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‘We still need to be afraid of’ coronavirus: Dr. Amesh Adalja

Dr. Amesh Adalja, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, joins The Final Round to discuss his thoughts on the latest developments with President Trump’s hospitalization, coronavirus, and the vaccine race.

Video Transcript

MYLES UDLAND: All right, welcome back to The Final Round here on Yahoo Finance. Myles Udland with you in New York. Well, as we speak, currently, the president's doctors speaking to reporters down at Walter Reed Medical Center. And for more on what we do and do not know about the condition of the president-- and let's talk more broadly about the state of the pandemic-- we're joined now by Dr. Amesh Adalja. He is with Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. So Dr. Adalja, let's just kind of maybe talk through the timeline here with the president from, the positive test, to him him being admitted to the hospital.

We now are about three hours away from him being released from the hospital, what the timeline, as far as we know, maybe says to you about kind of his condition and the state of his treatment?

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AMESH ADALJA: It's still a little bit unclear to me. Because we don't know exactly when he got infected. We don't know when his last negative test was. We're hearing that his first positive test was likely sometime on Thursday. And he did have a kind of a rocky course. It wasn't a grave course. But it wasn't a mild course. It was clearly something that I would put in the moderate level.

He has pneumonia on his X-ray from all indications. He needed supplemental oxygen. And he's gotten medications that we usually give to people who require oxygen and who are not just mild cases. However, he does seem to have improved. And he is not being discharged to some ordinary home. He's being discharged to the White House, where they do have a very sophisticated medical unit. So I think everything seems to have gone according to plan.

But again, there's a lot of uncertainty about what exactly happened when and what was driving some of the decision making because of the opaqueness of the medical team.

MYLES UDLAND: Now, obviously, we would all expect that the President of the United States is going to have access to all kinds of medical care that normal citizens wouldn't necessarily go to as quickly as the president did. But as we think about some of the treatments he's gotten and the way that seems to have maybe stabilized or improved his conditions, is this the sort of thing that we would like more citizens to have access to? Or is it a unique situation where you're only trying these treatments on the president given kind of their importance within, you know, obviously, the country, and the world, and so on?

AMESH ADALJA: It's important remember that remdesivir and dexamethasone, both of those are standard of care. And I've given those to countless patients that I've taken care of with COVID-19. The only thing that was really extraordinary that the president got was the compassionate use of the Regeneron monoclonal antibody cocktail. This is something that's in clinical trials. We don't yet know if it works. But he got in on compassionate use.

And it's unclear to me whether it actually helped, had no effect, or worsened his course. And I think that's why it's important that we do things in clinical trials. But I do think that this is something that people will likely have access to as the clinical trial data continues to accrue. It seems to be promising in early trials at decreasing symptoms, decreasing viral load. We don't know how effective it is on keeping people out of the hospital. That's what people are touting it for. Because, obviously, the president got it and still ended up in the hospital.

- Dr. Adalja, we know that President Trump tweeted earlier, don't be afraid of COVID. And that's something that seems to be getting a lot of attention. As a public health message-- because his experience. To your point, he got access to certain medications that others didn't. What are your thoughts on that, on the message that he has sent out just now?

AMESH ADALJA: We still need to be afraid of COVID. COVID still is killing hundreds and maybe even 1,000 people a day. There are tens of thousands of cases occurring. It is disrupting our lives. It is something that we really need to not panic about. But we need to take commonsense actions to limit the spread. And that includes face coverings, avoiding congregate settings, trying not to be in crowds, six feet apart, social distancing, all of that. That's how we move forward in this pandemic.

Now, that doesn't mean that you're afraid of the virus. It means that you recognize it as a threat and you take the appropriate action.

SEANA SMITH: Dr. Adalja, today, we have Governor Cuomo shutting down certain schools in New York City hotspots. We heard from New York City Mayor de Blasio that he's looking to actually close down nonessential businesses. Is this the type of activity that you see reoccurring here over the next couple of months as nine states have reported a record number of cases over the last seven days?

