Episode Transcript: #1451 - Dr. Peter Hotez

It's great to see you again Joe. I feel a lot better seeing you now.

I feel a lot better seeing you too, especially with the bow ties we talked about before. Your signature touch.

Yeah, as I was saying, I tried to start wearing a regular tie for a while. It was like when Dylan started switching to electric instruments at the Newport Folk Festival and there were just cries of outrage so I had to...

What kind of cries of outrage are you getting about your bow tie? Especially in these trying times?

They liked the bow tie. The point was I tried to switch to a regular tie for a while and they said there's no way that can happen.

Yeah, that's what I meant. I screwed it up. Who's getting upset at you wearing a regular tie? Those people need to get alive.

I think it was meant in a good natured way.

I'm sure. We don't do very many of these Skype ones because they're odd. I don't know if you've done too many of these. Sometimes people talk over each other. It's very strange.

Yeah, I guess it's the epidemic, right? Otherwise I'd be on a plane and come to see you in LA.

Yeah, we'll do that again sometime. So let's get going. So taking it from the top, let's discuss... Give us your take on how we got here.

Because this has been very strange. Obviously the president completely miscalculated what was going to happen and the way he was explaining it to the news.

He was kind of saying that it was just a few cases and they'll be gone. And now obviously New York City is shut down. The entire country is separated from each other. Everybody is isolating at home.

Give us your take on how we got here.

Well, the truth is we knew this was coming or something like it. We had a heads up. Even a heads up before last year because this is now our third major coronavirus disaster of the 21st century.

We had what's called SAR, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2003 that started in China and caused a terrible epidemic in Toronto. It actually took the Rolling Stones to do a concert to bring the economy back to Toronto in 2003.

And then it was Mayor's Coronavirus Infection in 2012 and this is the third one. So we actually realized that coronaviruses were going to become a new thing and we embarked on a big coronavirus vaccine program a decade ago.

And each time they've caused devastating hospital epidemics, they've affected healthcare workers. So the point is this unfortunately has become a new normal for the globe is terrible coronavirus epidemics.

And we saw this one coming up at the end of 2019 in China and I knew we were in for trouble because that's what coronaviruses do.

So you knew that we were going to be in trouble because there was no way they can contain it and keep it in China?