S1: Hey there , San Diego , it's time for KPBS roundtable. I'm Andrew Brackett , voice of San Diego held their annual Politik Fest last week , focusing on solutions to some of our region's biggest challenges , among those homelessness.
S2: So just a reminder that the solution to homelessness is housing. Period. And full stop.
S1: What can San Diego do to end street homelessness and to get more San Diegans the treatment they need ? And in our new San Diego Storyteller series , a conversation with the leading science writer about his new book on pandemics and how to prevent them , that's ahead on KPBS roundtable. Last weekend's annual PolitiFact looked for fixes to many of San Diego's biggest challenges. A pair of panels took on different facets of San Diego's homelessness crisis in the hopes of finding real , actionable solutions. We'll dive into two of the big questions they addressed. What do we do about street homelessness and what should we do when people with behavioral health problems refuse treatment ? Joining me to unpack those discussions and their takeaways are two reporters that moderated each of those panels. Lisa Halberstam is a senior investigative reporter with Voice of San Diego. And Jim Hinch is also here. He's Voice of San Diego's South County reporter. I want to welcome you both here to roundtable. Lisa , I want to start with you. Your panel focused on street homelessness. I think a lot of times we refer to it as unsheltered homelessness.
S3: As I've often done on the show. There are , per that latest number , about 5700 individuals throughout the county living on the street. Um , and I believe it's about , uh , 3000 or so , uh , in the city of San Diego. Um , and there has been a reduction in street homelessness , uh , across the county and in the city of San Diego in recent history. But I think it's really important to say that the number of people who are seeking out services , um , for homelessness has not been going down. And I would venture a guess that most of your listeners aren't noticing a dramatic drop in homelessness.
S1: And , Lisa , as you mentioned , you've been on this show. You've been on Midday Edition plenty of times talking about homelessness. You know , throughout the last several years , you've been covering this beat for quite a while.
S3: So maybe there's a discussion about like , well , how do we clean up encampments or , you know , do we need to , you know , enforce to try to get people to continue moving along from camps ? This was about what do we do to get people off the street. And I think we had a really good discussion. And one thing that really excited me is , is there was some agreement on some things. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. And we'll delve into more of that shortly. But Jim , I want to bring you in now , your panel. You know , you focused on what to do when people with addiction or mental health issues refuse help.
S4: Some people have had some pretty negative or traumatic interactions with treatment before. Um , some people have not , um , developed a trust with , uh , caregivers sometimes. Offers of help are made out of the blue. Sometimes they're made by law enforcement. And that can be , uh , intimidating for people. Um , and sometimes it's just a matter of if you are a person , say , who suffers from drug addiction , it's very hard to choose to stop and to move into treatment. Sometimes people want to move into treatment. And there are kind of moments in the cycle of addiction when they want treatment. But maybe by the time the offer of treatment comes , that window is closed and there they've kind of gone back into a relapse cycle. So there are a lot of reasons.
S1: And I think these two topics , you know , we're talking about them here in the same conversation. You know , they're often linked. And I wanted to get , you know , each of your thoughts about , you know , the extent of that link. I mean , is that connection fair , Jim. Like how much are street homelessness and , you know , issues around behavioral health treatment overlapping.
S4: Um , there is an overlap. I do want to caution , I think , with the issue of homelessness , it's an issue where people make broad generalizations , broad generalizations as to the cause. And I just really want to caution people against doing that. The number of reasons why people are homeless is as large as the number of people who are homeless. It is an individual thing that really has to do with someone's individual story. It's not always. Sometimes it is the case that drug addiction can lead to a level of chaos in a person's life that lands them on the street , but it can be equally true that financial circumstances or other life circumstances land people on the street , and simply the condition of being homeless , of being homeless , causes them to turn to drugs to cope. Whether it's using methamphetamine to stay up at night so they don't get robbed , uh , Numbing the pain with fentanyl. Um , so , uh , sometimes someone has an undiagnosed mental illness and they self-medicate with drugs. Sometimes the heavy use of drugs , especially , uh , synthetic methamphetamine , can lead to mental illness. So it's in some ways , I feel like it's a bit of a red herring to look for those , uh , blanket reasons and just to say. Oh , well , everyone on the streets is addicted to drugs or everyone is mentally ill. It's it's complicated. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. And , Lisa , I mean , you've been covering this for as long as you have. We know , you know , Mayor Todd Gloria has kind of made , you know , connections between this. I think it's fair to say in certain ways of , like , you know , the person on the street corner that is obviously experiencing mental illness and trying to kind of connect that to the issue of homelessness.
