SGU Episode 881

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SGU Episode 881
May 28th 2022
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 880                      SGU 882
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Guest
NRG: Dr. Naomi Rowe-Gurney, NASA planetary scientist
Quote of the Week
With less critical thinking comes more vaccine hesitancy.
Nedra Rhone, columnist, AJC
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction, WETA Doc, AQ6

Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, May 25^th 2022, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Cara Santa Maria...

C: Howdy.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys.

S: ...and Evan Bernstein.

E: Good evening folks!

S: So.

J: Yes.

S: Some exciting news. You know Jay, Bob and I have been doing alpha quadrant six which is our science fiction review show. And right before the pandemic we recorded a documentary at WETA in New Zealand. The special effects company that did Lord of the Rings and other movies.

E: I've heard of that.

J: District 9.

S: District 9.

J: I Am Mother.

S: Yeah that's right and King Kong. The most recent King Kong.

E: Oh yes.

S: And they did that really awesome World War I museum where the the statues were giant size.

B: Oh my god. And crazy realistic. Like crazy realistic.

S: Hyper detailed, hyper realistic and like what were they five times normal size?

B: Something like that.

S: Which is a lot bigger than it sounds. Because you think about that means you're 30 feet tall. Like the scale, that was the scale. Amazing. Anyway we did a documentary basically all about their process. And we finally published that as an AQ6 episode what two weeks ago Jay?

J: Just about.

S: So check that out. So we all do a lot of side projects every now and then we bring them up. But this is, the Alpha Quadrant 6 we've been we've done on and off. The pandemic really kind of torpedoed our schedule with this because we couldn't physically get together.

B: Photon torpedoed.

S: Yeah we tried to do some online and they were all right but you know just wasn't the same thing. Like we couldn't get in the studio together and crank out a bunch of episodes. But now we can. So so we're back on schedule putting out a video and a podcast every week.

J: Every Tuesday.

S: Every Tuesday, yep. So yeah so we want you guys to check it out. We did recently The Batman we reviewed that movie.

J: And Strange New Worlds

S: Strange New Worlds. So we try to hit that if something just comes out we'll try to hit it right away so that we could recommend it or not recommend it. Like we'll watch the first episode and give you an idea. Then we'll do wrap-up reviews or we'll do themed reviews. Like the top 10 spaceships or whatever. How many episodes total have we put since the beginning every published chance? We're getting up there.

J: You know 80 episodes.

B: Wow.

J: Oh if you want to find us you can go to youtube.com/AlphaQuadrant6. That's Alpha Quadrant and the number 6. Or you can go to alphaquadrant6.com. We have you know Facebook page. We have a Patreon so you can find us pretty much anywhere. Just look for Alpha Quadrant and then number 6.

S: Yeah doing that show's a lot of fun.

J: I love it.

B: And what are we gonna do what are we gonna do next guys? How about Love, Death & Robots review?

S: I already watched the whole season.

B: Season 3 baby. I'm partially through, no spoilers.

J: Bob Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan literally drops the day after tomorrow.

B: Yeah, we could do that.

J: Now I don't know if that's gonna be, if they're gonna drop the whole thing or if they're gonna do it episode by episode. Probably episode by episode so we'll get to review the first episode at least.

S: Then we're gonna do futurism in science fiction movies. And we've got to do Doctor Strange.

J: Yeah.

B: Yes. Hello? We got to get to the damn theater and watch it.

S: So those are the next shows that we're gonna review.

B: Let's go right now.

COVID-19 Update (3:22)

J: Can I tell you guys something else that's going on in my life?

S: Yeah.

J: So you know you covid, right?

S: Yeah I'm familiar with that, yeah.

J: So long story short my daughter did not get covid over the wave during Christmas when everybody got covid except my daughter.

S: She dodged Omicron?

J: She did. She dodged the big wave of Omicron. Well she got it last week. A week and a half ago So I have not literally seen my six-year-old daughter since Friday of last week because she stayed with her grandmother who also got covid literally the same day from the same person. Keep it in mind, you know, keep in mind man, covid is still swinging out there. There's, in Connecticut the numbers have been skyrocketing. It's happening in other states in the country probably in other places around the world as well. But just be careful. Carry masks in your car. Make sure the people that you know and love are vaccinated. Get your boosters. Like keep it in your head. You don't have to think about it every day like we did two years ago but be smart and keep up with it.

S: Speaking of which and we're actually going to talk about the monkey pox a little bit later in the show when we get to the news items. But you guys all know Mark Crislip, right?

J: Yeah.

B: Yeah.

E: Oh yes.

S: Yeah. He's awesome. So he he was writing for Science-Based Medicine for years but in 2018 he retired from Science-Based Medicine and now he's back. And he wrote his first post─

B: Awesome.

S: ─yesterday.

E: Un-retired like Tom Brady.

S: Yeah, exactly. He actually last Thursday he published it. And it was basically all about covid. It's like where are we with things right now. He's an infectious disease specialist but you should read it. He's very very funny writer just a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor but also totally on point. He basically says yeah we're never going to be done with covid. Like covid is never gonna be over. It's now permanent part of the infectious disease background. And we're definitely in the learning how to live with that face but he says things so matter-of-factly like as a specialist. It's like we know how to deal with this. We totally 100% know how to deal with this. You have to mask and get vaccinated. Those are the two things that really work right. Everything else is kind of nibbling around the edges but masking works and getting back. And then the only way to get to herd immunity is with vaccination. That's it. We're never going to get there by natural infection. That's always been a fantasy. It doesn't you know, infectious disease─

C: What about a hybrid of the both.

