Episode 1 For Posterity Not Prosperity Transcription

Brian  0:19  

Hello?

Bo  0:20  

Hey

Brian  0:20  

Good morning.  How are you doing?

Bo  0:20  

Doing well.

So are you on hands-free speaker phone?

Yeah, I’m on the bluetooth system in my car.

Okay.  Yeah, I don’t know if that’s gonna be high quality enough, but I’ll send you the recording so you can hear it. Can you this may not be possible because you’re making it because we’re making an actual phone call but you couldn’t do Skype over it right? 

Brian  0:36  

Skype over?  Uh, that wouldn’t change the microphone.

Bo  0:40  

Well, but like a phone call us a cell phone call, usually a phone call usually sounds lower quality, because it’s, like, more compressed, I guess.

Brian  0:54  

Yeah. Voice over IP thing, or whatever.

Bo  0:56  

Yeah.  It’s just something I’ve noticed. But, you know, not a big deal. We’ll figure that out. Yeah, okay. And then the other. The other thing is people are texting. So I’m gonna, like have these dings, because I’m on the phone recording. Then if anybody texts me dings in the audio, like, I don’t know how to separate that.

Brian  1:21  

I also thought about that. As far as like road noise. 

Bo  1:26  

Yeah, sure. it’ll, it’ll be there. But it won’t. It’s not too bad. I don’t think we’ll see. Plus, you know, anybody listening is probably driving so they’ll just think their own car.  “Why is the road exceptionally loud today?”

Brian  1:44  

Yeah, exactly. Right. My Mercedes usually doesn’t sound like this.  That’s our target audience right?

Bo  1:54  

That is of course the target audience, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I don’t know who else I don’t know who else would listen. Unless you’re driving a luxury car.

Brian  2:06  

Yeah. 

Bo  2:07  

So how’s it been going?

Brian  2:11  

Good. Just going through the grind. Enjoying total lack of preparedness and consistency in messaging?

Bo  2:21  

Are you saying that publicly? You got to be careful what you say.

Brian  2:25  

Oh, yeah. No.

Bo  2:28  

We’ll pull that out. Don’t worry.

Brian  2:30  

My own personal gripe.  Their mask requirements are the most convoluted insanity ever, but we’ll talk about that later.

Bo  2:38  

Well, you can talk about it. We’ll cut all this out. It’s fine.

Unknown Speaker  2:41  

Yeah, I did. Like they’re like, yeah, it’s a lot of details. And it’s like, wait, but you’re just contradicted yourself. And like, who’s enforcing this because it says it will be enforced. But then they’re like, use the proper channels. And they don’t ever tell us who the proper channels are. And I’m not gonna call the police. I’m not gonna call the police on the students for not wearing a mask.

Bo  3:04  

Has anybody ever done a study on?  Oh, what was I? I had, like a fleeting thought last night about, actually. And then I got distracted and forgot to follow up. But I wondered, what was it was, has anybody done any research to determine like, if, like to compare messaging in different countries and behavior? So 

Brian  3:37  

Oh, yeah. Yeah.  There’s a guy in Georgia Southern that does this.

Bo  3:43  

Oh, really? 

Brian  3:45  

Yeah. 

Bo  3:46  

So is the, to me the the least successful thing to do is to shame people for not wearing masks.

Brian  3:53  

Yeah, it creates 2 groups. 

Bo  3:54  

Right.  Which is more successful…  It’ll probably happen again. Gosh, I got to figure out how to isolate everything to what we’re doing in these times.

Brian  4:07  

What if we did a Zoom call?

Bo  4:11  

Maybe?

Brian  4:16  

Is that better or worse than Skype?  The problem is that I go through to kind of data dead zones. 

Bo  4:18  

Okay.  So the call might mess up?

Brian  4:22  

Yeah. And then I’ll forget doing right between the and that other town. 

Bo  4:28  

It’s okay. You don’t need to give specifics.

Brian  4:34  

Oh that’s true.  

Bo  4:35  

Sorry, we haven’t talked about any of this.  We’ll say our names probably but maybe only first names. I don’t know.  We got to be harder to find than Andrew. 

