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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to the Daily Dive Weekend edition. I'm Oscar Ramirez,
and every week i explore the top stories making waves
in the news and some that are just playing interesting.
I'll connect you with the journalists and the people who
know the story and bring you news without the noise
so you can make an informed decision. You can catch
a new episode of The Daily Dive every Monday through Friday.
That's ready when you wake up. On the weekend edition,
(00:27):
I'll be bringing you some of the best stories from
the week. Checking in with the current state of the
coronavirus pandemic, it seems that the virus is here to
stay for the long term. It's easily transmissible, we have
new strains and it will take some time to vaccinate
the world. While we may not have the most restrictive
measures in place forever, it will eventually be endemic, something
(00:49):
we learned to live with, and it will also mean
big business. Think testing, ventilation for schools and businesses, and
masking for more. And why COVID is here to stay,
we'll speak to Drew Hinshaw, Senior reporter at The Wall
Street Journal. I think we're in a kind of paradoxical
phase where we are really hoping, with good reasons to
hope that the vaccine drive will soon see a big
(01:13):
decrease in hospitalizations. I see, us won't be so full.
You're gonna see you know, a fewer severe cases for
sure of COVID, especially among you know, the vaccinated groups.
So we're in this paradoxical phase where, yeah, like we've
got these vaccines and is if you look at what's
happened in Israel, where cases of hospitalizations have fallen by
like in the past few weeks as they've been vaccinating
(01:34):
so many people. That's hopeful, but there's this industry that's
basically building up around the fact that, well, COVID might
not be as serious in the you know, sort of
medium term future as it was you know, the past
few months, but it's going to be around for a
long time. The number of tests that are being made
(01:55):
is going up, it's not going down. You would kind
of intuitively think, oh, COVID has to not going to
be a big business in the years. We've got these vaccines,
no one's gonna need them. Well, the people who are
betting their money on this are saying the opposite. They're saying,
you know, there's gonna be need for millions of tests.
People who want to go visit their family or go
to a basketball game or a concert or something gonna
want to get a test. Yeah, I mean, the live
events industry has been hit so hard by this, and
(02:18):
that's one of the ones where you know, we've heard
many stories that they're gonna want to only admit people
that have had tests or even vaccines you know here,
things like vaccine passports things like that. So, yeah, testing
is definitely ramping up, and especially at home, testing kits
are ramping up a lot, and you know, people just
want to know before they can go out and all that.
So that's one part of it. And while we might
(02:38):
not see some of the most restrictive measures in place,
the other part of it, you know, big business of masks, ventilation,
proper ventilation and buildings for schools and businesses. You know,
this is all far reaching effects that are going to
be part of us for years to come. We are
talking about a disease that it's going to be in
a phase of, to use a somewhat technical term, vaccine
(02:59):
managed into a city where we've got this disease, it's
going to be extremely hard to eradicate on a global scale.
Even within countries, some of the most successful countries have
not actually eliminated it. You know, you hear a lot
about Australia, New Zealand. There are still cases there. They're
low single digits average, but there's still cases, cities locked
down over one or two cases there. You know, that's
the preview of just how even the most successful countries
(03:21):
they don't live a post COVID life. They live with
this sort of thing flickering off in the corner of society.
And and you mentioned, you know, eradicating diseases. There's only
one virus that has been eradicated completely that small positive.
Other diseases like polio, I didn't know it was just
so weird eliminated in the US and the seventies. In
Europe not until two thousand two. And there's still pockets
(03:44):
of Afghanistan and Pakistan which this pops up. And so
you know, this is a respiratory disease COVID mostly I guess,
primarily right. And you know these are even more difficult
to get rid of. One of the astonishing facts like
you know that came out last year was there was
this thing called the Russian flu in the eight nineties,
you know, I killed a million people and one of
(04:04):
the common symptoms was people lost their sense of smell
and taste. And last year some researchers and Denmark did
some studies and co came to the conclusion that this
thing called the Russian flu is a coronavirus, and more incredibly,
that coronavirus is still with us today. It's attenuated. It's
not as virulent or as harmful as it used to be.