S: ─don't work that way. The problem is─

C: No really. I mean what about the people who do vaccinate and then the people who refuse who ultimately catch covid?

S: The problem is with the, as he explains, the problem with the relying on natural infections. Is that this virus mutates so quickly that by the time it comes around again it just reinfects you. So like omicron's really good at reinfecting people who were infected previously with covid for example. So it just doesn't work. You would need everybody to get infected at once with the same strain. Which is never going to happen.

C:' So just that is what vaccination kinda is.

S: That is what vaccination. Vaccination you can literally give everybody the same immunity all at once. That's the only way that we're ever going to really deal with pandemics like this. It's just so frustrating that's like okay here's the answer and then a bunch of people refuse to do it. And there's not really much we can do about it or are willing to do it. I mean we could.

Ulvade, TX Shooting (6:24)

C: I mean this is kind of the story of our American lives right now. Is clear and present problems that we have a clear answer to that people just refuse to.

S: I know. I know. I mean we haven't brought up yet what happened in Texas. And it's just absolutely horrible another school shooting. Another elementary school shooting. This was basically Sandy Hook redux. This is just.

C: Yeah this was the worst mass shooting in quite some time. Like we do have mass shootings nearly every day but this was the worst in quite some time.

S: Basically since Sandy Hook. Yeah totally. I mean can you just imagine just the whole classroom of young children being mowed down like that just like. You can't even wrap your head around it.

E: It's beyond horrific.

S: Yeah it's just beyond horrific. Every time there is a big, like national headline grabbing mass shooting, it's interesting to see the zeitgeist in this. Like what how are people basically responding. Like after Parkland there was this sense of this time something's really gonna happen, you know?

B: Yeah, yeah.

S: And of course nothing happened. After Sandy Hook it was like well this is so shocking. This is gonna shock even─

B: Yeah, little kids.

S: ─the cynics. I mean yeah those are little kids but nothing happened. This time around the vibe that I'm getting is everyone's just saying nothing's gonna happen. Nothing's gonna. That's nothing's gonna change. We're gonna do absolutely nothing in response to this.

E: Pretty defeatist.

C: Well you've seen the onion article, right?

B: It's just practical at this point.

C: It's getting so much coverage. There's an onion article that they published in 2014 and the headline was "No Way to Prevent This", Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.

B: Awesome.

C: And they have now republished it 21 times and only changed, like the exact same article, they've just only changed the details of the shooting. 21 times since 2014. And that's the thing a certain segment of the population sees that and goes yeah WTF. And another segment of the population sees that and goes second amendment. So yeah. I mean there's a lot of memes we could be listing here and there's a lot of I guess political discussion that we could be having which we try to to be smart about how we approach it here on the SGU.

S: So we try to be, try to be evidence based and neutral when it comes to partisanship. We're doing a very very quick coverage here. And we probably should do a deep dive at some point soon. And we've talked about it before. But the bottom line is that sensible gun safety regulations work. They work. We have enough data to know that that is the case. But also the one of the best articles I saw which is again it's one of these ones that gets republished every time there's a mass shooting. So it's still relevant like every six months or so. And it compared the amount of research money that the NIH and the CDC are spending on different problems. And the number of people those problems kill, right? So you have these tiny little dots of diseases with huge budgets researching them. Then you have this massive bubble of of gun violence deaths and a teeny tiny budget to research it. So like if you look if you take a public health approach to this which is reasonable and rational but also one you know political party is against looking at this as a health care issue. A public health issue. It makes absolutely no sense. There's a complete disconnect between the magnitude of the problem and then the research priority that we're giving it. And that's by design again that's not just because no one thought of it. That is by political design. So those are the things we need to be talking about. We should be doing the science. We should be doing evidence-based rational. And the other thing is 80-90% of people want these regulations. They're not even unpopular. That's the most frustrating thing is that we lack the political will in the face of overwhelming public support. Something is broken there, right? That's what's so frustrating.

C: Well the lobbying system. Yeah. The gun lobby. That's what's broken. Is that the interests of politicians. They're placing them over the actual lives of children.

S: No absolutely. Yeah that's the that that's really, our democracy isn't working when the public can't exert their will through their elected representatives. That's, this is, it reminds of that every time one of these things happens it's like and of course nothing's going to happen because. But I the thing is. I just really hate the defeatist attitude. And that's why I'm─

B: Oh I embrace it.

S: ─I'm not happy with the overall response that I'm seeing in public of nothing's going to happen, there's nothing we could do. Because it's self-defeating, right? Even if it's true it doesn't matter.

C: It also really doesn't makes sense given the administration we're in. Like we can do something.

S: Well yeah. Well I think honestly I think the thing that we can do is vote. That's the real. I don't think we have the political people in place now to do anything because you need you need 60 votes in the senate basically. And we don't have that. And if if the public really wanted if we really wanted to do something about this it would require people voting on this issue and getting off their butts and voting. And the problem is people forget about it in three weeks and they go on to the next thing.

J: And that's also incredible that's a very slow process.

C: Yeah. Like I think we can be doing more right now. And part of that is speaking up. It's putting pressure on the people that we already voted into office by just plastering them with the message that they are failing their constituents. And by acting locally as well because yes we know that the second amendment is this big Goliath that David is facing but we can affect change at the local level. We can make sure, we can make sure that the states that we live in have the strictest laws possible. In so far as they don't encroach on on the constitution. I mean obviously─

E: [inaudible]

C: Yeah. I mean we can make sure that our neighborhoods are safe. That's what we have to do.