Brian  4:50  

Yeah!  Haha.  With like an hour of cyber snooping and you find his homestead.

Bo  4:50  

That’s right.  But uh,yeah, so anyway, I had that thought like it what’s the what’s the most effective way to for I guess, you know, without sounding like for the government to control people, but what I mean is, if you’re in public health, and your goal is to get people to follow whatever guidelines, you’re laying out, what is the most effective method psychologically, I wonder?

Brian  5:23  

Well, so the first thing they teach you is that your intervention has been culturally acceptable. It’s not that it’s not a viable intervention. 

Bo  5:30  

Ooh, so.  So let’s pause there.  Are masks culturally acceptable in the US? I would, I would argue, no.

Brian  5:40  

Yeah, I would say that as well. But I mean, it’s also the first of all, that most Public Health people ignore much like, you know, abortion, and, you know, South American or Central American countries, like, that’s not culturally acceptable, but it’s still something that’s written about all the time and literature. 

Bo  5:57  

Oh I see. Okay. 

Brian  5:59  

Yeah. Or like they have like, they call him the gatekeepers, right. So you find you get some sort of community involvement. And it doesn’t matter how effective the intervention is, it won’t be taken up if there’s not, you know, I guess trust, so like, have you ever heard of PrEP- the prophalactic HIV treatment? 

Bo  6:25  

No, no. 

Brian  6:27  

If you’re a high risk person, and you take PrEP, your probability of getting an HIV infection is like, effectively zero, as long as you take the medication correctly. 

Bo  6:37  

Wow. 

Brian  6:38  

Yeah, it’s super effective, right? So they were trying that, in a group of prostitutes in I’m gonna forget the country, over in Asia. And they got zero community buy-in that in this rumor started that these pills are really to make you sterile, and, you know, do all these other things. So the trial pretty much canceled because they didn’t bring in or you know, weren’t transparent enough with the, with the participants.

Bo  7:12  

Right, like, I feel like you have this outside organization. And it feels it feels very, like why are they coming over here to study us?  I understand that, or what are they? They’re, they’re testing their drugs on us because they don’t value us.

Brian  7:29  

Exactly.  Yeah. All those things happen. Yep. 

Bo  7:33  

That’s interesting.

Brian  7:33  

So yeah, the first thing is ethically acceptable. And then if it’s not then you need to find another intervention and then go from there. But sometimes there isn’t another option. So you just mitigate.

Bo  7:46  

Sure. Yeah, so you  do you do the best that you can. So if you’re trying to, you know, if you’re trying to if your goal is something that’s not culturally acceptable, which loosely masks are probably not.  How do you motivate people the best?  You’re saying use parenting tricks of creating trust?

Brian  8:09  

Yeah, 

Bo  8:10  

Basically, that’s what you’re talking about. You’re you’re talking about a form of parenting? I think it’s tricking, tricking them into trusting you. And then this sounds terrible. I don’t mean it that way. But it sounds like you’re It’s funny how people talk about this sort of thing. It’s like, everyone they treat is they treated as if everyone’s an idiot, and maybe everyone is, but sometimes I’m like, can you give anybody any credit?

Brian  8:34  

For Yeah, for like, self, a lot of self determination? I don’t know. I suffer from the oh my God, everyone’s an idiot, myself. And I also look at myself like, oh, well, I’m an idiot about these topics. Therefore, I will not make you know, based on how I feel decisions for you know, certain things. 

Bo  8:52  

Well, yeah, but you’re also like, Ah, you know, do you think you’re doing a job of that? Are you think cuz I don’t, I don’t, I think I could tell myself that all day long. But I don’t know if I would actually do a good job of that.

Brian  9:06  

I do a good job with that with high consequence things, but like, if I’m building something, and I’m like, seems like it’ll work.

Bo  9:15  

Haha.  Yeah, looks good enough. It should keep the rain off excavator.  It’ll be fine. 

Brian  9:20  

Exactly. Yeah.  I mean it’s not going to fall on me until tomorrow

Bo  9:24  

The winds gonna blow it’s all next Thursday. 

