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Andy calls up author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Laurie Garrett to explore one of the most challenging questions of the day: how will Biden reach Trump supporters on the vital issues of the pandemic? It’s a question that needs an answer.

 

Keep up with Andy on Twitter @ASlavitt and Instagram @andyslavitt.

 

Follow Laurie Garrett on Twitter @Laurie_Garrett.

 

In the Bubble is supported in part by listeners like you. Become a member, get exclusive bonus content, ask Andy questions, and get discounted merch at https://lemonadamedia.com/inthebubble/

 

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• Livinguard masks have the potential to deactivate COVID-19 based on the testing they have conducted from leading universities such as the University of Arizona and the Free University in Berlin, Germany. Go to shop.livinguard.com and use the code BUBBLE10 for 10% off.

 

Check out these resources from today’s episode: 

 

• Read Frank Bruni’s profile on Laurie in The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/02/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-prediction-laurie-garrett.html
• Watch Laurie’s 2007 TED Talk about lessons from the 1918 flu pandemic: https://www.ted.com/talks/laurie_garrett_lessons_from_the_1918_flu?language=en 
• Here’s a collection of Laurie’s articles and interviews about COVID-19: https://www.lauriegarrett.com/covid-19-media?tag=Authored
• Check out the CDC report on the Minnesota COVID-19 outbreak associated with the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6947e1.htm
• Pre-order Andy’s book, Preventable: The Inside Story of How Leadership Failures, Politics, and Selfishness Doomed the U.S. Coronavirus Response, here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250770165

 

 

To follow along with a transcript and/or take notes for friends and family, go to www.lemonadamedia.com/show/in-the-bubble shortly after the air date.

 

Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia. For additional resources, information, and a transcript of the episode, visit lemonadamedia.com.

Transcription

SPEAKERS

Andy Slavitt, Laurie Garrett, Gov. Gavin Newsom

Gov. Gavin Newsom  00:00

The bottom line is if we don’t act now, our hospital system will be overwhelmed. We don’t act now, we’ll continue to see a death rate climb, more lives lost. And that’s why today, we are pursuant to the blueprint, we put out some 14 or so weeks ago, pulling that emergency brake. We’ve done it sequentially over the course the last number of weeks. But we’re doing it in a much more broad and much more comprehensive way. Today we’re announcing and introducing a regional stay at home order in the state of California.

Andy Slavitt 

Welcome IN THE BUBBLE. This is Andy Slavitt. That was Governor Gavin Newsom. And it really could have been almost any governor in the United States talking about situation in their state and the need for pullback, more regulation stay at home orders, restaurants are closed across California. And, you know, one of the things I think, having been on the phone over a course of time with a number of the governor’s that’s really interesting is, you know, April, the governors were acting early, because they knew that this was an exponentially growing virus. I feel like now all the Governors are doing things just a little too late. Taking smaller steps. First, they closed the bars by 10. Then they closed the bars at eight, then they closed the bars at six. And week later, they’ve closed the bars. Look, these are not easy decisions for anyone for Governors or anyone else. And it’s a reflection on the fact that Congress has not supported bar owners and people who work in bars.

That makes it incredibly difficult on governance. But still, hospitals are filling an incredible amount of people dying. And it’s while these are very difficult choices, I don’t envy anyone ever need to make them. There’s no question you choose human life, because they’re still bouncing back. And I think we’re seeing that now, as things continue to get worse, I hope you’re being safe in every way. And I hope that you don’t need a hospital for a while, because it’s getting to be very challenging. We will start to peek, things will start to drop, there’s no question, you know, as people are locked down, in most communities, that will happen. But it’s going to take a while for this to burn through and burn off. And, you know, it’s there’s pretty good evidence now that as soon as the governor’s let up, people are going to be back at it again. And I think you should all just be very careful. We’re trying to be careful here in our bubble.