B: Yeah but I mean I keep going back to for me Sandy Hook was a real real watershed in many ways because that was the time I really really felt well of course something's going to happen. When we're talking 20 some odd five and six-year-olds slaughtered. I mean that I mean it was really egregious and from that angle. And it didn't happen. So then I'm thinking what will it realistically take for something to happen. And I don't have an answer to that because I can't imagine what it's going to take for something to happen. This isn't gonna do it. Sandy Hook didn't do it.

S: All right well we're not going to solve this problem today unfortunately but it is a conversation that we need to keep having. So guys let's go on with our news items.

News Items

S:

B:

C:

J:

E:

(laughs) (laughter) (applause) [inaudible]

Monkeypox (13:29)

• Should We Fear the Monkeypox?

S: All right Cara so we've been talking about covid but what about this monkey pox I keep hearing about?

C: Yeah I don't know if you guys watched a recent episode of Last Week Tonight but he sort of intros it with like this is going on, this is going on and monkey pox I'm not going there, I can't deal with this right now. He's like we're a bit fatigued. I'm not going there. And I think it is an important conversation to have especially amongst as you mentioned the background of covid. What is monkey pox. Should I be afraid of monkey pox. What's going on. Because we're hearing it on the news and I think we can go, well we can go one of several ways but we can go one of two extreme ways. Which is the same way we went in the early covid days. This is happening somewhere else, it doesn't affect me. Even though we've seen a few cases spreading around the globe I'm not concerned about it. Or we can go the other direction which is freak the f out. And I don't recommend either of these directions. I think it's probably somewhere in the middle.

S: And to our credit though. I you know remember and have listened back at this at the v- our very first reaction to covid was be concerned but don't panic.

C: Right.

S: That was our first. And then of course it was yeah we probably should have been panicking (Cara laughs) but initially we were like yeah, this, but definitely don't ignore it. Be concerned about this. Keep an eye on it. It's too early to panic. But I think we're in the same place with the monkey pox but go ahead and give us the overview.

C: I think we probably are. I think you're right. But for individuals who here. I mean there's a reason that John Oliver was like I can't deal with this right now. Like don't tell me that there's a monkey pox infection going around the globe right now. So let's talk about what this is. This is not a pandemic. This is not an epidemic. Maybe an outbreak is a good term to use.

S: It's an outbreak. There's a very specific definition as you know that─

C: Yeah.

S: ─WHO uses outbreak epidemic and pandemic. This is at the outbreak stage now.

B: Covid was at the outbreak stage at one point. Go ahead.

C: Any pandemic starts as an outbreak. You are correct about that. So let's talk a little bit about what monkey pox is and what we know about it. So monkey pox actually is sort of a misnomer. It was identified in 1958 among lab monkeys. So we first kind of got wind of this idea of this disease because lab monkeys showed symptoms of it. But it's not a monkey disease. They're not the natural host a natural reservoir and it's very likely that individuals who catch it, now it is a zoonotic infection, but it's very likely that they're catching this as a spillover from rodents. We haven't really pinned down the exact core reservoir but it's very likely that rodents are the ones carrying monkey pox. The first cases in humans were in the 70s in the DRC. We actually saw an outbreak here in the US in 2003. I don't remember that. Do you guys remember a monkey pox outbreak in the US? I mean it happened.

E: No.

J: I remember reading about it but I wasn't aware when it happened.

C: Right. Okay. So that happened, I think they were they prairie dogs. I think that were sold from a pet store and those had come from Ghana. We're seeing that most of the spillover events are happening in Africa and there are sort of two regions. There's the West African endemic version of monkey pox. And then there is the DRC, Democratic Republic of Congo, remember that's formerly Zair kind of cluster of monkey pox. Monkey box is a pox virus. It is similar to smallpox. It's not the same thing as smallpox and here's some of the good news. We're going to be doing some good news bad news today. Some of the good news is that it is generally more mild than smallpox. It is generally less deadly. The symptoms are generally less severe. It can be quite dangerous though especially for individuals who have compromised immune systems, like many viruses. So children, older individuals, pregnant women. It can look kind of like chickenpox. One of the, there are multiple symptoms and they happen in a very particular order. You get these flu-like symptoms, a fever headache and then you start to develop, and swollen lymph nodes, and you start to develop this blistering rash that happens after that. It usually takes about four weeks in total. About a month for the entire course. Although it can be shorter. By the time the pox actually show up you've already usually been showing these other symptoms. The deadliness is low. And one thing that I think people are getting confused in their coverage is that whereas the DRC cluster of these viruses can have a case fatality rate of upwards of 10%. The outbreak that we're seeing right now is actually the Western Africa virus and it has a case fatality rate of closer to, actually under 1%. In practice it has been slightly higher 2-3% but that's usually because of poor health care not because the virus itself has that high of a fatality rate. So with proper treatment it's very unlikely that individuals will die from the type of monkey pox that is currently circulating. When we look at where it is in the world we have some, it's, depends on if we're looking at confirmed or suspected cases but the majority of them right now are in the United Kingdom, Spain and Portugal. We're also seeing cases in the teens in Canada and the Netherlands. And then we've got two cases here in the US, two in Australia, two in Denmark kind of down the line. And these are all within the last several days. Like going back to earlier this month but these are updated all within the last several days. There is some idea, we still don't know where the the first spread took place, but there's some idea that it likely took place in Spain because that's where the virus was first being tracked. It could have been at a rave. It could have been at, or actually it's like a pride parade because early reports pointed to the virus spreading within the community of men who have sex with men. So we actually are seeing some parallels to some of the early panic that we saw with the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Where there's some misunderstanding about how it's spread about who can catch it. Monkey pox, anybody can catch monkey pox. If we are seeing a cluster within a particular community it's just because that happens to be a community that was exposed. A monkey pox does spread through particles in the air but it doesn't spread as quickly or as easily as covid. And that's something that's important to remember. Monkeypox is not covid. It's not a coronavirus it's a completely different type of virus. Although it can be meaningful for us to make comparisons like we did early on with covid when we talked about the flu. Because it's what we know and it helps us find an established jumping off point. It is important that we remember that just because it's a virus, there are a lot of viruses out there. Remember that science or fiction we did on viruses? Didn't we all miss it?

