Scott Gottlieb on how, and when, to end social distancing

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Politics, News, News Commentary, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.5 • 11.1K Ratings

🗓️ 13 April 2020

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When will social distancing end? When will life return to “normal”? And what will it take to get there? Scott Gottlieb is a physician and public health expert who served as Donald Trump’s first FDA commissioner, where he was the rare Trump appointee to win plaudits from both the left and the right. Now he’s a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he’s emerged as a leading voice on the coronavirus response. Gottlieb is one of the lead authors of a comprehensive roadmap for what it would take to end social distancing and reopen the American economy. The report divides coronavirus response into four distinct phases (we are currently in phase one, which requires the strictest social distancing measures) and documents key “triggers” that states need to meet if they want to advance to a phase with less intense social distancing and a somewhat normal economy. It’s exactly what we need right now: a specific proposal for what comes next that we can actually analyze and debate. Two themes drive this conversation. First, what are the challenges to simply getting out of lockdown? Why don’t we have enough tests yet? What’s stopping us from making more? And second, what does the world look like out of lockdown but before we get to a vaccine? What’s being imagined here isn’t a return to normal, either socially or economically, but a kind of limbo that it’s not clear we have the political will to sustain and that has few answers for the most vulnerable among us. For more on this topic, I looked at not just the AEI plan but three others for this piece. I thought immersing myself in the plans to reopen the economy would be some comfort. Boy, was I wrong. Resources: "A road map to re-opening" by Scott Gottlieb, Caitlin Rivers, Mark McClellan, Lauren Silvis, and Crystal Watson, AEI "I’ve read the plans to reopen the economy. They’re scary." by Ezra Klein, Vox The Weeds - How does this end? Want to contact the show? Reach out at ezrakleinshow@vox.com Please consider making a contribution to Vox to support this show: bit.ly/givepodcasts Your support will help us keep having ambitious conversations about big ideas. The Ezra Klein Show is a finalist for a Webby! Make sure to vote at https://bit.ly/TEKS-webby New to the show? Want to check out Ezra’s favorite episodes? Check out the Ezra Klein Show beginner’s guide (http://bit.ly/EKSbeginhere) Credits: Producer/Editor - Jeff Geld Researcher - Roge Karma Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	World history is permanently altered by this episode. I don't think you can have an episode
0:05.6	of this magnitude and not have implications that are going to be potentially quite profound
0:10.1	that we don't fully understand yet.
0:23.3	Hello, welcome to the Ezra Clancho on the Vox Media podcast network. The biggest question
0:27.7	right now is what comes after social distancing. There is no national plan. We are in a period
0:32.6	of enormous sacrifice economically, socially, personally, and there's no national plan for
0:37.5	using that time well. People are doing things, states are doing things, cities are doing
0:41.2	things, but there's not actually been an articulated strategy for what comes next. So I think
0:46.7	it's really important to look at the people who are trying to articulate those strategies
0:50.6	and try to get a realistic understanding of what is the path here? Like what, even if
0:55.5	we do all this right, what does right look like? One of the people trying to figure that
0:59.4	out is Scott Gottlieb. He is the former FDA commissioner, he's Donald Trump's first FDA
1:03.8	commissioner, and he was a very rare Trump appointee and that he won quite a lot of
1:07.2	plotts from people on both the left and the right. After working in the Trump administration,
1:12.0	he went back to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative leading think tank, where he's
1:15.7	really been one of the key voices on coronavirus, particularly on the right, particularly
1:19.5	of people on the right with some real expertise here, trying to get this taken seriously,
1:23.3	trying to think about it in a systematic way. And he's one of the lead authors on a plan
1:28.0	now for reopening the economy. So we talked about that plan here. We talk about sort of the
1:33.0	coronavirus response in general. And one thing that I think is worth keeping in mind, and if you
1:37.4	go to Vox and we'll put this in the show notes, you can see a big piece I've written on the various
1:41.1	plans to reopen the economy and the way they're actually kind of scary, be here that here too.
	...

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