S3: And so often in. I don't really blame anyone for this. It's easy to think that most homeless people have behavioral health conditions , because they're the people that we notice and see the most. And often , you know , over the years , I've found people are often complaining about the same few people a lot in communities. Um , I will say that , you know , I agree with Jim , absolutely that , you know , for there are as many reasons as there are people why folks become homeless. But what we do see is that in high cost housing markets like San Diego , there is a correlation with higher levels of homelessness. And we have a lot of communities throughout our country that are really struggling with housing costs right now. And , you know , if you look at , I believe it was the LA times a few years back , had done a really great series looking at different homelessness and different communities. and they looked at some communities in the South that had higher rates of addiction and mental health challenges than we have in San Diego or in Los Angeles , where , you know , obviously they were they were reporting from that vantage point. And what they were finding is they didn't necessarily have the same rates of homelessness that we have. The difference is that it's not as hard to hold on to housing or to get housing in those communities.
S1: And housing , you know , kind of digging into your specific panel. Housing was a , you know , was like a big focus here. I want to delve into that. One of the panelists for your session , Lisa on street Homelessness , was retired Marine Colonel Patrick Patty Goff , associated with the Sun Break Ranch.
S3: Check in. Get assessed. Take a look at their needs. Um , be paired on site with different types of services. Potentially move on to other levels of care. The idea , though , is that there would be lots of different players on site. One of the concerns about this proposal is that it would cost an estimated $275 million a year. Um , and that that would be just a massive cost. And there would need to be a lot of different players in the region tapping into this model. Um , you know , certainly , um , Patty made the case that we really need a place for folks to check in and a place that people could go rapidly. Um , but right now , there isn't a location identified for Sunnybrook Ranch. But I will say it seems to be kind of picking up steam in the new presidential administration. Um , you know , seems like more folks are jumping on board. So recently , Alpha Project CEO Bob McElroy said that he , you know , would endorse and possibly , you know , be involved in helping with that project.
S1: And , Patty , I think he kind of reiterated that sort of the vision for this was that it was sort of like the first step in kind of getting into that continuum of care he talked about. I want to kind of move over to , you know , your other two panelists where they seem to have a lot of overlap on the solutions they ended up proposing. And it comes back to the housing you mentioned earlier , it was housing. Um , here's a little of what Doctor Margo Khushal had to say. She's a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco. Here's a little bit of what she had to say and kind of running up to her , her solution that she proposed.
S2: So just a reminder that the solution to homelessness is housing. Period. And full stop. The problem that we have solving homelessness is not that we don't know what to do. We know what to do. It's simply that we haven't brought real solutions to scale. We won't end homelessness until we address the underlying issues , but we know what to do , and now we just need the political will to do it.
S1: And in her , you know , proposed solution , she really emphasized non congregate shelter. Right. Can you talk more about what that means and how that kind of plays into the role of solutions here. Yeah.
