

Most of us don't smoke,

because we know that that's bad for us.

Most of us look both ways before we cross a street.

Most of us, you know,

do things in our house, that are -- fix trip hazards.

So as we go forward with this outbreak,

I'm hoping that people will pay a lot more attention

to things that can cause us to get an infection.

So you know, cleaning things, disinfecting things.

More importantly, not coming to work if you're sick.

I'm hoping that employers will put in paid sick leave for everybody,

so people can stay home.

Yeah, it’s an additional cost,

but I can tell you that we've now learned

that the cost of not doing something like that

is billions and billions and billions of dollars.

Paid sick leave is pretty cheap when you do that.

DB: Yeah, we are, I think, envious in the United States

of all the countries that perhaps have

a more all-encompassing health care system than we do.

Would you agree that masks are kind of the symbol

of adopting that "public health professional as a second job" mindset?

GB: Well, you know, it's funny.

Our colleagues in Asia have had a mask --

wearing masks as a culture for many, many years.

And you know, we've always kind of chuckled at that.

When I went overseas,

I would always kind of chuckle when I saw people wearing masks.

And of course, when this first started,

you know, we only promoted masks for people that were infected

or of course, health care workers,

who we thought were in a higher-risk environment.

But I think that wearing masks

is probably going to be part of our culture.

We've already seen it probably will not be part of our beach culture,

although it probably should be for now.

But I do think that we're going to see more and more people wearing masks

in a variety of settings.

And I think that makes sense.

DB: Yeah, wear your mask to show that you care about others.

And that you have this, kind of, public health spirit.

So speaking of Asia,

who has done well?

Looking around the world, you've been doing this for a while

and communicated with your peers,

who has done well

and what can we learn from those good examples?

GB: Yeah, South Korea in many ways is the role model.

You know, China actually, at the end of the day,

did reasonably well.

But the secret to all of those countries

that have had less morbidity and mortality than we have,

is they did lots of testing very early on,

they did contact tracing and isolation and quarantine,

which by the way, is the bedrock of public health practice.

They did it early, they did a lot of it,

and by the way, even though they're reopening their society,

and they're beginning to see episodic surges,

they then go back to those basic public health practices

of testing, isolation, contact tracing

and transparency to the public when they can,

because it's important for the public to understand how many cases there are,

where the disease is,

if you're going to get compliance from the public.

DB: So testing, contact tracing and isolation.

That doesn't seem like rocket science, to use that old cliché.

Why has that been hard for some countries to implement?

What's holding us back,

is it electronic medical records,

is it some fancy doodad,

or is it just maybe overconfidence,

based on maybe the public health successes of the last 100 years?

GB: You know, we are very much a pill society.

We think there's a pill for everything.

If we can't give you a pill for it,

then we can give you surgery and fix it.

You know, prevention works.

And we have totally underinvested in prevention.

We've totally underinvested in a strong, robust

public health system.

If you look at the fact that in the America today,

you can very easily know

what's coming off the shelf of a grocery store,

Amazon knows everything there is to know about you,

but your doctor does not have the same tools.

At three o'clock in the morning,

it's still very difficult to get a hold of your electrocardiogram,

or your medical record, or your list of allergies

if you can't tell the practitioner what you have.

And we just haven't invested in robust systems.

One of the interesting things about this outbreak

is that it has created an environment

in which we're now dependent on telemedicine,

which has been around for several years,

but we weren't quite into it.

But now, it's probably going to be the new standard.

DB: But it also seems --

So, obviously,

those countries with an incredibly robust health care system,

like Taiwan, have done well,

but it seems like even countries that perhaps would be considered

to have a less robust health care system, like a Ghana in Africa,

have actually done well.

What has been the, I guess, the secret sauce

for those kinds of countries?

GB: Yeah, it's still pretty early in some of their exposures,

and hopefully, they might not have a wave that comes later,

that's still a possibility,

but at the end of the day,

I think, to the extent you have done good, sound public health practices,

all of the countries that have done well

have implemented that.

Now we're a big country, we're a complex country.

And yes, we didn't get the testing right to begin with.

