--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: It's Friday, April 10th, 2020, and it's colder and windier in D.C. today than it was yesterday.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: I'm Sean Ramos-Furham, and this is The Weather in D.C., along with your coronavirus update from Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: We hit a bleak benchmark today. More than 100,000 people around the world have died as a result of this coronavirus, and that's likely an undercount.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Lockdowns are being extended around the world. Ireland, Italy, South Africa, Malaysia are all looking to late April, early May at the soonest.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Meanwhile, President Trump has been pushing to reopen the country next month.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: It's worth noting that President Trump doesn't really have the authority to just open the country back up.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: The CDC has recommended people shelter in place through the end of April, but that's for states to decide, which is why a few states still haven't really even shut down yet.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Nebraska. They say antibody tests will be key to getting back to normalcy around the world.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert, says a large number of antibody tests should be available in the United States soon.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: There have been problems with the accuracy of these tests, so I guess we'll have to wait and see.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Another big part of getting back to normal is contact tracing.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Google and Apple are saying they're going to collaborate to use Bluetooth technology in their billions of devices around the world to tell us if we've come into contact with someone who has had this coronavirus.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: They say users' privacy will be protected.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: The feature is still a few months away.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Professional basketball might also still be a few months away, but some of your favorite players from the NBA, WNBA, past and present will be getting together to play horse from their houses and neighborhood courts.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: The first round is coming this Sunday.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Check local listings.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Not sure who will win, but shout-outs to my world champion Toronto Raptors.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Share your pandemic stories with Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: What's on your mind? What's bumming you out? What's giving you hope? What's your greatest concern?
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Who's your favorite Toronto Raptor?
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Email todayexplained at vox.com.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Tweet at today underscore explained or at Ramos Firm or give us a call and leave a message at 202-688-5944.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Support for this show comes from ServiceNow.
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--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Hi, my name is Sean.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: I'm calling from New York City.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: I am a relatively healthy 27-year-old, and I'm maybe the most anxious I've ever been in my entire life.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: And I just, I don't, I don't know what to do about that.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: And I get that the response needs to be mitigating actual real health impacts for the most vulnerable sections of the population.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: I get that. I really do.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: But what can the rest of us do to just feel okay?
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: I don't know.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Has anyone thought about the kind of psychological impact that this crisis is having on the population?
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Thanks so much.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Thanks for calling, Sean.
--:-- Ezra Klein: The answer to your question is yes.
--:-- Ezra Klein: Your boy, Ezra Klein, has been thinking about the psychological impact of this crisis.
--:-- Ezra Klein: He wrote a whole dang piece about it for Vox.com.
--:-- Ezra Klein: I think in politics, we're very used to looking at the economic impacts of things.
--:-- Ezra Klein: What is it going to do to GDP? What is it going to do to the unemployment rate?
--:-- Ezra Klein: But what coronavirus is doing is disrupting something more foundational and fundamental even than that.
--:-- Ezra Klein: It is disrupting whether or not we are able to see each other, to give each other a hug, to go visit a parent.
--:-- Ezra Klein: And there's been a revolution in recent years in the medical science around social isolation and loneliness, which are different things, notably.
--:-- Ezra Klein: Social isolation is objective, measurable.
--:-- Ezra Klein: How many people do you see in a week?
--:-- Ezra Klein: Loneliness is subjective.
--:-- Ezra Klein: It is whether or not you feel lonely.
--:-- Ezra Klein: But both of them have mental effects on people, and they really do physical harm.
--:-- Ezra Klein: They are a genuine health risk.
--:-- Ezra Klein: So understanding that and then trying to abate it, recognizing that we have to do more than just physically distance, we also need to socially connect, particularly for the most vulnerable.
--:-- Ezra Klein: I wanted to write this piece because I think it's unbelievably important.
--:-- Ezra Klein: Are there numbers on social isolation? Are they as bad as these jobs numbers we're seeing?
--:-- Ezra Klein: We don't do it in a national way, moment to moment, the way we do for the economy.
--:-- Ezra Klein: It isn't that there are daily unemployment filings for loneliness.
--:-- Ezra Klein: But we do have surveys and we do have a lot of data on this.
--:-- Ezra Klein: By coincidence, just a couple months ago, the National Academies of Science released a huge report on the health consequences of social isolation and loneliness in older adults.
--:-- Ezra Klein: As you might expect older adults are among the most vulnerable to this
--:-- Ezra Klein: So 43 said they felt lonely and about a quarter fit the definition of socially isolated
--:-- Ezra Klein: And this is pre
--:-- Ezra Klein: This is pre-coronavirus.
--:-- Ezra Klein: And remember, you may be a millennial or a Gen Zer or whatever who's socially distancing right now, but if you're over 70, you're doing something in most parts of the country, if you're paying attention, that is much more severe.
