COVID-19: Globalism, “Trusted” Evangelicals, and Dr. Bob

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. Today, we're gonna be talking a little bit about the coronavirus.

I know you probably didn't know that, couldn't guess that, but it's obviously being talked about everywhere, and so I wasn't gonna do a podcast this week because I'm very busy with some personal things, but I thought, you know what?

The world is really weird right now, and especially for those who really like the podcast,

I don't wanna make it weirder by skipping a week. I mean, I usually put out a podcast every week, so we're gonna at least have one thing that's normal this week, and that will be this podcast.

So I'm gonna be talking kind of fast, so if you usually listen at double speed, you may wanna slow it down for the monologue.

After the monologue, we're gonna talk to Dr. Bob, as we affectionately call him, at Duke University Hospital, and we don't reveal his name because, well, he's a fan of this podcast, and that's enough of a reason, you know?

People in those kind of communities where they have influence, and they have, let's just say, politically correct constraints that they have to live under, they probably don't want people to know that they listen to this, but Dr.

Bob is, I'll let him talk more about what his expertise is, but he's definitely qualified to talk about this pandemic, and so we're gonna ask him some medical questions, mostly, and we're gonna end with some silver linings here, but I wanna talk a little bit about this whole thing, just start off kind of bird's eye view here.

I probably feel like a lot of you, like, and I just kind of mentioned it, the world just doesn't feel right this week.

It just feels different in a bad way. We're used to going to church.

We're not going to church. Church looked different if we did. We go to the store.

We can't find milk or eggs or toilet paper. It's crowded. We go out in public, and no one's dying on the street.

There's no emergency that we can see around us, generally speaking, but at the same time, things feel empty, and so it's, having a change happen that quickly from the normal habits of our life, it can,

I mean, we're sitting at home now, a lot of us, and we have time now. I don't. I have no time.

This is probably the busiest week of my life. It's hard for me to even get this out there, but many of us do, and I probably will soon, and so we sit at home, and what do we do?

Are we watching TV? Are we on the internet? Are we reading? We have time now to look at things we probably didn't before, and I encourage you, number one, to look for the blessing in that, especially if you get to spend time with your family, if you get to projects that you just haven't gotten to, if there's a theological question you had, now you can study it.

I mean, there's some blessings to this, but at the same time, we can't shake probably the feeling of, this is just weird.

So, I wanted to bring to your attention a few things, and I'm gonna share with you some links, some things that I've uncovered on the

World Economic Forum and kind of just the general flow of where I think this whole thing is going, as far as more globalization, more consolidation.

I think that there are forces that whether they're behind some of the regulations that are taking place, or whether they wanna benefit from the panic and some of the regulations that are being put in place by governments, there certainly are people with an agenda right now.

And I'm not a conspiracy theory guy. I need to let you know that. Here's my modus operandi. When someone comes to me with a conspiracy theory, especially one that's like the

Bilderbergs or the Masons are controlling everything or something, I usually say, what do you want me to do about it?

Even if that's true, which I don't think it is, but what can I do? Well, you just need to be aware.

I'm like, I understand being informed, but here's the thing. And this is what I usually say. I believe there's a greater conspiracy that is way beyond what you're talking about, a spiritual conspiracy.

We get a glimpse of it in the book of Daniel. The demons, Satan himself, is influencing world governments.

He's against the forces of good, of God. He controls some of the evil forces that you're probably thinking are man -made or in some weird cases, people say reptilian or alien or whatever.

No, no, no. Look, you're talking small stuff. It's way beyond that. All that to say though, if you have

Jesus Christ, if you are in him, if you are a Christian, you have access to the king of the universe who controls, who is over those entities, and you can have comfort in that.

If you don't have him, then well, I guess I'd be afraid too, but there's nothing you can do about it. So I can at least pray with knowledge.

But other than that, what's the practical reason for knowing things that are so big and global and outside of your control?

Well, not much. So there's a few things I wanna share with you, but I wanna make it clear what my intention is.

I want to share some of this trend, if you wanna call it that, towards globalization and consolidation.

I wanna share it with you because I just want you to be thinking, number one, about questions that are gonna be arising about your own investments, how you raise your kids for this world that we are embarking on in, that we're living in, and the world that's also just around the corner.

And I want to get behind, I think, what's enabling this because there's a fear that I think is driving people to be more,

I mean, it's what I saw when I went to the store and there's no toilet paper, right? There's a fear. There's a willingness to trade in liberty for security.

And I think that there's a sense of personal responsibility itself that is lost.

I noticed that local municipalities in many places were cracking down on social gatherings much more than the national or state governments were initially.

And then state governments were more restrictive than the national government. And now, of course, they're all being restrictive, but there was a sense

I got that there was a fear. Maybe there was a moral posturing. And I mean, some of these guys genuinely probably care about their citizens, but there's also,

I just sense, a fear that they don't want to be blamed for not taking the proper precautions and someone dying on their watch.

And so they're going to take extreme actions. If it means completely crashing their economy, their local economy, completely destroying their tax base, which really,

I mean, you need that in order to fight this. You need resources, right? Resources don't come out of thin air.

Governments don't produce money. We all need to remember that. It comes from people. It comes from productivity. And so if people are not going to be productive, if you're limiting that, you need to be very careful.

Some cures are worse than their diseases. And this is one of the things I'm watching is not saying that we should take precautions, but I can't escape the feeling that we're going overkill here on some things.

And I think there's an assumption that these leaders, civic leaders, are responsible somehow.

And they do bear responsibility before God for implementing justice. But we have personal responsibility.

That's really one of the defining things about Americans, or it was, was that we believe in self -government.

We believe that government should leave us alone and we should make responsible decisions. Now, people are less and less so making those decisions responsibly, but that is our heritage.

And normally I would think, and you'll hear me say this kind of later to Dr.

Bob, but in a situation like this, there's a risk. There's always a risk to going outside, right?

You can get in a car accident. There's a lot of things that could happen that could go wrong. But in this specific situation,

I'm more of a believer in local municipalities, local organizations, local businesses, local families organically making decisions about what's best for them and hopefully a good media providing information about how to make that best decision.

I don't like the top -down stuff. I'm just giving you, this is just my gut feeling right now. I'm giving you, I don't like it.

And in some cases I think it's overstepping boundaries. And I'm gonna talk about that a little bit in regards to the church.

But all that to say, I think we need to get out of the mindset that government or civic leaders of any kind are somehow responsible.

If your pastor holds church and you go to church and you get the coronavirus, ultimately the decision to go to the church was your decision, right?

The decision to go out to the grocery store is your decision. And we hear this about the coronavirus every five seconds.

So there's an awareness there already. And so I just think personal responsibility needs to be regained somehow because I think we've lost it.

We cry out to our gods and our God right now is the government, it seems like. That's the

God we pray to. It really is our father who art in Washington at this point. Every time a hurricane blows through, every time a pandemic happens, it's what's the government gonna do?

And I'm on a tangent at this point, but I was glad Donald Trump did a national day of prayer and we probably need to have another one.

But in addition to prayer, humiliation and repentance would be nice. I mean, look, the possibility that this is the judgment of God, I mean, why not?

Why can't it be that? We certainly deserve it, don't we? So I wanna go through some things here.

Just if I can, let's see here. Oh, there we go. I wanna talk a little bit about some things

I've noticed. Some of them you might find interesting, but there's a general narrative

I'm gonna be weaving. I think there was some anticipation for this. If you go to the CDC website back in November, on November 15th, public health advisors for the quarantine program were being hired all over.

Alaska, California, Chicago, Illinois, Detroit, Michigan, I mean, all over, you just read this, all sorts of places.

And it's just, it's very interesting to me that this was taking place back then.

And I haven't compared all the dates, but if I'm not mistaken, that's right when, that's like immediately when things were happening in Wuhan in China.

It almost feels like that was before, but either way, there was some kind of a, whether either someone was way ahead of the game and they knew that this was coming or they assumed this could happen or someone had already started to take place and someone was just seeing the potential for what could happen.

But either way, there was some anticipation. But despite the anticipation, despite hiring people for this quarantine program back in November, there was some unpreparedness because the

Center for Disease Control, look, here they're hiring in November. And this is an interesting article, by the way.