S: Yeah. How many there are?

C: Yeah yeah like how many infect. Yeah it was a banana's number. It was like orders of magnitude more than we thought. One of the things that's important is is about finding that balance. Because what we don't want to do is say well we know about monkeypox, we know what it is, we've dealt with it before. We have actually by the way smallpox vaccines in our stockpile. And smallpox vaccines are like 80 to 85% effective against monkeypox because they are so similar. Unfortunately the original smallpox vaccine that we do have stockpiled also has like some pretty nasty side effects. Which is why when the CDC first grappled with whether they wanted to inoculate the entire population or vaccinate the entire population they decided against it. Because the risk wasn't worth the benefit at the time because there was no real risk of of catching small packs since smallpox has been eradicated. But we've always had a concern about bioterrorism which is why we've maintained these vaccines. Since then a newer vaccine has been developed so that's really promising. It was developed only like a few years ago. Right 2019 JYNNEOS, I'm not sure how to pronounce that. And it has a a lower side effect profile. And we also have an antiviral that was developed for orthopox viruses. So smallpox and monkeypox it works on. It's called Tecovirimat and so we have all of these different treatments available to us. So in some ways this is completely different than covid because we already know about it. It's a known entity. The problem is we've never seen a spread like the spread we're seeing right now. Most monkeypox outbreaks have been in either West or Central Africa and they've stayed in West or Central Africa if they have spread around the globe it's been one or two people and then they've been contained very readily. So there still are some questions has there been any sort of mutation. Is there something different about the way this virus spreading. So we really want to do exactly what we were talking about before. We want to be cautious but we also don't want to panic. Collect more data. Know that we have appropriate prevention strategies and treatment strategies on deck if we need them but hopefully we won't need them. One last thing I want to say before kind of we open it up is that there was some good reporting in the Washington Post recently I think it was just yesterday. The headline was "As monkeypox panic spreads, doctors in Africa see a double standard". And I think it's an important perspective because when we say should we be worried, well, yes or no. We're very often talking about should we in the west be worried. But this monkeypox outbreak did not just happen in specifically in Nigeria. It's been spreading for years. It's not actually new just because it's new to those of us in the west. And the fact that we have these stockpiles. And the fact that we have these treatments available really does I think lead to the question of why aren't we doing more to help it in it's or to stop it in its tracks where it's where it's happening to prevent these global outbreaks. So food for thought there.

S: Yeah I mean totally. This is like Ebola. Same thing where we need a an international rapid response team for any outbreaks like this no matter where they happen. First of all just for you know equality we want it─

C: Yeah just from a humanitarian perspective.

S: ─from a humanitarian point of view. It doesn't matter who you are we want to stop an outbreak. But even if we're being selfish and being western and privileged whatever. There are, the best way to protect everybody in the world including ourselves is to stop these outbreaks at the source where they happen. We don't want Ebola to break out we don't want the monkeypox to break out. And because every time they do then it creates the new opportunities for more mutations to happen.

C: Absolutely. Zoonotic infections are not just humanitarian problems. They are economic problems. They are public health problems. They are geopolitical problems. And to pretend like they don't play a role in all of these different contexts is to be utterly naive and isolationist in our in our response. And ultimately it's going to bite everybody in the ass.

S: Yeah I mean and when I wrote about this the I said this is, you know, you would think that covid was a wake-up call. And it only sort of was but my fear is that you know the world is getting kind of covid fatigued and before we like really learn the lesson and maybe the one-two punch is necessary. Like a near-miss. Like yeah even when covid is running its course and we start to adapt to it and live as with covet as the new normal. We have to remember it's not gonna be a hundred years before the next pandemic. That's just not the world─

C: Absolutely not.

S: ─we are living in. We're living in, yeah, there's too much international travel. The human population itself is just it's we're approaching 8 billion and we are encroaching upon nature in such a way that zoonotic infections are more likely to jump to humans. And this is just this is that's not only is covid the new normal. Pandemics are the new normal. We are living now in pandemic world. And we have to adapt to that. We realized with that first really massive outbreak of Ebola that we were not ready for it. And then we said okay we have to fix this and then we only halfway did we. But we didn't fully fully fix it. And then covid happened. We got caught with our pants down. I mean magnificently. And you know it was okay now we really have to fix it this time. And now we got the monkeypox and you know the WHO sounds like they're on top of it and that sounds good. And they say this is containable. There's no reason to panic. Yes, it's an outbreak but this is at the containable stage. But like the world's got to get its shit together. That we and we're not. We're not. To the degree that we need to be.

C: Yeah you use that term caught with our pants down and I literally was thinking while you were talking I was like that's the thing. We're not caught with our pants done we see it coming a mile away. Every pandemic started as an outbreak. Like how how were we not more prepared. We know it's gonna happen. And we this is one of those examples that we always talk about on the show. Where it's like we have the tools. We have the knowledge. We have all of the things that we need to either prevent mitigate or treat. And yet we continue to walk down the street and whistle going it's not gonna happen to me.

