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March 23, 2020 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
27:21
Special - COVID19
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Time Text
Hello from London on a beautiful spring day.
I can see through my window.
I just wanted to touch base with you recording this on Monday the 23rd of March 2020.
The coronavirus, of course, wherever in the world you are, the situation changing by the day, the government advice here changing frequently.
Same situation in many countries.
I hope that you're managing to stay healthy and please stay optimistic through all of this because eventually we will come through it.
Now, my reason for popping up here is to just let you hear a couple of items from my radio show last night, which are connected with coronavirus.
The first one is an assessment of where we are now, looked at from UK eyes, but I think it's applicable to the world.
Dr. Bharat Pankania, senior clinical lecturer at the University of Exeter, is first, followed by some guidance if you're working from home and some words about the resilience of the nation's technology in the middle of all of this.
Now, this is a British thing, but again, many of these things will apply to you wherever you are.
So Fevzi Turkalp, the gadget detective, is here, and he will tell you a couple of tips about home working and also we'll discuss keeping the networks that we rely on now, and that includes me, resilient and effective through all of this.
So Fevzi Turkalp is second and third.
A look at the global and British financial situations and how we come through all of this with my good friend Justin Urquhart Stewart from 7 Investment Management in London, one of the senior financial people in this nation who I've known and been lucky enough to know for many, many years.
So those three things coming up.
If you want to get in touch with me, would love to hear from you.
If you want to just let me know how you're doing, whatever.
Anything that I can do on the shows, any guest suggestions that you have, whatever you want to do, go to the website theunexplained.tv.
Designed and created by Adam.
And thank you, Adam, for all of your hard work on this show.
All right.
First item about coronavirus then, an assessment of where we stood as of, I'm looking at my clock now, 12 hours or so ago.
Dr. Bharat Pankalia, Senior Clinical Lecturer at the University of Exeter.
I've heard you on so many media outlets over this last week, Bharat.
How are you at the end of this week?
We feel tired.
And now that we are entering this exponential phase, I also feel a little sad.
I feel, you know, my fellow brothers and sisters are going to become ill and some of them may not make it.
And it makes me extremely sad.
And of course, there's the feeling that we all have that in many ways there's nothing, there's an inevitability about the things that you said.
It's only a question of scale, isn't it?
It is.
And I have been using the phrase that the train has already left the station in that there are some people who are already incubating the illness.
And I was using the phrase yesterday that for those people who are still lucky enough not to have encountered the virus, please remain lucky and get out of circulation immediately.
This is so serious, you cannot believe how serious it is.
We have seen what happened in Italy and the same can happen here.
And people need to get out of circulation for two reasons.
One, not to get ill and the second one is not to make others ill who may be so vulnerable that they may succumb to the illness.
So serious.
It is indeed.
And I can't believe that we're talking about a scenario like this when I think back to Christmas not that long ago when we seemed to have a great year ahead of us and that's all gone out the window.
I suppose the only person that I know tonight sitting here in my apartment thinking about this is me.
You say to take yourself out of circulation and I'm thinking, well, I've got bread that's going to be going off by about Wednesday next week.
You know, I'll do my best to keep it going for a long time.
I'm running out of milk, so Wednesday next week is when I'm going to have to venture out.
You know, what's the advice to ordinary people I'm at home for much of this week?
And I think that's going to go for a lot of people.
And I'm just speaking about myself because I think I represent a lot of people.
You know, we're going to have to go out.
Different countries seem to have different policies for things like food shopping.
Some places like South Africa and Canada, they will give you hand sanitizer when you enter the supermarket.
You know, what need we to be doing when we have to make those very necessary trips?
So my advice to people would be, yes, indeed, you have to feed yourself and you have to try and get normality in your life to an extent.
So you go, you work out which would be a quieter time.
That would be a good strategy.
The second thing is you make sure that you're going to go and get in and out as quickly as possible.
And then when you come back, the first thing you do before you even bring in the groceries is wash your hands, take your shoes off as you would, I hope, and also wash your hands and dry them properly.
And the idea is when you are in the supermarket, you have to distance yourself.
So even though you may see that people are queuing, you step backwards because you have to take charge of your own welfare.
So try not to get infected by anyone near you and you keep on distancing yourself from them.
What stage, as far as you're aware, in the UK are we at now?
We know that Italy is going through something terrible.