Brian  9:27  

Exactly.  But I mean with other things like finance or, you know, insurance, or whatever. I I do kind of outsource a lot of the thinking about that to other people, like somebody else has a really long time money, let me see what they think? 

Bo  9:42  

Well, yeah, but still you make the decision.  Your relying upon ex… uh, that gets me to expert advice. What is that even What does that even mean anymore? Have you noticed that?

Brian  9:55  

I don’t value expert advice. I value data and transparently collected data, right? So I mean, 

Bo  10:02  

if someone could walk you through the data that they’re drawing upon, then that would help you make that decision

Brian  10:11  

Because someone says so is BS and 99% of time that’s like how our government operates. 

Bo  10:15  

Yeah, well, speaking of this is somewhat related, but I sent you the, the fall schedule.  I’m sorry, the the plan for our county’s public school system to go back to in-person from virtual they’re starting virtual this the school year. And it cracked me up because there was an AJC article that said that, that the county had released a plan to go back to in-person, which the county is calling it face to face, but it’s gonna require masks. So why would you ever call it face-to-face? That cracks me up.

Brian  10:59  

Yeah, “in person.”  Oh, you want to hear the big 180 like mind boggler as far as being an educator? 

Bo  11:08  

Sure. What’s that?

Brian  11:10  

So in the education industry that I work in. So my classroom can hold 40 people, but with social distancing, it can hold 20. So that’s 19 plus me, right? Which means there’s two. students I can’t rotate in on alternate days, right?

Bo  11:29  

Wait, what?  There are there are two students that you cannot rotate.

Brian  11:34  

Yeah, because that means there’s 38 people that are eligible to come in one day, or, you know, I have three days a week. But that’s 38 or 19 19 19 on those day. So there’s two people that I had to constantly be like, Well, you can’t come this day, either. You had to come every other Wednesday. 

Bo  11:52  

Why? Why are they? Why wouldn’t they get the right capacity for the space?

Brian  11:59  

It’s not, it’s not available? Right?

Unknown Speaker  12:03  

Can you just tell your students, “Hey, I’m gonna be here, don’t come to class, I will broadcast it. And we can have discussion.”

Brian  12:11  

Oh, no, you can’t say that. I’m gonna say that I’m doing a hyperflex class which means you can take it online. Yeah. Like whenever you want, Oh, nice. Are you into my live lecture broadcast, that will happen each Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Or you can come in person with the caveat that once my room is at 90% capacity, I’m closing the door. And that’s it. And some people were like, Well, why don’t you have a schedule? I’m like, I’m not gonna sit there and ask people their name. Right? Like, every time someone walks in the door, I’m like, What’s your name? Are you on today’s list?  Like, I’m not gonna waste 15 minutes of class. I’m trying to enforce some rotating. 

Bo  12:55  

Yeah, that’s that makes perfect sense. They have to understand that because that’s just a waste of everyone’s time.

Brian  13:01  

You’d think but that’s, you know, I don’t know, that’s what everybody’s I go do a rotating schedule until they do well, I’m like, Well, how do you enforce that? And then, you know, some kid shows up and says, This is my day, and other kids says, It’s not my day, that I need a secretary to run my classes. 

Bo  13:16  

Yeah, that’s, that’s not worth it.  Yeah, I mean you gotta, you gotta have at least 10% of the class. That’ll be like, you know what, I’m just gonna watch it online. I think it’ll be a way more than 10%. Well, that’s why I’m saying at least 10% you know, so I don’t even think any of this will be an issue. I guess you got to watch out for it. And if it is an issue, then you bar the door.

Brian  13:38  

Yeah, and it is “No learning for you today!”

Bo  13:44  

You have to take volunteers from the audience of who this person could sit next to. That’s the overcapacity. 

Brian  13:49  

Right. Yeah.  Well, yeah, I think

Bo  13:54  

Off the record, do you think it’s like even effective to do that? Like, say, has a compat? I mean, how are you determining capacities by six feet, but well, you know, if somebody is in there coughing, they’re still indoors.