02:37

And I want to say quick thanks to a few people in the bubble got recognized as one of the top podcasts or one of the best podcasts or the favorite podcasts of 2020. That was very nice to see. I guess that gets I want to just say thank you to you for listening. Obviously, if people didn’t listen, Apple wouldn’t feel that way. Although, you know, I know that they appreciate other elements. Just want to say thank you, to Kryssy and Alex, who is you know, are the production team on this and they own every bit of this show as much as I do. And in fact, you know, they do most of the work and I kind of don’t know what I’m doing. I want to thank Ivan Kuraev, he’s the editor of the show, like he is making sure it sounds good. And the rest of the Lemonada Team for putting this on. But it’s great. of the I think, you know, there are 12 podcasts that got recognized. I think that was there’s 13 podcasts in the world. So I think we got 12 or 13. And we’re pretty proud of that. No, there’s more than 13 podcasts, as you know. So we’re happy about that.

Laurie Garrett is on the show today. Laurie Garrett is an award-winning science journalist. She’s an author, she and I have just gotten to know one another over the last few months, I’d say she is a very strong, thoughtful person with lots of opinions. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for explanatory journalism for a series, the chronicle the Ebola virus outbreak in Zaire. She has been giving TED talks and writing and talking about pandemics and their consequences for a long time. And the topic that Laurie and I really try to hone in on is how we manage this pandemic through this very divided country where we have it seems to be two different tribes that I know you know what  I’m talking about. Two different giant bubbles, that are really causing people to respond very, very differently. And the question in my mind and a lot of people’s mind is how does Joe Biden tackle these two different parts of the country these two different ways of thinking. And Laurie’s the perfect person to talk about this with us. I think you’ll see. So let’s dial up, Laurie, and have that conversation.

Laurie Garrett 

I was just sending you a thing saying I’m giving up.

Andy Slavitt

No, you have no, you have no patience whatsoever, none.

Laurie Garrett

That’s right. None. No, I was on and it just kept saying, “the host is in another meeting.” I’m like, Oh, I’m not good enough for you. Okay, Andy, you got somebodies better priority than me? Yeah

Andy Slavitt

Get out. You know, I’ve talked about you coming on the show for a little while. So you get massively high expectations to be, but I’m not worried about that. It’s like, I found that you and I have gotten into a couple times close to talking about is this sort of impact of its divided country, on the pandemic, in all of your work, and, and all of the things that you have thought about and all of your experience, both writing about and thinking about and speaking about pandemics. There’s a lot that you were able to foresee, one of the things that I imagine is really interesting and different about this pandemic in the US, as opposed to the rest of the world is how it plays out with our divisions. How do you reflect on that?

Laurie Garrett  06:30

You know, back in the spring, Frank Bruni of the New York Times did a profile of me. And I didn’t actually realize he was doing a profile of me, I thought he was just interviewing me as background for a column he was working on at the New York Times. And when it came out, it had this enormous impact on my life, because a whole lot of people suddenly heard about me. And one of the things I said in that interview was that I thought that there was going to be a lot of violence spawned by this epidemic, and that the inequalities in our society that had been festering and worsening ever since the 2008 financial crisis, were going to become explosive issues, and bitter resentment and rage, and it would be American versus American. And when I saw my words in print in Frank’s article, which I think if I remember, recall, right was the first week of April, at the height of the epidemic.

In New York, I suddenly thought, “Oh, my goodness, did I overstate this? Ah,” you know, have I gone too far here? Well, flash forward, we go through Black Lives Matter. We go through riots in the streets all over America, we go through armed white vigilante shooting at people and getting away with it, apparently, apparently, that’s justifiable homicide in America, we get to the point where, you know, a bartender or a bar owner on Staten Island, used his vehicle as a weapon against the police, the NYPD this week, because they were trying to enforce COVID limitations on who could come into his bar and force mask wearing. And now I actually think I understated way back when the likelihood of violence and separation in America, I think none of us really fully understood how likely it was that, you know, this damn mask would become a literal point of partisan separation. And that just this simple thing of a mask to wear when you go outside. Yeah, muffles your voice a little bit. So who cares? You know, that should become a point of division, that his party identity is absolutely astounding.