And you know what? I don't think I put the website I found this on. Most of them, I have the website and I can't remember what website this was.

This is, the headline is the CDC was fighting racism and obesity instead of stopping epidemics.

And I'm not gonna read all this for you, but essentially the CDC for years now has experienced a complete mission drift.

Instead of studying outbreaks and where they formed and how to fight them and so forth, they were focusing on disparities and trying to make sure, researching these grandiose proposals for the federal government where they could eliminate inequity on certain things or eliminate obesity, studying what causes obesity and how to implement programs to fight it.

I'll tell you what causes obesity, all right? It's taking in too many calories and not burning enough.

One of those two things are both, a combination. I mean, a lot of this stuff isn't rocket science, but the

CDC was focused on these things. And so they were unprepared for what's taking place.

There's also, and I'm sure there's a lot of examples of this, but there's also government incompetence. This is something

I saw the other day from Canada. Passengers were allowed to return home from Europe without being tested.

And they were given a pamphlet, but they were not tested. And so just some basic common sense things weren't followed.

And of course, restrictions have been imposed now. And this is, a few days ago,

I put, maybe this was yesterday, I don't even remember. Time is just weird right now with how fast things are happening. But when

Cuomo had, I think it was yesterday or the day before, said that we're gonna shut down restaurants, gyms, and bars by 8 p .m.,

I thought, this is crazy. How can someone do that? And now, of course, we're seeing this everywhere and more severe restrictions than that.

We're trying to make sure that we get the most clear, best guidance to give people. So, Judge?

Okay, with respect to bars and restaurants, there's a couple of different issues there. I do not believe

I have the legal authority to do that. Section 418 of the government code gives me powers under disaster, which

I do have. If I read those the way that I read them, I can apply uniform hours to businesses. I can't pick and choose.

But let's get past section 418 of the government code right now and talk about the U .S. Constitution, which forbids me from depriving you of liberty or property without due process.

So, I think if we got past section 418, I'd still have a constitutional problem. As the doctor mentioned, cities might have some different tools to work with.

I don't have them. I don't believe I have any authority to close bars and restaurants. And so, I'm, my head's spinning.

It's almost like too fast to digest what's actually taking place. But that is taking place all over.

And, of course, the economic ramifications, I can't even imagine. This was an interesting thing.

This is actually from back in February, but this is what was happening in China. And I don't know if it'll happen here or not, but the government was literally taking physical currency to be quarantined, because it may have the virus on it.

And who knows what else they were doing in regards to the money supply. I don't know, but that was,

I mean, this is the extent to which this kind of thing can go. Then we have, we had a run on a bank in Midtown.

They were cleaned out of $100 bills. Of course, the stock market has been steadily going down.

And so, I think people are starting, people are panicking in different sectors. And now, it's not so much the coronavirus that's making people panic.

It's now the response to the coronavirus. Because of these responses, people are panicking further.

And so, you have things like in Denmark, the parliament ruled on Thursday, last

Thursday, unanimously, they passed an emergency coronavirus law, which gives health authorities powers to force testing, treatment, and quarantine with the backing of the police.

So, imagine that happening here. You know, that would be incredible. And then, here's another one.

Barge restaurants closing in Illinois, et cetera. And so, here,

I'm gonna start showing you some things I found on the World Economic Forum website.

So, these, just so you know, this is more, these are the kind of global elites, globalist -friendly organizations, publications.

And so, if you wanna know kind of like where globalist thinkers want to take things, this would be where you go.

And so, Trump's trade policy, not good, hampering the U .S. fight against coronavirus from the

Peterson Institute on International Economics. And you know, they're arguing that medical supplies from China, we could have easily been more prepared and had more of those supplies if Donald Trump hadn't started his trade war.

And of course, those restrictions have been lifted at this point. But you're gonna see a trend.

As I show you the rest of these articles, there's a theme here. In The New Yorker, and I found this, again, through the

World Economic Forum, they were linking to it, the coronavirus calls for wartime economic thinking. Here's a paragraph.

The world is de facto at war against the virus rather than against each other. This is the good news. Oliver Blanchard, the former chief economist at the

International Monetary Fund tweeted on Monday. He went on to point out that during the Second World War, the federal deficit as a percentage of the

GDP rose to 26%. As the Roosevelt administration spent heavily on armaments and other programs, let's not be squeamish,

Blanchard added. So what they're essentially saying is, treat this like you're in war, like a physical war, and don't be afraid to go into debt.

And so yes, run up the spending bill right now because we're at war. There's proposals now for universal basic income.

I mean, that's been there before, but more than that, actually, in this article, and I didn't pull up the quote, but even

Mitt Romney was saying we should, because of this emergency, this coronavirus emergency, I think it was like 1 ,000 bucks or something we should give to every

American. It was something like that for every family. But he wanted to give this across the board kind of monetary, from the government, monetary,

I guess, gift, for lack of a better term. In fact, it's not a gift, though, when it's your money, but it's redistribution if it's not your money.

And he wanted to do this because of, I guess, the missed, to help people out, the missed work, business problems, so forth and so on.

Donald Trump is, of course, bailing out airlines and it looks like possibly cruise ships. $50 billion handout from the government to help through the current downturn in travel.

I mean, this is amazing. Do you think any of this could have happened without the precedent that George Bush put in place, really, and then

Barack Obama continued and made worse during the 2008 economic downturn?

I mean, this is incredible that it's just, it's not even a thought. It's just, of course, the government's going to help these industries.

Which, again, that's your money. That's not, the government doesn't have money. It's your money. You're paying

American Airlines. Of course, more global control here.

Here's some articles. Center for Global Development, coronavirus response. Time to take the G20 seriously again.

World Economic Forum. How the coronavirus market turmoil compares to 2008. Third, and here's one of the points they make.

The global business community needs to come together to help lead the recovery. The World Economic Forum's COVID action platform aims to galvanize both governments and business leaders to do just that.

And what's the COVID action platform? Galvanize the global business community for collective action. Protect people's livelihoods and facilitate business continuity.

Mobilize cooperation and business support for the COVID -19 response. It's all about coming together.

That's gonna be the theme you're gonna be hearing. It's gonna be, you know, private businesses and corporations and governments and everyone just consolidating to form something.

A global stimulus has been proposed by the IMF blog. This is, again, I found this through International Monetary Fund.

I found this through World Economic Forum. They linked to it. And so they think there should be a global stimulus.

That is a frightening prospect in my mind. Because, I mean, a national stimulus is frightening enough.

A global stimulus? Where's all this gonna come from? Well, again, there's consolidation happening.

And so if there's consolidation of all these various corporations and governments and so forth, they can create, they can have a fund or something that can bail out countries that are having problems.

And we can eliminate disparities. The only problem is if you create something that big, the amount of control it would have, there might be some potential for good, maybe.

I'm willing to give a very big benefit of the doubt, sort of. But the potential for evil is even worse if you start creating things of that proportion.

I mean, what other problems can we tackle? Well, I'm glad you asked. We can tackle immigration.

The crisis, the International Crisis Group put this out. Sharing the Burden, Revisiting the EU, Turkey Migration Deal.

And the point of this is, I'm gonna just read. As the European Union and Turkish officials revisit the 2016 deal in the coming weeks, the two sides should explore options for modernizing the

Customs Union and fostering the integration of refugees in Turkey. They should also assess the prospect of offering substantially more humanitarian aid and other assistance to civilians in Idlib.

Worries over the spread of coronavirus among these vulnerable populations who may soon be on the move is all the more reason to take measures to address their desperate conditions, progress.

And these areas is more realistic than efforts to unstick complex talks on visa liberalization or acts ascension that are conditioned on Turkey meeting a long list of criteria, et cetera.

So this is trying to, in some ways, it's pulling the heartstrings, but we need to up our humanitarian aid.

We need to help these people, which of course, I mean, it's always good intentions can lead to sometimes some boneheaded moves.

And so far that's happened in Europe. I mean, it's one of the reasons Brexit happened because immigration, the unrestricted, more just immigration pouring in from these countries has not been good culturally for them.

And it's changed many European countries. And so now that there's a crisis, it's kind of like, well, let's up more compassion, more resources, more money being poured into helping these people and bringing them in.