S3: Yeah. So I know a lot of your listeners , when they think of homeless shelters , they probably think of , you know , a big room packed with a bunch of bunk beds. Non congregate shelter is perhaps a space where , you know , there are only 1 or 2 beds in a room. Somebody has their own space , maybe their own bathroom or a bathroom that they're only having to share with a couple folks. Um , and really , when you talk to people on the street , you find a lot of times some folks are really resistant to large scale shelters because it makes them really anxious. Um , you know , maybe they're a veteran who has PTSD , and being around that many people is challenging. I often say I'm a real light sleeper. I could not be in a in a big shelter. I would never sleep. I think it's important to when we're talking about , you know , the model that Doctor Kuschel was introducing to say that she was the lead on a kind of generational study on homelessness in California that came out a couple years ago. And her focus and her discussion was really about kind of an encampment by encampment approach of really focusing on individual encampments and what their needs are , and trying to talk to folks and offering non congregate shelter , which people often who are on the street are more likely to take up. Um , and maybe they can also move into the same location. So you have a community that builds up in an encampment. Right. And if they can all move into the same place and still kind of maintain that community , the outcomes tend to be better. Um , and she also had talked about , um , doing vehicle buybacks because some of the folks in one of the encampments that she talked about in Berkeley , um , where she happens to live , um , that the city of Berkeley focused on , um , they were actually buying back vehicles , and that gave some folks that maybe , you know , the vehicle is their foremost possession. And so the thought of giving that up can keep them from moving on to other solutions. Um , Margo talked about how she actually , uh , experienced living in this community where the , the hotel that that on congregate shelter that folks from a particular encampment were moving into. And she said there's been no complaints. And she can confirm that because she lives in the neighborhood and she's on the next door. Yes.
S1: So , okay , so now on to the winner of this solutions showdown. And that was Ian de Jong from Org Code Consulting. Again he echoed some of Doctor Tuchel's approach. Here's a little of what he had to say.
S5: We absolutely know how to end homelessness. Everybody we work with needs somewhere to live , something to do and someone to love. You get that right. And everything falls into sequence thereafter. So you need to focus on what actually solves homelessness , not what treats the Band-Aids. If you had an issue with not enough classrooms for students , you wouldn't blame the kids. If you didn't have enough doctors in the hospital , you wouldn't blame the patient. If you don't have enough permanent housing options with supports. Don't blame people who are homeless.
S1: So he made some really interesting connections here about how to kind of reframe housing and how it exists in our society. Tell us about his solution.
S3: So a little bit about Ian de Jong. He is a consultant who has done a lot of work in communities across the country. He's Canadian , actually , but he's also done a lot of work in San Diego , so he's very familiar with the landscape here. Um , his proposal was that the city of San Diego worked to supply , um , 2500 permanent supportive housing units over the next five years. Now , for folks who may not know what is a permanent supportive housing , it's basically housing with supportive services attached to help people stabilize in housing. So that could be anything from case management to maybe a linkage to some sort of addiction treatment , if that's needed. And he suggested that , yes , this is going to be really costly. Um , you know , he suggested it would be 305 million annually over five years. So that's not a small dollar figure. Um , but he suggested that this is the solution where you know that ultimately , if someone's housed , you know , it's the word is.
S6: It's the ultimate , right ? Right. You don't have a home.
S3: It's the ultimate fix. Um , but he suggested that , um , San Diego could help pay for that with what's called social impact bonds , which are basically , um , investments that allow private entities like foundations or even businesses to invest and then benefit. Um , if a project goes well.
S1: We're going to continue our conversation and move over to to Jim's talk. Right after this break. We'll continue our conversation on street homelessness and mental health and addiction treatment right after the break. You're listening to KPBS roundtable. You're listening to KPBS roundtable. I'm Andrew Bracken. We're talking about last weekend's Politics Fest put on by Voice of San Diego. This year , they focused on coming up with solutions to some of our region's biggest challenges. I'm speaking with Voice of San Diego's Lisa Halberstam and Jim Hinch about homelessness and mental health. Jim , I want to bring it back to your panel on behavioral health. You heard from three experts Paul Armstrong , Erin Meyer and Tara Stamos.