Now we shouldn't assume that sarkov To, the virus that
(04:27):
causes COVID, is going to become like weak, like an
ordinary fluid. We shouldn't assume that, but you know, it
gives you. I do these these respiratory diseases and and
coronavirus is they from what we've seen in history, they
stick around. They're hard to eradicate. Now, let's talk a
little bit about vaccines and treatments for COVID. Vaccines. You know,
it's going to take a long time before people across
the world have access to this. There's still no vaccine
(04:50):
yet for children, for young children on this so that
will take some time. And then the treatments beyond that
we're learning about all these long term effects, you know,
the brain fog, the lost of sense of smell and taste,
as you mentioned, So even treatments for all these things
in the vaccines will have to constantly be improved. This
kind of goes back to that notion of COVID will
be big business for many years to come. Yeah, and
(05:10):
there's a really big problem happening in the global ice
we called the Global South. Countries that have like no
expectation of getting a vaccine to cover their population this year,
like Nigeria's two six million people, they're getting enough vaccine
to cover maybe eight million people in the next six months.
And you're seeing, like in South Africa, there's this this
new strain and some of the vaccines that we have
(05:31):
are not nearly as effective against it, at least in
preventing like mild cases. They do seem to prevent, or
we can hope that they prevent like death and then
like severe illness. But we're seeing already that there's strains
coming from different parts of the world that are beating
our vaccines in some ways, and there's this gap that
we have to really worry about. This like this two
year period where at least two years. There's like not
(05:54):
enough vaccines for these countries. And this is sort of
a problem that like nobody has really taking global leadership
of you know, I mean, China donate some vaccines here,
the kind of the multilateral system with a lot of
European donors, they donate some vaccine here. The US hasn't
done much at all on this front. It seems likely
that this will be endemic, will be able to live
with this, things will get better on that a sense
(06:16):
of it, but it doesn't mean it's gone away. And
I think you mentioned in an article, you know, years
decades to come, we'll probably be with this thill. Yeah,
Unfortunately that that it seems like we are for sure
talking you know, a long battle against this disease. And
you know, like you mentioned like there's you you can't
fact there's no vaccine for children. Now, that's not like
(06:36):
as dire as some things, because children don't seem to
get you know, severe disease very often from this compared
to other populations. But they can be a pocket where
the virus continues to circulate spread. So it's yeah, I mean,
I I guess that's kind of the thing to sit
here with is just this idea that this is going
to be a long term struggle that our society is
fighting in one corner, even in the most optimistic scenarios
(07:00):
for this year. Drew Hinshaw, senior reporter at The Wall
Street Journal, thank you very much for joining us. Yeah,
thanks to It's great, great a chance. Also this week,
the NTSB has concluded its investigation into the helicopter crash
that killed Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and seven others, and
they said it was the decision of the pilot to
(07:21):
fly in the clouds that caused them to lose orientation
of the ground, which led to them flying into the hillside.
For more on what investigators had contributed to this fatal crash,
will speak to Ian Duncan, transportation reporter at the Washington Post.
They placed the blame pretty squarely on the pilot. They
said that he shouldn't have flown into the clouds, and
if he did, you should have fired. The consused procedures
(07:42):
that involved slowing down and carefully trying to climb out
before declaring he was an emergency situation, and then he
could have got help to navigate back to some myth safely.
Instead he flew in at high speed and was conturning,
which led to him getting disoriented it and basically feeling
as though who was climbing when the helicopter is falling,
(08:04):
And that's why the helicopters and crashed into this mountain
side there. The NTSB said that between they investigated a
hundred and four similar crashes, twenty of them involved helicopters,
and a lot of them had this very same thing
where you know, the pilot kind of lost disorientation. Tell
us a little bit more about it if you can.
It has to do with the inner ear. I think
(08:25):
they call it the leans, where you just basically lose
place of yourself and flying in the clouds, you don't
have any point of reference. Really, I think people would
be familiar with the feeling of being dizzy, and you
can be flying in such a way that your body
can't work out whether you're tilting to the side and
moving up or down, or exactly how you're moving through space.
(08:48):
And normally we can kind of compensate for this by
looking at where is the ground whereas the horizon, but
once you're in clouds, you can't do that because you
just can't see anything. And so you can be extremely disoriented.