And I don't have a long time, I don't have any time really to get into a big discussion of this, but we wanna help people, especially as Christians, we wanna help people, but what's the mechanism we ought to be using to do that?

And how do we help people out of a hole when they're in a predicament, when they're in a predicament that is generational, that every generation lives in the same kind of grinding poverty or the same kind of tyranny, maybe leading by example, maybe sending missionaries, and maybe there's other ways to address these things and actually help people more long -term, kind of the principle of teaching a man to fish instead of giving them one might be better than importing some of those problems.

And I'm not saying that people are problems, I'm saying importing the problems, the ideas that some of these people will bring into your country.

So more immigration. How about climate change? I mean, you thought that coronavirus was just about a virus.

No, coronavirus and climate change, there is much uncertainty and much to play for. The Grantham Institute, and again, through the

World Economic Forum, I found this, here's one of the paragraphs. First and most strikingly, experts are back on the agenda and their place in informing public policy has been restored to some degree.

In contrast, a low point of Michael Gove, I'm not sure, it was earlier in the article, Michael Gove's comments during the

Brexit campaign. Okay, so this is, so here, let me explain this.

What this article is saying is that during Brexit, this was a populist uprising and they weren't trusting the experts.

That was a horrible thing, but they didn't trust the experts. And Michael Gove being one of these people.

And listening to experts is now widely recommended. There are few, if any, coronavirus deniers.

And we are, for the most part, turning to, I can't pronounce this, epidemiologists,

I think I got it, to inform public policy. Those who would deal in epidemics, those guys.

This is welcome and hopefully a lesson that will be retained for climate change. So what's the moral of coronavirus?

Hey, they're finally trusting the experts again. The people are looking towards the elites. Oh, they're listening to us.

Maybe they'll listen to us now when we talk about climate change. That's the takeaway from this.

And here's another article. This is from Green Biz again, World Economic Forum -linked. COVID -19 and the climate change, a healthy dose of reality.

We'd better get started figuring this out. We have a window, a painfully clear window on what's coming next, a window of opportunity to align our organization's value.

Listen to that, align our organization's. Everyone get into lockstep. Value chains and systems of commerce with this strange new normal.

As I said, COVID -19 could be a taste of our collective future. So this is, that paragraph scares me.

It just, not in a way that I'm shaking to my boots. I'm a Christian, I don't do that. But as far as just knowing, this person is a utopianist dreamer.

They, and what they want is for everyone just to come together and learn and do it now.

Do it now under the present circumstances, but keep this coalition so that we can fight the next thing, which is climate change, which is,

I mean, this video isn't about this, but this myth that there's this man -made global warming that's just gonna flood everything and ruin everything.

We're gonna use what's happening with coronavirus to now deal with an even bigger threat.

I mean, it's about control, guys. It's about control. Think of yourself now as a global citizen from the

London School of Economics and Political Science. These occurrences, coronavirus, show how profoundly the virus has cut into the relationship between citizen and as a guarantee of the state's responsibility for the well -being of its citizens, on the one hand, and human rights and practices of solidarity on the other.

So which one are you gonna choose, guys? Which are you gonna choose? Are you gonna choose being a citizen? Are you gonna choose something so much more nice, human rights and solidarity?

Well, I mean, I don't know, human rights and solidarity, that sounds a lot nicer than being a citizen. Well, that's kind of what that article is about.

Here's one from the World Economic Forum on Education. Three ways the coronavirus pandemic could reshape education.

So here's a few things. Public -private educational partnerships could grow in importance.

Similar to Hong Kong -based readtogether .hk forum, China, and they have a video of it, there's a consortium of over 60 educational organizers, publishers, media, and entertainment industry professionals.

So read elites when you hear that. Providing more than 900 educational assets, including videos, book chapters, assessment tools, and counseling services for free, for free.

Of course, nothing's for free. So there's gotta be strings attached, guys. Gotta be strings attached.

The consortium's intention is to continue using and maintaining the platform even after the coronavirus has been contained.

Unless access costs decrease and quality of access increase in all countries, the gap in education quality and the socioeconomic quality will be further exacerbated.

So you don't want a disparity. You don't want some people, you know, haves and have -nots. We need to come together.

We need to make sure everyone has the same access, the same technology, the same tools. We need to offer it for free.

Here's another one on education. From Pew Research Center. As schools close due to the coronavirus, some

US students face a digital homework gap. Oh, the homework gap. And it's worse, of course, for black teens than it is for whites because 11 % of them don't have computers.

It's comparing income levels. So we're gonna have to, we need equity. We need equity in order to do this.

And how are we gonna do that? Well, it's the tools I just described for you. Everyone's gonna come together and we're gonna offer services for free and we're gonna close this gap.

So let me tell you what's going on. You remember in World War II, if you will, if you're old enough, maybe you remember, where you studied about it, the whole world came together.

The Allied powers came together. And, I mean, first there was economic cooperation like Lend -Lease, but then, you know, it was consolidation, it was

Allied forces. I mean, we, you know, from World War I we had the League of Nations. From World War II, you know, more of an involvement in global efforts from the

United Nations. And you had NATO during the Cold War. And so you have these, you know, in reaction to actual war, there's, or the potential threat of war, there's a coming together.

And, of course, on an individual level that happened. I mean, women were in the workforce. People were tightening their belts, having victory gardens, and recycling tires and so forth during World War II because everyone was motivated for the war effort.

And liberals, you know, they want that kind of cooperation, that kind of consolidation.

You can control something like that. You can think of all the good you can do if everyone's on the same page, pursuing the same kind of goal.

The problem is war stinks. And something like this, something like this pandemic, which also stinks, but isn't quite as bad as war, this brings people together because people are afraid.

If they can sacrifice, they'll sacrifice, especially when you know that it's someone that you love that could die from it, or you yourself, you're willing to come together to find a solution.

And so that's kind of what they're tapping into, that, you know, willingness to work together on this commonly valued project.

And again, the issue, well, from a biblical standpoint, there's a bunch of issues with this.

This is the Tower of Babel tendency. This is, when you do this on a global level and you're talking about every level of government, you're talking about businesses and corporations, and then just all consolidating, that can be used for tremendous evil.

And there's a reason God didn't want that. However, you know, that being said, just a common sense kind of way of approaching this, even if you can do tremendous good, if you start creating the kind of entity or entities that have the backing of armies or private armies, or there's force that can implement some of the things they have, or they're gonna control your education for free, but there's strings attached with it.

They can indoctrinate your kids. There's potential for a lot of harm. And we need to be aware of that.

This is the direction things seem to be going. Now, not all this stuff has happened, but they're dreaming right now.

This is the, I mean, these are utopianists. When they see this, they think, oh, goodness, how can we use this crisis to show people the truth of what we've been saying?

Just follow us. We're the elites. We can centrally plan everything. We can control everything from education to medicine to now,

I guess, with the global warming stuff, regulating the economies in such a way that it'll impact the environments.

This is, what happens to national allegiances? What happens, I mean, there's a lot of concerns that we could talk about in regards to this.

But I should say, before I, there's silver linings.

I said I would bring those up. Don't be too worried. Not all of this has happened. I'm just pointing out that there are people who want this to happen, and the solution, again, is to go back to personal responsibility and to say, look, in the

United States of America, we've been through a lot. We've been through the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and all sorts of pandemics before Spanish flu, and we can hang tough together in our country, in our local community.

That's really what Love Your Neighbor, I mean, it really does start. It's your neighbor. It's the Good Samaritan was someone right there on the side of the road that they saw.

That's who that was. The love one another passages generally, like at First John, love your brother.

It's your brother. It's your Christian brother. Those who don't provide for their family, worse than an infidel. There's a proximity.

There's a principle in scripture. There's those who are the closest to you have the most responsibility for, and that's where, really,

I think our efforts should be going, primarily. It's to those who are closest to us, and this consolidation kind of tendency that we're seeing in places like the

World Economic Forum is it's not your neighbor across the street. I mean, they want you to care for them, right, but just as much as you would for someone who's in India, or in Russia, or wherever.

You're going to come together and create this organization, which, frankly, organizations, when they get that big, it's impersonal at that point.