09:07

That we would have failed messaging so thoroughly, that we could even bypass that. We’re now at a point where even states that have Republican governors, Republican US senators, and are getting advice from a Republican run, CDC are unable to enforce or even strongly suggest COVID protection measures even once they see the light because all their ICU beds are full, because their hospitals are now full, because they have refrigerator trucks lined up to receive bodies. They still seem unable to reverse the damage done among their base. So you know, months and months and months of listening to Donald Trump, say lie after lie after lie and exert maximum pressure on other Republicans to the point where they are in terror of getting a bad tweet from the president. So that even a governor who knows better and has reached a point where 30% or 40% of daily COVID tests are coming back positive among his citizenry, and his hospitals are all full. Even that Governor is too scared, too frightened of the power of a Trump tweet. To result in the base threatening his life.

10:46

I think we’ve reached a point where everything has conflated so that we’re you stand on whether or not we just had a righteous election in America, or a fraud, where you stand on the anti Vax movement, where you stand on police brutality, all these issues have become conflated into a single mess, a conundrum. And I don’t know how Biden is going to punch through all of this, because he has appointed a pretty remarkable, although I would say, less than charismatic coterie of health officials are at least he’s going to nominate them for approval by the Senate. And they’re all people that will take reasoned decisions, let science guide the policy of COVID control. And we’ll try to bolster and strengthen the ACA, Obamacare, try to bolster and strengthen access to vaccines coverage through Medicare and Medicaid, all of these things, but, you know, they’re up against a playing field that’s already been so distorted, that it’s not clear. We’re all playing the same game.

Andy Slavitt  12:10

So what are we observing Laurie that’s going on, in call it Trump country, versus it gets used to call Clinton country now or Obama country? We call it Biden country now officially, what does it look like in terms of compliance? In terms of belief? In what the reality of this virus is? The description? And then do we know how that’s showing up? In terms of infections and illnesses and deaths?

Laurie Garrett

Yeah, Andy, we have a pretty clear idea now that, indeed, we have a real division in belief and there, you start, right there with that word, belief. You know, belief is, is a religious concept. Belief is an intellectual foray. But belief versus scientific hard facts, you know, the word belief, it should not be in the picture. And so you start off with, do you believe in the science? Do you believe in the reality? And do you believe in the evidence, and if you right, at that point, are already on the rejection side, then it’s really hard to know how to reach you. And what I think four years of Donald Trump has done is undermine the concept that there are incontrovertible facts, that should be a baseline that we all agree upon, and act upon in concert. You know, is the sky blue? I don’t know. According to Trump, maybe, maybe not. You know, are there things that human beings do that emit CO2 and are damaging our atmosphere? Well, it kind of depends on what day of the week it is. Donald Trump says yes, some days and no others. And so I think the problem here is that is that very word belief. It connotes the notion that actual facts are something we can take or leave, believe or not believe.

Andy Slavitt  14:17

And it’s actually shows up in the outcomes that we’re seeing in rural America and Trump country, so to speak. Are we seeing that in the data?

Laurie Garrett

Yeah, I think we are. I mean, first of all, I think anybody who’s really seriously looked at the data is going to say the Sturgis motorcycle rally was a major turning point. 460,000 plus motorcyclists converging on a town that’s normally got a population of about 2000 and staying there for 10 days, frolicking, partying, nobody wearing masks and then returning to their home states. Now that we don’t have, you know hundreds of studies to look at but the CDC did do one very careful and genetically based survey of motorcyclists that returned to Minnesota, and showed very clearly that they spread the virus throughout their immediate community and their households and their close associates, upon return to Minnesota. There are some studies indicating a similar effect in Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa, North and South Dakota. We have such an explosive situation now completely out of control in the northern prairie and rust belt states.

I think, you know, that the fact that no one said in either South Dakota or the neighbor states, none of the governor’s none of the leaders said, let’s call this off. No Sturgis motorcycle rally this year. No one dared go up against them except the Oglala Sioux Nation, which said, You can’t motorcycle through our community. And we’re all paying a price for that. Now, there are any number of other smaller events that have occurred, since each of which could have been averted, could have been canceled, there could have been interventions, but for political reasons, such interventions never occurred.