And what they're saying in this case is helicopters have
instruments where they can tell you the kids where the
helicopter is pointing and how it's oriented in space. But
(09:12):
if you're not prepared to switch over to that and
look at that and know to trust that over what
your body is telling you, you can just get confused
very easily, and some proportion of these incidents people end
up crashing. Now, one of the other parts of it,
the board members all concluded as well. They said that
he had a sudden loss of judgment basically, and because
(09:32):
he was a friend of Kobe Bryant, he felt maybe
the pressure to have to go on with the flight,
to complete the flight, and that that probably played a
role because he did have training for this type of
weather and terrain and things like that, and he didn't
use his best judgment, maybe because he was trying to
please him or something. That's right. Yeah, they talked about
(09:53):
this pressure that sort of inferring this. They obviously don't
have any evidence from him that he had put this
pressure on himself, and that as you sort of get
closer to your destination, if you haven't thought ahead and
about alternative that you might take. Something unexpected happens. You
get into this kind of plan following bias that gets
stronger and stronger, and it becomes harder for you to
(10:14):
kind of think that I need to stop and do
something different. And so they say that as one of
the contributing factors to what happened here, And they said
this happens with high profile clients, that pilots want to
impress them and do a good job. I think you
sort of imagine the dynamic, and that they thought that
this was at play. The helicopter itself did not have
a black box. There are recommendations that, you know, a
(10:36):
lot of helicopters should have these terrain warning systems that
could help notify you, you know, for getting too close
to a hillside things like that. But even the NTSB
said that even if that was in place for this
particular incident, that that might not have helped them, might
have even been more confusing. The courage about that those
systems has ended up being a bit of a red herring.
(10:56):
The ANT Speed board member who went to California to
over see the investigation last year, she could have brought
it up at a news conference, and it has become
something that has been written about a lot. There's been
legislations produced in Congress about it, and its phase makes sense.
Oh well, if the system tells you, hey, you're about
to crash, like maybe that would stop this kind of crashed.
But what they really were at pains to make clear
(11:19):
today at the board meeting is those systems only work
when the pilot is really in control of the helicopter,
and that in this case, he wasn't in control. The
helicopter was essentially out of his control, and so any
warning wouldn't have really helped him recover the situation. Does
the ns B make any other type of recommendations when
it comes to this, I mean, I know they were
just investigating this particular instance, but do they make a
(11:42):
recommendation such as these terrain warning systems? So they have
recommended these warning systems generally, and that's syst of standing recommendation,
and I think there's some frustration on their part, certainly
on the part of Jennifer Harmandy, who's one of the
board members, that the f A hasn't acted to make
that mandatory. So it is something that I think could
(12:02):
be lifesaving matter, but just not in this pay. The
investigation was a little bit over a year. You know,
they used the drone to recreate the flight path. You know,
so they do their due diligence when they go through
these types of investigations, and you know, there's a bunch
of lawsuits. Obviously things kind of come up from this.
Our condolences go out to all the family members and everything,
(12:22):
but these are other things that still need to be resolved.
Vanessa Bryant has sued the helicopter company, so these are
all things that we have to look into. And the
ntsb s conclusions can't be used as evidence and lawsuits,
which I found was pretty interesting. Yeah. I mean, I
think if you were to look at the facts that
the NTSP kind of put together, they would support as
(12:42):
Bryant's kind pro only more than those made by the company.
But the rules are sort of pretty clear that you
can use some of the factual information that was developed
an investigation, but you can't just put the conclusion in
front of, you know, jury and say, well, here's what
the NTSP said. So you have to agree that they
want the jury to be able to kind of reach
an independent judgment. The lawsuits have not really moved forward
(13:05):
because this is procedural issue about the SOO government's involvement
in that they probably continue to play out over the
coming months and years. Ian Duncan, transportation reporter at the
Washington Post, thank you very much for joining us. Yeah,
thank you. Amid some early stumbles and lack of doses
(13:26):
hampering the roll out of vaccines, we're also seeing hesitancy
and skepticism by many healthcare workers who are refusing their doses.
Many of them cite the speed at which the vaccines
were developed, and for others, it's a trust problem, distrust
of the government and even the health care systems they
work for. For more on why so many healthcare workers
are resisting the COVID vaccine, will speak to Drew Kolar.
(13:49):
He's a practicing physician and contributor to The New Yorker.
You know, the reason I wanted to write this article
is because I also found it quite surprising that healthcare
workers had recently high levels of that seeing hesitancy, despite
seeing the damage of COVID nineteen firsthand, despite being at
higher risk for infection by passing it on to their
loved ones, And so I wanted to explore what was
(14:10):
behind this vaccine hesitancy, and I think one thing that
you'll notice is that, at particularly in nursing homes, it
has to do with a lack of trust in often
your employer, a lack of trust in the healthcare system,
and a lack of trust in the political and the
regulatory environment under which these vaccines were created. We know
(14:31):
that they are safe and effective at medical science has
taught us that, and they were developed at record speed,
but I think that also creates its own issues that
people have been told over the course of the last
year that vaccines can take years, if not decades to make,
and here we have one kind of a medical miracle
which came out in less than one year. But that
(14:51):
also creates a level of hesitancy among the general public,
but also among healthcare workers. And a lot of the
nurses that you spoke to, a lot of them said
the speed was a big factor, and they just said, hey,
there's no way I'm gonna wait to see long term results.