America has, we understand, some of this to come.
Where are we at?
So in the next two to three weeks, we may see a surge in number of cases.
According to the data, we are about two to three weeks behind the Italian trajectory.
And I just want to sort of say, I hope I'm wrong.
I feel despondent and I feel, look, a surge in cases is expected.
Let us hope I'm wrong.
Let us not become one of those cases to be.
And of course, a lot of, you know, we have to do our part.
We have to play our part here and obey the advice because it's just, You know, it's too important not to obey.
And it's heartbreaking to see people ignoring it as if it isn't real.
I mean, there are reasons to be a little hopeful, though, aren't there, with the entrance of the private sector medical facilities into the battle here.
Of course, with, and you will know this better than anybody else, I think, with the international effort to, number one, develop a vaccine and number two, develop treatments.
Yes, and I tell you, both of those are not available right now.
So when people tell me nice positive things like we're working very hard on immunizations, vaccines, and trying out some medications, I still look at them and I say, yes, but by that time, many people will have been infected, some severely ill, and some will have left us.
So really, we've got no tools whatsoever in the early phase of this coronavirus outbreak.
And the only thing we can do is not get infected for the reasons I have said and the things we have to do not to get infected.
Do you think Boris Johnson needed to have moved faster or perhaps more decisively is the wrong word, but more forcefully that he has to enforce something akin to a lockdown?
My personal opinion has always been, and I remember saying to Nick Robinson on BBC Radio 4 Today program, and that was about a couple of weeks ago, I said to him, we need to go down hard and fast.
So a lockdown, removal of events, shutdown from going to pubs, clubs, that sort of thing, it helps.
It helps to contain it if you act fast earlier.
Right.
Okay.
I've got a question from, in fact, I've got a number of questions and I'm just on my phone here trying to open them.
But here's one that was emailed to me beforehand.
This is from Allison in Liverpool.
Hi, Alison.
I hope you're okay.
She says she suffers with ME and CFS.
I don't know what that is, neurological illness, she says, peripheral nerve hyperexcitability.
I have non-epileptic seizures and absence seizures.
She wants to know, and I don't know how old Alison is, whether she should now be self-isolating with those things.
Well, look, Alison has clearly demonstrated to us that she has got coexisting medical conditions.
And therefore, we don't want her to have an additional, shall I say, kicking from a virus that can create severe illnesses.
So, Alison, of course, you need to take care.
Of course, you need to make sure you don't get infected.
And if you can, move yourself out of circulation better.
I mean, whilst I will say that these are two independent events and there is no that the coronavirus is harmful to you or not, bearing on the side of caution, I would say, look, you've already got coexisting medical conditions.
Try not to get infected.
Which is advice, Alison, and all of us we need to definitely heed.
But look, there has to be an end to this, or at least an abating to this.
When do you think that we can, the measures that we will take, and you don't have to be a sage or a psychic to know that there will be more measures, I'm sure.
When do you think we may be able to think about relaxing those?
Well, until and unless we have the virus not in free circulation and a population that has encountered it, we will continue to see people getting ill.
The point is that we only want people in small numbers to get ill so that the National Health Service can cope with them.
If we create a sudden surge, we can't cope with them.
And then people who could have benefited from treatment don't get the treatment and then they die, unfortunately.
And that's the management strategy that we've seen unfold.
And, you know, the fact is a big part of that is people doing what they're supposed to do.
Thank you very much for staying up to do this.
Dr. Bharat Pankani, a senior clinical lecturer at the University of Exeter.
Bharat, thank you.
And please take care in this coming week.
Beyond Explained at Talk Radio, do some of your messages coming soon.
Then we'll talk with Fevzi Turkalp, the editor of Gadget Detective, of course, the man from GadgetDetective.com.
We'll talk about working from home, but also something that I don't think the others have been talking about yet.
What we can do about the resilience of the technology that we have.
You know, is everything going to keep going and what is being done to make sure it does?
We're talking about coronavirus and I think we had to do that section with Barat Pankanir at the beginning just to update us where we are because all sorts of things are happening.
You will have heard in the news that McDonald's are closing their stores at some point tomorrow.
I think it's at the end of trading 7 p.m. tomorrow.
It's affecting so many sectors of the economy and will continue to do.
And we'll talk more about that in the way that we talk about these things on The Unexplained with Justin Urquhart Stewart, my old financial friend here, just before I get to Fevsi to talk about working from home and some of the aspects of that.
