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never ending covid. the nation is in a resurgence of covid-19 cases. the virus is being passed in bars, through shopping, parties, and an infinite list of places and events where people are doing the simple action of coming together. there’s a toll we pay for not doing this, but as rp eddy explains in today’s episode, the pandemic will continue to drag on if we don’t enact vigilant measures of social distancing, mask wearing, and cleaning. how will schools—vital to the education, nutrition, and job market of the nation—open? will this summer become safer or more dangerous for infections?

tom scott is chairman & co-founder of the nantucket project. rp eddy was the architect of the Clinton administration’s pandemic response framework and the United Nations response to the global AIDS epidemic & is CEO of global intelligence firm Ergo.  

rp is co-author of the best-selling award-winning book Warnings: Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes with Richard A. Clarke, Former National Security Council counterterrorism adviser.

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rp daily never ending covid.mp3
 
[00:00:16] OK, RP. 
 
[00:00:19] It is Tuesday. Today is the 14th of July, having spoken to you in a little bit, Covid, Covid, and more Covid. 
 
[00:00:31] There's just a lot of Covid talk going on right now. My general feeling is that, you know, the headlines are pretty heavy and you're seeing some reversals in places like California. 
 
[00:00:43] But I also feel a sense of sort of just true exasperation where people are sort of throwing their hands up, throwing their hands up innocent. 
 
[00:00:49] Again, my impression in the sense that they don't really expect the feds to do anything. I guess on a state level, things may happen. I dropped one of my sons off at camp last week after he was, you know, tested negative for the disease. And I'm trying to keep my own head. You've given advice that is about being your own leader and practicing being covered smart. I think my own behavior is primarily covered smart. But I'm also about to take a team on the road to travel down the Mississippi to do a variety of conversations to clarify. They are all outside. They will all have masks. They will all have safe practices and they'll be small. You're talking like 15 people on 11 different nights. So I got a lot on my mind and it's not easy. But if you could react to two things, one, I'd like to talk today a little bit about our trip and to what the hell like the big world is talking a lot about it again. And things seem out of control in a way, or it's certainly the media tells it that way. 
 
[00:01:54] There is a reversal. It's great to see you, Tom, and great to see you, too. 
 
[00:01:59] There's a there's a there's this weird irony I think is true about this disease, which is if it was a little more deadly, it would have killed less people. And because it kills less than one percent of the entire group of people who are infected and because that crowd tends to be older, not entirely, and thereby kind of a hidden death. 
 
[00:02:23] We had this in America and a couple other nations, not many, this lagging, lagging, lagging sense of taking it at all seriously. 
 
[00:02:32] In that moment of lagging, you're taking it seriously, led to that leadership vacuum, led to a lot of room for us to start fighting among ourselves about nonfactual aspects. Bullshit, basically. Sorry, Mom. And my mom told me not to curse as much.