See how other people react once they get it, and
you know, it's an interesting thing. Obviously we've been learning
(15:12):
about the pandemic and vaccine making. I think, like in
no other time before, you know, happening in real time.
And the thing with the vaccine, especially like the Fiser
and Maderna vaccines, these m RNA platforms, you know, that
platform for that vaccine was already there. They just needed
that opportunity to be able to tweak something so they
can make it for the coronavirus for COVID nineteen. So
(15:34):
that I do understand that kind of the speed can
be scary about it, but that platform was something that
has been worked on for a long time already. It
is something that has been worked on for years, an
incredible new technology. But I think this really gets at
the heart of the issue is that it's not always
the case that telling people about the science and how
(15:56):
things were developed is enough to get them over there
kind of desired to watch and wait and see what
happens with the vaccines and others. Often it's a case
of misinformation. A lot of people are getting their information
from sources that may not be reliable. It can be
an issue of just wanting to see how other people
do before they are kind of taking this into their
(16:17):
own body. And it can be an issue really of
trust and understanding that the health care system or other
kind of parties have not treated them in a way
that they've wanted to be treated in the past, and
they're understandably skeptical that this seems to be being forced
on them. Now that being said, this is this is
an issue and that we really need to kind of
(16:38):
combat it head on. We need to have these conversations,
we mean engaging these dialogues, and we do need to
help people understand that this is the best thing for
themselves as well as our communities. Tell me a little
bit more about the setting of the senior living facilities,
these nursing homes and these certified nursing assistance that we
find a lot of them working in these in the settings,
(17:00):
you know, nursing home residents, it does seem that there
are high levels of vaccine acceptance for them for their
part at least, but the nurses were not seeing it
so much. And then yourself, as a practicing physician, do
you see this in other hospital settings or do you
find it more relegated to these nursing home facilities. You know,
one thing that's important to note is we often talk
(17:21):
about healthcare workers as a large group, but of course
there are different professions within healthcare there are different settings
within healthcare, and so one thing that seems to be
the case at least early on, that nursing home staff
have higher levels of vaccine hesitancy compared to hospital staff,
for instance, and that nurses and doctors seem to accept
the vaccine at higher rates than other healthcare workers. So
(17:45):
there are many healthcare workers, some you've talked about, certified
nursing assistance, licensed practical nurses, people who work in cleaning
services or environmental services, patient transport, and we see that
vaccine hesitancy, at least earl leon seems to track with
level of education. So that's one marker, but it also
seems to track, as I mentioned, with other non hospital
(18:08):
facilities like nursing homes and long term care facilities. You know,
one thing to note is that these are really challenging
places to work for a lot of people. A lot
of nursing home staff have felt during the pandemic, but
also before the pandemic, that they haven't gotten a lot
of respect, they haven't always gotten a ppe that they need,
they have worked for relatively low wages, and so these
(18:30):
kinds of issues are very much wrapped up into how
they feel at this moment when they're being asked or
told in some cases to take the vaccine. Yeah, as
you mentioned that, the onset I it does really seem
to be this lack of trust problem. The polarization, the
politicization of the vaccines does also seem to come into
play a lot. You know, a lot of people said
(18:52):
they don't trust either political party and how they positioned
all of it, the trust and government. You know, it's
unfortunate to hear that stuff because we want our healthcare
workers to kind of be leading on this setting. But
if you're not comfortable with it, obviously you're not gonna
want to go forward with that. So it's just an
interesting look to see how it's shaken out. And as
I mentioned, there is no lack of people wanting the
vaccines still, we see that in the numbers, So you know,
(19:15):
we'll see how the rollout continues. Really. Drew cool are
practicing physician, assistant professor at wild Cornell Medical College and
contributor to The New Yorker. Thank you very much for
joining us. It's my pleasure. Thanks what don't forget to
join us on social media at Daily Dive Pod on
Twitter and Daily Dive Podcast on Facebook, leave us a comment,
(19:37):
give us a rating, and tell us the stories that
you're interested in. Follow us on I Heard Radio, or
subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Oscar Ramirez and
this is the Daily Dive Weekend edition
Welcome to the Daily Dive Weekend edition. I'm Oscar Ramirez,
and every week i explore the top stories making waves
in the news and some that are just playing interesting.