But we should not repeat the mistakes that we had over the last three months,

because we've still got several months to go.

And now that we know what we did wrong,

I'm encouraging us to do it right the next time.

DB: That seems smart.

GB: And the next time is tomorrow.

DB: That's right.

It's already started.

I mean, it almost seems to me,

if I can use this metaphor,

that some of these countries

already had the, kind of, antibodies in their system,

because they had experience with maybe Ebola or the first SARS.

Is that the key, previous exposure

to these kind of public health crises?

GB: Well, this is a very different virus.

And while there may be some early evidence

that MERS and SARS one,

we may have some early protection from that,

there's some early, early studies looking at that,

that's not the solution.

The secret sauce here is good, solid public health practice.

That's the secret sauce here.

We should not be looking for anything, any mysticism,

or anyone to come save us with a special pill.

This is all about good, solid public health practice,

because, by the way, look,

this one was a bad one,

but it's not the last one.

And so we need to prepare for the next really big one.

We think this one was bad,

imagine what would have happened had Ebola been aerosolized,

or MERS had been aerosolized.

You know, pick a TV movie.

Even though this was a bad one,

we still dodged a really, really bad one this time.

DB: Yeah, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome is no joke,

and we should be thankful that it doesn't spread more easily,

like SARS-CoV.

Is this, though --

So all these diseases are zoonotic,

that means they jumped to us from the animals that are out there.

Obviously, humanity is kind of encroaching on nature

in an ever more, kind of, urgent way,

whether that's climate change or going into the forests, what have you.

Is this just the new normal,

like, we should expect pandemics every so often?

GB: Well, they do come periodically,

so this is not, you know, the first pandemic, right?

We've had several,

100 years ago, the 1918 influenza,

SARS was a significant infection,

even though it didn't get this bad, SARS one.

And we had the avian flu,

which was a challenge,

and the swine flu.

We had Zika.

So no, we've had several new disease outbreaks.

These emerging diseases happen a lot,

and in many ways,

we've been fortunate

that we have been able to identify them early

and contain them.

But we're now in an environment

where people can, by the way, make some of these things up.

Now, this one did not happen, as best we can tell, it's not man-made.

It did not probably come out of a leak in the lab.

But we know that, when I was in school,

to grow a bug, you had to be pretty sophisticated.

That's not the case today.

And we need to protect ourselves from both naturally occurring infections

and from those that are created by humans.

DB: Plus we have other, kind of, threat multipliers,

like climate change,

that make pandemics like this that much worse.

GB: You know, I was saying climate change was the greatest threat human survival

before this one.

But this is rivaling climate change.

But let me tell you,

the big challenge we have now

is that we have a pandemic,

which we have still not contained,

as we enter hurricane season,

and we have climate change,

which is exacerbating the ferocity of the hurricanes that we're having.

So, you know, we're in for an interesting summer.

DB: And here's Chris with, I think, a question from our audience.

Chris Anderson: Many questions, actually.

People are very interested in what you're saying, Georges.

Here we go, here's the first one from Jim Young:

"How do we deal with people who don't believe this is serious?"

GB: You know, you just have to continue to communicate the truth to folks.

One of the things about this particular disease

is that it does not spare anyone.

It does not recognize political parties,

it does not recognize geography,

and we had lots of people, particularly in rural communities,

that were not seeing it, because it had not yet come to them,

and they didn't believe it was real.

And now many of those communities are being ravaged by this disease.

And so we just have to --

You know, it's not appropriate to say "I told you so."

It is appropriate to say, "Look, now that you see it,

come on board and help us resolve these problems."

But this is something that's going to be around for a while.

And if it becomes endemic,

meaning that it occurs all the time at some low level,

everyone is going to have this experience.

CA: Thank you.

Here is one from Robert Perkowitz.

"We seem to have been ignoring and underfunding public health,

and we were unprepared for this virus."

Look if the question is going to pop up there,

I think it should, by some magic.

"What should our priorities be now

to prepare for the next public health crisis?"

GB: Well, we now need to make sure that we've put in the funding,

resources, training, staffing on the table.