E: What are the roadblocks specifically?

S: Political will.

C: Political will. Financial roadblocks. It's really I mean that's what it comes down to where do we want to put our money. How do we wanna prioritize.

S: But the thing is it's not really a money issue because it doesn't cost─

C: It's not that expensive.

S: ─it's not that much money and it's a good investment. We would save so much more money. It really is just political will because we're just politically dysfunctional. That's the bottom line. There are international organizations like the World Health Organization and there are national organizations like the CDC who contribute to this. And it's just a matter of giving them the resources and the priority etc. to so that they could set up the infrastructure. I remember like when the Ebola outbreak was happening the characterization was we're building the firehouse after the fire is─

C: Right.

S: ─and you can't do that with infections. I think that what covid really that what I hope comes out of covid and again it's still kind of a mixed bag is that we realize that pandemics are a worldwide global problem that we all have to solve together. You cannot think locally when it comes to a pandemic by definition.

C: You can't be isolationist. You can't.

S: You can't be isolationist. You can't be my country first you can't do any of those things because it doesn't work.

C: It doesn't work.

S: Whatever you think. Whatever your philosophy or ideology or politics are. It doesn't work. You have to treat it like a global problem which means it's everybody's problem everywhere. And we need to treat it that way. And if we don't we're gonna get keep gonna keep getting bitten in the ass by these pandemics. So is the monkeypox going to be the next one? Probably not. But if it isn't there's something else coming down the line.

C: Absolutely.

S: As again as getting back to Mark Crislip up as he as he noted in in his recent SBM article. It's like covid is not the worst thing out there by a long shot.

C: No it is not.

S: There are even if just the respiratory viruses there are things that are much worse. Like if we get hit with a bird flu pandemic it would be much worse. Imagine covid but with like a 10% fatality rate that's─

C: Like imagine something like─

E: We're going through a bird flu right now in the in the country, aren't we?

S: Yeah.

C: Imagine something as infectious as covid but as deadly as Ebola.

E: I, forget I mean.

B: The United States just passed what the million deaths?

S: One million.

B: I mean imagine if at this point that was 10 or 15 or 20 million which easily could have been the case if this was a nastier virus which is absolutely could have been.

E: It's again it rewrites it rewrites everything at that point.

C: And something, I mean one of the points that we didn't make about monkeypox and it sounds like a negative but it's sort of a veiled positive. Is that the symptoms are really obvious with monkeypox. The unfortunate thing is that they're delayed but in infectious diseases where there is a rash associated with it, it becomes very easy to identify the infected. And it becomes a little bit easier for treatment due to that. You don't need necessarily to be doing certain, you don't need to develop certain types of tests to see if somebody has the disease you can identify it point blank.

S: It's got its own marker.

C: Yeah it's got its own marker which can be beneficial but the problem is it's delayed.

S: One of the things on the good news is the technology and Moderna is already working on specific vaccine, mRNA vaccine. So again we'll have another vaccine that we won't get to enough people. All right let's move on.

NASA Mars Plans (30:45)

• NASA shows off early plans to send astronauts to Mars for 30 days

S: We're gonna we have a great interview with a NASA scientist coming up later in the show. We have a couple of space news items starting with you Jay. You're gonna talk, talk to us about NASA's recent plans for Mars. They've basically fleshed out what in more detail their their plans for going to Mars. Give us the update.

J: NASA released a good block of details on their first human mission to Mars. So here are some details. So NASA said that the mission will be 30 days. So 30 days at the planet. Of course the total mission is going to be way longer than that. I think it's like 500 days round trip. Two astronauts will be on the ship in orbit while another two astronauts are planned to go down to the surface. This is kind of like they had one person in the orbiter when they when we went to the Moon with the Apollo missions. So they planned to double that. And NASA has asked pretty much anyone who wants to give them feedback on their mission planning feel free to do that. The new deadline for that feedback is on June 3^{rd</ which I find interesting. They want to hear from the public if anyone has any good ideas or you know just give them your feedback on on what they're doing.}

S: Jay how would you feel about going to Mars and then not stepping foot on martian soil? (Evan laughs)

J: You know I thought of that actually Steve, I was─

S: You have to think of that.

J: ─I've thought of it a couple of times you just I watched a few documentaries about the Apollo missions and the astronauts that get picked and you think, people were asked. You're going to be left in the essentially the command module and you're not going down to the surface. But I will say this Steve, that the work that they do there is very important.

S: Of course.

E: It's critical.

J: You would think though if they're all the way there. Mars is so much farther than the Moon that they would be like well we'll let everybody go down. But it's complicated. It's expensive. It's dangerous. Somebody has to stay back.

S: But here's one difference Jay. So I mean the astronauts were in rotation we know that. You know during the Apollo mission. And there was a lot of competition to get one of those spots. If you were going to be in the command module there was a good chance based on what you knew at the time that in a later mission you could go down to the Moon. They didn't know that Apollo was going to get cut short. If you go all the way to Mars and back I doubt you're going again because you basically used up your life of radiation exposure. and you're probably not going to go back. So it's different in that way.

J: That's true. I mean it I think I guess to some people it's still an honor and still─

S: Of course. I get it.

J: ─a really exciting thing to do.

S: And I'm sure that's what they would say. It's like it's you you're still, it's better than being somebody left back on Earth, right? You get to go to Mars. Even if you're only going to be in orbit.

J: But Steve I thought you were gonna say this is what I thought you were gonna say. I thought you were gonna say that if you're left in the command module there's a pretty good chance that you the astronauts that went down to the Moon surface we're not gonna make it back.