I'll connect you with the journalists and the people who
know the story and bring you news without the noise
so you can make an informed decision. You can catch
a new episode of The Daily Dive every Monday through Friday.
That's ready when you wake up. On the weekend edition,
(00:27):
I'll be bringing you some of the best stories from
the week. Checking in with the current state of the
coronavirus pandemic, it seems that the virus is here to
stay for the long term. It's easily transmissible, we have
new strains and it will take some time to vaccinate
the world. While we may not have the most restrictive
measures in place forever, it will eventually be endemic, something
(00:49):
we learned to live with, and it will also mean
big business. Think testing, ventilation for schools and businesses, and
masking for more. And why COVID is here to stay,
we'll speak to Drew Hinshaw, Senior reporter at The Wall
Street Journal. I think we're in a kind of paradoxical
phase where we are really hoping, with good reasons to
hope that the vaccine drive will soon see a big
(01:13):
decrease in hospitalizations. I see, us won't be so full.
You're gonna see you know, a fewer severe cases for
sure of COVID, especially among you know, the vaccinated groups.
So we're in this paradoxical phase where, yeah, like we've
got these vaccines and is if you look at what's
happened in Israel, where cases of hospitalizations have fallen by
like in the past few weeks as they've been vaccinating
(01:34):
so many people. That's hopeful, but there's this industry that's
basically building up around the fact that, well, COVID might
not be as serious in the you know, sort of
medium term future as it was you know, the past
few months, but it's going to be around for a
long time. The number of tests that are being made
(01:55):
is going up, it's not going down. You would kind
of intuitively think, oh, COVID has to not going to
be a big business in the years. We've got these vaccines,
no one's gonna need them. Well, the people who are
betting their money on this are saying the opposite. They're saying,
you know, there's gonna be need for millions of tests.
People who want to go visit their family or go
to a basketball game or a concert or something gonna
want to get a test. Yeah, I mean, the live
events industry has been hit so hard by this, and
(02:18):
that's one of the ones where you know, we've heard
many stories that they're gonna want to only admit people
that have had tests or even vaccines you know here,
things like vaccine passports things like that. So, yeah, testing
is definitely ramping up, and especially at home, testing kits
are ramping up a lot, and you know, people just
want to know before they can go out and all that.
So that's one part of it. And while we might
(02:38):
not see some of the most restrictive measures in place,
the other part of it, you know, big business of masks, ventilation,
proper ventilation and buildings for schools and businesses. You know,
this is all far reaching effects that are going to
be part of us for years to come. We are
talking about a disease that it's going to be in
a phase of, to use a somewhat technical term, vaccine
(02:59):
managed into a city where we've got this disease, it's
going to be extremely hard to eradicate on a global scale.
Even within countries, some of the most successful countries have
not actually eliminated it. You know, you hear a lot
about Australia, New Zealand. There are still cases there. They're
low single digits average, but there's still cases, cities locked
down over one or two cases there. You know, that's
the preview of just how even the most successful countries
(03:21):
they don't live a post COVID life. They live with
this sort of thing flickering off in the corner of society.
And and you mentioned, you know, eradicating diseases. There's only
one virus that has been eradicated completely that small positive.
Other diseases like polio, I didn't know it was just
so weird eliminated in the US and the seventies. In
Europe not until two thousand two. And there's still pockets
(03:44):
of Afghanistan and Pakistan which this pops up. And so
you know, this is a respiratory disease COVID mostly I guess,
primarily right. And you know these are even more difficult
to get rid of. One of the astonishing facts like
you know that came out last year was there was
this thing called the Russian flu in the eight nineties,
you know, I killed a million people and one of
(04:04):
the common symptoms was people lost their sense of smell
and taste. And last year some researchers and Denmark did
some studies and co came to the conclusion that this
thing called the Russian flu is a coronavirus, and more incredibly,
that coronavirus is still with us today. It's attenuated. It's
not as virulent or as harmful as it used to be.