16:47

Let me ask you the question as a problem for both of us to try to wrestle with, which is the very, I think, the most material question right now you’ve connected to it or a little bit earlier, which is how to advise Joe Biden, and how to reach the other half of the country, let me take a step back. First, someone built a model for me, which showed me that for every 10% of the public, additional 10% of the public that’s non-compliant, either with masks, or with the vaccine, it’s 100,000 more deaths. So I use that as a rule of thumb in my head, that every 10% really counts, every 1% really counts, every person really counts. So that if you’re Joe Biden, figuring out how to reach this other half of the country, it’s got to be the most daunting challenge. He could nail everything else, get the vaccines out, he can nail putting the right people the right roles he can nail having the people who are already inclined to wear masks, wear masks. But if he doesn’t do that, the virus doesn’t go away. If people don’t take the vaccine, if people don’t, in some sense, compliant believe in their system that this is real. So I think he does it.

Well, that’s interesting. I mean, right now he’s focusing on the notion of patriotism. So the key message constantly, is wear a mask. It’s the patriotic thing to do. But I think in the end, there’s a limit to what you can accomplish with the patriotism message, because we already have a division on what’s a patriot. We have a blue state patriot (unclear) patriot. So the question is, how do you get past this? And one thing I’ve been toying with and working with is trying to figure out if we just have sane, consistent messaging from all tiers of government, all tiers of the federal government at any rate, will that calm things down? Will that slowly begin to undermine the counter message? And I guess my answer is it depends on what Trump chooses to do. He could be a COVID killing saboteur on the sidelines.

19:02

If he chooses to use his tweet power, his whatever he does next in life, media presence, to simply attack everything that Biden does, and all of the COVID efforts, it could keep the red blue divide alive, it could make it impossible to roll out a vaccine effectively, to have sufficient coverage. To take care of the population. It could be devastating. And so, I mean, I can only hope along with everybody else that Trump will take a different posture as an ex-president, but I don’t see any evidence of that.

Andy Slavitt

I think we know that some of the prior presidents from Obama, to Bush to Clinton are planning on doing some work together around taking the vaccine But there’s one name that’s absent from that, of course, and that’s Trump. And I’m not sure whether who’s invited into that or not, it probably be difficult for them to invite him, on the other hand, can imagine the power of him actually deciding to be a state’s person.

Laurie Garrett  20:18

He’s already declared that he’s already immune.

Andy Slavitt

Yep.

Laurie Garrett

You know, so he’s already said, “Look, because I survived the virus I have me like bull strong man have great immune system.” So he’s unlikely, unlikely to go on camera getting a vaccine. Now, Mike Pence might be our second-best option. If Mike Pence between now and Christmas, when presumably the FDA will give the Pfizer vaccine the emergency approval if he goes on camera and gets vaccinated. That may help if Ivanka also goes on camera and gets vaccines that may help.

Andy Slavitt

I was on a call with the state lieutenant governor of Texas this week, who is about as far right, as you can imagine. And he was talking about the vaccine. And I asked him if he would publicly acknowledge that he’s taking the vaccine that he said he would, and good for him. And he said, Abbott, the governor of Texas would as well. You know, I think the Governor of Florida has the, you know, should do the same thing. Governor, South Dakota should do the same thing. And so this this question around does patriotism the right argument? I don’t know. You know, I just don’t know what it is that people are listening for. I know what people who are processing it, electrically are listening for, what’s the day to say? What did the Europeans do? Etc, etc.

Laurie Garrett

Well, here’s the question, Andy, another way of looking at it instead of trying so hard to puzzle it out. In the American context, as you’re asked the question this way, why hasn’t it played out as dramatically as a schism over public health in Europe? In almost European as it has here. Yes, there, there have been isolated incidents of, you know, protesters, opposing lockdowns or opposing various measures. But overall, Europeans have gone along with what their governments have advocated. And so if there’s differences in Europe, it’s also because the governments themselves are different. And they’ve taken different policy choices. But look at the UK, they just went into a three-week all-out lockdown of the whole nation. And there were almost no incidents of resistance of any kind. People went along with the game. What’s the key difference here? Why would you have compliance in Europe and not here? And I think, of all the various hand waving, you know, recipes on this. I think the answer that’s the clearest is they have social safety nets.