It really is, and they don't get their money out of a vacuum, so there's always strings attached, so I just wanted to point that out, and no,

I'm not saying it's just, it's a big globalist conspiracy and spooky music. I'm saying this is what actual links from elite institutions the

World Economic is linking to. These are what those people are saying. This is what they want, so be aware of it, that we're moving in that direction, and don't fear, don't fear.

Don't go buy toilet paper. Show that you don't need those guys as much.

As Americans, as in my case, as Virginians, or wherever state you're from in your local community, we'll hang tough together.

We'll get through things together. Love your neighbor, and devote your time to those things, and show that we can,

I'm hoping one of the silver linings here in regards to education, I'll just say this, is homeschooling. I hope people realize when their kids come home from school and maybe they have some online work they have to do that parents start thinking, wait a minute, we could do this.

We don't need the government schools anymore. That would be nice. I mean, there's actually potential here for even more nationalism.

I mean, I'm not saying that's gonna happen. I don't think most elites want that to happen, but look, the potential is that people could start thinking, you know what, this virus came from another country.

We should have shut down travel sooner maybe. We should, maybe we should make more medical things in our country and not be dependent on China for those things.

Maybe there will be more of a nationalism. I don't know, I don't know. So here's some other things

I just wanted to point out. Individual liberties are being, people are getting nervous, people who care about that kind of thing.

We have a coronavirus patient refused quarantine so deputies are surrounding his house to force him to, which to be honest with you, in some ways

I can kind of understand. I don't know the details to what extent he was refusing to be quarantined.

Maybe he wanted to be in his own house quarantined. You'd think that would be okay, but the concern

I have is that this becomes more widespread and we enter a phase where there's, again, you can hear even the struggle in my own voice because there are people out there who just don't take precautions.

Every time you see one of those discovery channel things on like a volcano explosion or a tornado or hurricane, there's always those people who are like,

I've lived here my whole life, I'm not leaving. And those are the guys that you think, well, someone should probably, should keep them from harming others.

And that is a role that government has. And so if it's the local government,

I don't have as much of a problem with that. But again, this is authority that can be abused.

Harris County Judge Linda Hildalgo, this was on Twitter, I guess, earlier today. Today are new regulations on bars and restaurants.

So basically they must not operate except in delivery, takeout, drive -through.

And then to report violations, call our hotline. And so people were upset that, what, you're just trying to get people to call on businesses who are remaining open.

And it's like, yeah, this isn't, I don't recognize this either. This isn't the country I thought I lived in where you just lead with that.

Let's all kind of police each other. That means there's sort of a civic mistrust in that area.

And you wanna build trust in an environment like this. But at the same time, you wanna be concerned for safety.

So again, if we can self -regulate, if we can have self -government, and we don't need those things.

And that would be my hope is we can return to that, a basic trust in each other. But just pointing out that that's happening, we have here social media smartphone tracking.

So in Israel and Iran and China, they are tracking citizen smartphones to build a database.

Let's see here. They're using that intel. So basically, here's how that would work.

If you track where someone is, and you find out, oh, someone had coronavirus there, then you can look at all the other people who are in that area and you can test them.

So you can keep virus from spreading. Of course, though, the downside is the government now has, they can track you.

And we're setting precedents for this being a normal thing, normalization of it. We have the

Washington Post, U .S. government tech industry discussing ways to use smartphone location data to combat coronavirus.

So of course, now the U .S. is looking at this potentially. So Zuckerberg admitting that, yes, there is,

I guess, I'll just read it. We are working closely together on COVID -19 response efforts with the government. We're helping millions of people stay connected while also jointly combating fraud and misinformation about the virus, elevating authoritative content on our platforms, and sharing critical updates in coordination with government healthcare agencies around the world.

We invite other companies to join us as we work to keep our communities healthy and safe. So they're working with the government.

And here is an article. This was actually, people who were posting this, it was going against community standards.

I don't know if that's still the case, but this is from Business Insider. And Google, Facebook, and other tech companies are reportedly in talks with the government to use your location data to stop the spread of the virus.

The data could also shine light on whether people are adhering to government -ordered containment measures like social distancing as the number of coronavirus cases surpasses 5 ,000.

Trump issued guidance recommending that people avoid gathering in groups. So here's what that would mean.

If you're taking a picture with your friends at a party and you have coronavirus or a place where there's coronavirus or something, they could notify the government using that platform.

Crazy stuff, guys. You think that's an infringement of privacy? Well, I mean, look, Facebook is a private company.

You're probably, I'm encouraging you, like my stuff on Facebook, but just be aware that that stuff could go straight to the government if Facebook just wants to make that available.

It's very easy. So, and then here's the evangelical reaction. And I'm gonna say a little bit about this, but kind of winding down my monologue before we get to Dr.

Bob here. Look at the word that is on the front of this website, trusted resources for churches from leading experts.

Trusted experts. Trusted experts. It almost sounds like a political campaign.

It almost sounds like they've got something to prove. It's not just, yeah, here's some helpful things. They want you to know that these are from trusted experts.

And I just, to me, it just, it feels weird. It felt odd when I was reading it. I'm like, trusted?

Like, I would just, you know, here's some good information, you know, this will help your church.

Why does it have to be, why is it a pull to get you to look at these people and platform them in your mind?

Like, they're the experts. I mean, did John MacArthur get a call? I mean, who's the expert?

Because I know, you know, Rick Warren's not a doctor. He's the one up front of this. So what makes him a trusted expert?

The fact that it says that? Kind of weird, kind of weird.

But they, obviously, this is an elitist thing. Like, I mean, I keep using that word,

I guess. And elitist doesn't have to be a bad word, but there is a sense of superiority here.

Like, these are the guys, these are the leaders. And it's not, you know, these aren't the, the leaders scripture talks about.

These aren't, you know, prophets, apostles, pastors, right? I don't think we have apostles now, in that sense, anyway.

But it's not an ecclesiastical role, is my point, that's biblically warranted.

This is a secular kind of category, trusted experts. And, you know, they're gonna tell you what to do.

Now, what are the things they're telling you? Well, they have a book out, Preparing Your Church for Coronavirus, in a PDF, which was, like, really quick, that they had a book out.

This was a couple days ago, I saw it, and I'm like, man, that was quick. Probably just had information and slapped that label on it.

But here's the, here's some of the things that, here's one of the things that says in the PDF. People of Asian descent have faced stigmatization and discrimination because of COVID -19 outbreak, has its origin in China.

Your church has an important role to promoting faithful preparedness, and also in reducing fearful panic and prejudice.

If you can find me one incident, I mean, look, I've been eating more Chinese food in the last month than I've ever eaten, and I think it's because every time

I turn on anything, or I walk in a room, and, you know, Planet Fitness or something, and the media's on, it's talking about, it was talking about Wuhan for so long, and I'm always like, man,

I could really use some sweet and sour chicken right now. I think it was like, it worked the opposite with me.

But there's this idea, and I haven't seen one example of it, that there's racism against Chinese because of this.

Why are evangelicals, the trusted ones, repeating this stupid farce that people of Asian descent have faced stigmatization and discrimination?

And this made its way into a Preparing Your Church for Coronavirus book. Really, how does that help you in preparing for coronavirus, to know that?

Means your church is gonna be really thinking about racism, I guess, and this is somehow,

I don't know. Ed Stetzer, who, Ed Stetzer, if there's any guy who's, oh, here we go, who's woke, you know,

Ed Stetzer would pretty much fit that bill. He is, I believe he's the head, if I'm not mistaken, of the

Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College, and, oh my, there's a lot we could say about Ed Stetzer, but here's what he says for this, in this context.

Leverage ways your church is already speaking out on behalf of the marginalized and vulnerable. Ensure the fair distribution of resources so that these groups don't fall through the cracks amidst the public health crisis at hand.

It's just a weird way to phrase it. It's not, this isn't biblical language. Yeah, help the orphans and the widows, right?

Marginalize, marginalized means there's an action being taken against them. Marginalize it, I mean, this is used frequently in the social justice circles.

I'm not saying that there's no one who's marginalized, but this is overused word, and how about just making sure everyone has help, help your people.

Don't show partiality, but leverage the ways your church is already speaking out on behalf of marginalized and vulnerable, fair distribution of resources.

I mean, he's worried that even, that they won't do this, that this isn't the way the church is for some reason.