S4: I guess on the one on one side , you'd have Paul Armstrong from the San Diego Rescue Mission , which is a faith based organization that believes very strongly in a 12 step sobriety recovery model. And Paul's whole point was kind of coming from a faith based perspective. We need to be comfortable being our brother's keeper. That is to say , identifying people who can't make good decisions for themselves because they have a drug addiction or a mental illness , and we need to be comfortable making decisions for them , even if , even if they don't want us to initially. Because in the long run , that's the best thing for them. His quote was , I can't tell you how many people have said getting arrested and going to jail was the best thing that ever happened to me , because it put me in touch with treatment. It helped me sober up , and it gave me an opportunity to reconsider my life and make different choices. So that was his perspective over on the other side. Uh , Tara from the San Diego Harm Reduction Coalition comes , comes at it very much from the perspective of we need to respect the perspectives and the humanity , um , and the struggles of people who are homeless or suffering from drug addiction or mental illness. We need to be very hesitant to make decisions for them , and instead we need to build systems that support them in their current situation and give them an opportunity to slowly but surely build their way toward making , you know , positive decisions for themselves. And , um , she told us story from her own life that for many , many years she had been addicted to drugs. Homeless , a sex worker , you know , as she put it , living a very chaotic life. And at one point somebody stopped and asked her for directions for a hiking trip or something. And that moment of somebody just connecting with her on an ordinary level reminded her of her own humanity and kind of set her into a different way of thinking. Um , I guess you could say in the middle was Aaron Meyer , a psychiatrist from UCSD and a behavioral health officer for the city of San Diego. He really looked at these very brass tacks , bureaucratic fixes that would remove many of the logjams that make it hard to treat people in this situation.
S1: And Aaron Meyer and he talked about this idea of of system refusal when people's needs don't kind of fit into one box. Right. And here's a little of what he had to say during that talk you had with him.
S7: We need to reform our practices so that people with complex needs are preferentially included , not preferentially excluded. Our system must acknowledge that complexity is the rule , not the exception.
S1:
S4: Oftentimes , I've actually talked to people who are , say , the loved ones of people who are homeless who will say , you know , I have a child who is on the streets suffering from drug addiction , and she was ready to go into treatment. She wanted to go into treatment because she got into like a really horrible accident. So she also had an injury , took her to the treatment place and they said , oh , well , she's bleeding. We can't admit her. She needs to go to the E.R. first. Okay. Drag her to the E.R.. Um , you know , it's an alienating experience. Doing that takes forever to be seen. Maybe spends the night in the hospital by the time she gets out the next morning , that window of openness to treatment has closed , and she's back out on the street. What if you had an ability to treat somebody's wound and at the same time refer them directly into a treatment program.
S1: They went with Aaron's solution.
S4: So one of the things just a Just very simple idea. What if we had a countywide app or tool that would enable people to know where , uh , treatment beds , shelter beds , um , you know , and , uh , other kinds of services are available in the moment because literally right now in San Diego County , if you're a police officer who's looking for a place for someone or a parent or anybody else , you have to make individual calls to , you know , hospital after a hospital treatment , organization after treatment organization , government agency after government agency to try to find an available bed. The process can take forever and be utterly maddening. You're waiting on hold. What if there was just an app that told you and then you knew exactly where to go ? So simple. The county of Los Angeles already has this tool. It's not impossible. Now there are complaints that it's not always accurate , but that's just a fix. Um , it seems like a relatively it seems like a relatively doable lift. Uh , you could say , um , he also just thinks there should be a dashboard that measures the county's progress and holds agencies and treatment organizations to account based on whether they are sort of living up to to what seem like reasonable metrics for service. Um , there's a there's sort of a legal category called a 5150 hold , which is , um , a law enforcement officers ability. If they invoke that statute , they can commit someone to a locked psychiatric unit for 72 hours. Right now , only law enforcement officers have the power to do that. But in other counties , paramedics , specially trained paramedics and other care providers also have the power to do that. Law enforcement officers aren't always the best at diagnosing someone's exact problem. A paramedic can sometimes be much better. Wouldn't it make sense to expand the number of people who have the ability to do that , to pull someone off the streets , get them into a stable environment where they can be referred out to more long term help. There's another provision in the law goes by this , like the statute is 5200 , which enables someone , an authority to sort of initiate an investigation into whether someone suffers from a grave disability , including sort of like an incapacitating addiction to substances that has rendered them incapable of making good decisions for themselves. And therefore there needs to be some kind of like authority to step in and make decisions on their behalf right now that that system is almost never invoked or used. And and Aaron says he'd like to , uh , expand it.
S1: Um , I want to just throw over to Lisa real quick. I mean , we're hearing a lot of things that are sound like , you know , as Jim mentioned , these are actionable. These aren't things that cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Your panel , on the other hand , came up with some other different solutions. Tell us more about some of your takeaways from from both of these panels.