--:-- Ezra Klein: You're quarantining.
--:-- Ezra Klein: You are terrified of catching this, not because you might give it to somebody else, which is bad enough, but because you may not survive it.
--:-- Ezra Klein: So a lot of people who are already quite lonely, quite isolated, have moved into a period of self-imposed quarantine that does not have a clear endpoint.
--:-- Ezra Klein: And the more that young people go out, the more that their children or their friends are out in the world and potentially able to catch this virus, the more they have to segregate away from them.
--:-- Ezra Klein: So it's really, really difficult.
--:-- Ezra Klein: And loneliness and isolation, particularly among the elderly, is a tremendous health risk.
--:-- Ezra Klein: It seems to be physical in some deep way.
--:-- Ezra Klein: And the particular way in which it's physical, the former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has done a lot of work on this.
--:-- Ezra Klein: He's got a book coming out on it, is that it sets off a tremendous stress response in the body.
--:-- Ezra Klein: Human beings know on a deep level, deeper than our conscious thought, to feel safe in a group.
--:-- Ezra Klein: If we are not in a group, we wake up more often during the night, we are more afraid, we are what's called hypervigilant, we're constantly scanning for threats, we don't relax.
--:-- Ezra Klein: And this seems to then set off a chain reaction of very dangerous actual physical reactions in the body.
--:-- Ezra Klein: So in this National Academy of Sciences report, what they find is social isolation, and I'm quoting here, has been associated with a significantly increased risk of premature mortality from all causes.
--:-- Ezra Klein: And those causes include a 50% increased risk of developing dementia, a 29% increased risk of incidence of coronary heart disease, a 25% increased risk of cancer mortality, a 59% increased risk of functional decline, and a 32% increased risk of stroke.
--:-- Ezra Klein: Now, that is over time.
--:-- Ezra Klein: It's not necessarily over two or three weeks of being lonely.
--:-- Ezra Klein: But if this goes on for a long time, it is worth being clear.
--:-- Ezra Klein: Being lonely and being isolated is a health risk, a direct physical risk to your life.
--:-- Ezra Klein: I'm sure there are some people who are fine being alone.
--:-- Ezra Klein: I know a few people who seem happier in quarantine than they were going to work every day.
--:-- Ezra Klein: But what about people who already suffer from serious anxiety or depression, people who are already desperately lonely?
--:-- Ezra Klein: This is a huge issue, I think.
--:-- Ezra Klein: So the way I would think about this is that the people who are already at the highest risk for social isolation and loneliness are even more vulnerable in this era.
--:-- Ezra Klein: So we've been talking about the elderly, but the disabled are another group here, a lot of people who it's already hard for them to go out, already hard for them to go take a walk, already hard for them to see people for one reason or another.
--:-- Ezra Klein: And then people with serious mental health issues who are socially anxious, who are depressed, this is going to make it much harder both for them to go out, but also harder for people to reach out to them.
--:-- Ezra Klein: They may have an extreme reaction where they have trouble even taking incoming help, even if people are trying to be safe about it.
--:-- Ezra Klein: And I want to be so clear, we need to do the social distancing.
--:-- Ezra Klein: We absolutely need to.
--:-- Ezra Klein: But we also have to remember that the cost of social distancing will fall disproportionately on those who are already most vulnerable and already were the most lonely and isolated.
--:-- Ezra Klein: And that will have not just psychological, but also health effects for them.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: I'm doing okay so far.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: My hair is a wreck because I figured I'm not going anywhere so I didn't bother curling it or anything.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: My name is Dorothy Kelly.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: I'm 84 years old.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: I live alone, and I'm pretty much in isolation.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: It's really hard to just be stuck in the house all the time.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: I like to be with people, so I miss that.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: and I see my daughter on Saturdays from a distance.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: She brings me groceries and leaves them in the garage and tells me not to come past the kitchen door and the same with my daughter-in-law.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: She leaves stuff on her front porch.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: I'm doing Duolingo on my iPad in Italian mostly to keep my brain active and then reading a mystery book and then I keep cleaning out some drawers because I am 84 and I've got so much stuff accumulated, you can't imagine.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: Then that's basically it.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: And watching movies that I've recorded in the evening or TV shows.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: I like Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, so I record them.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: I didn't even know what FaceTime was until last week when the phone started making noises and I answered it.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: It was my son doing FaceTime.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: So I said, how do you do that?