And by the way, our next public health crisis

is not 10 years from now, it's not 20 years from now,

it's the potential co-occurrence

of influenza, which we know is going to happen this fall,

because it comes every year,

with either continued COVID or a spike in COVID.

And we're going to have a disease process

which presents very much the same,

and we're going to have to differentiate COVID from influenza.

Because we have a vaccine for influenza,

we don't yet have a vaccine for COVID.

We hope to have one in about a year.

But that still remains to be seen.

DB: So get your flu shots.

CA: Yeah.

Indeed, in fact, David Collins asked exactly that question.

"What is the likelihood of a vaccine before the next wave?"

GB: Well you know, the fastest vaccine that we've ever developed was measles,

and that took four years.

Now, a lot of things are different, right?

We have started on a SARS-one vaccine.

So it had gone to a lot of animal trials,

it had gone to some very, very early human trials.

As you know, we just got some announcement

that at least it does seem to work in monkeys, in rhesus monkeys,

and there's some evidence that at least it may be efficacious and safe

in a very, very small number of people.

When I say very, very small number of people,

handful of people.

So now it's got to go to phase two and phase three trials.

So, yeah, [David] held up two hands,

so yeah, yeah, it's a small number of people.

What that tells you is either that those folks were very lucky,

or it works.

And we won't know until we put this into the arms of thousands of people.

CA: Here's an important question from a TED Fellow.

"How do we actually train people about what public health means?

Especially in the context of folks

who don't believe they have a responsibility to 'the public?'"

GB: Well, you know, I remind folks

that when public health does its best job,

nothing happens.

And of course, when nothing happens, we don't get credit for it.

So the reason that everyone in this country

does not have to get up every morning and boil their own water

is because of public health.

The reason that, if you get into a car accident,

you know, get into an automobile collision,

and you wear your seat belt, and you have airbags,

and you're not killed from that automobile collision,

is because of public health.

The reason that the air is safe to breathe,

the food is safe to eat,

is because of public health.

The reason that your kids are not in clothing that ignites

is because we have fire-retardant clothing.

And that is a requirement.

The reason that you don't trip walking down the stairs

is because we've actually looked at how to build the stair

so that people don't trip when they go up or down it.

That's actually a public health intervention.

So the built environment,

medicines, all those kinds of things,

vaccines, those are all public health,

and that's why public health is there,

and you may not believe that it's that important,

but we couldn't live without it.

CA: Maybe one day we can all envision a health care system in America

that actually has some incentives

that point towards public health.

That would be very nice.

David, I've got to just keep going with some of these questions, if it's OK,

because they're pouring in.

There's one here from Jacqueline Ashby.

Important question for every parent.

"What are your recommendations about sending children back to school?"

GB: Yeah, I'm struggling with this one, I've got three grandkids.

And the good news is that my grandkids are more technically proficient than I am,

and right now are getting their lessons remotely.

I think it's going to be a challenge

as we think about sending kids back to school.

We're going to really need to know how infectious kids are

and how well they do when they get infected.

Now, right now, it seems,

except for a very small number of children who get a very rare disease,

that they tolerate this disease very well.

But the central question is,

how many of these germs will these kids bring back to you

and to grandma and grandpa.

So that's going to be important.

And you know, trying to tell an eight-year-old

not to interact with their friends,

is a real challenge.

By the way, trying to tell a 17-year-old not to interact with their friends

is going to be a real challenge.

So, we've got to properly educate these kids,

we've got to figure out how we stagger their schedules.

Uri's idea for the workforce

might be an interesting concept for schools,

because the idea is to try to decompress the number of kids in the classroom.

By the way, if you get smaller class size, you get better education, anyway.

So, we've got to have enough teachers, though.

So that may be the rate limiting step.

CA: Alright, last question here for now from [Steven] Petranek.

Masks. Advice on masks --

I switched that off, here we go.

Advice on masks seems to have shifted.

"Would most Americans who live and work in cities

be better off wearing masks

to also help reduce the air pollution particles

they encounter every day?"

GB: It may help some, absolutely.