The church, it must be leveraged in order to do this. I'm just pointing out the language.

It sounds an awful lot like the social justice language we get in liberal circles in the world.

Derwin Gray here, we fight with faith, hope, and love. Sadly, there have been incidents where Asians have been the target of racism and prejudice because of COVID -19.

Teach your people to treat everyone as though Jesus died for them because he did. We are to love our Asian sisters and brothers in this time of anguish.

It makes me so mad. It just rubs me the wrong way that this lie, this lie, this farce, that because of coronavirus,

Asians are being marginalized or treated in these unfair ways. And you see three instances in this website, links on this website and so forth to at least to that.

That's the issue. Your church needs to be more equitable and so forth. It's like this is part of fighting the coronavirus apparently.

But they are the trusted experts though. So there is that. One thing the website did not address, which, that I saw at least, and it is the question

I think a lot of ministers though, it's pretty much the number one question that ministers right now I think are focused on, is do we at some point reject whatever stipulations are coming down on us?

For instance, like I was hearing on a podcast today in the state of Washington, specifically churches were singled out as places that could not assemble because of the spread of this virus.

And the question then becomes, is the church, and this is a question I really want everyone to think through, is the church an essential element of the culture, of society, like grocery stores, think about it.

Grocery stores are still open, right? Restaurants in many places have closed or have to close by government order where there's a curfew, but people still need stuff.

So you can't just close down grocery stores. Is a church and meeting together and worshiping or having the house of God open, is that more or less important than having a grocery store open?

This is a question that you need to ask. And I think the answer is going to show you how much of a modernist, modernist in the sense of being affected by modernity and the secularization that has come with it, you are.

Or do you see this church as actually central, as actually essential?

Because if you see the church as essential, then you will see an institution that answers to heaven, to which the government does not actually have control or cannot exert itself.

And this has been kind of a feature of Western civilization for a long time. This is why Stonewall Jackson could teach slaves to read inside a church, against the law in Virginia at the time, but he could do it because he did it in a

Sunday school. He did it at church and the state did not have authority there. This is why even in some

Eastern Bloc countries, the populations there would have, it would just been gone really poorly for the

Soviets if they would have chased certain political prisoners in churches. I think

Romania is the one I'm thinking of. I think it was Romania where this happened in the late 80s. There was someone, it was a pastor who

I guess had found refuge in a church. But anyway, this was just kind of part of the fabric of Western civilization.

Even in places like China, Mao had to destroy the churches. Church has always represented the house of God.

And of course, in Exodus you see that governments can pursue a murderer even up to the altar.

I mean, they have a specific narrow role. There's a role that government has, a role the church has, a role the family has. But is it infringing on the church when the government says you cannot meet?

Or these restrictions make it impossible for you to meet and we're gonna enforce them by the threat of the gun, really, by the force.

And it's interesting, actually, Nine Marks, and I don't usually, you know, here's the thing about Nine Marks. Nine Marks has some really good things on church polity, church government.

They're going in a social justice direction fast on other things. Thabiti Anabwile, of course,

Nine Marks guy. Mark Devereux said a few things. He even has,

I'm not gonna go through the whole list. There's a bunch of things I could talk about in regards to Nine Marks. But they put out this really good blog,

I thought, really informative blog on their website about the Spanish flu and how the church is in Washington, DC and, you know, long story short, there was a ban by the local government and it started out, though, with basically a request.

We were requesting that churches not meet and then it became a demand. And then, though, it was actually becoming a showdown.

It went on for so long that, and there's some interesting quotes here. I'm gonna just read for you. Reverend Randolph McKim, a pastor in DC area, he argued in strong terms that nothing has so contributed to the state of panic which has gripped this community as the fact that the normal religious life of our city has been disorganized.

He further protested that when the Federation of Pastors met with the city commissioners to consider the matter, the commissioners reasoned purely on materialistic grounds.

No weight or consideration was given to the power of prayer or the comfort against anxiety that the church gatherings would provide.

In the author's words, that prayer had any efficiency in the physical world was an idea that was given no hospitality by the commissioners.

Another Baptist pastor, Milton Waldron, J. Milton Waldron, said that interfering with the freedom of religious worship was what the city officials were doing.

And again, these are city officials. This isn't federal or state. This is city officials. I guess in DC, you just have the city.

You don't have a state necessarily. But said that his people feel that the authorities are woefully lacking in reverence to God and wanting an incorrect knowledge of the character and mission of the church when they place it in the same class with pool rooms, dance halls, moving picture places and theaters.

And he said that the Christian church is not a luxury, but a necessity of the life and perpetuity of any nation.

And so I would encourage you maybe to go check that out because those are some wise words, some words we need to be thinking about.

You know, the church really should be, that is a sacred space, is the place of God that represents eternal things.

And can the government force? Well, I know there's some pastors out there, not many, who are ready to fight.

There's other pastors I know who have kind of said, we're gonna try to do what we can because we do want, we do care about social distancing.

We don't want our people to get the virus. But they have, there's a line though, that they say this line may not be crossed.

We will, we're not gonna indefinitely do it this way. And there are other pastors who are just, you know, internet's fine.

No, that's not church. Yeah, it's good that you can get some things through the internet, but that's not the idea behind church, coming together, using your gifts.

And so anyway, I just wanna get your head thinking in that respect.

Where are those lines? And what does it say that you have this, the trusted evangelicals putting out this kind of response?

And that's not the question that they're even addressing. They're really a lot more concerned about the fact that, you gotta make sure your church isn't racist against Chinese people.

This is ridiculous. All right, last but not least, this is a mega episode at this point, but we're gonna talk to Dr.

Bob and hope you enjoy it. Dr. Bob, you've been with us before, and it is my pleasure to welcome you back to the

Conversations That Matter podcast. Last time, you were talking about some social justice stuff that was happening at Duke University.

And now, you're becoming, very quickly, our guest expert on all things medical.

But now you're gonna be talking a little bit about what everyone's talking about, which is the coronavirus. So thank you so much for joining me.

I appreciate it. Well, thank you for having me back, John. It's certainly good to talk with you again.

Not sure I would claim medical expert on everything. I'm still only in my training, but I can at least give you what

I know. And I would say to all the viewers out there, if you want direct medical advice, please speak to your personal provider.

Yeah, well, Dr. Bob, you do have some unique abilities in this area on a few fronts, which is one of the reasons

I wanted to interview you. And I know, partially because you do work for Duke, and you are a fan, in some respects at least, from what you've told me, of this podcast.

We're keeping you anonymous for now. But this is for those who listen to the podcast and enjoy it and wanna hear my take, and I wanna hear your take.

So we're gonna talk about this coronavirus deal. Tell everyone a little bit about yourself, though, as far as what kind of work you do, without giving too much away for identity purposes.

Yeah, well, if that's the problem, it's because I'm so unique. It's kinda hard to keep myself under wraps.

But my background is that I did my undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering at the top five

US engineering school in my home state. And after that,

I proceeded to go to medical school, and also picked up concurrently with my medical degree a master's of science in public health with a concentration of biostatistics and bioinformatics, which sort of plays off of my engineering background.

And so I really have two passions. I have a love for medicine, but also a love for data science.

Both passions going all the way back to early childhood. I started programming for the first time my freshman year of college, which is kinda funny because I actually hated my first programming class, but now that's actually something

I can potentially see myself doing in addition to doing the whole medical thing. Some of the research that I do,

I have field -specific research, but also more translational research that I do here that involves artificial intelligence research, whether that's image analysis or natural language processing, looking at images of specimens or going through medical research reports.

So I'm still sort of in the infancy of doing a lot of the backend work. I have a pretty extensive background in the

Python and R programming languages to be specific. Okay, that's a lot, I think.

I think it's probably, you're very smart and we all understand that now, for sure.

I definitely don't know what half of those things are that you just mentioned. So I know you have some experience in disease control.

I know you were telling me. Well, at least I've studied it. I have a master's degree in public health, which

I guess means something. Yeah, well, I would think so, combined with all your other abilities and skills here.

And I know you were telling me before we started recording, you're actually gonna be taking part in doing some research that is related to the current crisis that is sweeping our country and our world.