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: So he explained it to me, so luckily for cell phones and text messages and stuff like that, and FaceTime with my family, so that's good.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: But I'm looking out my window right now, and the trees are starting to bloom all over the place.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: And the birds in the morning are I guess they don't know there's such a thing as a coronavirus and they all singing and building their nests and the trees are in my house It so funny to hear them singing and being happy
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: I miss being able to hug my grandson, who's nine years old.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: I have five grandchildren, but he's the youngest.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: And I just miss the closeness, you know, being able to hug somebody and have somebody hug me, which I always do with my family.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: We're huggers, so I miss that.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: My advice to other people that are in my position is to keep busy with your mind, do something, watch something pleasant, read a book that's interesting, and try to stay positive is the main thing.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: And I think someone in my position has to think like that, has to be positive.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: Otherwise, they may as well just, you know, curl up and die because people have died from depression, just being sad.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: So you just got to keep thinking positively that this will end, hopefully.
--:-- Dorothy Kelly: I just hope it all does end.
--:-- Ezra Klein: Support for Today Explained comes from Built Rewards.
--:-- Ezra Klein: These days, it seems like everybody has a rewards program.
--:-- Ezra Klein: You swipe your card and you get one cent on the hundred dollars.
--:-- Ezra Klein: But with your rent, frequently you just pay month after month.
--:-- Ezra Klein: You never get anything from it other than that roof over your head.
--:-- Ezra Klein: Not anymore, says Built Rewards.
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--:-- Ezra Klein: Your home isn't just where you sleep.
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--:-- Ezra Klein: You can eat at your favorite local restaurants, then earn more points.
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--:-- Ezra Klein: When you're ready to travel, they say Built points can be converted to miles or hotel points all around the world.
--:-- Ezra Klein: You can earn points on rent and around your neighborhood wherever you call home by joining built.com slash explained.
--:-- Ezra Klein: That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash explained.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Ezra, we heard from Dorothy, who's learning Italian on Duolingo and getting the hang of FaceTime, keeping her mind busy.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Is this on us to figure out for ourselves, or is there something like, I don't know, the government could do to help, or what?
--:-- Ezra Klein: To be fair, it is a hard thing for the government to do anything about.
--:-- Ezra Klein: This isn't one where you you can easily imagine a policy that will solve it.
--:-- Ezra Klein: We are right now in a tension between our public health policy of social distancing and trying to keep the economy going.
--:-- Ezra Klein: One of the ways I've been trying to think about it, and I saw this going around on Twitter, is I wish we had messaged this as physical distance and social connection.
--:-- Ezra Klein: We need to be more physically distant from each other, but at the same time, we need to be doing more, not less, to reach out.
--:-- Ezra Klein: We need to be calling the people in our lives who are vulnerable.
--:-- Ezra Klein: We need to be setting up ways to call the people who don't have people in their lives to call them.
--:-- Ezra Klein: As some doctors mentioned to me when I was working on this piece, by definition, the people who are most at risk are the people who are not going to have a social network that activates in this moment.
--:-- Ezra Klein: They are the ones who don't have kids who are going to make sure to call them every day or twice a day.
--:-- Ezra Klein: I've really upped the amount I'm FaceTiming my son in with his grandparents, my parents, but a lot of people don't have that.
--:-- Ezra Klein: So what are we doing for them?
--:-- Ezra Klein: And that is something where, I guess, in theory, the public sector, but also civil society could activate, right?
--:-- Ezra Klein: That's a good app people could work on.
--:-- Ezra Klein: And by the way, that's another thing, that there's going to be a digital divide among seniors here.
--:-- Ezra Klein: I was talking to some seniors who were having real loneliness and isolation issues already from coronavirus.
--:-- Ezra Klein: But the seniors I'm talking to are the ones who are able to get in touch with Vox, right?
--:-- Ezra Klein: And they were saying that a great thing for them is they learned in recent years or at some point in the past how to use computers, how to connect digitally, how to use Skype.
--:-- Ezra Klein: But older Americans are the ones who are least likely to be heavily online.
--:-- Ezra Klein: And so for a lot of folks who haven't built a comfort and a confidence or even haven't bought the hardware that lets you have these kinds of digital connections, a lot of the ways the rest of us are trying to manage this era of social distancing are not there for them.
--:-- Ezra Klein: They can't easily join a Zoom with all of their friends because they don't know how.
--:-- Ezra Klein: So even just helping older people in your life set up and become comfortable with the digital solutions here that are a partial replacement for in-person connection, that can be really useful.
--:-- Ezra Klein: But beyond all the Zooms and the FaceTimes and the house party apps or whatever at issue here especially with the elderly is that they may not have a social network to begin with, right?
--:-- Ezra Klein: You're saying we need a totally new solution or app or something that could connect people who are free and willing to talk with those who are desperate for connection, right?
--:-- Ezra Klein: Like, I don't know, maybe like a chat roulette, but without all the perviness?
--:-- Ezra Klein: That's a good, I like chat roulette with that.
--:-- Ezra Klein: Yeah, like chat roulette, but for helping older people combat loneliness.