But let me tell you what I would prefer we stopped doing:

burning fossil fuels.

And doing all those terrible things

that we are doing to destroy our climate.

You know, everyone's talking about the fact

that we've had this amazing reduction

in CO2 because we're not driving cars.

I've got to tell you,

that is the best evidence that climate change is man-made.

All those climate change skeptics

who don't think climate change is man-made,

we have just had a worldwide demonstration

on what people do to create climate change.

And so what we need to do is stop

and move to a green economy.

DB: Here, here.

CA: Thank you so much for those,

I'll dip back in at the end with maybe a couple more.

Thank you for this.

DB: So we're waving the flag for masks.

But also, one of the things

that has become clear from this

is that COVID-19 is not the great leveler that maybe some had hoped it was.

Some communities are experiencing much worse,

significantly worse outcomes than others.

Why is that?

GB: We're talking principally about the African American

and Latino communities

that seem to be disproportionately impacted if they get the disease.

And it's because of exposure, primarily.

Those populations have more public-facing jobs.

So, you know, bus drivers,

grocery clerks,

working in long-term care facilities,

nursing homes,

in meatpacking facilities, chicken farms.

So that's why they're much more -- going to be exposed to the disease.

Susceptibility.

Lots of chronic disease.

So we know that particularly African Americans

have disproportionate amounts of diabetes, heart disease,

lung disease,

and because of those chronic diseases,

we found early on that that virus

is more detrimental to those populations that have those diseases.

And so that's the big issue here.

That is what's causing those differentiations

and it's really a challenge,

because in many ways,

those are many of the people

that we have decided are essential employees

and have to go to work.

DB: That's right.

So what is, in your view, the public health intervention

to protect these essential workers,

if you have ideas on that front?

GB: I absolutely do.

We started this by a testing strategy based on symptoms.

And now that we have enough tests,

we need to make sure that not only people get those tests for clinical reasons,

and people who have symptoms,

but also begin to prioritize people who are public-facing,

who are essential workers.

So, certainly people working in nursing homes, hospitals, etc.,

but bus drivers, security guards,

grocery store clerks.

They need to be tested,

and they need to have testing with the periodicity

that will secure them, their families,

and give everyone the trust

that they're not going to be infected

and we're not going to infect them.

People who work in meatpacking plants,

as an example.

And we've seen the real tragedy

of what's going on in the meatpacking plants,

because they are working in an environment where they're shoulder to shoulder.

There are some other things they need to do

in terms of figuring out how to give them physical distancing on the assembly line,

that's going to be important.

But again, Uri's idea is not a bad idea

for this nation to consider,

for many of those industries to think about.

DB: Yeah, we have to make sure that these truly are folks

who are treated as essential workers, not sacrificial workers, it seems to me.

And obviously, this is not just confined to the US.

GB: Oh, absolutely.

We're seeing these disparities not just in the United States,

but in other countries as well.

And they have a lot to do with race and class

and the types of jobs that you do,

the occupations that you do.

And quite frankly,

we should have thought about this when we saw the first data

that showed that in China

people with chronic diseases were much more at risk

and had worse health outcomes.

We would have sped up our actions right away,

because, look, that's happened with every new disease

that's come into the country.

DB: So it seems like a lot of this goes back to that potential --

it's not an oxymoron,

public health is everybody's job,

and we need to adopt that.

What does, in your view,

a robust public health infrastructure look like?

What would that look like?

GB: Well, you know,

anytime a new health threat enters our community,

we ought to be able to rapidly identify it,

contain it,

and if we can mitigate it, for sure, and eliminate it if possible,

and then put in all the protective measures

that we had before.

So that means having a well-staffed,

well-trained governmental public health entity,

just like we have for police, fire, EMS.

It means that they've got to be well-paid,

it means that they've got to be well-resourced.

You know, we still have some of our contact tracers

out there using pen and pads.

And sending things to Excel Spreadsheets.

No, we need the same kind of robust technology

that the folks at, you know,

any of the online retailers are using, whether it's Amazon, etc.

We're still looking at data that's two years in the rear

to make data-driven decisions.

We need to be able to make immediate decisions.