Laurie Garrett  23:02

And so in the United States, would you say we’re going on lockdown, and your bars closing, and this is closing, and that is closing. Every one of those people goes on the unemployment line, every one of those people is immediately economically affected. Every one of those children either does or doesn’t go to school, either does or doesn’t get lost. We’ve lost hundreds of thousands of children. They’re not in school it virtually or otherwise, we don’t know where they are. We don’t know. Do they? Are they learning to read? Have they forgotten everything? Have they forgotten their times tables? We don’t know. And in this country, the attitude of our government seems to be, look, you know, it’s tough that you lost your job, and you might lose your apartment, and you might not be able to make your mortgage payment. And, you know, you’re getting billed for your COVID treatment that was done to your grandmother, and you can’t pay the nursing home bills on your grandfather. All of this is, is really tough. But you know what? You’re on your own because we’re Americans. We don’t want socialism. We don’t want you know, if you want some, if you want something different, you go talk to Bernie Sanders and AOC.

Andy Slavitt  24:17

Right. You know, it’s interesting you say this, because the social safety net brings one other thing with it. First of all, I agree with you 100%. But the bigger brings with it is trust in government, that they have my back when I have a hard time. So when they ask something of me, when they asked me to wear a mask, when they asked me to do something for others, I’m more likely to trust that they’re doing something that’s good for all of us. Whereas in the US, we have a relationship where one party certainly has told us government is no good even when we’re in it. You shouldn’t trust it. And when the other team is in it, you absolutely shouldn’t trust them. And so this this kind of embedded distrust of government, which, by the way, goes all the way back to the revolution, right? I mean, it’s not, it’s, it’s somewhat part of our roots to be a little bit fair about it is, you know, and look, if you said, Where’s the best country to make a billion dollars, it might be this country, it might be the US. But if you said where’s the best country to prevent hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths, by people acting on each other’s behalf? It certainly wouldn’t be this country. And in that sense, I kind of wonder how much of this is just embedded endemic stuff? And how much of it is the President? The soon to be former president.

Laurie Garrett

Well, and you got to bring Congress into the picture as well, because certainly the big fight going on right now, as unemployment checks are about to run out. Eviction protections are about to run out. Millions of Americans are about to go to 1939, right? Excuse me, 1929. And beyond the dole and stand in a food line. And Congress continues to didier, didier, didier and pare the agreed upon bipartisan possibilities down further and further by more than 50% already. And they still haven’t reached an agreement. When you look at all this and ask what’s really going on what’s really behind all of this? You know, I think that the one party is saying, we want to take advantage, if you will, of this pandemic crisis, to build up elements of the of the safety net that we always wanted built up. So we’re going to request two point something trillion. That’s what came out of the house many months ago. Two point something trillion, that includes some not just temporary spending, but permanent changes in the law that will allocate going forward for certain kinds of social safety net coverage, such as programs for the preschools, and protection and surveillance of nursing homes, that sort of thing.

27:12

And the response on the Republican side is exactly the opposite. Because they are now under Trump, the party anti-regulation, anti-government, they don’t want to build up anything with any emergency spending bill that could result in permanent change in budgetary allotments, or in the actions and interventions from government. Right? They want a minimalist government. So except, of course, when it comes to military and police. So they will say no, we can’t do any of that. So they’re willing to spend in one shot deal spending splurges for designated population groups, but they are not willing to make any structural changes. So I think where we are now is at (unclear) between the parties in Washington, and similarly at state levels in state legislatures over is this a moment to consider the weaknesses of our systems and why we can’t handle this epidemic? Or is this a moment to simply vote through a much-pared down emergency spending thing to buy more time, until we have full scale immunization of the population.