--:-- Ezra Klein: Does that app exist or do we need to make that app?
--:-- Ezra Klein: I think that is a good app idea if anybody's out there and wants to make it.
--:-- Ezra Klein: And hopefully somebody is.
--:-- Ezra Klein: But I want to say that one of the ways coronavirus is an unbelievable asshole of a disease is it in addition to the direct death and sickness that it is causing.
--:-- Ezra Klein: It is causing tremendous economic and social disruption.
--:-- Ezra Klein: It is rending the very fabric of our lives.
--:-- Ezra Klein: And something that I'm trying to add to the list of just what we are thinking about is the possibility if some of the more grim cases are correct and we are social distancing in pretty significant ways, let's say, through the end of the year, what are we going to do to connect people?
--:-- Ezra Klein: But you and I spoke earlier about how you've been FaceTiming more with your parents so they can see your son, their grandchild.
--:-- Ezra Klein: And like, I got to say, as a pathological keeper in touch, I've been pleasantly surprised to see friends who've never called me or FaceTimed me calling and FaceTiming now.
--:-- Ezra Klein: And I just used that house party app last week for the first time.
--:-- Ezra Klein: And it was utter and total chaos.
--:-- Ezra Klein: But I appreciated that a buddy organized it.
--:-- Ezra Klein: I don't know if we have any actual data yet, but is there a chance that this cross-continental quarantine changes the way we communicate with our loved ones?
--:-- Ezra Klein: I mean, fewer memes and links and photos and maybe deeper conversation about how we're really doing and how we're feeling?
--:-- Ezra Klein: I do think so.
--:-- Ezra Klein: And I also think it's going to go in all different directions for people at all different times.
--:-- Ezra Klein: So I want to know two things that are a little subtle here.
--:-- Ezra Klein: I spent some time with Vivek Murthy.
--:-- Ezra Klein: We did a great episode on my podcast actually about loneliness.
--:-- Ezra Klein: And something that is in his book and in other work is this idea that when people are lonely, they are touchier.
--:-- Ezra Klein: They experience more things as a slight, right?
--:-- Ezra Klein: They weren't called.
--:-- Ezra Klein: They're going to be scared.
--:-- Ezra Klein: They're going to be anxious.
--:-- Ezra Klein: They're going to be angry, right?
--:-- Ezra Klein: They're going to need somebody to talk to.
--:-- Ezra Klein: They'll be freaking out about something.
--:-- Ezra Klein: And then you call.
--:-- Ezra Klein: And now they're ranting at you.
--:-- Ezra Klein: And you just called to have a nice conversation.
--:-- Ezra Klein: And then on the other hand, there are going to be people, and I've definitely felt this myself, I'm in a house with, I'm here with my wife and my wonderful but totally nuts one-year-old son and two dogs who are cooped up and not getting enough exercise.
--:-- Ezra Klein: And I'm not always the best version of myself either.
--:-- Ezra Klein: And so as much as I want to be out there connecting and trying to be a good Samaritan on all this, sometimes I'll call somebody and I don't get the reaction I'm hoping for and I don't have some of the emotional bandwidth to deal with it.
--:-- Ezra Klein: And so I'm finding it really important to be mindful that good intentions aren't enough.
--:-- Ezra Klein: You also just have to recognize it's going to be hard for everybody and we're going to have to be really generous with each other and try to find the times when there is space.
--:-- Ezra Klein: Actually setting aside an hour a day so you can like take 10 deep breaths first and then be in a good place to talk to people is difficult but in the same way as everything else in this crisis if we have the bandwidth for it it's something that we have to do in a pro-social way it's a way we can come together and show solidarity we don't just need social distancing in a very deep way we need a commitment to solidarity to social solidarity
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Ezra, thank you so much.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Maybe we can have you back to talk about this once someone makes chat roulette without the perviness.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Once they do that, I'm not going to come back because I'm going to be on chat roulette so much having great socially connecting conversations.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Ditto.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Ezra Klein's aforementioned podcast is The Ezra Klein Show.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: I'm Sean Ramos for him.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: This is Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: The team is working remotely in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., but we still make time to check in every morning via Zoom.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Afim Shapiro has big hair.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Amna Alsadi has noisy neighbors.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Jillian Weinberger has a spare room.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Bridget McCarthy has a Dan Charles.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Noam Hassenfeld is always wearing headphones, and Halima Shah is clearly a cat person.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Liz Nelson joins us once a week, and Desmond joins her about once a month so far, but he's always welcome.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Cecilia Lay is checking our facts from San Francisco.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: The mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder makes music from outer space, I'm guessing.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: We had extra help this week from Paul Mounsey.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: John DeLore did us a few solids too.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
--:-- Sean Ramos-Furham: peace.