Just to say, Mark, nice to hear from you.
Steve, nice to hear from you.
Hauser.
He says, Howard's in the house tonight.
Well, certainly, I'm in the flat anyway.
Very small, very humble, but then that's me.
Simon Canning says, thank goodness you're on.
Now, this is the thing.
You will be getting a supernatural distraction in the next hour, I promise.
And for part of this hour, you know, I'm sorry that we have to talk about aspects of the news at the beginning of this.
I had, I think, two emails in the last week, many other emails from people saying, you know, we want a complete distraction from it all.
I think a show like this, we can't entirely do that, I'd say.
But I get where you're coming from, and I get that this is incredibly testing and stressful for all of us.
I've heard broadcasters on the air on other radio stations sounding upset at times, and I get that.
Paul, nice to have you there, and also Pablo, nice to have you there.
I'm sure there are other messages coming in, and I will see them as soon as we've got this system that Reese is cutting and pasting emails to me.
And, you know, it's kind of working.
Let's get to Fevzi Turkup, the gadget detective.
Fevzi has been working from home since I was a boy.
How are you, Fevzi?
Someone's going to notice and kick me out one day.
I'm good, thank you.
I'm well.
Thank you very much.
Working from home since you were a boy.
I think that's probably more true.
Yes.
But yes, yes, so I'm on one side of the capital city and you're on the other side of the capital city, which is a bizarre feeling.
Okay, we're going to talk about working away, or rather working away from work, if you know what I'm saying, working at home.
There are many aspects of this.
You know, social ones, psychological ones, of course there are, you know, the isolation and stuff like that, but also the independence it gives people, as we know.
But none of this can happen if we don't have broadband that holds up.
Now, we know that the United Kingdom is not the greatest in the broadband league.
Broadband is going to have to hold up exactly as it is right now, because I'm doing this on it, and I've only got the most basic of connections.
It's going to have to hold up without a lot of maintenance for three or four months, isn't it?
Yeah, that's going to be one of the problems.
So you've got the problem of capacity, average capacity, and peak as well.
And what we're seeing so far is although the peak's gone up a bit, what's happened more is that the peak hours have increased.
So before, maybe the peak hours were from 6 to 8 p.m.
Now it's from about lunchtime to about 8, 9 p.m.
So that, but, you know, there's quite a lot of spare capacity in that system.
But as you say, one of the worries is when bits of the network go down as they inevitably will, how quickly will they be able to fix them?
I think, you know, it won't be terrible, but it will definitely take longer, you know, as engineers fall ill, unfortunately, and so forth.
And it's going to take a while to fix them.
And, you know, the other problem will be is if the fault is inside your property, you know, are engineers going to be willing to come in?
Are you going to be willing to have them in?
You know, there's those sorts of issues as well.
So it's not without problems.
But don't forget also that we also have the ability to have a backup system.
So if we have wired internet over a telephone line or if you're with Virgin over cable, you've also got your mobile phone.
And I'm not just talking about tapping away on the mobile phone, but the data that you can have on a SIM card can then create a Wi-Fi hotspot of its own.
So if you get really stuck, you know, you might be able to use that for a period.
And I would ask the mobile phone operators who provide data packages to maybe make some offers to people about, you know, removing the cap or raising the capacity.
Take off the caps or raising the cap.
At this time of emergency, I think that that would be a good thing to do.
Because there are some operators now, new entrants into the field, who are saying like unlimited and stuff like that.
And some of us, I think, have got 20 gig or something like per month, which with sound, it would take a long time to fill up.
But I think the operators need to be, if they can technically do it, I think they need to be definitely doing that.
Just for those of us who've never done that before, my webmaster, Adam, who designed my website, theunexplained.tv and gets my podcast out to you.
Hello, Adam.
He's going to be listening tonight.
Probably just blushed now when I said it.
But he suggested that I use my phone as a hotspot if everything else failed here.
And I checked the speed of it.
It's actually very, because I don't have very fast broadband, it's actually pretty similar to my broadband.
So if I learn how to create a hotspot, and it looks quite easy in the menus, I've got an Android phone.
So if you haven't thought about doing that, you say that's not a difficult thing to do.
No, you can do it in five minutes.
You just switch on the hotspots option and then you will then see it.