So, and I'm not expecting you to get into all of that, but just wanted people to kind of be aware of who you are, what you do.

And I know your microphone was popping a little. I don't know if it's too close to your mouth. Just wanted to make you aware of that real quick before we get into the meat here.

So here's the first question. I think I am not unique in this.

I wasn't even gonna put out an episode this week, but this thing has gotten so much bigger than I ever thought even a week ago it would become.

And there's so many different facets to it. You have obviously the biological element, you have a political element.

There's even now there's a religious element. And so I was hoping to start off with biological elements since that's your area.

What is this virus? And can you explain specifically kind of like how it invades the body, how it spreads, the mechanics behind it?

Yeah, so the first thing for your users who don't really have much of a biological background, the first thing to note is that this is a virus that is the pathogen or the disease causing agent.

Viruses are small infectious agents that have genetic information. So DNA or RNA, which that's actually a very technical term, that they can replicate inside living cells, but they lack the basic structure and function of living cells.

Therefore, for the longest time, they haven't really been considered to be living organisms per se, because they lack the key components that actually make a cell a cell.

And scientists, biologists have typically considered cells to be the basic unit of life, which makes it difficult when learning to treat these things because all of our antibacterials or antifungals that target bacterial or fungal pathogens, those attack components of the cell.

And so those components are lacking in viruses, which make viruses a unique challenge from both a clinical and a public health perspective.

So this particular virus is the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2.

For some of your more politically or historically savvy listeners, the

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus was actually first seen in 2002 and 2003 in China in the quote unquote

SARS outbreak. And so this virus is the same coronavirus, but it's a different strain.

So it's not genetically related per se to the original 2002, 2003 virus, but it is that same form of coronavirus, so to speak.

And so there's an obvious question at this point. SARS was not what we, we didn't have the reactions, we didn't have the amount of cases and the severity.

What makes this different? Is it that it's more contagious? Is it contagious in earlier stages when it's not noticeable?

And so people aren't naturally keeping their distance. What's going on?

It's still hard to say exactly why this is so much more severe than the original SARS outbreak.

We're still sort of in our infancy and learning all of the epidemiology behind this thing.

I think part of it definitely has to do with a slow reaction on the part of governments, both locally where the virus originated from as well as internationally once the virus began to spread abroad.

This virus is also, like I said, a little bit different from that original SARS virus. So it could have properties that make it more virulent compared to the one that we saw back in the early 2000s.

So how does something like this pandemic, how does it get started and how does it spread? Yeah, so what is sort of, to define some terms like what is a pandemic, there's three related terms within the epidemiology world that sort of describe ways in which diseases present themselves within the community.

The first of those would be something that we would call endemic. So this is a disease like tuberculosis in say certain developing countries where the tuberculosis bacteria in that case is just naturally, has come to a natural equilibrium within the habitat.

So there's a certain number of people in that particular geographic area who would just be carrying the tuberculosis bacterium.

When it goes beyond the normal baseline level, that is what we would call an epidemic, but an epidemic would still be sort of confined to the same general geographic area.

Pandemic is when now you have an epidemic that starts crossing borders and not just national borders, but continental borders.

And so the term global pandemic would be a pandemic that has crossed continents, that has crossed hemispheres and is affecting the entire globe, or at least a significant portion of it.

Now, here's the question I have, and this is kind of a broad question, so you can take this in many different directions, but with your expertise, what concerns you the most about the situation from a medical standpoint?

Because we know that people are, some people are getting very emotional about this, very fearful.

You kind of tell us, give us a barometer, tell us kind of like how concerned you are about this.

You probably are more aware of the current numbers coming in from different places and the effect that this could have on the medical infrastructure of the

United States. Yeah, so one of the big challenges right now is that we don't have any point of care testing.

So there's not like a test, say like, somebody who again, like diabetes point of care, you have like a little monitor that you can take some blood and then that blood will give an analyzed reading, then we'll tell you sort of what your blood sugar level is.

Or we have a point of care testing for things like streptococcus pneumonia or other pathogens that are out there.

We don't have that right now. All we have are sort of the big, behind the scenes laboratory testing kits that are not necessarily easily usable by somebody who's not an expert.

Okay, so the measure for us though, the measures that are taking place right now in local governments, state governments, even what people are choosing to do themselves against what we know about this virus, if possible.

Because here's what I'm hearing. Yeah, it's not really something that will kill you if you're young and in good health.

It's something that the median age is about 80 years old. And of course, the numbers keep changing as far as what comes in from Italy, which

I know is a culture where it's aging and everyone's kissing each other. And then the numbers that we have from China, and then the numbers are being currently updated.

But there's a kind of a lag in what we, the numbers available to us here in the United States. But I realize we have limited information, but with what we do know, which is what

I'm interested in, why are the reactions the way they are?

The social distancing, canceling businesses and churches. Is this something from a medical standpoint that is procedural or advisable?

Or does this seem to you to be something that is overkill and do what

England did initially and what the governor of California, I think was doing initially, which is just nursing homes and places where people are susceptible, kind of shut those down, but don't crash your economy and your tax base, which you need to fight this.

That's the root of it for me. Yeah, so one of the things about this disease, so when they caught the original

SARS back in 2002, 2003, it was characterized by fever, cough, shortness of breath, some of the same signs that we see in this particular virus.

But what was really concerning about it was how it spread, is that it spread through respiratory droplets, which allows for very easy person -to -person contact.

Basically, what I'm saying is if somebody coughs or is even just breathing in close proximity, there's a risk for transmission of the disease.

That's in contrast to something like the HIV virus, which takes the exchange of bodily fluids.

It's not something that spreads through the air. And so that's what makes this virus so dangerous, very similar to the influenza virus, sort of broadly speaking, in that this is something that is transmitted person -to -person without necessarily having physical contact or the exchange of bodily fluids.

Don't we go through that every flu season, though, on some level? I mean, that's - Yeah, there is, the flu does have a much higher morbidity and mortality.

So morbidity being the effect that it has on patients, people getting sick, and then mortality, people actually dying, than most of the general public would be aware of.

But I've seen numbers on this virus anywhere from four to 80 times more, at a higher risk of death than the influenza virus.

So something that spreads with the same ease as the influenza virus, but that has a higher mortality.

And that comes down to the mechanism of action of how this virus actually works in the body. So there's a reason it's called the severe acute respiratory syndrome, coronavirus.

That's because one of the complications that it can lead to is acute respiratory distress syndrome.

Which is a pretty bad outcome. There's three essentially pathways this disease can take.

You can have essentially a common cold type of pathway where all you have is upper respiratory sort of nasal pharyngeal symptoms.

You know, runny nose, that kind of stuff, what we would classically call rhinitis. Or it can go down into the lower respiratory tract and cause a pneumonia -like picture.

Or in this case, it can cause what we call acute respiratory distress syndrome, which is a more severe outcome of lower respiratory tract infection.

This essentially leads to rapid loss of oxygen in the person who is infected, as well as edema or filling of the lungs with fluid.

And this is caused by injury to the alveoli, which are the units of gas exchange in the lungs.

And there's some thought that, there's a lot of speculation as to why that is, but it seems that the immune system ramps up.

And you have damaged your alveoli from both your own immune cells, as well as what the virus is doing to your alveoli.

Okay, so this is a dangerous virus. Even if you're young, something you don't wanna get, even if it looks,

I mean, everything I've heard is that more than likely you're living through this, like 99 % or more, you're living through this if you're not predisposed to kind of a condition that would affect your lungs or your elderly.

From what you're saying though, I mean, it's gonna be nasty, even if you live. And we don't know at this point, right, if it can come back or what kind of long -term effects.

Is that right? Yeah, there's some preliminary reports that are out there that people can still shed the viruses weeks after they've recovered, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're infectious, but we're not necessarily sure sort of what that post -recovery infectious window is at this point.

I think there is preliminary data that's coming out there, but we don't have a full picture just yet because this virus is so new.

We first covered this thing back, I think they said the first documented case was like the 17th of November, so only about four months ago, which you put that in sort of a long chronic time span.

It's not, that is yesterday. Right, and it's interesting that in Italy, in Milan, where the fashion industry is, and there's a lot of Chinese who work there, that's where it started there.