S3: Um , but I think what kind of binds together all of these things , though , is that they really require political will and a willingness to look at something a little differently than we typically have , whether that means that maybe there needs to be some way for the community to tap into helping to fund housing , um , or even , you know , the Sun Break Ranch concept. Maybe there needs to be a way for philanthropy or the community to come in and weigh in more when it comes to some of the other solutions. I mean , these would require , in some cases , the county to come on board and say , we would like to change this policy. So for example 5200. Essentially what that is , is that , you know , a family member could make a request to the county and say , I would like somebody to do an evaluation of my loved one. I'm concerned. And then the county could then according to the law , you know , make a request with the court that the court then look at whether to do a court ordered evaluation of a person. Right now , in practice , that doesn't seem to be actionable , according to Doctor Meyer. So that would require the county taking a look and openly. That is something I'm trying to look into right now and understand what is the process ? Um , but a lot of it would just require , you know , folks to coordinate and agree that these are the solutions we want to go after.
S1: I mean , a lot of kind of actionable things here. And I want to , you know , take some more time to point folks to where they can , you know , find these panels and really dive deep into it as we're kind of running out of time here. We'll have a link to that on our website at KPBS. I've been speaking with Lisa Halberstam. She's senior investigative reporter with Voice of San Diego , along with Jim Hinch. He is Voice of San Diego's South County reporter. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks.
S4: Thanks.
S3: Thanks for having us.
S1: Coming up , we hear about a new book highlighting the incredible work of those on the frontlines working to prevent future pandemics. Roundtables back after the break. Welcome back to KPBS roundtable. I'm Andrew Bracken. Plagues are as certain as death and taxes. That's a line from former public health official Richard Crouse from the 80s. And if plagues or pandemics , to use a more modern term , are indeed inevitable , what can we do to prevent them and minimize the death and destruction they bring ? That's the question raised in the new book Planning Miracles by John Cohen. John's a widely published science journalist who's covered infectious diseases and their impacts for decades , and though his work has taken them all across the globe , much of his writing happens right here in San Diego , his longtime home. And John Cohen joins me now. John , welcome to the roundtable.
S8: Thank you so much for having me , Andrew.
S1: So , John , you start your book with this old adage from Benjamin Franklin , an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. He was actually writing about , I think , fired preparedness , actually. Right.
S8: And we aren't very good at doing the ounce of prevention. We keep getting ourselves into trouble because we don't move quickly enough in developing things that are that , you know , ounce of prevention a vaccine is , you know , literally that ounce of prevention.
S1: But it's more than an ounce , right ? I mean , because , you know , the title of your book is Planning Miracles and it's almost like , you know , tell us more about that , the title of it. Because how how do you. How does one plan a miracle ? Right.
S8: So the title comes from the 1955 annual report of the March of Dimes. Jonas Salk , who lived much of his life in San Diego and created the Salk Institute with the help of the March of Dimes. In 1955 , his vaccine proved safe and effective , and Basilio Connor , who headed the March of Dimes , an annual report that year , wrote this was a planned miracle , so I'm riffing off that.
S1: And tell me more. I mean , I think you're right. A lot of us , when we think of of Salk , we think of the Salk Institute , that beautiful building , right ? Right. But maybe we don't know as much about the man himself. What impact did the polio vaccine , which he had a big garden , have upon the world ? Ultimately.
S8: So in the six years that it was the only vaccine used , between 1955 and 1961 , polio in the United States , cases dropped by more than 5%. Today , polio is eliminated from the United States. It's eliminated for much of the world. It still exists. It's not eradicated. Smallpox is the only virus we've eradicated from humans. And as a parenthetical , we did that with a vaccine. But the polio vaccines have been incredibly effective. Everywhere there used.
S1: One point you kind of keep coming back to in your book when it comes to pandemics and sort of how we look upon them is this panic neglect cycle you write about , you know , tell us about that.
S8: So I opened the book with an epigram from 1722 , from Daniel Defoe's book The Journal of the Plague Year , where he writes that as soon as the plague was gone , people didn't want to think about it any longer. They had forgotten everything that had happened. I think we have an amnesia right now to the Covid pandemic was traumatic for all of us , for the entire world. People are sick of it. They don't want to think about and remember things like the Omicron wave or flattening the curve. Absolutely.