S: Well that the first time that was true.

B: I was thinking about that too.

S: Collins was prepared to come back by himself, right? I mean he had he was essentially─

E: I was a contingency, yeah.

S: Yeah I mean he knew that there was a good chance that he would be making a three-day trip to back to Earth by himself and he was ready to do that.

E: You have to psychologically prepare yourself for that? Boy it's awful.

S: Training psychologically everything, it was a very real possibility.

J: So they said Steve that they're thinking late 2030s early 2040s for the first Mars mission. For the first crude Mars mission.

S: 20 years basically.

J: So I know we talked about this previously on the show but Bob and Steve mentioned it already. We talked about we talked to two people from NASA last year at NECSS and they said that speed is of the essence for many reasons. Like getting people to and from Mars as quickly as possible and of course one of the main reasons is the dangerous radiation that people will be exposed to because we also found out that there isn't like shielding and things like that there are really going to be significant. So we they said we need to get the astronauts to Mars as fast as possible to minimize the amount of radiation that they're going to have to deal with. Now gravity is a big player in this too. When we go to Mars the lack of gravity is going to be a problem. The astronauts will be in microgravity which essentially means that they're weightless for months at a time. This means that they will have muscle and bone loss. And once they get down to the surface of Mars, guess what? They will be in a weakened state. The third, the one-third Earth gravity on Mars will still feel like a ton of gravity to them. So what, one idea NASA had that they're talking about right now is in order to handle this issue that they'll have the astronauts live in a rover. This will let them get around, do science and acclimate safely. It'll be kind of like they'll be like the people from WALL-E, those people on the ship. (laughs) So once they're in good enough shape to put on the spacesuits if they're strong enough and their endurance is at the right spot then they can go outside do more science. But in the beginning man they're gonna basically have them be lying down doing more exercise to beef up so they can put those suits on. So before the astronauts get to Mars there will already be approximately 25 tons of hardware and supplies and equipment and everything poised for their use. When they arrive in orbit around Mars their ascent vehicle will already be there 100% ready to go to fly them down. So they'll be leaving probably when all of this stuff has already been put in place. NASA knows that their current plans are definitely likely to change. I mean they're talking about it right now because they're going to be pouring much more time into consideration into these missions. Right now what they're doing is they're saying that the habitat spacecraft that will be able to bring them to and from Mars surface will be, it's going to be a hybrid. It's gonna be a chemical and electrical propulsion. Preparation for these future Mars missions of course are significantly, I mean utterly influenced, and hinging on the success of the Moon missions once we get to the point where things are going very smoothly on the Moon and we get it and we have all this stuff in place. Then we could start sending equipment to Mars to prepare for humans going to Mars. But the pathway to pave that road to get there it's a huge amount of money and work. Which I find utterly fascinating. You go through this list and you're reading about just all the different things that they've realized that have to be have to come into reality at some point within the next 10-20 years.

Linear Bias (37:47)

• The Linear Bias

S: All right let me ask you guys a question. This is a math question. It's a hypothetical question. So let's say you are the CEO of a company and the company's business requires two fleets of vehicles to do deliveries or whatever. A smaller fleet in a big and a bigger fleet in terms of the size of the vehicles. But it's the same number of vehicles. And they each drive 10 000 miles a year. So same exact number of miles driven per year by each fleet. Fleet A is comprised of vehicles that get 10 miles to the gallon. Fleet B is comprised of vehicles that get 20 miles to the gallon. Now your accountant says we have enough money to upgrade one of these two fleets but not both. And because of just advances. You can swap out the fleet that gets 10 miles to the gallon for one that gets 20 miles to the gallon or the one that gets 20 for one that gets 50. Which would save more money? Going from 10 to 20 miles per gallon or 20 to 50 miles per gallon.

C: And we're only concerned about money.

E: And the same number of vehicles in each fleet?

B: Ten to twenty.

E: It's the same quantity.

S: Same number of vehicles and miles driven in each fleet.

S: So this is like a backgammon question.

B: Ten to twenty.

S: All things being equal except 10 to 20 versus 20 to 50. 3934

E: Because 10 to 20 is a 50% gain versus 20 to 50. That's a smaller ratio.

C: Yeah it doesn't matter we're just looking at the total gain.

S: What do you think? Just give me an answer. Just give me.

C: I don't I have to do the math. I can't do the math that fast in my head.

B: 10 to 20.

S: What your gut? What's your gut tell you?

C: I don't like this gut questions.

B: Come on why else would he ask if it wasn't 10 to 20?

C: Yeah it's 10 to 20 is my gut but.

E: But they said 20 to 50?

B: So you got a gut.

C: But the other one's way bigger 20 to 50.

E: Yeah it is 20 to 50 it is more than double.

C: But so do you have half your fleet dragging ass in the last century or do you get both of your fleet like slightly better? Steve I changed my mind I think you want to go 50.

S: 20 to 50?

C: Well cause you're saying it's 50:50. So in my so in yeah but I don't care about the ratio. In my head this is how I'm calculating it and this is probably wrong. 0.5 times 10 plus 0.5 times 50. Or 0.5 times 20 plus 0.5 times 20.

S: Yeah.

C: And you're gonna get better gas mileage if you upgrade the higher fleet.

S: What do you think Jay?

J: I would. I don't know. My gut is for some reason telling me 10 to 20.

S: So the people use two heuristics when confronted with these questions that are both wrong. (Cara laughs)

C: And we just demonstrated both of them.

E: Yeah, shortcuts don't work, great.

S: So one is, well there's only two choices so some of you are abvously right but─

B: Exactly.