And you have this exchange. I mean, people were flying to Europe, from Europe to the United States, from China to the

United States before the border or the airline traffic was closed to them.

And this virus, I mean, I'm just putting two and two together here. This virus has been in the

United States most likely for much longer than we probably realized, much longer than we were actually testing for it.

And so I'm wondering how many of us thought we got a bad flu. I know I got a flu in December, and maybe we actually got this virus.

Is that possible that people who did not know they had coronavirus have maybe already had it or are carriers for it?

I've heard, that's another thing I've heard, that you can be a carrier without having the symptoms, so forth and so on.

Yeah, well, it goes back to it. As I mentioned before, you have those three sort of main pathways of disease here, and you could just have the sniffles or a runny nose or even a pneumonia -type illness or a pneumonia -like illness that you could have thought was the flu that could have been coronavirus.

We're just not sure at this point how many people who had those symptoms or who were basically asymptomatic actually had this virus.

I think we know that it's been in the U .S. probably at least since January, but there's still not a lot out there as far as when exactly it arrived in the

United States. So let me ask you this question. Before we get into the politics, I know you're conservative, you are a

Christian. We agree on, I mean, I don't know where we disagree as far as I know at this point, but we'd probably have to talk a lot about very specific subjects to find something we disagree on, so I wanna get into that.

But first, just from a medical standpoint, give some advice to my listeners as far as what to do to prevent this.

Obviously, we know the things we're being told like wash your hands, social distancing.

There's been a number of things online, though, going around for cures and potential cures that I'd like to just get your thoughts on this.

Is there an inoculation coming out? Are there things that people could be eating or drinking that are better than others?

Tell me what your thoughts are. Well, there is work that's being done on vaccinations at this point.

That's probably one of the failings of the public health system in response to the last two coronavirus outbreaks, both the 2003

SARS as well as the 2009 Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome virus that we probably should have been working on and at least a general coronavirus vaccine that could have provided at least some coverage.

Just as we do with the flu every year, you're not gonna get 101 to one matchup with the flu strain each year with the vaccine that you develop.

But as far as what people can be doing, I think definitely cutting down your unnecessary travel in public.

Yes, making sure you wash your hands. Some things that are probably not smart to do is all of the panic buying that you see going on.

And also when it comes to the respiratory mass, this is something I think that needs to be said is that we only have a limited supply and this gets back into some political and economic issues of just in time supply and those sorts of things where I was reading, we only have like 30 to 50 million

N95 respirator masks and we only have a certain number of respirator machines in hospital

ICUs. And that when people are out buying surgical masks, which actually do not protect them at all, there's no demonstrated efficacy of using a surgical mask and preventing the spread.

And for the masks that actually do prevent something called the N95, those are masks that you actually, if you're a healthcare worker, you get fitted for and trained on to make sure you're using it properly.

So it actually doesn't do you much good if you're going out there and buying a mask that could be saved and reserved for a frontline healthcare worker who is actually involved in treating patients and using that mask improperly.

Yeah, and I've read some things even in Georgia, I think it was outside of Atlanta, hospital was talking about how they've already are having a shortage of certain things like hospital gowns and that sort of thing.

And I think it's in preparation for this and what they're already experiencing. I mean, they're over,

I think it was 150 people or so for something like that are already being tested. And so this is kind of for some areas, a strain that they weren't expecting.

Are you concerned that the medical infrastructure in certain parts of this country could be strained?

Well, that's one of the things you may have heard in the media, the so -called flattening of the curve. That's right.

And that refers to the epidemic curve, which essentially has to do with the incubation period and how many people get sick at a certain time.

And the idea of flattening the curve is sort of with the social distancing, with the precautions such as cleaning surfaces, avoiding unnecessary travel, that we may have the same number of people who get sick, but if we can spread out when they get sick, you're not gonna have a spike in sick people, which is one of the reasons

I would tell the young people out there to take this very seriously as well, is that, yes, even if you get this virus and you're not gonna die, if you come down with pneumonia and you end up in the hospital, because you were not taking proper precautions and there are enough people like you who made the same decision, that is gonna put a tremendous burden on the healthcare system.

And it's not just patients who are also dealing with this, who are in more susceptible groups, but also patients who are already in the hospital for other medical conditions, whether they're on dialysis or whether they're awaiting a transplant, heart surgery, many of the other medical necessary procedures that different patients need.

If the hospitals are overburdened with taking care of people who are falling ill to this coronavirus, then that's gonna put a strain on people who don't have it, who are there for other reasons.

So that's why I would say it is very important for people to take the precautions that their local public health organizations, as well as the

CDC and other federal entities are recommending people do.

Okay, political angle now. I go - You're gonna get in trouble, John.

I'll try not to, I'll try to have my own little commentary and say some of the more outrageous things, outrageous, of course, to more leftist.

Your words, not mine. Yeah, exactly, exactly. I won't make you say something that you don't wanna say and you can certainly pass on a question, but -

Sure. So we go outside, I live in Virginia, it's a smaller town and people aren't dying in the streets.

For the most part, things look the same way that they looked except for the fact that the stores are more crowded, the toilet paper's gone, which is an ironic thing to me because it's like all these things are being shut down, but everyone's still going to the store, so they're still around each other in that context, but I digress.

And there's, my knee -jerk reaction is like, why in the world are we going through all this trouble of 10 people now can't be in the same proximity with each other?

And the question that arrived in my mind a couple days ago was like, why don't we just treat this like we do any other flu?

And if you are susceptible to these kinds of things, you know the risks, don't go out, lock down the nursing homes, that kind of thing, but don't shoot your entire economy so that you don't have the tax base to fight this kind of thing.

And that's, I guess, my concern is that, is the cure worse than the disease?

And so I'm spitballing at this point, but I've already talked to, by the time we're recording this,

I've already had a little mini -commentary about this before we even got started. So my audience knows how

I feel about it. I want to hear your thoughts, though, because you know more than me about the medical procedures and threat of this virus, and I know you're a conservative guy.

Do you see a threat to civil liberties, or maybe a precedent being set for the erosion of those liberties in the future?

Give me your thoughts on this. Obviously, I can sort of answer that in general without getting into too many of the details, because I don't want to speak more than I know.

Obviously, it's a very difficult balance that has to be maintained between defending and protecting the public health at large, as well as individual practitioners trying to protect their patients with the issues of civil liberties.

I think what needs to be looked at more long -term is not necessarily how we react when things like these hit our shores, but how do we react prior to something like this hitting again?

I think we really need to consider how our agencies respond.

There is a story that was published, I think it was the New York Times or Washington Post, talking about, it was the

Washington Post, I gave you the link, that talked about how the World Health Organization had already created testing kits that were working in the field that were being used in other countries, such as South Korea, yet the

CDC, basically because of red tape and things of that nature, and I don't want to bash people in the

CDC, I'm sure they're doing a good job, and there's obviously been some adjustments since then, but there was not allowing that test to be used.

They were trying to develop their own test, which from my understanding, based on the Washington Post article, not only did their test not work, it failed to have the same level of efficacy as the

World Health Organization test, but it actually prevented private companies and local and state public health organizations from developing their own testing procedures and validating those procedures and getting these tests to the markets sooner, and so I think there is definitely an issue of government regulation and government red tape that caused us to drag our feet a little bit on this.

I also think that as soon as this virus had gone from more of an endemic level to an epidemic level in Wuhan and in the

Hubei province of China, that we should have been probably re -evaluating our point.

I don't know what the specific answer would have been, but re -evaluating travel from those regions earlier than we did, and so now we're essentially living with the fruits of what that is doing.

The information, if I'm correct in this, was not available at the time.

I mean, we didn't have the numbers that were coming out of Italy coming out of Wuhan, and so it didn't seem like the threat that it is now, if I'm not mistaken on that.

So, I have colleagues from China, and I have a great working relationship with them, but there is,

I think... You can say I'm wrong. Yeah, there needs to be,

I think, looking into, their government needs to do some self -reflection on their end as far as how they handled it locally.

It seems like it probably spun out of control sooner than they were anticipating.

And it's something that they, as a nation, need to look into as well.

It's not just, we obviously need to do what we can here in the United States, but we should encourage other countries to adopt standards of public health and dissemination of information that we have here in the

United States, even if we do have an imperfect system ourselves. Now, a question for you.