So you know on another device, say a laptop or a desktop that needs internet connection, you search for Wi-Fi in the way that you normally would.
But in addition to the normal Wi-Fi that might pop up and your neighbor's Wi-Fi and everything else, you will see the Wi-Fi from your iPhone or Android phone.
And you can just log on to it and it will require you to type in certain information that pops up.
But you can do it and it's straightforward and it works reasonably well.
Remember to keep your phone plugged into a charger whilst you're doing that because it will deplete the battery quite quickly.
But in essence, it can be done.
And for a lot of people, it can be faster than their home broadband.
And in some areas where some people rely on it completely.
And in the United States, it can be a lot faster than normal domestic broadband as well.
So it's quite interesting.
Some countries will go that way and won't bother with the wired systems, I feel.
Right.
Okay.
Well, certainly if you look at the African continent, a lot of people rely totally on mobiles and they have for 20 years now.
So it's not a great surprise to them.
And that's one of the ways that we're going to have to do it.
Just quickly, do you think that organizations like Netflix are doing us a favor and need to be copied by other organizations by doing things like reducing the definition of their videos down from 1080p, I think, down to 740 to reduce the bandwidth?
I think we can cope with, you know, not having the most pristine quality where you can see the pores of people's skin.
So I think Netflix are doing the right thing.
They're not actually being very forthcoming about exactly what they're doing.
I don't think they are dropping it from HD down.
I suspect what they're doing, and I actually tweeted them and asked them this question and the silence I got back was deafening.
But I suspect what they're doing is increasing the compression ratios.
So they'll have the same number of dots on the screen in theory, but the information will be more highly compressed.
Because if you were to drop from HD to standard definition, you would probably reduce the data by two-thirds.
And as they're only reducing it by 25%, I have to think that's not what they're doing.
And at 25%, certainly on a small device like a tablet and so forth, the difference would be imperceptible anyway to most people.
It's only really if you've got it on a 4K screen and a large 4K screen, you're going to notice a difference, I suspect.
But these are small, small things, aren't they, Flevsy?
Yeah, no, it's also good.
And the other tip that I'd give you is that if you do find that you're having problems with entertainment, let's say, things like that, you can download overnight with a lot of services when there's less contention on the line and then view it during the daytime hours.
And that's actually quite a good way to do it, to actually have it loaded into the tablet and watch it later.
I think that's a good thing.
Another tip, just entertainment-wise, not so much work.
Just as you have Netflix for movies and TV, you have a service called Readly for magazines.
So, Readly is R-E-A-D-L-Y.
It's kind of like a Netflix for magazines.
So, you subscribe to it.
I think they have sort of free offers from time to time, but I think the standard cost is $7.99 a month.
And then you get access to hundreds, if not thousands, of different magazines.
But you get it on your tablet and you get all the back issues as well.
It's actually in this time, if you're not.
Oh, if you all know how you're going to spend your time.
Well, you know what?
It's great because I remember when I used to buy paper magazines and how they were taking up the whole house.
And then I had this rule of anything that was more than six months old would have to go, except I'd cut out any articles that were of particular interest.
And it was a nightmare, you know, because the number of magazines I was buying.
But with this sort of system, it actually, it literally is like Netflix, but for magazines.
And the implementation is great because on a tablet, you can have this very real experience.
And the page flip is sort of hypnotic when you flip backwards and forwards.
I know what you're going to be doing tonight.
Now, Femzi, if people want to ask you questions, if you're still taking questions digitally, where do they go?
Yes, come and say hello on Twitter at Gadget Detective.
I've got quite a lot going on at the moment, but I would do my best to get back to you and help you if I can.
You're a good man.
Please be careful out there.
I will.
Thanks for you, too.
Fevzi Turkout, my old friend, the Gadget Detective here.
I'm going to get to another old friend here.
I've known him for more than 25 years.
Always helped me out.
Usually in a crisis, sometimes of my own making.
Justin Erkert Stewart from 7 Investment Management, we want to talk just quickly here, just to conclude our coronavirus coverage, if you can call it that, on the unexplained tonight, which I think is important to be doing.
To be talking about our economy and the world economy.
Justin, thank you very much for staying up tonight to do this.
Harry, my pleasure.
Great to meet you again.
Nice to speak with you again, Justin.
Are you going into the city tomorrow?
No, I'm not.
No, no.
I'm sort of actually taking a step back now.