Brian  14:07  

Here for that convoluted mask, requirement comes in, right. So they say imagine the only requirement, social distancing is not available. But technically, yeah, but technically, when you’re in the classroom with a reduced capacity, you are meeting the CDC guideline for social distancing, even though in a group greater than 10. We’re trapped in the enclosed room for an hour at a time. Yeah. I don’t see it as socially distancing. So then do you tell a student that takes their mask off once they’re in a class that Hey, no, you put that back on? And if they do, like, do I call the people that get academic honor code on them, or like call the police or…

Bo  14:47  

Call the police.  Oh my gosh. 

Brian  14:52  

I mean, I would never do that. That would that’s, you know, asinine, but it’s still like it leaves us in this insane position of like, I should not be thinking about these things. I should be the email how to convey information to my students and doing research. Why am I wasting 10 hours a week? Trying to administer a class? 15 different ways.

Well 3 different ways, but I don’t have. 

Bo  15:19  

Yeah.  So what’s the mortality rate? What are we what are we looking at here?

Brian  15:23  

Like, overall across all age groups?

Bo  15:27  

Across?  Yeah, yeah. Across overall. Let’s do the start there. Yeah.

Brian  15:33  

I haven’t looked in a while, because I’ve kind of become desensitized but the last time I looked it was hovering around the 1% mark. 

Bo  15:39  

And and is his mortality really what the main concern is?

Brian  15:45  

I would argue not, I would say that the ARDS that are somewhat in their, you know, 40s, or 50s. That’s gonna be a lifelong disability, and also an insanely increased risk of dying of pneumonia in subsequent years like so we haven’t even… The mortality is the thing that catches the news.

Bo  16:05  

I didn’t even think about that.  Yeah, so you’re saying he gets it now and recovers? Then they have that reduced lung function for the rest of their life? Or for at least a considerable period? before?

Brian  16:17  

10 – 15 years 

Bo  16:17  

Yeah, wow! 

Brian  16:19  

If they don’t die of pneumonia before that.

Bo  16:19  

Right.  So then then they’re really susceptible to, to, to falling ill.  And dying. Yeah.

Brian  16:30  

In subsequent years yeah so we’ll see.  I think, a little bump in the … years among that same high risk age group of people, they’ve got it, you know, might have been hospitalized or ventilated, survived, but then they did lack the their lung function is literally can’t prevent future infections, and then ultimately, account people. This disease is so bizzare like causing strokes. If you have a stroke when you’re 50 years old. That’s a lifelong thing that you had to deal with. 

Bo  16:58  

Wow. 

Brian  16:59  

So I don’t know why that’s not getting as much attention. The news media is all about the death that death is like at the tip of the iceberg that’s the worst outcome. But there’s other super societal costing outcomes that are also occurring. Yeah, yeah. And also, have you ever taste your food for a long period of time would suck also.

Bo  17:19  

Yeah but it sounds like that’s mostly temporary, so that’s, that’s a good thing. I think 

Brian  17:22  

Mostly, I have a student whose friend. It’s been two months, but she cannot taste or smell anything. 

Bo  17:28  

Oh, wow. Wow.  Yeah, you were saying they had determined that they had determined.  Did they determine the mechanism exactly for that, or do they know?

Brian  17:40  

It’s very bizarre. 

Bo  17:41  

Yeah. Yeah, my friend…

Brian  17:45  

Like COVID toes.

Bo  17:45  

Yeah, I’ve heard of that. Where your toes turn black. It’s almost like you got frostbite.

Brian  17:49  

Exactly,  yeah, and oh, and also the renal and kidney damage that occurs. Right. So like, you aren’t, either, that, you know, welcome to dialysis.