Now we shouldn't assume that sarkov To, the virus that
(04:27):
causes COVID, is going to become like weak, like an
ordinary fluid. We shouldn't assume that, but you know, it
gives you. I do these these respiratory diseases and and
coronavirus is they from what we've seen in history, they
stick around. They're hard to eradicate. Now, let's talk a
little bit about vaccines and treatments for COVID. Vaccines. You know,
it's going to take a long time before people across
the world have access to this. There's still no vaccine
(04:50):
yet for children, for young children on this so that
will take some time. And then the treatments beyond that
we're learning about all these long term effects, you know,
the brain fog, the lost of sense of smell and taste,
as you mentioned, So even treatments for all these things
in the vaccines will have to constantly be improved. This
kind of goes back to that notion of COVID will
be big business for many years to come. Yeah, and
(05:10):
there's a really big problem happening in the global ice
we called the Global South. Countries that have like no
expectation of getting a vaccine to cover their population this year,
like Nigeria's two six million people, they're getting enough vaccine
to cover maybe eight million people in the next six months.
And you're seeing, like in South Africa, there's this this
new strain and some of the vaccines that we have
(05:31):
are not nearly as effective against it, at least in
preventing like mild cases. They do seem to prevent, or
we can hope that they prevent like death and then
like severe illness. But we're seeing already that there's strains
coming from different parts of the world that are beating
our vaccines in some ways, and there's this gap that
we have to really worry about. This like this two
year period where at least two years. There's like not
(05:54):
enough vaccines for these countries. And this is sort of
a problem that like nobody has really taking global leadership
of you know, I mean, China donate some vaccines here,
the kind of the multilateral system with a lot of
European donors, they donate some vaccine here. The US hasn't
done much at all on this front. It seems likely
that this will be endemic, will be able to live
with this, things will get better on that a sense
(06:16):
of it, but it doesn't mean it's gone away. And
I think you mentioned in an article, you know, years
decades to come, we'll probably be with this thill. Yeah,
Unfortunately that that it seems like we are for sure
talking you know, a long battle against this disease. And
you know, like you mentioned like there's you you can't
fact there's no vaccine for children. Now, that's not like
(06:36):
as dire as some things, because children don't seem to
get you know, severe disease very often from this compared
to other populations. But they can be a pocket where
the virus continues to circulate spread. So it's yeah, I mean,
I I guess that's kind of the thing to sit
here with is just this idea that this is going
to be a long term struggle that our society is
fighting in one corner, even in the most optimistic scenarios
(07:00):
for this year. Drew Hinshaw, senior reporter at The Wall
Street Journal, thank you very much for joining us. Yeah,
thanks to It's great, great a chance. Also this week,
the NTSB has concluded its investigation into the helicopter crash
that killed Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and seven others, and
they said it was the decision of the pilot to
(07:21):
fly in the clouds that caused them to lose orientation
of the ground, which led to them flying into the hillside.
For more on what investigators had contributed to this fatal crash,
will speak to Ian Duncan, transportation reporter at the Washington Post.
They placed the blame pretty squarely on the pilot. They
said that he shouldn't have flown into the clouds, and
if he did, you should have fired. The consused procedures
(07:42):
that involved slowing down and carefully trying to climb out
before declaring he was an emergency situation, and then he
could have got help to navigate back to some myth safely.
Instead he flew in at high speed and was conturning,
which led to him getting disoriented it and basically feeling
as though who was climbing when the helicopter is falling,
(08:04):
And that's why the helicopters and crashed into this mountain
side there. The NTSB said that between they investigated a
hundred and four similar crashes, twenty of them involved helicopters,
and a lot of them had this very same thing
where you know, the pilot kind of lost disorientation. Tell
us a little bit more about it if you can.
It has to do with the inner ear. I think
(08:25):
they call it the leans, where you just basically lose
place of yourself and flying in the clouds, you don't
have any point of reference. Really, I think people would
be familiar with the feeling of being dizzy, and you
can be flying in such a way that your body
can't work out whether you're tilting to the side and
moving up or down, or exactly how you're moving through space.
(08:48):
And normally we can kind of compensate for this by
looking at where is the ground whereas the horizon, but
once you're in clouds, you can't do that because you
just can't see anything. And so you can be extremely disoriented.