S: ─so one is to assume like to do a linear calculation to say well 10 to 20 is the difference is 10. And 20 to 50 the difference is 30. So that's obviously a much bigger difference so that's the one you should prefer. Evan you were essentially stating the ratio bias. 20 is twice 10. 50 is more than twice 20. So that should be better, right?

E: That's what it sound like, yes.

S: Both of those are wrong. And this is the linearity bias over that's like the the umbrella cognitive bias. I can't resist cognitive biases.

B: We noticed.

S: But not only is the is not only is this strict linear bias wrong actually even the ratio bias is often wrong and obviously depends on context. So Bob is correct 10 to 20 is the much bigger advantage. It's very counterintuitive though. And the other thing that's happening here is you're thinking of it backwards. We our instinct is to think about how much of a gain you're making rather than how much of a decrease of a loss you're spending. So think about it this way Cara you could think of it this way. When you go from 10 to 20 you're having your fuel. The 20 is already at half so it's impossible for it to have as much of a gain as the 10 to 20.

C: But I wasn't even looking at it like a dip like a change.

S: But that's the question.

C: Right but I was literally looking at it like if half your fleet 0.5 is operating at 20 miles per gallon plus.

S: So the here's so your approach is you're looking at the miles per gallon. You should be looking at the gallons per mile.

C: I see.

S: That's the logical fallacy. These you should not be looking at like how far you're getting on a gallon but how many gallons are you spending to go that 10 000 miles.

C: Then why don't we term it that way?

S: We should people argue that we should it should be miles per gallon. I mean it should be gallons per 100 miles or something and make it meaningful because then it is more intuitive. When you know what I mean because then when you when then your your instincts are aligned a little bit better with the reality you still might think linearly. But yeah when you actually think about it in terms of how many gallons of gas you're saving you would have to go to zero just to equal. You basically have to have infinite miles per gallon in order to equal going from 10 to 20. Because you're already spending half at 20. So the the potential savings is less. So actually so you would say for example for for every 500 gallons you save from going from 10 to 20 you're only going to save 300 from going from 20 to 50. Let me give you another example. And this is also like designed to be a little bit mind-blowing but I know you guys are prepared for it now. Also with driving. Let's say you increase your driving speed from 40 miles per hour to 60 miles per hour. How much would you need to increase your spree speed from a starting point of 80 miles per hour in order to save the same amount of time on the journey. Would you say 100 miles per hour or 120 miles per hour?

E: Oh I see what's the right what's the equivalent.

C: I have a very hard time with these.

E: [inaudible] is the same as 80 to a [inaudible].

J: I'd say it's a higher number.

S: How much so you think about how much time do you save by going from 40 miles per hour to 60 miles per hour. Now how fast would you have to go in order to save the same amount of time if you were starting at 80 miles per hour?

B: Probably yeah, probably 120.

C: Yeah tell me if I'm wrong but I remember always being told that like sort of at 60 or beyond you're sort of peaked.

E: Optimal performance.

C: Like you're not gonna save anything.

J: Oh because of wind resistance, right?

C: Like, no not because of wind resistance but just like because of the way that the math works.

S: Because of diminishing returns.

C: Yeah like you're not gonna get there any faster if you go 90.

S: Yeah.

C: Yeah.

S: So the the answer is 240 miles per hour.

C: Right yeah like you're never gonna get to 240. So if if you follow a linear thinking you would say a hundred. If you follow ratio thinking you would say 120. But in reality you need to be thinking exponentially which gets you to 240. So the part of the linearity bias is that we underestimate the advantages of improving things at the low end and we overestimate the advantages of improving them at the high end. So that that works for both of these examples that I gave. So like when you go from 10 to 20 that advantage just blows away anything you can get beyond that. And when you go from 40 to 60 that gives you such an advantage in speed that you can't make it up unless you go like 240 miles per hour beyond 80. So the part of it is the thing that with this example what people don't take into account is that you're getting there a lot faster when at 80 miles per hour as your starting point there's a lot less room for improvement. And at 40 so like when you're if you're you're calculating a journey you really want to avoid the choke points. Even if it's like it would be you would save much more time taking back roads than speeding along the highway and then getting into bumper to bumper. That the time you lose when you're going super slow vastly outweighs even a relatively decreasing speed overall. But yeah you're right so after when once you get north of 60 miles an hour again the thing is at 60 miles per hour you're pretty you're gonna get there reasonably fast. There's just not that much room for improvement. So when you go even faster you're starting you're talking about for even 100 mile journey. Like just a couple of minutes. Like it becomes negligible. The time savings becomes increasingly negligible when your starting point is already pretty high.

E: Unless you're an ambulance.

C: But to be fair.

S: No even you shouldn't speed that's right and ambulances don't really speed I don't know if you paid attention.

C: No what they do is they get the benefit of the cars moving out of their way, that's all they'll get.

S: So they make it up at the low end. They're not waiting in traffic they're but they're not speeding.

C: And so to be fair Steven I only wanna clarify because this isn't just a conversation we're having but people are listening and learning from us. Some things in life are linear. Like we have to be clear that this bias only applies to these specific situations and others like them.

S: Yes I mean or you could say that we have a linear bias whether it's true or not.

C: Exactly.

S: It's true sometimes but even when it's not true we still stick to our linear bias. We just tend to think linearly.

E: We grasp it more easily.

S: Yeah and so yeah.

C: Because I think some of the things that are really fundamental to our evolution are linear. Like it it the heuristic has served us in so many ways.

S: Yeah that's why we have that heuristic.

E: Yeah generally speaking. You can survive life in a linear way of looking at things.