AMESH ADALJA: I don't think that we're going to see broad economic shutdowns and stay-at-home orders. But you will see targeted public-health interventions based on data. So what you're seeing in New York City is certain ZIP codes have increased cases. And then you're seeing targeted public health interventions there. You have to be very careful, though, that you don't drive things underground.

So if Mayor de Blasio shuts nonessential businesses in certain zip codes, are people just going to go to other places? Or they're going to be an underground market that's started? Because we know that that happens when you have these kind of orders that are trying to respect borders that the virus doesn't respect. So you want to really look at the data and titrate based on what you're seeing. And I think targeted public health and precision-guided public health with clear metrics is the best way to go forward. And hopefully, we don't have anything widespread in New York and get a handle on what's going on in those neighborhoods.

- Speaking of, Dan, following it, the CDCs guidelines just released-- rereleased, rather, about the spread of the virus airborne and the distance in which it could travel. Is this a reason to be even more concerned? Should people start, you know, sort of ignoring the 6-foot rule and maybe do 13 feet or something like that?

AMESH ADALJA: No, I don't think that we should ignore the 6-foot rule. You have to remember that that guidance, what it says is actually true, that the main way that people get infected is with being within six feet of each other, with close contact, with droplets. There are some situations where the virus can spread farther than six feet. But those tend to be enclosed areas, indoor, with poor ventilation, where people are doing certain activities, like singing, or shouting, or exercising, where you get much more virus being dispersed.

So that's not the main way that people get it. We have to think about it and mitigate against it. But it shouldn't change the basic things that we're doing in everyday life.

- And Dr. Adalja, you said we should still very much be afraid. But when you think of the president of the free world saying, do not be afraid, and all those folks who have previously not been afraid, just reaffirming and confirming how they view the virus and how politicized it is, how do you really convince those folks? You know, it does feel like, whether it's party lines, whether it's a idea of personal freedoms and safeties, there seems to be this kind of stronghold that is in place, basically, from the beginning of this virus. How do you think about it as a medical professional and really getting perhaps those anti-maskers and folks who have not believed in the severity of this virus to really be concerned?

AMESH ADALJA: It's very challenging. If the president getting infected, despite being the most protected man on Earth, with a very extensive testing regimen, ended up getting hospitalized and needing medication and oxygen, if that doesn't sway people to think that this is a real threat to the population, I don't know what will. I think that this has become kind of mind boggling to me, that there are people that don't realize that this is a major threat. It's a threat that we have to take seriously. And we can get through it, but only if people actually start to behave as if we're in a pandemic. Or we're going to continue through these cycles, that tens of thousands of cases every day, with people being afraid to do things that they used to do, and never getting back to any semblance of normalcy.

So this has to be the biggest challenge that we face when it comes to a pandemic. And it's actually just baffling to me that nothing will get through to that group of the population that doesn't take this seriously.

MYLES UDLAND: And then Dr. Adalja, just finally, before we let you go, it's getting colder here in the Northeast and across much of the country. We've seen a rise in cases in some states, a number of states. I believe it's 34 have higher cases over the last seven days than they ever did in the spring. As we head towards the winter months, are you bracing for an uptick in cases? Do you have an expectation, I guess I should ask, for the way the virus may unfold over the coming months?

AMESH ADALJA: We have to prepare that there's going to be an intensification of spread when it gets colder, when people are unable to do as many activities outdoors as they are and they're going indoors, where we just heard about-- that's one of the places where we worry about poor ventilation and extraordinary transmission occurring.

So I do think that we have to really be vigilant as it gets colder and make sure that we are still following all of those recommendations. And we still need to fix the ability to test, trace, and isolate people. It's going to become even more important in the winter as cases likely accelerate.

MYLES UDLAND: All right, Dr. Amesh Adalja with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, always appreciate you taking the time. Thanks so much.

AMESH ADALJA: Thank you.