S1: Absolutely. Yeah.
S8: Yeah. And people want to bicker about what went wrong , but they really don't want to think about the lessons learned and that how we can better protect ourselves. And this book is not about what we did wrong with Covid. It's about what can we do better the next time , and what are the scientific efforts to put us in a better place ? Because there will be a next time. And so now we've entered a neglect phase again. And we see , um , not only do people not want to think about it much. Our federal government is pulling back funding of pandemic preparedness research.
S1:
S8: Another chunk occurred from mosquitoes , which are transferring them from animals to the mosquito to humans. If history repeats itself , we will see that the most likely , um , next outbreak that grows will occur from our interactions with animals , be they domesticated or wild or mosquitoes , those are the most likely routes. There are other routes , and a lot of attention has been played to the possibility that this pandemic was caused by a laboratory leak. Um , there has been one outbreak that was caused what appears to be by a laboratory release of a vaccine that was poorly made in Russia , but that's not a common occurrence. The common occurrence is what I just described.
S1: So , you know , we're talking about this very serious issue , very , you know , like , um , I don't know. There's a very serious problem that you say is going to happen again. Inevitably. Right. But there's also a real sense of optimism that comes through in your book. And I want to kind of touch upon that one.
S8: It's not that we're we're just we're screwed. We're trapped there. So traditionally , surveillance has been incredibly labor intensive , you know , trapping wild animals or sampling domestic animals. You're doing it one by one. It can be very dangerous as well with some animal species like bats. And new techniques can collect DNA and RNA from the air. With a handheld device , a new technique can collect dust From a chicken farm on an electrostatic sheet. There's one research group from France that was working in Africa by sampling fire ants that walked into the rainforest and ate dead animal carcasses. They found and came out , and you could sample them to understand what viruses were in these animals. So there are a lot of creative ways that we can go about doing surveillance that are now being tested around the world. And my book shows people using these things in different settings. A group from UC Davis baited little treats for primates like stick candy , kind of sticks that were tied to strings , and they could come back and collect them and get their DNA and RNA and see what was in these primates. We can collect feces and urine from primates. That's how we really nailed down the origin of HIV. So I think as these techniques become more widely used , it will become easier to gather information about what is out there. And ultimately , Microsoft is doing this as well with the mosquito trapping device and what they call it as a biological weather station. And I think that's ultimately what we're shooting for , is to be able to have a sense that , hey , there's a hurricane coming. You know , there's we can see these things off in the distance. We know we can we can alert ourselves to what might happen. And that's the point.
S1: And you kind of make this kind of comparison between sort of natural disasters and some of these , and the way that kind of fits into pandemics and how they come about. Yeah. I guess , you know , you mentioned Covid.
S8: It changed our lives.
S1: What surprised you about the Covid pandemic ? Now , here we are five and a half years later.
S8: No , I , I was joking at the time that every day I woke up was a surprise. You know , I , I covered that pandemic. Um , some days I was working 20 hours a day. Um , you know , it it was surprising how in slow motion I wrote a story that came out January 14th of 2020 that quoted a leading epidemiologist saying , this is likely going to be a pandemic. That was , you know , it was it was very early on that it was clear to scientists at the front what was likely to happen. And I was at a dinner party in Cardiff , where I live in , uh , I think it was late February and everyone moved away from me , and a friend came over and said , John , you're Debbie Downer. You know , you keep telling us that they're going to shut our schools and that we're all going to be working from home. Nobody wants to talk to you. And everybody was sitting around the fireplace away from me. Um , I was surprised by also the public's , um , large , the large number of people who didn't understand how science works. Science is based on using the best information we have today to make decisions , and that keeps changing. And that kept changing during the pandemic. Um , I was surprised by how much individual individualism there was. People worrying about themselves and not worrying about the community. Um , you know , my mother , who's now I'm grateful she's still alive. She's 95. I was really worried about her getting Covid and dying , and I was worried about spending time with her. It every time I went in to see her , I , you know , I would test and and she was alone for quite a while. Um , I think there was a lot of kind of I think it's almost arrogance about the risks that we were facing by people who didn't want to wear masks when it was the virus was at its peak and none of us had immunity. Um , and , and I and I think looking back on it , that was it's really shocking to me that we understand the need for an army and national defence and working together against an enemy. But the public in the United States had a really hard time balancing our community needs versus versus individual needs , and people are still railing about that. Right.