This is in the public now. I mean, we're gonna be dealing with this for a long time to come.

Is that right? Yeah, I think we're at least weeks, potentially months, possibly up to a year or more.

And so, in order to flatten the curve, I guess a concern I have is do we indefinitely then shut down churches and businesses and social gatherings?

I mean, is there a line which you think you would look at that and say, okay, that's too far?

We can't, because if it's out there, everyone's gonna get it eventually. The only reason that we're doing all these things at this point is to learn more about the virus and also to flatten the curve, as you said.

But it is, I mean, are we gonna be dealing with this perhaps in two years? That flu season, if you haven't gotten it yet, will it be coming back around?

I guess that's my question. Yeah. Yeah, well, okay. Yeah, I think this is not the last epidemic we're gonna see.

I think one thing that makes it so challenging is I don't think any of us have seen this in our lifetimes, nor have our parents or maybe even our grandparents seen anything like this.

You probably have to go all the way back to the late 1940s and the polio outbreak at that time.

Or maybe even all the way back to the Spanish flu that we saw in 1919, 1920, to have something of this magnitude.

Our public, and this is a testament, I think, to our healthcare system and to our public health system, just how well they have worked for so long.

But as the world becomes more globalized, we're gonna have to make a choice as to how far we want that globalization to go.

As you globalize the economy, you're gonna expose yourselves to the issues that arise in other nations more and more.

Yes, we used to have two oceans that protected us from the rest of the world, but with high -speed air travel and students from all over the world coming to our universities and businesses, their commerce that is taking place, that's something that is gonna have an impact.

We've never seen anything like this in human history. And so I think if we want to accept that reality, we have to prepare ourselves more to respond more quickly to things like this in the future.

Now, as far as sort of rounding that back to your original question, John, for us as Christians, and now

I'm speaking as a Christian, not as a medical professional, it's that balancing, it's balancing the first and second greatest commandments.

Our first commandment is obviously to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. And we want to do that in light of you and I being convictional

Protestants, in light of the doctrine of sola scriptura. What does it mean to live out our faith in light of what the scriptures say?

The scriptures command us in Hebrews, chapter 10, verse 25, not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together.

First Corinthians 11, as often as we eat the bread and partake of the cup, we've reclaimed the

Lord's death until he comes. We have the structures and ordinances of the preaching of the word, of the baptizing of those who have made professions of faith and those who are confessing that faith, partaking of the

Lord's table together. Those are things that we cannot put off indefinitely. But at the same time, we do need to balance that with being a good neighbor.

And as Christians setting the example for having a right obedience unto

Caesar, as Paul talks about in Romans 13, understanding that the government has been ordained by God for the punishing of evil doers.

And for those who are breaking the law, in this case, I would say that application could be extended to those who are being reckless in a public health sense.

But that is something we're going to have to ask ourselves and what point that is, what line in the sand.

I would say that I don't necessarily know where that is at other than to say that we know what we are commanded in scripture.

And eventually we have to resume that. But in the meantime, we can use this time to be good neighbors and to proclaim the gospel, to volunteer with church relief efforts, to obey the authorities and everything that they say in terms of reasonable evidence -based public health practices.

But I think there will come a time where yes, we as Christians, we do have to express our faith.

We're not the first generation of Christians down throughout the long march of church history that has dealt with epidemic disease.

You think back to the Black Plague or back to the early church with the

Antonine Plague or the Plague of Justinian, or even into the reform period where Luther and Calvin, and even up into the late 1800s,

Charles Spurgeon, this was a daily reality. That's why there is such intense theological debate on so many of the issues that you see, whether it's infant baptism is because death was a more present and immediate reality for people in those times than it has been for us today.

And I think in a lot of ways we've become lax because of the prosperity, because of the structures that prior generations had built that have kept us insulated for the most part.

And so I think there is gonna have to be a reevaluation for how we as Christians interact with government and how we interact with our fellow citizens.

Well, well said, I appreciate it, Dr. Bob. You are always welcome to come on this program and talk about anything going on in the medical world.

And your advice, both on a Christian level and as a medical expert are invaluable.

So definitely appreciate you sharing that. Anything we could be in prayer for you as you are engaged,

I'm trying to put this delicately, in responding to this crisis in the capacity in where you work.

Yeah, well, I've definitely heard coming out of Italy that there's been a number of healthcare workers who've been infected and even in China before that and healthcare professionals, both doctors, nurses, and other allied health professionals who have succumbed to this disease.

And so there are people out there every day who are putting their lives on the line and being in prayer for them, understanding that one of the things

I used to say back during medical school when I'd interact with people who would come for seminary, they're like, what's the way

I can get involved in the city or ministry? And it's like, well, doing hospital chaplaincy work and that kind of work, obviously, there's public health restrictions and precautions at this point, but as we begin to recover from this and some of those restrictions come off, as people who are more professional ministers, pastors, to get into the hospital setting, not just for the patients and their families, for gospel opportunity, but for the healthcare professionals, for the people who maintain our hospitals.

It's a large sector of our economy and there's a lot of people who are engaged in this fight. So just be in prayer for them.

I would say be in prayer for our leaders as well. There's obviously a lot of tough decisions that are having to be made, both within the federal government, state governments, local governments, and even governments overseas.

So I would say be in prayer for leadership as well. Yeah, I wanted to kind of end this whole thing on a high note and prayer is certainly, looking to God is certainly that.

Some other things that just came to my mind, even though as you were so rightfully saying, we should be praying for our leaders and for our medical health professionals and getting involved in whatever areas we can.

Ecclesiastes says that it is better to be in the house of mourning because there a man considers his end.

And I often think about that when I go to a funeral, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a funeral because there's a lot of people right now that are considering their end.

And I actually put a post out there on Twitter. For those who follow me on Twitter, I've been posting about this kind of multiple times a day.

But earlier today, I was saying how on, it was Amazon Prime, there's this pandemic movie that's trending.

All of a sudden, it's one of the most popular movies people are watching. And there's a lot of worry out there.

And this is a good time to switch from thinking about our own mortality to thinking about eternity, not just the fact that we're gonna physically die, but the fact that life actually goes on after that.

And I would hope that movies about Jesus, like the one that Gibson did a few years ago, or religious movies that are trying to answer those ultimate questions would be the ones trending.

They're not right now. But this should be a time when people start to reflect on their own lives.

And if we were getting a notification from the media, our social media, everywhere we looked, every time a car accident happened, we'd be freaking out about car accidents because we'd think, oh my goodness, we need to regulate the roads more.

We can't have cars as close as they are. And all the things that go into a car accident, we must prevent that.

And we'd be obsessing over it. But right now, that's not the issue. The issue is this virus.

And so people are obsessing over it. But we could easily just as well die in a car accident.

And in fact, we're all gonna die anyway in the end. If it's not coronavirus, it's gonna be something else.

And so now is the time to repent of sin and to put our trust, if you're not one of Christ's, to put your trust in him for your salvation, that he took the sins that you committed on himself on the cross and he paid for them.

And you can be in a right relationship with God if you repent and you put your trust not in your own works or your deeds or anything in you, your decision, but solely in the work of Jesus Christ.

And that is the message that counts for something in eternity.

And so anyway, I felt compelled to kind of end on that note. But you were going in that direction and you're doing such a good job.

I just wanted to jump in there and add to what you were saying. So thank you. Well, yeah, thank you,

John, for having me on. You know, I sent you that sort of document that has all the sort of official channels, contains links to the

CDC website, as well as all the official channels. I would just reiterate that.

I'm just giving my one perspective. This is not medical advice that I'm giving at all. I just wanna be a good citizen and get the information out there that I know.

I'll make that available, by the way. Everyone who wants to see that document you put together, not to cut you off, but it will be in the link below there.

So I just wanna let everyone know that. Yep, excellent. All right, well, thank you, John, for having me on again.

And yeah, let's do it again, hopefully under better circumstances and maybe hopefully after a quarantine and all the public health restrictions have been lifted.

Yeah, maybe we can talk about all your politically incorrect ideas that you don't say in front of the camera or on the recorder.

I'm just kidding. Yeah, Dr. Bob, thank you so much. God bless you and have a good night, all right?