And what they're saying in this case is helicopters have
instruments where they can tell you the kids where the
helicopter is pointing and how it's oriented in space. But
(09:12):
if you're not prepared to switch over to that and
look at that and know to trust that over what
your body is telling you, you can just get confused
very easily, and some proportion of these incidents people end
up crashing. Now, one of the other parts of it,
the board members all concluded as well. They said that
he had a sudden loss of judgment basically, and because
(09:32):
he was a friend of Kobe Bryant, he felt maybe
the pressure to have to go on with the flight,
to complete the flight, and that that probably played a
role because he did have training for this type of
weather and terrain and things like that, and he didn't
use his best judgment, maybe because he was trying to
please him or something. That's right. Yeah, they talked about
(09:53):
this pressure that sort of inferring this. They obviously don't
have any evidence from him that he had put this
pressure on himself, and that as you sort of get
closer to your destination, if you haven't thought ahead and
about alternative that you might take. Something unexpected happens. You
get into this kind of plan following bias that gets
stronger and stronger, and it becomes harder for you to
(10:14):
kind of think that I need to stop and do
something different. And so they say that as one of
the contributing factors to what happened here, And they said
this happens with high profile clients, that pilots want to
impress them and do a good job. I think you
sort of imagine the dynamic, and that they thought that
this was at play. The helicopter itself did not have
a black box. There are recommendations that, you know, a
(10:36):
lot of helicopters should have these terrain warning systems that
could help notify you, you know, for getting too close
to a hillside things like that. But even the NTSB
said that even if that was in place for this
particular incident, that that might not have helped them, might
have even been more confusing. The courage about that those
systems has ended up being a bit of a red herring.
(10:56):
The ANT Speed board member who went to California to
over see the investigation last year, she could have brought
it up at a news conference, and it has become
something that has been written about a lot. There's been
legislations produced in Congress about it, and its phase makes sense.
Oh well, if the system tells you, hey, you're about
to crash, like maybe that would stop this kind of crashed.
But what they really were at pains to make clear
(11:19):
today at the board meeting is those systems only work
when the pilot is really in control of the helicopter,
and that in this case, he wasn't in control. The
helicopter was essentially out of his control, and so any
warning wouldn't have really helped him recover the situation. Does
the ns B make any other type of recommendations when
it comes to this, I mean, I know they were
just investigating this particular instance, but do they make a
(11:42):
recommendation such as these terrain warning systems? So they have
recommended these warning systems generally, and that's syst of standing recommendation,
and I think there's some frustration on their part, certainly
on the part of Jennifer Harmandy, who's one of the
board members, that the f A hasn't acted to make
that mandatory. So it is something that I think could
(12:02):
be lifesaving matter, but just not in this pay. The
investigation was a little bit over a year. You know,
they used the drone to recreate the flight path. You know,
so they do their due diligence when they go through
these types of investigations, and you know, there's a bunch
of lawsuits. Obviously things kind of come up from this.
Our condolences go out to all the family members and everything,
(12:22):
but these are other things that still need to be resolved.
Vanessa Bryant has sued the helicopter company, so these are
all things that we have to look into. And the
ntsb s conclusions can't be used as evidence and lawsuits,
which I found was pretty interesting. Yeah. I mean, I
think if you were to look at the facts that
the NTSP kind of put together, they would support as
(12:42):
Bryant's kind pro only more than those made by the company.
But the rules are sort of pretty clear that you
can use some of the factual information that was developed
an investigation, but you can't just put the conclusion in
front of, you know, jury and say, well, here's what
the NTSP said. So you have to agree that they
want the jury to be able to kind of reach
an independent judgment. The lawsuits have not really moved forward
(13:05):
because this is procedural issue about the SOO government's involvement
in that they probably continue to play out over the
coming months and years. Ian Duncan, transportation reporter at the
Washington Post, thank you very much for joining us. Yeah,
thank you. Amid some early stumbles and lack of doses
(13:26):
hampering the roll out of vaccines, we're also seeing hesitancy
and skepticism by many healthcare workers who are refusing their doses.
Many of them cite the speed at which the vaccines
were developed, and for others, it's a trust problem, distrust
of the government and even the health care systems they
work for. For more on why so many healthcare workers
are resisting the COVID vaccine, will speak to Drew Kolar.
(13:49):
He's a practicing physician and contributor to The New Yorker.
You know, the reason I wanted to write this article
is because I also found it quite surprising that healthcare
workers had recently high levels of that seeing hesitancy, despite
seeing the damage of COVID nineteen firsthand, despite being at
higher risk for infection by passing it on to their
loved ones, And so I wanted to explore what was
(14:10):
behind this vaccine hesitancy, and I think one thing that
you'll notice is that, at particularly in nursing homes, it
has to do with a lack of trust in often
your employer, a lack of trust in the healthcare system,
and a lack of trust in the political and the
regulatory environment under which these vaccines were created. We know
(14:31):
that they are safe and effective at medical science has
taught us that, and they were developed at record speed,
but I think that also creates its own issues that
people have been told over the course of the last
year that vaccines can take years, if not decades to make,
and here we have one kind of a medical miracle
which came out in less than one year. But that
(14:51):
also creates a level of hesitancy among the general public,
but also among healthcare workers. And a lot of the
nurses that you spoke to, a lot of them said
the speed was a big factor, and they just said, hey,
there's no way I'm gonna wait to see long term results.