By the way, Taiwan,

you mentioned them earlier,

I remember being in Taiwan

watching data come from infectious diseases, real time,

from their electronic medical record system.

So, you know, we can do this, the technology exists.

DB: Imagine that.

Wow, real time health information,

what a difference that would make.

Do you think that technology can help us here,

whether that's the Google-Apple collaboration or whatever else?

GB: Technology can help us,

but it's not going to replace us.

We're nowhere near where we can sit back

and have our electronic avatar do our work for us.

But the technology can outstrip our work.

It can give us situational awareness.

It can give us real time information.

It allows us to send information from point A to point B

for data analysis.

It allows us to do second thinking,

so we're doing all this modeling,

it allows others to check our numbers right away.

So it could speed up research.

But we have to invest in it,

and we have to continue it,

because obsolescence is always the evil part of technology.

DB: And it looks like Chris is back with more questions.

CA: Yeah, I guess we're getting close to the end,

but the questions keep coming in.

There's one here from Neelay Bhatt.

"What role do you see parks, trails and open space play

in assisting larger public health goals?"

GB: You know, green space is absolutely essential,

and the ability to get out and walk and exercise,

having sidewalks, so that you can have communities that are walkable,

bikeable and green for utilization of all ages,

it's good for our mental health, it's good for our physical health.

And I always tell folks, you know,

it's a great place to go when someone's gotten on your last nerve.

CA: Indeed.

Here we have one anonymous question.

Where possible don't go anonymous,

because we're all friends here when all said and done.

Probably someone ... Anyway.

Let's see, but it's a good question.

"There are many who are highly suspicious of what the real experts are saying.

What have you found to be effective in helping the highly suspicious

be less suspicious and more trusting?"

GB: Tell the truth.

If you make a mistake, acknowledge it and correct it right away.

Be consistent.

And don't say stupid stuff.

And far too often that happens.

And you know, one of the interesting things,

we've already been through this with the mask discussion.

You know, traditional wisdom was that we only had people wear the mask

if they were infectious,

or you're in a health care environment

where there was a high risk of getting the disease.

And then we said,

no, it's OK for everybody to wear a mask.

And that's because we learned eventually,

and became much more believable,

in the science that we had asymptomatic spreading.

But we did not communicate it very well.

We said, oh, no, no, we're changing our minds,

everybody can wear a mask,

after telling people not to wear a mask.

And then we didn't spend enough time explaining to people why.

So we lost trust.

So we need to do a better job of that.

And then our leaders

need to be very careful what they say when you have a bullhorn.

And by the way, I've made mistakes,

I've said things on TV that were just wrong,

because I was wrong.

And I've tried very hard to try to correct those

as quickly as I can.

All of us do that,

but you have to be strong enough

and have a strong enough personality to say when you're wrong

and then correct it.

Because at the end of the day, once you've lost trust,

you've lost everything.

CA: Well if I might say so,

just the way in which you're communicating right now,

I mean, to me, that is a means of communication

that engenders trust.

I don't know what magic sauce you have going there,

but it's very, very compelling listening to you.

Thank you so much for this.

David, do you have any other last cues?

GB: I've made lots of mistakes.

DB: Yeah, no, but it really has been a real pleasure

to have you join us, and thank you for that.

Just one final question if I may.

You've been doing this for a while,

what gives you hope looking forward?

GB: You know, let me tell you something.

The one thing that gives me hope

is when I see people taking care of their friends and family members.

I mean, drive-by birthday parties.

I saw that on the news today.

People who are calling their friends.

I've heard from people that I haven't talked to in years,

who are just calling me to say,

"I haven't talked to you for a long time. Are you OK?"

So do more of that.

And the trust we've had in one another,

and the love we've shown, it's just been absolutely amazing,

so that gives me hope.

DB: Humanity for the win in the end.

GB: Yeah.

DB: Well, thank you so much, Dr. Benjamin,

for joining us and for sharing your wisdom.

GB: Glad to be here.

CA: Yes, thank you.

GB: You guys be safe.

Your families be safe.

DB: Thank you, you too.