28:32

And I fear that we’re going to end up going to the ladder. And we’re going to go to it with a short-term bridging effect. So that in the sort of imagination of the political elite, there will be an effective vaccine or vaccines plural, it will be widespread in use nationwide, perhaps in a non-equitable fashion, but nevertheless out there for everybody to get immunized by the summer. And by this time, next year, the majority of Americans will have either become immune having survived COVID itself or been immunized and we will see our epidemic start disappearing. And so the only willingness to spend is very short term, get us to that magic moment. Now, the interesting thing is when you talk to people on Wall Street, who are you know, in the top, top Fortune 500 investment firms, banks and you know, major entities on Wall Street, they’re saying, “Hey, we want another all-out stimulus package.” This is what’s kept the economy going. If you don’t infuse tons and tons of money, trillions of dollars into the economy. We won’t ever bounce out of this right. We’re going to bounce out, but with worsened inequity, with worsened divided wealth. And in the end, smart companies realize, if we keep having all the bounce outs, only go to reward the top elite of society. So the 1% keeps getting richer and richer, then you lose the spending power, the consumer power of the middle class, and then who the hell do you sell your products to?

Andy Slavitt  30:33

I think this is a really shrewd political analysis, which is that, you know, all the problems want to do is just potentially get to a temporary bridge, the democrats want structural reform. And you know, Congress, of course, is a bit in the balance. And you’re 100%, correct.

I want to finish on two different questions. Two points that are because I think you’re such a great thinker about these things. And I love talking about them. One, is the question of entering and exiting the pandemic, the same country versus an improved country? And it’s sort of that that old Churchill quote about, you know, will do Americans will do the right thing after they’ve exhausted all the rest of the possibilities. One would think that we’ve exposed over the last year, so many of the things that have been barely beneath the surface or have been above the surface, but rarely talked about around racial injustice and inequity around how capitalism’s excesses, foster real pain on people and don’t solve the problems the way that systems do without some sort of government intervention.

And that there are exact there actually is a cost and a price for liberty. You want your freedom, there is something if you’re going to be part of a society, that you have to attribute all of those things which are ripe for dialogue, and they’re not easy topics, and they’re not meant to be changed overnight. But do you feel a sense of optimism or pessimism that those at least those conversations can begin to take hold? Forget about whether it will get instant legislation. There’s no hope of that. But whether or not those conversations could take hold and eventually change the country for the better.

Laurie Garrett  32:29

Oh, boy, that’s a huge question. And it requires a lot of crystal balling that may be way beyond my skill set. I was in a discussion with Mark Carney, who is the former head of the Bank of England, and before that head of the Bank of Canada, and now his financial investment on show. And he was saying that the majority of the Fortune 500 corporations, and pretty much the entire multinational business sector sees recovery as a must that is sustainable recovery. So in other words, his point was no, we don’t all want to go back to 2019. We want to go forward to a COP26 climate change, you know, improvement in the planet, we want to go forward to less dependency on fossil fuels, to a reimagine nature of the city, a reimagined nature of mass transportation, a reimagine nature of what are these cultural magnets. And how do they function in society.

And if we’re, we are, in fact going to, you know, rebuild out of all this in a more sustainable way, then we could theoretically, get to 2024. And look back and say, you know, that year 2020 was the worst year ever. We hated it. We’re so glad it’s behind us. But look at how it pushed us to re-envision what we were as societies, what we were as energy utilizers and how we would function as companies as cultural sectors, and so on. I mean, I guess the only source of real hope that I see going forward, trying to envision out a decade from now is that we take advantage of this horrible nightmare we’re in to think not how did we end the nightmare but what was always my dream? How do we go from here to my dream?

Andy Slavitt  34:52

Yeah, that’s great. Love that. Last question for you, Laurie. It’s related to what I think we’re up against a few months, and it’s gonna sound like a very negative question. But I’m trying to be a realist here, because there’s been some really positive news. It should talk about what the vaccines. Are we in a ticking time bomb, which only the vaccines can solve? And by that, I mean, have we proven ourselves completely unable to solve our way out of this pandemic, without the help of science or the vaccine. And of course, even the vaccine requires the level of participation in community that all the other solutions do, as well. So it still means certain if we don’t care about one another, if we won’t, I’ll take the vaccines. But without the vaccines, are we destined to be a country where we just irresponsibly allow one another to die? I mean, in other words, more acute way of saying that is, people are going to Memorial Day barbecue, no matter what, there’s either going to be a vaccine or not. And we’re gonna either have death, so we’re not. And so we really are in a race, is that the right way to look at it?