I've handed on to the next generation.
I've got lots more initiatives to do to try and improve, to make things better for investors.
But for most investors at the moment, that has to affect they're probably having an absolutely terrifying time working out what's going to happen next.
Well, they are.
So you're like Captain Kirk handing it over to the next generation then.
It's all good.
But also just making sure don't panic because this is not the same as a normal sort of market crash.
It is a very, very different one indeed.
But equally, the panic of throwing everything up in the air and running away is not the way to go about it.
Okay.
Well, that's it.
What about the measures that the government has been taking?
All of these measures will cost money, and nobody has talked yet because it's not something really to be thinking about now.
But of course, there'll be a price tag for all of this to come, won't they?
No, indeed.
In fact, I was writing something today about this, which is actually what they should be doing is making sure that everyone is so aware of this, that this is exceptional money.
Luckily, the interest rates are now so low that effectively it's almost free money.
The government can borrow money at less than the rate of inflation, which is really quite astonishing.
The government can actually produce government paper, which it rather perversely, it produces and then it owns.
Rather strangely, over £15 billion a year of interest payments from the government.
It actually goes to the government.
It may sound rather odd, but actually because they actually end up owning the debt.
We pay every year rather than about 5.0 billion pounds a year in interest payments on our debt.
And that's gone up quite considerably.
If interest rates were to rise, that would be a very painful indeed.
That's unlikely to occur.
What the government can do is actually put a lot more money into the system and do so on a sort of emergency basis.
And one of the things I've been calling for is actually to encourage certainly wealthier people to participate by creating actually corona bonds, to actually say actually giving people the opportunity to actually buy bonds which will be inflation-proof and will give them some reward in five to ten years' time so that they can participate in this and also be helping with the financial recovery of this.
So this is like a war then, isn't it?
That's what happened in wartime.
Eight years, if you can imagine those posters, you know, those big butch posters of people there with their tattoos on buy war bonds and actually buy corolla bonds.
But that's in many ways, it's not so much that's the value of it, that's encouraging, making sure that everyone knows that we're all in this together, which we have to be.
But in terms of actually making sure the economy recovers, this takes time.
And I'm afraid the time is actually, it's coordinated across the nations.
And so far, we're seeing some level of coordination, although I am concerned about what President Trump may be doing.
But we do need global coordination to actually make sure that not only is the, obviously, the effects of this virus that managed, but in terms of the investment of the economy, it's still maintained as well.
And people don't panic.
And there is good news.
China is coming back in manufacturing because they went through it all first.
Very quickly, Justin, question I've got to ask, and we've only got a minute or so here, and thanks for doing this.
What's going to happen to shops now?
Shops are closing temporarily, but will things ever be the same after this?
No, they won't be the same.
They'll be different, but they'll be there.
The government must provide that support, and that's absolutely vital for these exceptional circumstances.
So long as they do that, the shops come back.
And as consumers, we must also make sure we are there to actually make sure we use those shops as well.
What we mustn't do is lose the one word that runs any economy, and that is confidence.
Confidence that it will actually come right in the end, and it will do.
That is what we've all got to do.
Justin, we've talked so many times over the last three decades, actually.
Please take care, and thank you so much for doing this.
Thank you.
Thank you, Howie.
So the three people that you heard, Bharat Pankania, senior clinical lecturer at the University of Exeter, Dr. Barat Pankania, Fevzi Turkup from GadgetDetective.com, And Justin Urquhart Stewart from 7 Investment Management in London.
I hope those items might have helped.
Wherever in the world you are, please stay safe and stay calm and stay in touch.
Those three things that I say at the end of every show, and I think we should also now be saying, stay healthy.
You know, do everything that you can.
I'm dismayed that in the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries, some people seem to be ignoring the advice.
I don't think they realize how potentially serious things may be going to get.
So please, if you haven't been doing the things that are recommended, please get doing them.
Not only for your sake, but for the sake of the health professionals who will have to look after everybody if they get sick, but also for your nearest and dearest and just anybody.
In all of this, all of the listeners to the unexplained and all of the people in all of the world, we're a family now.
And maybe this is teaching us some things that when we come out of all of this, we need to remember.
I don't think anything can be the same after this.
But we'll see.
Okay, until we meet on a regular unexplained coming soon here, please stay safe.
Please stay calm.
And whatever you do, please stay in touch.
Take care.
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