Bo  17:59  

Really? I haven’t heard of

Brian  18:00  

that. I mean, it’s one of the more rare ones, but definitely, uh, you know, he survived, but you have, you know, greatly altered. I’m going to use these, the quality of life, right? Even though that’s a super subjective thing and it annoys me most of the time, but you know, if you go from one quality of life down, you notice the difference. If you’re always have the same quality of life you don’t notice that, you know, you’ll adapt eventually. But those are hard adjusts to make 

Bo  18:25  

Oh sure that makes sense. Yeah, I couldn’t imagine having to like, yeah, that’s terrible.  But oh, man.  Yeah, a friend of mine.  She she had had it and was, you know, she’s young and healthy and but still was knocked down for gosh, like four weeks. I think she was suffering with chills and fever. And she still worked, which I thought was good, credible, but she was just rundown. And then lost her taste and smell and all of that and then slowly gained it back. But she said it was different. Like, stuff just she had, it was like when she lost her taste and smell food had like, occasionally had like a metallic taste, which was, 

Brian  19:18  

Oh, wow.

Bo  19:19  

I could just only imagine that would be horrible. And then, yeah.  But then, and then I guess she started getting it back. But she says it’s just not I think she was a super taster before and now she’s what I would consider just normal or my level so it’s like, so you know, it could have permanently damaged her taste, but she’s at least getting some of it back. I don’t know it’s to be seen, I guess. 

Brian  19:49  

Yeah.  It’s like I said super interesting. And also super kind of bizarre. 

Bo  19:58  

Yeah. Yeah, I don’t know, Ijust I think you’ve kept me way more sane through all of this. Because I actually have an expert to bounce. Like, what? Basically you’re filtering the nonsense or the information that’s being fed to me, you know, and I’m like, should I be worried about this? Or is this a thing or? So that’s, that’s helped a lot. I don’t even know why we didn’t think about recording those conversations. That would have been a smart, smart thing to do. Right? 

Brian  20:26  

Yeah, probably. 

Bo  20:29  

I’m sure. We’ll have plenty of content to talk about in the coming weeks and months. I saw something…

Brian  20:38  

Yeah, I think there’s an election happening or something maybe?

Bo  20:38  

Yeah my big joke, and this will probably offend a bunch of people. But my big joke is, I kind of, I kind of want to see Biden win, just so I can see a bunch of Republicans start freaking out about the virus.  Like I wondered if flip flop if the administration changed, if it would just like you would, the media would stop talking about it. And then all these republicans would start freaking out, you know,

Brian  21:06  

Yeah, like wear your masks every day.

Bo  21:07  

Yeah, like all that kind of generalization.

Brian  21:11  

I mean, I don’t see why it would not change. I mean, everybody freaked out about Bill Clinton’s ties to Epstein, and Fox News edits out Trump with Epstein. And what I can’t remember that woman’s name his girlfriend or whatever? 

Bo  21:27  

Oh, yeah. Really? Yeah. 

Brian  21:29  

Yeah. I mean, yeah. So I mean, the same thing or like when Trump agreed with people about the income inequality, like the next week two super liberal media outlets are like, let’s not over emphasize mom and pop stores. They don’t do a good job offering. Like, Oh, wait, now you’re for corporations?  Wait.  What’s happening?

Bo  21:47  

We’re the “upside down.” We’re in the “during” that we all like to look back at the “before” but we’re in the “during” right now. We’ll wait for the “after.” 

Brian  21:55  

Yeah.  Yeah, like the Member Berries from South Park.  I don’t know if you’re allowed to mention other shows but…

Bo  22:00  

Sure. Sure. 

Brian  22:03  

“Member when!”

Bo  22:04  

We aren’t making any money. So it won’t matter what we say. 

Brian  22:10  

This is more for posterity than prosperity. 

Bo  22:15  

Yeah, will will, will guarantee that we won’t get any sponsorship that’s for sure. Yeah, straight from the beginning.  But anyway, yeah, so I haven’t even paid attention to time. How are we doing? We’re at 25 minutes.

Brian  22:32  

Yeah, I’m actually I’m turning left on the road in front of my office so I’m almost there. 

Bo  22:36  

Okay, I was interrupting you so you didn’t say where you were.

Brian  22:40  

Oh, yeah, so I’m almost there.

Bo  22:44  

Yeah, I was, I had a totally different topic, but we can save that for next time.  We’ll just…We’ll end this here,  but stay on and I’ll uh… Alright, hang on.