See how other people react once they get it, and
you know, it's an interesting thing. Obviously we've been learning
(15:12):
about the pandemic and vaccine making. I think, like in
no other time before, you know, happening in real time.
And the thing with the vaccine, especially like the Fiser
and Maderna vaccines, these m RNA platforms, you know, that
platform for that vaccine was already there. They just needed
that opportunity to be able to tweak something so they
can make it for the coronavirus for COVID nineteen. So
(15:34):
that I do understand that kind of the speed can
be scary about it, but that platform was something that
has been worked on for a long time already. It
is something that has been worked on for years, an
incredible new technology. But I think this really gets at
the heart of the issue is that it's not always
the case that telling people about the science and how
(15:56):
things were developed is enough to get them over there
kind of desired to watch and wait and see what
happens with the vaccines and others. Often it's a case
of misinformation. A lot of people are getting their information
from sources that may not be reliable. It can be
an issue of just wanting to see how other people
do before they are kind of taking this into their
(16:17):
own body. And it can be an issue really of
trust and understanding that the health care system or other
kind of parties have not treated them in a way
that they've wanted to be treated in the past, and
they're understandably skeptical that this seems to be being forced
on them. Now that being said, this is this is
an issue and that we really need to kind of
(16:38):
combat it head on. We need to have these conversations,
we mean engaging these dialogues, and we do need to
help people understand that this is the best thing for
themselves as well as our communities. Tell me a little
bit more about the setting of the senior living facilities,
these nursing homes and these certified nursing assistance that we
find a lot of them working in these in the settings,
(17:00):
you know, nursing home residents, it does seem that there
are high levels of vaccine acceptance for them for their
part at least, but the nurses were not seeing it
so much. And then yourself, as a practicing physician, do
you see this in other hospital settings or do you
find it more relegated to these nursing home facilities. You know,
one thing that's important to note is we often talk
(17:21):
about healthcare workers as a large group, but of course
there are different professions within healthcare there are different settings
within healthcare, and so one thing that seems to be
the case at least early on, that nursing home staff
have higher levels of vaccine hesitancy compared to hospital staff,
for instance, and that nurses and doctors seem to accept
the vaccine at higher rates than other healthcare workers. So
(17:45):
there are many healthcare workers, some you've talked about, certified
nursing assistance, licensed practical nurses, people who work in cleaning
services or environmental services, patient transport, and we see that
vaccine hesitancy, at least earl leon seems to track with
level of education. So that's one marker, but it also
seems to track, as I mentioned, with other non hospital
(18:08):
facilities like nursing homes and long term care facilities. You know,
one thing to note is that these are really challenging
places to work for a lot of people. A lot
of nursing home staff have felt during the pandemic, but
also before the pandemic, that they haven't gotten a lot
of respect, they haven't always gotten a ppe that they need,
they have worked for relatively low wages, and so these
(18:30):
kinds of issues are very much wrapped up into how
they feel at this moment when they're being asked or
told in some cases to take the vaccine. Yeah, as
you mentioned that, the onset I it does really seem
to be this lack of trust problem. The polarization, the
politicization of the vaccines does also seem to come into
play a lot. You know, a lot of people said
(18:52):
they don't trust either political party and how they positioned
all of it, the trust and government. You know, it's
unfortunate to hear that stuff because we want our healthcare
workers to kind of be leading on this setting. But
if you're not comfortable with it, obviously you're not gonna
want to go forward with that. So it's just an
interesting look to see how it's shaken out. And as
I mentioned, there is no lack of people wanting the
vaccines still, we see that in the numbers, So you know,
(19:15):
we'll see how the rollout continues. Really. Drew cool are
practicing physician, assistant professor at wild Cornell Medical College and
contributor to The New Yorker. Thank you very much for
joining us. It's my pleasure. Thanks what don't forget to
join us on social media at Daily Dive Pod on
Twitter and Daily Dive Podcast on Facebook, leave us a comment,
(19:37):
give us a rating, and tell us the stories that
you're interested in. Follow us on I Heard Radio, or
subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Oscar Ramirez and
this is the Daily Dive Weekend edition
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