Laurie Garrett  36:04

When I was a kid, we if you know, you would go to your driver’s ed class, and it would be full of all these health messages. And it was in those classes that we would also learn about cigarette smoke, and alcohol, and drug use, and all of that it was also squashed in for some reason, with driver’s education, I’ve never understood why they were all mixed. But that’s a separate point. And I remember, I’ve never forgotten this one movie, because it had such a strong impact that was shown to us. The movie depicted men doing various things that were stupid to do. And then would be one thing after another macho behavior. And as the individual is dying, the slogan is, “He’s too tough to care.” We’ve all now seen the examples of these families where loved ones got together for a birthday, wedding, a bar mitzvah. Now, more recently, Thanksgiving, and they all were too tough to care.

They felt like, “Hey, you know, it’s more important for us to be together.” and then seven family members die of COVID. Just unbelievable levels of carnage and grieving. I can’t even fathom what it must be like to be one of the survivors in some of these situations. I can’t imagine living with the guilt of that. Where we’re headed, I think one of the messages that’s going to have to happen is that this too tough to care approach is so wrongheaded. It has we have to figure out a way to undermine it. So that it is I mean, I realized Biden’s trying to say the counter to too tough to care is, it’s patriotic to care. I would say it’s just humane, it’s just picked your value system. Or if you’re a Christian, if you’re a Jew, if you’re Islamic, if you’re, if you’re no religion at all, but you believe in good citizenship. If you grew up a Boy Scout, a Girl Scout, I don’t care. But find a value that makes you recognize that too tough to care and community don’t go together. You know, too tough to care and family don’t go together, too tough to care and society, with a capital S don’t go together. And that’s the task is to get America to separate the notion of don’t tread on me freedom, you know, liberty and rights, from duty to community.

Andy Slavitt  38:53

Like you said, incredibly well, as always, I love the fact that you are always pushing for us to be better, not just thinking, but you’re actually trying to get us somewhere. And so it’s so great. Laurie, thank you for being on.

Laurie Garrett  39:07

Thank you for inviting me.

Andy Slavitt  39:19

Fascinating conversation. Those could go on for a long time, because she she’s got a lot to say and she’s incredibly thoughtful, just getting her wisdom. Let me tell you about the next few episodes. On Monday. We have our bubble in the bubble, make a bubble, be a bubble podcast. It is a podcast with two terrific experts on how to create a bubble for yourself, your family, your friends, how not to create a bubble more importantly, how to break into a bubble, all kinds of bubble things. And then Wednesday, Heidi Larson from the Vaccine Confidence Project. That’s I said that in a very unconfident way see this my dad joke Vaccine Confidence Project because I’m confident in vaccines. That’ll be great. It’s we just had an episode on Monday, on how to get your vaccine, when to get it where you’ll get it. Go listen to that if you haven’t listened to it. I’d say listen to that podcast, listen to the WINTER TOOLKIT podcasts if you haven’t heard it, those are the most, I those are just really relevant, basic stuff, go listen to some fun stuff in the archives too, because we make it free. Go to Tina Fey go listen (unclear) on Johnny, my enemy. Go Listen, any of those people, and then a toolkit on getting back to work, how to go to work, the horror stories of work. I prefer not to work, but you have to work sometimes. And we’ll talk about how to stay safe in your job. Thanks so much. Have a great rest of the week. Be safe.

CREDITS

Thanks for listening IN THE BUBBLE. Hope you rate us highly. We’re production of Lemonada Media/ Kryssy and Alex McOwen produced the show. Our mix is by Ivan Kuraev. My son Zach Slavitt is emeritus co-host and onsite producer improved by the much better Lana Slavitt, my wife. Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Wittels Wachs still brew our lives and executive produced the show. And our theme was composed by Dan Molad and Oliver Hill and additional music by Ivan Kuraev. You can find out more about our show on social media at @LemonadaMedia. And you can find me at @aslavitt on Twitter or at @AndySlavitt on Instagram. If you like what you heard today, most importantly, please tell your friends to come listen, but still tell them at a distance or with a mask. And please stay safe, share some joy and we will get through this together. #stayhome