S1: Right. And there has been a real challenge of trust between the scientific community and parts of our government now. But also , you know , people. And I'm just curious , like how you as a science , you know , a scientific storyteller even.
S8: I mean , a lot of mistakes were made and there was too much certainty coming from public health authorities at times about what was going to happen. But I think one of the things we need to do is historically look back at what was what we were facing and what we were facing was what happened in Wuhan , what happened in northern Italy , what happened in New York City , what happened in Seattle ? What happened in Iran ? Hospitals were collapsing right and left. They couldn't handle it. And so we wanted to flatten the curve. This is a phrase that people seem to have forgotten. That's what we were doing by social distancing , by closing schools and businesses. And we succeeded. We flattened the curve. We kept our hospital systems functioning. It came at a great cost. And I'm not arguing that everything was perfect. Please. You know I did. Yeah. I don't I don't take a position and I'm not a fist in the air about this. I understand why people are upset about many things that went wrong , but collectively , we succeeded in a way that saved a lot of lives. And the vaccine saved millions of lives and was brought forward much more quickly than even I thought it could be done. And I think that's a lesson for us in the future. We need to move quickly when these outbreaks occur. To make vaccines and to make antiviral medicines and make monoclonal antibodies. And we weren't fast enough this time around , even though we moved at warp speed.
S1: I wondered if we can kind of going back to your book here , if you could read a few words from your book on. You know , some of what we've been talking about here.
S8: This is from the introduction , I think this is my fifth book , and I think the introductions are always the funnest part of books , the myriad innovative ideas that scientists are now pursuing to prevent pandemics offer realistic hope that we can create a world less vulnerable to microbial attack. We have the brains and the technologies to better protect ourselves from zoonotic jumps , reducing their frequency more quickly , thwarting outbreaks that do occur , and responding more effectively to ones that become epidemics and pandemics. Scientific efforts can accomplish any of these feats. None require divine intervention , but that will require committed visionaries who have appropriate support. Creative minds , abundant curiosity , a mix of confidence and skepticism , deeply ingrained public health ideals , and , most critically , a sense of urgency.
S1:
S8: So we have the tools at our disposal to make a vaccine that works against all coronavirus variants of SARS-CoV-2 that caused Covid. I think we're close to being able to accomplish that , and maybe even making it broader protection against all members of the SARS family. So I'd like to see that pursued as aggressively as possible.
S1: You've been writing about viruses , infectious diseases for the bulk of your career. Just just briefly now , I think , like since your 20s , right.
S8: And as part of that , major , I wrote about Jonas Salk and approached him and convinced him to let me write about him with the understanding that I would never publish the story that I that I wrote. I ended up getting to know him very well and writing about him a great deal. But that's how I got into it.
S1: Oh , wow. So it comes back to you started our conversation talking about Jonah.
S8: In the eighth grade , and I have the book report that I found when my mother's house had a fire some years ago , and it was really funny. The Grady , the teachers markings were very funny.
S1: Well , I've been speaking with John Cohen. His new book , Planning Miracles How to Prevent Future Pandemics , is out now , and John will be talking more about his book at the San Diego Central Library downtown on Tuesday , October 21st. We are going to share a link to that on our website at pbs.org. John , thanks so much for being here.
S8: Oh , pleasure. Thank you for having me.
S1: That'll do it for our show this week. Thanks so much for listening. You can listen to the show anytime is a podcast. KPBS roundtable airs on KPBS FM at noon on Fridays again Sundays at 6 a.m.. If you have any thoughts on today's show , you can always email us at roundtable at KPBS. You can also leave us a message at (619) 452-0228. Roundtables. Technical producer this week was Brandon Truffaut. The show was produced by Ashley Rush. Brooke Rooth is roundtable senior producer. I'm your host , Andrew Bracken. Thanks again for listening and have a great weekend.
