Reasons for optimism in COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. (10)

Professor David Jones, is there a topic of question that we have not covered. But about. This you feel strongly and would like to say and discuss with our viewers? I guess the final thing I would say follow them what we were just discussing, how do you titrate the appropriate response? Dr. Anton Titov, MD. Or how do you judge what response is appropriate compared to the magnitude of the problem? Dr. Anton Titov, MD. Medical second opinion is important. Far? Dr. Anton Titov, MD. Over the past few weeks, I continue to be strangely reassured that I don’t think COVID is going to prove to be one of these mass epidemic events. If you were to say, Well, why do I Why am I confident about that? Dr. Anton Titov, MD. Dr. David S. Jones, MD. I can’t give a good answer. Dr. David S. Jones, MD. I have good colleagues who are modelers. Their models are showing somewhere between tens of thousands of deaths or up to a million deaths in this country. Sometimes that is what their model show, why am I downplaying? Dr. Anton Titov, MD. Well, some of that is the reflexive skepticism of models. Every model has a million assumptions built into it. The models are only as good as the quality of their assumptions. Given that we don’t know what case fatality rate will be in the United States, it is very hard to model. Some of my self-reassurance again comes from the historical fact that mass epidemics are rare. Are we now in one of these rare moments in history where catastrophe will strike? Dr. Anton Titov, MD. Dr. David S. Jones, MD. I doubt it. It is just unlikely based on the statistics. But it is possible. So I found myself, I found myself stuck in a situation where I don’t think the end is nigh. But I probably do think that it is worth continuing with our aggressive responses, just in case now will that be a catastrophic Lee expensive, expensive example of hedging our bets, when I realized that that the cost of this is very real. The stock market crash has wiped out an enormous amount of value that mostly affects the richest patients in society who had the good fortune to own stocks, to begin with. Still, there have already been thousands and there will soon be millions of patients who have been laid off patients who need their salaries to survive. Dr. David S. Jones, MD. That is an enormous cost. There’ll be a normal there’ll be significant human suffering. The new poverty patients will die from this,. The amount of money the government is talking about transferring to patients isn’t going to keep patients out of poverty, it is not going to allow patients to keep their homes, their apartments, try out aware of the very real human costs of our tremendous mobilization against COVID. But I would have a very hard time; I wouldn’t want to advise anyone, to back off the measures that we are doing now. Because there is enough fear that something bad could happen to justify, at least in the short term. The efforts that we are now mobilizing. Now, do we need to live this way for two weeks for six weeks for three months. The longer this goes on. The greater the consequences will be. Dr. David S. Jones, MD. We will need to constantly reassess whether those costs are justified by the burden of this disease. In two weeks, we will know much more about the behavior of this virus, about what mortality crisis we face, or don’t face. So I hope we will have the wisdom to continue to reassess As we get more and more information. The uncertainty decreases over time. Well, Professor Jones. Dr. David S. Jones, MD. That is certainly true. Thank you very much for this most informative and fascinating conversations, we will continue following. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. You know what’s going on, obviously. In the meantime, we will have all to watch a little bit more movies or more books and hopefully it will become a little bit wiser in life. Dr. David S. Jones, MD. I hope to continue the conversation about cardiovascular disease and once again to recommend to all our viewers, your very fascinating book, broken hearts. The tangled history of cardiac care, as well as several of your public lectures that are available online. Professor Jones, thank you very much for this conversation. Thank you for the work that you are doing to spread this information.