C: It's just bites you in the ass sometimes.

B: Two brontosaurus burgers are twice as good as one. (laughter)

S: That's exactly right and we we think of that that the bias comes from like if I have one bookshelf of books and then I add a second one I have twice as many books. That's correct. That is linear. So of course Cara that's why we have this heuristic. Maybe it's that in our evolutionary milieu, as I love to say, that there wasn't a lot of things happening that were geometric. But now we live in a civilization that deals with stuff. Like we have Moore's law where we have a geometric increase in the in the processing speed basically. Of computers, the number of transistors on on a computer chip and over like every eighteen months to two years. And that has produced just unbelievably massive increases.

E: Is that still holding true? Did Moore's law taper off or with computing power?

C: Not yet. I don't think.

E: We're still on the course?

S: Well it's just that it's different. I mean it's there's a complicated answer to that.

B: Yeah it's that's not it [inaudible].

C: But it's still not linear.

S: It's still not linear. It's just like those other aspects of computing power that are being focused on. It's not all about the central processor. Like adding cores does that really, it's just different. But there but the industry is maintaining the overall performance increase one way or the other because that's what's best for the industry and for sales. The benefit of understanding the heuristic biases of how your brain works is that you can fix them. You can think. So how for example do we do this? So here just getting out of yourself and thinking oh wait is this a linear progression or not. And just sort of add new modules to to modify your heuristic but you're doing it sort of consciously. But and this gets to what you're saying Cara. It's always going to be like amazingly more helpful to pick the low hanging fruit. Rather than push for incremental advances at the high end. Always deal with the lowest end first. You're going to get so much more bang for the buck at the low end than you will at the high end. Because we vastly underestimate the benefits of shoring up the low end. And we the over estimate─

C: Yeah we never apply this to our economics principles.

S: ─I mean economists do. But even sometimes they get it wrong when they fall for this heuristic but generally people don't. Like intuitively we do we don't do it. So but there's a lot of people who are like not expert economists or whatever who are the heads of companies and who make decisions, who make purchasing decisions and business decisions based upon this faulty linear heuristic. We also run into this, we talk about this a lot in our book. We don't run into it we're trying to extrapolate future progress because from both ends. Because we think of progress as linear just intuitively and we also think of problems as linear. And problems are not linear either. So you get diminishing returns there. Like for example I like─

E: Batteries?

S: ─well like one of my. Last 5% that last 5% could be ten times as hard as the first 95%, right? So like with speech recognition. Kurzweil in the 1990s predicted that by like the early 2000s we will we would have cracked speech recognition. And we got to like 95% which sounds great but that still means one in 20 words is wrong. And it got stuck there. It took 20 more years to like really get to the point where it's more like a the greater than 99%. And then we ran into that with self-driving cars. Where we're like okay yeah we're going to be all driving we're going to be all riding around and self-driving cars by the early 2020s, right? Now. And that's not happening because that last few percent which is important. Not having accidents it turned out to be an order of magnitude harder than the first 95 to 98%. So when you approach problems first of all you have to be aware of that but it also means you should just grab that 95%, you know what I mean? And just make sure that you do all of those things first. That's why like my approach to the energy problem is like let's grab the 95% of every option we have and not try to push the last 5% of any one option where you get into incredibly diminishing returns. It's the same thing if you try to go 100% solar in wind it's a lot harder than just letting it get to its natural sort of equilibrium point where we're picking the low-hanging fruit. Anyway. So this it's really an interesting bias. And like once you really wrap your head around it it does help you think about a lot of things. Make sure you're calculating things the right way. I love the gasoline one because it is it's like you're thinking of miles per gallon but you really should be thinking of gallons per mile when you try to do comparisons.

C: It doesn't help that the question is couched [inaudible].

S: I know I mean but that's the that's the way we think of things.

E: Reverse engineer.

S: That's the world we are interfacing with. So anyway good to keep that in mind. And it comes up in a lot a lot of places like more than you would than you would think. Okay let's move on.

Who's That Noisy? (52:46)

Answer to previous Noisy:

Water lapping up against metal gutters of pool

New Noisy (56:37)

[Michael Jackson-esque squeals, screams, and scatting]

J: ... If you think you know what this week's Noisy is, or, my God, people, if you have heard a Noisy that you think is cool--you found it on the web, it could be something from your life, at work, at home--as long as it's interesting and doesn't sound like white noise--if it sounds like this, [imitates white noise], don't send that to me.

Interview with Dr. Naomi Rowe-Gurney (1:13:08)

• Dr. Naomi Rowe-Gurney, Planetary Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and Howard University

Science or Fiction (1:35:49)

Theme: Which one is older? Item #1: The first cities predate evidence for iron use by about 5,000 years. Item #2: The first dinosaur walked the Earth 40 million years before the emergence of the first true trees. Item #3: The first firearm was invented about 900 years after the first steam engine.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Dinosaur → true tree
Science	Cities → iron use
Science	Steam engine → firearm

Host	Result
Steve	clever

Rogue	Guess
Jay	Dinosaur → true tree
Evan	Steam engine → firearm
Bob	Cities → iron use
Cara	Dinosaur → true tree

Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.

Jay's Response

J: ... "to blaaave"

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:57:57)

With less critical thinking comes more vaccine hesitancy.
– Nedra Rhone, columnist, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Signoff/Announcements

S: —and until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

S: Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at theskepticsguide.org. Send your questions to info@theskepticsguide.org. And, if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com/SkepticsGuide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.

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Today I Learned

• Fact/Description, possibly with an article reference
• Fact/Description
• Fact/Description

References

Vocabulary